543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God

0:10I am the great traitor. There must be no other. Anyone who even thinks about deserting this mission will be cut up into 98 pieces. Whoever takes one grain of corn or one drop of water more than his ration will be locked up for 155 years. If I, Agiray, want the birds to drop dead from the trees, then the birds will drop dead from the trees. I am the wrath of God. The earth I pass will see me and tremble. Whoever follows me on the river will win untold riches. We will control all of New Spain, and we will stage history as others stage plays. I, the wrath of God, will marry my own daughter, and with her found the purest dynasty ever known to man.

1:16Together we will rule the whole of this continent. I am the wrath the wrath of God so that was Klaus Kinski the great German actor as Lope de Aguirre in the film Aguirre the wrath of God which was made in 1972 directed by Funster Werner Herzog and loosely based on I mean one of the most remarkable episodes of European exploration in history. A 16th century Spanish band of conquistadors venturing into the Amazon rainforest in search of El Dorado, and it doesn't end well. And it's one of the maddest films ever made, partly because, of course, the conquistadors speak in German, and we know that they would have spoken in English.

2:14Obviously. But also, Dominic, I guess because it ranks alongside Francis Ford's Coppola's attempt to finish Apocalypse Now as a kind of cinematic folly de grandeur, doesn't it? It does indeed. Because they go into the jungle and it's all terrible and Herzog tries to kill Kinski. Kinski's going mad. He's got his great bulging eyeballs. Yeah. The making of the film is carnage. It is. And it's holding a mirror up to the carnage of the original 16th century expedition. Exactly. It's very like Apocalypse Now in that sense. So they shot it in the early 70s, as you say. They shot it on location in the Peruvian Amazon and Herzog at one point threatened to shoot Kinski, his lead actor, and then turn the gun on himself.

2:55And that's sort of been reported as he was basically forcing Kinski to film scenes at gunpoint, which I think is a slight exaggeration. But the filmy of it was demented. But that actually, of course, reflected the subject matter, which is, as you say, this expedition. It's very, very Heart of Darkness, actually. The 16th century expedition. It's about European colonizers, colonialists, conquistadors. in Heart of Darkness, which we did a podcast on a few weeks ago, you know, they go up the Congo. Joseph Conrad, his narrator, Marlow, goes up the Congo. He's in search of this guy, Kurtz, who's lost his mind.

3:28Well, in this story, it's the people who are going up the river who lose their minds, and particularly this bloke, Aguirre, who I think it's fair to say is one of the strangest and most unsettling characters we've ever done on this podcast. It's really interesting. The books about him are often written by, some of them are by professional historians but one of the best for example is by a guy called robert silverberg who's actually a science fiction writer yeah he did so all those books with kind of giant spaceships yeah cover and he wrote an absolutely brilliant book called the golden dream a history of quests for el dorado like very scrupulously researched very serious book and he describes aguirre in this book he says he's the single most villainous figure in the annals of the spanish conquest which is you know it's quite a high bar to clear yes it is and then there's the great historian of the amazon john hemming who wrote a brilliant book about the fall of the incas and he says of aguirre simply cruel psychopathic a man of unmitigated evil yeah so people are going to enjoy this yeah yeah it's always good to have a character like that on the podcast i mean it is very heart of darkness so very reminiscent of the series we just did on the congo but we've also have just done an episode on dr john d elizabeth first's kind of great magus yeah and his great ambition is to track down secrets that will unleash untold wealth right and the whole eldorado quest yes sense that there is a golden ruler a golden city lost somewhere in the jungle and that if only you can find it then you will be unspeakably rich this also is part of the agirai story so it's a kind of fusion of the two isn't it it's absolutely part of the aguirre story and yet the mad thing about it is there's pretty much only one person in this story who thinks that el dorado is a complete myth and a nonsense and that's aguirre yeah yeah there's an argument possibly he's the only sane man on the expedition isn't there some historian who says that he's the only man in history to look for el dorado who didn't want to find it exactly exactly well we'll come to that in fact he tries to dissuade other people from trying to find it so let's give everybody a bit of context because there'll be a lot of people who are not familiar with this story at all so we're in the Spanish Empire in the late 1550s so that means the Aztecs and the Incas have been conquered a generation ago loads of silver is flowing back to Europe from Mexico and Peru but if in your mind you're thinking okay well South America has been conquered by Spain the story is over that's not right at all Spanish rule is very fragile and it's really just confined to the coasts and Spain itself although it's very rich and powerful it's in a kind of world of trouble.

