Quizquiz

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Inca commander Quizquiz fighting the Spaniards, possibly in the battle of Cuzco

Quizquiz (or Quisquis, meaning "Little Bird") was, along with Chalkuchimac and Rumiñahui, one of Atahualpa's leading generals. In April 1532, along with his companions, Quizquiz led the armies of Atahualpa to victory in the battles of Mullihambato, Chimborazo and Quipaipan, where he, along with Chalkuchimac defeated and captured Huascar and promptly killed his family, seizing capital Cuzco. Quizquiz later commanded Atahualpa's troops in the battles of Vilcaconga, Cuzco (both 1533) and Maraycalla (1534), ultimately being bested by the Spanish forces in both accounts.

After the ensuing battles, Quizquiz fled further into the safety of the Andean mountains, but his forces soon demanded that he accept the Spanish demands, and, it being planting season, that they be able to return to their families. Quizquiz refused, and his war-weary troops eventually killed him in 1534.

Quizquiz was one of Atahualpa's leading generals both in the civil war against Huascar and the war against the Spanish. Juan de Betanzos reports in his "Narrative of the Incas" that during the civil war Quizquiz led troops of 60,000 and later 100,000 men against Huascar's troops. Quizquiz was responsible for the significant defeat and capture of Huascar, where Huascar planned to use a decoy advance guard that was to be later joined by the body of the army, however this decoy was destroyed before the rest of the army could join it. The fact that Quizquiz and not Atahualpa was in charge of the army has led some historians to see a late disintegration of the Incan Empire, where Athualpa was not sufficiently confident to leave control of administration in the hands of someone else. Quizquiz was in Cusco at the time of the Spaniards' arrival. Contrary to the belief of many Natives, especially in Mexico, Quizquiz recognised that the Spanish were not gods because they did not speak the Incan language and asked too many questions about the location of gold. Like his King Atahualpa, Quizquiz was eventually defeated. However, his reluctance to surrender to the Spanish eventually resulted in his death in 1534 at the hands of his own war-weary men.