Hey Thoughty2 Here. 500 years ago, a *tiny* band  of Spanish conquistadors landed in what is now  

Peru, and between them they toppled one of the  largest and most powerful empires on the planet.

As for how, that’s what we’re going to  find out in this video. But in case you  

can’t wait that long, let me give  you the gist. The Spanish conquered  

the Inca thanks to a monumental stroke  of luck, a room full of solid gold, an  

out of control bioweapon, and what might just  be the greatest ambush in military history.

This is the truly remarkable story of how  168 men conquered an empire of 10 million.

This is the story… of the fall of the Inca.

In early 1532, the Inca empire was one of the  biggest and most advanced on earth. Home to  

around 10 million people and covering an area of  more than 2 and a half million square kilometres,  

it was by far the largest empire ever to exist  in pre-columbian America. It was well organised,  

had advanced politics and fearsome military power,  

and Inca engineering would  have impressed even Europeans.

The Inca rulers of the age had every reason  to believe their glorious civilization would  

continue to grow and prosper for hundreds,  perhaps even thousands of years. And yet,  

just 18 months later, the Inca emperor was  dead and his mighty empire was in ruins.

Considering the Inca’s wealth and  influence, the speed of this demise  

is nothing short of astonishing. But  even more remarkable is how it happened.

Because the Inca weren’t beaten  by a mighty invading army or an  

apocalypse-grade natural disaster. They  were defeated by precisely 168 Spaniards.

Now I know what you’re thinking - that is  literally impossible. And trust me I get it.  

I’ve put dozens of hours of research into this  topic and I *still* have trouble believing it.

But what I’m going to tell you in this  video is well-established historical fact.

If you follow this channel regularly, you'll know  that the Spanish had already had a bit of practice  

conquering powerful New World civilisations  in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.

A decade before taking on the Inca,  a chap called Hernando Cortes had  

done a number on the fearsome  Aztecs in what is now Mexico.  

That experience had taught the Spanish plenty  about the vast differences between their culture  

and those of the New World. But it had also  taught them that they had something in common:

They both. Bloody. *Loved*. Gold.

Gold was the fuel of the Spanish empire.  It paid for armies, bought noble titles,  

and directly translated into unimaginable  wealth. They got a great deal of it during  

their conquest of the Aztecs, but, like the  Au addicts they were, they were going to  

need some more… and fast. Luckily, they  had a pretty good idea where to look.

As far back as the early 1500s, there  had been rumours of a large - and more  

importantly *rich* - kingdom somewhere to the  south. No sooner had the Aztecs been defeated,  

the Spanish started trying to find it.

There were several expeditions to what we  now call South America in those early days,  

but the most important ones for the purposes  of this story were led by Francisco Pizarro.

A man born to humble beginnings,  Pizarro had gone to the New World  

in his thirties in search of a better  life. To some extent he’d found one,  

rising through the ranks to serve as  the mayor of Panama city. But he hadn’t  

travelled halfway across the world to become  a bureaucrat. His ambitions were far loftier.

In 1524, he and fellow wannabe-conquistador  Diego Almagro led an expedition south from  

Panama City along the Pacific coast in search  of the wealthy civilisation that was rumoured  

to exist there. Unfortunately  for them, they didn't find it.  

Instead, they found treacherous swamps, an  impressive variety of tropical diseases,  

and lots of angry locals who  were quite keen to murder them.

The expedition was an unmitigated disaster.  Zero square metres of territory were claimed  

for the Spanish crown, not a single ounce of  gold was stolen - I mean ‘liberated’ - and  

lots of Spaniards died in various horrible ways.  When co-commander Diego Almagro lost an eye to  

an arrow in a skirmish in what is now Columbia,  they decided it was probably best to go home.

But neither Francisco Pizarro nor Diego Almagro  were men who gave up easily. Pizarro in particular  

was relentless, perhaps because conquering  giant new world civilisations with bugger  

all men was in his blood. Pizarro was the  second cousin once removed of Hernán Cortés,  

the man who’d defeated the Aztecs with just  500 men. That family’s got a lot to answer for.

Anyway, two years after their disastrous  first expedition, Pizarro and Almagro were  

back for another bite of the guava, this time with  almost double the manpower and even a few horses.

To begin with, the second expedition  went pretty much the same way as the  

first. Swamps were traversed, diseases were  died from, and, far from finding a vast,  

wealthy civilisation, the Spanish found  little more than the odd primitive village.

But Pizarro and Almagro’s fortunes changed  dramatically thanks to a chance encounter  

somewhere off the coast of what is now Ecuador.  That's where one of their ships came across a  

large raft floating serenely through the  treacherous waters of the Pacific ocean.

At first this raft appeared to be little  more than an insignificant curiosity. At  

more than 10 metres long and 6 wide,  it looked absolutely nothing like any  

kind of ocean-going vessel the Spanish  had ever set eyes on. But it wasn't the  

raft itself that changed Pizarro and Almagro's  fortunes... it was what the raft was carrying:

Gold.

The apparently primitive craft was  full of the stuff, as well silver,  

emeralds, fine textiles and pottery.

By this point the Spanish had a few young  natives among their crew to act as translators,  

so communication - though difficult - was just  about possible. The men on the raft claimed to  

be traders from a large, wealthy port city to the  south called Tumbes - part of a vast, rich empire.

During the garbled conversation one  word in particular came up a lot:  

‘Inka’ - though Spanish chroniclers of the time  recorded it as ‘inga’. The word referred to the  

leader of this great empire - Inka literally meant  ruler or emperor. But over the years it became the  

western name for the entire civilisation. In case  you’re wondering, the people we now call the Inca  

referred to *themselves* as the Tawantinsuyu.  And no, that probably isn’t how you pronounce it.

Anyway, the discovery of the pimped out raft  was exactly the proof Pizarro and Almagro  

had been looking for, but by this point  supplies were running critically low and  

many of the men were suffering from a range  of ailments and injuries. In other words,  

they were in no shape to head out conquering.

