Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/272

 2 6o THE AGE OF HAPSBURG ASCENDENCY Huascar. Atahualpa found out that they were intriguing with him, and ordered his execution. Pizarro, having got the ransom, turned on Atahualpa and executed him as an usurper who had murdered his brother. Nothing is more remarkable than the completeness with which this small band crushed every attempt at resistance on the part of the Peruvians, in spite of their possession of a highly organised army. Steel, gunpowder and cavalry, and the defensive armour of the Spaniards, proved utterly irre- sistible against a people who, greatly as they had advanced in civilisation, had not learnt the use even of iron. There was no lack of valour among the Peruvians, but they found them- selves absolutely powerless against the weapons of the conquerors. Thus was Peru also brought into subjection to the Spaniards. The Spaniards extended their dominion to the Californian peninsula, and took possession of the mouth of the La Plata The Spanish River on the south-east of South America ; but Expansion. they very soon learnt that ships containing treasure were unsafe unless they voyaged in companies, and the practice began of sending what was called the Plate Fleet home from South America at regular intervals. The great emporium was the city of Cartagena on the Caribbean Sea, near what we may call the stalk on which South America hangs like a pear. The treasures of Peru were brought thither by way of the Isthmus of Panama. In this new world of which they had taken possession, Queen Isabella had originally done her best to safeguard the natives against maladministration and against oppression, but with little effect. Practically they became merely slaves ; and since they proved physically unfit for hard labour, and began dying out with great rapidity, while there was no European working population, the practice was instituted at an early stage of carrying off ship-loads of the hardier negroes from Africa to become slaves in the Spanish Indies. With the exception of the Brazils bestowed on Portugal by the pope, the Spaniards had a monopoly of America, as the Other Portuguese had a monopoly of the Indian Ocean Voyagers. and the Spice Islands of the Western Pacific. Both countries governed their colonies on the theory that they