Transcript

How 168 Men Conquered The Incan Empire | Fall of the Incas EP 1

From The Rest Is History · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 1 h 10 min · 13,174 words · 170 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "How 168 Men Conquered The Incan Empire | Fall of the Incas EP 1", an episode of The Rest Is History published February 16, 2026 (1 h 10 min, about 13,174 words). It mentions 37 people, works and ideas, including Inca Empire, Francisco Pizarro, Atahualpa, Peru, Diego de Almagro.

What this episode is about

A concise summary: The rapid Spanish conquest under Francisco Pizarro, wielding fewer than 200 men, crashes the Inca Empire as Atawalpha is captured and control is seized in the name of the Spanish crown, marking a pivotal moment in the rise of colonialism. The episode frames this hinge event as an extraordinary, multidimensional tragedy and adventure in world history.

Key takeaways

  • Conquest hinges on improvisation: a few hundred Spaniards topple an empire 2,500 miles long through audacity, not mass.
  • Pizarro’s lack of literacy becomes a paradox: strategic brilliance often travels faster than written tradition.
  • Eurocentric melodrama meets colonial calculus: hero-villain labels dissolve under imperial motives and greed.
  • Peripheral origins matter: Extremadura’s harsh myth-making bred resolute, risk-taking explorers who reshaped world maps.
  • Sequel-itis in history: the Peru conquest outshines its Aztec prequel only because of chimeric, mercurial politics.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 10:00: Francisco Pizarro, Inca Empire, Conquistadors, Aztecs
  2. – 20:00: Aztecs, Diego de Almagro, Panama City, Gold
  3. – 30:00: Gold, Peru, Biru, Charles V
  4. – 40:00: Empire, Francisco Pizarro, Diego de Almagro, Tawantinsuyu
  5. – 50:00: Aztecs, Empire, civilization, Inca Empire
  6. – 1:00:00: Empire, Inca Empire, Aztecs, Quechua
  7. – 1:09:39: Empire, The Rest Is History, Francisco Pizarro, Inca Empire

Notable quotes from "How 168 Men Conquered The Incan Empire | Fall of the Incas EP 1"

  • Little does he know that this moment marks the death nail of the Inca Empire.
    about Inca Empire · at
  • With an amazing range of characters. So, two of them you've mentioned, the doomed emperor Atawalpa and the illiterate Spanish buccaneer Francisco Pizarro. But it's one of these…
    about Francisco Pizarro · at
  • Pizarro's first expeditions in the 1520s, his arrival in Peru in 1532, the capture and murder of the Inca Emperor Ataalpa, the battle for the Inca capital of Kusco, the flight…
    about Atahualpa · at
  • Servant girl with whom this infantry officer had a liazison. She brought him up. He never learns. So he's very unlike Anan Cortez. He never learns to read and write. Later on…
    about Hernán Cortés · at
  • Nakedness, rain, and abandonment. On that side, you return to Panama to be poor. On the other, you go to Peru and become rich. The choice is yours.
    about Peru · at
  • Against the French in Italy and the other is against the Ottomans in Eastern Europe. So what he wants more than anything is gold and silver from the new world. And Pizarro says…
    about Gold · at
  • Anyway, spoiler alert. This is the beginning of a feud that will destroy all these people. Anyway, 27th of September 1530, Pizaro sets sail from Panama and is bound for Biru. He's got three ships and 180 men and a load.
    about Diego de Almagro · at
  • Dominic, only now are they beginning to grasp the reality of what they have discovered. An immense land stretching between the Andes and the Pacific. And this is the Empire of the Incor.
    about Andes · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Francisco Pizarro — Person · Core topic · 6 mentions · first at
    Central protagonist of the episode: his background, motivations, expeditions, and strategy set up the conquest of the Inca Empire.
  • Atahualpa — Person · Core topic · 1 mention · first at
    The Inca ruler whose civil-war victory and subsequent capture/murder by Pizarro is positioned as the pivotal turning point of the conquest narrative.
  • Diego de Almagro — Person · Core supporting figure · 3 mentions · first at
    Pizarro’s key partner-turned-rival; his marginalization in royal grants seeds the feud that will shape later events.
  • Hernán Cortés — Person · Referenced comparator · 1 mention · first at
    Used as the model and comparison point for Pizarro and for how the Peru conquest is framed as a sequel to the conquest of Mexico.
  • Charles V — Person · Referenced authority · 2 mentions · first at
    Grants Pizarro legal authority and incentives to conquer Peru; his need for bullion ties conquest to European wars and imperial finance.
    Not all of them. And he can't believe what he finds on this raft. Cuz as he reports in a letter to Charles V of Spain, it's full of gold and silver ornaments, crowns and…
  • Pedro de Candia — Person · Referenced participant · 1 mention · first at
    Named as one of the ‘Immortal Thirteen’ who crossed Pizarro’s line, noted for artillery/firearms expertise foreshadowing Spanish advantage.
    Pedro de Kandia is a giant. So, the giant Greek and 11 other BS cross to Pizarro's side of the line. The rest of them get back on the ship and go to Panama. And for the next few months,.
  • Rasheen Vega — Person · Referenced source · 3 mentions
    Cited as a later chronicler (half Inca) offering a characterization of Pizarro and Gonzalo Pizarro, illustrating source perspectives.
  • Bartholomé de las Casas — Person · Referenced moral counterpoint · 2 mentions
    Mentioned as present on early Hispaniola expedition and later as a defender of Indigenous rights, highlighting Spanish internal debate.
  • Philip II — Person · Brief comparison · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned only to compare Pizarro’s austere black clothing style to a later Spanish monarch.
    Black and austere kind of black and white costume which he wears all his life like Philip II. Yeah. His pleasures are simple playing bowls kind of ball games. Do you think the…
  • Martin Cloons — Person · Production aside / joke reference · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as a humorous casting suggestion for Hernando Pizarro; not part of historical narrative.
    So, Martin Cloons, yeah, he's he doesn't sound terri like a massive looker, but everyone said he was kind of charismatic, charming, impressive. Yeah, big bloke. he's.

Books & papers

  • The Fall of the Aztecs — Paper · Referenced prior series · 2 mentions · first at
    Positioned as the direct prequel model for the Peru conquest narrative and Spanish expectations.
    Yes, I guess so. It's the return of the king to the two towers of the fall of the Aztecs.
  • 1491 — Book · Referenced secondary source · 2 mentions
    Recommended as a strong modern synthesis about the pre-Columbian Americas; used to contextualize the scale of the Inca Empire.
  • Columbus' Voyages — Paper · Referenced prior series · 1 mention · first at
    Cited as an earlier Rest is History series that forms part of a ‘trilogy’ leading into Peru and the Aztecs.
    Sort of thought of this as the third part of a trilogy. So, in February 2023, we did a series about Columbus' voyages to the Caribbean. So, that was episode 306 onwards. They…

Concepts & topics

  • Inca Empire — Concept · Core topic · 10 mentions · first at
    The civilization being encountered and conquered; its scale, organization, and vulnerabilities (civil war, disease) are explained in depth.
  • Conquistadors — Concept · Core topic · 2 mentions · first at
    The episode frames Spanish conquest as entrepreneurial, violent, legalistic, and faction-ridden, shaping how Pizarro’s campaign unfolds.
    For these are the concistadors of Spain, led by Francisco Pizarro.
  • Gold — Concept · Motivating resource · 3 mentions · first at
    A recurring driver of Spanish decisions (royal approval, recruitment, risk-taking) and a symbol of perceived Inca wealth.
  • Tawantinsuyu — Concept · Core topic (Inca self-description) · 2 mentions · first at
    Explained as the Inca name for their state (“land of the four quarters”), central to understanding identity and governance.
    And the local people called this civilization Tawantin Soyu, the land of the four quarters. But Tom, we know it as the empire of the Incor. And so the Incor.
  • colonialism — Concept · Core theme · 1 mention · first at
    Explicitly framed as a hinge moment in world history; used to discuss violence, law, religion, and exploitation in Spanish expansion.
    Spanish buccaneer Francisco Pizarro. But it's one of these hinge moments in world history. It's a landmark in the story of colonialism. And actually, it's I'm I sort of thought…
  • Empire — Concept · Analytical frame · 28 mentions · first at
    Used to compare Aztec and Inca political structures, logistics, and governance, and to explain how a small force could topple a vast state.
    Little does he know that this moment marks the death nail of the Inca Empire.
  • Aztecs — Concept · Comparative case · 12 mentions · first at
    Serves as the prequel model for Spanish conquest tactics and as a comparison for imperial structure and vulnerability.
    Of kind of warehouses and storehouses along the roads with clothes and with food and supplies and stuff. There's nothing like this in Mexico in the Aztec Empire. And in fact, some of the Spanish say there's nothing like this in Europe.
  • Quechua — Concept · Core topic (language) · 4 mentions · first at
    Identified as the language used via interpreters and as an imperial language imposed by the Incas, central to communication and control.
    Know what the language is, but the language that they are translating to and from is a language called Ketwa, which is a very big Andian language. So Pizarro goes back to…
  • Biru — Concept · Rumored objective · 3 mentions · first at
    Presented as the name/rumor of a rich southern land that motivates Pizarro’s expeditions and pursuit of royal authorization.
    Anything is gold and silver from the new world. And Pizarro says to him, Your majesty, I've heard that this place Biru is brilliant. I've not been there, but I've heard very good things.
  • Spanish Empire — Concept · Core context · 1 mention · first at
    Provides the institutional framework (royal grants, Council of the Indies, imperial wars) enabling and incentivizing conquest.
    For these are the concistadors of Spain, led by Francisco Pizarro.
  • civilization — Concept · Analytical frame · 8 mentions · first at
    Used to discuss what constitutes ‘advanced’ society (roads, agriculture, administration) and to compare Inca vs Aztec vs European assumptions.
    This is tremendous news. This is so exciting because this means there clearly is an advanced civilization if they're making golden tweezers.
  • Christianity — Concept · Core theme · 2 mentions · first at
    Presented as a legal-religious justification for conquest (submission to Christian king; invitation to convert).
    Notaries and stuff. and this whole kind of mad thing where they have to read out a statement inviting the native Americans to become Christians and submit to the Spanish king…
  • Cultural Exchange — Concept · Minor theme · 1 mention · first at
    Only briefly alluded to as ‘fusion of cultures’; not developed in this episode beyond a passing remark.

