Francisco Pizarro

Prepare your hearts as a fortress, for there will be no other.

Friends and comrades! On that side [south] are toil, hunger, nakedness, the drenching storm, desertion, and death; on this side ease and pleasure. There lies Peru with its riches; here, Panama and its poverty. Choose, each man, what best becomes a brave Castilian. For my part, I go to the south.

This city is the greatest and the finest ever seen in this country or anywhere in the Indies... We can assure your Majesty that it is so beautiful and has such fine buildings that it would be remarkable even in Spain.

What treason is this that you have meditated against me? Me, who have ever treated you with honor, confiding in your words, as in those of a brother?

No man should think of going forward in the expedition, who could not do so with his whole heart, or who had the least misgiving as to its success.

Let every one of you take heart and go forward like a good soldier, nothing daunted by the smallness of your numbers.

For in the greatest extremity God ever fights for his own; and doubt not he will humble the pride of the heathen, and bring him to the knowledge of the true faith, the great end and object of the Conquest.

Let no one, who values his life, strike at the Inca.

There is no more to do here. Let those be Castilians who will, and those Peruvians who will.

For my part, I will go to the south, and he who has the courage to follow me, let him come. He who has not, let him return to Panama.

I have not come for such reasons. I have come to take away from them their gold and their silver, and to do with them what I will.

I say that I do not know how to read, and that I have never in my life known how to do so.

What do you want, gentlemen? What do you wish from me? Do you want to kill me?

Santiago! Santiago!

Since I have come to this land, I have not eaten bread, nor drunk wine, nor slept in a bed, nor have I been able to hear Mass, nor have I seen a priest.

I am a poor man, and I have nothing but my sword.

Let them bring me the gold, and I will divide it among all.

We came here to serve God and the king, and also to get rich.

I will not leave this land until I have discovered its secrets.

God has given me this land, and I will keep it.