5:59So the Emperor Charles V abdicated in 1556, and Spain and its empire passed to his son Philip II. He appears to be very rich and powerful, but he inherits a great mess. There's huge inflation, thanks to all of his silver. Spain has been fighting all these wars in Italy and the Holy Roman Empire. He has to default on Spain's loans straight away. He's got no money. He's struggling to raise taxes in Spain itself. And the obvious place to look is the New World. Let's get more gold and silver from the new world but the problem is that his authority and this is going to be really important to explain the political context to this story his royal authority is very weak in the spanish colonies so in peru for example you know the incas have as it were fallen but there are still only about 4 000 european spaniards in peru and lima and whatnot and they are fighting these endless civil wars and there are little rebellions and feuds and things and in 1556 a new viceroy called the marquis of caniette arrived in lima from spain and dominic when he arrives in lima does he find the lilting of a spanish guitar he doesn't actually tom he hears the sound of screams and chaos because law and order have slightly broken down in lima this is not the world of pannington bear it's this it's a much darker world the place is in chaos there are unemployed soldiers and ruffians everywhere total sort of feuds and vendettas and he has to try to sort this out you know he wants to find money to impress philip ii and you can see why this scenario would appeal to a science fiction writer yeah it's a kind of staple isn't it the new colony on a distant planet yeah full of gun runners and smugglers and desperados that's exactly what it is all i think we should assume that almost everybody in this story who we mentioned at this point almost has an enormous scar running from their eyebrow right down to their chin or something a weapon with a personal nickname exactly yeah gut splitter yeah the widow weeper or something of that kind anyway at about this point when the marcus of caneta arrives in lima an amazonian indian chieftain arrives in peru from the east and it's very like the sort of barbarians on the periphery of the roman empire there are all kinds of movements of people who are pushing other people because of the arrival of the europeans so it's caused kind of chaos among the tribes and this bloke is taken the leader of this tribe is taken to see the spanish authorities and he says we've traveled a long way we've traveled along the amazon and i have seen lands rich in gold and the marcus of kenyete's eye you know he raises his eyebrows this yeah he's oh brilliant and this tallies with two things that people in the two great colonial cities of the western side of the continent which are lima and quito now in ecuador this tallies with two things that they believe.

8:45First of all, 10 years or so earlier, a man called Francisco de Oriana had led one of the great expeditions in all history, the first European expedition on the whole length of the Amazon. And he had traveled for 4 ,000 miles. And he, Oriana, reported that he had seen very large, very rich settlements, people who lived in towns, people who wore fine woven clothes with great pottery and loads and loads of silver and for centuries people have assumed since then that this was all nonsense and just a fable but actually now the trend among historians of amazonia is to say actually amazonia probably was more built up than we think and there were more people there and they were more sophisticated and they were all killed in the long run a lot of them by disease and things so they've been discounted ever since but archaeologists now think there's a lot of truth in this.

9:37And then the second thing is that in Lima and Quito, people have been swapping stories about this place called El Dorado. And this seems to have originated as a very garbled and exaggerated and confused report of what the Spanish were doing on the other side of the continent in Colombia, where they were conquering a people called the Muisca. And these Muisca were quite rich. And this basically became embellished and garbled into a story of a land so rich that the king could sort of paint himself in gold dust, throw a load of gold into the lake every year in a religious ritual, and there's gold everywhere and there's a lake full of gold and all of this kind of business.

10:14Because El Dorado is literally the golden man, isn't it? The golden one. Exactly. So the Marcus de Canieta, anyway, he arrives in Lima, and there's all of these different rumours hanging around, all the stuff out there in the Amazon, who knows? And his great brainwave is, and it's really smart, I'll get rid of all these ne 'er-do-wells with their scars by saying to them, lads, why don't you go off on a massive expedition to go and find El Dorado? Because if they do find it, he'll be the man who saved Spain's finances. He can send all the gold back to Philip II, and that's great. If they don't find it, and they'll die.

10:45Brilliant. Brilliant. He's rid of them. It's win-win. So to command the expedition, he appoints a fellow called Pedro de Esua, who is a knight from Navarre, from Pamplona. Everyone says he's very brave, he's very gallant, he's very headstrong. He's actually not without experience. He has been serving in New Granada, which is Colombia, for about 10 years. He's already gone on some El Dorado expeditions. No joy, really. But he's not a complete idiot. So he is appointed to lead the expedition. He is told, when you conquer the province of Amagua and Dorado, you will rule it as governor. And he thinks, well, brilliant.

11:21Because this is, of course, what conquistadors want. They want a slice of territory, and they want an official appointment so that they can make money out of it. That's what all this is about. That's what Cortez, Pizarro, all of these people. So Asua, over the next year or so, he gathers his team. He gets a very, very large expedition by the standards of the day, about 400 Spaniards and thousands of Peruvian Indians, native Peruvians, I suppose people might call them now. And it's the largest European force for the next two centuries to enter Amazonia. I have to say most of the people on this expedition are not people with whom one would choose to go on holiday.