Places & events

  • Peru — Place · Core setting · 2 mentions · first at
    Primary geographic focus: the destination of Pizarro’s expeditions and the territory of the Inca state described in the episode.
  • Cusco — Place · Core setting · 2 mentions · first at
    Identified as the Inca capital/heartland and focal point of the civil war and later Spanish campaign.
    1520s, his arrival in Peru in 1532, the capture and murder of the Inca Emperor Ataalpa, the battle for the Inca capital of Kusco, the flight of the Incas into the jungle, and…
  • Andes — Place · Core setting · 3 mentions · first at
    The dramatic physical environment framing first contact and explaining Inca isolation, agriculture, and logistics.
  • Panama City — Place · Staging hub · 3 mentions · first at
    Depicted as Pizarro’s base of operations and recruitment/financing hub for expeditions south.
    Series. So if we fast forward now to the beginning of the 1520s, Pizarro, who's now in his early 40s, has settled in the boom town of Panama City. So Panama City is booming…
  • Tumbes — Place · Early contact site · 1 mention · first at
    First major coastal town confirming a wealthy, organized society; later found ruined, signaling civil-war disruption.
    Pizarro has a massive salary and is governor and captain general, Almagro has been rewarded with the title of commonant of the town of Tombz which is marketkedly inferior. So…
  • Trujillo — Place · Biographical origin point · 2 mentions · first at
    Pizarro’s birthplace, used to characterize the harsh social environment that produced many conquistadors.
    Pizarro, hero, villain, is for the listeners to decide. He's born in 1478 or so in a place called Trujillo in Extremadura, which is the kind of wild west of Spain. Has a lot of…
  • Hispaniola — Place · Background setting · 2 mentions · first at
    Marks Pizarro’s early New World experience and violence against Indigenous peoples; also where Las Casas is linked to the story.
    On. And by the end of the 15th century, hundreds of Spaniards, people from Pizarro's kind of background are seeking their fortune on Hispanola and on Cuba and on the other…
  • Puná — Place · Campaign waypoint · 1 mention · first at
    Island where locals attack the Spanish; illustrates early conflict dynamics and Spanish reliance on steel and horses.
    South of Guakil in Ecuador, big city today, they reach a large island called Puna. And here the locals are not so friendly. They stage a massive dance to trick the Spanish and then turn on them.
  • Cuba — Place · Background setting · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as part of the Caribbean staging ground for conquistador networks and Cortés’s departure point.
    When Cortez went from Cuba to Mexico and then from there into Central America, Pizaro joins a different company from his cousins, a company operating much further south, and they're basically.

Media & podcasts

  • The Rest Is History — Podcast · Primary show · 5 mentions · first at
    The podcast in which the story is told; referenced for episode numbering and membership/club access to the full series.
    Story, a horror story, a tragedy, but above all, a tale of incredible melodrama. And that is the story that we are telling today on the rest is history.
  • The Royal Hunt of the Sun — Media · Referenced portrayal · 1 mention · first at
    Cited for a (likely inflated) population figure, illustrating how popular portrayals shape perceptions of the Inca Empire.
    That's the Inca Empire. Probably, not as in the Royal Hunt of the Sun claimed 24 million people, probably about 12 million people.

Full transcript with timestamps

November 1532. On the peaks of the Andes, 14,000 ft high, an Incor warrior gazes out from his watchtowwer. His country is ravaged by civil war. The farms are smoldering. The villages are bleeding. And now on the horizon, he sees something totally unimaginable. 168 men are advancing towards him. The kind of men he has never seen before. Soden with sweat, stained with blood, red beards on their faces, riding huge, unfamiliar, unearly beasts. Little does he know that this moment marks the death nail of the Inca Empire.

For these are the concistadors of Spain, led by Francisco Pizarro. Under Pizarro's leadership, the Spanish will imprison the emperor of the Inca Atawalpa and take control of his empire in the name of their Christian king. It's one of the most extraordinary stories in all history. An adventure story, a horror story, a tragedy, but above all, a tale of incredible melodrama. And that is the story that we are telling today on the rest is history.

This series is going to be one of the most epic, one of the most astonishing we've ever done. And it tells the story of I mean, one of the most extraordinary episodes in the whole of world history, isn't it?

Yes. So, this is the story of the conquest of the Empire of the Incor, an empire that stretched from north to south, some 2,500 m. It was the longest empire in history, and it ruled millions of people. And it's conquered by a few hundred Spanish concistadors, so fewer than 200 really. It's an adventure story with an amazing range of characters. So, two of them you've mentioned, the doomed emperor Atawalpa and the illiterate Spanish buccaneer Francisco Pizarro. But it's one of these hinge moments in world history. It's a landmark in the story of colonialism. And actually, it's I'm I sort of thought of this as the third part of a a trilogy. So, in February 2023, we did a series about Columbus' voyages to the Caribbean. So, that was episode 306 onwards. They love us to give the numbers, Tom. Then, in the autumn of 2023, we did an epic series.

at that time our longest about the fall of the Aztecs, the conquest of Mexico that was number 385 onwards.

We've said that um the conquest of Peru is one of the most extraordinary stories ever told. But I mean the mad thing is is that the conquest of Mexico is as well.

Yeah. And this is the sequel really. I mean it really is the sequel because everybody who's taking part in this adventure has that model in their minds.

So what would you call it? Alien Contact 2. Yes, I guess so. It's the return of the king to the two towers of the uh fall of the Aztecs.

And the amazing thing about this is it's one of those sequels that is just as good as the prequel.

Definitely it is. Definitely. So, we're a few years after the fall of the Aztecs. will be telling the story of Pizarro's first expeditions in the 1520s, his arrival in Peru in 1532, the capture and murder of the Inca Emperor Ataalpa, the battle for the Inca capital of Kusco, the flight of the Incas into the jungle, and the story of the legendary city of Vilka Bambber, which was the last refuge, the lost refuge actually, of the last Incor. So, it's a very, very melodramatic story, and we shouldn't waste any more time before plunging right in. And maybe Tom, we should start with our protagonist. So that's the man that Martin, who you voiced so splendidly, is uh talking about in that introduction. And this is the concistador who changed the lives of millions of people, Francisco Pizarro.

Francisco. Yeah. And we will, as in the Aztec series, we will be trying to reflect the linguistic diversity of the newly united Spain by doing a huge range of Spanish accents from different regions and pronunciations. There will be no internal consistency, but a word of warning for our American listeners. We will not be pronouncing them in the strange way that you do. So, you just have to suck that up. Right. So, Pizarro, hero, villain, is for the listeners to decide. He's born in 1478 or so in a place called Trujillo in Extremadura, which is the kind of wild west of Spain. Has a lot of stalks. Yes, exactly. A lot of castles. It's sunble bleached. It's a very poor country, very violent. Bandits. Spaghetti western, isn't it?

Spaghetti western territory. Yes. It's kind of place that basically you leave if you want to be successful, which is why so many of the concistadors anan Cortez and Francisco Pizarro most famously came from Extramura.

