Francisco Álvarez de Toledo (Oropesa, 10 July 1515 – Escalona, 21 April 1582), also known as The Viceroyal Solon, was an aristocrat and soldier of the Kingdom of Spain and the fifth Viceroy of Peru. Often regarded as the "best of Peru's viceroys", he is as often denounced for the negative impact his administration had on the Indigenous peoples of Peru.
Toledo brought stability to a tumultuous viceroyalty of Spain and enacted administrative policies which changed the character of Spanish colonial rule and the relationship between the Indigenous peoples of the Andes and their Spanish overlords. With a policy called "reductions", Toledo forcibly relocated many of the Indigenous peoples of Peru and Bolivia into new settlements in order to enforce their Christianization, collect tributes and taxes, and gather Indigenous labor to work in mines and other Spanish enterprises. He has been condemned for the reductions, expanding the forced labor demanded of the Indigenous peoples under the mit'a of the Inca Empire, and executing Túpac Amaru, the last Inca chief of the Neo-Inca State in Vilcabamba.
Toledo held the position of viceroy from November 30, 1569, until 1 May 1581, a total of eleven years and five months. He has been praised as the "supreme organizer" of the immense viceroyalty, giving it a legal structure and strengthening institutions by which the Spanish colony functioned for more than two hundred years. Scholar John Hemming described Toledo as "one of the world's great colonial administrators". He also described him as "honest and honorable but cold and unfeeling...autocratic" and "with the temperament of an ascetic."
Francisco de Toledo was born on 15 July 1515 in Oropesa, Castile belonging to the noble family Álvarez de Toledo. He was the fourth and last child of Francisco Álvarez de Toledo y Pacheco, II Count of Oropesa, and María Figueroa y Toledo, eldest daughter of Gómez Suárez de Figueroa, II Count of Feria and María Álvarez de Toledo, daughter of the I Duke of Alba de Tormes. The death of his mother would influence his disposition, making him serious and taciturn. His mother's aunts, Mary and Elizabeth, were responsible for his upbringing.
At the age of eight he moved to the court of King Charles I of Spain, to serve as a page to the queen consorts Leonor and Isabel. He learned Latin, history, rhetoric and theology, fencing, music, dancing and courtly manners.
Francisco de Toledo was fifteen years old when in 1530 King Charles I accepted him at home, accompanying that emperor until his last days in the most varied circumstances of both peace and war. This personal contact with the monarch, who adopted the prudent policy, "Machiavellianism" and the tendency to seek balances between his partners, would serve as a useful experience for further governmental work.
In 1535, when he was twenty, he was invested with the habit of a knight of the Order of Alcántara, a religious-military order, and years later was given to this corporation the task of Acebuchar in 1551.
The first military action in which he intervened was the Conquest of Tunis (1535), a great triumph of the imperial troops over the Ottoman Turks who snatched the plaza in North Africa. Following the emperor on his tour of Europe, the young Álvarez de Toledo passed through Rome, where king Carlos I defied Francis I of France, which triggered another war with that country (the third of the reign of the emperor), between the years 1536–1538. Following the signing of peace, Álvarez de Toledo returned to Spain and later went to Ghent, in Flanders. Once participated in the expedition to the Ottoman Algiers in North Africa, campaign which ended in failure due to bad weather (1541).
In the following years he continued to serve the imperial arms, but also participated in the diets, boards and councils. It was a very turbulent time, as well as the onslaught of the Ottoman Turks occurred progress of Protestantism in Germany, region under imperial orbit. In all this time Álvarez de Toledo was near the emperor Charles V.
He met the Spanish negotiations with England to start a new war against France.
He dealt with the issues of Hispanic America interested about the legal status that should have the Indians. He was in Valladolid when Friar Bartolomé de las Casas appeared before a board of theologians the text of A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies and knew of the writing of the New Laws of the Indies that caused such a stir in Peru.
He left Barcelona in 1543 with the emperor, for Italy and Germany during the fourth war against France. He participated in the battles of Gelderland and Düren.
In 1556 took place the abdication of Charles I and his consequent trip to Spain, and on November 12, on the way to Monastery of Yuste, entered the castle of Jarandilla de la Vera, which was hosted by its owner, 4th Count of Oropesa, Fernando Álvarez de Toledo y Figueroa, who was the nephew of Francis and who also received the old ex monarch. The stay lasted until February 3, 1557, when the works in Yuste were finished, final resting place of Charles I. They both served him until his death in 1558.
The following years were spent by Álvarez de Toledo in activities related to the Order of Alcántara. Between 1558 and 1565 he remained in Rome, where he participated in the discussion and definition of the Statutes of the Order, as attorney general.
Toledo became the fifth viceroy of Peru (which included at the time Bolivia) in 1569. He was appointed viceroy by Philip II of Spain. Peru was the "jewel" of Spain's colonial empire. The conquest of the Inca Empire by Francisco Pizarro in 1532-1533 had given Spain enormous wealth, but Toledo inherited a chaotic situation. The problems facing Toledo included conflicts between and among the Spanish conquerors and the secular and religious authorities in Peru. Corruption by colonial officials was endemic. The Peruvian population of indigenous people, Andeans, had declined by about 75 percent (from 10 million to 2.5 million) from 1520 to 1570 due to conflicts and epidemics of European diseases. A rump state of the Inca Empire still existed outside Spanish control in Vilcabamba. Most seriously, from the viewpoint of Spain, was that the production of silver, a major contributor to Spain's finances, was declining.
Until the arrival of Francisco de Toledo as Viceroy, Spanish rule of the Andean population had largely been indirect. Except for Roman Catholic priests, Spaniards were forbidden from living among the Indians and the Spanish extracted tribute and labor from the Andean population through their indigenous leaders, the caciques or kurakas. Other than the often brutal demands of the Spanish colonists for labor and tribute, the Andean Indian cultures remained in many ways little changed from the days when the Incas ruled.
Toledo conceived and implemented an ambitious program to "put down neo-Inca insurrection, strengthen colonial government and legal institutions, indoctrinate the native populace in Catholicism, and shore up faltering revenue streams" from mining.
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