While subduing the Inca Empire he laid the foundation for Quito and Trujillo as Spanish cities in present-day Ecuador and Peru, respectively.

Back in Peru, a longstanding conflict with Pizarro over the control of the former Inca capital of Cuzco erupted into a civil war between the two bands of conquistadores.

His mother, anguished, gave him a piece of bread and some coins and said: "Take, son, and do not give me more trouble, and go, and God help you in your adventure."

The Casa de Contratacion (royal agency for the Spanish Empire) required that the men who crossed the Atlantic provide their own weapons, clothes, and farming tools, which Don Polanco provided to his servant.Diego de Almagro, now in his late thirties, arrived in the New World on June 30, 1514, with the expedition that Ferdinand II of Aragon had sent under the leadership of Dávila.

The expedition arrived at the city of Santa María la Antigua del Darién, Panama, where many other future conquistadors were already assembled, among them Francisco Pizarro.

Almagro undertook his first independent conquest on November 1515, commanding 260 men as he founded Villa del Acla, named after the Indian place.

Espinosa decided to undertake a new expedition, which departed in December 1515 with 200 men, including Almagro and Francisco Pizarro, who for the first time was designated as a captain.

Almagro wanted to have a ship built with the remaining materials of the Espinosa expedition, to be finished on the coast of the "Great South Sea", as the Pacific Ocean was first called by the Spanish.

[6]: 133  During Pizarro's continued exploration of Incan territory, he and his men succeeded in defeating the Inca army under Emperor Atahualpa during the Battle of Cajamarca in 1532.

Their fellow conquistador Sebastián de Belalcázar, who had gone forth without Pizarro's approval, had already reached Quito and witnessed the destruction of the city by Inca general Rumiñawi.

Despite this, De Almagro still obtained an important fortune for his services, and the King awarded him in November 1532 the noble title of "Don" and he was assigned a personal coat of arms.

Although by this time Diego de Almagro had already acquired sufficient wealth in the conquest of Peru and was living a luxurious life in Cuzco, the prospect of conquering the lands further south was very attractive to him.

Given that the dispute with Pizarro over Cuzco had kept intensifying, Almagro spent a great deal of time and money equipping a company of 500 men for a new exploration south of Peru.

This might have been the reason why Almagro did not immediately confront Pizarro for Cuzco, and promptly decided to embark on his new quest for the discovery of the riches of Chile.

After crossing the Bolivian mountain range and traveling past Lake Titicaca, Almagro arrived on the shores of the Desaguadero River and finally set up camp in Tupiza.

The hardest phase was the crossing of the Andean cordilleras: the cold, hunger and tiredness meant the death of various Spanish and natives, but mainly slaves who were not accustomed to such rigorous climate.

[6]: 253 By luck, these men found the Valley of Copiapó, where Gonzalo Calvo Barrientos, a Spanish soldier whom Pizarro had expelled from Peru for stealing objects the Inca had offered for his ransom, had already established a friendship with the local natives.

He never found gold or the cities which Incan scouts had told him lay ahead, only communities of the indigenous population who lived from subsistence agriculture.

[6]: 254 The withdrawal of the Spanish from valleys of Chile was violent: Almagro authorized his soldiers to ransack the natives' properties, leaving their soil desolate.

After the exhausting crossing of the Atacama Desert, mainly due to the harsh weather conditions, Almagro finally reached Cuzco, Peru, in 1537.

De Almagro's disappointed troops returned to Cuzco with their "torn clothes" due to the extensive and laborious passage on foot by the Atacama Desert.

Pizarro never intended to give up the city permanently, but was buying time to organize an army strong enough to defeat Almagro's troops.

De Almagro fled to Cuzco, still in the hands of his loyal supporters, but found only temporary refuge; the forces of the Pizarro brothers entered the city without resistance.

The lad De Almagro fought the desperate battle of Chupas on September 16, 1542, escaped to Cuzco, but was arrested, immediately condemned to death, and executed in the great square of the city.