Pod Insights The Rest Is History 647. The Fall of the Incas: The King in the North (Part 4) About this episode How did the Spanish conquistadors under Francisco Pizarro take advantage of the Incan civil War? Were they able to discover the glorious city of Cusco, with all of its riches? And, what terrible brutalities did they commit along the way…?
Join Dominic and Tom, as they discuss the next dramatic phase of the Spaniards conquest of the Incas, as the violence escalates and the city of gold prepares to fall…
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Transcript 13,265 words · 5 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:04 Tom Holland? This episode is brought to you by AutoTrader. Now, if car shopping feels like a massive faff, buying your car online at AutoTrader makes it way easier, really.
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0:42 Tom Holland? So buy your car online on AutoTrader, really.
0:49 Tom Holland? This episode is supported by Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Now, history's biggest leaps started as hard questions that people didn't want asked.
1:01 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, there's a classic example of that at the end of the 15th century. And the hard question in particular was, what is out there beyond the Atlantic Ocean to the west? And as you will know, the man who found the answer to that question was the explorer Christopher Columbus. And he realises, or rather, everybody else realises, that there is a vast continent out there. And it is, of course, the Americas. So Anthropic knows the importance of questions. And it's why Anthropic is founded on one hard question above all. How can we ensure that the AI revolution really goes well for ordinary people?
1:31 Tom Holland? So they asked over 100,000 people. And what came back wasn't just fear, there was hope as well. People wanted to know, will cancer ever be cured? Can kids have a better future? It turns out that there is hope in hard questions.
1:46 Dominic Sandbrook? Ask yours at claude.ai/RestIsHistory. And keep thinking.
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2:42 Tom Holland? Their capital is completely round. They call it the navel of the earth. And that's what it looks like. In the middle was a huge temple, the centre of their faith. The walls were plated with gold enough to blind us. Inside, set out on tables, golden platters for the sun to dine off. Outside, the garden, acres of gold soil planted with gold maize, entire apple trees in gold, gold birds on the branches, gold geese and ducks, gold butterflies in the air on silver strings. And imagine this, away in a field, life-sized 20 golden llamas grazing with their kids. The garden of the sun at Cusco. A wonder of the earth.
3:26 Tom Holland? Look at it now. So that was posh boy, Fernando de Soto, in Peter Shaffer's play, The Royal Hunter of the Sun. Came out in 1964. We've been hearing a lot from it. And de Soto, in that passage, is describing one of the great wonders of the world in the early 16th century, which was Corrit Cancha, the temple of the sun in Cusco. And Dominic, that is from a play. But Peter Shaffer, I mean, he loves his research, doesn't he? He's obviously gone to the primary sources and reworked them.
3:59 Dominic Sandbrook? It's very, very closely based on some primary sources that we'll hear from later in this episode. They were written by Spanish chroniclers a few years after the fall of the Incas. And that sense, I mean, you did it in a sort of very clipped 1950s war film voice. But I think generally when people perform that play. There's a sense of wonder and awe in their voices.
4:21 Tom Holland? Well, shall I go back and redo it?
4:22 Dominic Sandbrook? No, no, no one wants that.
4:23 Tom Holland? Their capital is completely round. They call it the navel of the earth. Oh, and that's what it looks like. How about that?
4:32 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
4:32 Tom Holland? Have I got the part?
4:34 Dominic Sandbrook? Definitely.
4:35 Tom Holland? Gold geese and ducks.
4:40 Dominic Sandbrook? Very toast, Ray.
4:42 Tom Holland? Twenty golden llamas.
4:48 Dominic Sandbrook? Um, it's very toast of London, that reading. Matt Berry would do a very good job. Right, yes, so, and actually, while he's speaking in that voice, loads of Indian porters in the play, I say Indian in inverted commas because that's what they're called in the play, they've been removing the rays of the sun, which are like petals, and piling them up in this giant hoard of loot for the Spaniards. And this is what we talked about last time, the pillaging of the Temple of the Sun to pile up Atahualpa's ransom. So he ended with Atahualpa being, um, garroted by the Spanish anyway. So this is paranoid atmosphere in Caraca, where since November 1532, Pizarro and his comrades have been holding Atahualpa prisoner. And this is just the beginning of the looting of Peru.
5:31 Dominic Sandbrook? Because this is the story of one of the greatest gold heists, surely actually the greatest gold heist in history.
5:37 Tom Holland? The, surely, I mean, I can't think of anything comparable.
5:39 Dominic Sandbrook? And at the heart of the story are the temples and treasure houses of the Inca's holy city of Cuzco. So it's a, it's a story today of gold and greed on an epic scale, but there is more. We'll be telling the story of the greatest pitched battle in the history of the conquest of Peru, so tens of thousands of warriors.
5:58 Tom Holland? Because to be honest, we haven't had any yet, have we?
6:00 Dominic Sandbrook? No, and I think people are gagging for a battle and they're gonna get one. We'll be meeting a terrifying Inca warlord who turns his victims into percussion instruments.
6:09 Tom Holland? We love an Inca warlord who turns his victims into percussion instruments. On the rest is history.
6:13 Dominic Sandbrook? And most exciting, and this is a real gift for long-standing listeners. We shall be welcoming back to the show one of our favourite characters, top gilet and red trousers model, Pedro de Alvarado.
6:27 Dominic Sandbrook? A bloke, total ledge. So that's something to look forward to. So let's begin with Pizarro and the conquistadors in Carcamaca. It's the summer of 1534. They've just killed Atahualpa. What now? So killing Atahualpa has made their life much simpler in a couple of respects. First of all, they are now free to push on for the gold of Cuzco, which is about 750 miles, 800 miles to the south. And this is especially important for Pizarro's partner, Diego de Magro, who, as we heard last time, is absolutely seething because he's been cut out of the ransom. Hopping mad. He's a short man, a very colorfully dressed man, a boastful man, and as we'll see, a violent man.
7:12 Dominic Sandbrook? Secondly, the Spaniards have definitively now taken a side in the civil war between Atahualpa and Huascar. Now, initially, they were pro Atahualpa, but by killing him, Pizarro has put himself very firmly on the side of the late Huascar, who represented Cuzco and the south of the empire. And he cements this further with his choice of the new puppet emperor.
7:39 Dominic Sandbrook? So they have been holding in Carcamaca all this time Huascar's younger brother, who is called Tupac Hualpa. He's probably in his twenties. We know virtually nothing about him. This bloke's just been hanging around somewhere. And as soon as Atahualpa, they've held their Christian funeral service for Atahualpa and buried him. Pizarro summons all the local chiefs and he unveils this bloke Tupac Hualpa. And they have a kind of coronation ceremony for him. There's a lot of interesting tribal dancing and feathered costumes play a part, I'm happy to say. So they haven't converted to Christianity? No. And actually, the Spaniards, it's really interesting, actually, this story. A little bit different from the conquest of Mexico. They don't really make that much effort
8:24 Dominic Sandbrook? to impose Christianity and to stamp out the local cults and whatnot at this stage. I think probably because they're so heavily outnumbered and they know it would be madness to even try. It's all about the gold. There's a big difference because remember in the conquest of the Aztecs, the Spaniards are always kind of going into temples and being rude about the local idols and stuff. Well, also there was human sacrifice going on.
8:45 Tom Holland? And I think that that possibly intensifies the sense of
8:48 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes.
8:49 Tom Holland? Of cultural difference.
8:51 Dominic Sandbrook? Maybe, yeah. They're not fans of cultural difference, are they, the Spaniards by and large? And actually, to the local chiefs, after the coronation service, you can see that they think basically the natural order now has been restored. Huascar's family are back in charge. His brother is the new emperor. Yes, he's got these weird foreign mercenaries who are working for him. But you can see how they could sell that across the empire.
9:13 Tom Holland? So it's kind of like Rome in Italy in the fifth century A D with, you know, an ineffectual Roman emperor surrounded by Gothic guards.
9:22 Dominic Sandbrook? Completely. And that's, do you know, I actually thought about that in the last, while we're recording the last episode. The parallel with kind of barbarian mercs who are working for you. And the, the difference, of course, is that that the Spanish are going to come in such overwhelming numbers, I suppose.
9:39 Tom Holland? Also, that they feel no aspiration to become an Inca.
9:43 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly.
9:44 Tom Holland? So that's the other big difference.
9:46 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
9:46 Tom Holland? There's no place in the, in the Spanish world for you to tolerate the, the cults and the gods, for instance, of the Inca. Whereas the German mercenaries, they all became Christian.
9:56 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, the German mercenaries want to become Romans, don't they, to some degree? Whereas the Spanish have no desire to become Peruvians.
10:01 Tom Holland? No.