11:55They're kind of gangsters, mercenaries, ex-cons. They're hard men, I think it's fair to say, Tom. And they start building all these rafts and brigantines on the edge of Amazonia that they will use to go into the kind of river network. It's kind of a spaghetti western only in a jungle. Exactly. It's a spaghetti western. So we're going to be doing some episodes about Harold Hardrager going into the lands of the Rus. And I think there's a slight Viking element to this, kind of slightly terrifying men who would be no strangers to a facial tattoo. yeah kind of venturing in search of gold and hopefully some slaughter a lot of stubble though exactly yeah this is a slightly sweatier version i think it's probably fair to say anyway in the summer of 1560 before he sets off a sewer gets a letter from a friend and the friend says to him look you're making two dreadful mistakes mistake number one you are taking your mistress what donna iniesta atienza please tell me she is incredibly ugly please tell me she's not absolutely gorgeous tom so gallant well but it's for her own good and for the good of the expedition so no she's said to be the most beautiful woman in all of peru that is mad disastrous 400 desperados and one woman yeah so she's a young widow she's probably mixed race and mestizo there are like four or five eyewitness accounts written after the event on this issue they're frustratingly inconsistent so some say she's a woman of unimpeachable honor others say she's a little bit free with her affections it's hard to say so it's hard to know the truth there tom i think you listeners just make up their own minds anyway a sewers mate says you are mad to take her with you nothing good will come of it and i quote greater evils will follow than you can possibly suppose and i have a sense they're not wrong yes well especially as the friend also says you're not just taking quite bad men some of the men you're taking are unbelievably bad men And he says the worst is a man called Lope de Aguirre.

13:50So we know from a letter that Aguirre later wrote to Philip II, which we shall come on to. Aguirre had been born in 1510 in the Basque country. He'd come to Peru in his early 20s. He'd worked as a horsebreaker and a general enforcer. That's a terrifying CV, isn't it? And there's a wonderful account based on other accounts by a Franciscan monk called Fray Simon. And Simon said of Aguirre, he was of short stature and sparely made, ill-featured the face small and lean beard black the eyes like a hawk and when he looked he fixed his eyes sternly particularly when angry so he's generally a slightly unsettling presence yeah all the chroniclers agree that he talks a lot he's very roughly spoken he's incredibly bad-tempered and he's incredibly vengeful and when you think this is in the context of the conquest of south America yeah and people are saying now this bloke you know he's crossed the line that's very disturbing so he's always been you know kicked out of towns he really is a spaghetti western character and as Fray Simon says he has a limp which I always think is an unsettling sign in the conquistador because he's been shot in the leg Fray Simon says he was driven from one province to another and was known as Aguirre el loco the madman right so he's signed up to this expedition and the other thing is he's brought with him his daughter so his daughter he had a daughter with an Indian woman and his daughter is called Elvira and how old is she 13 13 years old oh so he's taking her out of school well she always travels with him and apparently he is completely devoted to her like this is his real soft spot right you know he takes Elvira very seriously but um I mean Should anyone listening think you've taken their children out of school?

15:36Don't. Just don't do it. You have to pay a fine, don't you, in England? This is a salutary warning, I think, of what could happen, what could go wrong. Certainly don't go to the Amazon with a group of ne 'er-do-wells. No. Pedro de Osuera, the commander of the expedition, completely ignores this letter, which is madness. And on the 26th of September 1560, he sets off with his expedition into the tributaries of the Amazon. And right from the start, surprise, surprise, things start to go wrong. They've built all these ships, but there are massive leaks on them, and he has to leave all but one of them behind.

16:05What, so he's setting off, and he's got all these ships built, and then he can't take any of them, except for one? He can take one, a brigantine, and then loads of rafts. Why doesn't he wait to fix them? Because it takes ages. And, you know, because the people are getting very impatient. And, to be honest, I've had to cut out already a lot of feuding. Okay. There's been a lot of feuding already. I'm getting a really bad feeling about this. Right. So, they all cram into these rafts, But a sewer insists on keeping one cabin just for himself and Doña Inés, and that does not go down well with the other people on the expedition.

16:35As Fray Simon says, the people were in such a state of ill humour that they almost mutinied. And this is before they've left. This is before they've left. Anyway, they set off. After a few weeks, they reach a river called the Maragnon, which is the main source of the Amazon. So that runs from the Andes, sort of down and eastwards, deep into the jungle. So if they follow it, they will be swept along ultimately towards... The Atlantic. Yes, they're going from west to east. Yeah, from left to right. Exactly. I mean, it's a heck of a way. It's 4000 miles. Yeah, they're not intending to go to the Atlantic by any means.

