648. The Fall of the Incas: Battle for the Sacred City (Part 5)

17:45Tom Holland:you open and cut you into little pieces so what is going on here it seems really odd that these men would deliberately humiliate and insult the man who is so important to their maintenance of ruling cusco and the empire more generally see i don't think it is that odd i think it's human

18:04Dominic Sandbrook:nature they see him as their puppets they're bullies they have a little bit of contempt for him. They have weapons and he doesn't really. He's dependent on them. They don't speak his language. They look down on him and his customs. And over time, I think these guys who remember, they're not educated men. They're tough, hard men from basically the Wild West.

18:24Tom Holland:But they know the stakes. I mean, they're not naive. They understand that they need to maintain a degree of income support for their very precarious regime in Cusco. It just seems very odd and it may i mean maybe you're right that it is a deliberate attempt to humiliate manco well

18:43Dominic Sandbrook:we'll see them they really do humiliate him later on don't they or is it the fact that they are

18:47Tom Holland:princesses the key thing that if they can marry the princess then perhaps they can you know hopes of founding a royal dynasty it does seem unwise i guess it is unwise they're unwise people they

18:58Dominic Sandbrook:will behave in the next two episodes all of these people will behave incredibly unwisely i mean you can't deny that because i know you've read the notes they will behave really really mad recklessly

19:11Tom Holland:poorly hot-headedly but i still think they're not fools it seems peculiar there's a sense of something not quite being explained here i don't think that it can just be a matter of oh that i fancy them because they both fancy princesses yeah who are the sisters of the inca and you feel that

19:29Dominic Sandbrook:that can't be coincidence i don't know about that i think all of the spanish go for high-born women

19:34Tom Holland:generally yeah but these are the highest born aren't they so they are but that's not necessarily different from how the spanish behaved in mexico it's a bit like cleopatra only sleeping with very

19:43Dominic Sandbrook:powerful men maybe i mean anyway um manco actually offers gonzalo money to get back to the story manco offers gonzalo loads of silver and gonzalo said to him all the silver is fine but it's the woman i really want and manco did a mad thing where he got her sister's companion her friend he forced her to dress up as his sister to try and fool Gonzalo. Gonzalo was not fooled and eventually he got his hands on Cura Oclo who actually worse is going to happen to her in the next episode I'm afraid. So Manco is very bitter about all this and he decides to side with Almagro in the feuding and this then creates yet another split because some of Manco's relatives say well that's mad you should be siding with the Pizarro's.

20:25Dominic Sandbrook:So the factionalism now sort of seeps like a poison into manco's court one evening manco becomes absolutely terrified that these other incas are going to murder him and he ends up fleeing to al magro's house and hiding under his bed which seems a weird thing to do and while he's doing that um loads of other spaniards find out and they rush to manco's house and start looting it so when he comes back the next day he says can i have my stuff back and they say no you know you went and hid under the bed we've got your stuff you snooze you lose basically anyway this is all obviously very chaotic and very bad for the spanish regime so francisco pizarro rushes back from lima and try and sort this out and he says okay i'm going to try and sort this out and what i'm going to do is almagro i think you should go to chile and basically this there's clearly going to be another empire there or rich lands or something go down there i will give you funding actually you know you're my business partner I'll put more money into your enterprise you can go off to Chile and carve out your own empire there which will end up being called New Toledo.

21:27Tom Holland:Do you think he knows that there's nothing there? I mean he's been down in Lima

21:30Dominic Sandbrook:No I don't because it's a long old way they don't really know what's there I think and actually Almagro ends up marching past the great mine at Potosi which becomes the most lucrative mine in the world and doesn't realise it's there so there was money there if he had found it

21:45Tom Holland:but he didn't. But he's going to end up marching across the driest desert in the world, isn't he? Yes, exactly. Kind of think Pizarro has some sense of the geography.

21:55Dominic Sandbrook:Maybe. So anyway, Almagro sets off for Chile. He's got 600 Spaniards. And actually, Manco gives him an army of 12 ,000 men, commanded by the high priest Villac-Umu and Manco's brother, Paolo. So off they go to the south. And it's a complete and utter nightmare. They have totally unprepared for climbing up onto the high Andean plateau, the Altiplano, which is basically Bolivia and northern Chile. They run out of water. They absolutely disgraced themselves this expedition. There's a priest called Cristobal de Molina who is with them, and he said, any natives who would not accompany the Spaniards voluntarily were taken along bound in ropes and chains.

22:33Dominic Sandbrook:The Spaniards imprisoned them in very rough prisons every night and led them by day heavily loaded and dying of hunger. So they've got these huge chain gangs. When somebody dies in the chain gang, which they do all the time because they're exhausted, they're hungry, thirsty, whatever. The Spaniards are ridiculously very horrible. They cut the heads off these people who have died, but they leave the bodies still attached to the chain. So as you're trudging along, you're having to kind of drag this corpse, drag this corpse, which could be in front of you, behind you, in the chain. Both. I mean, it's pretty horrible.

