Histoire des guerres civiles des espagnols dans les Indes, suivi de Suite des guerres civiles des espagnols dans le Peru

Second French edition bringing together these two texts by Garcilaso de la Vega first published in Spanish in 1650. Frontispiece depicting in the foreground the landing of Spanish troops on American territory and in the background the indigenous population besieged in the heart of a burning city. In the lower section, a banner bears the inscription "Quid non mortalia pectora cogis auri sacra fames", taken from Virgil's Aeneid and translated by Molière as "O execrable hunger for gold, to what lengths do you not force men's hearts to go". Work decorated with headpieces and historiated initials.
Contemporary full vellum binding, smooth spine decorated at head with a pen-and-ink title almost faded. One corner slightly bumped, title page skillfully restored at inner margin, pale dampstain to lower margin on final gatherings.
Bookplate of the Nordkirchen family pasted on front pastedown. Manuscript ownership inscription on title page with initials "E. H. L.".
Natural son of a conquistador and an Inca princess, raised in two different cultures, Garcilaso de la Vega (1539-1616) offers a unique vision of Inca civilization by rejecting a Euro-centric view. While in his Royal Commentary, first published in France in 1633, de la Vega traced the history of the Inca rulers, he here proposes an account of the conflicts that animated the Spanish colonists after their arrival in Peru. His aim is to convey the upheaval caused by these internecine wars, both for the indigenous people and for the Spanish. In his address to the reader, de la Vega explains that the Inca rulers had succeeded in founding an empire where "Moral, Political, & Military Virtues" reigned; the arrival of the colonists and the execution of Atahualpa - the last independent emperor - disrupts the established order and is seen as the expression of "Ambition" and "Avarice" of these "new Hosts". De la Vega presents these events in the form of a true epic, seeking to show the reader "the various effects in this History, wonderfully entertaining, & where the Author endeavors to make the principal ones among those who were the true Actors play their role on this Stage". A continuation of his first major work on the History of the Incas, Kings of Peru, the History of the Civil Wars of the Spanish in the Indies offers the reader a vast panorama of Peruvian history in the few years following the conquest.
Handsome copy of this work of major importance in the historiography of the Spanish conquest of Peru.