647. The Fall of the Incas: The King in the North (Part 4)

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So pick up the Irish flute or those calligraphy pens or that daunting Beef Wellington recipe card and leave the laundry to us. Rinse. It's time to be great. Their capital is completely round. They call it the navel of the earth, and that's what it looks like. In the middle is 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-size 20 golden llamas grazing with their kids the garden of the sun at cusco a wonder of the earth look at it now so that was posh boy anando de soto in peter shaffer's play the royal hunt of the sun came out in 1964 we been hearing a lot from it um and de soto in that passage is describing one of the great wonders of the world in the early 16th century which was 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 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. Well should I go back and redo it? No, no, no one wants that. Their capital is completely round they call it the navel of the earth and that's what it looks like. How about that? Have I got the part? Definitely. Gold geese and ducks! Very toast. 20 golden llamas. It's very Toast of London, that reading. Matt Berry would do a very good job. Right, yes. And actually, while he's speaking in that voice, loads of Indian porters in the play, I'd 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 horde 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 we ended with Atahualpa being garrotted by the Spanish anyway. So this is paranoid atmosphere in Cacamaca, where since November 1532, Pizarro and his comrades have been holding Atahualpa prisoner. And this is just the beginning of the looting of Peru, because this is the story of one of the greatest gold heists, surely actually the greatest gold heist in history. These? Surely? I mean, I can't think of anything comparable. And at the heart of the story are the temples and treasure houses of the Incas' holy city of Cuzco. So 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. Because to be honest, we haven't had any yet, have we? No. And I think people are gagging for a battle and they're going to get one. We'll be meeting a terrifying Inca warlord who turns his victims into percussion instruments. We love an Inca warlord who turns his victims into percussion instruments On The Rest Is History And most exciting and this is a real gift for long listeners we should be welcoming back to the show one of our favorite characters top gilet and red trousers model pedro de alvarado bloody good bloke total ledge so that's something to look forward to so let's begin with pizarro and the conquistadors in kakamaka 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 Amagro 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 colourfully dressed man, a boastful man, and, as we'll see, a violent man. Secondly, the Spaniards have definitively now taken a side in the civil war between Atahualpa and Huascar. Now, initially they were pro-Athahualpa, 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 so they have been holding kakimaka all this time huascar's younger brother who is called tupac hualpa he's probably in his 20s we know virtually nothing about him this bloke's just been hanging around somewhere and as soon as atawalpa they've held their christian funeral service for atawalpa 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 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 And I think that that possibly intensifies the sense of cultural difference 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 so it's kind of like roman italy in the 5th century a.d with you know an ineffectual roman emperor surrounded by gothic guards 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 I suppose. Also, that they feel no aspiration to become an Inca. Exactly. So that's the other big difference. Yeah. There's no place in the Spanish worldview to tolerate the cults and the gods, for instance, of the Inca, whereas the German mercenaries, they all became Christian. Well, the German mercenaries want to become Romans, don't they, to some degree? Whereas the Spanish have no desire to become Peruvians. No. And actually, at the end of this coronation ceremony, Tupac Cualpa gives Pizarro ceremonially this white feathered headdress and says this is a tribute to my overlord charles v 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 ato alper is dead the spanish of the gold the spanish of a puppet emperor the spanish of one so they finish without any mention of the the percussion based yeah do Do you remember that from your children's book? I don't. Because it would have made a brilliant illustration and we're pre-empting the show. 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. the indies immediately wrote to Charles V and said, you've got to welcome this guy at court. You've got to see this. And Ando was invited to the court in Toledo. He was a massive celebrity. Everyone was very excited. He then went to Extremadura to 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? And meanwhile, two of the other guys who returned, Cristobal de Meña 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 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 they're doomed Yeah the gold rushes on, exactly 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? Yeah. Do you think that they could have upgraded their infrastructure fast enough and sufficiently enough to see off Spanish conquerors? No, deep down. Because, I mean, nobody in the Americas does it. But maybe the Incas more than anyone else, because they're so isolated, so hard to get to. 