The Battle of Ollantaytambo (, ) took place in January 1537, between the forces of Inca emperor Manco Inca and a Spanish expedition led by Hernando Pizarro during the Spanish conquest of Peru. A former ally of the Spaniards, Manco Inca rebelled in May 1536, and besieged a Spanish garrison in the city of Cusco. To end the stand-off, the besieged mounted a raid against the emperor's headquarters in the town of Ollantaytambo. The expedition, commanded by Hernando Pizarro, included 100 Spaniards and some 30,000 Indian auxiliaries against an Inca army of more than 20,000.
There is some controversy over the actual location of the battle; according to some, it took place in the town itself, while Jean-Pierre Protzen and John HemmingJohn Hemmings, "Conquest of the Incas," Chapter 10 argue that the nearby plain of Mascabamba better matches the descriptions of the encounter. In any case, the Inca army managed to defend against the Spanish forces from a set of high terraces and flooded their position by channeling water from the Urubamba River, which greatly hindered the Spanish cavalry. Severely pressed and unable to advance, the Spaniards withdrew by night to Cusco. Despite this victory, the arrival of Spanish reinforcements to Cusco forced Manco Inca to abandon Ollantaytambo and seek refuge in the heavily forested region of Vilcabamba, where he established the small independent Neo-Inca State which survived until 1572.
Prelude
In 1531, a group of Spaniards led by Francisco Pizarro landed on the shores of the Inca Empire, thus starting the Spanish conquest of Peru. At that time the empire was emerging from a civil war in which Atahualpa had defeated his brother Huascar to claim the title of Sapa Inca. Atahualpa underestimated the strength of the small force of Spaniards and was captured during an ambush at Cajamarca in November 1532. Pizarro ordered the execution of the emperor in July 1533, and occupied the Inca capital of Cusco four months later. To replace Atahualpa, Pizarro installed his brother Túpac Huallpa as a puppet ruler, but he died shortly afterwards. Another brother, Manco Inca, was crowned in his place. During this stage, Atahualpa's generals were the only opposition to the Spanish advance as a sizable part of the empire's population had fought on Huascar's side during the civil war and joined Pizarro against their enemies.D'Altroy, The Incas, pp. 311–319.
For a while, Manco Inca and the conquistadors maintained cordial relations, together they defeated Atahualpa's generals and reestablished Inca rule over most of the empire.Hemming, The conquest, pp. 164–167. However, Manco came to realize that real authority rested in Spanish hands when his house was looted with impunity by a Spaniard mob in 1535.Hemming, The conquest, p. 171. Following this episode, the Inca emperor was subject to constant harassment as the Spaniards demanded gold, took away his wives, and even imprisoned him. In response, he fled his capital to start an uprising.Hemming, The conquest, pp. 173–183. In May 1536, an Inca army besieged Cusco, which was garrisoned by a group of Spaniards and native allies.Hemming, The conquest, pp. 185–187. The conquistadors were hard pressed but they managed to resist and counterattack, storming the main Inca stronghold at Sacsayhuaman.Hemming, The conquest, pp. 192–196. Meanwhile, Manco's generals occupied the central highlands of Peru and annihilated several expeditions sent to reinforce Cusco but failed in their attempt to take the recently founded Spanish capital of Lima.Hemming, The conquest, pp. 199–206. As a result of these events, neither side was able to break the deadlock at Cusco for several months, so the Spaniard garrison decided to make a direct attack on Manco's headquarters at the town of Ollantaytambo, northwest of the city.Hemming, The conquest, p. 206.
Sources Primary sources about the battle of Ollantaytambo were written mainly by Spaniards. Pedro Pizarro, a cousin of Francisco Pizarro, was part of the expedition against Manco Inca's headquarters. Years later he wrote down his recollections of these and other events in a chronicle called Relación del descubrimiento y conquista de los reinos del Perú, completed in 1571.Hemming, The conquest, pp. 511, 532. The anonymous Relación del sitio del Cuzco y principio de las guerras civiles del Perú hasta la muerte de Diego de Almagro starts in January 1536 when Hernando Pizarro arrived in Cusco, and ends with the execution of Diego de Almagro in July 1538. This chronicle, which includes an account of Manco Inca's rebellion and the attack on Ollantaytambo, was written in 1539 probably by Diego de Silva, a Spanish soldier who was actually in Lima during the uprising.Hemming, The conquest, pp. 181, 505, 555. An account of the battle was also included in the Historia general de los hechos de los Castellanos en las islas y tierra firme del Mar Oceano, written by Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas between 1610 and 1615.Hemming, The conquest, pp. 508, 559. Herrera was the Cronista Mayor de las Indias (Chronicler-in-Chief of the Indies) of the Spanish Crown and despite writing in Madrid, had access to many documents and sources. On the Inca side, the only written account of the battle is included in the Relación de la conquista del Perú y hechos del Inca Manco II, written in 1570 by Titu Cusi Yupanqui, son of Manco Inca.Hemming, The conquest, pp. 513, 559.