10:02 Dominic Sandbrook? Um, and actually, at the end of this coronation ceremony, Tupac Qualpa gives Pizarro ceremonially this white feathered headdress and says, this is a tribute to my overlord, Charles the Fifth. And that is a sign of where power really lies in this dynamic. Now, in a lot of accounts of the fall of the Incas, this is when the story ends. Atualpa is dead, the Spanish have the gold, the Spanish have a puppet emperor, the Spanish have won.
10:26 Tom Holland? So they finish without any mention of the
10:31 Tom Holland? the percussion bass.
10:33 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah. Do you remember that from your children's book?
10:36 Tom Holland? I don't.
10:38 Tom Holland? Because it would have made a brilliant illustration and we're preempting the show.
10:42 Dominic Sandbrook? It would have been, it would have been. I mean, it would have been tremendous. This is where most of the children's books end. And for some of Pizarro's men, this is the end. So he gives them permission to go back to Spain with their winnings. His brother Hernando has already gone, of course. He reached Seville in January 1534. And his gold was a huge sensation when he unloaded it. When he unloaded it in Seville, the council of the Indies immediately wrote to Charles V and said, you've got to welcome this guy at court. You've got to see this. Hernando was invited to the court in Toledo. He was a massive celebrity. Everyone was very excited. He then went to Extremadura to the, the Pizarro's kind of ancestral homeland and he went on a recruitment drive to get more people. You can come and get gold. Why don't we all go?
11:27 Dominic Sandbrook? And meanwhile, two of the other guys who returned, Cristobal de Menya and Francisco Jerez, they wrote accounts of their time in Peru, which became, by the standards of the 16th century, huge bestsellers. And they were translated into Italian and into German. And people in Venice, mapmakers in Venice, started producing sort of imaginary maps of Peru. And it became this great sensation. Basically, if you're young, if you fancy yourself as an adventurer, Peru is where you now go. And I think from that moment onwards, clearly, the Incas are doomed because a lot more people are going to arrive by ship in the next few years.
12:06 Tom Holland? So it's the very familiar story, isn't it, of the winning of the West, that native peoples in the Americas, once there's a sniff of gold,
12:16 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
12:16 Tom Holland? they're doomed.
12:17 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, the gold rushes on. Exactly.
12:19 Tom Holland? So just one question. Do you think there is an alternative reality where the Incas do survive? Had they seen off Pizarro? Had they become alert to the possibility? Had they got horses? Had they obtained weapons?
12:31 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
12:31 Tom Holland? Do you think that they could have upgraded their infrastructure fast enough? Sufficiently enough to see off Spanish conquerors?
12:41 Dominic Sandbrook? No, deep down, because, I mean, nobody in the Americas does it.
12:44 Tom Holland? But maybe the Incas more than anyone else because they're so isolated, so hard to get to.
12:48 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes, I think the terrain actually makes it perfectly possible, you could imagine, I would say some sort of Andean Highland state surviving, just hard to get to.
13:00 Tom Holland? So the lowlands being conquered, but.
13:01 Dominic Sandbrook? The coastline always, the Spanish are always coming, but maybe, you know, so the Incas don't have a couple of things, really, something that might have been a massive game changer then is a bow and arrow. Because they don't have that many trees in the Andes, they have remarkably few kind of pikes and bows and arrows, which might have helped to bring down the horses. I mean, it's amazing, as we'll come to in this episode. You know, a handful of horses can see off hundreds and hundreds of men who are terrified and they don't know how to bring them down because they don't have many bows and arrows.
13:32 Tom Holland? But they might have learnt, if they'd had a sufficient breathing space, they might have.
13:35 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, the counterargument to that is nowhere else on the continent do people hold out. And the weight of Spanish technology, of numbers and also disease. I mean, one thing we haven't really talked about much, we talked about in the first episode. Smallpox has made its entrance and has, before the Spaniards even arrived, and disease will continue to decimate the populations of South America.
14:02 Tom Holland? Okay, so it's bad news for the Incas, basically.
14:04 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah. So by Inca America, Pizarro and Almagro are preparing to set off south. And this really, I mean, even by their own standards, this is an absolutely insane journey to be doing. They're going 800 miles almost south across the central Andes. They're basically going up and down the whole time, down into these valleys, crossing rivers, climbing these peaks. As John Heming says in his brilliant book, it's one of the most staggering invasions in history. Without supplies, communications or reinforcements, this tiny contingent was going to try to force its way into the heart of an enormous hostile empire to seize its capital city. And they set off on the 11th of August. It's very like Alexander the Great kind of going
14:46 Dominic Sandbrook? through what's now, you know, Turkey, Iran and whatnot. Sort of endless river crossings, rope bridges, climbing rock faces, ambushes by strange people, all of this kind of thing. Anyway, after about eight weeks of this, it's actually going pretty well. So they're about halfway, which I think is really good going. The locals by and large are Huascar supporters.
15:10 Tom Holland? Well, these are the wanker people.
15:13 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
15:13 Tom Holland? So it's always good to have the wankers on side.
15:16 Dominic Sandbrook? I think you've, you've always got them on side, haven't you, Tom? The wankers? They're very much Team Tom Holland, I think.
15:21 Tom Holland? I would never snub a wanker.
15:23 Dominic Sandbrook? No. So by early October, the Spaniards are approaching the Valley of Xauisha. So this is where Hernando Pizarro lured away Chalkuchima.
15:34 Tom Holland? The rugby player who got burnt.
15:36 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes, who got burnt. And actually.
15:37 Tom Holland? He's still alive, isn't he?
15:39 Dominic Sandbrook? The Spaniards had brought him with them. He's very badly singed, if you may recall. His tendons, I think, had been badly burned, hadn't they?
15:46 Tom Holland? Oh.
15:47 Dominic Sandbrook? But he, and they've now chained him up, but they've brought him with them. Now, at about this point, they're halfway, the Spaniards start to get very jittery. The scouts are reporting there are northern troops. So that's Atahualpa's former armies, the troops from Quito in the north nearby, and these are led by the northern commander Kiskis, who is the guy who had taken Kuzco for Atahualpa. Anyway, the Spaniards go on. The terrain becomes more desolate. It's now very cold and some of the Spanish, not surprisingly, have got terrible altitude sickness. You know, they're tens of thousands of feet high up. The villages are deserted. There are more rumours of northern troops. And at last, they come out in the Valley of Xauisha, and there, there are two more reminders of the
16:31 Dominic Sandbrook? civil war. So first, very ominously, I mean, I know we said this with the Aztecs, but this would be another brilliant Hollywood film or series. They ride past the bodies of 4,000 people who'd been killed by the Quetin army some months earlier, and the bodies had been left there to rot. And then, as they continue, the locals start to turn out and to greet them as liberators. I quote, "The natives all came out onto the road to look at the Christians and greatly celebrated their arrival, for they thought it would mean their escape from the servitude in which they were held by that foreign army." A foreign army, which is in. Yeah, is an Inca army from Quito in Ecuador, from the north.
17:12 Dominic Sandbrook? The Spanish go into Xauca and they find that the northerners have left behind 600 men to set fire to the storehouses. So the Spanish charge, they drive off the northerners and they save some of the gold. And then there's a bit of a chase. As the Spanish are chasing basically the rear guard of the northern army. Um, through this valley. And this is clearly one of many little, you get this little snippet. Behind which lies a much bigger story that is unknown to us. The pursuit continued for four leagues and many Indians were speared. We took all the serving people and many beautiful women. There was a good haul of both gold and silver. And just in those words, we took all the serving people and many beautiful women. You don't have to be too cynical.
17:55 Dominic Sandbrook? To imagine that what the fate that befalls the many beautiful women is not a pleasant one at all. There's probably a lot of this stuff happening off stage. Now during all this, when the Spanish are probably behaving very badly, a wholly unexpected development. During the journey, the young emperor, puppet emperor, Tupac Hualpa, has fallen ill. And we have no idea whatsoever what he fell ill with. Isn't there a rumor that um Chalca Chima had poisoned him? Yes, I think almost certainly rubbish. I think this is part of the. The blackening of his name. I mean, the blackening, he's already blackened, remember? Yeah. But now they're blackening him metaphorically. Yeah, so Tupac Hualpa suddenly basically falls ill and then he dies.
18:38 Dominic Sandbrook? And this is very bad news for Pizarro because he's lost his puppet emperor. And he summons all the local bigwigs and he says, well, who should be the emperor now? And some people say there's some bloke who's a brother of Huascar who's called Manko, who's off in Cuzco. And other people say, no, no, he's no good. Get one of Atahualpa's sons. And they can't agree and there's basically a stalemate and there's no decision for the time being. So I leave that thought that hanging. There's a vacuum there. Meanwhile, the Spanish are preparing for the last section of the march, which is the most dramatic bit, which is crossing the central Andes towards Cuzco. And this is real kind of, you know, rope bridge, climbing impossible cliff faces, all of this kind of thing. So there's a account by Pedro Sancho Pizarro's secretary on one of many of these mountain ascents.