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. So the lowlands being conquered, but... 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 for them 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 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 know how to bring them down because they don have many bows and arrows But they might have learned if they had a sufficient breathing space they might have Yeah The counter 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. Okay, so it's bad news for the Incas, basically. Yeah. So back in Cajamarca, 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. John Hemming 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 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. Well, these are the Huanca people. Yes. So it's always good to have the Huanca's on side. I think you've always got them on side, haven't you, Tom, the Huanca's? They're very much Team Tom Holland, I think. I would never snub a Huanca. No. so by early October the Spaniards are approaching the valley of Xauxa so this is where Hernando Pizarro lured away Chalcuchima the rugby player who got burnt yes who got burnt and actually he's still alive isn't he the Spaniards have brought him with them he's very badly singed if you may recall his tendons I think had been badly burnt hadn't they and they've now chained him up but they brought him with them now at about this point the 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 Quisquis who is the guy who had taken Cuzco 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 rumors of northern troops. And at last they come out in the valley of Xauxa, and there there are two more reminders of the 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 quitan army some months earlier and the bodies have 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 the Incas yeah is an Inca army from Quito from Ecuador from the north the Spanish go into and they find that the northerners have left behind 600 men to set fire to the storehouses it's 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 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 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 chalcochima 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 blackening him metaphorically Yeah so Tubac Hualpa suddenly basically falls ill and then he dies And this is very bad news for Pizarro because he 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 Manco 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'll leave that thought 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 an account by Pedro Sancho Pizarro's secretary on one of many of these mountain ascents 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 camp followers and stuff. There are two more skirmishes with the Keaton army who are still hanging around at a place called Vilca Suaman and Vilca Conga. 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. Well, because when you say Incas... Yeah. I mean, it's specifically the Incas from the north, right? Yes, the Keatons, as I guess we should call them. So it's only a faction of the Incas. It is, but there's maybe 30,000 of them. They've got the southern Incas and they've got the Wanker. 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 sort of 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 that is incredible isn't it yeah but i suppose if they haven't got pikes and they haven't got bows and arrows, how do you stop a horse? Right. You've got a kind of club or something. I mean, you might get a lucky blow in. What about one of those pieces of string with stones on each side? how do you stop a horse? how do you stop a horse? Right. You've got a kind of club or something. I mean, you might get a lucky blow in. What about one of those 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 they would have. I mean, there would be excellent slingshot action. I mean, they do have slings, but they just are never able to bring any of these people down. So we're now up to November 1533 and now a massively important figure enters this story. So a day or so after the last skirmish at Vilcoconga, a group of locals approach the Spanish camp and one of them, and I quote, looking like a common Indian, I mean, obviously all through this story, the Spanish call the locals Indians, he identifies himself and he says, I am Manco. I am the younger brother of the late Huascar. I'm a son of the late Emperor Huayna Capac. I am the new candidate of the southern faction, the Cusco faction in the civil war. How old this guy is, we don't quite know. Some Spaniards said he was 15. Some said he was 20, but looked younger. Let's say late teens. He's been on the run for months. When Atahualpa captured Cusco, Manco had basically run away because he knew he'd be a dead man if Atahualpa'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 a stop to them and I wanted to liberate the people of Cuzco from this tyranny. 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 have been dragging this boat Chalcuchima around with them and now Manco confronts Chalcuchima in front of them and he says I know you've been smuggling orders to the Keaton army to Kis-Kis 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 Chalcuchima you dog how could you pull such a navus trick and basically they drag Chalcuchima We're into the nearest village square. They say to him you know we going to kill you convert to Christianity and we garrote you instead of burning you He says you know I been burned already You might as well just finish the job Do you think he like Hatchewy wasn it in the Caribbean who said that he wouldn't convert to Christianity because he didn't want to be in a heaven where there were Spaniards? Yeah. That kind of vibe. 