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>> November 15th, 1532, Cajamarca.
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Hernando de Soto has just made official contact with Atahualpa and it is not going well.
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Atahualpa's first words are rebuke,
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"I am told you have killed my people and put them in chains."
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He says, "Holding up an iron collar is proof."
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De Soto denies this truth and Atahualpa invites them to eat.
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The Spaniards declined food,
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but agreed to sit and drink Chicha beer.
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They're sloppy and spill the drink,
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a deep of front.
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Suddenly inspired, De Soto offers a display of horsemanship in return.
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He canters around the square,
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cutting in freelancing on his strange beast before charging
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straight at the emperor 20 feet, 15,10.
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He reigns in so close that the horses breath
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flutters the tassels on Atahualpa's royal headband.
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Atahualpa stands in passive,
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and the guards who broke ranks to defend him are immediately executed.
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True Incas do not flinch.
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[MUSIC] The next day
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Atahualpa visits Pizarro at de Soto's invitation.
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The Spanish have camped in an empty city square.
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Upon his arrival, men sweep the ground before him.
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Soldiers carry ceremonial axis and priests and dancers sing praises.
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Atahualpa himself, rides in on a towering litter carried by 80 men.
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Gold plates on its surface reflecting the dying sun.
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Macaw feathers ripple in the Andean wind.
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He has nothing to fear.
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There were only 168 of these foreigners,
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and he has 8,000 in his unarmed party.
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Not to mention 80,000 soldiers waiting in the hills.
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But no one is here to meet them.
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The square is empty,
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save for the translator from the day before and a man and long robes.
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This translator is not Incan.
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Some low class sailor from the northern coastal villages who barely speak catchua,
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and Atahualpa suspects this man's grasp of Spanish is just basic.
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But for what he makes out this robed man is a priest.
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He has come from a great king and wants the Inca to accept his God.
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The priest waves some box claiming that it contains the word of this God.
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Intrigued, Atahualpa asks to see it.
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He listens to the box, but hears nothing.
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Slowly with great difficulty,
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he manages to open it.
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But he finds no divine voice inside,
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only sheets of cloth covered in patterns.
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Angry at this deception,
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he tosses the box on the ground.
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The priest runs towards the buildings screaming about his God being dishonored.
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Thunder cracks and the ranks near the emperor erupt in a fountain of gore.
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More banks and jets of smoke from the buildings around them.
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An ambush, 40 infantry in their metal shirts cutoff the exits.
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Then 60 men on monstrous beasts,
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some covered head to foot in metal charged the back of the Inca ranks.
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What weapons the Inca carry our ceremonial.
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The few soldiers carrying real slings and axis
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find the foreign armor impervious to their weapons.
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Incans have never seen horses and have no anti cavalry tactics. There's no escape.
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Within minutes, hundreds die by Spanish blades or fall crushed under iron horseshoes.
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One group of panic attendance surge against an Adobe wall so densely that it collapses,
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spilling fleeing men into the hills.
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These few escape, but 7,000 others die in the massacre.
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Atahualpa tries to escape to his later,
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but to many of the barriers are dead and
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the Spanish are stripping the gold plates from its surface.
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It tilts and falls.
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A soldier on horseback towers above him, huge.
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Suddenly his sword flashes down,
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but a man throws himself between the emperor and the blade,
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and takes the blow on his own arm.
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It's Francisco Pizarro, and this cut will be the
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only wound the conquistadors take and what they will later call a battle.
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Pizarro now holds the Inca emperor.
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Which is good for the conquistadors,
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because despite the fact that he has cannons,
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armor, horses, and muskets,
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he's still only has 168 men to defend Karmarkar against 80,000.
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It was, Atahualpa realized, a hostage situation.
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These Spanish wanted gold.
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Gold was something the emperor could provide,
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he walked into a room that measured 20 feet by
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15 feet and made a chalk line eight feet up the wall.
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"If you release me," he said,
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"I will fill this room with treasure,
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twice over with silver,
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and once with gold."
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It would take time, but it could be done.
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Pizarro agreed, not only because he wanted the gold, though.
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Yeah, he wanted that gold pretty bad.
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But because of pause in hostilities,
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let him send to Panama for reinforcements.
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But this just happened to be Atahualpa's plan to. For eight months,
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as the treasure float in,
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he continued running his empire through intermediaries.
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Slowly, he organized an army to drive the Spanish out once he was released,
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but he ran into a problem.
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The half of the empire that had back to Oscar in
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the Civil War perceived the Spanish as liberators.
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Yet this perception did not last long.
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As Pizarro told the country under royal protection,
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his disgust with the Incan religion became ever more clear.
