He was not aware how precarious was his own tenure of life. Pizarro saw more and more clearly that, in order to become the real master of Peru, he must get rid of the reigning Inca, and put some child in his place, who would be a passive instrument in his hands. He was fairly alarmed by the religious obedience, timid but absolute, that the "child of the Sun," even in his captivity, received from all classes of his subjects. He fancied that from the recesses of his prison, and even while paying off his enormous ransom,[70] Atahualpa had sent secret orders to the most distant populations to arm themselves and come to his rescue. The interpreter through whom he communicated with his captive was out of temper with his master, for his head had been so turned by ambition, that he had demanded the hand of a _coya_, that is to say, one of the Inca's women, and had been haughtily refused. In revenge, he made malicious reports to Pizarro. But it was an accidental circumstance that brought the latter's ill-will towards his captive to a point. The Inca greatly admired the art of writing when he discovered all the uses the Spaniards made of it. One day it occurred to him to get one of the soldiers on guard over him to write the word _Dio_ upon his nail, and he was delighted and astonished to find that every one to whom he showed it read it in the same way. So they told him that every one a little above the common herd could read and write in Europe. His evil star would have it that he showed his thumb one day to Pizarro, who could make nothing of it. Pizarro, then, could not read! Atahualpa concluded that he was merely one of the common herd, and found an opportunity of telling him so. Pizarro, stung to the quick, hesitated no longer. A mock judgment condemned Atahualpa to the extreme penalty for the crimes of idolatry, polygamy, usurpation, fratricide and rebellion. In vain he appealed to the King of Spain. He was led to the stake, and Father Valverde made him purchase by a baptism _in extremis_ the privilege of being strangled instead of burned alive.
From this moment the fate of Peru was decided. The head once struck from the great body, long convulsions ensued, but no serious resistance was possible. Pizarro set up as Inca a young brother of Huascar's, who was at first a mere instrument in the hands of his country's bleeders, but afterwards escaped and raised insurrections which ended in his total defeat. The Spaniards had been reinforced, and had found allies amongst the peoples who had been torn from their native soils by the victorious Incas.[71] Other attempts, still attaching themselves to the name of some Inca, failed in like manner. And yet the mass of the Peruvians, in spite of their conversion to Roman Catholicism, remained obstinately attached to the memory of their Incas. One of their real or pretended descendants, in the eighteenth century, did not shrink from serving as a domestic at Madrid and Rome, as the only means of learning the secret of that European power which had so cruelly crushed his ancestors.[72] But on his return to Peru (1744 A.D.) his efforts only ended in his destruction. But this did not prevent a certain Tupac Amarou, who was descended from the Incas through a female line, from fomenting a rebellion in 1780, which it cost the Spaniards an effort to suppress.[73] Later on, after the revolution that broke the bond of subjection to Spain, this stubborn hostility of the Peruvians changed its character; but in 1867, Bustamente still tried to make capital out of the historical attachment of the natives to the Incas by declaring himself their descendant. The opposition, however, had long lost all vestige of a religious character. The legend of Manco Capac, which is still current amongst the people, has been euhemerized. It is now no more than the story of a just and enlightened prince, the benefactor of the country. The natives, it seems, are fond of playing a kind of drama, in which the trial and death of Atahualpa are represented. Superstitious to the last degree, they accept the practices of Catholicism with a submission that has in it more of a melancholy and hopeless resignation than an ardent or trusting faith. The glorious age of the Incas is gone, and will never return, but it is still regretted.[74]