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 who burned him most keen keen and enthusiastically were his own former friends which i think is a lesson a lesson to us all don't have friends yeah he dies very bravely though he calls on kis kis to avenge him he shouts out you know you will avenge me one day and actually kis kis is still hanging around somewhere with his army there's one more battle on the last mountain pass before they get to cuzco and this time the Keaton 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 Kis-Kis'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 Kis-Kis now begins this long retreat with his army 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. It was the political and spiritual center of the empire, famous across the Andean region for its palaces and its architecture and his temples and so on and so forth. So if you imagine it, Cusco then is now 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 very orderly The Spaniards wrote home and said beautiful paved little roads They always got water channels down the middle It very clean At the center is this great square called Auque Pata, which is lined with the palaces of the Incas. 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 which is great yeah i mean effectively you're not dead 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 kind of carried around in litters and they line them up chronologically yeah 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'd just kind of sit there. That would be great. Yeah. That would be great. Tabby in the chat correctly points out that we should do this with former Rest His History producers. So we could have Theo, just bring him in here. Our erstwhile producer, Theo Young-Smith, we could bring out his mummified body at Rest His History events and parade it around on a litter. I'm sure everyone would enjoy that. It's lessons from history. Yeah, completely. So the Spanish thought that Cusco was brilliant. 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. But here's the thing. Clearly not. Right. Otherwise, they would report on it. Maybe Quisquis 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. Or maybe it's so outside the sense that the Spanish had of what a city should look like, that it strikes them again like something from a romance. Because that was a theme in Mexico, wasn't it? Maybe, yeah. Or maybe they, I mean, all the Spanish sources, of course, it's always in their interest to pick these things up because they want to attract more people and they want to impress the king. Yeah. So they write to Charles V, the city is the greatest ever seen in the Indies. We can assure your majesty it's so beautiful and has such fine buildings, it'd be remarkable even in Spain. I guess one point worth saying is none of these people have been to Mexico. So they've got no standard of comparison. Because it's not as good as Tenochtitlan, which is bigger, I think, and more impressive. Yeah Or maybe they 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 I think that probably right You know, they were anxious when they arrived, of course, after all the fighting and after Kayamaka and stuff, but they are delighted. The people greet them as liberators. They move into the palaces of the Incas. What happens to their bodies, to the mummies? Presumably still there. I don't know. Well, that's a bit creepy. Oh, and Pizarro, don't forget, Pizarro's got a form. I mean, he spent the night with Attawelpa. Yeah, but he was alive. I mean, would he spend a night with a 200-year-old mummy with George III, would you? I don't know. Do you know what? I probably would, just to say that I'd done it for the experience, wouldn't you? I guess. If somebody said, would you like to spend the night with William the Conqueror? I mean, actually, his body would be dead. Yeah, he just exploded. That'd be horrible. Yeah, no. I mean, who would you choose? I would probably choose, I don't know. George V, my favourite king. George V? We could talk about stamp collecting. He'd be disrespectful. He'd be dead, Dominic. That's the point. Yeah, but he'd be about as interesting a conversation as if he was alive. I think maybe Charles II. Yeah, of course. Just for the bants. Yeah. It would feel less disrespectful. Charles I would be a twist, wouldn't it? Yeah, it would. Would his head be sewn on or just rolling around? Exactly. So they all move into these palaces. What the locals make of this, we do not know. but they don't rebel 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 Cusco 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 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 behavior. 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 Koli Kancha, which is the temple of the sun. hostage for good behavior. And would this stuff be gold? Often it would be gold, of course, yes. hostage for good behavior. 