Almagro

Almagro, DIEGO D', a Spanish conquistador, was born in 1464 or 1475, and was a foundling who derived his name from the town near which he was found. After serving in the army, he sailed to seek his fortune in the New World, where he amassed considerable wealth by plunder, and became one of the leading members of the young colony of Darien. In 1522 he formed, with Pizarro, the design of conquering Peru—an undertaking crowned ten years afterwards with marvellous success. Receiving permission from the Spanish court to conquer for himself a special province south of Pizarro's territory, he marched on Chili in 1536, penetrated as far as the Coquimbo, and returned in 1537, just when the Peruvians had flown to arms and shut up the Spaniards in Cuzco and Lima. As these towns lay south of Pizarro's district, they were claimed by Almagro. He dispersed the Peruvian army before Cuzco, and advanced against Lima, hoping to make himself sole master of the country. But on the 6th April 1538, he was defeated in a desperate engagement with the Spaniards under Pizarro near Cuzco; and on the 26th, he was strangled in prison, and his corpse beheaded in the market-place of Cuzco. His half-caste son, Diego, collecting some hundreds of his father's followers, stormed Pizarro's palace, and slew him (1541); then proclaimed himself captain-general of Peru; but, defeated in the bloody battle of Chupas (16th September 1542), he was executed along with forty of his companions.