17:07They think they'll go into Amazonia, and there'll be a sort of Aztec style kingdom. Yeah. And they can seize its gold, make themselves the masters of it, then go back to Peru and say, brilliant, we've done it, you know, so they're not particularly worried about how they're going to go to get back coming up river against the current. They have not thought this through. I think it's fair to say because we shall see quite quickly they start to some of them say how are we getting back yeah i think for some of them that probably is always an option that they may have to continue all the way and then loop around the top of south america and we shall return to this idea anyway after a while they find their first native villages fray simon reports that you know the people were very impressive they had woven cloth sort of shirts and things so they had you know this is not a totally unsophisticated civilization by any means, but they don't find any gold.

17:55And the Spaniards become increasingly restless. Surprise, surprise. As the weeks go by and they go deeper and deeper into the jungle, there's a lot of muttering that Asua is more interested in dallying with Doña Inés than finding gold. There's no hint of gold. What's going on? Clearly, Asua finds it very difficult to impose his authority on all these hundreds of kind of ex-cons. What is the structure of control? Does it just depend on his charisma? Yeah, and he has a series of tenants that he employs who are constantly bickering and feuding among themselves. I mean, these are people who, it's not a military expedition.

18:30These are not people who are used to following orders. These are people who are used to being, they're mercenaries, they're kind of adventurers. I don't want to speak out of turn, Tom. I feel that you would be very uncomfortable in this environment. I wouldn't like it at all. No. I'd stand on the margins wringing my hands i mean i've been on tour with you when there was just four of us yeah and i just can't see you enjoying this atmosphere no the sweating the lack of shaving if nothing else because you're always a clean shaven man i am anyway they proceed down the river fray simon says of us he's too merciful and at times his acts savored of weakness but then he does that classic thing that quite weak leaders do which is from time to time he kind of lashes out and inflicts severe punishments on people randomly and so people say well you don't know where you stand with him you know he's not consistent so they're not happy they capture an indian girl at one point and they say these people that ariana met who were called the amagwa you know all those years ago when he went down the amazon where are they and she says well i've never heard of these people and they realize with a sense of horror we could be hundreds of miles from where these people live if eldorado exists he could be 2 000 miles away because i suppose in in a jungle where you have no idea what the landmarks are distance just becomes an abstraction and no proper map yeah no sense of anything really but just the sort of the green vastness and the sound of the sound of snakes slithering in the undergrowth and strange monkeys screaming in the night you know that's basically what's snoring exactly now after a while this other brigantine their ship rights were clearly massively incompetent because this other brigantine springs a leak and they have to move everything out of there onto these rafts so the german film version bears very little resemblance to reality but the one thing it does have is a lot of raft action and that is true to life because they are on these rafts starts pouring rain to in the rainy season that by christmas 1560 it's the rainy season it's constantly raining they've got no shelter they're soaked they've run out of food they're really miserable and they are totally and utterly lost and this is when aguirre really enters the story he and one of his mates who's a man called sal duendo are going around and muttering to the others first of all aguirre says this business about el dorado is clearly absolute total tosh like this is just a stupid children's story we should go back to peru and just start rampaging through peru and steal the gold of peru if we really want gold that badly and secondly he says a sewer is a terrible leader he spends all his time with his mistress doña inez who's basically the real mistress of the expedition he is selfish and i quote an enemy of giving away and a friend to receiving which i quite like as an expression and he is going to force us to stay in the jungle until we're gray-haired old men and you know if we don't act we're going to get deeper and deeper and we're going to be just completely lost and we'll all die i mean he he's got a point with both hasn't he i mean he's not wrong there agira is a madman in many ways and we shall see he does behave unbelievably badly even by rest his history standards but in this he's not actually wrong yeah so when he goes around saying this people say well who's going to be in charge and agir to his credit he doesn't say myself he says there's a young nobleman who's traveling with us called don fernando de guzman his birth and merits are worthy of greater honors and he says to guzman he goes to guzman he says to him look if we get rid of Ursua and you take over the leadership of the expedition.