And you can leave because it is a land that breeds tough men. So Francisco is the uh illegitimate son of an infantry officer who belonged to the minor nobility and his mother was a servant girl um with whom this infantry officer had had a liazison. She brought him up. He never learns. So he's very unlike Anan Cortez. He never learns to read and write. Later on, people would say to mock him that he was a former pig herder. He'd herded pigs in the fields, which is perfectly plausible because there's lots of pigs in Extremure, famous for its ham. But he seems to have been welcome at the Pizarro family mansion in the town square. And there very probably he first met a distant cousin uh a much younger boy called Ernan Cortez whose mother was a Pizarro and was from the Pizarro clan in the late 1490s when he was in his teens. He may have gone with his father to fight in the wars in Italy. can't be sure, but

if he did, he didn't stay there for long. Because if you're from Extra Majiraa, if you're keen to seek your fortune in the 1490s, a much more exciting and lucrative place has just opened up. When Pizaro was 14 years old in 1492, Columbus first sailed to the new world. And when he is 17 years old, so in 1495, the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella basically scrap uh Columbus' monopoly and open up the Indies to any Spaniard who will pay them a share of the profits. So this is now now the kind of gold rush as it were is on. And by the end of the 15th century, hundreds of Spaniards, people from Pizarro's kind of background are seeking their fortune on Hispanola and on Cuba and on the other Caribbean islands. And Pizaro is one of them. He actually went before Cortez did. He landed on Hispanola in 1502 and he became a soldier and he made a name for himself as a man who will do what needs to be

done. And basically doing what needs to be done is massacring the local people, the Tyenos. I mean just to add a kind of interesting detail on that that there's going to be a lot of massacreing coming

but a person who sailed with him on that expedition to Hispanola was Barame Deas Kazas.

Oh yeah. The man who in due course will become the great spokesman of the rights of the the the native peoples in America. And that is going to be an enduring tension throughout the course of Spanish history in the new world in the 16th century which we should not forget about. I think as with the Aztec series, if you just think of the Spanish as blood soaked, greedy, um that's not quite right. They were they're always arguing about what to do, but also there a huge theme of this series, as it was in the previous one. They're very legalistic.

They're always arguing about the sort of legal ramifications of what they're doing. They're always traveling with notaries and stuff. and this whole kind of mad thing where they have to read out a statement inviting the native Americans to become Christians and submit to the Spanish king which obviously is gibberish to the people who are listening to it but that is going to be an ongoing theme isn't it now a big theme of the concistador's experience was that so many of them this is the age of uh printed books so many of them arrive in the new world with their heads full of chavalic fantasies they're expecting to fight monsters and rescue maidens and they're very excited at the thought of adventure Pizarro of course is He may know of such things but he has never read one and he never will because he still can't read and write. And actually some historians and indeed some Spanish chronicers who later very harsh

about him treat him as an illiterate thug. I think that's a little bit harsh. I think he's a much more straightforward man than Cortez was very feline, wasn't he? He was vulpine. Yeah, he was very Machavel. Yeah. Pizaro is not a Machavevel. He's a He's a strong man. He's a big bloke. He's very tough. Everyone says he's daring. He's more conservative than Cortez. So he wears black and austere kind of black and white costume which he wears all his life like Philip II. Yeah. His pleasures are simple playing bowls kind of ball games. Do you think the um the kind of sense of him as an illiterate thug is reflecting class bias then on the part of chronicers who despise him for his illiteracy?

Yes, a little bit. A little bit. And there's so much feuding that once um people have fallen out with Pizar, they say, "Oh, you're a former pig herder. You can't even read. You're just a bruiser." All of this. But actually at the time, his men generally saw him as quite an easygoing I mean definitely the Tyenos didn't, but his men saw him as an easygoing kind of chap. So one of the things about the conquest of the Incas, a lot of the concistadors wrote memoirs about their time in Peru. And of course those memoirs maybe fictionalized or maybe distorted but there are really interesting kind of insights into what went on.

And I mean you have a kind of critical mass of um accounts you guess. I mean they can't all just be made up right.

No. So one Spanish chronicler and one memoir said he was a good companion without any vanity or pomposity. A later chronicler who was actually half Inca called Gilazu said he was kindly and gentle by nature and never said a hard word of anyone. I mean, how kindly and gentle Pizarro was, we shall discover. He is a a soldier's son from a very violent part of Spain. This is a very violent business. And Pizaro, as we will find out, will do whatever it takes, and he will kill whomever he needs to kill in order to get out on top.

There is your shout line for the film. He will kill whoever he must to come out on top. Okay. Wow. That that's Yeah, I mean, I can see it now. Um, who is he played by? Robert Shaw. I mean, I like Robert Shaw as an actor. So, for the next 20 years or so, he's in the Caribbean. He's a pretty obscure figure. So, we talked in the Columbus and Aztec series about the concistadors and how they operated these chains of conquest. They would basically have rival networks of entrepreneurial kind of free bootters and adventurers and whatnot who would be engaged in island hopping across the Caribbean getting closer and closer to the American mainland. And obviously the most celebrated of all these networks, of all these operations, is Cortez's.

When Cortez went from Cuba to Mexico and then from there into Central America, Pizaro joins a different company from his cousins, a company operating much further south, and they're basically hacking their way through the jungles of Central America and Panama and stuff, which is lacking in the kind of splendid civilizations that Cortez finds. So there is a slight sense that there's kind of a bit of luck, isn't there?

Completely. It's like you're venture capitalists and you're investing in tech firms and some of them will pay off and some of them won't and and Pizaros has not really paid off. That said, he's part of the group that become the first Europeans to lay eyes upon the Pacific. Yeah. So, not Stout Cortez as John Keat said got it wrong.

No, it's Balboa Vasco Nunes de Balboa who's the f who leads that um operation. And here's a very good example of how the concistador's lives work. Pizarro is standing with him when they look out on the waters of the Pacific. And six years later, it is Pizarro who arrests Balboa and brings him for execution in Panama because of the endemic feuding that is always tearing the concistadors apart. So they're basically always worried that you know you can team up with somebody and go on some amazing expedition and risk your life and whatnot and three years later that person will sink a knife into your back and steal your money or you'll be involved in 20 years worth of lawsuits in in Spain or you'll die of some hideous disease in a jungle.

All of these things will happen in this series. So if we fast forward now to the beginning of the 1520s, Pizarro, who's now in his early 40s, has settled in the boom town of Panama City. So Panama City is booming, but it's a kind of pretty rough. It's a kind of place of pub brawls and stuff. Star Wars bar. The cantina in Star Wars. Exactly. Pisaro has done pretty well for himself. He has his own estate which is called an encoma which comes with a grant of indigenous laborers who basically you know as close to slave labor as you can get really.

But Pizarro is restless. And the puzzle for historians is working out why he's so restless. Cuz at this age, in your early 40s, most concistadors say, "That's it now. I'm not trudging through jungles with loads of leeches again. I've had enough. I've made a little bit of money." Is it his pathos?

Yeah, like Alexander. Alexander the Great style yearning. I mean, I suppose because he's illiterate. He doesn't have that kind of massive Alexander the Great vibe. I think actually the Posating it, Tom. Pizarro has quite modest personal tastes. You know, he's not a man given to luxury. He's he's not a man given to display. He looks quite conservative. He He's not married. He doesn't have children. So, it's not like he's interested in piling up gold for his descendants. He has a yearning. Yeah. A thirst to make a name for himself. A thirst for glory. Maybe that's the uh the subtitle of the film.

It is. And he will gamble in the next seven years, his health, his his life, and most importantly for a concistador, all his money on a pursuit of well, this is the mystery. What what what does he really think he's after? And the truth is he doesn't know. In 1522, so this is just a couple of years after Cortez had arrived in Tennosand, the capital of the Aztecs. In 1522, further south, a Basque called Pascal de Andagoya had sailed southwest from Panama. So Tabby was very anxious that people understand the geography because we're not the rest is geography, but we like to dabble in it from time to time. So Pascal the Andory had gone southwest from Panama. So that's basically down the Pacific side of the top of South America, what is now Colombia. And he had gone along the coast of Colombia. And he was gone for ages. People thought he'd vanished. And then he returned and he said, "I've been

in the jungle in Colombia and there are people there. There's not much there, but people say further south there is this land called Biru." And Beiru they say is a rich and powerful empire, maybe as rich as Mexico. And Dominic, just to ask, there have been no contacts between the Aztecs and the Incas, have there? And the the the the geography is just too impenetrable and impossible.

As we'll discover when we get to the Incas, they've basically been living in a vacuum.

Yeah. Cuz they're geographically bound in by sea and mountains and jungle and all kinds of things. Yeah.

Exactly. So Pizarro in Panama City, you know, imagine him in his cantina surrounded by aliens. He says, "Oh, I like the sound of this." And this is the dream that he will chase. So he in the summer of 1524, he forms a partnership with two friends from Panama City. One of them is a priest called Ernando Duke who dabbles in business and has borrowed some money from a judge and the other a very important person in this story in all six episodes is an old comrade of Pizaro is called Diego de Almagro and he's from rural Newcastile. He's a little bit older than Pizarro. He's also illegitimate. He's also illiterate though can't read. And he's another very hard man. People said his body was covered with scars from fighting. But he's literally more colorful than Pizaro. He wears very colorful clothes.

And to read you because it's important to get all these people in their heads. One chronicler said of Almagro, "He was a man of short stature with ugly features, but with great courage and endurance. He was generous but was conceited and was given to boasting, letting his tongue run on sometimes without stop. So he's short, he's ugly, he's very brave, and he's boastful. And he's always talking about himself.