Instead, Pizarro and Almagro did the 16th century  equivalent of calling for backup by sending a ship  

back to Panama to request more food and men.  But to their surprise, the request was denied.  

The Spanish colony at Panama had never been  wealthy, and the governor, Pedro de los Ríos, had  

had enough of funding expensive - and so far  fruitless - expeditions south. So, rather than  

send the support Pizarro and Almagro had asked  for, he ordered that they sail home immediately.

Almagro reluctantly complied, but Pizarro  refused. He’d found a solid lead suggesting  

that the next great New World civilisation was  lurking somewhere to the south just waiting  

for a brave Spaniard to come along and conquer  it. So, rather than head back to Panama City,  

Pizarro made a very bold - and, as  we’ll soon find out, very stupid - play.

Gathering what remained of his  men, he offered them a choice.  

Either they could sail back to Panama  with their tails between their legs,  

or they could stay with him to seek  fortune and glory to the south.

His inspiring speech complete, Pizarro waited  for the inevitable flood of men to rush to his  

side. But apparently he wasn’t much of a  public speaker, because just 13 agreed to  

join his mini rebellion. The rest hopped on  board the nearest ship and buggered off home.

That left Pizarro in a bit  of a predicament. Actually,  

it left him in *a lot* of a predicament.  The Spanish were the undisputed masters of  

toppling entire civilizations with a handful  of men, but even for them, 14 was pushing it.

So, with progress towards his main quest  now essentially impossible, Pizarro and his  

micro-army were forced to take on a side question:  survive alone in enemy territory for 7 months.

They did not have a good time. At first they set  up base on Isla Del Gallo - which is basically a  

tiny island separated from what is now Columbia  by a narrow tidal inlet. But it very quickly  

became clear that long-term survival there was  impossible. There was no fresh water to drink,  

food was scarce, and the men were  constantly harassed by local tribes.

Pizarro and co were forced to beat a hasty -  an extremely dangerous - retreat by building  

a crude wooden canoe and paddling  it more than 100 kilometres up the  

coast to a small island they’d  spotted on the way from Panama.

Life there was… terrible. There was  at least fresh water, but food was  

still in short supply and the men often  went hungry. They had no tools to work  

the land and no materials to build shelter  from the relentless tropical downpours. And  

while - thankfully - no humans lived on the  island… but plenty of other things did. There  

were so many venomous snakes that Pizarro  dubbed their new home La Isla Gorgona - a  

reference to the snake-haired Gorgons of Greek  mythology. It still bears that name to this day.

Pizarro and his men fully expected  to die in snake-hell. But after 7  

brutal months Bear-Grhyllsing it on Gorgona,  

they were unexpectedly rescued by  Diego Almagro and taken back to Panama.

Given what they’d been through you  might expect that Pizarro and his  

fellow castaways - known these days as  the Famous 13 - would have been keen to  

put their feet up for a bit. Preferably  somewhere warm, dry, and 100% snake-free.

But remarkably, 7 months marooned in hell had  done absolutely nothing to dampen their desire  

to venture south in search of riches. Diego  Almagro was equally keen to get back out there,  

but the governor of Panama was just  as determined as ever to block any 

further expeditions.

And this is where Francisco Pizarro executed  a negotiating tactic so effective it’s still  

used in workplaces all over the world even  today. What do you do when your boss won’t  

let you do something that you *really* want  to? Easy - you go and ask his boss instead.

In this case, the governor of Panama's  boss was a chap called Charles. Or,  

to give him his full title, Charles V, Holy Roman  Emperor, Archduke of Austria, and King of Spain.

Pizarro sailed back to his homeland  in 1528 to convince King Charles to  

approve a third expedition to South America.  It’s clear Pizarro understood his audience,  

because he made sure to bring plenty  of gold and gemstones captured from  

the Tumbes raft along with him. Given  that Charles V was basically Gold Member  

from Austin Powers in a big fancy crown,  Pizarro’s request was granted immediately.

But he was given far more than  the simple green light to launch  

a third expedition. By virtue of a royal  decree called the Capitulation of Toledo,  

Pizarro was granted the governorship of a brand  new province to be known as New Castile that  

would stretch from the border of Panama some  two hundred Spanish leagues — or just over  

a thousand kilometres — along the Peruvian coast.  He was also granted the title of Adelantado,  

made Captain General of the new region,  and given a big fat salary to go with it.

It was everything Pizarro had dreamed  of and more… but ironically enough it  

would also prove to be the death  of him - literally. Though not  

for the reasons you might think -  more on that later in the video.

As the proud new owner of a  big ol’ chunk of South America,  

Pizarro sailed straight back to Panama to give  the tens of millions of locals the good news.

In January 1331, he embarked on his third - and  final - expedition. His target was Tumbes - the  

wealthy coastal trade hub mentioned by the  Pimp My Raft-ers. It was a distance of about  

thirteen hundred kilometres as the crow flies,  but it would take them more than a year as they  

battled currents, storms, and, whenever they  were forced to make landfall - the locals.

The expedition finally reached  Tumbes in the Spring of 1332,  

but the city was not at all what any  of them had expected. Actually that’s  

not quite true - in many ways Tumbes was  *exactly* what they’d expected: a large,  

advanced settlement with stone buildings  and paved roads. There was just one problem:

It was in ruins.

Much of Tumbes had been burned and it was mostly  abandoned, its buildings damaged and its plazas  

eerily empty. Whatever had happened here, it  was recent - and it was violent. Pizarro would  

find out the gory details soon enough,  but for now he was forced to improvise.

He’d originally planned to make first  contact with these ‘Inca’ at Tumbes,  

but that clearly wasn’t going to happen on account  of everyone being dead. Instead, like the first  

Settler in a game of Civ, he started scouting  about looking for a good place to found a city.  

The spot he chose was… here, and he  named the settlement San Miguel de  

Piura. It was the very first Spanish  settlement in what we now call Peru.

More importantly, it was also the first  Spanish settlement within the borders  

of the mighty Inca empire. The stage had  been set. Confrontation was inevitable.

