649. The Fall of the Incas: The Last Emperor (Part 6)

16:19Dominic Sandbrook:who's been watching in horror and in syphilitic agony from his litter. The Pizarro troops catch up with him, and they lock him in the same tower in which he had imprisoned Hernando. So poetic justice. Poetic justice. Just a side point on this battle, actually, the Battle of Las Salinas. Apparently, it's regarded as one of the last medieval battles decided with lances and cavalry charges.

16:42Tom Holland:Well, isn't that good news for the watching fans?

16:45Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah.

16:45Tom Holland:You turn up to watch a battle and it's the last medieval battle.

16:48Dominic Sandbrook:Right, because future battles will all be loads of artillery and pikes and stuff. So much more early modern. But this is an old school battle. So they put on an old school treat for the watching crowds, which is nice. That's great. So for 10 weeks, Diego de la Magro, who thought he had it all, is rotting in prison and then he's dragged out for trial. And I described him earlier as very naive and gullible. And I think he is because he thinks, you know, we're going to have more negotiations. You know, this will all be fine. And he is absolutely dumbfounded when Hernando Pizarro says to him, you're a rebel.

17:21Dominic Sandbrook:You know, you're a traitor against the king. I proclaim the death sentence upon you. This is the end of you. And Armagro breaks down in tears. He begs for his life. He says to Hernando, suspend the sentence so that I can appeal to Charles V for pardon. so that legalism again yeah the legalism you let the wheels of justice take their take time and anando says to him come on you this is very demeaning and unbecoming from you anando said to him at one point what do you think this is what you know what game do you think you're playing he says god gave you the grace to be a christian so please employ your remaining moments in settling your accounts with heaven because you're for the chop and the appointed day is the 8th of july 1538 right.

18:04Dominic Sandbrook:Hernando sends the executioner to Almagro's cell. The executioner goes in. He garrots Almagro, and then they drag his body outside. They strip him naked, and then they cut off his head. So you might think this is the end of the Pizarro-Almagro feud. Exciting news. It isn't. This is a proper vendetta, and it will go through the generations. We'll come back to this point. so now Cusco belongs to the Pizarros and to their new puppet now you may remember that the end of the last episode Almagro had a puppet called Paolo a collaborator Paolo's men had fought for Almagro at Las Salinas but as soon as they saw that the Pizarros had won Paolo immediately switched sides and he said to Hernando Pizarro look I was pals with Almagro I served him very loyally I'll serve you loyally now if you like and Hernando who's a smart man said great yeah why not let's do it so in return for collaborating Paolo the sort of fake emperor they built him his own Spanish style townhouse he got his own Spanish style landed estate and they gave him a Spanish coat of arms and I quote a black eagle rampant a gold puma two red snakes a red imperial fringe the inscription Ave Maria and eight golden Jerusalem crosses.

19:24Dominic Sandbrook:That's too much action. I think that's great.

19:26Tom Holland:No, I think less is more.

19:28Dominic Sandbrook:Do you? Yeah, with a heraldic coat of arms. So you wouldn't fit in in Peru. They think more is more. So Paolo ends up wearing Spanish clothes. He converts to Christianity. And actually, he disgraces himself in one way. He hands over to the Spaniards the mummified remains of his father, Juena Capac. God, he is a snake, isn't he? The last unchallenged Inca emperor. He hands them over. and his apparently we're told that his mother and his other relatives sobbed and said please don't hand this over the spanish will just burn it and destroy it which they did and paulo said i don't care i'm all about winning and i have i've won so that's the end of that and he did

20:03Tom Holland:and cuzco itself is in a terrible way by this point because it's been kind of demolished everything's been stripped off it's been burnt by red hot slingshot um so an absolute i mean

20:13Dominic Sandbrook:wasted if you go to cuzco today cuzco is a very attractive city but it's a spanish colonial city

20:18Tom Holland:There's nothing of the Incan city.

20:20Dominic Sandbrook:There are bits. So there are bits of wall and stuff. There are bits of temple wall and things. A little bit like in Mexico City. But by and large, what you're seeing is, you know, you're not seeing thatched houses that were built by the Incas. So what's happened to Manco, Paolo's predecessor, half-brother and now rival? Manco has been off in the jungle after his close shave at Vitcos. And he now launches a series of attacks across the Andes. tom you'll enjoy this he's particularly keen to punish tribes who have sided with the spaniards your old friends the juanca this is not good for the juanca they are brought back he captures lots of them and brings them back into the jungle at vitkos for punishment and we're told his men tortured them in the presence of their women so after the next couple of years this degenerates into this colossal guerrilla campaign fought over a vast canvas so the pizarro brothers basically battling Manco's forces and other kind of native forces.

21:20Dominic Sandbrook:Everywhere from the Andes down to Lake Titicaca, the great sort of plateau of Bolivia and so on. These huge landscapes. But also fast distances. Massive distances. I mean, we're talking about hundreds and hundreds of miles. Over incredibly inhospitable terrain. Bonkers. One of the decisive battles, just to give you an example, one example of how this works is a place in central Bolivia called Cochabamba. and there gonzalo finds himself trapped in a valley by thousands of sort of bolivian indigenous warriors and he it looks really dicey for him but he's got with him paulu and 5 000 indigenous warriors from cuzco and he ends up winning and it's a really good example of how much indigenous support mattered to the spanish conquest because one spanish writer alonso de toro said if paulu had not been there, the Spaniards would have suffered heavily.

22:12Dominic Sandbrook:And if he'd chosen to be treacherous, few or none of them would have escaped. But Paolo has already decided, you know, the Spanish are going to win, so I'm going to stick with them. And he does. And they hold out, and they basically end up wiping the floor with the people attacking them. So by the middle of 1539, I mean, we're only seven years after Pizarro marched into Cajamarca to meet Atahualpa. The Pizarros are actually pretty close to finishing the job. They've pacified Ecuador. You know, they beat the bloke with his drum and whatnot. They've subdued most of Peru and Bolivia. They've got from Charles V the seal of approval because Francisco Pizarro has been made a Marquis.