Order of battle
Manco Inca had gathered more than 20,000 troops at Ollantaytambo, among them, a large number of recruits from tribes of the Amazon rainforest.Vega, Incas contra españoles, p. 79. Manco Inca's forces were a militia army made up mostly of conscripted farmers with only rudimentary weapons training.Hemming, The conquest, p. 207. This was the regular fare in the Inca Empire, where military service was a duty for all married men between 25 and 50 years old.D'Altroy, The Incas, p. 217. In combat, these soldiers were organized according to their ethnic group and led into battle by their native leaders, called kurakas.D'Altroy, The Incas, p. 233. They used melee weapons such as maces, clubs, and spears, as well as ranged weapons such as arrows, javelins, and slings; protective gear included helmets, shields, and quilted cloth armor.D'Altroy, The Incas, p. 227. Against the conquistadors, wooden clubs and maces with stone or bronze heads were rarely able to penetrate Spanish armor;Hemming, The conquest, p. 114. slings and other missile throwing weapons were somewhat more effective due to their accuracy and the large size of their projectiles.Hemming, The conquest, pp. 114–115, 187. Even so, Inca soldiers were no match for the Spanish cavalry in open terrain so they resorted to fighting on rough terrain and digging pits in open fields to hinder the mobility of horses.
The attack was led by Hernando Pizarro, the senior Spanish commander in Cusco, with a force of 100 Spaniards (30 infantry, 70 cavalry) and an estimated 30,000 native allies.Hemming, The conquest, p. 207; Vega, Incas contra españoles, p. 78. One of his main assets against the Inca armies was the Spanish cavalry because horses provided a considerable advantage in hitting power, maneuverability, speed, and stamina over Inca warriors.Hemming, The conquest, pp. 109–111. All Spaniards wore some kind of armor, the most commonly used types were chain mail shirts and padded cloth armor which were lighter and cheaper than full armor suits; they were complemented by steel helmets and small iron or wooden shields.Hemming, The conquest, pp. 112–113. The main Spanish offensive weapon was the steel sword, which horsemen supplemented with the lance; both weapons could easily penetrate the padded armor worn by Inca troops.Hemming, The conquest, p. 113. Firearms, such as arquebuses were rarely used during the Spanish conquest of Peru because they were scarce, hard to use, and despised by horsemen as an ungentlemanly weapon.Hemming, The conquest, pp. 113–114. Spaniards relied heavily on Indian auxiliaries because they provided thousands of warriors as well as support personnel and supplies.D'Altroy, The Incas, p. 319. These native troops had the same sorts of arms and armor as their Inca counterparts. During the Ollantaytambo campaign, the Pizarro expedition included thousands of auxiliaries, mainly Cañaris, Chachapoyas, and Wankas, as well as several members of the Inca nobility opposed to Manco Inca.Vega, Incas contra españoles, p. 78.
Battle
The main access route to Ollantaytambo runs along a narrow valley formed in the mountains by the Urubamba River, which connects the site with Machu Picchu to the west and with Pisaq and Cusco to the east. After his uprising, Manco Inca fortified the eastern approaches to fend off attacks from the former Inca capital, now under Spanish occupation. The first line of defense was a steep bank of terraces at Pachar, near the confluence of the Anta and Urubamba rivers. Behind it, the Incas channeled the Urubamba to make it cross the valley from right to left and back thus forming two more lines backed by the fortifications of Choqana on the left bank and 'Inkapintay on the right bank. Past them, at the plain of Mascabamba, eleven high terraces closed the valley between the mountains and a deep canyon formed by the Urubamba. The only way to continue was through the gate of T'iyupunku, a thick defensive wall with two narrow doorways. In the event of these fortifications being overrun, the Temple Hill, a religious center surrounded by high terraces overlooking Ollantaytambo, provided a last line of defense.Protzen, Inca architecture, pp. 22–26.
Faced with these constraints, the Spanish expedition had to cross the river several times and fight at each ford against stiff opposition. The bulk of the Inca army confronted the Spaniards from a set of terraces overlooking a plain by the Urubamba River. Several Spanish assaults against the terraces failed against a shower of arrows, slingshots, and boulders coming down from the terraces as well as from both flanks. To hinder the efforts of the Spanish cavalry, the Incas flooded the plain using previously prepared channels; water eventually reached the horses' girths. The defenders then counterattacked; some of them used Spanish weapons captured in previous encounters such as swords, bucklers, armor, and even a horse, ridden by Manco Inca himself. In a severely compromised situation, Hernando Pizarro ordered a retreat. Hernando's plan was to withdraw his army in an orderly manner, but the pursuit by the Incas drove the Spaniards to despair, turning the retreat into a rout. The Spaniards fled, abandoning their indigenous allies along the way, who were then massacred by the pursuing Inca soldiers. The pursuit was so fierce that another relative of the conquistador Francisco Pizarro, his cousin Pedro Pizarro, was on the verge of being killed by Inca warriors when his horse died, and had to be saved by two horsemen who came to his aid.Hemming, The conquest, pp. 208–209.
The victory had been so decisive that, the following day, a Cusco detachment that set out in pursuit of the retreating rivals found the Spanish camp completely deserted. The chronicle of Titu Cusi Yupanqui recounts that the Cusco warriors laughed loudly upon seeing that the Spaniards had fled in terror.
Battle site