But to begin with, things were surprisingly  amicable. There were no dramatic standoffs,  

no full-blooded assaults, no  confrontations of any kind. In fact,  

it was completely the opposite. When the  Inca finally came… they were bearing gifts.

Turns out they’d had been aware  of the Spanish for some time,  

and had only been waiting for the  right time to introduce themselves.  

That time had apparently come. Because along  with the gifts, the Inca envoys brought a  

message. Actually an invitation - the leader  of this great empire was keen to meet them.

Pizarro was naturally delighted. Page one in ‘How  to Conquer New World Civs for Dummies’ clearly  

stated that the first thing to do was figure out  who was in charge so you could try and kill them.

According to the envoys, the Inca emperor  was hanging out at some hot springs about  

350 kilometres to the east. Pizarro  gathered his men and set off at once.

The journey would take them two gruelling months  as they trekked across deserts, fjorded rivers,  

and wound their way up steep Andean valleys.  Eventually they made it to a highland town  

called Cajamarca… and it was around this time  that Francisco Pizarro realised he’d fucked up.

Because camped not far from the city were  approximately 80,000 fearsome Inca warriors.  

Despite having just 168 men at his disposal,  Pizarro had come into the highlands with  

conquest on his mind. Everything he’d heard about  the Inca empire indicated it was on the big side,  

but never in his worst nightmares had he expected  to be outnumbered almost *five hundred* to one.

Clearly I would have made a terrible  conquistador because I would have  

hopped on the nearest horse and legged  it. But apparently Fransisco Pizarro  

was made of sterner stuff. Because, far from  fleeing, he led his men into town and sent a  

messenger into the giant Inca camp to  request an audience with the emperor.

These two utterly mismatched forces would do  battle the very next day. If the bookies had been  

taking odds at this point, they’d probably have  put a Spanish victory at about a gazillion-to-one.

But… we already know how this story ends.  Somehow, the Inca were beaten at Cajamarca,  

and ultimately utterly defeated soon afterwards.

But how is it physically possible for  168 men to defeat an army of 80,000,  

let alone go on to conquer  an empire of 10 million?

Well, to answer that question properly we're  going to have to back up a bit. Because,  

despite the incredible show of  martial strength at Cajamarca,  

not all was quite as it seemed in the Inca empire.  We know how the Spanish made it to this point,  

but to fully understand what happened next,  we need to find out how the Inca got here.

As we’ve already seen, Pizarro and his men  were the first Spaniards ever to enter Inca  

lands. But it turns out the Spanish had  - completely by accident - sent a deadly  

vanguard deep into Inca territory  long before Pizarro even arrived.

But this invading force wasn’t  military in nature. It was viral.

If you've seen my video on the fall of  the neighbouring Aztec empire, you'll  

already know that old world diseases, including  measles, influenza, and particularly smallpox,  

wreaked absolute havoc when unwittingly unleashed  in the New World. Europeans had developed some  

level of resistance to these diseases thanks to  generations of natural selection. But the people  

of the New World have never been exposed. And  that made Old World diseases unimaginably deadly.

After the fall of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan,  

in 1521, it took the Spanish a good decade or  so to establish a presence in Inca territory.

But smallpox had made far swifter progress south.

Hitching a ride along well-trodden trade routes,  this deadly disease is thought to have reached  

South America as early as 1524. The Spanish didn’t  know it, but they - or at least their diseases -  

had been killing Inca by the tens of thousands  long before Pizarro ever engaged them in battle.

Smallpox tore through the Andes like a  ghost army, killing indiscriminately.  

Nobody was safe from this silent killer...  not even the emperor of the Inca himself.

You see, the mysterious and all powerful ruler  that invited Pizarro and his men to meet him at  

Cajamarca was actually extremely new to the job.  His predecessor, a man called Huayna Capac who  

had ruled the Inca for almost 35 years, had died  from what was almost certainly smallpox in 1527.  

Huayna Capac’s son and heir also died -  again from smallpox - just a few weeks later.

Between them, those two deaths left a  power vacuum right at the top of the  

Inca imperial hierarchy. A vacuum that  would ultimately shatter the empire.

Succession wars are complicated affairs in  most cultures, but for the Inca they were  

especially challenging. Because apparently  swimming in gold like Scrooge McDuck wasn’t  

the only thing Inca rulers liked to do with  their spare time. According to most estimates,  

Huayna Capac is thought to have fathered  somewhere in the region of *250* children.

Admittedly most of those had no real claim  to the Inca throne having been born either  

to lesser wives or concubines. But there  were still plenty of viable candidates,  

and the empire was quickly plunged into chaos  as various parties vied for the right to rule,  

with two of Huayna Capac’s children eventually  emerging as the most likely candidates.

In the red corner was Huascar. Born  to Huayna Capac’s principle wife,  

he was backed by the nobility in the  empire's capital, Cusco. In the blue  

corner was Atahualpa. Although he was also one  of Huayna Capac’s sons, the other half of his  

lineage was somewhat murky. On the surface that  made his claim to the throne less convincing,  

but crucially he had the backing of  many of the Inca’s best generals.

Neither was prepared to back down,  

which meant what happened next was  absolutely inevitable: all out civil war.

The Inca Civil War raged for 3 long years, and  at various times both sides appeared to be on  

top. In the end it was Atahualpa who got the  W, but victory had come at a *massive* cost.

The nobility had been fractured, the army  battered, and many of the best Inca generals  

were dead. The citizens were tired, and everywhere  you looked, loyalties were divided. There’s a  

reason Tumbes was in ruins when Pizarros found  it - the Inca had torn it apart themselves.

Add all of this to the utter devastation  wrought by the smallpox epidemic, and,  

despite the apparent show of strength at  Cajamarca, when Pizarro turned up in 1532,  

the Inca were far weaker and more  vulnerable than they had ever been before.

Pizarro didn't know it, but he had arrived at  quite literally the perfect point in history  

to take on the Inca, almost down to the  month. By the time they met in battle,  

Atahualpa had likely ruled the Inca for under  6 months - he was only in Cajamarca in the  

first place to recover at the hot springs  after finally defeating Huascar in battle.