22:54Dominic Sandbrook:And he's got a very - A mad coat of arms. Yeah, a mad coat of arms. A mad coat of arms that shows Atahualpa with a metal collar with his hands plunged into two great chests of gold. So very on the nose, like Pizarro's not. But he's out and proud. Yeah, basically a coat of arms that combines gold and garrotting, which is what he's all about. That sums it up, really, doesn't it? Yeah. What they haven't done there, the Pizarros, is find Manco. So Manco has retreated even deeper into the jungle. And we have a tremendous source. His son, Tito Cusi, will come back to his son in the second half. his son is a great character his son said of him he returned to the town of vitkos and from there he went to vilcabamba so that's below vitkos in the jungle where he remained for some days and he built houses and palaces to make it his principal residence for it has a warm climate because it's deep in the rainforest and vilcabamba which is sort of further down from vitkos was chosen for its remoteness and its safety that they thought there was basically no way the spanish could find them in the heart of the jungle and it's vilcabamba that becomes the ultimate lost city of the incas so the site today is called espiritu pampa but it's totally cut off like you can't drive there and actually if anyone was interested our friend michael wood who's been on the rest is history did a tv series in the 1990s called conquistadors he did an episode about peru and he literally hacks his way through the jungle in the sort of second half of that episode to get to this site and kind of does pieces to camera from the ruins.

24:31Dominic Sandbrook:It's really good telly and very sort of powerful. Anyway, so that's where Manco is. In April 1539, the Pizarro's decided they'd make another attempt to try and find him. And Gonzalo and Paolo set off from Cusco with 300 men to track him down. And they were pretty confident they could get him. They thought he was hemmed in, there's no chance of escape, all this. They hacked their way through the jungle. They survive an ambush by some Incas who roll boulders down the hill at them. That old boulder trick that the Incas are now very addicted to. And they think they've got him cornered in a jungle fort called Chukuluska.

25:05Dominic Sandbrook:But once again, Manco slips away. It's very, I mean, this is very Hollywood. He ends up swimming across a river to escape them. And then he gets out of the river, he stands on the other bank, and he taunts them across the river and he shouts at them, I am Manco Inca. I am Manco Inca. I have already killed 2 ,000 Spaniards. One day, I will kill the rest of you, and I will take back the lands of my forefathers.

25:29Tom Holland:So he's got away, but his sister stroke wife, Cura Oclo, who we heard about in the previous episode, seized, raped, horrible. Even worse things now happen. And again, if you've got your children

25:47Dominic Sandbrook:with you watch out so basically uh yes you're right gonzalo pizarro had taken a fancy to her and cuzco and had behaved poorly she's had a terrible time now they catch her again and they drag her back to the sacred valley and basically all the way they keep trying to rape her again and her nephew titu kuzi said she defended herself fiercely throughout and she covered her body with filth i think we know what he means so that the men who were trying to rape her would be nauseated She defended herself like this many times during the journey. So they get back, and Francisco Pizarro wants to use her as a hostage to get Manco to surrender.

26:28Dominic Sandbrook:And he sends messengers to Manco with gifts of a pony that he's imported over the sea and some silk, some nice silk. And he says to Manco, come on, give yourself up, and I'll let your wife go. Manco kills all the people bringing the messages. He says, we don't do deals with terrorists. and Pizarro is furious, and he decides to take his revenge on Kira Oklo, Manco's wife. They strip her naked, and they tie her to a stake, and there we're told she is beaten and abused by Canyari Indians, so native allies, and her last words are quoted as, hurry up and put an end to me so that your appetites can be fully satisfied.

27:11Dominic Sandbrook:They shoot her with arrows, they put her body in a basket and they floated along the river into the jungle to Manco. And Tito Cousy says Manco wept and made great mourning for her, for he loved her very much. But Manco never does give himself up and we'll find out what happens to him after the break. But before that, let's move on two years to the summer of 1541 and to the Pizarros. So they're now for, what, nine years since they met Atahualpa, and they look like they've won. Francisco is the governor in Lima. Gonzalo is his lieutenant governor in Quito, in Ecuador. And Hernando has gone back to Spain to represent them at court.

27:50Dominic Sandbrook:Francisco, the man we began this whole series with, the man from nowhere, you know, the wild west of Spain, Trujillo, he's 63 years old. He's one of the richest men in the world. he has achieved his dreams more completely even than his cousin enan cortez as one chronicler lopez de gomara says he had found and acquired more gold and silver than any of the many spaniards who crossed to the indies and more than any commander in the history of the world i think that possibly is true i mean colossal quantities amazing thing about pizarro pizarro remember illegitimate, illiterate, you know, as a young man, as a boy, herded pigs.

28:30Dominic Sandbrook:He has achieved all this by, of course, ambition and violence, but also by cunning and kind of cool, shrewd calculation. He's not a lovable man, that's for sure. But he's not as slippery as Cortez is, and he's not as bloodthirsty as Pedro de Alvarado. And the weird thing about Pizarro, as historians so often say, is he lacks the sort of driving motivations of a lot of conquistadors. Which is the lust for gold, the desire to convert Christianity. Right. All through this series, right? There's been very little about Christian conversion. You know, we haven't had accounts of the Spanish destroying temples out of zeal, or insisting that their collaborators become Christians.

29:14Tom Holland:You've had priests watching with interest as people bow towards the sun. Exactly.

