Tupac Amaru's Execution Ends Inca Resistance
A Spanish viceroy's army captures the last Sapa Inca and takes him to Cuzco for execution, closing the empire's final chapter
Quick facts
- Last Sapa Inca
- Tupac Amaru
- Captured by
- Viceroy Francisco de Toledo
- Year
- 1572
- Outcome
- Executed at Cuzco; Vilcabamba state ends
What happened
Manco Inca's successors held Vilcabamba for decades after his death, but in 1572 a Spanish force under Viceroy Francisco de Toledo captured the last independent Sapa Inca, Tupac Amaru, described by World History Encyclopedia as Thupa Amaru. Toledo's forces took him back to Cuzco, where he was executed, ending the line of independent Inca rulers and any remaining organized state resistance to Spanish rule in Peru. World History Encyclopedia's broader account of the conquest notes that by roughly 1570 around half of the pre-Columbian Andean population had already died from the combined effects of war and disease since the Spanish arrival four decades earlier.
Why it matters
Tupac Amaru's execution is the conventional endpoint of the Inca Empire as an independent political entity, thirty-nine years after the fall of Cuzco and forty years after Cajamarca, marking how long organized resistance actually persisted even after the loss of the imperial heartland. His name would later be adopted by 18th-century Andean rebels and 20th-century political movements as a symbol of resistance to colonial and post-colonial rule.
How we know
The capture and execution are recorded in Spanish colonial administrative and chronicle sources from Toledo's own viceregal government, which had every reason to document the elimination of the last independent Inca claimant as an official act of state.
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia. Pizarro & the Fall of the Inca Empire · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- World History Encyclopedia. Pizarro & the Fall of the Inca Empire · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
See something wrong? . Corrections with a source get fixed fastest.
Part of a timelineThe Inca Empire26 events · How a highland kingdom without writing, wheels, or iron built the largest empire the Americas ever saw, then lost it in a single generationView all →