Profile of Francisco Pizarro, the illiterate Spanish soldier of fortune who had himself elected Governor of Peru in 1531 with the Pope’s blessing and promptly set about collecting the country’s fabulous reserves of gold for his own use in a 10-year campaign of brutality. Tricking the trusting Incas into meeting him unarmed, he killed thousands, destroying the institutions of a flourishing empire before he was himself assassinated by a rival treasure-seeker in 1541.
