Francisco Pizarro: Quest of Empire and Eternity

 

X.O.A.T

XPLORER OF ALL TIMES

Francisco Pizarro

In the dry winds of Extremadura and the golden silence of the Andes, Francisco Pizarro emerged not only as a conquistador but also, paradoxically, as a seeker—of wealth, yes, but also of truths submerged under the myths of the Old World and the mystique of the New. While history has often remembered him through the lens of conquest and cruelty, it is in his sparse writings and silent decisions that we glimpse a mind fraught with contradictions and an age gripped by vast transformations.

The Shadows of Extremadura: Ideals Forged in Silence

Born out of wedlock in the remote Spanish province of Extremadura in the 1470s, Pizarro grew under the harsh codes of honour and ambition that marked post-Reconquista Spain. Poverty was not merely a material condition but a moral stain, and the hunger for status shaped his earliest ideals. Yet, what drove him was not simply greed—a raw, visceral desire to emerge, to cross over the threshold from the nameless margins of feudal Spain into the chronicles of empire.

Spain, in his youth, was intoxicated by millenarian dreams—of a Christian world empire, of the Last Judgment near at hand, and of divine favour manifesting in global dominion. In this religious-political crucible, men like Pizarro were not taught to question empire; they were taught to embody it. Thus, Pizarro's ideal was not utopia—it was permanence, a legacy carved in stone and blood.

Philosophy in Iron: The Intellectual Currents of the Age

Pizarro’s world was saturated by late scholasticism, where theology still reigned supreme but was slowly being challenged by Renaissance humanism. Spain, however, remained cautious of such disruptions. Thinkers like Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda argued for the natural inferiority of indigenous peoples, drawing on Aristotelian notions of "natural slavery," while others like Bartolomé de las Casas fiercely opposed such views. Although Pizarro left few explicit endorsements of such debates, his actions place him closer to the former.

Yet there is a peculiar kind of philosophy in the actions of men like Pizarro. When he chose to disobey orders, to brave the Pacific in a leaky brigantine, or to return to Spain to secure royal blessing rather than act as a rogue, we see not recklessness but a vision governed by a logic: greatness must be legal, if not moral. His philosophy, if it can be so termed, was one of civilized conquest—the merging of brutal instinct with institutional legitimacy.

Writings in the Margins: The Ghostly Voice of Pizarro

Unlike his contemporary Hernán Cortés, who left behind eloquent letters to Charles V, Pizarro was not a prolific writer. His extant notes are terse, almost laconic, but their brevity is revealing. In one such communiqué sent from Cajamarca after capturing Atahualpa, he writes:

“The Inca was taken without much blood; the Lord has guided us.”

This seemingly simple line reveals three layers of his psyche. First, a tactical mind that values efficiency over chaos. Second, a theological instinct that saw divine will behind calculated violence. And third, a humility before power—not before the Inca, but before God, Empire, and History.

In his few signed orders and testimonies, we find a man more executor than thinker. But in that very function lies his philosophical weight: Pizarro, unlike Cortés, did not seek to narrate the conquest—he sought to become it. His silence was his statement.

Interior Conflicts: Between the Cross and the Sword

Was there doubt in Pizarro? Was he haunted, even fleetingly, by the moral fractures of his deeds? We find no confessions, no recantations. But perhaps his most intimate conflict was not with the Incas but with his own brothers and comrades.

The eventual civil war between Pizarro and Diego de Almagro—his companion in conquest—was not merely political. It was metaphysical. In their quarrel over Cuzco and its gold, they rehearsed the broader Spanish struggle between conquest for faith and conquest for fortune. Pizarro killed Almagro not as a usurper but as a fallen mirror of himself.

Here lies his inner genius: he understood the fragility of loyalty in the new world order. He survived until he didn’t—assassinated in 1541 by Almagro’s son in Lima, the very city he founded. He died surrounded not by natives but by ghosts of his own ambitions.

The Soul of the Conqueror: A Reflection in Blood and Stone

To understand Pizarro is not to justify him but to encounter a figure born of metaphysical rupture—a world where medieval piety met capitalist hunger and where human life became a wager for eternity. He was not driven by hatred or cruelty per se, but by the cold fire of order, a desire to translate chaos into power.

His legacy, preserved in the stones of Lima and the broken temples of the Andes, is that of a tragic Prometheus—not stealing fire for humanity, but for Empire. He bore no philosophical treatise, but in the ruins he left behind, one reads the oldest of philosophical questions: Can greatness exist without virtue?

Conclusion: Reading the Man Beneath the Empire

Francisco Pizarro's life is a palimpsest—beneath the conqueror lies the orphan, beneath the founder the destroyer, beneath the silence a philosophy of permanence. His genius was not intellectual but existential: he mastered the art of acting with finality in a world slipping into flux.

We may never know his deepest thoughts, but we have his decisions—and they speak with terrible clarity. In them we find a man shaped not by the clarity of ideals, but by the urgency of his era: a time when empires were built by men who feared being forgotten more than they feared being damned.

Sources:

(text)

1.  The History of the Conquest of Peru by William H. Prescott

2. The Last Days of the Incas by Kim MacQuarrie

3. The Conquest of the Incas by John Hemming

(pictures)

PIC-1: Wikipedia

PIC-2: iStock

PIC-3: Britannica

PIC-4: Wikipedia

PIC-5: 

T

ierras Vivas

PIC-6: Francisco Pizarro

PIC-7: North Wind Picture Archives