For Pizarro, it was a genuinely  mind boggling stroke of luck.

Despite the battered state of his new empire,  

when Atahualpa first heard that a band  of white men had entered his lands,  

he couldn't have been any less concerned. His  scouts had confirmed the Spaniard’s puny numbers,  

and, far from being afraid, Athahualpa’s  overriding emotion was simple curiosity.

With the benefit of hindsight, inviting the  Spanish to stroll right into the heart of  

his kingdom unchallenged seems like madness.  But Atahualpa was not a stupid man. In fact,  

everything we know about him suggests he  was a capable and charismatic leader. And  

inviting the Spanish to meet him at  Cajamarca was a very deliberate ploy.

Given their numbers they almost certainly posed no  threat. And, in the unlikely event that they did,  

where better to face them than right in the centre  of his power, surrounded by his armies? After all,  

his warriors outnumbered the Spanish by more  than 450 to one. What could possibly go wrong?

The answer, of course… was absolutely anything.

Atahualpa had so many warriors with him  at Cajamarca that he couldn't possibly  

bring all of them into the city  for his meet-cute with Pizarro. So,  

he left the bulk of his force at the  hot springs just outside of the city.

That might sound like a rookie mistake, but  it wasn’t as risky as it sounds. Atahualpa  

still rocked up with some six thousand  men - 35 times the number of Spaniards.  

These were still impossible odds. Or  at least... they should have been.

But here’s where Atahualpa made a bit of a  boo boo. The Inca emperor wisely brought a  

huge force with him when he went to meet the  Spanish. But crucially, he left behind the  

vast majority of his warriors, opting instead  to surround himself with noblemen, priests,  

musicians, dancers, and servants,  almost all of whom were unarmed.  

There *were* a few armed guards among the  retinue, but they made up a very small minority.

Again, in hindsight that sounds just a teeny  insane. But Atahualpa’s recklessness is actually  

pretty easy to understand: his position  at Cajamarca was so absurdly dominant,  

it simply never occurred to him  the Spanish would be crazy enough  

to try anything. From his perspective the  meeting was a purely diplomatic affair,  

and he was keen to impress the Spanish with the  richness of both his culture and his coffers.

Atahualpa was carried into the city’s central  plaza on a gigantic feather-covered litter  

carried by 80 of his most important officials,  who themselves were decked out in ceremonial  

clothing and gold jewellery. If anybody  had been handing out style points that day  

he’d have received full marks across  the board. But, nobody was. In fact,  

when he arrived in the plaza, there was  nobody there at all. The place was deserted.

After a few presumably somewhat awkward  seconds, two men emerged from a building  

and approached the emperor’s litter -  not Francisco Pizarro and Diego Almagro,  

but a lowly Friar - Vincente de Valverde - and  a native interpreter. This was *not* the kind  

of welcome the Inca emperor had been expecting.  And the disrespect was about to get a lot worse.

Friar Valverde, who was apparently the proud  owner of a truly gigantic set of Spanish balls,  

handed the Inca emperor a  bible, then, cool as you like,  

demanded that he convert to Christianity and  become a subject of King Charles V of Spain.

Given that he had never heard of  Catholicism - nor this King Charles  

bloke for that matter - Emperor Atahualpa  wasn’t overly impressed with these demands,  

and after flicking through a few  pages of the bible he tossed it aside.  

That may sound pretty disrespectful, but in  fairness to Atahualpa not only was the holy  

book written in a language he didn’t understand  - the Inca didn’t actually have written language  

in the first place. Their closest equivalent  was a knot-based record system called quipu.

Having had just about enough  of this Spanish insolence,  

the In emperor prepared to unleash his wrath on  the hapless friar… but he never got the chance.

Because at that moment.. the Spanish attacked.

It was an almost unimaginably bold move. In fact,  

to Atahualpa there was no ‘almost’ about it - it  was quite literally unimaginable. Never in his  

wildest dreams did he consider the possibility  that the Spanish would go on the offensive.

It was like a chihuahua suddenly attacking  a great dane while out for walkies. Actually  

that analogy doesn’t really do it justice.  If the 168 Spaniards were a chihuahua,  

the Great Dane would need to be 15 metres tall  to accurately represent the Inca. Chihuahuas  

are little shits, but even *they* wouldn’t take  on an enemy the size of a five storey building.

I don’t think it’s any exaggeration  to say that Pizarro’s attack on the  

Inca at Cajamarca is one of the most audacious  offensives in the history of warfare. This was  

suicide dressed up as battle tactics.  And the Spanish knew it. Many of them  

had literally wet themselves in terror  in the hours leading up to the ambush.  

These were battle-hardened veterans who’d seen  more than their fair share of action across  

Pizarro’s three South American expeditions, and  even they believed their position was hopeless.

But, as crazy as it was to take on the  full might of the Inca at Cajamarca,  

the Spanish did have a couple of  important advantages on their side.

The first was obvious - surprise. As we’ve  already seen, the Inca never considered the  

possibility of an attack, which is why they were  so hopelessly unprepared when the trap was sprung.

The second advantage was purely  martial. The Inca were formidable  

warriors in their own right, but they  had never fought Europeans before.  

And that meant they’d never faced  guns, cannons, horses, or armour.

Their introduction to these advanced  military technologies came all at  

once in the space of a couple of  minutes when the Spanish attacked.

It was to be a baptism of  fire… and blood. Lots of blood.

Let’s start with the guns. Known as arquebuses,  the Spanish had only brought a grand total of 12  

with them to Cajamarca. These weapons were long,  unwieldy, and slow to load. Against an experienced  

force they would have been good for a single  volley at most in the close confines of the plaza.

But to the Inca, these crappy  old guns were basically magic,  

capable of killing a man at fifty paces  with nothing but a bang and a flash of fire.

Then there were the cannons. Known as falconetes,  they were extremely small - barely a metre long  

and designed more for portability and speed  of deployment than pure killing power. But,  

once again, they were simply nothing like  anything the Inca had ever encountered before.