19:24 Dominic Sandbrook? Looking up at it from below, it seemed impossible for birds to scale it by flying through the air, let alone men on horseback climbing by land. And yet they do it with all their kind of native porters and, you know, camp followers and stuff. There are two more skirmishes with the Cheetah army, who are still hanging around, at a place called Vilcashuaman and Vilcaconga. But both times, although the Spanish are outnumbered, they managed to drive their attackers back. And the interesting question is why the Incas are not able to defeat the Spaniards? Because they massively outnumber them.
19:58 Tom Holland? Well, because when you say Incas.
20:00 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
20:01 Tom Holland? I mean, it's specifically the Incas from the north, right?
20:04 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes, the Cheetahs, as I guess we should call them.
20:07 Tom Holland? So it's only a faction of the Incas?
20:08 Dominic Sandbrook? It is, but there's maybe 30,000 of them.
20:10 Tom Holland? They've got the southern Incas and they've got the wanker.
20:14 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, well, they've got native support, that's absolutely crucial. So this isn't Spanish versus Incas, it's Spanish and half of the Inca Empire against the other half, that's one thing, I think you're dead right. And then the other thing is the horses. All the accounts say that a handful of horsemen would even in quite hilly terrain could see off hundreds, even thousands of Incas. And the Spanish get this, start to get this reputation for really awe-inspiring invincibility. You know, at this point, I think no Spaniard has been killed, which is incredible.
20:50 Tom Holland? That is incredible, isn't it?
20:52 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
20:52 Tom Holland? But I suppose if they haven't got pikes and they haven't got bows and arrows, how do you stop a horse?
20:58 Dominic Sandbrook? Right, you've got a kind of club or something, I mean, you might get a lucky blow in.
21:02 Tom Holland? What about one of those, um, these, uh...
21:04 Dominic Sandbrook? Pieces of string with stones on either end and you throw them. Oh, yes. And they go around the hooves and bring them down. That's what I would do. Yeah, yeah, exactly. In a film, that's what we would have. I mean, they would do be excellent slingshot action. I mean, they do have slings. But they're just are never able to bring any of these people down. So we're now up to November fifteen thirty-three, and now a massively important figure enters this story. So a day or so after the last skirmish at Vilcaconga, a group of locals approached the Spanish camp. And one of them, and I quote, "looking like a common Indian." I mean, obviously, all through this story, the Spanish called the locals Indians. He identifies himself and he says, "I am Manco. I am the younger brother of the late Huascar.
21:48 Dominic Sandbrook? I am a son of the late Emperor Huayna Capac. I am the new candidate of the southern faction, the Cuzco faction in the civil war." How old this guy is, we don't quite know. Some Spaniards said he was fifteen, some said he was twenty but looked younger. Let's say late teens. He's been on the run for months. When Atu Alpa captured Cuzco, Manco had basically run away. Because he knew he'd be a dead man if Atu Alpa's men found him. And Pizarro is delighted when this guy Manco turns up. And he says to Manco, "I have come for one reason only, to free you from slavery by the men of Quito. Knowing the injuries they were doing to you, I wanted to put stop to them, and I wanted to liberate the people of Cuzco from this tyranny."
22:32 Dominic Sandbrook? So he says this through interpreters. And Manco appears to believe it and says, "Oh, brilliant. Well, we can work together. That's all that I want. Oh, I'm so pleased." And we know that Manco is not an idiot and is a man of steel, because he shows his steel right away. The Spaniards had been dragging this bloke Chalcochima around with them. And now Manco confronts Chalcochima in front of them and he says, "I know you've been smuggling orders to the Keaton army to Kiskis and his men." Basically, either through informants or presumably through your nice bits of string. And there's a massive row. Pizarro loses the plot and he shouts at Chalcochima, "You dog, how could you pull such a novice trick?"
23:14 Dominic Sandbrook? And basically, they dragged Chalcochima into the nearest village square. They say to him, "You know, we're going to kill you, convert to Christianity, and we'll garrot you instead of burning you." He says, "You know, I've been burned already. You may as well just finish the job." Do you think he's like, um, Hachui, wasn't he?
23:29 Tom Holland? In the Caribbean, who said that he would convert to Christianity because he didn't want to be in heaven where there were Spaniards.
23:36 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
23:37 Tom Holland? That kind of vibe.
23:37 Dominic Sandbrook? If heaven's full of people like you, I'm not going there. Exactly. So they set him on fire and burn him to death. Actually, a small detail, one of the sources says, the people, the people who burned him most keenly and enthusiastically were his own former friends, which I think is a lesson, a lesson to us all.
23:55 Tom Holland? Don't have friends.
23:57 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah. He dies very bravely, though. He calls on Kiskis to avenge him. He shouts out, you know, you will avenge me one day. And actually, Kiskis is still hanging around somewhere with his army. There's one more battle on the last mountain pass before they get to Cusco. And this time, the Catan army almost beats them. They drive the Spanish back, but it's a constant issue. They can never finish them off completely before nightfall. And actually, all night, the Spanish kind of hunker down, slightly Rourke's Drift style. And when dawn comes, Kiskis's men are nowhere to be seen. They've melted away into the mountains. They think the Spanish can't be beaten and they've slightly lost heart. And Kiskis now begins this long retreat with his army.
24:40 Dominic Sandbrook? I mean, the guy who a few months earlier was on cloud nine because he thought he'd won the civil war. He starts this long retreat towards the north, back to Ecuador. His men are obviously knackered and their morale is ebbing, and we will see how that plays out in the second half of this episode. But for now, the morning of Saturday, the 15th of November, 1533, Pizarro and Manco, who's, I think some of the sources say, on a horse, which must have been an amazing sight for the people of Cusco, they ride into the capital city as conquerors. Now, Cusco, a very popular tourist destination today, is the heart of Inca civilization. The Incas called it the navel of the world.
25:24 Dominic Sandbrook? It was the political and spiritual centre of the empire, famous across the Andean region for its palaces and its architecture and its temples and so on and so forth. So if you imagine it, Cusco, then as now, is spread across the foothills at the top of this very fertile, very green Andean valley. Its buildings then were kind of one story, made of stone or adobe, and they were thatched. There was a grid system, it's very clean, it's very orderly, the Spaniards wrote home and said, beautiful paved little roads, they've always got water channels down the middle, it's very clean. At the centre is this great square called Au Capata, which is lined with the palaces of the Incas.
26:08 Dominic Sandbrook? So basically, each Inca, each emperor would build a palace or a mansion during his lifetime, and this was going to be his own mausoleum, his own resting place. And when he was dead, his mummified body would be put in this palace with all his furniture, all his stuff, and all his old servants.
26:26 Tom Holland? Which is great.
26:27 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, I mean, effectively, you're not dead.
26:29 Tom Holland? And if they have a kind of procession, a royal wedding or coronation or something, they're all brought out, aren't they? And they're kind of carried around in litters, and they line them up chronologically.
26:40 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
26:41 Tom Holland? So it would be like, you know, having a royal wedding here, and you'd have Queen Victoria and George III, and they'd all be wheeled out and they're just kind of sitting there.
26:50 Dominic Sandbrook? That would be great. That would be great. Tabby in the chat correctly points out that we should do this with former Rest Is History producers.
26:57 Tom Holland? So we could have Theo, just bring him in here.
26:58 Dominic Sandbrook? Our erstwhile producer, Theo Young Smith, we could just bring out his mummified body at Rest Is History events and parade it around on a litter. I'm sure everyone would enjoy that.
27:07 Tom Holland? It's lessons from history.
27:08 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, completely. So the Spanish thought that Cusco was brilliant.
27:11 Tom Holland? Can I just ask, surely Cusco must be in a massive state, though? I mean, everyone's died of smallpox, and there's been all this fighting, and it's been occupied by people who hate it.
27:20 Dominic Sandbrook? But here's the thing, clearly not, right? Otherwise, they would report on it. Maybe Cisquis has not, you know, he hasn't raised it to the ground, and the northern army that has been occupying hasn't left a terrible mess. I mean, I don't know why that is, but the sources would tell us, wouldn't they? The Spanish, they would want to tell us.
27:41 Tom Holland? Or maybe it's so outside the sense that the Spanish had of what's City should look like, that it strikes them again like something from a romance, because that was a theme in in Mexico, wasn't it?
27:51 Dominic Sandbrook? Maybe, yeah. Or maybe they, I mean, all the Spanish sources, of course, it's always in their interest to big these things up. Because they want to attract more people and they want to impress the king.
