Francisco Pizarro Born: 1476 Died: 154 Francisco Pizarro was born in about 1476 in Trujillo, a small town near Caceres, Spain. The illegitimate son of a Spanish captain, he spent his childhood with his grandparents in one of Spain's poorest regions. He apparently never learned to read or write. The conquest of Peru by an obscure adventurer is one of the most dramatic episodes in the history of the New World. Until he was nearly 50 years old, Francisco Pizarro, serving as a minor Spanish official on the Isthmus of Panama, had nothing to show for years of toil and peril but a small holding of land. Little more than a decade later, he had conquered the fabulously wealthy empire of the Inc