23:06Dominic Sandbrook:They get to southern Bolivia, and at this point, the high priest, Vilak Umu, who's gone with them, deserts, and he goes back to Cusco. He rushes back to Cusco. He gets to Cusco and he meets up with Manco and he says, these people are absolute scum. They're behaving terribly badly. You know, we can't live like this. We cannot spend our entire lives in misery and subjection. Let us die for our liberty and for the wives and children whom they continually take from us and abuse. I will say one thing about all these tremendous quotations. Some of these are by people who I think had had classical educations.

23:39Dominic Sandbrook:so if it strikes you as the incas are speaking very much like people spoke in our carthage series this is probably the explanation anyway manco summons this great meeting november 1535 and actually you know that speech that you began with tom is very very you know carthaginian resistance or something isn't it however it was reported to us by a chronicler called theata de Leon, and he said he had an eyewitness account from a servant called Alimache. Oh, well then. So, it must be true. And he had a recording device. Exactly. It's basically a transcript. Manco said, you know, I've sent for you my kinsmen to tell you what I think about these foreigners before it's too late, before more foreigners join them.

24:23Dominic Sandbrook:They're waking up to that then. They are. That more foreigners are coming, because that's what Francisco Pizarro is doing on the coast at Lima. He's basically preparing a base for people to arrive as they sail down the Pacific. Samanko runs through all the bullet points that you did at the beginning of the episode, Spaniards lust for gold, treatments of women, poor behaviour, and then the stirring final line, we'll strive with all our might to kill them, or we will die in the attempt. And I suppose what you would say if you were being hostile to Samanko is, if only he'd realised this a year earlier, he could have teamed up with Attawalpa's old generals.

24:58Dominic Sandbrook:So he could have had Rumi Niawi with his drum, his human drum on his side. But alas, he tried to use the Spaniards against them, and so he's going to be doing this on his own. So that night, after this meeting, Manco and his entourage slip out of Cusco under cover of darkness to launch the resistance. But they are betrayed because one of their servants was a spy for the Pizarro brothers. As soon as Manco is gone, this servant rushes off to juan and gonzalo pizarro and he says yeah manco's gone so they ride off in pursuit and they find on the road south of out of cusco loads of incas and they say were you with manco where did manco go and they what the incas don't answer so they seized one of them and according to the spanish chroniclers tortured him astutely until he gave a great shout saying the inca was not going that way how do you torture someone astutely well tom I mean, if you know, you know.

25:59Dominic Sandbrook:You know. Yeah. So they've tortured him astutely with this rope, and the guy finally shouts out, he's not going that way. Well, actually, Manco has gone that way. They find him hiding in some reeds at the end of the valley. Now, they drag Manco back. Remember, Manco is the Sapa Inca, the son of the sun. And this shows the extent to which the Spanish respect has completely degenerated into total contempt. Because they drag him back, They throw him into prison with a chain round his neck and shackles on his feet, and then they treat him very badly. So these are from Spanish sources, right? This is Diego del Magro's son.

26:37Dominic Sandbrook:They urinated and spat in his face. They struck and beat him. They called him a dog. They kept him with a chain round his neck in a public place where people passed. This is that priest, Cristobal de Molina. They stole everything he had, leaving him nothing. They kept him in prison for many days, guarded day and night. They treated him very, very disgracefully, urinating on him and sleeping with his wives and he was deeply distressed the whole urinating on

27:01Tom Holland:him thing i mean that seems clearly did happen because the way they keep harping on about it