21:57Philip II may well initially be annoyed, but when he hears the circumstances, he would consider it a good service and he will specially reward you. And he says to Don Fernando at this point, look, we won't kill Ursua. We'll just leave him by the side of the bank or something. I mean, by the way, I mean, that would be effectively to kill him, I imagine. I mean, it's not like he's going to make a new life for himself in the jungle. Anyway, Don Fernando, as I think you can expect with the man who goes around calling himself don fernando he's a very vain man right and he is and i quote swelled up by the wind of ambition he gave thanks for what they offered him and assented to all their projects there was something in the air that night there was so bright alan partridge's son is called fernando yeah i imagine these people as being very similar right so don fernando says right i'm in okay let's get this plot started and at that point aguirre says yeah there's one slight change actually we probably will kill a sewer after all and don fernando is shocked by this but he's in too deep he's implicated in the plot so he can't back out but i mean it's ridiculous to be squeamish as you said because to just dump him on the side of the river i mean it's a death sentence anyway probably more merciful to kill him that would be my attitude i would have hardened up by this point you and i are completely on the same page on this so on new year's day 1561 they're camped in this village by the side of the river a sewer has sent some of his key lieutenants to scout ahead and that gives his opponents the perfect opportunity and as darkness falls a group of Aguirre's men gather outside a sewer's hut and they find him lying in his hammock talking to a page boy and he says to them sort of in a friendly but suspicious way caballeros what seek ye here at this hour and they kind of i imagine there's a lot of cackling they draw their they draw their knives and swords plunge them in and that is the end of pedro de suya he is dead and then they start shouting it's interesting what they shout actually they start liberty liberty long live the king the tyrant is dead so at this point they're trying to dress it up yeah as an act of loyalty to philip the second they've had a bad leader they've got rid and the king will be very happy six semper tyrannous exactly the camp is in total uproar because people can hear the shouting screaming they butcher another of us here's lieutenants who's a man called vargas who's come out in his cotton armor so this is one thing the german film gets wrong they're all wearing enormous metal armor in the german film but in reality they'd have worn sort of aztec or inca style cotton padded quilted armor but the metal makes them look sweatier i mean it's a good for good for the visuals i'm wearing a quilt in a film just looks ridiculous that's not intimidating no no no so then of course with staggering predictability they immediately break into the wine stores they all drink this wine get absolutely wasted they round up us you as other mates they kill them as well they don't kill doña ignez i was going to ask about her what's her fate so she's just hanging around in her own hut she's not mentioned at this point but we know she's mentioned later on so she's just presumably quaking in her heart very anxious i mean these don't seem the kind of guys who would necessarily be 100 chivalrous towards the mistress of someone they've just killed i have to tell the listeners if they've already formed a great attachment to her as a character the second half will make will make challenging listening so they then assemble the next day with massive hangovers and don fernando is the new leader and he says i've decided we'll continue the search for el dorado because when we find all this gold the king will forgive the murders and he will give us handsome rewards so we should draw up a document explaining the spanish are so legalistic aren't they they did this all the time in the conquest of mexico remember when we did that series they're always drawing up requirements and reading out legal documents to people who don't understand them and things so i've got a question which is this is a highly dangerous expedition everyone knows that there's disease and wild animals and people with blow pipes and all that kind of stuff why would they ever confess to having murdered this guy why don't they just say oh he died of you know some disease or something i mean it just seems a bit odd there's a lot of them that remember they were trouble with 400 people i suppose they think the news will come out i suppose yes i suppose and because some of the people there were not parted to the plot and perhaps a little bit displeased about it so they think it's better to have an excuse so they draw up this legalistic document don fernando signs first and then aguirre steps up and he signs his name as follows he writes lope de aguirre the traitor wow and there's great gasps and shock and aguirre laughs and how does he laugh dominic i imagine a demonic laugh at this point so i'll do a variety of laughs later on there'll be a lot of opportunities put it that way that was terrifying he says uh you have killed the king's governor one who represented his royal person clothed with royal powers we have all been traitors we have all been a party to this mutiny i mean again he's not wrong is he no see again there is an alternative explanation which is the only sane person in a world of fools i mean there is a kind of shakespearean quality to this where it's the villain who speaks the truth like kind of richard iii or iago or whoever yeah well because of what he says next he then says to the assemble company this business about el dorado is demented even if we found it there is no way philip ii would allow us to keep it he would send in viceroys and governors and bureaucrats it's madness to be wasting our time on this we should go back to peru there's a load of treasure there let's kill everybody in peru and take the treasure that's just a much more sensible way of proceeding there's a huge argument the council breaks up and this issue is unresolved.

27:28So they set off downstream again, deeper and deeper into the Amazon. Now, by this point, Aguirre has clearly realised what perhaps some of the others have not yet woken up to. There is no way, actually, that they're going to be able to get back upstream. Because by now the current is getting stronger and stronger. It's really strong. You know, the Amazon, these are big rivers. There is no way with these terrible rafts that they're going to be able to go back the other way. You know, the more I hear about him... The more you like him. The more I like him and the more I think I would have rallied behind him.