29:20Dominic Sandbrook:And Pizarro sets the tone for this. He appears to be generally pretty uninterested in this kind of thing. The amazing thing is, for a man who's been driven by the pursuit of gold, he's very uninterested in spending it. So we're told he didn't like fine food. He didn't like fine wine. He doesn't like hunting particularly. he wears the same old clothes he's always worn he spends his spare time just hanging around in his orange orchard that he's had built and basically playing coits for pennies with ordinary spanish soldiers so what has driven him all this time what has made him tick what has made him risk everything adventure glory i mean obviously he likes having the gold but he doesn't particularly want to spend it he doesn't want to live a luxurious life we just do not know i mean whether

30:09Tom Holland:Whether it's a fault of the sources or whether it's a reflection of his personality, but he's a much less vivid character than Cortez, isn't he?

30:15Dominic Sandbrook:Yes, absolutely. And I think, but I think that's exactly what he was like. I think there's something opaque, opaque, possibly even a bit dull. There's nothing especially likeable. Although, actually, the other conquistadors generally did find him likeable. They said he doesn't have, you know, he's not as untrustworthy as Cortez is. I mean, obviously, if you're Diego del Magro, you might disagree. but by and large he's neither lovable nor but especially loathsome by conquistador standards he is as you say just dull a bit vanilla so but in the summer of 1541 he hears some slightly worrying news in spain his brother hernando has been indicted for the execution of almagro this is always the way with the spaniards and he's being held in the alcazar their castle in madrid and it's a reminder to pizarro you know you can be very successful as a conquistador but you never entirely secure.

31:07Dominic Sandbrook:And at the same time, he starts to hear rumours of unrest from the streets of Lima. Remember that Almagro had been the standard bearer for people who felt they'd arrived too late and they'd been left out and they hadn't shared in all the booty of the Pizarro's and they feel resentful and frustrated and bitter. And people like that, who of course are arriving all the time, now have a new champion. And this is a young man who was born to a native woman in panama and has arrived in peru and he's nicknamed el model el mozo the boy but his real name is diego de almagro he is the son of pizarro's old rival and in june 1541 the mayor of lima says to pizarro this young man you know his father's son um you know he's out for revenge he's planning a coup to assassinate you at mass and bizarro says what in lima lima's my city i'm the big man nothing will happen i don't i don't have anything to fear from this boy then on sunday the 26th of june that morning he hears reports of trouble people tell him that um there are men outside al magro younger's house and they're shouting down with the traitor down with the tyrant i.e bizarro and he thinks okay well to be on the safe side i'll say that i'm ill and i won't go to mass and this afternoon I'll go and get my cavalry.

32:31Dominic Sandbrook:We'll ride into the city and we'll capture this little brat and we will punish him. So the hour of mass comes and Almagro and his friends wait for Pizarro outside the cathedral. But obviously Pizarro doesn't come. They get one of their number who's a Basque priest and they say, go to Pizarro's house, find out what's going on. The priest goes to Pizarro's house and Pizarro very naively actually says to the priest, oh, come on in. You know, actually you can celebrate mass here if you like. So they start celebrating mass. Meanwhile, the other conspirators all pile down to Pizarro's house, about 40 of them.

33:06Dominic Sandbrook:They start making a great racket outside the house, banging on the door and shouting and stuff. Pizarro sends one of his friends to find out what's going on. At about this point, Pizarro's servants are indigenous people, like scrambling out of the windows and stuff. This is absolutely insane. Why is he so blithely oblivious to all this? clearly these men mean us nothing but ill and at this point doors of pizarro's mansion crash open and almagro the younger's men burst in and pizarro grabs a sword and a dagger and he stands there in the doorway remember he's in his 60s but the attackers are on him right away he cuts the first one down but the men behind him are too strong they slash at pizarro's body and one of them stabs him in the throat and he falls to the ground and then one of the attackers juan borrigan wrote this account.

33:53Dominic Sandbrook:When the Marquis had fallen wounded to the ground, he made the sign of the cross over his mouth with his fingers and begged confession for his sins. But I took an urn that was full of water and smashed it down onto his crossed fingers. And I said to him, in hell, you will have to confess in hell. It was a big jar and it broke his face. And with that great blow, the Marquis breathed his last. So that night, Pizarro's mangled body is buried behind the cathedral. And that is the end of the man who masterminded the conquest of the Incas. So with that, everything changes again. So now you have in Lima, Almagro the Younger.

34:38Dominic Sandbrook:He's parading through the streets and he's shouting, I am the new master of Peru. But you still have one Pizarro brother left in South America. That is Gonzalo, who is in Quito. He's going to want revenge. And of course, in his jungle there, you have Manco Inca, who is planning one last comeback.

35:00Tom Holland:So Dominic, would you say still all to play for?

35:03Dominic Sandbrook:Absolutely all to play for, Tom.

35:05Tom Holland:Yeah.

35:05Dominic Sandbrook:I mean, mad to stop listening now.

35:07Tom Holland:Yeah, you'd be completely mad. So come back after the break for the thrilling final chapter of this epic and blood-soaked saga.

35:21Tom Holland:This episode is brought to you by Vanguard. Now, Dominic, history is full of examples of people who are promised the world and then got very badly let down. Can you think of a particular example?

35:34Dominic Sandbrook:I can. 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 the Inca emperor Atahualpa.

35:51Tom Holland: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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36:59Dominic 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.

37:33Tom Holland:hello and welcome back to the rest is history so the two principal characters in our story pizarro and almagro the business partners who whose relationship stretched right the way back to episode one whose bloody vendetta has laid waste to peru they are both now dead their vendetta has cost both of them their lives and i guess dominic the the big question is where does that leave the struggle for supremacy in peru which is by now war ravaged smallpox scarred ransacked of gold

38:12Dominic Sandbrook:and silver in a very very poor way yes exactly so we've still got our two rival inca emperors we still have pauliu and kuzco with his lovely coat of arms that you think is a bit too uh garish it's busy so he doesn't die horribly he lives peacefully till about 1550 and then he dies of old age or illness in his bed in his bed i mean unheard of he has no legitimate children and the spanish don't bother you know proclaiming a successor by this point the inca empire has been consigned to history really so they think well we don't even need a puppet you know who cares Now, there's also Manco in Vilcabamba, in the jungle.