27:06Dominic Sandbrook:precisely and it's not a detail you often see in a 16th century accounts they also do a terrible thing where they burn his eyelashes with a candle shouting at him dog give us gold if not you will be burned so basically they're just torturing him i mean they're tormenting and torturing him astutely the word obviously spreads because there are now uprisings across the countryside there were reports coming in that when spaniards go out to their estates to collect their tribute the locals are rising up and attacking them about 30 spaniards in total are killed gonzalo and juan pizarro ride out of the city to exact really horrendous reprisals there's lots of burning people alive there's lots of cutting people's arms and legs off all of this kind of thing and then in january 1536 there's a little bit of a change because their older brother hernando returns from spain now you may remember that pizarro had sent hernando to spain to take the gold to the court to show charles v and hernando had done this and it was very successful and it had been very good for the pizarro faction hernando has now returned he had previously if you remember being quite pally with atahualpa and he does seem to have been a little bit more sympathetic to the locals than his boorishly behaved brothers so he arrives in cusco and he says what's all this you know we need to change the record a bit so he goes to see manco who's recently been released he treats him a great courtesy he says you know i've been speaking to charles v charles v really respects you things have got a little bit out of hand and you know i'm sorry about that we can start again unfortunately if you have any self-respect as a person i feel like if you've been urinated on if somebody has slept with your wives there's no coming back from that really is there you can't start again you can't let you can't you know let bygones be bygones so manco in the early months of 36 starts plotting with his brother the high priest and they make their plans by the end of the rainy season which is late march the word has gone out will make weapons in secret get people to stockpile food and supplies and then in april they send messages out across the empire with their lovely knotted strings the kipus they say this is on we're gonna do this we can have a massive uprising the muster point will be a place called lares in the yukai valley the sacred valley 15 miles north of cusco and the question is how is remember when he tried to get out the city last time there was action with astute use of ropes yeah how is he going to get out this time he has a very clever wheeze he uses the spanish greed against them he goes to hernando and he says my brother the high priest vilak umu and i would like to go to a religious festival in the sacred valley and actually if you let us go they've got a giant golden statue of my father juana capac and i'd love you to have it and and and and i says oh well in that case why haven't you left already my goodness of course you can go so on the wednesday before easter after mass manco and villacuma go out the city now on the way they meet another conquistador who's very suspicious where are you going off to and um manco says oh well we've got we found there's some hidden gold in those hills and we're gonna go and get it oh well then good luck so they get to lares and all the big inkerchiefs are there and there are loads more of these rousing speeches they all swear an oath we'll drive the spaniards out of our country or die in the attempt and actually manco is delighted to discover that his local sort of chiefs and commanders and bigwigs have done him a great job they have gathered about a hundred thousand people and they have somehow armed them and fed them these people have come from the land so they're peasants and farmers and stuff but they've been given clubs and whatnot and slings right and slings exactly and they are outside the capital and as John Hemmings says in his brilliant book this is the last great tribute to the Inca's genius for organization it was a very top-down very collectivist kind of empire and this is their last great effort at mobilizing the people so by Easter Saturday they are moving onto the slopes around Cusco these giant giant numbers of people and the Spaniards look out one of them says there were so many troops they covered all the fields by day they look like a black carpet covering everything for half a league around the city and by night there were so many campfires the land like a clear sky filled with stars on Easter Saturday Hernando gets word he can't believe this you know what idiots his brothers were to let him down and provoke this uprising and he calls the Spaniards of Cusco to a meeting and he says well we're just going to have to resist you know we're not going to give into this but there's only about 200 spaniards maximum in the city and they've got 500 native auxiliaries so these are ethnic groups who don't like the incas the canyari and the chachapoya but they're against maybe a hundred thousand people i mean these are not good odds and then they orders he says well the incas were always frightened of our cavalry we'll send out our horses but for the first time the incas are there in such numbers that the horses can't maneuver in the crush so they're basically pushed back into the city and the incas advance and advance and advance till they're camped right outside the walls and then we're told they taunted the spaniards and i quote raising their bare legs at them to show how much they despised them so what's going on there well if you've ever met a peruvian he's bared his legs at you you know oh that's what they were doing yeah exactly you can't pretend that's never happened to you and so at dawn on the 6th of may manco orders the assault and it is a tremendous scene very hollywood the sun rises and as it does so the incas charge down the hillsides they smash through the spanish defenses they fight their way into the narrow alleys that lead into the city they break through the spanish barricades and palisades they drive back the garrison and they fight their way into the central square and all the time the incas have this new weapon a secret weapon they'd always you mentioned their slings they'd always relied very heavily on the slingshots but now they've been heating the stones in their campfires they've been wrapping them in kind of cotton wool and then they send them flying onto the thatched roofs of cuzco and a spanish chronicle says there was a strong wind that day and as the roofs of the houses were thatch it seemed at one moment as if the city were one great sheet of flame so these huge black clouds of smoke start rising above the city the spanish are in total chaos they can't breathe through the smoke they can't hear their men's orders because of the din from the attackers the roar of the fires and they're being driven further and further and further back and as manco's son tito kuzi wrote they feared that these were to be the last moments of their lives.

34:13Dominic Sandbrook:They could see no hope of relief and they did not know what to do. My goodness.

34:19Tom Holland:So is this the end of Spanish rule in Peru? Is this the restoration of the Incan Empire? Only one way to find out, and that is to join us again after a break.

34:33Tom Holland:This episode is brought to you by Vanguard. Now, Dominic, history is full of examples of people who were promised the world and then got very badly let down. Can you think of a particular example? I can.

34:46Dominic Sandbrook:I can think of a couple of examples, Tom. So we've just been recording a series about the fall of the Incas and Francisco Pizarro, who was the Spanish conquistador in charge. First of all, he betrayed his business partner, Diego de Magro. And then, shockingly, he betrayed

35:01Tom Holland:the Inca emperor Atahualpa. Well, Dominic, can I ask you a question? Had Atahualpa been in the hands of Vanguard. Do you think that Vanguard would have let him down?

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35:59Tom Holland:Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste. Visit 1-800-CONTACTS.com today to save on your first order. 1-800-CONTACTS.

36:12Dominic Sandbrook:Tax Act understands you haven't memorized the tax code. That's why Tax Act has live experts to help. Tax Act can even do it for you if you prefer. It's the easiest way to know you're doing it right. Well, other than going back to college and obtaining a bachelor's degree in accounting with a minor in finance, then interning somewhere and becoming fluent in all tax forms. But that might be hard to accomplish before tax day. So maybe just stick with Tax Act. Tax Act. Let's get them over with.

