Travels in Peru and India: While Superintending the Collection of Chinchona Plants and Seeds in South America, and Their Introduction into India.Markham, Clements R. (Clements Robert), Sir
History
Travels in Peru and India: While Superintending the Collection of Chinchona Plants and Seeds in South America, and Their Introduction into India.
Markham, Clements R. (Clements Robert), Sir
Cinchona; India -- Description and travel; Peru -- Description and travel
This hideous cruelty was literally carried into effect, in all its
revolting details. On Friday the 18th of May, 1781, after the great
square had been surrounded by Spanish and negro troops, ten persons
came forth from the church of the Jesuits. One of these was the Inca
Tupac Amaru, who had, in the early morning, been visited in prison by
Areche, and urged to betray all the accomplices in his rebellion.[232]
"You and I," he replied, "are the only conspirators: you for having
oppressed the country with exactions which were unendurable, and I for
having wished to free the people from such tyranny."[233] The Inca's
companions in misfortune were his wife Micaela, his sons Hipolito and
Fernando, his brother-in-law Antonio Bastidas, his uncle Francisco
Tupac Amaru, Tomasa Condemaita the Cacica of Acos, José Verdejo and
Andres Castelo, captains in the Inca's army, and the executioner
Oblitas.
Verdejo, Castelo, Oblitas, and Bastidas were hung at once. The rest
were heavily chained, tied up in the bags which are used for carrying
the maté or Paraguay tea, and dragged backwards into the centre of the
square by horses. Francisco and Hipolito Tupac Amaru, the one an old
man verging on fourscore years, the other a youth of twenty, then had
their tongues cut out, and, with Tomasa Condemaita, were garrotted by
an iron screw, the first that had been seen in Cuzco. Micaela, the
wife of the Inca, was then placed on the same scaffold, her tongue was
cut out, and the screw was placed round her neck in presence of her
husband; but she suffered cruelly, because her neck was so small that
the screw failed to strangle her. The executioners then placed a lasso
round her neck, and pulled different ways, at the same time kicking her
in the stomach and bosom until they succeeded in killing her. The Inca
was then taken into the centre of the square, his chains were taken
off, and his tongue was cut out. He was then thrown on the ground;
lassos, secured to the girths of four horses, were fastened to his
wrists and ankles, and the horses were made to drag different ways, "a
spectacle never before seen at Cuzco." As the unfortunate Inca's body
was thus raised into the air, his youngest son Fernando, a child of ten
years, who had been forced to witness this horrible massacre of his
relations, uttered a heartrending shriek, the knell of which continued
to ring in the ears of those who heard it to their dying day.[234] The
horses did not pull at the same time, and the body remained suspended
like a spider for many minutes, until at last the brutal miscreant
Areche, who was looking on from a window in the College of the Jesuits,
caused the head to be cut off.[235] The child Fernando was then passed
under the scaffold, and sentenced to be banished for life to one of the
penal settlements in Africa.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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