38:53Dominic Sandbrook:He's kept out of the civil wars. He's just watching, hoping they all lose, which they kind of are. So he's waiting. But people who enjoy confusing Spanish vendettas will be pleased to hear that this particular one is actually not quite over, because it simply moves to the next generation. So the Pizarro's champion is Gonzalo. Gonzalo, we described him in episode one. the Spanish Chronicle saying handsome popular virtuous easygoing but he's behaved disgracefully throughout this series that wasn't his vibe in the previous episode not at all now he has been doing something very fun he has been searching for the mythical land of cinnamon in the Amazon and he went there with a guy called Francisco de Oriana and if you've ever seen one of our stage shows particularly in Australia you may remember that Oriana went all the way down the Amazon didn't he?

39:44Dominic Sandbrook:He met people who'd invented Wellington boots or something. I can't remember all the details.

39:48Tom Holland:And this is the first kind of real great quest for El Dorado, isn't it?

39:51Dominic Sandbrook:Exactly. Gonzalo went back to Quito, to the lilt of the Spanish guitar. And there he heard the news of his brother's death, and he took over leadership of the Pizarro clan. So he's there in Ecuador. The Almagristas, as they are called, are delighted with life now. They're in control of Lima and Almagro the Younger. And Almagro the Younger, who's just 22, says, well, I'm now the governor of New Castile. Brilliant. I've won. This does not go down well with Charles V. People aren't watching this in Spain and saying, well, this is actually tremendous behavior. Our conquistadors have behaved incredibly well.

40:28Dominic Sandbrook:Charles V, who is a very, he's quite a boring man himself, isn't he, for one of the most powerful men who ever lived. Charles V gets these reports at his desk and says They're just all murdering each other and proclaiming that they're the governor. I'm in charge of choosing the governor. And he's already sent a special investigator called Vaca de Castro to South America. I mean, that's a tough gig, isn't it? I think it's a terrible gig. I think it's actually a terrible gig. I mean, if you're a judge in Spain and you're... You've got to go and sort out between these two thuggish clans. Exactly.

41:00Dominic Sandbrook:You definitely don't want to do that. Vaca de Castro gets to Peru, and there he's told that Pizarre has been murdered. and Charles V had said to him, if something like that happens, you become the governor yourself and sort it out. So Fakir de Castro does precisely that. He lands in Peru and he says, this is absolutely intolerable. He raises the royal standard and he says, I'm out for blood against Almagro Jr. And they have a showdown outside what is now the city of Ayacucho in central Peru, the Battle of Chupas in September 1542. Now this is a much more modern battle than the one we had in the first half.

41:34Dominic Sandbrook:So there's all kinds of arquebuses, there's light artillery. It's sort of proper early modern stuff.

41:41Tom Holland:And crucially, pikes. And these pikes disembowel the horses. And I kind of, I guess, illustrate to the Incas what they've been missing out on.

41:50Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, the Incas didn't have pikes. And if only they had pikes, it would be a very different story. Now, one of the guys who dies at this battle is a familiar name to people who listen to the first part of the series. He's the Greek bloke, Pedro de Candia from Crete. Yeah. Remember him? Yeah. So he had fired the artillery signal that marked the kidnapping of Atahualpa.

42:08Tom Holland:And then he'd gone off on a kind of proto-El Dorado quest, which had gone horribly wrong. Exactly.

42:15Dominic Sandbrook:And he's fighting in this battle for Almagro the Younger. And do you know who kills him? I mean, given the way the Spanish behave, people can probably anticipate. The guy who kills him is Almagro the Younger. He kills him for, and I quote, treachery in not firing his cannon sufficiently vigorously. So you basically, you don't want to be involved in this business at all, I think. You don't want to be involved with the Unmagro guys. I mean. They're terrible. The Royal Army under Vaca de Castro wins a huge victory. And Vaca de Castro says, I'm going to lay down the law now. No prisoners. And we're told the ditch under the scaffold was full of dead bodies.

42:52Dominic Sandbrook:And then, brilliantly, this gave considerable pleasure to the native onlookers. I bet. Although they were amazed to think that many of the victims had been captains holding posts of honour. So again, huge spectator sport. Yeah, you've got to get your pleasure the way you can. Exactly. So Armagro Jr. gets away. He flees to Cusco with a friend of his called Diego Mendez. And their plan is actually they'll head on from Cusco to take refuge with Manco. Right, another twist. Because Diego Mendez is clearly a bit of a dog because he dallies in Cusco for a final visit to his mistress. And that slows them down.

43:28Dominic Sandbrook:They're overtaken in the valley by a posse from Cusco and they're dragged back to Cusco. Mendez is imprisoned. Almagro Jr. is taken to the central square. He's tried for rebellion. He is unsurprisingly grotted, and then he's beheaded. So that is the definitive end of Almagro. Now, this bloke Mendez, who'd been his pal, he ends up escaping. He teams up with six other fugitives from the Almagro faction, and they do manage to get over the mountains to Vilcabamba and to Manco. now some of manco's captains when these blokes turned up they said oh really the almagristas you know just kill them just get rid these people are always trouble and manco i think it's weird how everybody in this entire story at some point is guilty of crass naivety yeah after 10 years of this mad backstabbing they say what could go wrong i trust him they seem nice yeah manco says well they can teach us to ride horses and to fire their spanish weapons so he puts them up in his so-called palace in vitcos this is the sort of courtyards on a promontory overlooking the valley and titu kuzi manco's son says my father ordered they should have houses in which to live he ordered his own women to prepare their food and drink he took his meals with them he treated them as if they were his own brothers so with that i think our listeners can guess what's coming so two years later these Almagrista refugees get a secret message from Cuzco basically the new authorities in Peru will forgive you if you can murder Manco and they discuss this and one of their female servants hears them discussing it and the servant tells Manco's commanders and they tell Manco and Manco again he says no I don't believe they would do this he says I think you've made this up I think you've actually made this up because you want me to get rid of these Spaniards and you so that you can have their weapons for yourself.