36:46Tom Holland:Hello, everyone, and welcome back to The Rest is History. It is May 1536, and the troops of Manco, the Incan emperor, have launched their assault on Cusco, where a very small number of Spaniards, fewer than 200, are trapped. The city is burning. Dominic, is this the end for Hernando Pizarro and his men?

37:10Dominic Sandbrook:Well, it's definitely the end for a particular version of Cusco. so Cusco a beautiful city but now as John Hemming says stripped for Ataralpa's ransom ransacked by Spanish looters and it's now being burned by its own people and the Spanish have been pushed right back into the central square they as you say they are trapped and this really is their darkest hour one side of the square though is not burning because it's relatively open there aren't many buildings there so this is their kind of escape from the smoke and the flames and they take refuge in two great buildings at the eastern end of the square.

37:48Dominic Sandbrook:Amazingly, these are the two buildings that the Incas don't manage to set fire to. Now, later on, some Spanish writers said this was because of divine intervention.

37:57Tom Holland:It's the Virgin.

37:58Dominic Sandbrook:The Virgin Mary, in a blue cloak, intervened to put out the fires. She had a load of white blankets. So she appeared and threw these white blankets over the flames. And this saved the Spaniards. I'm sorry to say, I don't want to disappoint our Catholic listeners, but I believe this is a later invention at least 100 years later.

38:18Tom Holland:Didn't Manco Inca's son say that the Spaniards had placed African slaves on the roofs with buckets of water?

38:25Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, so that's perfectly plausible.

38:27Tom Holland:Slightly less dramatic, but probably, as you say, more plausible.

38:31Dominic Sandbrook:It's a good point that you make there, because actually throughout this story, there are almost certainly some African slaves on hand. We know that the Spanish had started to import people. They're coming down from Central America. And you don't really get many glimpses of them in the sources, but I think you have to imagine that they're always there. So there's luck. There's brutal hand-to-hand fighting. And basically by nightfall, the pattern is set. The Spaniards are hemmed into the small corner of Cusco city centre. The Incas are encamped around them. It feels very like the siege of Tenochtitlan, for people who remember our series about the fall of the Aztecs.

39:06Dominic Sandbrook:and for the next six days or so the spanish fight days as one writer puts it of strenuous toil and danger slowly sort of pushing out from their little redoubt there are incas still who are

39:19Tom Holland:siding with them aren't there even in cusco so it's not like they are completely isolated no there is an element of an incan civil war going on at the same time there to be is again

39:28Dominic Sandbrook:very hard to glimpse in the sources but we are told that for example some of manco's own brothers side with the Spaniards. So throughout this whole story, I mean, you're dead right to point this out. Throughout this whole story, it's not a simple matter of Spaniards versus Incas. It is Spaniards and Incas and other indigenous peoples fighting Incas and other indigenous groups. It's just a massive punch-up. Basically, yes. Everyone's fighting each other. They are all fighting each other. Some of the Spaniards say to Hernando, you know the odds are massively against us we should break out of the city and make for the coast anando has the excellent line he says um no we should fight back better to die fighting than to perish here like hogs like hogs yeah i think that's an american translator isn't it so um anando says listen we're kind of sitting ducks here because the incas have taken up a position in the citadel of saxihuaman which is on this kind of rock spur that overlooks the city center right and this fortress this citadel had been built by pachacuti the legendary sort of uh great inca imperialist it's a fortress it's also a temple it's a huge storehouse it's this key strategic location and spanish accounts of the citadel of sacsehuaman said that it had massive stone walls it had these huge towers it had a labyrinth of tunnels the spanish writer garcia lasso de la vega said it's one of the wonders of the world there was nothing in like in spain and europe it was so vast the devil himself must have helped to build it actually was built by forced labor and anando says right we have to capture this back they can rain down missiles on us from this citadel so the plan is that his brother juan will lead the attack with 50 horsemen they'll burst through the enemy lines they'll charge up the um hill and capture of the citadel it's a very kind of helms deep plan and there's very helms deep scene to kick it all off so a later incasource says the spaniards spent the whole of that night on their knees with their hands clasped in prayer even those on guard in the square did the same as did many indians who were on their side on the following morning at dawn they emerged from the church and mounted their horses suddenly they put spur to their horses and at full gallop broke through the enemy and charged up the hillside at breakneck speed.

41:58Dominic Sandbrook:So very exciting. Stones and missiles are kind of raining down on them, but they zigzag up the hill. They reach the terraces. They turn right at a village on the top of the hill, and they finally end up in the parade ground in front of the citadel. And here, Incas have put up barricades, but Juan Pizarro and his brother Gonzalo lead the horsemen in charge after charge. Some of the horses are wounded. Some of the Spaniards are thrown from the horses, but they manage to break through the barricades and get all the way to the fortress gate. Now, it's now late afternoon and they're knackered. The Incas are raiding down these kind of javelins and sling stones and stuff.

