“The Marquis,” says Pedro Pizarro, “called out, saying, ‘Let none wound the Inca, under pain of his life!’” Atahuallpa was to be made prisoner, not killed. Around him a faithful few, his nobles and court, fought desperately to protect their sovereign. Unarmed, they grappled with the Spaniards, clung to their horses, and tried to drag them from their saddles. The struggle was of some duration, and night approached when, several of the palanquin-bearers having been slain, the litter was overturned, and the Inca fell into the arms of Pizarro and his comrades. He was carefully secured in an adjacent building, the news of his capture quickly spread, and the whole Indian army disbanded and fled, panic-struck at the loss of their sovereign. The number that fell that day is very variously stated. “They killed them all,” says one authority, a nephew of Atahuallpa, on whose testimony Mr Prescott inclines to place reliance, “with horses, with swords, with arquebuses, as though they were sheep. None made resistance, and out of ten thousand not two hundred escaped.” This is probably an exaggeration. Other accounts state the number of dead as far smaller, but there appears ground to believe that four or five thousand fell. The example was terrible, and well suited to strike the Peruvians with terror. But the extermination of the whole Indian army would have been of less importance than the single captive Pizarro had made, and whom, agreeably to his promise, he had to sup with him when the fight was done. Deprived of their sovereign, and viewing with a superstitious awe the audacious stranger who had dared to lay hands upon his sacred person, the Indians lost heart, and were no longer to be feared.