27:58Well, we'll see if you can maintain that position in the second half. I'm aware that it doesn't end well. So they now discover they've got massive holes in their rafts. They have to stop by the side of the river and build new ships. That takes them three months. I mean, day after day, hammering and stuff, you know, cutting down trees to make nails and planks and things. They've got no food. They're living off wild fruit. And I have to say their own horses because they had horses on these rafts. So they're now eating them. And Aguirre actually is quite pleased about this because he thinks if we eat all our animals, there's no way we can sort of settle down or be tempted to capture towns and, you know, all this stuff.

28:40We'll just have to keep going all the way to the Atlantic and get out of here, which is basically what I want to do. And I think it's about this point that the mood really, really starts to darken. What do you mean starts to darken? Yeah, because that was all prelude. That was all quite jolly. Because previously, when they'd got on reasonably well with the native population, they had done a bit of trading. Of course, there'd been a bit of violence, but nothing completely off the scale. Now, there's a lot of fighting. And basically, the word spreads, the Spaniards are bad guys. And whenever they go out to look for food, they're often ambushed by Indians.

29:12There's also a huge row, one of endless huge rows inside the camp. Some of Don Fernando's friends say, look, you actually need to get rid of Aguirre. But he doesn't have the guts. He demotes him as second in command. And the problem is, Aguirre, as we've established, is a very vengeful man. So Aguirre just notes this slight. He hides his fury and resentment. But he's determined one day that he will get his revenge. So we come to March 1561. Don Fernando and Aguirre call another meeting. You can sense that the mood is getting very paranoid. They begin by demanding that every man pledge his loyalty to Don Fernando by God and the Virgin.

29:49And then Aguirre addresses the men and he says, look, we've been talking, the plan has changed. We are going to forget about El Dorado now. We are going to seize the wealth of Peru and we will crown Don Fernando Guzman, our general, by the grace of God, Lord and Prince of Peru, the Maine and Chile, to whom by right these kingdoms belong. Wow, there's a twist. He says, we forswear our allegiance to the king of Spain. And Aguirre makes this huge pronouncement. He says, from this day forward, I pledge myself to my prince, king and natural lord, Don Fernando. And I swear and promise to be his faithful vassal and to die in his defense.

30:26So that's a death sentence, isn't it? And then he turns to Don Fernando. He bows. And in front of everybody, he kisses his hand as the new prince of Peru. And Tom, I hate to tell you, but with that traitor's kiss, the real nightmare begins. Brilliant, Dominic. OK, so it's been an absolute pleasure jaunt up until now. But in the second half, we will find out how, as Dominic just said, the nightmare begins.

30:56Hello, welcome back to The Rest is History. we are with Aguirre the wrath of god the traitor el loco the madman the epithets are piling up and dominic none of them are good and none of them looking good for don fernando who is in nominal charge has just been proclaimed by aguirre basically lord of the whole of south america so he must be feeling pretty pleased but i'm guessing tonight just something telling me he's not going to be around for long guess what the clock is ticking for don fernando i think it's right to say it's on so he's the prince of peru but they're lost in the middle of the jungle so it's fair to say his title is purely nominal at this point and aguirre says look this is how we're going to get out i've got my plan we'll finish building these brigantines these ships when they're ready we will sail all the way down the amazon another 2 000 miles or whatever to the atlantic dead easy then we will head to an island called margarita which is off the coast of venezuela there there's a Spanish base.

31:51We will take that base. We'll get supplies. We'll recruit people there. Then he says, we'll sail up to Panama. We'll seize the capital. We'll kill all the royal officials. We'll take control of the Spanish fleet based in Panama. We will rally the colonists of Central America, and we will cross the Isthmus of Panama and launch a seaborne invasion of Peru and seize the gold of Peru. Now, if you were standing in the middle of the jungle, soaked with rain, You've only eaten kind of overripe fruit for the past month and a horse. And Dominic, I'm imagining a lot of leeches. Yeah, loads of leeches. When someone outlined this plan to you, which involves a lot of travel, a lot of capturing of implausible capturing of fleets, crossing of isthmuses and multiple South American countries.

32:40You might say, I find this an implausible. You might equally say, well, what's the alternative? Yeah, well, that's what they say. They say, fine, let's give it a go. Why not? What's the worst that could happen? I think it's fair to say they haven't really thought that through because the worst that can happen is probably a lot worse than they're imagining. Well, I'm not sure about that, actually. I mean, being proactive is better than just sitting there and being eaten by leeches and dying in the middle of nowhere. That's true. I mean, at least to try. And as we'll see, maybe they had a few laughs along the way.

