History of the Conquest of Peru

With a Preliminary View of the Civilization of the Incas

Reading time

about 22 h

Length

305,169 words · 470 pages

Structure

40 chapters · 2 front-matter sections

Language

English

Era

Romantic

A handful of Spanish adventurers under Francisco Pizarro topple an empire of millions: William Hickling Prescott traces the Inca civilization at the height of its power, the internal succession war that left it vulnerable, and the swift, brutal Spanish conquest that followed — the ambush and ransom of the Inca emperor Atahualpa, his execution despite the ransom being paid, and the chaotic infighting among the conquistadors themselves once the empire they had seized had nothing left to give them.

Prescott, nearly blind for most of his adult life, worked from original Spanish archival sources gathered for him in Europe, dictating his research and drafts to an assistant. History of the Conquest of Peru appeared in 1847, four years after his Conquest of Mexico, and both were popular successes as much for their narrative drive as their scholarship.

This Bibliomancer edition presents the complete text.

New editions

Never lose your place.

This book is free to read in full, and stays that way. Leave an address: one click confirms it and opens a free account, so your progress and bookmarks sync across every device. You'll also hear when the next restored edition enters the archive. Terminate at any time.

Subjects

About this edition

The text is free of copyright. This edition was prepared from an authoritative digitisation, processed by Bibliomancer under its own review protocol; every automated correction is recorded in its transformation log. Rights assessed for CA, EU, GB, US.

William Hickling Prescott (1796–1859) was born in Salem, Massachusetts, into a prosperous family; a college accident left him nearly blind in one eye and increasingly unable to use the other, and for most of his working life he had his research read aloud to him and dictated his own drafts to an assistant. Working almost entirely from original Spanish-language archival sources gathered for him in Europe, he became the first major American historian of Spain's conquests in the Americas, publishing History of the Conquest of Mexico (1843) and History of the Conquest of Peru (1847), both written in a vivid, dramatic narrative style that made them widely popular well beyond scholarly circles. He died in Boston at sixty-two.