Francisco Pizarro

Francisco Pizarro (c. 1478–1541) was a Spanish conquistador who led the expedition that brought the Inca Empire under Spanish rule and founded Lima, today the capital of Peru. Born in Trujillo in the Extremadura region of Spain, he came to the Americas as a young man and in 1513 accompanied Vasco Núñez de Balboa on the crossing of Panama that reached the Pacific Ocean. In the 1520s he led voyages down the western coast of South America, and in 1529 he received royal authority from Charles V to govern the lands he reached. In 1532 his small force met the Inca ruler Atahualpa at Cajamarca and took him captive, beginning the fall of the Inca state. Pizarro founded Lima in 1535 and was assassinated there in 1541 by followers of a rival. His expedition joined the Andes to the Spanish world, reshaping the region's language, faith and society.