ans were puzzled by the importance Europeans placed on gold, but avarice was only one of the compulsions pressing the Spanish onward:
The Spaniards also were driven by a monumental faith honed in holy war against the Moors--Muslims who had occupied Spain for 700 years. For many, the conquest was a crusade. They called themselves "Christians" more often than Spaniards, and some referred to the Indians as "Moors" and their temples as "mosques."
The Inca empire was still relatively new in the early sixteenth century, and at the time of the arrival of the Europeans, it was undergoing a severe internal crisis, a civil war between two rival heirs for the chieftainship. This dissension facilitated the Spanish conquest. Pizarro negotiated with two factions at once and played them against one another. He captured Atahuallpa and ransomed him. The Spanish collected Atahuallpa's treasure, but they then refused to free him as promised. Instead, they tried him, charged him with usurpation, idolatry, polygamy, and other crimes, and executed him. These "crim
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