45:29Dominic Sandbrook:I'm not going to fall for that one. My guests would never betray me in this way. And then what happens next? Insane. And this is an account by a guy called Juan de Betanzos. He says, they decided to have a game of coits. They hoped the Inca would wish to play with them at this game, as he usually did. This has my single favorite detail, by the way, from the whole series. Then while playing, they would concoct a quarrel with him and gang up to kill him. they hid daggers in their boots they hid many bread rolls up their sleeves to eat in the jungle when they escaped i think that's a massive giveaway frankly if a bloke turns up and his sleeves are stuffed with bread rolls you know you're in trouble they start playing this game they part-playing coits it's basically throwing horseshoes manco says i don't want to play i'm not in the mood and also what have you got why you got all those bread rolls up your sleeves What's going on here?

46:23Dominic Sandbrook:I mean, why someone like the Coen brothers haven't made a film of this? I do not know. Anyway, they start playing the coits. They feign having an argument over a foul throw. Manco moves into the referee. And then one of them, Gormes Perez, took out his dagger and plunged it into the Inca's chest. And the terrible thing is that one of the people watching this is Manco's son, Tito Cusi, who was nine years old and who wrote this, or dictated this very evocative account of what followed. My father, feeling himself wounded, tried to defend himself, but he was alone and unarmed and there were seven of them with knives.

47:02Dominic Sandbrook:He fell to the ground covered with wounds and they left him for dead. I was only a small boy, but seeing my father hurt, I wanted to go and help him. But they turned furiously upon me and hurled a spear which only just missed me. I was terrified and hid among some bushes. They searched for me, but failed to find me. And maybe you'll know this better than me, but I can't think of many accounts from the 16th century or earlier of something like this that are quite as personal, you know, by somebody's son telling the story firsthand about the terror and the horror of that kind of moment. Is he writing this in Spanish?

47:38Dominic Sandbrook:He's dictating it to a missionary, to a Spanish missionary who wrote it all down. So basically we have Tito Cusi's account of the entire conquest dictated by him to Spaniards who came to visit him later on.

47:52Tom Holland:It gives you a sense of if that is the kind of standard for Incan narrative. Yeah. How badly we've missed out on not having other such eyewitnesses.

48:01Dominic Sandbrook:Just a very straightforward kind of account. I mean, what he doesn't mention is whether they had bread rolls falling out of their sleeves as this happened.

48:07Tom Holland:Well, he was very young, wasn't he? Maybe he thought that was standard for a Spaniard. Yeah. Well, they could have been doing it for weeks before to lull him into a false obscurity.

48:16Dominic Sandbrook:That's proper planning, isn't it? Yeah. It's sort of secreting tapas around their... Bocadillos. Yeah. So anyway, these guys, they run into the jungle. I mean, this is a stupid plan, the coits and all that. How they thought they could get away with this, I do not know. They're chased into the jungle by Manco's bodyguards. They end up being cornered in a thatched hut, rather like John Wilkes Booth. So loads of Incas appear outside, Boston Corbett style. They pile up wood. They set it on fire. Any of the Hispanics that come out are shot with arrows, and the rest are all burned alive. And that's the end of the assassins.

48:49Dominic Sandbrook:And sadly, the end of poor Manco. So he was embalmed. He was taken down the hill to Vilcabamba and he was housed in the Temple of the Sun there. And actually, most Spanish sources were very damning about his murder. They didn't see his assassins as heroes. They saw them as cold-blooded traitors. And actually, most of the Spanish sources saw Manco as pretty admirable. You know, a noble adversary. And historians have been very kind to him by and large. Clearly, he was a resilient and courageous man who inspired people to stick with him and not to collaborate. John Hemming calls him an indomitable patriot, the only native prince whose royal lineage and stubborn courage enjoyed the respect of Spaniards and Indians alike.

49:35Dominic Sandbrook:And I have to say, he's probably one of the very few admirable characters from this entire series. With Manco's death, any chance of a serious native fight back pretty much disappears. So we're now in 1544, 12 years after Bazaar's arrival, and the Spanish supremacy is largely unchallenged. So most of the land now of the former Inca Empire is divided between about 500 Spanish landowners. They build these large stone mansions in Spanish colonial settlements, places like Lima or Trujillo, which is also on the coast, full of hangers-on. They import European horses. They import African slaves and Spanish women to be their wives.

50:16Dominic Sandbrook:Gold has by now pretty much all gone. It's gone back to Europe. So these guys live on proceeds from their massive estates. They're encomiendas. Now, there are people arriving all the time from Spain at this point, hundreds of people who don't have gold and who don't get estates. And they are very impatient and resentful, and they take it out on the locals. and the reports back to Spain that the rabble, as they are called, are behaving very badly. They're taking local people as slaves and all of this kind of thing. And this is the context in company with the protests of clergymen like Las Casas, who you mentioned before.

50:50Dominic Sandbrook:Who is now on the Royal Council by this point. Exactly. So this is the context for what are called the new laws of the early 1540s. So this is Charles V responding to these complaints. And he says, no more abuses. stop giving out indigenous people's land and giving out indigenous people themselves as workforce our colonial officials it should be a priority for them to look after in inverted commas indian welfare we should treat them as equal subjects of the spanish crown you know basically be a bit

51:21Tom Holland:kinder and specifically no slavery so neither because of war even under the category of rebellion nor by barter nor for any other cause in any other way may any indian be made a slave exactly

51:32Dominic Sandbrook:At the time, lots of sort of churchmen said, great, this is exactly what we want. Historians, of course, think very highly of the new laws because they're a step in a more liberal direction. But at the time, Spanish settlers in the Americas hated them. They were outraged. The things were heard by the people over here with great indignation. There was a wild tumult with the news flying from one part to another. So go woke and go broke. Right. this is what happens because Charles sends a viceroy to enforce the new laws in Peru in 1544. The settlers go ballistic and their champion is a very familiar name.