27:59 Tom Holland? Yeah.
27:59 Dominic Sandbrook? So they write to Charles the Fifth, this city's the greatest ever seen in the Indies. We can assure your majesty, it's so beautiful and such fine buildings, it'd be remarkable even in Spain. I guess one third point worth saying is, none of these people have been to Mexico. So they've got no standard of comparison.
28:15 Tom Holland? Yeah.
28:15 Dominic Sandbrook? Because it's not as good as Tenochtitlan, which is bigger, I think, and more impressive.
28:20 Tom Holland? Yeah, or maybe they've been in Peru long enough. And kind of cantering through so many small villages that to arrive at somewhere this vast is kind of overwhelming.
28:30 Dominic Sandbrook? I think that's probably right. You know, they were anxious when they arrived, of course, after all the fighting and after Caimanaka and stuff, but they are delighted. The people greet them as liberators. They move into the palaces of the Incas.
28:42 Tom Holland? What happens to their bodies, to the mummies?
28:45 Dominic Sandbrook? Presumably still there, I don't know.
28:46 Tom Holland? Well, that's a bit creepy.
28:48 Dominic Sandbrook? Don't forget, Pizarro's got a form. I mean, he spent the night with Atahualpa.
28:51 Tom Holland? Yeah, but he was alive. I mean, would he spend a night with a?
28:55 Dominic Sandbrook? With Atahualpa's father.
28:55 Tom Holland? Two hundred year old mummy. With George the Third, would you? I don't know.
29:00 Dominic Sandbrook? Ah, do you know what? I probably would, just to say that I'd done it for the experience, wouldn't you?
29:05 Tom Holland? I guess.
29:05 Dominic Sandbrook? If somebody said, would you like to spend the night with William the Conqueror? I mean, actually, his body would be.
29:09 Tom Holland? Yeah, it's exploded. That'd be horrible.
29:12 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, no, I mean, who would you choose? I would probably choose.
29:18 Tom Holland? I don't know.
29:19 Dominic Sandbrook? George the Fifth, my favorite king.
29:21 Tom Holland? George the Fifth.
29:21 Dominic Sandbrook? We could talk about stamp collecting.
29:23 Tom Holland? Be disrespectful. He'd be dead, Dominic, that's the point.
29:26 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, but he'd be about as interesting a conversation as if he was alive. I mean.
29:30 Tom Holland? I think maybe Charles the Second.
29:32 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, of course.
29:33 Tom Holland? Just for the bants.
29:34 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, well.
29:35 Tom Holland? It would feel less disrespectful.
29:36 Dominic Sandbrook? Charles the First would be a twist, wouldn't it?
29:38 Tom Holland? Yeah, it would. Would his head be so? On or just rolling around.
29:43 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly. So they all move into these palaces. What the locals make of this, we do not know. But they don't rebel. You know, they don't rise up. They don't drive the Spanish out. There's no reason to doubt that they do greet them as liberators. The Spanish accounts are buzzing with excitement at the beauty and wealth of Cuzco. So Pedro Pizarro, Pedro Sancho, these accounts of the storehouses bursting with stuff, with cloaks, with gold, with weapons, with shields. All the goods that are manufactured in this country, says Pedro Sancho. You know, they can't believe the warehouse is full of stuff because there's no equivalent for this in Europe. The central government doesn't just pile up stuff in great warehouses and have it hanging around in its capital.
30:28 Dominic Sandbrook? And then, of course, the temples, they're the things they've really come for. So Cuzco's temples were full of relics. Ornaments, holy objects from other temples. Because basically, if the Incas conquered you, they would demand some of your stuff as a sort of hostage for good behaviour. And would this stuff be gold? Often it would be gold, of course, yes. It would be gold or silver. Of course, the thing they've really come to see is the Temple of the Sun, the Corricancho, which is the thing we heard about right at the beginning. Now, the wall plates have already been taken to use as atoalpa as ransom, but the place is still absolutely stuffed with gold. So one of the conquistadors, Diego de Trujillo, wrote,
31:09 Dominic Sandbrook? "As we entered, Vilak Umu, who was their high priest, cried, 'How dare you enter here? Anyone who enters here has to fast for a year beforehand and must enter barefoot and bearing a load." Which is true. This is what you had to do, is your kind of ritual thing. "But we paid no attention to what he said and went in." I mean, presumably this is all through interpreters.
31:29 Tom Holland? I mean, it's interesting, isn't it, that a lot of the Spanish, when they come to these temples, describe them as mosques?
31:35 Dominic Sandbrook? Because they're coming from the world of the reconquista and the conquistadores granada and stuff.
31:39 Tom Holland? Yeah. And so the the kind of desubordination of mosques would be
31:42 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes.
31:43 Tom Holland? Very much their bag.
31:44 Dominic Sandbrook? And so they go in. Another conquistador, Juan Ruiz de Arthe. Writes, since Attila Alpa had ordered that nothing of his father's should be touched, we found many golden llamas, women, pitchers, jars and other objects.
31:59 Tom Holland? Are there any golden llamas left or did they all get melted down?
32:02 Dominic Sandbrook? No, I don't think there are. I see, I remember, you know, we were talking about the children's book last time, the children's books that had pictures of Attila Alpa's ransom. It was always golden llamas that were in the pictures for me and sort of images of the sun and things. The two things that really are memorable from the temple. So in the intro reading that you did, you mentioned a garden of the sun. This is from another chronicler, Fiebre de Leon. In the rear of the cloisters was the garden of the sun, where all the flowers, fruits and leaves were of pure beaten gold. And we know they were because we know that they took one of them to Charles the Fifth's court to show him. And he said, wow, melt it down. They melted it down. They melted everything down.
32:45 Tom Holland? Because they did preserve the Aztec stuff, some of it. I mean, we do have Aztec treasures.
32:51 Dominic Sandbrook? That's a good question about why, why there's a difference. And I wonder if part of the difference, Charles the Fifth at this point is fighting, remember we mentioned he's fighting two wars simultaneously?
32:59 Tom Holland? Yeah.
32:59 Dominic Sandbrook? And the demand for money, you know, in the fighting the French in Italy must just be overwhelming.
33:05 Tom Holland? No time for the arts.
33:06 Dominic Sandbrook? No time for the arts. The real star of the temple, there's a thing called the punchao, which it means the dawn. And this was like, quote, "An image of the sun of great size, made of gold, beautifully wrought and set with many precious stones." This image of the sun was the single most important of all Inca artefacts. And no one knows what happened to it. So there's one Bas conquistador who basically went around for years afterwards saying, "I lost it in a game of dice" or something, very Han Solo or whatever.
33:36 Tom Holland? That sounds improbable.
33:37 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah. Other people said that's rubbish. He never had it to lose. It just vanished and it was never found. So maybe it's still buried somewhere outside Cusco. That's the exciting thing, in a cave or something.
33:49 Tom Holland? With the mummy of Attila Alpa.
33:51 Dominic Sandbrook? With Attila Alpa's body. Yeah, who knows? Now, while his men have been looking at all this golden stuff, Pizarro has been thinking about the future of the empire. The day after entering the city, he summons Manco and he says to him, you know, you're obviously a great chap. I want you to be the new emperor. So this is a fantastic moment for Manco. I mean, just a few months earlier, he was a teenage fugitive fearing for his life. And now he's going to become the Sapa Inca. He's going to get the whole thing. He goes off outside the city and he fasts for three days at a mountain retreat. And then he returns for his coronation, which is this absolutely massive public event. So he's going to be crowned with this kind of red tassels.
34:30 Tom Holland? Oh, yeah.
34:31 Dominic Sandbrook? String on his head.
34:32 Tom Holland? So the tassel that goes down the forehead.
34:34 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes, exactly. There's loads of dancing. There's loads of fiestas and all this kind of stuff.
34:39 Tom Holland? Have they brought the mummies out?
34:40 Dominic Sandbrook? The mummies come out.
34:41 Tom Holland? Great.
34:41 Dominic Sandbrook? So Miguel de Astete, one of the conquistadors, has a lovely description of bringing out the mummies. They've all got diadems on their heads. They're put on thrones. There were women who ministered to them with as much respect as if they'd been alive. And actually, my favorite detail, so the mummies are brought out and next to each mummy, there's a little kind of altar with Miguel de Astete says, on which were his fingernails, hair, teeth and other things that had been removed after death.
35:08 Tom Holland? I mean, imagine sitting next to Queen Victoria's teeth. What are the, what are the other things?
35:14 Dominic Sandbrook? Fingernails.
35:16 Tom Holland? Yeah.
35:16 Dominic Sandbrook? Hair, teeth. What does that leave? What else? What are the other things? And then here's the fun detail, and I quote, I think this is from Miguel de Astete again. There were so many people in the parties and both men and women were such heavy drinkers that all day two wide drains ran with urine as abundantly as a flowing spring.