42:35Dominic Sandbrook:Juan's page boy is killed by this huge stone. Juan Pizarro himself had been hit the day before by a slingshot missile and his face was so swollen that he couldn't wear his helmet. Oh dear, unwise. But he says to the Spaniards, one more attack before nightfall. That's what it takes. and they spur their horses. They race for the gate. Their missiles are raining down again. And then a massive stone smacks into Juan Pizarro's head. Oh my God, so like an egg, a boiled egg being smashed. Exactly. He totters, he falls off his horse. He's clearly hideously wounded. The Spanish break off their charge. They rush to his side and they carry him down the hill to Cusco.

43:20Dominic Sandbrook:So he clings to life overnight and he dictates a will and he says, I leave all my plunder to my brother Gonzalo. He leaves some money to religious bequests. He leaves some money to the poor. But now he really lets himself down. You may remember he had locked up this young girl who he was sleeping with, who was a princess. And he said, I leave nothing to her. I mean, he actually said this. What a bastard to say this as he's dying. I leave nothing to her. He called her an Indian woman who has given birth to a girl whom I do not recognize as my daughter.

43:51Tom Holland:As you say, an absolute bastard to the end.

43:54Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, and then he died. I mean, so unnecessary. Yeah. But he's a bad advert for Spain, I think. So the next day, Juan's devastated brother, Gonzalo, leads another assault. Great drama. Everyone was shouting and they were all entangled together, fighting for the hilltop. It looked as though the whole world was up there, grappling in close combat. And as night's falling and Nando joins the assault, he's spent the day making scaling ladders. again the kind of technology that the incas don't really have but the spanish of course are used to from their fighting in the old world and under this hail of stones the spanish start to scale the outer walls again it is very helms deep and then there's this ferocious hand-to-hand fighting as they drive the incas back to the inner citadel the fighting goes on for the next two days the commander of the citadel was a man called titu kuzi gualpa and he had sworn to fight to the death he's hit twice by spanish arrows but it doesn't deter him he strides around we're told like a lion from side to side of the tower he repulsed any spaniards who tried to mount with scaling ladders he killed any indians who tried to surrender he smashed their heads with the battle axe he was carrying and hurled them from the top of the tower so basically like one of stalin's commissars or something the second world war basically if you fault it he'll smash it over they had with an axe i was thinking more like gimli gimli doesn't hit people on the head from his own side though and throw them off the tower anyway gimli doesn't do this the spanish start to throw in their own native auxiliaries this goes back to your point tom about them having native support some of them are led by manco's own brothers which seems mad and at last this guy titucuzi gualpa realizes that the fortress is lost he throws his weapons down onto the spanish and then we're told i mean a strange choice actually in the last moments he grabbed handfuls of earth stuffed them into his mouth and scoured his face in anguish then he covered his head with his cloak and he leaped to his death from the top of the fortress in fulfillment of his pledge to the inca so the fortress is lost and those men rampage through they round up 1500 people and they put them all to the sword so now we're at the end of may and the siege has been going what for a month or two and there's a definite sense that the initial momentum has been lost we're told that with the fall of the citadel income morale begins to ebb manco says to his generals you've let me down you know there were so many of you and so few of them and yet again they have eluded your grasp there are a couple of reasons i think why this is john hemming says the spanish always have this technological advantage the only real department in which the incas have parity as he puts it is in projectiles but projectiles didn't usually kill an armored spaniard and this is a kind of hand-to-hand bloody fight to the death and if you've got a steel sword that can make all the difference and the other thing is what the point you made the native allies they're always there we barely glimpse them in the spanish sources but they're always there you know between the lines almost auxiliaries servants armed troops all of this but also um people of high birth as

47:15Tom Holland:well aren't they they're a kind of nobleman who come over oh yeah manco's brothers in in part i assume because manco is destroying their city i mean the the use of burning slingshot is annihilating a place that is their own and perhaps they think the spaniards are the best hope to

47:32Dominic Sandbrook:to save it if you decide the spaniards are going to win and can't be beaten then a lot of people will say well it's literally pointless to to fight on against them the best thing for our people is to come to an accommodation you know we'll save lives we'll save the city save our civilization but this is not the end the siege drags on for another three months and it is incredibly fierce so i'll just give one quote from a spanish writer alonso enrique de guzman i can bear witness that this was the most dreadful and cruel war in the world between christians and moors so he's talking about the fighting in spain in the 1490s against the muslims in the south of spain between christians and moors there is some fellow feeling and it is in the interests of both sides to spare those they take alive because of their ransoms but in this indian war there is no such feeling they give each other the cruelest deaths imaginable.

48:29Dominic Sandbrook:So a sense of it being an existential struggle, you know, not governed by the rules that govern fighting in Europe or the Mediterranean, but something, you know, unbelievably savage in which kind of all restraints are off. And week by week, faced with this, Manco's army is losing momentum. Most of Manco's men are not professional soldiers. They're peasants, they're farmers. They've taken their families with them. And by August or so, they're drifting away to go back to their fields. And it's about this point that you get some dramatic news from the coast. So remember that on the coast, at this new city of Lima, Francisco Pizarro has been there all the time.

