Pizarro Seizing the Inca of Peru, 1846.
Funeral of Atahualpa.
July 26, 1533: Atahualpa, last emperor of the Inca Empire, is executed.
In 1532, in town of Cajamarca, a Spanish ambush under Francisco Pizarro resulted in the successful capture of Atahualpa, the young and newly-victorious emperor of the Inca Empire. While held captive, Atahualpa offered large amounts of gold and silver to the Spaniards for his freedom - or perhaps merely his life. In the meantime, an Inca general named Rumiñahui began amassing forces to lead against the invaders, the captured emperor became a liability, and Pizarro ordered him executed.
Atahualpa was charged with and found guilty of committing and treason and practicing idolatry among other crimes after a mock trial, and he was sentenced to death by burning. However, the friar who accompanied Pizarro’s group offered to commute Atahualpa’s sentence if he were to convert to Catholicism - which he did. By his own request, the last Sapa Inca was instead strangled to death with a garrote (according to some accounts, on August 29, the feast day of the beheading of John the Baptist). His successors, including two of his brothers, were nothing more than puppets of the Spanish conquistadors, although unrest and rebellion continued through the empire to the end of the century.