35:36 Tom Holland? Gorgeous.
35:37 Dominic Sandbrook? So just imagine the scene. You're there as a Spaniard. There's a lot of mummies being paraded around with their fingernails, teeth and other things. And meanwhile, people are constantly relieving themselves into these massive overflowing drains of urine. So that being in a festival, I guess.
35:56 Tom Holland? It's kind of Glastonbury, isn't it?
35:57 Dominic Sandbrook? Or the Rest is History Festival at Hampton Court this summer.
36:00 Tom Holland? I don't think that the people who'll be coming to our wonderful festival will be urinating and bringing the mummies of their ancestors. I mean, I may be surprised, who knows?
36:10 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
36:11 Tom Holland? But I don't think so.
36:12 Dominic Sandbrook? I put nothing past the members of the Rest is History Club, quite frankly. So the climax to this event is the Spanish who take charge. Vicente de Valverde reads mass and then they parade into the square where Manco is sitting on a stool surrounded by his nobles. And then Pizarro's secretary, Pedro Sancho, reads out for all to hear the requirement, which we've discussed earlier. It's this mad legal thing that the Spanish have to read. The history of the world, the story of Christ, the history of the papacy. And the, it's like a brilliant Rest is History series and the Spanish monarchy. And then the legal obligation of the Incas to accept the Pope, the Church and the King of Spain. And then it ends with this warning, which always amuses me.
36:57 Dominic Sandbrook? If they don't do this, the Spanish are legally obliged to do you, quote, "all the harm and damage that we can and any deaths and losses which shall result from this are your fault."
37:06 Tom Holland? So it's like those little disclaimers that we read at the end of our Rest is History adverts.
37:11 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly. May contain, yeah. Side effects may include. So at the end, Manco and Pizarro share a kind of golden cup. There's a ritual where all his chiefs pay tribute to the flag of Spain. The Incas sing a lovely song, thanking the sun for allowing them to drive out their enemies and thanking the sun for sending the Spanish to rule over them. Miguel de Astete says in his memoir, "I do not believe they truly meant it. They only wanted to make us think they were happy with our company." I don't think you have to be terribly astute to, to draw that conclusion. And then one more set piece. Sometimes people, perhaps the more earnest listeners to this podcast, sometimes comment, there's a lot of bad behaviour towards animals
37:56 Dominic Sandbrook? at the Rest is History. And this is a very good example because Manco decides to celebrate his triumph with a traditional royal hunt, which is called a chaco. And he sends out 10,000 betas, 10,000 betas to encircle this huge area of the countryside where Incas go. And these blokes basically have to sort of close ranks slowly until they can all hold hands. And inside this huge ring of people are now trapped all the animals. So that's vicuñas and guanacos, which are kind of like llamas. There's roe deer, mountain foxes, hares and pumas. And then Manco and his entourage enter the ring along with Pizarro and about 50 Spaniards who've all been armed with sticks. And then they have a brilliant time killing
38:40 Dominic Sandbrook? every animal in sight, bludgeoning them to death.
38:42 Tom Holland? They're not tossing them?
38:43 Dominic Sandbrook? Not tossing them. And the sources say they killed 11,000 animals with sticks.
38:50 Tom Holland? God, I wouldn't want to take on a puma with a stick.
38:53 Dominic Sandbrook? No, you wouldn't.
38:54 Tom Holland? In fact, I wouldn't want to take any of them with a stick.
38:56 Dominic Sandbrook? No, no, I think that's fair. John Heming says on the, on the plus side, it was a moment of great cordiality between Spaniards and Peruvians.
39:02 Tom Holland? It's the universal language, isn't it? Killing animals.
39:06 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, but bad news, Tom. This cordiality is not going to last because beyond the gates of Cosco, Quiskis is still there with his northern army. And further north, there is an army under a much more terrifying warlord who has just turned one of his victims into a musical instrument. Tom, a very different hunt will soon begin. But this time, who is the hunter? And who is the hunted?
39:31 Tom Holland? Well, we will find out after the break and we will be meeting the human drum. Don't go away.
39:42 Tom Holland? This episode is brought to you by Claude by Anthropic. Now, history lives in the contradictions.
39:49 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, I've always been fascinated by the great mysteries of history, like what happened to the Maya civilization of Central America? Why were all those great cities deserted? But Tom, there's one mystery that's always fascinated you, isn't there?
40:00 Tom Holland? Yes, Dominic, I've always been fascinated by the question of how humans came to make and use fire. How did that originate? And a tremendous discovery was announced just last year that the place where it seems fire was invented was Suffolk.
40:19 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, you know, one of the things that makes history so fascinating is the kind of back and forth between sources to try and explain these great mysteries. And you know what's built for that kind of thinking? Claude is built. For that way of thinking, it doesn't smooth things over. It helps you dig into the disagreement to reveal something new. And Anthropic just committed to not running adverts in Claude. So your thinking stays yours. Try Claude for free at claude.ai/RestIsHistory.
40:54 Dominic Sandbrook? This episode is brought to you by Mint Mobile. Right now, all of Mint's plans are $15 per month, even unlimited. So go to mintmobile.com/history. Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12 months. Plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Greater than 50GB may slow when network is busy. Includes up to 20GB of hotspot. Capable device required. Availability, speed and coverage varies. See mintmobile.com.
41:34 Dominic Sandbrook? This episode is brought to you by the Gates Foundation. We have touched on the fall of the Roman Empire a few times on this show, haven't we? But what our listeners may not know is that among the causes that historians talk about, it's not just barbarian invasions. There's also talk of a disease which people call Roman fever, which I believe we know now as malaria. For thousands of years, humanity was defenseless against it. But thankfully, we live in a time of incredible ingenuity. And American scientists and partners around the world are fighting back with support from the Gates Foundation. Yes, so they're creating a new generation of bed nets that kill up to 90% of mosquitoes.
42:17 Dominic Sandbrook? That leads to a 50% drop in malaria, saving lives and protecting vulnerable communities. The Gates Foundation, partners of human potential. Search GatesFoundation.org/mosquito to learn more.
42:36 Tom Holland? Hello, welcome back to The Rest Is History. It is January 1534, we're in Cusco, the capital of the Incas, and it's only three years since Francisco Pizarro set off from Panama. It's a year since he captured Atahualpa, and so far, Dominic, it has to be said, I mean, he has enjoyed an incredible streak of luck. So many points where things could have gone slightly differently, and he and all the Spaniards would have been wiped out. But instead, here he is, he's installed at, you know, in the great capital of the Incas, you know, the very centre of this massive empire. He's got temples, he's got palaces all around him. They've got this compliant young puppet in the form
43:19 Tom Holland? of Manco. He must just be thinking, this is great, everything's going superbly, what could possibly go wrong?
43:26 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, you're absolutely right. And now he can really get stuck into what he's come here for, which is the gold. So, some of the gold of Cusco has been moved north to Caimaca, but not all of it. There is a lot more gold in the temples of Cusco, and there is four times as much silver as the Spanish have already shared out. So for the Spanish, this is basically the best thing ever. So all their accounts, you know, they say, you know, wherever you went, you basically found pictures of gold, golden effigies. Pedro Pizarro has a section where he says, you know, we went and found this cave and it was full of women's shoes made of gold.
44:03 Tom Holland? I mean, you can see why it drives the Spaniards mad, because this is exactly what, in their wildest fantasies, they had been imagining. And now those fantasies have come true. And it will implant a kind of gold lust that will continue to rage for decades and centuries afterwards.
44:22 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, it will. And actually, the mad thing about them all falling out, which they do, spoiler alert, they all end up, you know, killing each other, is they were all really rich men. They've got enough money now to buy a country estates back in Spain, to make their families' reputation, all of this kind of thing. But the lust for more and more just seems to seize them. And the competitiveness.
44:47 Tom Holland? And the fear that your gold will be taken away, I suppose?
44:49 Dominic Sandbrook? That's, that's at the back of their mind the whole time.
44:52 Tom Holland? There is Christopher a moralist.
44:53 Dominic Sandbrook? There is Christopher a moralist. So there was a young priest who wrote an account of this, Cristobal de Molina. Their only concern was to collect gold and silver to make themselves all rich without thinking that what they were doing was wrong and that they were wrecking and destroying. For what was being destroyed was more perfect than anything they possessed.
45:11 Tom Holland? So it's like the lamentations over the beauties of Tenochtitlan, isn't it?
45:15 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
45:16 Tom Holland? After that had been destroyed.
45:17 Dominic Sandbrook? And there are people, clearly at the time, who think, you know, there are one or two people who think, God, hold on. Are we losing our minds here?
