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History of the Conquest of Peru

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First published: 1847
Pages: 625

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About this book

Four years after finishing his Mexico, Prescott turned to the other great Spanish conquest and published this in 1847. It opens with the Incas at their height: the roads, the quipu records, the storehouses, a state that fed and organized millions without money or writing in any form Europe recognized. Then Pizarro comes ashore with fewer than two hundred men, and the book moves to Cajamarca, the seizure of Atahualpa, the room filled with gold, and the civil wars among the conquerors that killed more Spaniards than the Incas ever did. Prescott's verdicts belong to his century, but his eye for character and his control of pace have not dated.

About the author

William Hickling Prescott

William Hickling Prescott (1796-1859) came from a wealthy Massachusetts family and turned to history after an injury left him nearly blind. Working with secretaries and crates of imported Spanish manuscripts, he wrote Ferdinand and Isabella, the Conquest of Mexico, and the Conquest of Peru, and was read across Europe.