49:07Dominic Sandbrook:He has sent out a series of relief columns to try and save his brothers, but these had been annihilated as they tried to go over the Andes by one of Manco's best commanders, a guy called Kizo Yapankui, who had basically hidden waiting for them in gorges and ravines, then hurled down rocks and boulders at them. Really simple, but it worked beautifully. Yeah, so they finally rumbled how to destroy Spanish expeditions. Exactly. Basically, three of these columns were annihilated, 200 horsemen are killed, and their severed heads are sent as gifts to Manco.

49:40Tom Holland:Do they capture the horses?

49:42Dominic Sandbrook:They don't capture them and ride them, I don't think. I think they kill some of them, and the rest of the horses just run away, I think, escape. So Pizarro back in Lima is in a bit of a panic now. He hasn't got any news from Cusco. He doesn't know what's happened to his brothers. He's sending out desperate letters all across the empire, including actually to Pedro de Alvarado. The Inca has the city of Cusco besieged, and for five months I've heard nothing. The country is ravaged, and the native chiefs have won many victories against us. It causes me such great sorrow that it's consuming my entire life.

50:13Tom Holland:But there is someone who answers this appeal, isn't there, who is a kind of interesting illustration of the relationships that can develop between Spaniards and native women. Because this is this woman, Conto Huacho, who had been the queen of a native people, taken by Juana Capac. And she is Pizarro's mother-in-law. And she's one of history's great mother-in-laws. She raises an army of her countrymen and marched to Lima to help him. so it can work for both sides it can interestingly actually i mean although he gets he does get some

50:50Dominic Sandbrook:support he gets some support from panama he gets some native allies as you rightly say but actually across the spanish empire the general sense is the pizarro's have brought this on themselves the governors have exploited the inca hernando pizarro caused this rebellion for it is said that he tortured the local chief for his gold and silver so even at this point people are saying the Pizarro's are kind of bad men. They've treated Manco and Co. very roughly.

51:15Tom Holland:I mean, they're not wrong, are they?

51:16Dominic Sandbrook:Exactly, they're not wrong. I mean, the idea that the Spanish, the black legend, which is the Spanish are all uniquely cruel and corrupt, is just not true. Even from this stage, lots of Spaniards are saying, the Pizarro's are terrible people. And, you know, I actually feel really sorry for the Incas. Anyway, things are going to get really tricky for Pizarro now because this guy, Kizo Yapankui, who's crushed his relief columns with boulders, he now descends from the Andes onto the coastal plain and he starts marching on Lima. And in Lima, people become absolutely terrified because very soon Lima's virtually surrounded with Inca troops on the hillsides, just as in Cuzco.

51:52Dominic Sandbrook:And for five days, they're waiting. And then on the sixth day comes the decisive moment. This guy, Kizo, addresses his men. He says, you know, classic kind of Inca rhetoric. This is the moment to capture the city or to perish in the attempt. I intend to enter the town today and to kill all the Spaniards and any who accompany me must go on the understanding that if i die all will die so the incas advance people said it was an amazing scene they had these sort of it's very kingdom of heaven they've got these kind of banners kind of waving in the sunshine an amazing scene thousands of incas against just two squadrons of spanish cavalry quizo is leading them with a spear on foot but then as john hemming says for all its splendor and reckless bravery this attack was to prove as futile as that of the French at Agincourt, the British at Balaclava, or the Confederates at Gettysburg.

52:45Dominic Sandbrook:Because basically, Kizzo leads his men and they're on foot. And as soon as they're within range, the Spanish charge. They rush out on their horses. And it's flat ground. Basically, they rout Kizzo and his men instantly. And in the first attack, they kill him and they kill 40 of his kind of commanders and chiefs and Kizou had said if I die all will die actually that's not true everybody else just runs away he's dead Lima is saved and now the Spanish can venture out of Lever and vent their fury with some truly hideous reprisals so one of Pizarro's soldiers writes to a friend of his in Seville we captured alive a hundred natives and killed 30 we cut the arms off some of the prisoners and the noses from others and the breasts from the women then we sent them back to the enemy to show them that they too would submit to the knife oh dear yeah so it's only going to get darker by the way just to just to warn you so pizarro doesn't know what's been happening to his brothers in kuzco what's been going on there in the meantime the answer is that they've stabilized the situation they're still encircled but they're facing fewer attacks from manco's men so much so they've been able to slacken their own guard duty and get some sleep which is you know a nice change for them after months of heavy fighting they occasionally launch raids out of the city they capture prisoners they bring them back in they cut off their hands then they let them go again as a kind of warning to the others yeah of course they do they launch raids to get food um so they capture a supply column monomanco supply column that's brought loads of llamas so they're dining on kind of roasted llama and by the end of 1536 the whole thing has become a stalemate the Spaniards can't get out the Incas can't get in but on balance this is probably good for the Spaniards because all the time more ships are coming down the Pacific Coast bringing reinforcements from other Spanish colonies even from Spain where the court has sent 50 arquebusiers so gunmen and 50 crossbowmen so they're bringing more new technology and they're coming all the time just as they had in Mexico.