I mean, this is the film is just writing itself, isn't it? There'd be so many actors who'd want to play that part.

Well, not not because he and Pizar at this point are great mates. And spoiler alert, it will not last.

Not for long. No honor among thieves. So, so in November 1524, they set off in three small ships down the Pacific coast of Colombia. So, this is the top left of South America. And this is not a success at all. This voyage, the weather's really bad. They put a shore. They get into a fight with some villagers who have got spears and bows and arrows. Al Magro loses an eye. So, this is great now cuz we can picture him with an eye patch. I don't think he did wear an eye patch, but I think for the purposes of the film.

What? So, he just had a horrid kind of bleeding saw, I think. So, yeah. Oh, great. I think for Hollywood purposes, the the eye patch is important. Who would play him? Joe Pesky.

I'm thinking the bloke was Gimly. John Reese Davis, a Welshman. Yeah, more Welsh history and the rest is just too much.

Okay, so he's either Gimy or Joe Pesky. Yeah, I think Gimy. I think Gimly. We still haven't cast Pizaro, but we can work on that during the course of the series. Anyway, they go back to Panama. Pizarro is undeterred. He raises more money. In March 1526, he and Elmagro set off again with two small ships, and this voyage will become one of the most celebrated voyages in Spanish history. They go south down the coast of Colombia, the sort of western coast. And when they get to the San Juan River, Pizarro goes ashore and camps, Almagro goes back to Panama to get reinforcements. And their pilot, so the guy who's basically, you know, piloting the ships, who's a guy called Bome Ruiz, he says, "Oh, I'll take the ships on a little bit. Scout on south to see what's there while you guys do what you're doing." Ruiz crosses the equator and then once he's crossed the equator on the horizon he sees a ship and it's

basically a raft. It's an oceangoing raft. Oh, like the contiki with cotton sails and he captures this ship and a lot of it um people sort of jump overboard and stuff to escape him, but not all of them. And he can't believe what he finds on this raft. Cuz as he reports in a letter to Charles V of Spain, it's full of gold and silver ornaments, crowns and diadems, belts and bracelets, tweezers and rattles and strings and clusters of beads and rubies, mirrors and cups and other drinking vessels. Tweezers. Tweezers. Tweezers and mirrors. Yeah. Brilliant.

Tweezers. The king will be thrilled to have some tweezers. Golden flavors. Very odd. Like uh Yeah. Masal hair clippers.

Dental floss thing. Dental floss. Yeah. Anyway, they've got all this stuff on the boat and these BS on the boat were taking this to trade all this gold to trade unbelievably for brightly colored fish shells which they would use as counters. So this is effectively money. Yeah. But what this tells Ruiz is that, you know, to trade this for a load of shells means that the people with the gold must have an awful lot of it because they don't prize it that highly. Anyway, for Pizaro and Co., this is tremendous news. This is so exciting because this means there clearly is an advanced civilization if they're making golden tweezers.

And they got loads of loads of um golden rubies and stuff. Exactly. Ruiz keeps three of the BS in the raft on afterwards to train as interpreters. And actually, throughout this whole story, there are clearly going to be people interpreting the whole time. And we know virtually nothing about them. And the one thing we do know actually is the Spanish, unlike in the story of the Aztecs, the Spanish spend a lot of time complaining that their interpreters are useless and they're mistransating what is being said because there's no equivalent of malinee.

There's no meal. No. Cortez's girlfriend who for very complicated reasons can speak all these various languages. But there isn't an equivalent of that in this story, is there?

No, there isn't. There are just generic people who keep getting Spanish themselves get them mixed up as we shall see. Um, and they but their Spanish do say and in fact the Incas later say, "God, your interpreters are absolutely useless."

Well, I mean, I don't think you can blame them because they're having to learn a completely new language. And how can they be sure that the language is properly spoken?

Yeah, true. I mean, I just think interpreters should do their job, but I have high expectations. Anyway, Ruiz, the pilot, goes back to the camp and he sees Pizarro and Almagro turns up with uh from Panama and they're all delighted by the news of the gold.

He's the Welsh guy. Alagro is Yeah. the guy with the eye patch. And now Marro says, "Look, I'll take some of this gold back to Panama. I'll get more recruits. Why don't you guys keep going? You know, see if you can what you can find." So they they go on and they decide they'll rendevu on this deserted island called the Islad Deo, which is on the border roughly between Colombia and Ecuador. So we're now going down the west coast of South America. So Pizaro and co go to this island. Almagro goes back to Panama to take the gold back and to get more recruits. When Almagro gets back to Panama, the governor of Panama says, "This is mad. I'm not giving you more people. This is a fool's errand." What about the rubies and the gold? Yeah, he sees that, but he just thinks it's maybe a one-off. It's a maybe a one-off, but also, you know, the weather, the weather, the malaria, you know, we've got stuff going on in

Central America that we're busy doing. I'm not throwing more men, you know, more men off good money after bad as it were. Now, meanwhile, Pizarro and the men on this desert island, the Islado, they're having a dreadful time. They run out of food. They're living off like rotten shellfish. Mosquitoes are eating them alive. They've all got dentry. All of this kind of thing. Eventually, they see ships coming towards them. And Pizaro says, "Oh, brilliant. These are the reinforcements. These are the new recruits." The ships arrive and actually the people on the ship say, "No, no.

We've come to take you back home. You're going back to Panama." Pizarro is gutted. He's furious. And this incredibly famous scene in Spanish history, he draws his sword. He gets all his men onto the beach, the men who haven't died of dissentry. And he draws a line in the sand of the beach. And he has this fantastic speech. Comrades and friends, on one side lies comfort, on the other lies death, hardship, hunger, nakedness, rain, and abandonment. On that side, you return to Panama to be poor. On the other, you go to Peru and become rich. The choice is yours.

It's um very like when I phoned you to ask if you would like to do a podcast. God, it is. Yeah. He drew a line in the sand and said, "On that side is comfort, on the other is

golden tweezers, nakedness, rain, and abandonment." And so only 12 cross, don't they? Only 12 men crossed and one of them is a very cool guy who's a Greek who's come from Cree.

Pedro de Kandandy. Pedro Dandia who's an expert in artillery and firearms and I just mentioned that artillery and firearms, you know, for no particular reason. I mean, it may not have an impact later on in the plot.

Pedro de Kandia is a giant. So, the giant Greek and and 11 other BS cross to Pizarro's side of the line. The rest of them get back on the ship and go to Panama. And for the next few months, Pizarro and these men, who become immortalized in Spanish paintings and Spanish literature later on as the famous 13 or the immortal 13, they stay on this desert island and they're almost doing it out of stubbornness cuz it's not like they're going to go anywhere. Are they becoming good mates as a result of this? Are they getting on each other's nerves? Are they a band of brothers? What what effect do you think it has on them?

I think it probably does create a band of brothers thing because a lot of these people continue will carry on with Pizaro because that's the striking thing, isn't it? But they they really do stick together.

Yeah, they're all in now. They can't back out because they look like fools. They look like absolute idiots. They stay on this desert island and Pazaro becoming increasingly emaciated. And then at last the pilot Ruiz comes back with a ship and says the the governor of Panama said, you know, enough. Come home now. You've made your point and basically no one's going to come and join you. So, very despondently, they get on the ships and Pizaro says, "Before we go home, could we just take one last look south? Can we just have a look and see what's around the headland or whatever?" So, they they go um on and they go into the Gulf of Guakil, which is where Peru and Ecuador meet. So, southern Ecuador, northern Peru. And there they see a town on the coast, which they end up calling Tomb. And they go near the town. Two of Pizarro's men go ashore with presents of that the ship clearly has brought them some foods.

They've got pigs and chickens. They go ashore with presence of the pigs and the chickens. And the locals are delighted. So they're not frightened by these pigs. I think if you've never seen a pig before, it'd be unsettling.

They don't seem unsettled. They seem delighted. They probably make a nice ham sandwich out of it or something. Anyway, the two BS come back onto the boat and they say, "Oh my god, this is what we wanted. This is a proper civilization. These BS have pots. They have nice clothes. They have chiefs. And they talk about a king far away. And best of all, they have very fancy temples decorated with silver and gold. Kaching. Yeah. But Zach, that's what Pizaro is thinking. Brilliant. So Para has what he needs. He's got the ship, the evidence of the ship with the tweezers. He's got the evidence of the town where they welcome the arrival of a pig and they've got temples with gold. And he says, "Great."

And what's more, they pick up from this town. They're either given or they capture two local boys who they call Martino and Filipio, like little Phillip or little Martin. And these boys they're going to train as interpreters to add to the ones they've got already. And these boys will play a big part in this story

cuz they'll grow up actually pretty good right? Yeah. Well, better than the rest. The Spanish keep mixing them up. So in the chronicles, the chronicles always disagree whether it's Martino or Filipino who's translating. But anyway, they've got translators and the language, of course, the Spanish don't know what the language is, but the language that they are translating to and from is a language called Ketwa, which is a very big Andian language. So Pizarro goes back to Panama and he meets his business partners and he says, "Look, we've obviously got a lot of potential here for another expedition, but we need to get royal approval because we don't want to go down, find stuff, and then have competitors come down with royal approval to sort of take all the treasure."