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 Kodokansha, which is the thing we heard about right at the beginning. Now, the wall plates have already been taken to use as Atahualpa's ransom, but the place is still absolutely stuffed with gold. So one of the conquistadors, Diego de Trujillo, wrote, As we entered, Vilac 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 i mean it's interesting isn't it that a lot of the spaniards when they come to these temples describe them as mosques because they're coming from the world of the reconquista and the conquista granada and stuff yeah and so So the kind of despoliation of mosques would be very much their bag. And so they go in. Another conquistador, Juan Ruiz de Arce, writes, Since Atahualpa had ordered that nothing of his fathers should be touched, we found many golden llamas, women, pitchers, jars, and other objects. Are there any golden llamas left, or did they all get melted down? No, I don't think there are. See, I remember, you know, we were talking about the children's book last time, the children's books that had pictures of Atahualpa'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 fiesta 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 v's court to show him and he said wow melt it down they melted everything down because they did preserve the the aztec stuff some of it i mean we do have aztec treasures that's a good question about why why there's a difference and i wonder if part of the difference charles v at this point is fighting remember we mentioned he's fighting two wars simultaneously yeah and the demand for money fighting the French in Italy must just be overwhelming. No time for the arts. No time for the arts. The real star of the temple there's a thing called the Puncao which means the dawn And this was and I 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 artifacts and no one knows what happened to it so there's one bass conquistador who basically went around for years afterwards saying i lost it in a game of dice or something very hand solo or whatever that sounds improbable 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 cuzco that's the exciting thing in a cave or something with the mummy of atavalpa with atavalpa's body yeah who knows now while his men have been looking at all this golden stuff pisaro 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 sapper 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 tasseled oh Oh, yeah. String on his head. So the tassel that goes down the forehead. Yes, exactly. There's loads of dancing. There's loads of fiestas and all this kind of stuff. Have they brought the mummies out? The mummies come out. Great. So Miguel de Estete, 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 favourite detail. So the mummies are brought out, and next to each mummy, there's a little kind of altar with um miguel de estete says on which were his fingernails hair teeth and other things that had been removed after death i mean imagine sitting next to queen victoria's teeth what are the what are the other things fingernails yeah 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 Estete 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. Gorgeous. So just imagine the scene. You there as a Spaniard There a load of mummies being paraded around with their fingernails teeth and other other things and meanwhile people are constantly relieving themselves into these massive overflowing drains of urine so it's like being at a festival i guess yeah yeah it's kind of glastonbury isn't it or the rest is history festival at hampton court this summer 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? Yeah. But I don't think so. I put nothing past the members of the Restless History Club, quite frankly. So the climax of this event, it's 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 it's like a brilliant Restless 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. 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. So it's like those little disclaimers that we read at the end of our Restless History adverts. Exactly. May contain. 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 Estete 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 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 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 beaters, 10,000 beaters, to encircle this huge area of the countryside around Cuzco 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 a bit 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 every animal in sight bludgeoning them to death they're not tossing them not tossing them and the sources say um they killed 11 000 animals with sticks god i wouldn't want to take on a puma with a stick no you wouldn't in fact i wouldn't want to take any of them with a stick no no i think that's fair john hemming says on the on the plus side it was a moment of great cordiality between spaniards and peruvians it's the universal language isn't it? Killing animals. Yeah but bad news Tom this cordiality is not going to last because beyond the gates of Cuzco Kis-Kis 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 well we will find out after the break and we will be meeting the human drum don't go away this episode is brought to you by claude by anthropic now history lives in the contradictions 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? 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. 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. An anthropic just committed to not running adverts in Claude, so your thinking stays yours. An anthropic just committed to not running adverts in Claude, so your thinking stays yours. Try Claude for free at claude.ai slash restishistory. We're leaving today and entering a world of Mickey Mouse waving, princess meeting and greeting, lightsaber clashing, the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror dropping, Banshee flying Space mountain launching Galaxy rewinding Galaxy rewinding Fireworks igniting World of other worlds For whatever you love Infinite worlds await at the most magical place on earth Walt Disney World Resort So good, so good, so good New spring arrivals are at Nordstrom Rack stores now Get ready to save big with up to 60% off Rag and Bone Marc Jacobs, free people and more. How did I not know Rack has Adidas? Because there's always something new. Join the Nordic Club to unlock exclusive discounts, shop new arrivals first and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite Rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you Rack. 