52:08Dominic Sandbrook:It is none other than Gonzalo Pizarro. He's now in his mid-30s and he thinks, finally, this is the chance to make myself the unchallenged strongman of Peru. He raises an army and he says, I'm going to use this against Vilcabamba against the Inca, the little Inca kingdom. But actually, once he's raised it, he uses it to march on Lima. And this is such an interesting moment. In his book, John Hemming points out that this is basically a preview of so many rebellions in the Americas over the next few centuries.

52:43Tom Holland:Except that I guess that particularly in South America, the rhetoric will be that this is a campaign launched in aid of liberty from servitude.

52:52Dominic Sandbrook:Liberty from the oppression of the crown.

52:54Tom Holland:But Pizarro is essentially doing this because he wants to restore servitude. Well, for other people. Which is also, of course, I guess, what the founding fathers also...

53:04Dominic Sandbrook:Wait, we're about to get on to this. John Hemming. A home government had legislated too liberally on behalf of colonial natives. The colonists loudly protested their loyalty to crown and mother country, but demanded a free hand to exploit the territory that they had worn and settled. So in other words, Tom, this is a dry run for the tax revolt of the 1770s. And there is only one major difference between Gonzalo Pizarro and George Washington. And you know what that difference is? Gonzalo Pizarro had, he had his own teeth. He had all his own teeth. He did not walk around with somebody with slaves' teeth in his mouth.

53:40Dominic Sandbrook:Also, Gonzalo Pizarro wasn't a massive hypocrite. So that's another big difference.

53:44Tom Holland:And you know someone else who had that perspective on the revolution in America? Is it Dr. Johnson? It's Dr. Johnson, who will be appearing in our next series.

53:54Dominic Sandbrook:Brilliant. So it all links up. Because people at this point are thinking, well, enough of this. I want to hear about this Dr. Johnson guy. He sounds very sound. And as luck would have it, he'll be joining us on Monday. So Gonzalo Pizarro, the George Washington of Peru. He kills the Viceroy and he marches into Lima as the master of Peru. We're told he was wearing a sumptuous outfit. It's always good to hear about the clothes. A sumptuous outfit of black velvet, gold, plumes, and jewels.

54:19Tom Holland:I mean, to be fair, George Washington, that's not his style.

54:21Dominic Sandbrook:That's not his vibe at all. However, Gonzalo, by doing this, basically is an open rebellion against the king of Spain. As we know from the American business, once you've done that, you either have to go the whole way or not. There's no real halfway house. Charles V sends a new viceroy called Pedro de la Gasca. And this says to this new viceroy, right, okay, scrap the woke laws. That hasn't worked at all. You know, as you said, Tom, we've been too liberal. Forget all that. However, we have to punish Gonzalo. You cannot, you know, rebel against the crown and kill the viceroy. So Gonzalo confronts the viceroy outside Cusco at a place called Chaciahuana.

55:00Dominic Sandbrook:But Gonzalo's men completely let him down. They all desert and he's taken prisoner. And he has one last final confrontation. this guy who's behaved consistently badly, I think, from episode one to episode six. Gasker says to him, you've been very ungrateful to his majesty. You Pizarro's were nothing until he raised you from the dust and made you rich men. And Gonzalo, perhaps not entirely unfairly, says, what we did, we did at our own expense. His majesty did not lift us from the dust. The Pizarro's have been gentlemen since the Goths came to Spain. That's a good line. if we were poor well that explains why we went out to win this empire and we gave it to his majesty that we might have kept it for ourselves joy he reminds me of a little bit there lope de gire do you not think there's a sort of the resentment of giving everything away to the crown and all

55:51Tom Holland:that kind of thing yeah i mean you can definitely see where the wrath of god comes from i mean and

55:55Dominic Sandbrook:not least with all the grottings exactly it's the same thing so between lope de gire uh the madman And Gonzalo de Pizarro and George Washington, I mean, they've got a lot in common, those three men. That's a dinner party I don't want to go to. Because George Washington would actually bore you to death before the other's got a chance to garrot you. He'd cheer you his garden, wouldn't he? So Gonzalo ends up being executed in the main square of Cusco, textbook execution, confesses his sins, apologises to the king, all of this. And that's the end of him. And that basically is the end of all of them.

56:27Dominic Sandbrook:They've all died violently. After all that, the only exception is Hernando Pizarro. He was in prison, if you remember, in Madrid. He ended up being moved to another prison and he stayed there for 20 years. He was released in 1561 and then he died 17 years later, aged about 74. Was he able to enjoy his wealth? I don't think so, really. I think a lot of it was probably confiscated and stuff. So it was all for nothing. But let's talk about what it all meant for the people that have been slightly absent for this series, which is basically the people of the Andean region. So a guy we've quoted a lot, John Hemming, brilliant, brilliant book on the conquest of the Incas.

57:06Dominic Sandbrook:Really, I can't recommend it too highly. He's very frank about what all this meant for the people of Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. A total and utter demographic disaster. There are all kinds of accounts, including from that bloke I played on stage, Bicente de Valverde, writing to Charles V in 1539. I moved across a good portion of this land and saw terrible destruction in it. Having seen the land before, I could not help feeling great sadness. The sight of such desolation would move anyone to great pity. I mean, we don't need to go into all the sort of evidence and the quotations, but other Spanish writers describe how towns and villages are deserted, populations, valleys where there were 40 ,000 people, there are now 4 ,000 people.