So it's that legalistic side again. Exactly. So in 1529 in the spring, Pizaro goes back to Spain and he goes to see the king of Spain, the emperor Charles V, who's in Toledo in the center of Spain. Now Charles V is a very very busy man. He's the king of Spain. He's the head of the house of Hapsburg. He's the Holy Roman Emperor. He is currently fighting two very expensive wars. One is against the French in Italy and the other is against the Ottomans in Eastern Europe. So what he wants more than anything is gold and silver from the new world. And Pizarro says to him, "Your majesty, you know, I've heard that this place Biru is brilliant. I've not been there, but I've heard very good things.

They have golden tweezers. They have uh lovely pots. They have nice clothes. All of this. Give you, your majesty, a pot." But Charles loves a part if he can melt it down into into money for his wars. Now, as luck would have it, also in Toledo at the court visiting with a loads of gifts for the royal family is Anan Cortez. He's making one of his periodic returns from Mexico. Is this where he turns up with loads of um Aztec mime artists for the pope? Their bodies are their tools.

Is he not always traveling with indigenous people? Well, anyway, Cortez has gone down an absolute storm and because of that, people are very wellincclined to the idea of, "Oh, there's another Mexico further south." Well, brilliant. So, in July 1529, the council of the Indies, which is based in Seville, authorizes Pizarro to conduct the discovery and conquest and settlement of the province of Peru. And they say to him, "You will be the first governor. You will be his first captain general. If you find it, we will give you a massive salary for life. Actually, double the salary." that's given to Cortez in Mexico. So, he's got a really good deal out of it.

It's kind of a franchising. Yeah, it's franchise. He's got the franchise. Pizarro has to put up the capital and take the risk, but he has the brand name. Exactly. There is one catch. When he got the franchise, he he he accidentally forgot to get a good deal for his business partners.

Oh, no. The Welsh guy. Yeah. This is how it works. So, the guy with only one eye, Diego Damagro, he's going to be the his reward. While Pizarro has a massive salary and is governor and captain general, Almagro has been rewarded with the title of commonant of the town of Tombz which is which is marketkedly inferior. So he's not going to be happy at all when Pizarro gets back as we will discover. Anyway, Pizarro goes back from Seville to the new world January 1530. He's picked up about 200 recruits from his native extra majura by and large including six Dominican friars. And Dominic, would one of those friars be called Valverde?

He is called Valverde. Yeah. The Valverde clan will play an important part in this story. Maybe a doctor of theology. It's a long time since we had a Valverie on the show. And longstanding listeners will recall that when a Valverie appears on the rest is history. All kinds of things will follow.

Good times follow. Good times follow. Exactly. So there's there's this guy Valverie who will be playing an important part and there's the three Pizaro brothers. So, of these three brothers, they will, you know, return in later episodes. So, get them remember that they're there. There's the youngest who is called I mean, actually, there's so much disagreement about what order they're in, how old they are, and what not, but this is what I've decided. Juan is the youngest. He's maybe 19 or so, and everyone said he's very uh impetuous, he's gallant, he's young, he's dashing, all of this. Then there is Gonzalo. Gonzalo is the middle one.

Maybe he's about 20. He's very friendly and easygoing. He was full of nobility and virtue and was beloved and respected by everyone says the chronicler Garthilazo.

He's the kind of noble one. Juan is the the the kind of the young scamp. Yeah. What's he like?

Yeah. And then and then the third one. What's he like? He's the oldest and he's Ernando. Now Ernando big figure in this story. He's the only one who's legitimate. The others are all legitimate. One Spanish chronicle describes him thus. A tall heavy man with thick lips and a thick tongue. and the tip of his nose was fleshy and in and inflamed, a great and boastful talker.

So, Martin Cloons, yeah, he's he doesn't sound terri like a massive looker, but everyone said he was kind of charismatic, charming, impressive. Yeah, big bloke. Um, he's got military experience cuz he definitely has served in Italy against the French. And he will end up being Francisco's closest confidant, his chief adviser, Ernando. And is there a sense that um Italy is is where you earn your spurs? That's the kind of cutting edge of military technology.

Exactly. Where the Spanish troops are regarded as some of the best in the world, by the way. So by 1530, they're all back in Panama and Pizaro is planning a new expedition. He does have one problem. His business partner, Diego Damagro, is absolutely outraged that Pizarro has returned and got him this terrible deal. And Pizarus says, "Look, listen. When we've got Peru, there must be something underneath it to the south and you can have that and that's what's going to become Chile. So, Almagro will, you know, he will go off later on to Chile, but that isn't legally stamped, is it? So, he doesn't have kind of letters patent from the king or anything.

No, no, no. And actually, their relationship now is a bit broken and it'll never be the same again. And this will run right through this story.

I can see why. Yeah, of course. He's really sold him out. He's completely sold him out. And it's worse because Ernando Pizarro's brother absolutely despises Al Macro. Anyway, spoiler alert. This is the beginning of a feud that will destroy all these people. Anyway, 27th of September 1530, Pizaro sets sail from Panama and is is bound for Biru. He's got three ships and 180 men and a load of horses, 37 horses. Now, a crucial point. Almagro makes the same mistake again. He says, "I'll raise more men in Panama and I will follow later. I'll join you later." This is maybe because he's a bit cautious and he wants to find out how things are going to turn out before he, you know, risks his life. I assume that.

I mean, he doesn't feel quite the blood brother with Pizarro now and so doesn't feel that they're in it together to the same degree, I suppose. I would guess so, but as we will discover, this is going to have massive consequences. I mean, a lot of people will die because of this. Pizaran coast sail off down the Pacific coast. The weather's against them this time. So, they have to make landfall much earlier than they planned in what's now the far north of Ecuador. So, if you look at a map, top sort of left corner of South America. From there, they start to march down the coast. It's very miserable. There's loads of mosquitoes. You know, they're hungry. Pizarro, everyone says, does really well. like he's brave, he's big.

When they're crossing a river, he will help to carry the sick across on his back. All of this kind of thing, he leads from the front. I mean, whatever else you say about him, he's, you know, he's genuinely brave. And he's got tremendous stamina and all this stuff

and concerned for his men. And concerned for his men. They reach their first settlement, a town called Kake in February 1531. They find a load of huts. They find a load of very baffled villages, and they find a load of emeralds and gold and silver. So Pizaro shares a lot of it out and then weirdly he hangs around in this place which doesn't sound that thrilling for about 6 months. They all come down with a disease. This may be actually I mean they come down disease because they've hung around but it may explain why they hung around afterwards. They come down with a horrible disease called carryans disease where you get these massive warts that then bleed separating warts.

Do they stay with you or do they heal? No. No, I think they eventually if you I mean if you Google it, you won't forget it. So don't Google it is all I say. Now everyone will Google it. Of course Tom's googling it as we speak. He can't wait to see all those photographs of people's bleeding warts. Oh my god, you finally seen those the Karen's disease. Yeah, guys, whatever you do, do not Google car's disease warts. Yeah, it's not good. Horrible. So now word is spreading about these bearded men who came in floating houses. you know, classic thing like we had with the conquest of Mexico.

More reinforcements eventually arrive from Central America, from Panama. Almagro is still not among them. He's still waiting to find out what's going to happen. So eventually, Pizarro sets off again. He crosses the equator. He's now going through fields of cultivated maze, what our American listeners would call corn. And this implies a high level of social organization. You know, there's farming going on here. People need to be you need some form of social order for that to happen. And the interpreters are reporting to the Spanish that people are talking about an empire further south and also they're talking about a war, but no one really knows what that is. Intriguing.

South of Guakil in Ecuador, big city today, they reach a large island called Puna. And here the locals are not so friendly. They stage a massive dance to trick the Spanish and then turn on them. But of course, the Spanish theme of this series, they have their steel swords against which, you know, there can be no resistance and they're able to overcome the locals. Do they have horses?

They do have horses. They've got about 38 37 horses again, which absolutely terrify the people of South America as we will see again and again. You can turn up with two or three horses and hundreds and you can defeat hundreds of people, thousands of people because they're so frightened of the horses. cuz all these rumors start to spread, don't they? That they um they eat people.

My my favorite of all the rumors is that it was widely believed that the Spanish were incapable of walking uphill. That that was what the horses they had the horses for.

Exactly. So, some more people more reinforcements arrive among a character who will play a part in the story. A knight from Spain from Extra Majiraa uh called Ernando Doto.

Oh, big news in Florida in due course. Yes, he will come to a stick in Florida. Dotto is 32 years old. He's another very short man. There's a lot of short people in the story, but he has won a reputation in Central America as a very dashing and brave horseman. That's his great skill. He's like a sort of the person who would be very good at dress or some such.

Nice. He'd win gold with Princess Anne. He would he'd be great powers to Princess Anne, actually. Is he poss?

