Pizarro now determined to take an active share in the government of the country.  Placing a son of Atahualpa’s on the throne, and having received reinforcements of men and arms, he marched throughout the Province at the head of 500 men, carrying with him the puppet King upon whom he placed great hopes.  The latter disappointed these, since he died in the course of the expedition.  In some respects this was doubly unfortunate for Pizarro, as there now remained one clear claimant to the throne of the Children of the Sun—­Manco Capac, the brother of Huasca.

Manco Capac was by no means prepared to yield tamely to the situation.  For a considerable time very little was effected on either side.  The Incas were slowly recovering from the shocks and tribulations which they had undergone; the Spaniards, on the other hand, found their attention occupied by the unexpected arrival of a Spanish expedition commanded by Pedro de Alvarado.  This leader had performed his part in the conquest of Mexico, and had now hastened to the South in order to ascertain what chances of enrichment were to be met with in the land, the reputation of which was now spreading itself abroad.  For a while it looked very much as if open warfare would result between the rival parties.  In the end, however, Pizarro consented to buy the departure of Alvarado, and this leader retired heavy in pocket.  On the whole his visit had not proved unprofitable to the astute Pizarro, since many of Alvarado’s men had remained in Peru to throw in their lot with him.

Pizarro and Almagro were now left in occupation of the Inca Empire.  It was inevitable that jealousy should arise between the pair, and it was not long before the situation grew strained.  Pizarro, true to his own interests, had insisted on returning to Spain in order to give an account of the doings in Peru.  Needless to say, he employed the opportunity to obtain the royal sanction to advance still further his official position—­somewhat at the expense of Almagro, of course.  Almost directly after his return he founded the city of Lima, intending this to supersede Cuzco as the future capital of the country.

All this while the breach between Pizarro and Almagro had widened.  In 1535 the latter, realizing that even the Empire of the Incas was not sufficiently large to hold the pair of Spanish leaders, determined to make for the South.  The expedition was a tragic one.  Almagro, though his spirit was undaunted, was now aged in years, and the barren country of the Atacama Desert and the attacks of the hostile Indians rendered the enterprise a failure from a monetary point of view.  Almagro had invested all his fortune in this, and his affairs now became desperate.

[Illustration:  PIZARRO AND ATAHUALPA.

From a seventeenth-century engraving.]

In the meantime the crafty Pizarro had been permitted to enjoy very little peace and tranquillity in Peru.  Manco Capac had bided his time, and his Indian subjects, fervently loyal to the sacred dynasty, had crowded about him in their thousands.  The Peruvians now assumed the aggressive.  Thousands of Inca troops scoured the country, and, falling on remote and unprepared bands of Spaniards, obtained some modicum of revenge in slaughtering all they found.