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 yeah 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 the you know in the great capital of the incas you know the very center 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 of manco um he must just be thinking this is great everything's going superbly what could possibly go wrong 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 cuzco has been moved north to in Cajamarca, but not all of it. There is a lot more gold in the temples of Cuzco, 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 they say wherever you went you basically found pictures of gold, golden effigies. Pedro Pizarro has a section where he says, we went and found this cave and it was full of women's shoes made of gold. 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 afterward. Yeah, it will. And actually the mad thing about them all falling out, which they do, spoiler alert, they all end up 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 family's reputation, all of this kind of thing. But the lust for more and more just seems to seize them. And the competitiveness and the fear that your gold will be taken away, I suppose, that's at the back of their mind the whole time. There is Christopher a moralist. There is Christopher a moralist. So there's 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. So it's like the lamentations over the beauties of Tenochtitlan, isn't it? Yeah. After that had been destroyed. 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? Are we the baddies here? 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 Cajamarca, 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 Cortes in Mexico. that Cortes 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. So if we think about the map and think about the Inca Empire in thirds because it long It not wide It 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 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 Spaniards are merely a new factor in this war. 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'd sent all the looting parties southwards. 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 Chalcuchima, but two of them are on the loose. So one of them is this guy Quisquis, 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 Kis Kis'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. So bear them in mind. But there is another general up in the north who's a very ruthless man and this is a guy called ruminyawi and he enters this story with some very colorful behavior which we have been trailing extensively so basically after atawalpa died there was a question among the northerners about who would succeed him as the claimant atawalpa had a brother called kilis kacha and he said well i'll do it and it's not clear whether he wants to be emperor himself or regent for atawalpa'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. We'll have a party to celebrate and celebrate your elevation. They have this wake. It like the sort of red wedding or something Rumi gives Kiliscacho and his entourage have some lovely drinks these drinks have been drugged and when they pass out ruminyawis men cut their throats so that the end of them well not quite the end because then ruminyawi literally turns kilis kacha 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. Very coy, these chroniclers, aren't they? 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 into a kettle drum. Goodness. Well, you know, it's like Jan Zizka, the Hussite general, but he had himself turned into a drum after he died. Did he? So the story goes. See, Rumunyawi'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 them. 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, Rumunyawi. 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. Dominic, is there someone else who has heard similar rumours, who we have met in a previous series? 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 the gilet 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 giralda 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 outstakes you will remember that pedro alvarado is a great laugh but you want to stay on the right side of him. So actually he's been roistering around Guatemala 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's been slaughtering Guatemala 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 4000 Guatemalans and the great thing about Pedro is everything he touches turns to dust and disaster even as he arrives people in central america are writing to 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 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 Hemming calls some unnecessary cruelty to the coastal tribes. Oh, don't do that, Pedro. Oh, Pedro, don't do that. Oh, Pedro. Pedro's such a laugh. So, even by Spanish standards, he is so cruel that the other conquistadors later hold a judicial inquiry. I mean, how bad do you have to be? Yeah, for all the other guys, Pizarro, Magro, all these people saying you've crossed the line. So to give you an indication, he starts enslaving women and children in sledge chain gangs. He hangs some village chiefs. He has people burned alive. He has one local chief fed to some dogs. Because he's bought a whole load of war dogs, hasn't he? Yes, he has. I bloody love a dog. A hoon. 