Manco Inca

Installed as Sapa Inca by Francisco Pizarro in 1533, Manco Inca began his reign as a Spanish client and ended it as the founder of an independent Inca state in the mountains of Vilcabamba. A son of Huayna Capac and a younger half-brother of the rivals Huascar and Atahualpa, he was born around 1516 and was still in his teens when the civil war and the Spanish invasion destroyed the established order. After Atahualpa's execution and the early death of another brother, Tupac Huallpa, the Spaniards needed a legitimate ruler acceptable to the Cuzco nobility and its royal panacas; Manco, of high birth and an enemy of Atahualpa's faction, served their purpose and entered Cuzco with them in 1533.

The alliance deteriorated quickly. The chronicles, including the account later dictated by his son Titu Cusi, describe escalating extortion and personal abuse of the young ruler by Spaniards in Cuzco. In 1536 Manco escaped on the pretext of retrieving a golden statue and raised an enormous army. His forces besieged Cuzco for months, taking the fortress of Sacsayhuaman before losing it in fierce fighting, while a second army attacked Lima. The sieges ultimately failed, and Manco withdrew first to Ollantaytambo, where he repulsed a Spanish attack, and then in 1537 beyond the mountain ranges into Vilcabamba.

There he maintained a reduced but functioning Inca state, with its court, religion, and administration, raiding Spanish traffic on the highland roads and receiving fugitives. Among these were supporters of the defeated Almagrist faction of Spaniards, whom he sheltered after their civil war against the Pizarros. In 1544 these guests murdered him, apparently hoping to win pardon from the colonial authorities; they were killed by his followers.

His position within the dynasty framed the final decades of Inca rule. While his brother Paullu Inca cooperated with the Spaniards in Cuzco, Manco's line held Vilcabamba: his sons Sayri Tupac, Titu Cusi Yupanqui, and finally Tupac Amaru ruled there in succession until 1572. The dates of his life, like most Inca chronology, depend on colonial-era sources and are approximate, but his reign is conventionally counted from 1533 to 1544, with the independent Neo-Inca state dating from his rebellion of 1536.