57:48Tom Holland:I mean, the key writer on this, again, is Las Casas, isn't it? Who, in 1552, he writes this book, The Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies, in which Peru features very prominently. And he casts it as a kind of genocidal destruction of a paradise. And he casts the Incas as childlike, as peaceable, as never having committed any crime at all. And that is the narrative that then passes into Protestant countries, and which Peter Schaffer, for instance, ends up inheriting, and which I think is still very, very much part of the narrative in, say, English-speaking countries.

58:29Dominic Sandbrook:Completely. And it's part of that world, that sort of vibe of the panpipes are playing, native spirituality in touch with nature peaceful people lovely textiles all of that kind of thing that there's not the degree of truth in that but as we just established in episode one to be ruled by the incas was definitely not a barrel of laughs i mean they are pretty brutal you know they will deport you they will deny you private property they believe in forced labor you know massive chain gangs all of this kind of thing i'm not saying they're complete monsters but they're not saints either.

59:04Tom Holland:But also just really important to emphasize that we know about the monstrous crimes of the conquistadors thanks to Spanish writers and Spanish moralists. And so that tension in attitudes to what the Europeans are doing in the Americas is there right from the beginning. It is not a kind of something specific to the 21st century to worry about this.

59:28Dominic Sandbrook:No, I mean, just by By the way, you mentioned genocide, and that's something that historians talk about a lot. I think it's not right to call this a genocide for this reason.

59:38Tom Holland:No, but that's Las Casas' rhetoric. I mean, Las Casas is providing these terms and these frames of reference.

59:44Dominic Sandbrook:Of course. And lots of people today, if you Google it online, there are lots of people who will bandy around terms like these, which I think are wrong because most people probably died not because of Spanish violence, but because of disease by smallpox and measles. We've already described the effect that they had in the Caribbean and in Mesoamerica, Central America and Mexico. The conquest, of course, follows the Civil War. Yes, the Civil War is just as bad, right? Yeah. Between them, the two of them destroyed Inca infrastructure. So the irrigation canals, the terraces, the roads on which the economy depended.

1:00:14Dominic Sandbrook:As early as 1539, some Spanish writers are saying, you know, because basically armies are crisscrossing the land, taking people's food, people have nothing to eat. And as in the Caribbean, I think you have a massive sense of trauma and therefore a collapse in the birth rate. Of all people, Philip II of Spain wrote years later to the Archbishop of Lima, we have been informed that many people hang themselves, others allow themselves to die by not eating, others take poisoned herbs, and mothers kill their babies at birth, saying they do it to free them from the hardships they suffer themselves. And that really reminds me of what people were saying about the Taino people in the Caribbean in the 1510s.

1:00:55Dominic Sandbrook:There's this kind of cultural collapse, which comes from the effect of colonization. And if you survive, your life is not much fun. So the survivors, because of the encomienda system, are subject to punishing work requirements. So about four out of five men in Spanish-ruled Peru in the 16th century are subject to forced labor. And as you said, Tom, and I think you're dead right to make this point, the criticism does not come from without, it comes from within, from senior Spanish officials. So this is a guy called Fernando de Santillán, who was a royal official in Peru and Ecuador in the 1560s.

1:01:31Dominic Sandbrook:I think it's a really telling quotation. He says, when people are healthy, they work only for tribute. Even when they're sick, they're forced to pay their tribute in full. They have nothing left over for themselves. They're deeply depressed by their misery and servitude, and they believe they must continue to work for the Spaniards for as long as they live. This is a Spaniard talking. Because of this, they despair. They ask only for their daily bread, and they cannot even have that. There are no people on earth so hardworking, humble, or well-behaved, but they live the most wretched and miserable lives of any people on earth.

1:02:03Dominic Sandbrook:And actually, do you know what? The people he's talking about, the people in the fields, they don't even have the worst of it. The worst of it are the people who end up working in the mines, particularly the mine we mentioned before, the giant mine at Potosi in Bolivia that opened in 1545. Tens of thousands of people were drafted there year after year to work as forced laborers digging out silver. It ended up being called the mountain that eats men. And if you, you know, demographers, historians argue about exactly how many people died in that mine at Cerro Rico in Potosi. I mean, the highest estimate is 8 million people.

1:02:42Dominic Sandbrook:The lower estimates are still hundreds of thousands of people died in these mines. I mean, just unbelievable.

1:02:50Tom Holland:And the amount of silver produced from that will massively destabilize not just the economy of Spain, not just the economy of Europe, but the entire global economy. And you can start talking about the global economy.

1:03:03Dominic Sandbrook:You can, thanks to this. thanks to this, the silver is being shipped across to Spain. And as you say, the effects are rippling all through the world economy. There's a brilliant book on this by Charles C. Mann called 1493, about the world after the discovery of the Americas. So we'll just finish off by telling you what happened to the jungle kingdom of Vilcabamba. Manco was succeeded by his son, who was called Sari Tupac, who was five years old. And he ruled in Vilcabamba for the next few years. They just kept themselves to themselves. They were very quiet. We're talking about maybe a couple of thousand people in the jungle.

1:03:38Dominic Sandbrook:In 1552, Syri Tupac, who was then late teens, got a letter from, again, of all people, Philip II of Spain. He wasn't quite Philip II then. He was a prince. But Philip said to him, listen, I know that your father Manco was provoked into his uprising. Isn't it amazing, by the way, that Philip, of all people, is saying this? If you come out of your lair i promise you a full pardon and we'll leave your little kingdom alone but basically i'd like you to come out and this guy siree tubac decided to accept and he would travel down by litter to the coast he was greeted in lima by the viceroy with great honor he was lodged in the viceroy palace he was given they said you know thanks for coming out we'll give you a big estate in the sacred valley outside cuzco and amazingly i love this pope julius iii gave him special dispensation to marry his sister.

