Twelve years after Cortez, came Pizarro who, with a still smaller force conquered an even wealthier and more civilized empire.

The Incas, unlike the Mexicans, were a mild race, living in a sort of theocratic socialism, in which the emperor, as god, exercised absolute power over his subjects and in return cared {440} for at least their common wants.

The Spaniards outdid themselves in acts of treachery and blood.

In vain the emperor, Atahualpa, after voluntarily placing himself in the hands of Pizarro, filled the room used as his prison nine feet high with gold as ransom; when he could give no more he was tried on the preposterous charges of treason to Charles V and of heresy, and suffered death at the stake.

Pizarro coolly pocketed the till then undreamed of sum of 4,500,000 ducats,[1] worth in our standards more than one hundred million dollars.
[Sidenote: Circumnavigation of the globe, 1519-22] But the crowning act of the age of discovery was the circumnavigation of the globe.