Uh, he's a knight. He's an He's an ilalgo. Okay. So, he is. Exactly. He's one of those kind of menacing posh people. I wouldn't get on that horse if I were you.

Yeah, he's a young Charles Dance. That's exactly what he is. So, Pizarro says to Sto, right, you can be one of my chief left tenants. Actually, when we get to Peru, the capital, you can be the um left tenant governor of the capital city. And Sto says, "Brilliant. I can't wait." We shall see how this promise works out. I say they're now inching closer to this mysterious empire. There's there's about 400 of them now. So, they get some rafts. They crossed from this island that they've been on back to the mainland and to the town of Tomb they had visited before. Now they'd seen the temples if you recall. They had seen the people's nice clothes. They'd seen all this. But when they get to the town, they can't believe it because the buildings are all ruined. The streets are deserted. The temples have been looted. What's happened? Yeah, something apocalyptic. Theto goes ahead um to find out what's going on. He finds the local

chief across the river. He brings them back to Pizaru and the chief says, you know, he he doesn't really fill them in on what's happened, but he says, "There's a much greater chief who lives far away and this greater chief lives in a town with gold and silver jugs and houses and temples walled and roofed with gold." I say, and Pizarro thinks, "Wow, this is looking good." They continue on. The next place they get to is a little town called Pueos. And here the local chief is friendly. He gives them food and he adds a little bit more detail about what's been happening. He says, "I too answer to this great chief, the emperor." And the emperor's rule extends for thousands of miles north to south. But he says, "The old emperor has died and his two sons have been fighting for control of this empire, of a civilization that up till now has been totally unknown to the outside world.

And the local people called this civilization Tawantin Soyu, the land of the four quarters. But Tom, we know it as the empire of the Incor. And so the Incor and we will find out what they have to say for themselves after the break. Hello everyone and welcome back to the rest is history. It is the autumn of 1532 and top concistador Francisco Pizarro and his men have finally crossed into the mainland of modernday Peru. And Dominic, only now are they beginning to grasp the reality of what they have discovered. An immense land stretching between the Andes and the Pacific. And this is the Empire of the Incor.

Yeah. So at last we get to the Incas themselves. So, first of all, the Incas, I think, are a little bit less known than the Aztecs. They're sort of shrouded in mystery.

They don't call themselves Incas, do they? They don't. They don't call themselves the Incas at all. So, the the reason we call them the Incas is that they called their emperor the Sappa Inca. And the Spanish got the word Incas from that. But they called themselves, as far as we know, they called themselves probably runa, which means just the people. And they called their country not Peru. They called it Tuantin Soyu, the land of the four quarters, north, south, east, and west. And their history is a little bit obscure because they didn't write anything down. They had no writing.

You'll be telling me they didn't have wheels next. You're right. You're not wrong. Um and they don't have pigs. So they don't have the three important elements for any civilization. So basically what is written about the Incas is all written by Spanish chronicers. And we're fortunate in some ways that the Spanish were fascinated by South America and that in you know the 1530s 1540s 1550s Spanish concistadors and memoirists and historians are writing a lot of stuff down. But what we can't know, of course, is how accurate it really is. But I would guess again that if you have all these, you know, large numbers of people writing accounts, there must be a measure of truth. They can't just be making it up from nothing.

I think so. I think absolutely. So the Incas are not the first civilization in the Peruvian Andes. You know, archaeologists will tell you there were loads of kind of different cultures before the Nazca as in the lines, the Naza lines,

the Chavein. Um, a very famous civilization called the Tuanaku. Are they famous?

They are f I'm I talk about nothing else. I mean, the people I hang around with, they're always talking to about Tuanaku. I go out in London and in the pubs of London.

I mean, I would say I do. I would say they're well known, but I wouldn't say they're famous. I think I think I think famous is the word. So I mean Tom Lake Tittikaka the gate of the sun people are always chatting about that aren't they? The gate

see that's famous. Okay. So that was that's the Tanaku's most famous thing. They built this fantastic gate by a lake and then they went into decline about AD 1000 and then they were succeeded the Tanaku by this loads of competing kind of citystates and tribes and stuff and all of these people. So they're Andians. They developed, as we said before the break, in isolation really from the outside world because north of Peru you have the forests, the highland forests of Colombia. West you have the Pacific. East you have Amazonia with its dense rainforests and south all the way south you have the wilderness that is Patagonia.

So this is by miles the most isolated civilization on the face of the planet. Yeah, I think so. I think so. So it's not like you know it's not like a kind of Himalayan kingdom that has been purch by missionaries or traders or whatever. This place is these people have basic have really been cut off. Now the Incas themselves like the Spanish they are newcomers to the top division to the big league

and like the Aztecs and like the Aztecs. So they're originally a pastoral tribe um so shepherds and stuff or whatever um in the valley of the Urubamba River which is outside the highland city of Kusco in the Andes that's about 11,000 ft above sea level. They'd actually physically developed you know tremendous lung capacity or whatever to live so high up with the air so thin and they speak a language called Ketwa which is an Andian language which precedes the Incas. Um they don't invent it or anything. So can I ask is is there um a sense among the Incas as there was among the Aztecs that they are living amid the ruins of previous civilizations and that their gods and their sense of the past is inherited from those civilizations.

Yes, definitely there is. Absolutely there is. So particularly this very famous uh people the Tanaku

the well-known people. Yeah, really well known. So a lot of their gods, uh, a lot of their customs, a lot of kind of Andian, um, social moes and whatnot, they are inherited by the Incas rather like the Aztecs were their successors to the people of Teoti Hakan and so on and so forth. So the people in the Andes have this creator god, don't they? Verakocha.

Verakocha. Yeah, exactly. So he's an ancient god, not just an Incan god. And he's the top dog.

Well, as we shall see, some of the great temples that end up being looted by the Spanish precede the Incas. Yeah. you know, maybe hundreds or indeed thousands of years old, these religious sites. So, yes, absolutely. They're living amid the ruins of civilizations that preceded them. They begin to expand from being just this little tribe in probably the late 13th century. So, for context, that's the time when Edward the is hammering the Scots. Then by the 1350s, so that's the time of the Black Death, 100 years war, all that stuff, they are expanding into the neighboring valleys. And historians call this state the Kusco Confederation.

And then about a century after that, there's this legendary moment in Inca history when their rivals, who were called the Chanka, attacked the Kusco Confederation. And the Chanka looked like they were going to have the upper hand. And the king of Kusco, who was called the Sappa Inca, he fled the city. But his son, who was called Kuzi Yupanki, rallied the army and he won this tremendous victory. And then on the back of that he displaced his father and he became sappering or emperor and he took a new name to mark that which is patchakouti and he is the person patchouti who reorganizes and expands the kusco kingdom into an empire.

So he's the augustus of the incas. He is absolutely the augustus. So when the Spanish came and wrote about him more than 100 years later they said he's the guy he's the founding father. So a Jesuit missionary called Bernab Corbo said he endowed the state with a code of laws. He expanded the official religion. He embellished the temples with magnificent buildings. In short, he overlooked nothing and organized everything. And later archaeologists and writers said, "Oh, Patricut is absolutely the man." The Augustus, as you called him, Tom. So there's a Victorian explorer called Sir. Clemens Markham who said Patakouti he said was the best all round genius produ ever produced by the native races of America but actually disappointingly he may not have existed

what yeah I know really disappoint a real shock that is so classic so I think modern historians now think the incor might have made him up as a sort they needed a founding father figure

it's kind of like you know if he didn't exist you need to invent him well that's the thing so I think we act as though he did exist because somebody like him must have done

Yeah. Someone of the same name. Yeah. Somebody must have expanded the empire. And so if you believe the traditional accounts, Patrick, his son, who was called Tupac Inca, and his grandson who was called Hua Kapak, they massively expand this empire. So they go all the way west to the coast of the Pacific. They go north into Ecuador and Colombia. They go south to Lake Tittikakar and the kind of highlands of um the high plateau of Bolivia. They go southwest to the top of what is now Chile. So you can imagine them basically expanding throughout Western South America.

So it's just very very long and thin. So long. So long. 2,500 miles long. Yeah.

There's an American writer called Charles C. Man who wrote an absolutely wonderful book. I thought I I never thought I would say this about a book that has a lot of science in it, but it's called 1491 and it's about the new world before Columbus. And amazingly for a really good book, there's a load of stuff about pollen and plants and agricultural terracing, but it's really interesting.

It is, isn't it? Yeah. And in that book, he says, imagine as though there was one power that ran an empire that went all the way from St. Petersburg in the north to Cairo in the south, but a sort of long thin empire. That's the Inca Empire. Probably, you know, not as in the the Royal Hunt of the Sun claimed 24 million people, probably about 12 million people.

Still impressive though, isn't it? I know. And they're living in massive regional diversity and all of this.

And if you know, if you're a guy leading an invasion with about 190 horsemen, I mean, it doesn't really matter how many millions you're up against, it's still millions.