54:57Dominic Sandbrook:So the weeks continue, the siege goes on. And then in April 1537 comes the real game-changing moment. Remember that all this time Pizarro's business partner Diego de Almagro has been off in Chile disgracing himself with his chain gangs. He is now coming home. He's very dejected. They've found no gold and silver. they're very miserable they've basically killed loads of people but that hasn't made them happy i mean madly they marched right past the gigantic silver mine at potasi which at its height i'll talk about this a little bit maybe in the next episode produced 80 of the world's silver you know one of the the cerro rico the hill of gold the hill of silver they didn't even realize it was there anyway they crossed the atacama desert as you said was that the world's highest desert

55:51Tom Holland:No, it's the driest desert. Driest desert. There are places there where there's been no precipitation for centuries. Yeah. Very Alexander the Great, isn't it?

56:00Dominic Sandbrook:Well, we'll probably just cross that. What's the worst that could happen? They cross this desert. Amazingly, don't all die. And they discover that El Magro hears, well, this massive war has broken out and Manco is besieging the city of Cusco. And now El Magro thinks, well, this is a brilliant opportunity for me. because basically if i can get manco on side if i can end the war save new castile charles v will see me as the hero he you know the pizarro is a rubbish he'll see me as the hero of the hour so he sends manco this absolutely gushing letter my well-beloved son and brother i'm so sorry for the abuse the christians have done to your person the robbery of your property and house and the seizure of your beloved wives i'm on my way to help you i won't do anything without your approval i will never refuse you the friendship i've always felt for you so in april 1537 al magro's army arrives around cuzco you now have i mean this is so george rr martin isn't it you now have three forces in a standoff and nando pizarro in the city and two different armies outside the city that are manco and that of al magro what's really unclear is how this constellation of forces will play out so manco surely knows now that with two spanish armies he's not going to drive them all out of Peru.

57:19Dominic Sandbrook:He can't beat two of them. He also knows the Pizarro's will not forgive him for this war. Hernando in the city, he would love the siege to end. On the other hand, he hates Almagro, and he's got no intention of giving him Cusco.

57:35Tom Holland:So who do you think he hates more, Manco or Almagro?

57:38Dominic Sandbrook:Oh, Almagro. I would have thought so. The Spanish hate each other far more than they hate the Incas. Yeah, because there's no sense. I mean, Manco's, you know, he's the opposition.

57:48Tom Holland:He's doing what he should be doing. Because that would be a punchy reversal, wouldn't it? For him suddenly to team up with Manco and wipe out. That would be the real. See, that's the real what if of history.

57:56Dominic Sandbrook:If Hernando Pizarro had teamed up with Manco at that point to attack El Magro. But actually, El Magro moves first. And then we promised guava fruit action. And that's coming. El Magro moves first. He sends this messenger called Rui Diaz. You'll realize in a second why I've gone to the bother of naming the messenger. to manco's huge fortress at alonte tambo and he says um you know manco you're my great friend if you stand down your forces i'll make sure the king gives you a royal pardon it'll all be forgiven and i'll make sure the pizarro's are punished and manco's really tempted by this but then another messenger arrives from anando pizarro who manco has been fighting all this time and anando says to manco you're mad if you trust almagro he's an absolute snake and a liar and anyway he's basically my brother's Francisco's subordinate.

58:43Dominic Sandbrook:He can't deliver on any of his promises. Don't listen to him. He's a liar. All of this. So Manco now, he's got these two messages and he can't decide which one to go for. And he decides he will test Diego de Almagro. He's captured four of Hernando's scouts. And Manco says, well, if you are really on my side, prove your good faith by executing these four Spanish scouts. And this is a real dilemma for Almagro. If Almagro executed these four Spanish scouts, his own countrymen. I mean, the king of Spain would be furious. You see, I think in that situation, Pizarro would execute them. And make an excuse.

59:20Dominic Sandbrook:But Almagro is a bit naive, isn't he? These people have been defending Cusco. Can he do it? He can't do it. He doesn't do it. And when Manco hears that he hasn't done it, he says, gosh, Hernando Pizarro's right. Almagro will never deliver. He is a snake. These Spaniards and the final analysis will always stick together. So Manco turns on Almagro. he orders an attack on his army which is fought off but then this is the exciting fruit action yeah because what happens to rui diaz so rui diaz is stripped naked he's the messenger who brought a message saying i'd like to be your friend and this is his reward a mad passage actually so rui diaz is stripped naked and then and i quote they anointed him with their mixtures i mean who knows what those mixtures are and were amused to see his contorted features i mean nothing

1:00:08Tom Holland:Nothing good in those mixtures, evidently.

1:00:13Dominic Sandbrook:Tabasco. They made him drink a great quantity of chicha, that's their kind of beer, and tying him to a post, they used their slings to fire guava-free.

1:00:28Tom Holland:I mean, it's the darkest moment in the entire history of the Spanish conquest.

1:00:32Dominic Sandbrook:Well, I was about to say, by the standards of the tortures in this series, Because this is quite... You've got up really lightly.