1:04:27Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, I mean, he'll do it for the Inca, but not for Henry VIII. Yeah, what's all that about? That's Paul from the papacy, yes again. So the kingdom, what they call the Neo-Inca kingdom, survived under his older half-brother who succeeded, who is Tito Cusi, the guy we've been hearing from, this amazing source, because he narrated this stuff to a Spanish missionary. Tito Cusi, he actually is, without any question, the only basically really really good person in this whole story so he ruled for basically a decade the 1560s and he said to his uh captains and whatnot basically we should do nothing to provoke the spanish we'll just completely leave them alone we'll stay here in the jungle and they'll leave us alone and not only did he do that he was very friendly to the spanish they would send missionaries and envoys and he enjoyed chatting to them he allowed them to put up a cross all of this kind of thing.

1:05:18Dominic Sandbrook:He allowed them to preach. He was baptized, although he continued to practice his own religion as well. And the Spanish reported that Tito Cusi was a large, very jolly man. He was a joker. He liked a lot of feathers and nice cloaks and stuff like this. And John Hemming says, basically, if he had lived longer, Vilcabamba, and I quote, might have become an independent state under the direct protection of the Spanish crown. It might have related to Spanish Peru as Lesotho, Swaziland and Botswana related to South Africa. And Vilcabamba would now have a seat in the United Nations. That's a nice thought, isn't it?

1:05:54Dominic Sandbrook:It is, isn't it? But he doesn't live. He goes to visit his father's shrine where his father had been murdered in Vitkos. He catches a chill. He then makes a terrible mistake. He decides to go on a massive drinking bout and gets absolutely wasted on Chicha. And then he gets a fever and he dies. and he's succeeded by his brother who has probably a better known name Tupac Amaru. Tupac Amaru was in his mid-20s and he was a disaster for the Neo-Inca state because he was much less skillful than Titucuzi. He said Titucuzi's death was all the Christian's fault. He should never have allowed all those missionaries in and done all this.

1:06:32Dominic Sandbrook:He kills a friar, he outlaws Christianity and he says let's seal off Vilcabamba from the outside world. So the viceroy at the time was a guy called Francisco de Toledo, and he sent an envoy to protest with letters protesting from the Pope and the King of Spain, Philip II. Tupac Amaru did not welcome the envoy with open arms. He had him murdered on the border. The inevitable consequence, the viceroy proclaimed Tupac Amaru an apostate, a homicide, a rebel, and a tyrant, and he called for a liberal interventionist war of fire and blood. I mean, a war of fire and blood, never good news. Never good news.

1:07:08Dominic Sandbrook:The Spanish marched into the jungle in 1572 in June. This time, they find it all pretty easy. The Incas have fled into the jungle, but they track them down. They capture Tupac Amaru, and they bring him back to Cuzco, together with the mummified remains of Manco and Titucuzi. And Tupac Amaru is tried for rebellion. It's a show trial, very like Atahualpa's. and like Atahualpa he converts to Christianity kind of in extremis but just like Pizarro and Almagro with the death of Atahualpa the viceroy wants to get rid of him and he wants it done quickly and so on the 24th of September 1572 the last king of the Incas is led out into the square in Cusco we're told that he was riding a mule with trappings of black velvet and he himself was completely dressed in mourning.

1:08:01Dominic Sandbrook:And as so often on these occasions, there are colossal crowds. The Indians climbed the walls and roofs of the houses and even the many large hills that are visible from the city were full of Indians. And he goes up onto the scaffold, Tupac Amaru. As the multitude of Indians saw that their lord and Inca was to die, they deafened the skies, making them reverberate with their cries and wailing. And then he turns to the crowd and he says his last words in Quechua. Pachacamac. so the old creator god see how my enemies spill my blood and then with one blow the executioner severed his head and held it high for all to see and as the blow fell the bells of the cathedral began to toll and they were followed by those of all the monasteries and churches in the city the execution caused the greatest sorrow and brought tears to the eyes of all and that was

1:08:53Tom Holland:the end of the last of the incas thank you dominic what an incredible epic sweep uh thanks so much a dark but i mean such a compelling story um and next week a complete change of tone we are in 18th century london for the story of samuel johnson and james boswell uh one of the great friendships in history and nobody I think is killed in the course of that series at all so a real a change of flavor I think it's fair to say and members of the Restless History Club will get all four episodes of that on Monday and if you're not a member you know what to do sign up at therestlesshistory.com but for now thank you Dominic for an epic tale epically told bye-bye

1:09:43Dominic Sandbrook:Muchas gracias. Adios muchachos.

1:10:13Dominic Sandbrook:so much we have decided to roll it out as its own show so it'll be coming out every tuesday we'll be doing a different book each time and digging into all the stories behind them and we

1:10:24Tom Holland:are going to be talking about the historical contexts behind some of the greatest and most famous books of all time we're going to be digging into the remarkable people behind them the unexpected stories behind the stories and also unraveling the plot of each book a bit and delving into the depths of the story.

1:10:41Dominic Sandbrook:Now, you don't have to have read the books to listen to the show, but we hope that by the end of each episode, you will be able to pretend to people that you've read them. That is the key thing. And either way, whether you read them or not, we hope that you'll learn lots of fascinating facts, you'll do lots of great stories, and maybe, Tabby, the odd laugh.

1:10:58Tom Holland:We will be looking at thrilling Gothic bodice rippers like Wuthering Heights and Frankenstein, as well as iconic stories like The Great Gatsby or Little Women. And then also some more modern stuff. So Game of Thrones, Normal People, The Hunger Games, Hamnet, all manner of exciting stories.

1:11:17Dominic Sandbrook:So please join us on our journey into all things books, wherever you get your podcasts. Just search for The Book Club every Tuesday, and hopefully we will see you there.

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