Both the arquebuses and the  cannons were woefully inaccurate,  

but the plaza was so full of Inca it made  no difference. The Spanish couldn’t miss.

After the initial shots were fired, Pizarro  sent in his cavalry - hidden from sight along  

the many alleyways that lined the plaza.  This was an era where cavalry charges could  

shatter even well-armoured troops who were  *expecting* them. And the Inca were neither.

It’s hard to overstate how utterly  devastating the Spanish cavalry were.  

There was no native analogue for European  warhorses. The closest animal they were  

familiar with was the llama, and there’s a reason  no army in history has attempted a llama charge.

Against the inexperienced Inca  in the chaos of the plaza,  

the Spanish cavalry became  unstoppable murder machines,  

carving death through the terrified  masses before forming up to charge again.

Finally there was the European armour, which  was far more advanced than anything the Inca  

had seen before. It didn’t make the Spanish  invincible, but it did render them largely  

impervious to most blows from standard Inca  weapons, including clubs, slings, and small axes.

It’s worth pointing out that, had Atahualpa  brought his best warriors with him that  

fateful day, there’s a good chance none  of this would have actually mattered.  

Lethal though the Spaniards were, they would  eventually have been overwhelmed by sheer weight  

of numbers. But, convinced he was untouchable,  Atahualpa had left his soldiers outside the city.

Put all of these factors together  and we’re left with a simple truth:  

the ‘battle’ of Cajamarca wasn’t really a battle  at all - it was a slaughter. By most accounts the  

Inca lost somewhere in the region of 3000 men that  day. The Spanish? Just one. And he wasn’t even  

a conquistador but an African slave who likely  wasn’t supposed to be fighting in the first place.

Pizarro had executed the perfect ambush,  but his aim wasn’t simply to kill a lot  

of Inca - there was method to this bloody madness.

As the fighting kicked off, Pizarro and a  few of his most trusted lieutenants made a  

beeline directly for Atahualpa. Dozens of Inca  threw themselves in front of their emperor,  

willingly giving their lives to protect  him. But the Spanish were unstoppable.  

They slashed their way through the crowd,  and within seconds Atahualpa was surrounded.  

One of Pizarro's men raised his sword to strike  the killing blow, but at the very last second  

Pizarro himself blocked the attack, receiving  a nasty wound to his hand in the process.

In the grand scheme of the Spanish conquest  Pizarro’s timely intervention may sound  

almost insignificant. But the fate of the entire  Inca Empire hinged on that single split second.  

Had Pizarro been a split second  slower, Atahualpa would have been  

slain and the entire Spanish conquest  of the Inca would likely have failed.

Pizarro’s objective had never been to cut the  head off the snake - he wanted to capture it.

Had Atahualapa been killed in the melee, the  70-odd thousand Inca soldiers waiting outside  

would almost certainly have stormed the city and  struck down the Spanish with great vengeance and  

furious anger. But by taking him alive, Pizarro  paralysed the Inca forces in a single stroke.

The capture of the Inca emperor  was also a huge psychological blow.  

Inca rulers were believed to be descendants of the  son God Inti, which made Atahualpa semi-divine in  

the eyes of his people. Seeing him in the hands  of the enemy was both confusing and terrifying.

Combined with the utter chaos going on inside  the city, it sewed panic in the Inca ranks.  

Panic that spread virus-like through  the Inca army gathered outside the city,  

causing tens of thousands of veteran warriors  to rout despite never actually facing the enemy.

The battle of Cajamarca literally  couldn’t have gone any better for  

the Spanish had Pizarro sat down the night  before and scripted the whole thing himself.

Atahualpa was placed under house arrest  but otherwise treated impeccably, though  

this was probably more about self-preservation  than respect for a foreign ruler. After all,  

Atahualpa was quite literally the only reason  Pizarro and his followers were still alive.

In exchange for his safety, the Inca ruler had  ordered what remained of his army to stand down,  

buying the Spanish the time they needed  to consider what the hell to do next.

Because Pizarro may have won the battle,  but the war was only just beginning.

At this point Atahualpa still  believed the Spanish would,  

at some point, let him go.  Oh that sweet summer child.

So, rather than resist his captors, he went into  negotiation mode. In return for his release,  

the imprisoned Inca ruler offered to  fill his entire cell with pure, solid,  

gold. Coming from almost anyone else on the  planet that would have been laughable. But  

the Spanish had already seen plenty of evidence  that Atahualpa could put his gold where his mouth  

was. To sweeten the deal, he also offered  to fill two adjoining rooms with silver.

Three entire rooms filled to the  ceiling with precious metals in  

exchange for a single life. That wasn’t  just an offer the gold-hungry Francisco  

Pizarro couldn’t refuse - it was  an offer he could scarcely believe.

Atahualpa was as good as his word,  and within two months the rooms were  

stacked to the ceiling with gold and  silver artefacts from across the Inca  

kingdom. The Spanish wasted no time melting  everything down it into solid gold ingots  

with a total worth just north of *half  a billion* dollars in today’s money.

Pizarro and his band of conquistadors were  now stupendously rich. But unfortunately  

for Atahualpa, they weren’t  feeling particularly charitable.

The Inca emperor had come through  on *his* side of the bargain,  

but the Spanish were having second thoughts  about theirs. Letting the Inca leader go was  

simply too big of a risk, so instead  they came up with an alternative deal.

They would keep all of the gold and silver,  

but rather than set Atahualpa free…  they’d burn at the stake instead.

Yeeeeah. The old switcheroo.

The Spanish justified their outrageous bait and  switch by accusing the emperor of three crimes:  

worshipping false idols, polygamy,  and treason against the Spanish crown.

The Spanish did give the Atahualpa the chance  to prove his innocence in a totally-not-fixed  

trial. But, given that two of his ‘crimes’  were an established part of Inca culture it  

was always going to be an uphill struggle. In  a verdict that surprised nobody - presumably  

not even Atahualpa himself - he  was found guilty on all counts.

