Roused at last, the Inca took advantage of the opportunity afforded by the scattering of the Spanish force and made his escape from Cuzco, where Hernando Pizarro and his younger brothers Juan and Gonzalo were in command, and, finding his subjects ripe for revolt, had no difficulty in raising two large armies. One he sent against the Adelantado, who was in Lima; with the other he returned to Cuzco and took the great citadel of Sacsahuaman, overlooking the town, and began a siege that was to last more than six months, and during which Juan Pizarro was killed in an attempt to recapture the citadel. The army that went to the coast was ambushed and defeated by the Spaniards and their local adherents before ever it reached Lima. All that what was left of it could do was to prevent the sending of reinforcements to Cuzco despite the desperate straits to which the Spanish force there was reduced. Pizarro was himself compelled to send to the Isthmus for help. Just before it was too late, however, he managed to get away two hundred and fifty men to the relief of his brothers, and just at that juncture also, Almagro, on his way back from Chile, turned up with his followers, and, caught between Cuzco and these two new detachments of the enemy, the Inca was overwhelmed and concluded to retire into the wild region of Vilcabamba, where the Spaniards could not follow with any hope of success, and there held out for some years. But with his retreat all that remained of the Inca dominion came to an end. There were a few other attempts, but neither he nor his descendants ever succeeded in recovering the throne. As for Almagro, he had had a frightful experience during his excursion into Chile and had met with nothing but disappointment and disaster. The route unwittingly chosen had been over the bleak Bolivian plateaux and across the mountains where the Cordillera reaches its highest, at a season when the passes are buried in snow and swept by furious storms, and his men had perished by thousands, some of the best of his Spaniards among the number. When he had at last made his way to the beautiful central valley between the Cordillera and the coast range and down to the river Maule, he had found nothing of the opulence of Peru, but only a poor but brave, warlike people who in a fierce battle had succeeded in checking his advance. And now, disgusted with this country of his to the south, he returned and made claim to Cuzco as being within his half of the conquered territory and demanded of the Pizarros its surrender. On their refusal, he promptly carried it by assault, made Hernando and Gonzalo his prisoners, and went out to meet the troops that had been sent to their relief by the Adelantado and defeated them.