Huáscar

Civil war consumed the reign of Huascar, who held the Inca throne at Cuzco from about 1527 to 1532, in the last years before the Spanish conquest. A son of Huayna Capac and, by most accounts, of the coya Rahua Ocllo, he was born around 1503 and was recognized as Sapa Inca in Cuzco after his father and the designated heir both died in the epidemic that swept the Andes in the mid-1520s. The events of these years are known only through chronicles written after the conquest, many of them based on testimony from rival branches of the royal family, and both the chronology and the hostile portraits of Huascar that some sources preserve must be read with caution.

His rule was contested almost from the start by his half-brother Atahualpa, who remained in the Quito region with the seasoned army their father had commanded there for decades. Whether Huayna Capac had intended any division of authority is uncertain; the chronicles disagree. After attempts at accommodation failed, the dispute became open war across the empire. Huascar drew on the loyalty of Cuzco and its royal panacas, the descent corporations of former rulers, but Atahualpa's generals Quizquiz and Chalcuchima commanded the more experienced forces and won the decisive engagements as the war moved south.

In 1532 the northern army defeated Huascar's forces near Cuzco and took him prisoner. The victors dealt harshly with his kin and supporters: the chronicles report killings within the royal family and the persecution of Capac Ayllu, the panaca of his grandfather Tupac Inca Yupanqui, which had backed him, including the desecration of that ruler's mummy. The dynastic machinery that had managed succession among the descendants of the royal line thus broke down precisely as the Spaniards arrived.

Huascar never regained freedom. While he was being conducted north as a captive, Francisco Pizarro seized Atahualpa at Cajamarca in November 1532; the chronicles state that Atahualpa, fearing the Spaniards might restore his rival, ordered Huascar killed, and he died at the hands of his escort around the end of that year. His death left the Cuzco branch of the family to seek other champions, and his younger half-brother Manco Inca was crowned under Spanish sponsorship the following year.