No, exactly. This gigantic country. The mad thing is they don't have some of the things that Eurasian empires take for granted. Namely, the horse, the wheel, the arch, and the written word. They don't have any of those things. What? So, what do they have? What's Inca civilization look like? Well, most people are peasants and they live in these kind of thatched huts along the river valleys of the Andes. They don't have any draft animals. There's no horses. There's no oxen in South America. So, they don't have wheels because there's no point. I mean, I suppose you could you have a wheelbarrow, couldn't you? You'd think you'd have a wheelbarrow,

but they don't have them. But they got llamas, haven't they? They've got loads of llama. I mean, if you like llamas, you're laughing cuz they've got more llamas than anyone.

Don't they eat guinea pigs? So, guinea pigs. So, what they eat? Do you want to hear what they eat? They eat sweet potatoes. They eat this maze or Americans would say corn. They eat potatoes

which the great historian John Heming calls Peru's greatest legacy to the world is uh the potato. They don't have any cows. They don't have any sheep. They don't have any pigs. They have a load of guinea pigs. And that's the national dish of Peru. Quite yum.

They drink a kind of beer made from maze called chicha. They chew cocoa leaves. The Spanish commented that the incan abilities seem to be constantly chewing these cocoa leaves. The kind of very mild, very, very mild stimulant basically ingredient of cocaine. Does it make them kind of rush around going on about how brilliant they are?

No, I don't think so. Cuz I mean reading some of the stuff that the Inca emperors say about themselves.

Yeah. You think there's a guy who's been on a cocoa? No, I don't think so actually cuz I think it's so mild the uh the cocoa leaf. I mean I've never chewed a cocoa leaf myself but um anyway they have a load of llamas as you say and alpacas. Now interestingly they all wear the same clothes. So if you went to the Inca Empire for a stroll you would see all the bloss wearing kind of brown cloaks and all the women wearing gray cloaks and so on. And this is an important point. This is a standard uniform and no deviation whatsoever is permitted. This is an exceptionally ordered society. So if you think about the Incor, they've got some massive things going against them. They don't have any domestic animals, very few domestic animals. They don't have rich farmland. and the the sort of highlands of Peru, the steep slopes of the Andes, is a terrible place to try to grow crops, which is why they have to carve out all these terraces and

stuff. And as Pizaro's men march into this empire, they see these stone terraces along the hillsides. They see there's loads of irrigation canals and ditches and an incredible road network. So, the largest road network in the Americas, 14,000 mi long. There's these paved stone roads, rope suspension bridges, and almost like kind of primitive cable cars going across the valleys. And they are crucial in any film, aren't they? You have to have a battle on a swaying suspension bridge with somebody threatening to cut the ropes.

Exactly. And all the way there's a chain of kind of warehouses and storehouses along the roads with clothes and with food and supplies and stuff. There's nothing like this in Mexico in the Aztec Empire. And in fact, some of the Spanish say there's nothing like this in Europe. I mean, an incredible road network,

but you'd have to have it because otherwise you couldn't run an empire that's that long.

That's that long. But to have it at all, that tells you how this empire is working. So the Incor, you know, they don't get people to build these roads out of, you know, voluntary enthusiasm. They force them. And they haven't built their empire by a shared enthusiasm for text nice textiles and playing the pan pipes. They have built it through force. And in terms of weaponry, they're kind of bronze age, aren't they? They've got slings and sort of axes and clubs and halbirds made of bronze. And they have quilted armor. And they have kind of Greekstyle crested helmets with kind of feathers and stuff. And they have nice little painted shields and whatnot.

And they have this horrible thing, don't they, where they come up against kind of enemy peoples and they say to the leaders of the enemy peoples, you know, join us and if you do then, you know, you'll become one of us and you can have a great time with guinea pigs and gold tweezers and things.

Yeah. And if you don't and you fight and then you get captured, they'll bring you back to the capital and they'll dig these huge pits and they'll put in kind of snakes and hungry jaguars and things.

Yeah. And then if you survive it, then you get pulled up and live as a servant. And if you don't, you get killed by these snakes and things.

I'll just put put my cards on the table here. I would not have liked to have lived in the Inca Empire. I think it sounds like a terrible place. I mean, this will shock our Peruvian listeners.

Well, no. I mean, you have to wear this monochrome clothing. You have to spend your whole time.

If you rebel, you might end up in a pit with a snake. I mean, it's not fun. They have absorbed all these surrounding peoples into their empire.

And part of it is by persuading their elites to join the Inca nobility. And to be an Inca nobleman is is quite a laugh. You get like a palace. You get the best food and drink. You get to use some of these roads are just for the nobility. You get to travel in a litter on these roads. And you get to wear these golden plugs in your earlobes. got earplugs. They sort of widen out your earlobe.

Would that be a selling point for you? I think it'd be worth a try. And the Spanish call them for that reason the the orones, the big ears. That's the Spanish name for the Incanability, the big ears. However, to be a peasant is awful. So, basically, the Aztecs, if the Aztecs conquered you, the Aztecs just want you to send them some lovely beans as a tribute every year or whatever, you know, some chocolate or whatever. The Incas aren't really that bothered about the tribute. What they want is you. They want your labor.

So, it's kind of a bit like Mauist China. You have to wear the same clothes and just spend your whole time being bossed around by apparachics making.

It really is. Well, it's actually more like Stalin Soviet Union actually. So, you will be called up regularly under a system called the meter, the turn. You'll be called up to work on state huge state farms and state construction projects. All these people who built all these roads and bridges and stuff are conscripts working in basically slave gangs, chain gangs. They belong to the emperor. There is no private property in the Inca Empire. There is no free market. In fact, there is no market of any kind. There are no markets, which is mind-boggling. There is no money. There is no private ownership of land. Land is held in common. In other words, it's kind of well, Latin American Marxists in the 60s and 70s used to talk about Inca communism, and they used to say, "This is brilliant. You know, no private property. There's no hunger because the food is kind of distributed by the state, all of this." But more right-wing

historians, you know, write of this with horror. So Hugh Thomas who ended up being a sort of very Thatchatter adjacent peer in the 1980s incredibly boring historian cannot write an interesting sentence. Like his books are simultaneously incredibly long but incredibly unsatisfying. No.

Yeah. Just lists of the genealogy of concistadors. So and so who was from Trujillo whose brother actually was the bishop of whatever. And he just goes on and on and on. And actually the guy is fighting a battle on the rope bridge at this moment. But Hugh Thomas is more interested in telling you that his uncle once went to Casarez and I don't know. Anyway, whatever Hugh Thomas says of the Inca system, personal liberty was practically non-existent. Blind obedience and unquestioning self-obnigation had forever to be accorded. Never was there a more pervasive government than that of the Incor. And I think there is something a bit chilling about it. So basically they could if they conquered you or if you did a deal with them, they would take like thousands of people and deliberately move them like Stalin and the Caucuses to the other end of the empire to work on a huge farm and forced them to speak Ketwa which wasn't their

language. And there's something very not totalitarian but something very top down and joyless and cold about it I would say.

So here's a question. Yeah. If you're an Andian peasant Yeah. Just suppose would you rather be conquered by the Incas or the Spanish?

I don't think it's a bundle of laughs either way to be honest with you because the Spanish as we will see behave quite poorly at times.

Do they behave as poorly as the Incas though? It's a tough one. I mean surely you get fiestas with with the Spanish

mariachi bands. You're thinking Mexico. You're in Mexico, Tom? I think you have fiestas in Peru, don't you?

Yeah, but more pampai based. No, that's fine. Um that's the fusion of cultures.

Yeah, I don't know. I think possibly I'm going to go with the Spanish just because I'm European. I'm euroentric person.

So for that reason the Incas do all this of course with no writing. And do you know what they use instead of writing? Um they have these things called kipus which are long rows of knotted looped strings.

I did know that. No one really knows how they work because a lot of them were destroyed in the Spanish conquest and historians have puzzled some of them out. But basically you get a load of string with a load of knots and that could be the census.

Yeah. It's kind of like an abacus, isn't it? I mean it's that kind of exactly could be anything. However, all the sort of suffocating uniformity of the Inca Empire maybe is a little bit I think might be a little bit overstated because if you take the example of religion, we know that the Incas tried to enforce their gods on the peoples whom they conquered. So particularly it seems like Patricki and his successors tried to enforce an official cult of the sun god linked to their own dynasty and the sun god was called ini and the inca priests said he gave the gift of civilization to Patricut his ancestor who was called mango kapak supposedly and our emperor is therefore the son of the sun and you know you should venerate him and all this kind of thing

like Japan yeah however we know the Spanish discovered that all the different local people still had their own cults and their own shrines and their own gods. So I mean that's not surprising and I I guess that that would also work actually in the dimension of you know what you want to wear and um whether you have to go and get build roads or whatever is that I imagine that off those main roads there is actually a degree of autonomy. I would suspect I mean I don't see that you can impose that degree of uniformity over people who live kind of 10 miles away you know up a mountain.

