employed other measures, but still of a pacific character; and endeavored
by negotiation, by conciliatory treatment, and by presents to the leading
men, to win them over to their dominion. In short, they practised all the
arts familiar to the most subtle politician of a civilized land to secure the
acquisition of empire. When all these expedients failed, they prepared
for war.

Their levies were drawn from all the different provinces; though from
some, where the character of the people was particularly hardy, more
than from others.53 It seems probable that every Peruvian, who had
reached a certain age, might be called to bear arms. But the rotation of
military service, and the regular drills, which took place twice or thrice
in a month, of the inhabitants of every village, raised the soldiers
generally above the rank of a raw militia. The Peruvian army, at first
inconsiderable, came, with the increase of population, in the latter days
of the empire, to be very large, so that their monarchs could bring into
the field, as contemporaries assure us, a force amounting to two hundred
thousand men. They showed the same skill and respect for order in their
military organization, as in other things. The troops were divided into
bodies corresponding with our battalions and companies, led by officers,
that rose, in regular gradation, from the lowest subaltern to the Inca
noble, who was intrusted with the general command.54

Their arms consisted of the usual weapons employed by nations, whether
civilized or uncivilized, before the invention of powder,--bows and
arrows, lances, darts, a short kind of sword, a battle-axe or partisan, and
slings, with which they were very expert. Their spears and arrows were
tipped with copper, or, more commonly, with bone, and the weapons of
the Inca lords were frequently mounted with gold or silver. Their heads
were protected by casques made either of wood or of the skins of wild