33:08So they set off. They go into the river network again of Amazonia. Eventually they built the ships. We're in April 1561. one this is the point at which robert silverberg says in his book in all the records of south american conquest aguirre stands out as the only man who ever went to great lengths to avoid finding el dorado because whenever they see a tribute an interesting looking tributary he says don't even look at it like keep going he's got his plan he doesn't want anything to interfere with it again he's right of course he is they don't want to get lost in this maze of rivers it's a terrible sort of labyrinth sort of riverine labyrinth they're eating fish they're living off turtles and manatees That's terrible.

33:45Manatees are endangered. Perhaps this is why. El loco. They're all incredibly emaciated. They're all going a bit mad. After a few weeks, Don Fernando, who's still hanging around, some of his friends say to him, this is mad. I mean, the El Dorado thing was pretty mad. But this idea about looping around and conquering Peru is absolutely bonkers. It's never going to work. Let's get rid of Aguirre. But they delay too long. They talk about it, but they don't do it. They have a sort of complicated plan. They're going to invite him aboard a ship and stab him and all this. And in the meantime, word leaks out.

34:16And so Aguirre finds out about it and he decides he will strike first. So the first person that he gets rid of is his friend, Senor Salduendo, who had been his ally earlier on. He's started sleeping with Doña Inés and Aguirre finds that disgraceful. And he denounces his former friend as a traitor. He sends his men to overpower him and to butcher him with knives, which they do. He says, actually, Doña Inés is a massive drain on this expedition and a distraction. She's got to go. And he sends two of his henchmen, who are called Carrion and Yomoso. Yomoso will be reappearing in the story in a colourful manner.

34:53These two guys turn up with daggers to kill Doña Inés. And the various chroniclers and eyewitness accounts really go to town on this. They're said to have stabbed her so ferociously that she drowned in her own blood. One account says they took an unnatural delight in mangling what had once been so beautiful. Another, even the most hardened men in the camp at the sight of the mangled, that word again, the mangled victim, were broken hearted. For this was the cruelest act that had ever been perpetrated. But Aguirre, he doesn't mind. He thinks it's great. I mean, it's what he wanted. It's what he ordered.

35:26So that's not true. Because he's clearly the most hardened man in the camp. And he doesn't care. Yeah, that's true, actually. You're quite right. And you've pointed out a terrible discrepancy in the sources. I have. oh tom this is the kind of forensic detail that marks us out as a great history podcast so don fernando has been sort of watching all this impotently and is horrified but as our sources say he now has just become a quivering jelly of a man he became fearful and changed in appearance but he didn't protect his person with more care nor take a gear his life nor seek to rally more friends for he had become so timid and listless that for care of his own life he took but little note it seemed that he carried death in his eyes so the end comes for him a few days later they're camped on an island in the middle of the river aguirre's men burst into his hut they kill his chaplain first stabbed him so ferociously that the sword pinned him to the mattress then they go by don fernando's kind of hammock and he wakes and aguirre said to him very gently don't be alarmed your excellency and then they killed all don fernando's friends while he was just sort lying there in his hammock looking mournful and then they shot don fernando with their arquebuses and hacked him to pieces with their swords and threw him in the river so that's the end of him so he never becomes king of peru he never became king of peru at all he just just floated down the amazon in bits it's a warning never to have dreams above your station that's what it is that's exactly what it is you should always be kept in check accept your lot don't aim high don't follow your dream so the next morning everybody wakes up and aguirre addresses the whole camp and he says look I did this for the safety of the army, because if Don Fernando had been allowed to live, we'd all have perished.

37:02He says, please, everybody, he says, please consider me from now on your friend and companion. You will not be disappointed for you can scarcely conceive how much I desire to administer to your pleasure and contentment. Of course he does. And he says to maximize everybody's pleasure and contentment. And a few quick ground rules from now on. All private conversations are outlawed and you can no longer go around in groups. To stop conspiracy. To stop conspiracies. We can have no more of this plotting. I mean, that's rich given from the chief plotter. But he says, look, there's been far too much plotting.