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In one instance, he ordered his men to climb
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the temple of the earthquake God and throw the God's image off the top,
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followed by all of the priests.
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When Atahualpa heard about this,
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his reaction was strong and immediate.
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He loved it, yeah.
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Because you'll see the temple had issued a prophecy that Huascar
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>> would win the civil war.
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>> He was glad to see his brothers followers cast down.
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In fact, his captive brother had met with Pizarro
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and offered the Spanish an alliance if they'd kill Atahualpa,
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free him, and install him as a ruler instead.
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But Atahualpa nipped that in the bud as well by having Huascar assassinated.
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Meanwhile, Atahualpa befriend his captors.
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Learned to play chess with de Soto and began dining with Pizarro.
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The conquistadors for their part,
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became fascinated with the Inca ruler with his fine bad skin close,
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many wives and noble bearing.
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Though Pizarro never dreamed of actually letting Atahualpa go,
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of course, he was the only thing stopping them from being completely wiped out.
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But he had become attached to the man.
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He wanted to take him to Spain as a royal hostage,
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but factions began to emerge in the Spanish ranks.
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Once the ransom was collected and divided,
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his auto expedition partner Diego de Almagro was unhappy with his men's take.
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Moreover, Almagro was distrustful of Atahualpa and argued for his immediate execution.
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Surrounded and cut off,
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Pizarro could not afford dissension in the ranks.
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When presented with evidence that Atahualpa was raising armies,
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Pizarro convened a trial and convicted
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the Inca emperor of treason against the Spanish crown.
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He had a choice, burn at the stake or
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convert to Christianity and be strangled with a chord.
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Atahualpa who wanted to keep his body
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whole so he could live out eternity as a venerated mummy,
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chose the cross and the chord.
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Killing the emperor was a bad idea.
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With Atahualpa dead, chaos descended even after the Spanish had subdued the country,
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they would face between 20-30 rebellions in the first two decades of their rule.
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They installed two puppet emperors.
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The first dying of smallpox before they even got him to Cusco,
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and the second shared power for three years before
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escaping to found a neo Inca state in the Peruvian Amazon,
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where Sapa Incas would reign for four more decades.
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Twice rebel armies besieged Cusco.
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Once, even in the new Spanish capital of Lima,
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but the Incan resistance could not be sustained.
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The Spanish learned that if they just held out long enough,
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Incan armies would dissolve once the crops needed to be brought in.
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Not to mention, the Incan practice of generals leading from the front was
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really not practical when facing an enemy armed with cannons and firearms.
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Spanish colonial government went about destroying
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Incan culture through forced conversion and cultural destruction.
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They raised the temples and built churches on their foundations.
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They melted down every gold object,
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remaking them into altarpieces or sending them back to Spain,
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and they confiscated and buried the royal mummies.
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But Pizarro and his men had their own problems.
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The Spanish Crown was horrified at Atahualpa's execution.
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Pizarro and his men were technically just peasants after all.
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Under no circumstances could they allow a bunch of peasants to
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commit regicide who cared if Atahualpa was a foreign idol worshiper.
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Killing a king, set a bad precedent.
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Also Pizarro's relationship with Almagro deteriorated further.
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The Spanish crown had made Almagro the governor of
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southern Peru and Pizarro the governor of Northern Peru,
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but was vague about who truly governed Cusco.
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Soon the conquistadors were fighting with each other,
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as well as the Incas.
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When Pizarro finally killed his rival,
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the man son took up the feud.
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Eight years after conquering Peru,
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20 men stormed Pizarro's mentioned in Lima as friends died to protect him.
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The old man managed to find a sword and half buckle his breastplate.
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He killed the first two attackers.
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But when he ran a third through,
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the flesh trapped his blade and the assassins fell on him.
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Pizarro, the man who'd toppled an empire for
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golden Christianity and whose conquest killed millions through disease,
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starvation, and violence, died on the floor of his governor's mansion,
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calling for Jesus and drawing across in his own blood.
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The Inca survived him.
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Because ironically, the Spanish repression had rehabilitated the Inca's, reputation.
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Groups who chafed under Incan rule began looking back on it as
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a golden age and told stories of Inca folk heroes standing up for the people.
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In fact, if you visit Peru today,
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you'll see the Inca legacy in textiles,
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cultural recreations, political movements,
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and even bottles of soda.
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Their monuments, their roads and their history are a source of pride,
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even in areas where they were originally considered foreign occupiers.
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Once, Peru had belonged to the Incas.
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But today, the Incas belong to Peru.
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See you next time everybody.
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[MUSIC] Special thanks to
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educational tier patrons Ahmed Ziad Turk and Joseph Flame [MUSIC]