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. But this is not going to end well for the porters or indeed for anybody else associated with Pedro de Alvarado's expedition. And the other Spaniards, the other conquistador leaders, when Alvarado turns up, it's a bloody massacre, right? I mean, you kind of go, oh, no. Yeah, they're gutted. Not Alvarado. He's 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 sort of expeditions to try to beat Alvarado to the gold of Quito so one of them goes from the coast and it about 200 men under one of pizarro captains a guy called sebastian de ben alc who is from andalusia the chronicler thiefer de leon said he was a man of little knowledge poor origin and a low intellect which doesn't really uh 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 Magro, right? You've already been cheated out of a load of gold once. 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. Oh, dear. 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. Then Alcázar 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 Cañari. The Cañari had always hated the Incas. Atahualpa had been really cruel to them. They basically can't wait to have a crack at Quito. They can't stand Quito. What about the Huanca? The Huanca are out of the picture now, Tom. They're not part of it? No, they're not part of it. So they advance towards Quito, and they get to the shadow of Mount Chimborazo. That is so fantasy story, isn't it? And at the hamlet of Teocajas, in the shadow of this mountain, this bloke, Ruminyawi, is waiting for them. With his drum. With his huge drum and his massive army. Do you know, I reckon that Alvarado would, I mean, he'd find that a bloody good laugh. With a drum? Yeah. Yeah, he'd turn loads of people in. He'd have an old orchestra of people. Trombones. what would be the most amusing instrument that you could make somebody into an oba you'd be gutted if they said you you're going to end up as a triangle you really would 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 Teocas. Some people call it the Battle of Mount Chimborazo. They can't agree. It's a massive battle that no one knows anything about. So the Spanish chronicler Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo claimed that there were 50 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 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 the rings yeah battle of the paleno field charge by the spanish cavalry they're all shouting santiago and I quote, or spirit. So it's this great sort of Tolkien-esque clash. And Ruminiyawi'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 Keatons. They left their campfires burning, but they slipped away in the darkness. And Ruminyawa's men didn't realize until it was too late. Did they just leave their porters behind? I think they must have left some of them, I guess. But what this means is that basically they are able to get into Quito. So Ben Al-Katha and his men are able to basically skirt Ruminyawa's army and get into Quito. But when they get there, they're gutted to find that Ruminyawa has already taken sort of Russia 1812 style action. Rumiñahui has gutted Quito. He'd taken all the treasure. He's taken Atahualpa'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 behavior by rumenari rumenari 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 and they will rape you if you don't and the virgin said no we don't want to so rumenari's men killed them all do you know if rumenari told me to do something i would do it i'm not gonna mess around i'm gonna go yes fine whatever please don turn me into a drum so then the spanish disgraced themselves massively they couldn find the treasure they sort of raid around the local countryside looking for the treasure They can 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. God, that is stern words. 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 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 has absolutely disgraced himself. Even by his previous standards. 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 in a volcanic eruption and covered with ash. They're covered with ash. He says, come on, 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 snow drifts covered with snow. 85 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 Guatemalans and Alvarado's native porters and a huge mob of female camp followers literally freeze to death as well. It's classic Alvarado. 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 what's going on there 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 deal he will sell all his ships and gear to almagro for a hundred thousand gold pieces deal he will sell all his ships and gear to almagro for a hundred thousand gold pieces all his men that he's come have gone with him the ones who are still left will stay in peru work for the other spanish generals but he himself alvarado agrees that he will leave peru and never come back that is a shame 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 and had a freak accident when a horse sat on him, didn't he? Yeah, a horse fell on him. He had a very impressive wife. Doña Luisa. The governor of Guatemala. Yeah. And I think she's, in the entire history of the Spanish Empire in the Americas, she was the only female governor. 