37:37And he also appoints a kind of Praetorian guard for himself of Basques with arquebuses. So actually behind that, I think there may be a sort of serious point, which is that there are clearly internal feuds and rivalries. Aguirre is a Basque himself. And it may well be that it's very hard for us to detect. There is perhaps an issue here between Castilians and Basques or something like that. And the sources, are they Castilian or Basque? They are Castilian by and large. And as we will see, the sources, I do believe that a lot of this happened, that a lot of what is being reported is true. But I think the spin they are putting on this is very particular, as we shall see, because these are eyewitnesses who have been part of a rebellion against the king of spain and want to excuse themselves by explaining how they were being misled by a madman so it may be that aguirre isn't less mad less mad i mean more like unai emery the uh basque manager of aston villa right not a madman not a madman at all a very good manager but you would follow him into the jungle tom would you not i absolutely would i'd do whatever he said but i mean if it all went wrong would you then smear him as a loco you claim that he had a limp and stuff i'd like to think i'd stay loyal right well some of the gear ace people did say law rights at the end that would be me i mean if he was like una emery i mean not if he was like klaus kinski yes just putting that on the record fine yeah you wouldn't follow a german is what you're saying i wouldn't follow a very sweaty guy with bulgy eyeballs who's wearing too much armor but i would follow a twinkle-eyed charismatic leader of men in a tracksuit or actually emery's very kind of dapper yeah he's never wears a tracksuit no he doesn't very kind of dapper coat and scarf you know what he is he's courtly yeah he is a word one would often use of a spaniard yeah courtly is absolutely the word you're right he actually has kind of quite a 16th century face i think like a kind of cavallero in a an el greco painting right they're now in i guess where are they they are in northern brazil they've got completely lost do we know how far they've got to get to the atlantic now they're well over halfway they are now probably go round about a river called the rio negro so they're heading across the border into what is now venezuela and just to ask no one has ever done this before no they have no idea where they are now actually at one point they see campfires they saw lights burning on the horizon and um they have a few guides left a few native guides some of the guides say god this could be it this could be the land of the amagua these people who are very rich and aguirre is furious at this he says on pain of death nobody's to look at this town or talk about it or mention the amagua again because he's really wedded to this plan of sailing around the top of south america in some way and then crossing the isthmus of panama and then seizing the gold of he's right well he's also at this point very very paranoid so fray simon says so many were the fears that disturbed the wicked conscience of Aguirre, that although he'd killed those whom he feared, he never felt secure from the survivors.

40:37And I think that's definitely true. At this point, he really starts getting into his garrotting. So there hasn't been a lot of garrotting so far, but now, I mean, I can't stop the narrative every five minutes for all the garrotting, just assume that it's constant. I mean, it's a more merciful way to go than stabbing someone to death. So perhaps he's coming round to him. Well, this I think you would disagree with, Tom, because I think there's a hint of a kind of satanic nihilism. I love a satanic nihilist. So Frey Simon says that Aguirre at this point banned his men from praying. And he said, throw away your rosary beads.

41:09You don't need them. He said, if you're worried about your souls, you should play dice with the devil. It's a good phrase. And then he says, he's very Friedrich Nietzsche, actually. He said, he told his men that God had heaven for those who chose to serve him, but that the earth was for the strongest. He knew for certain there was no salvation and that being in life was to be in hell and that he would commit every species of wickedness and cruelty so that his name might ring throughout the earth and even to the ninth heaven. He's like the judge in Blood Meridian. Yeah, Blood Meridian or the Marquis de Sade or something.

41:45There's a kind of ideological sadism to him, I think, if this is to be believed. They now enter the Orinoco River, and the river is widening, which is great news for them because it means that they're clearly approaching the Atlantic. It's really hot and humid in Venezuela in July, which is where they're there. And Aguirre is very hot-tempered. He says, we've got all these porters and guides with us. Let us abandon them here. So they abandon them on the riverbank, and they're crying, and they're desperate. And there's nothing there. I mean, it's kind of dangerous animals and mudflaks. And a couple of the Spaniards say, come on, this is a bit harsh.

42:22I mean, we've been traveling with these guys for months. And Aguirre says, right, you've got to go. And he has them garrotted or shot, people who try to protest. And then at last, on the 1st of July, 1561, they enter the Atlantic. This incredible voyage, they've covered 4 ,000 miles in nine months. They've lost about half of the original party at this stage. But they're still alive. 17 days later, they glimpse the island of Margarita. when they see the island i agree it says brilliant and he celebrates by garrotting two more of his men who he thinks could conceivably betray him to the authorities when he gets there and then they they sail to the island and he sends a messenger ashore to ask for help with the words we are ordinary sailors lost at sea and presumably this is quite convincing because they must look an absolute mess after yeah how long have they been in the jungle nine months nine months they've been nine months they're emaciated they're sodden they're filthy the governor completely believes this so he turns up with his officials it's all very very friendly and aguirre says you know would it be all right if we came on shore can we take some exercise and bring our weapons just to practice and the governor says yeah great so they march ashore as though they're kind of on parade it's very well planned and then they sort of unsheathe their swords and level their guns and They take the governor and his officials hostage.