45:25 Tom Holland? Are we the baddies here?
45:26 Dominic Sandbrook? Are we the baddies? Exactly. But Pizarro himself is in no mood to mess around. So exactly one month after he entered the city on the 15th of December, 1533. He says, let's start the melting down. And for the next two months, as in Carcamaca. The forges are roaring day and night and they're producing another colossal, colossal hoard of gold and silver bars for shipment back to Spain. Now, in the meantime, Pizarro is thinking about the issue of the wider Inca Empire. So Pizarro is not a fool. He knows what happened to Cortez in Mexico. But Cortez ended up cornered in the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, the future Mexico City. And basically had to fight his way out and he doesn't want that to happen to him.
46:10 Dominic Sandbrook? So if we think about the map and think about the Inca Empire in thirds, because it's a, it's a long, it's not wide, it's just very long. The Spaniards are in the central third. So that's basically modern day Peru. And they control that, Pizarro and Manco. Then you've got the southern third to below that. And that's what modern day Bolivia and northern Chile. And that so far, no Spaniard has been there. They don't know what it's like. But as far as they know, it's loyal to Manco. So that's fine. But the problem is the northern third. So that's modern day Ecuador and southern Colombia. That is Atahualpa's heartland. You know, the civil war in the minds of the people of the north is still going on and the
46:55 Dominic Sandbrook? Spaniards are merely a new factor in this war.
46:57 Tom Holland? And one of Atahualpa's achievements during his imprisonment had been to spare Quito and the north from the attentions of the Spaniards, hasn't it? He's he'd sent all the the kind of the looting parties southwards.
47:09 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes, exactly. So if the Spaniards want to unite the empire under Manco, they will have to beat Atahualpa's former generals, two of whom, I mean, they've already burned Chalcojima, but two of them are on the loose. So one of them is this guy, Quiskis, who had previously been in Cusco. He's been driven north from Cusco. He still probably has about 20,000 men, so quite battle hardened troops at this point. Most of Quiskis's men, although they're battle hardened, they are exhausted. They've been on the road for, what, two years? And they want to go home to Ecuador. And so he's trudging back all this time towards Ecuador with a gigantic mob. I mean, thousands of llamas and porters carrying all their stuff.
47:54 Dominic Sandbrook? So bear them in mind. But there is another general up in the north who is a very ruthless man, and this is a guy called Ruminyawi. And he enters this story with some very colorful behaviour which we have been trailing extensively. So basically, after Atahualpa died, there was a question among the northerners about who would succeed him as the claimant. Atahualpa had a brother called Kiliskacha. And he said, well, I'll do it. And it's not clear whether he wants to be emperor himself or regent for Atahualpa's sons. Anyway, Ruminyawi, who was the commander, the military commander, he said, you want to do it? Great. Let's have a big wake for Atahualpa. You know, we'll have a party to celebrate and celebrate your elevation. They have this wake.
48:39 Dominic Sandbrook? It's like the sort of red wedding or something. Ruminyawi gives Kiliskacha and his entourage, he says, have some lovely drinks. These drinks have been drugged. And when they pass out, Ruminyawi's men cut their throats. So that's the end of them. Well, not quite the end. Because then Ruminyawi literally turns Kiliskacha into a drum. And I quote, I shouldn't laugh because it's hideous. He extracted all the bones through a certain part. We don't know what that part is.
49:13 Tom Holland? Very coy, these correctlers, aren't they?
49:15 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah. He extracted all the bones through a certain part, leaving the skin intact and made him into a drum. The shoulders formed one end of the drum and the abdomen the other. So with the head, feet and hands embalmed, he was preserved intact but transformed.
49:35 Dominic Sandbrook? He was preserved intact but transformed into a kettle drum.
49:40 Tom Holland? Goodness. Well, you know, it's like Yan Ziska, the Hussite general, but he had himself turned into a drum after he died.
49:48 Dominic Sandbrook? Did he?
49:48 Tom Holland? So the story goes.
49:50 Dominic Sandbrook? See, Ruminyawi's got this bloke as a drum, but they weren't even particularly enemies. He's just a former ally who was stabbed in the back. I mean, it's a good lesson to others, isn't it? You don't mess with him. So with this kettle drum, he now rules in Quito as an independent warlord. I mean, he's literally kind of the king in the north. Ruminyawi. His problem, however, is now the Spanish are after him. So the Spanish have heard rumours that Quito is just as rich as Cuzco and they want its gold.
50:16 Tom Holland? Dominic, is there someone else who has heard similar rumours? Who we have met in a previous series?
50:23 Dominic Sandbrook? That one of the best people we've ever done on the rest is history is up there with Augustus the Strong, the Kaiser and all the other big friends of the show with chequered pasts. He is a man who, he loves a gile, he loves a great laugh. He loves a massacre of indigenous people at a festival and he loves a weekend trip with the girls to Cornwall to rock or similar. He climbed the Geralda in Seville. He let himself down quite badly in Mexico. He almost certainly went to Tabby's old school, Marlborough College. He's Pedro de Alvarado. So what's he been doing? So if you listen to the fall of the United States, you will remember that Pedro Alvarado is a, he's a great laugh. But you want to stay on the right side of him. So actually, he's been roistering around Guatemala,
51:07 Dominic Sandbrook? and he's been slaughtering indigenous people and being a total legend. And he's heard all these rumours of the gold of Peru, and he wants in. So he finally turns up. February 1534, Pedro de Alvarado lands on the coast of Ecuador with a load of Spanish infantry and crossbowmen, 500 of them. So he's turned up with a lot of men and 4,000 Guatemalans. And the great thing about Pedro is everything he touches turns to dust and disaster. Even as he arrives, people in Central America write into Spain saying, Pedro's turned up and it's all going to go horribly wrong for him. So an official in Panama writes to Charles V, although there are many Guatemalans, I believe they will all die soon
51:51 Dominic Sandbrook? because they're from a hot country and they're going to a cold one. And that sounds like the official in Panama is an idiot, but no, he's actually quite right. So Alvarado kicks off in absolutely textbook Pedro fashion. He indulges in what John Heming calls some unnecessary cruelty to the coastal tribes.
52:08 Tom Holland? Oh, don't do that, Pedro. Oh, Pedro, don't do that. Oh, Pedro. Pedro's such a laugh.
52:15 Dominic Sandbrook? So even by Spanish standards, he is so cruel that the other conquistadors later hold a judicial inquiry.
52:22 Tom Holland? I mean, how bad do you have to be?
52:24 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, for all the other guys, Pizarro, Almagro, all these people saying you've crossed the line. So to give you an indication, he starts enslaving women and children in select chain gangs. He hangs some village chiefs. He has people burned alive. He has one local chief fed to some dogs.
52:41 Tom Holland? Because he's bought a whole load of war dogs, hasn't he?
52:43 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes, he has.
52:43 Tom Holland? Bloody love a dog, a hound.
52:47 Dominic Sandbrook? And then, once he's had some fun there, he heads inland into the forest towards Quito, having enslaved hundreds of local people to act as his porters. Big spoiler alert, this is not going to end well for the porters, or indeed for anybody else associated with Pedro de Alvarado's expedition.
53:04 Tom Holland? And the other Spaniards, the other conquistador leaders, when Alvarado turns up, it's a bloody
53:10 Dominic Sandbrook? Massacre, right?
53:12 Tom Holland? I mean, you can't go, oh, no.
53:13 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, they're gutted. Not Alvarado.
53:18 Dominic Sandbrook? That is a little bit unreliable. They're going to be bloody carnage. Exactly. They're gutted. They're shocked, actually. And immediately, two other rival armies shoot off. I mean, I say armies, they're sort of expeditions to try to beat Alvarado to the gold of Quito. So one of them goes from the coast and it's about 200 men under one of Pizarro's captains, a guy called Sebastian de Ben Alcaza, who is from Andalucia. The chronicler Thea de Leon said he was a man of little knowledge, poor origin and a low intellect. Which doesn't really inspire confidence. Yeah, but actually, he does quite well, as we shall see. And the other is Almagro, Pizarro's partner. Imagine if you're Almagro, right? You've already been cheated out of a load of gold once.
54:03 Dominic Sandbrook? Now you think, well, at least I'll probably get the gold of Quito. And now Alvarado has turned up with his red trousers to get your gold.
54:10 Tom Holland? Oh, dear.
54:12 Dominic Sandbrook? Oh, no. So what happens next is a bonkers story. It's very, I already mentioned Game of Thrones. It's very George R R Martin. It's actually a shame that the Spanish chroniclers don't go into it in loads of detail. So, you know, the details are a bit sketchy. Ben Alcaza gets there first. He goes across the desert of northern Peru. He goes up into the mountains and he comes out on the high moors of southern Ecuador. And he's picked up a load of native supporters called the Canyari. The Canyari had always hated the Incas. Attoelpa had been really cruel to them. They basically can't wait to have a crack at Quito. They can't stand Quito.