At the last minute, he was given the option  of converting to catholicism in return for  

a reduced sentence. Well, sort of. He agreed  and was baptised under the name ‘Francisco’  

in honour of the man who had just stolen his  empire. In return for this final humiliation,  

Atahualpa was granted a marginally less  horrific method of execution - instead of  

being burned at the stake, he was merely garroted.

With Atahualpa out of the way, it was  time for Phase 2 of Pizarro’s grand plan:  

capture the Inca capital, Cusco.

On paper that looked borderline impossible.  Pizarro’s Spanish inquisition had managed  

to defeat Atahualpa through its chief  weapon - surprise. Surprise and guns.  

His two chief weapons, surprise and guns…  and cavalry. His *three* - you get the idea.

The point is, there was no chance whatsoever  of pulling off the same trick twice. This time,  

the Inca would be ready. That meant Pizarro needed  a new approach, and, once again, he was able to  

borrow a play from Cortes’ ‘Conquering  New World Empires for Dummies’ textbook.

The Inca and Aztecs were two very different  civilizations, but they had something important  

in common. Their empires were built by  conquering - and assimilating - dozens of  

smaller kingdoms and city states. In the case of  the Inca, that process had been incredibly fast.

When Pizarro showed up in the 1530s, the vast  Inca empire was barely a century old. That  

meant the majority of its new territories had been  captured *within living memory.* Like the Aztecs,  

the Inca were hard on their newly-acquired  citizens. There were forced resettlements,  

regular labour drafts, and heavy tribute  demands, all of which bred resentment.

Cortes had leveraged similarly divided  loyalties during the conquest of the Aztec,  

positioning himself as a liberator rather than  a conqueror. That nifty bit of PR had worked  

spectacularly, with hundreds of thousands of  native warriors agreeing to fight alongside him.

If Pizarro wanted to capture  the Inca stronghold at Cusco,  

he was going to have to pull off a similar trick.

The first order of business was  to install a new emperor on the  

Inca’s feathered throne. The man they  chose for the job was Túpac Huallpa  

and to begin with it looked  like an extremely astute move.

As one of the many sons of former emperor Huayna  Capac, Túpac Huallpa had royal blood and was  

therefore a legitimate ruler in the eyes of the  Inca nobility. But he was also politically weak,  

with little support from any particular slice  of Inca society. On paper he was perfect. But,  

unfortunately for the Spanish, just two weeks  into his reign Túpac Huallpa dropped down dead.

Some historians believe he died of natural  causes, likely an illness of some kind.  

But others suspect poison may have been  involved, most likely delivered by his own  

people who recognised that he was effectively  a puppet emperor fully under Spanish control.

Luckily for Pizarro, Huayna Capac’s generous  family planning principles meant there were  

plenty of other candidates to be  his next Pinocchio. In the end,  

he settled on a man called Manco  Inca Yupanqui - Manco to his mates.

Compared to Túpac Huallpa, Manco was  a significantly riskier appointment.

Just 17 he was young, ambitious, and  popular among the Cusco nobility. Some  

might say *dangerously* popular.  But from Pizarro’s perspective,  

Manco had one very important thing going  for him: a burning hatred of Atahualpa’s  

key supporters in Cusco. During the Inca civil  war, Atahualpa had attempted to exterminate his  

key rivals - in other words his brothers - and  Manco Inca had been forced to go into hiding.

Now, he was out for revenge, and if that meant  siding with the foreign invaders - so be it.

It was a match made in conquistador heaven.

Their combined forces marched on the Inca capital,  meeting fierce resistance along the way from  

forces still loyal to Atahualpa. In theory the  Inca still had huge military strength to call on,  

but it was scattered and loyalties were divided.  That allowed Pizarro - along with his huge army  

of Inca ‘allies,’ to divide and conquer, winning a  series of key battles on the long march to Cusco.

By the time they got there, Inca resistance had  all but crumbled and the capital was taken with  

ease. It was a huge moment in the conquest  of the Inca, but Pizarro didn’t hang about to  

celebrate. Because now that the Inca resistance  was largely broken, he had a colony to build.

Leaving two of his brothers, Hernando and  Gustavo, in charge in Cusco, Pizarro headed  

back to the coast. If Peru was going to be a  successful colony, it was going to need a new  

capital with better connections to Spain. On the  18th of January 1535, Pizarro founded a brand new  

city. Officially it was named Ciudad de los Reyes  - the city of kings. But even in those days it  

was commonly known by a different name: Lima.  It remains the Peruvian capital to this day.

Once Lima was established, the  real work of conquest began.  

Taking Cuzco had broken the spine  of Inca authority, but the empire  

itself was enormous - thousands of  kilometres of mountains, valleys,  

and provinces still answering to local lords and  generals who had no intention of surrendering.

So the Spanish fanned out. Small columns of  cavalry and infantry - augmented by native  

auxiliaries - were dispatched in every direction,  following the old Inca road network to every  

corner of the empire. Some regions submitted  the moment Spanish banners appeared, others  

fought bitterly. But, slowly and surely, town by  town, valley by valley, the Inca were beaten back.

By the late 1530s, most of the Inca  heartland had been absorbed through  

a relentless grind of patrols, skirmishes,  negotiations, and opportunistic alliances.

But back in Cusco, things were not going  well. At least, not for the Inca. Ostensibly,  

Manco was in charge. But in reality, the empire  was being run by a couple of hundred Europeans who  

didn’t speak the language, didn’t understand the  culture, and had no intention of sharing power.

Hernando and Gustavo proved to be rather  less diplomatically savvy than their brother,  

barely making any effort whatsoever to  keep up the pretense of Inca independence.  

They treated Manco not as an emperor,  

but as a mascot useful for wheeling out at  important ceremonies and not a lot else.

At first Manco played along, still believing  he could use the Spanish to rid him of his  

enemies before rebuilding the empire  in his own image. But it soon became  

clear that would be impossible. The Pizarro  brothers ignored his orders and openly mocked  

him at every opportunity. When they casually  took two of his wives for their own pleasure,  

Manco decided he’d had enough.  It was time to cut the strings.

