Atahualpa's ransom fills the room with gold
1533 · Event
From his cell the captured emperor offers the bargain of the age: a room filled once with gold and twice with silver for his freedom. For eight months llama trains strip the empire's temples to fill it — eleven tonnes of gold artefacts, melted into bars. Pizarro takes delivery in June 1533, and garrottes him anyway in July.
On these timelines: The Conquest of Peru, Latin America, Pre-Columbian Americas, Spain, Master
More from The Conquest of Peru
- Spanish conquest of the Incas (1532)
- Capture of Atahualpa at Cajamarca (1532)
- Manco Inca besieges Cusco (1536)
- Pizarro takes Cusco (1533)
- Assassination of Francisco Pizarro (1541)
- Smallpox reaches the Inca Empire (1527)
- Inca resistance at Vilcabamba (1537)
- Pizarro founds Lima (1535)
Around 1533
- Columbus reaches the Americas (1492)
- English Reformation (1533)
- Eighty Years' War / Dutch Revolt (1568)
- French Wars of Religion (1562)
- Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire (1519)
- The Reformation (1517)
- Magellan-Elcano circumnavigation (1519)
- Luther's 95 Theses (1517)
- Sistine Chapel ceiling (1508)
- William Shakespeare (1564)