I think you're right. I think the Incas are trying to impose a uniformity as part of the empire building project. But I think as we will discover a lot of local groups bitterly resist that and actually hate the Incor rather like with the Aztecs when the Spanish arrived in Mexico.

There are a load of people who actually say well I mean sure I'm not a massive fan of the Spanish but I'll tell you who I really hate. It's the people who've been lording it over us for the last 150 years. And this is the case I think with the Incas. So in the Inca Empire for example the official language is Ketwa but millions of Incas don't speak Ketwa. Millions of Inca subjects I should say. So they would speak Imara or Pukina or Machica or all these other languages many of which are now lost. And they chafe I think under the jack boot of the Ketwa speakers from Kusco. And so when the Spanish arrive I think there are probably a lot of people who think you know the Spanish are not a bundle of laughs. They will behave very badly. But if they will guarantee us a little bit more autonomy.

I mean, I imagine if you're an Andian peasant, you assume that anyone with power is going to behave badly.

Yeah, I think it's just relative, you know, who's who's going to be worse. Now, with the Aztecs, we talked before about how diversity was not their strength, how the Spanish were brilliant at using this against them. And this would be the case here as well. But here, it's slightly different because the Incas are even more vulnerable than the Aztecs. And this takes us back to the scene that had confronted Pizaro and co when they landed on the coast and they found the devastation and the deserted streets and the looted temples at the beginning of the 16th century. So the time when Pizarro is arriving in the Caribbean 1500 or so the emperor of the Incas, the 11th Sappa Inca as he was called was this bloke called Huena Kapak who was Patricut's grandson. And Hua Kapak is a very clearly a very impressive guy. He built loads of temples. He built loads of roads. He annexed a lot of what's now Ecuador and

Bolivia. He pushed as far north as Colombia. It's quite possible that he was the first emperor to hear reports of the Spanish arrival in the Americas. So, he probably would have got garbled news from Panama cuz he's gone up into Colombia in the next country up Panama. So, he's probably heard garbled news. There's some BS with beards who've turned up who are like laying waste and behaving poorly. So he may have known that the Spanish are coming. But the threat to him and his empire, it's not the Spanish themselves. It's what they bring from Europe, which is smallpox.

So smallox had arrived in the new world in the 1510s. It had ripped through the Caribbean, killing the vast majority of the indigenous population. And then it had killed colossal numbers of people in Mexico and Central America. It gets to Central America in the 1520s or so. Then it goes down Central America, down the Istmas of Panama into Colombia into the very place where Hua Kapak is campaigning with his army. It hits the army first probably in about 1525. Then it spreads to the court. It kills Hua Kapak's eldest son and then you know round aboutif between 1525 and 1527 or so he gets it too and within days he is dead of this disease to which nobody in the Americas has any immunity.

And for the Incor the death of the emperor from this unknown disease is an absolutely shattering pivotal moment. They have no system of primogenature. So the next son in line does not have an automatic right to rule. Basically the system works on constant succession crisis. There's a crown which is a kind of it might sound slightly peculiar to listeners who are used to crowns. It's a kind of cirlet of red cords with a tassel that hangs down. If you have the tassel that shows that you're the the king, the emperor. This cirlet will go not to the eldest but to the strongest.

And there are two obvious contenders for the crown as we should call it. So one of them is Ha Kapak's son Hascar probably son by his first wife. And Hascar's power base is in the traditional Inca heartland of Kusco.

But he's an absolute lush, isn't he? Do you think so? He's a lush I think this is I think this

He spends his whole time having drunken parties. That's what people say. But I think this I think this is um propaganda actually. I think this is Atawalpin propaganda because the other son is called Atawalpa and Atawalpa is younger. He's from a different wife. Atalpa is probably about 30. Um probably his mother came from Kito which is the capital city today of Ecuador. And that tension between what's now Ecuador and what's now Peru is a huge huge part of this story. North versus south basically.

So Atwaba doesn't have any particular loyalty to Kusco. No, not at all. Way down in the south.

His loyalty is to Keito in the north. What ends up happening is becomes the emperor and he says to his younger brother Atawala, "Well, you can be my viceroy in the north. You can rule in Kito. I'll rule in Kusco." There's 2,000 miles between these places. I mean, that gives you a sense of how huge this empire is.

But it's very very I mean, it's a very trit comparison, but I'm just going to go there because that's what we do. Um, it is very Game of Thrones. the potential for, you know, who who's gonna get the ultimate prize. And by about 1529, relations between the two brothers have broken down. There's a civil war. Um, now we're dependent on later Spanish accounts for the civil war. So, it's a bit murky. Clearly, this is a regional as well as a factional thing. Keito in the north versus Kusco in the south. That's really important. It's extremely vicious. So basically, if you side with one brother and the other brother's troops turn up, they will take hideous reprisals on you. And so the longer the civil war goes on, the more damage it does to the empire's infrastructure and unity. And it goes on for a long time.

So it takes 3 years before Atawalpa, the younger brother, the bloke from the north from Kito, before he gets an advantage. And in April 1532, his generals win a big victory over his brother's forces outside Kusco. They capture, the older brother, and Atawalpa's army can now lay siege to Kusco itself. Now, this has come, you know, victory is a hand, but it's come at a great cost to him and his empire. He personally has established a reputation for incredible cruelty. So if Spanish writers are to be believed, he would order enemy chief's hearts to be torn out and he would make their supporters eat them. Doesn't he behave very badly to uh poor old's kind of nearest and dearest?

Yeah. He rounds up all his wives, all his children. Yeah. Tortures them to death, then sticks their bodies on massive great spikes along the road. Um and I suppose effectively by doing that he is destroying not just um Haska status as a king but any prospect of him establishing his dynasty

his bloodline. Exactly. His bloodline and supposedly was forced to watch while his wives and children were being tortured. Atala's armies and armies have done tremendous damage to towns and cities the length of the empire from Kito to Kusco and they've divided that the the ruling Inca elite itself has been has been completely splintered. So to quote the Mexican historian Fernando Cvantes, "The Incan nobility on which the system had largely relied was now irreparably torn. The scars of the war were too fresh, too painful, and only too obvious." And isn't isn't there a kind of uh Romans destroying Carthage scenario where Atelpa basically tells everyone in Kusco, "You've got to leave.

You got to come to Kito. I'm going to wipe out Kusco, you know, abandon your temples." All of that.

Yeah. So at this point Kusco has not yet fallen but Atawalper is clearly a very vengeful person and he is determined you know he associates Kusco with his brother's faction and with the rebellion all his commanders tend to be from the north his family are from the north and his investment in as it were the traditional Inca heartland is not great and actually I think there is a lot of I think there's a case that a lot of people in the central and south Inca Empire view Ata walpa and his troops as outsiders as foreigners almost

as foreigners from the north. Exactly. Now, this doesn't have to be fatal for Atawalpa. He's won, right? I mean, he can with time he can rebuild the Incan nobility, you know, he can establish himself. He can stitch up the wounds of war. He can kill everybody he doesn't like. You know, he could be the emperor for another 30 years or something. But of course he doesn't know that time is the one thing that he does not have because this takes us back to the Spaniards who are knackered, hungry, soden with sweat but are now learning reality about this empire.

But just to remind people 168 Spaniards. So these Spaniards, they don't know everything we know about the Incas. But what they do know now, thanks to their informants, is that to the south there is this vast empire with extraordinary wealth. But it's divided. It is battlecard. It is ripe for the taking. And Francisco Pizarro, this illegitimate, illiterate bruiser from western Spain, he doesn't hesitate. He knows exactly what to do. And so now the Spaniard's road lies south to a showdown with Atawalpa in the town of Cayamaka to the temples and treasure houses of the Inca's capital Kusco and finally to a quest into the jungle to find the last lost city of the Incas. Showdowns, lost cities. This really is a series that has it all. We have five episodes to come.

Um, and the tremendous news for members of the Rest is History Club, our very own band of bedraggled but ruthless concistadors, is that you can hear all five episodes right away. And if you would like to sign up to join us on our murderous assault on the Incan Empire, then you can head to the rest ishistory.com and do it there. But for now, asto. Bye-bye.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "How 168 Men Conquered The Incan Empire | Fall of the Incas EP 1"?

Tom (Guest), Martin (Host), Unspecified collaborators/participants (Guest).

What is "How 168 Men Conquered The Incan Empire | Fall of the Incas EP 1" about?

A concise summary: The rapid Spanish conquest under Francisco Pizarro, wielding fewer than 200 men, crashes the Inca Empire as Atawalpha is captured and control is seized in the name of the Spanish crown, marking a pivotal moment in the rise of colonialism. The episode frames this hinge event as an extraordinary, multidimensional tragedy and adventure in world history.

What is mentioned in this The Rest Is History episode?

37 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Inca Empire, Francisco Pizarro, Atahualpa, Peru, Diego de Almagro, Conquistadors. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "How 168 Men Conquered The Incan Empire | Fall of the Incas EP 1"?

The episode runs 1 h 10 min; the transcript is about 13,174 words in 170 timestamped sections.

More from The Rest Is History

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated October 29, 2026.