He attempted to slip out of the city unnoticed,  

but he was captured and thrown into prison.  Despite the setback he did not give up,  

and during his incarceration he  continued to plot against his captors.

Eventually, he managed to convince  them to release him so that he could  

recover a valuable golden artefact  from a nearby temple - apparently  

he’d already figured out that the way to a  conquistador’s heart was through his wallet.

Manco was released along with an armed escort,  but he had no trouble giving them the slip.  

Within a matter of weeks he’d gathered a huge  army - as many as 100,000 men according to some  

estimates. And he marched them straight  back to Cusco to exterminate the Spanish.

On paper this battle should have been  a forgone conclusion. 100,000 angry  

Inca against a couple of hundred Spaniards.  But, once again, the conquistadors had help.  

Inca society was so badly fractured that  there were still plenty of people willing  

to fight alongside the Spanish *against*  Manco. According to most estimates,  

the tiny Spanish force at Cusco was augmented  by as many as 30,000 native warriors.

The Siege of Cusco has gone down in the  history books as a battle between the  

Spanish and the Inca, but the truth is,  Spaniards only accounted for about 0.6%  

of the ‘Spanish’ side of the siege, and only  about 0.1% of the total combatants. In terms of  

raw numbers this was basically another Inca civil  war. One that the Spanish took full advantage of.

Manco laid siege to Cusco for almost an entire  year, and he came within a whisker of taking it  

on more than one occasion. But the ‘SpanIncas’  somehow clung on long enough for Diego Almagro -  

who’d been off discovering Chile on an expedition  of his own - to arrive with reinforcements. Manco  

was forced to retreat. Beaten - at least for  now. But this isn’t the last we’ll see of him.

The Inca would never return to Cusco,  and the beating heart of their once  

great empire was firmly in Spanish hands. For  the conquistadors, it was finally time to sit  

down and celebrate another classic New World  conquest. Or at least, it should have been.

But the conquistadors were so fond  of conquering that the moment the  

Inca were beaten, they quickly  found a new target… each other.

Having just relieved the  defenders during the siege,  

Diego Almagro decided it was the  perfect time to stage a coup,  

throwing the Pizarro brothers in jail  and declaring himself governor of Cusco.

Bet you didn’t see that one coming.

In truth this little conflict  had been brewing for some time.  

Almagro had been quietly fuming ever since  hearing that Charles V had done the dirty on  

him in the Capitulation of Toledo by granting  Francisco Pizarro… basically everything. That  

had never sat well with Almagro. As far as he  was concerned, he and Pizarro were partners. Now  

that the war with the Inca was largely won, he  expected to receive his fair share of the loot.

Considering he’d saved the Spaniards’ Jamon with  his reinforcements during the siege of Cusco,  

the Inca capital seemed like a fitting reward.

Unsurprisingly, over in Lima  Pizarro saw things very differently.

Luckily they were both reasonable men,  so they sat down over a nice hot cup of  

tea and agreed on a compromise  that was fair to both of them…

Just kidding. They immediately  declared all out war.

This bizarre civil war would last about a year,  with two of Pizarro’s brothers - Hernando and  

Gonzalo - ultimately defeating Almagro’s  army just outside of Cusco in what is  

known as the Battle of Las Salinas. Like  Atahualpa four and a half years earlier,  

in the aftermath, Diego Almagro  was put to death by garroting.

That didn’t go down particularly well  back in Spain - Hernando Pizarro would  

eventually end up spending 20 years behind  bars for murder - but in principle the  

killing should have been the end of the  Pizarro-Almagro civil war. Unfortunately,  

there was one small problem:  Diego Almagro had a son.

His name was Diego Almagro the second.  The Pizarros had killed his father. Now,  

they must prepare to die.

Almagro the second, also known as ‘El Mozo,’  didn’t command the following his father had,  

but he *did* have a few close allies  loyal to the cause. On June the 26th 1541,  

those allies stormed Francisco Pizarro’s  palace in Lima, overpowered the guards,  

and murdered the man who had conquered the Inca.

El Mozo attempted to install  himself as governor of Lima,  

but lacking the support to pull it off  he was soon forced to flee back to Cusco.

By this point things had gotten so chaotic  the Spanish crown was forced to intervene.  

The conquistadors had done a grand old job of  securing the new colony, but their habit of  

murdering everyone at the drop of a hat was pretty  convincing evidence they weren’t fit to rule it.

Charles V dispatched ‘special investigator’  Cristóbal Vaca de Castro to Peru to attempt  

to bring things back under control.  The first item on his to-do list was  

to track down - and execute - the  renegade El Mozo. Once he’d ticked  

that off, he marched to Lima and  installed himself as governor.

El Mozo was the last of the Almagro  line, but a few loyal ‘almagrists’  

were still at large in Cusco. Fearing for  their lives after the death of El Mozo,  

they fled into the highlands to seek  succour from the most unlikely of sources.

After the Siege of Cuso, Manco Inca had not simply  given up - he’d gone underground. Withdrawing  

into the dense jungles of the highlands, he’d  busily established what we now call the Neo  

Inca State, a kind of mini empire that was part  resistance movement, part secret civilisation.

From his hidden capital at Vilcabamba, Manco ruled  what remained of his father’s once proud empire,  

striking out at Spanish settlements when he could  and sheltering anyone who was willing to fight  

the new order. Including, remarkably enough, the  last desperate survivors of the Almagro faction.

It was a decision Manco would soon come  to deeply, *deeply* regret. Actually  

that isn’t entirely accurate - he didn’t  regret it, because he was already dead.

About a year after taking the  rogue conquistadors into his care,  

they murdered him in cold blood after a drunken  argument. Inca vengeance was swift and brutal,  

and all but one of the Spaniards responsible  were killed in the immediate aftermath.

While the Inca were tearing the last Almagro  loyalists limb from limb in the jungle, elsewhere  

in Peru, the Spanish were doing what they did  best - gearing up for yet another civil war.