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 capital of Guatemala I've often thought I'd like to go and see his grave Tabby said she went and saw his she went and saw his portrait in Seville when she went to Seville good on Tabby so that leaves two of the Spanish generals Almagro and Benalcázar to deal with the northern warlords so first of all Quisquis Quisquis has been trudging all the way up from Cusco with his colossal llamas and does he know what's waiting for him 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 kis kis and they say to him you know look general go and ask the spanish for peace quote they are invincible and kis kis says you cowards i would rather starve in the wilds than bend the knee and surrender my country he reminds me of charles de gaulle and is he similarly successful does he emerge as the leader of a proud and independent Incan state? No. But when he says that, his officers take out their clubs and they bludgeon him to death So that the end of him John Hemming says It was a tragic end for one of the Empire finest generals who passionately resented the menace and humiliation of the conquest So, sorry for him. He didn't turn anyone into a musical instrument. He led his men with great valour. He wouldn't surrender, and he ended up on the wrong side of a club, and that's sad. Okay, but the guy, I mean, kettle drum guy, he's still very much on the scene, isn't he? 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 Rumunyawi is resting by a mountain lake. Quote, when I reached the lake, the Lord Rumunyawi 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 Rumunyawi is taken under guard back to Quito where Sebastian de Belalcázar 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 got gold? What's the point of him? I'd like to think he's still got his drum. Surely they allow him to keep... Because Atahualpa 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 Rumiñahui. I think they burn him as well. And the conquest of the north is complete. It's rapid, isn't it? Yeah. It's what, a year? Yeah. To conquer the whole thing and beat two armies? Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of it, I think, not because the Spanish overpowered people in battle, but they just, it's about morale. The Quitans just sort of lost heart. They thought they can never beat these blokes with their horses. Also, I guess a key point, they've got tribal allies. the canary people i mentioned you mentioned the great enthusiasm the huancas yes they've got various such people what did we say in the aztec series diversity is is not their strength so now you might think this is the end of the story but you would be wrong because back in cuzco manco has been surveying all this and thinking this is not quite what i thought it would be he's slightly riding a crocodile here 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 refounded Cuzco 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? Yes. 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 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. 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. Well, I think we think it's bad. They didn't think it was bad. They thought it was tremendous. Yeah, I know. 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 you give me gold and silver. And Pizarro basically has to threaten to execute this guy to force him to release the high priest. It would still have been possible, surely, for the people of Cusco, the native people, to rise up and wipe these people out. Yeah, but at this point, Manco, and therefore the elite, are on their side. On their side. Because, of course, at this point, they are still using the Spaniards in their own minds to conquer the north. 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. 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 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. 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 land to Spaniards entire villages thousands of laborers 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 was no private enterprise there was basically enforced labor you would be given thousands of so-called indians who are obliged to deliver regular tribute to you so this is the the encomienda setup that the spanish have been practicing in the new world since the very beginning yes especially in mexico and which is so open to abuse 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 bizarro bigger problem for manco though if young manco the young emperor is is watching this in his palace he is thinking what's happening 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 They're searching for gold. 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. And secondly, the feud between the Pizarro brothers and Diego de Almagro reaches boiling point. And what will we 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 so still so much to come um 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. Bye-bye. Hi guys It Katty Kay and Anthony Scaramucci here from the Rest Is Politics US We have just recorded a four series that all about Donald Trump becoming the global phenomenon we know him as today. You know, Katty, I knew Donald Trump since 2005. So in this series, we rewind the clock right back and dig into the people, the events, and the scandals that built him. Yeah, we're going to take you from his days in military school, what he learned there, how he actually weirdly thrived there, to his father's ties to the Ku Klux Klan, his days as a business mogul in New York and how that really shaped his worldview and his way of doing business. And we're going to explore parts of the Trump story that you might never have even heard of. Not to mention, Katty, the nefarious trickster, Roy Cohn. Where's my Roy Cohn? I heard him say that so many times. I mean, I was only there for 11 days, Katty. Where's my Roy Cohn? Well, let me tell you something. If you want to know who Roy Cohn was, you're going to tune into this series. With all the headlines that come out of Trump world every single day, we just felt there'd never really been a more important time to try to understand the America that created Donald Trump. To listen to episode one of Becoming Trump, head over to The Rest Is Politics US, wherever you get your podcasts.