Francisco Pizarro

1478 – 1541

Francisco Pizarro was a Spanish conquistador whose expeditions led the conquest of the Inca Empire in the 1530s. Capturing the Inca emperor Atahualpa under a flag of truce at Cajamarca in 1532, he extorted a roomful of gold and silver as ransom, then strangled Atahualpa anyway in 1533 before sacking the imperial capital at Cuzco and founding the colonial city of Lima. The conquest he led killed and enslaved millions of Andean people directly or through introduced disease, exhaustion, and famine, and ended one of the largest pre-Columbian states in the Americas.

Last checked: May 10, 2026, 1:06 PM