The Spanish Crown’s attempt to regain control of  

the colony was not going down well with  the men who’d originally conquered it.

In 1542, a comprehensive set of new rules  and regulations - known as the New Laws  

of the Indies - was issued directly from Spain.  The idea was to civilise the unruly colony and,  

more importantly, to systematically  strip power from the conquistadors.

The main sticking point was a law that  removed hereditary transfer of ‘encomiendas’,  

which were essentially pocket-sized fiefdoms built  on forced Indigenous labour. Encomiendas were the  

primary economic incentive for conquistadors, so  taking them away retrospectively was… unpopular.

To enforce these new laws, Charles V decided  Spanish Peru needed something it had never  

had before: a professional governor  who wasn’t a homicidal gold hungry  

maniac. He chose a man called  Blasco Núñez Vela for the job,  

naming him the first Viceroy of Peru. Núñez  Vela arrived in Peru in 1544, and from the  

first moment his feet touched dry land he became  one of the most hated men on the continent.

The conquistadors had no intention of giving up  the spoils of conquest without a fight - who saw  

that coming? - and so they elected a new leader  to spearhead yet another rebellion. Really there  

was only one man for the job - the last surviving  Pizarro brother still on the continent: Gonzalo.

The royalists and the rebels would  meet at the Battle of Iñaquito in 1546,  

with the rebels coming out on top. In truth it was  a pretty one-sided affair. Gonzalo Pizarro was a  

wealthy man with significant resources who enjoyed  broad support among his former conquistadors,  

and he had no trouble raising an army large  enough to crush the royalist forces. When  

the fighting was over, Blasco Núñez Vela, Peru’s  first Viceroy, was beheaded on the battlefield.

The rebellion had won, and the  colony of Peru was now operating  

entirely independently from the Spanish crown.

Back in Spain this news went down  like a gold balloon. The prospect  

of a rogue empire under the control  of Gonzalo Pizarro was unthinkable,  

but fixing the situation wasn’t entirely  straight forward. As we’ve seen,  

Pizarro was militarily strong, and taking back  Peru by force would have required launching an  

entire armada from Spain. That would have  been both time-consuming and expensive.

So in the end, Charles V took a different - and  

highly unusual - approach. He didn’t  send an army to Peru - he sent a priest.

His name was Pedro de la Gasca, and  he was about as threatening as a damp  

flannel. He had no troops, no gold, and no noble  lineage. What he *did* have was something even  

more valuable - a royal commission that  gave him the authority to offer pardons,  

negotiate settlements, and - crucially - quietly  ignore the hated New Laws wherever he saw fit.

La Gasca rocked up in 1547 and made it known  that any rebel who defected back to the crown  

would be given a full pardon and allowed to keep  their treasured encomiendas. In other words,  

they would be given everything  they’d wanted in the first place,  

with no repercussions whatsoever. All  they had to do was abandon the rebellion.

Gonzalo Pizarro never stood a chance.

His men defected to la Gasca by the hundreds, with  every lost man effectively becoming a soldier for  

the enemy. La Gasca played his hand to perfection,  wisely avoiding direct confrontation for long  

enough that, by the time the two forces met on  the battlefield, Pizarro was badly outnumbered  

and easily beaten. When the fighting was  over, Gonzalo Pizarro was given the same  

treatment he’d dished out to Núñez Vela two years  earlier - he was beheaded on the battlefield.

Gonzalo’s execution marked the end of an  era. After a storming start at Cajamarca,  

the Spanish had spent more time murdering each  other than ruling their new colony. But with the  

death of the last Pizarro, the world’s weirdest  series of civil wars were finally at an end.

Pedro de la Gasca assumed control of the colony,  the New Laws were quietly ‘reinterpreted’ into  

something the ex-conquistadors could live  with, and royal authority was restored  

for long enough for Peru to become a  productive part of the Spanish empire.

But there was still one loose end to tie up.

But deep in the cloud forests of the Andes, the  Neo-Inca state, founded by Manco Inca after his  

dramatic escape for Spanish custody, was still  alive and well. After Manco’s murder in 1544,  

the mantle of leadership passed through  several of his children until, in 1571,  

his youngest son, Túpac Amaru, was named emperor.

It wasn’t until Viceroy Francisco de Toledo  arrived in 1569 - the first strong, long-term  

administrator Peru had ever had - that Spain  finally had both the stability and the resources  

to finish the job Francisco Pizarro had  started three and a half decades earlier.

In 1572, Toledo launched a full-scale  campaign into the Vilcabamba valley,  

overrunning the Neo-Inca capital and shattering  the last independent remnant of the empire. Túpac  

Amaru fled into the jungle, but Spanish patrols  hunted him down and dragged him back to Cusco,  

where he was publicly executed in the  plaza his ancestors had once ruled.

His death marked the end of the Neo Inca Empire,  

and with it the final flicker of a  civilisation that had once ruled from  

Colombia to Chile. After almost forty years  of rebellions, civil wars, assassinations,  

and secret jungle kingdoms, the long story of the  Spanish conquest of the Inca was finally over.

And what a story it was - arguably one  of the greatest tales history has ever  

told. One of ambition, betrayal, and  empires rising and falling in real time.

Almost none of the protagonists in this grand epic  would live to see its end. The Inca emperors were  

persecuted over the decades until none remained,  and the Spanish conquistadors who started this  

whole mess were almost all swallowed up  by the very violence they helped unleash.

Of course, the story of the Inca didn’t actually  die with Túpac Amaru in 1572. He was the last of  

the Inca emperors, but tens of thousands  of ordinary Inca citizens lived on. Today,  

the legacy of the Inca is still very visible if  you know where to look. You can see it in the  

old imperial language of the Inca that millions  still speak - Quechua - you can see it in the  

festivals that blend Catholic saints with ancient  mountain spirits, and in the stonework the Spanish  

built their palaces on top of because  they couldn’t figure out how to move it.

Civilisations rise, empires fall,  

and history moves on - but the echoes  of the Inca can still be heard in Andes.

Thanks for watching.