The Dawson Ledger
Event

Battle of Cajamarca (1532 CE)

Capture of Atahualpa by a small Spanish force.

Andean

Event Details

  • Date: 16 November 1532
  • Type: battle
  • Civilizations: andean, western-atlantic

Description

Capture of Atahualpa by a small Spanish force.

Quantitative facts and their sourcing

  • Date 16 November 1532; outcome: Spanish victory.
  • Wikipedia-compiled (stub): Spanish 106 infantry and 62 cavalry; Inca guard 3,000-8,000; Inca killed 2,000-3,000, ~7,000 captured; Spanish dead: one (a slave). Spanish-chronicle-based; likely one-sided.
  • Candidate formal sources listed in the Wikipedia infobox/lead for this topic (METADATA-VERIFIED ONLY via Crossref/Open Library; NOT read; relevance to the figures above unverified): MacQuarrie Kim 2012, Last Days of the Incas.
  • PRIMARY-SOURCE figures: Xerez (Markham transl. 1872, read 2026-10-12): Atahualpa's men numbered "thirty thousand", some "who have seen armies in the field" said more than 40,000; "in the square and on the plain there were two thousand killed, besides wounded"; the litter-bearers and lords were all killed and "no account was taken of them". Written by Pizarro's secretary; partisan.

Confidence

low-medium (Spanish chronicle sources). Numbers marked "Wikipedia-compiled (stub)" come from a secondary aggregator and must be upgraded to page-level scholarly citations before any Official use.

Citations

  • xerez-markham-1872-ia [PRIMARY-READ] Francisco de Xerez, Clements R. Markham (ed.) (1872). Francisco de Xerez, Narrative of the Conquest of Peru, in C. R. Markham (transl./ed.), Reports on the Discovery of Peru (Hakluyt Society, 1872); archive.org scan, Cajamarca passage read. Hakluyt Society (scan: Internet Archive). https://archive.org/details/reportsondiscove00markrich. Read 2026-10-12.
  • hemming1970-conquest-incas [formal] John Hemming (1970). The Conquest of the Incas. Macmillan. https://openlibrary.org/works/OL4463013W. Verified 2026-10-11 (Open Library record found; edition exists, page-level not checked).
  • wp-battle-of-cajamarca [STUB (secondary aggregator)] Wikipedia contributors (2026). Battle of Cajamarca (Wikipedia; secondary aggregator, stub-grade). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cajamarca. Verified 2026-10-11 (resolves).
  • m-macquarrie2012-last-days-of-the-incas [formal] MacQuarrie Kim (2012). Last Days of the Incas. Hachette (publisher). https://openlibrary.org/books/OL33459339M. Verified 2026-10-11 (Open Library record found; edition exists, page-level not checked).

Review status

SOFT draft. Not Official. Needs editor review of CAD tags (estimated) and page-level citation upgrade.

About this entry

A draft entry preserved from civilization.study. Evidence grade: low. 3 of 4 listed sources are fully documented; the rest are names only. Method and sources

Conflict card

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battle · 16 November 1532

Battle of Cajamarca (1532 CE)

Capture of Atahualpa by a small Spanish force.

Evidence: Primary text read Draft estimate

What the record says

  • Note Date 16 November 1532; outcome: Spanish victory.
  • Unverified (Wikipedia-compiled) Wikipedia-compiled (stub): Spanish 106 infantry and 62 cavalry; Inca guard 3,000-8,000; Inca killed 2,000-3,000, ~7,000 captured; Spanish dead: one (a slave). Spanish-chronicle-based; likely one-sided.
  • Candidate sources Candidate formal sources listed in the Wikipedia infobox/lead for this topic (METADATA-VERIFIED ONLY via Crossref/Open Library; NOT read; relevance to the figures above unverified): MacQuarrie Kim 2012, Last Days of the Incas.
  • Primary text PRIMARY-SOURCE figures: Xerez (Markham transl. 1872, read 2026-10-12): Atahualpa's men numbered "thirty thousand", some "who have seen armies in the field" said more than 40,000; "in the square and on the plain there were two thousand killed, besides wounded"; the litter-bearers and lords were all killed and "no account was taken of them". Written by Pizarro's secretary; partisan.

Confidence. low-medium (Spanish chronicle sources).

Where it sits

Sources and evidence

No page-level citation is claimed for any source. Figures marked unverified come from a Wikipedia aggregator and are not for Official use.

Link to this conflict

Art: Patterns of Civilization chronicle art, made with AI: illustrations, not historical evidence. Entries are drafts preserved from civilization.study. Method and sources.