1:00:39Tom Holland:You'd opt for that given a choice, wouldn't you? Given all the options, I'd go for the guava fruit every time. But this is weird, isn't it? Because also they make him shave his beard and cut his hair. Also, again, I wouldn't object too strongly, I think.

1:00:56Dominic Sandbrook:No, no, no. What makes me laugh most is the line. They use their slings to fire guava fruit at him, distressing him greatly. and then they yeah they made him shave his beard and his hair they wish to change him into an indian with bare limbs i mean yeah mad torture so what's going on there i don't know i'm not an inca i can't there are some points where you just have to throw up your hands and admit it's the imponderable nature of history your powers of imagination let you down i think rudy as i totally agree with you i think he's got off unbelievably lightly he's had a shave i mean people pay for that you'd pay to go into a sort of posh barber and him to give you a shave not to fire fruit at you and i guess the guava fruit perhaps has moistened his skin

1:01:43Tom Holland:ready for the shave you could imagine that being quite fashionable hipsters yeah

1:01:49Dominic Sandbrook:pelter hipster with guava fruit then give him a shave people would pay very good money for this kind of this sort of treatment anyway so where are we with um with manco i feel like manco's options now are very narrow he can't capture Cusco I mean he couldn't capture it before he can't capture it now and I think the guava fruit de bark has torpedoed any possibility that's a deal breaker with El Magro so he decides his only option is to withdraw to safety and to bide his time and to hope that maybe the Spaniards turn on each other which of course you know he knows them by now every chance of that happening so basically he's going to go back to his old life as an outlaw and so a few days later he withdraws from his great fortress at Olontay Tambo he's going to abandon the Andean highlands to the Spanish he's going to head deeper into the sacred valley so that's basically in the shadow of Machu Picchu he's going to go across the mountains and deep into the jungle and he he addresses his supporters he said well people from the jungle have been asking me to visit them for years anyway so this is the this is the perfect opportunity i should give them this satisfaction for a few days he says and then there are a whole load of prayers led by the high priest they pack up all their idols and their kind of relics and they know you know realistically they're probably never coming back so manco vanishes and we'll come back to him and on the 18th of april almagro rides into kuzco with drums and pipes not as a liberator though he rides in as a conqueror he burns the houses of the pizarro brothers he takes hernando and gonzalo pizarro prisoner and he locks them up in the city towers and then when francisco pizarro finally does send a relief column almagro rides out to confront them and he persuades them to change sides so now the balance of power really has shifted francisco pizarro is still on the coast at Lima but Almagro is ruling unchallenged in Cuzco and he now promotes his own Inca puppet so this is a guy who's been with him on the expedition to Chile who is Manco's slightly younger half-brother who's called Paolo we don't know much about Paolo although he'll be coming back in the next episode Paolo is clearly an opportunist he's much more drawn to collaboration than Manco he'd much rather collaborate with the Spanish than basically join his half-brother as an outlaw paulo gets his supporters to help almagro and so in july 1537 a few months later almagro organizes another grand coronation ceremony in the square in kuzco he strips manco of his title as sapa inca i mean almagro has no authority to do that and there's no precedent for it really in inca history but he basically says manco's run away he's forfeited his title he's like james ii in 1688 and the red ceremonial kind of string fringe is with its tassel is given to paulu who is now supposedly the emperor but manco of course has not vanished manco has crossed the mountains he's come down into the jungle into a place called vilcabamba and here at a town called vitcos he's established his new headquarters just out of reach of the spanished so this is rainforest territory very wet wreathed in mist and kind of mystery and here manco is going to establish an inca state in exile and so all is set now for the end game you have francisco pizarro in lima on the coast you have al magro his old business partner turned hated rival in the high in Cusco and you have Manco in his jungle there at Filcabamba.

1:05:42Dominic Sandbrook:There's only going to be one winner and for at least two of these men this story will end in unspeakable bloodshed. So one of them will be the last man standing or will they and we'll find out which one in the final spine-tingling episode Tom of the fall of the Incas.

1:06:02Tom Holland:And so the end approaches and members of the rest of this history club can of course hear that episode right away if you're not a member of the rest history club and you want to join them you know what you've got to do you've got to head to the rest is history.com and sign up goodbye bye bye

1:06:29Dominic Sandbrook:rinse knows that greatness takes time but so does laundry so rinse will take your laundry and hand deliver it to your door expertly cleaned. And you can take the time pursuing your passions.

1:06:40Tom Holland:Time once spent sorting and waiting, folding and queuing, now spent challenging and innovating and pushing your way to greatness. 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. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for$15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do at mintmobile.com slash switch.

1:07:17Tom Holland:Upfront payment of$45 for three month plan equivalent to$15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com. Hi guys, it's Katty Kay and Anthony Scaramucci here from The Rest is Politics US. Wes, we have just recorded a four-part series that's 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.

1:08:08Tom Holland:And we're going to explore parts of the Trump story that you might never have even heard of. Not to mention, Caddy, 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, Caddy. 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.