54:49 Tom Holland? What about the wanker?
54:50 Dominic Sandbrook? The wanker has the picture now, Tom.
54:52 Tom Holland? They're not part of it?
54:53 Dominic Sandbrook? No, they're not part of it. So they advance towards Quito and they get to the shadow of Mount Chimborathol.
54:59 Tom Holland? That's so fantasy story, isn't it?
55:01 Dominic Sandbrook? And at the hamlet of Teocahas, in the shadow of this mountain, this bloke Ruminyawi is waiting for them.
55:09 Tom Holland? With his drum?
55:10 Dominic Sandbrook? With his huge drum and his massive army.
55:12 Tom Holland? Do you know, I reckon that Alvarado would, I mean, he'd find that a bloody good laugh.
55:16 Dominic Sandbrook? With a drum?
55:17 Tom Holland? Yeah.
55:17 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, he'd turn loads of people. He'd have an old orchestra of people.
55:20 Tom Holland? With trombones.
55:24 Dominic Sandbrook? What would be the most amusing instrument that you could make somebody into? An oboe.
55:31 Dominic Sandbrook? You'd be gutted if they said you're going to end up as a triangle.
55:34 Tom Holland? You really would.
55:35 Dominic Sandbrook? Anyway, this battle, right? I mean, historians, first of all, they can't agree when it happened. Possibly 3rd of May 1534. They don't even agree what to call it. So some historians call it the Battle of Teukahas. Some people call it the Battle of Mount Chimborato. They can't agree. It's a massive battle that no one knows anything about. So the Spanish chronicler Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo claims that there were 50,000 people fighting there. Nine out of 10 of them were indigenous. The Spanish are only a tiny element of this battle. But the Spanish, because it's on the high moors, that favors the Spanish horses. And Oviedo's account is great, actually. He says it started with this sort of Lord of the Rings.
56:19 Dominic Sandbrook? You know, Battle of the Pelennor Field, charge by the Spanish cavalry that were shouting Santiago. And I quote, "They attacked fiercely, trampling the Indians under their horses and causing great bloodshed with their lances. Terrible bravery and fury was shown by the side. The Indians rallied to a cry that this was the moment to fight for their liberty. The Spaniards shouted that their very lives were at stake. The Indians' bravery was exceptional. Although they saw the battlefield soaked in blood and covered with the bodies of their dead, and although they realized their doom, they fought on with marvelous vigor, lacking neither strength nor spirit." So it's this great sort of Tolkien-esque clash.
57:00 Dominic Sandbrook? And Ruminyaw's men were in danger of breaking, but then they rallied, they killed some of the horses. Maybe they did manage to club them to death or hit them with a drum or whatever. And they forced the Spanish to fall back. And night falls and the two sides are deadlocked. And you would think this might be a disaster for the Spanish since they're outnumbered. But overnight, the Spanish tricked the Quetons. They left their campfires burning, but they slipped away in the darkness. And Ruminyaw's men didn't realize till it was too late.
57:30 Tom Holland? And did they just leave their porters behind?
57:33 Dominic Sandbrook? I think they must have left some of them, I guess. But what this means is that basically they were able to get into Quito. So Ben Alcaza and his men were able to basically skirt Ruminyaw's army and get into Quito. But when they get there, they're gutted to find that Ruminyi has already taken sort of Russia 1812 style action. Ruminyi has gutted Quito. He'd taken all the treasure. He's taken Atuelpa's family. He's taken 4,000 women and he's set fire to the palaces and the storehouses and he's withdrawn, he's basically withdrawn with all them into the forests. Some poor behaviour by Ruminyi. Ruminyi and his men said to the virgins of the sun temple, there were 300 of them, "You should leave with us because the Spanish will arrive
58:17 Dominic Sandbrook? and they will rape you if you don't." And the virgins said, "No, we don't want to." So Ruminyi's men killed them all.
58:23 Tom Holland? Do you know, if Ruminyi told me to do something, I would do it. I'm not going to mess around. I'm going to go, "Yes, fine, whatever. Please don't turn me into a drum."
58:30 Dominic Sandbrook? So then the Spanish disgraced themselves massively. They couldn't find the treasure. They sort of raid around the local countryside, looking for the treasure. They can't find it. They start slaughtering all the women and children, demanding, you know, "Where is the gold?" Even the official royal chronicler of the expedition said this was cruelty unworthy of a Castilian.
58:51 Tom Holland? God, that is stern words.
58:52 Dominic Sandbrook? Those are stern words. And actually, if you're Ecuadorian, you think things are bleak, but now things are going to get a lot worse because both Diego de Almagro and Pedro de Alvarado
59:03 Tom Holland? Oh no.
59:04 Dominic Sandbrook? are fast advancing on the Ecuadorian heartland. So Almagro arrived first and actually he behaved himself by his own standards quite well. Unfortunately, it's a very different story with Marlborough College's Pedro de Alvarado because he, he has absolutely disgraced himself.
59:22 Tom Holland? Even by his previous standards.
59:24 Dominic Sandbrook? So basically, after he left the coast, he got completely lost in the jungle. His men were hacking their way through the jungle, being attacked by insects and ravaged by disease. All their stuff rusts in the humidity. They're caught, they're caught in a volcanic eruption and covered with ash. They're covered with ash. They, he says, "Come on, you know, stop complaining. Man up." They get through the jungle, they emerge into the Andes, then they go the wrong way and they go up the highest mountain pass into the Andes. So they're wading through snowdrifts, covered with snow. Eighty-five Spaniards died of exposure or hypothermia because they'd gone the wrong way in this mountain pass. But just as that bloke in Panama had predicted, all of the
1:00:09 Dominic Sandbrook? Guatemalans and Alvarado's native porters and a huge mob of female camp followers literally freeze to death as well.
1:00:17 Tom Holland? It's classic Alvarado.
1:00:19 Dominic Sandbrook? It is. They've all died. He hasn't died, however. He finally approaches Quito, where he finds the other Spaniards waiting for him. And basically, everybody thinks there's going to be this huge inter-Spanish battle. But one of them blinks. And do you know what? This is a very poor advertisement for Tabby's Old School, because the person who blinks is Pedro. After all that...
1:00:42 Tom Holland? What's going on there?
1:00:44 Dominic Sandbrook? He's lost his bottle. He's completely lost his nerve. I think because he's covered with snow and volcanic ash, and he's killed all his people, he's lost his mojo a little bit. Because basically, he does a deal. He will sell all his ships and gear to Almagro for 100,000 gold pieces. All his men that have come with him, the ones who are still left, will stay in Peru and work for the other Spanish generals. But he himself, Alvarado, agrees that he will leave Peru and never come back.
1:01:14 Tom Holland? That is a shame.
1:01:15 Dominic Sandbrook? And he goes back to Guatemala, sort of in disgrace. And if people want to know what happened to him, his later life, there was a lot more sort of roistering around in Mexico and Central America, a lot of killing people and unnecessary cruelty. And he ended up dying in a very amusingly banal way. He died in 1541 in a freak accident when a
1:01:36 Tom Holland? Horse sat on him, didn't he?
1:01:37 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, a horse fell on him.
1:01:39 Tom Holland? He had a very impressive wife.
1:01:42 Dominic Sandbrook? Dona Luisa.
1:01:43 Tom Holland? The governor of Guatemala.
1:01:45 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
1:01:45 Tom Holland? And I think she's, in the entire history of the Spanish Empire in the Americas, she was the only female governor.
1:01:52 Dominic Sandbrook? Is that right? They're both buried in, I can't remember what it's called. Is it called Antigua or something like that? In the old, the old capital of Guatemala. I've often thought I'd like to go and see his grave. Tabby said she went and saw his portrait in Seville, when she went to Seville.
1:02:08 Tom Holland? Good on Tabby.
1:02:08 Dominic Sandbrook? So, that leaves two of the Spanish generals, Almagro and Ben Alcata, to deal with the northern warlords. So first of all, Quisquice. Quisquice has been trudging all the way up from Cusco with his colossal llamas.
1:02:23 Tom Holland? Waiting for him.
1:02:24 Dominic Sandbrook? Not really. No, no, he doesn't actually. So there's a bit of mountain pass action skirmishes and stuff which we won't go into. Basically, eventually they emerge into southern Ecuador, him and his men. His men arrive in Quito province to discover the Spanish have captured their capital. They are gutted. They can't believe it. They thought they'd won the civil war, you know, a year ago or whatever. And now they've got home to find that these weird bearded men have basically killed everybody and seized their own city. They're distraught and they go to Kiskis and they say to him, you know, look, general. Go and ask the Spanish for peace. Quote, they are invincible. And Kiskis says, you cowards, I would rather starve in the wilds than bend the knee and surrender my country.
1:03:10 Dominic Sandbrook? He reminds me of Charles de Gaulle.
1:03:12 Tom Holland? And is he similarly successful? Does he emerge as the leader of a proud and independent Incan state?
1:03:18 Dominic Sandbrook? No. But when he says that, his officers take out their clubs and they bludgeon him to death. So that's the end of him. John Hemings says, it was a tragic end for one of the empire's finest generals. Who passionately resented the menace and humiliation of the conquest. So I feel sorry for him. He didn't turn anyone to a musical instrument. He led his men with great valor. He wouldn't surrender and he ended up on the wrong side of a club and that's sad.
1:03:43 Tom Holland? Okay, but the guy, I mean kettle drum guy, he's still very much on the scene, isn't he?
1:03:48 Dominic Sandbrook? He is, but he's lost momentum too. A lot of his men desert. They think the Spanish can't be beaten. He's taken refuge in the mountains outside Quito. And at last a conquistador called Miguel de la Chica gets a tip off that Ruminyawi is resting by a mountain lake. Quote, when I reached the lake, the Lord Ruminyawi was beside a small hillock leaning against a tree. I closed with him and after struggling for a very long time, I captured him. And so Ruminyawi is taken under guard back to Quito, where Sebastian de Belacata is in charge of interrogating him. Whether he's got his drum with him, I do not know. Does he have any gold? No, hasn't got a drum, hasn't.
1:04:29 Tom Holland? Got gold, what's the point of him?
1:04:30 Dominic Sandbrook? I'd like to think he's still got his drum, but surely they allow him to get, because Ata Alpa was allowed to keep the severed head of that bloke to use as a teapot or whatever. So surely this guy is allowed to keep his human drum. Anyway, they torture him, they burn him again, more singeing, where's the gold? No joy. And at last they bring him out, 1535, June 1535 into the main square of Quito and they execute Ruminyawi. I think they burn him as well. And the conquest of the north is complete.
1:04:58 Tom Holland? It's rapid, isn't it?
1:05:00 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, it's what, a year?
1:05:02 Tom Holland? Yeah.
1:05:02 Dominic Sandbrook? To conquer the whole thing and beat two armies?
1:05:04 Tom Holland? Yeah.
1:05:05 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, and a lot of it, I think, not because the Spanish overpowered people in battle, but they just, it's about morale. The Quetons just sort of lost hearts. They thought they can never beat these blokes with their horses. Also, I guess a key point, they've got tribal allies, the Canyari people I mentioned, you mentioned with great enthusiasm, the Huancas.
1:05:22 Tom Holland? Yes.
1:05:23 Dominic Sandbrook? They've got various such people. What did we say in the Aztec series, diversity is not their strength? So now you might think this is the end of the story, but you would be wrong. Because back in Cusco, Manco has been surveying all this and thinking, this is not quite what I thought it would be.
1:05:40 Tom Holland? He's slightly riding a crocodile here.
1:05:42 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah. Because clearly, you know, the Spanish have been melting down all this gold and silver all this time. It took them three months to do it. And then Pizarro shared it out, but the Spanish do not stop there. Now, every previous Spanish expedition to the New World had degenerated quite quickly into disorder and feuding. And the conquest of Peru, I'm sorry to say, is no different. So in March 1934, Pizarro had re-founded Cusco as a Spanish city under Spanish law. And at the time, Pizarro, to be fair to him, had directed that locals should be well treated. And I quote, "The native people of this country were created as our brothers and our descendants of our first ancestors." I mean, that's the sort of message of the Las Casas school, isn't it, Tom?
1:06:27 Tom Holland? Yes.
1:06:28 Dominic Sandbrook? That there are always people in the Spanish world who are saying, if we are true Christians, we cannot treat these people just as slaves and as, you know, dogs and all of this. We can't burn them and chain them up and execute them. We've got to treat them properly. We've got to be true to our principles.
1:06:45 Tom Holland? Yeah, but I mean, it never crosses their mind that turning up nicking their city, turning it into something completely else. I mean, that's Quite bad.
1:06:54 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, I think we think it's bad. They didn't think it was bad. They thought it was tremendous.
1:06:57 Tom Holland? Yeah, I know.
1:06:58 Dominic Sandbrook? But the problem, I think, is they don't even do the bare minimum. Because Pizarro's men are clearly disobeying him, and we know this because he's having to send out constant instructions. Stop looting gold and silver from the locals. Stop mistreating people. There's a story about a conquistador called Gonzalo Maldonado, who ignores him. He imprisons the high priest of Cusco and says, I won't let you out until we give me gold and silver. And Pizarro basically has to threaten to execute this guy to force him to release the high priest.
1:07:26 Tom Holland? It would still have been possible, surely, for the people of Cusco, the native people, to rise up and wipe these people out.
1:07:34 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, but at this point, Manco, and therefore the elite.
1:07:37 Tom Holland? Are on their side.
1:07:38 Dominic Sandbrook? On their side. Because, of course, at this point, they are still using the Spaniards in their own minds to conquer the North.
1:07:45 Tom Holland? And this is what's changing in Manco's mind. And I suppose also what is starting to happen at the same time is that all these guys who've been told, brilliant, there's loads of gold out in Peru, who've been coming from Spain, are starting to turn up.
1:07:59 Dominic Sandbrook? Are beginning to turn up. So this is a huge thing. The colonial officials across the rest of the Spanish Empire, that's the Caribbean, Central America, are already writing to Spain and saying, there's going to be nobody left. The news from Peru is so extraordinary that old and young men alike are packing up to go there. Unless they're tied down, we won't have a single citizen left. That's from Puerto Rico. So there are loads of such letters. And there are so many people arriving on the coast now that Pizarro decides we're going to build a new base on the coast, a new city on the coast. And he picks a site in January 1535. He wants to call it the City of the Kings, Ciudad de los Reyes. But it ends up being called after a local oracle, which in Quechua was called the speaker, or Limac, i.e. Lima.
1:08:44 Dominic Sandbrook? Now, meanwhile, all these people, as you correctly say, Tom, are turning up, and they want something. Now, the gold's been distributed, so what Pizarro is giving them is land. He is giving out huge tracts of lands of Spaniards, entire villages, thousands of labourers. What you would do if you were a settler, you would live in a Spanish townhouse, Spanish-built, in a Spanish town, a Spanish foundation in Peru, but you would be given huge landed estates outside the town and you would be given hundreds or thousands of workers. Because remember, there was no private property before this, there was no private enterprise, there was basically enforced labour.
1:09:24 Dominic Sandbrook? You would be given thousands of so-called Indians who are obliged to deliver regular tribute to you.
1:09:31 Tom Holland? So this is the encomienda set up that the Spanish have been practising in the New World since the very beginning?
1:09:39 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes, especially in Mexico.
1:09:41 Tom Holland? And which is so open to abuse.
1:09:43 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly. It is, I hate to use the jargon because I don't like using jargon generally, but people talk of settler colonialism. And if you want a really good example of extractive settler colonialism, this is a very good one. And actually, royal officials are telling Pizarro, "Stop, stop giving out other people's lands. The Indians, so-called, are free Spanish subjects under the crown. It's not your place to give them to people." But the other conquistadors keep saying to him, "We want more land." And if he wants to keep his position as top dog, he has to appease them. See, a big problem for Pizarro. A bigger problem for Manco though. If young Manco, the young emperor, is watching this in his palace, he is thinking, "What's happening?
1:10:26 Dominic Sandbrook? My empire has been given away around me." His position, of course, is incredibly insecure. He's young, there's been a civil war, you know, there's a growing sense that he's a Spanish puppet. There are complaints coming in to his palace all the time. The Spanish are behaving badly in the countryside, they're enslaving people, they're raiding villages, they're searching for gold. And then, in the summer of 1535, two things happen that are absolutely disastrous. One of the Pizarro brothers takes a fancy to Manco's sister, who is also his wife.
1:11:01 Dominic Sandbrook? And secondly, the feud between the Pizarro brothers and Diego de Almagro reaches boiling point. And what we'll be talking about next time. Manco summons his people to war. The battle for Cuzco, one of the greatest sieges in the history of the Americas. Pizarro's darkest hour and the bloody climax of his feud with his former business partner, Diego de Almagro.
1:11:25 Tom Holland? So still so much to come. And Rest is History Club members can hear that episode right now, of course. And if you would like to join them, if you would like to pile in to the Cuzco of our special offer in the Rest is History Club, then you can go to therestishistory.com and do so there. But for now, goodbye.
1:11:46 Dominic Sandbrook? Goodbye.
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