Dominic Sandbrook

So even Atahualpa's generals, because don't forget there's been civil war, even his generals act as though nothing has changed.

It's important for people to realise there are various armies roaming around.

So two of Atahualpa's key generals who will play a part in the next couple of episodes are in the south.

There's a guy with the excellent name of Kisikis who has just captured Cusco.

And there's another commander, basically the commander-in-chief, the oldest of the commanders, who's called Chalcuchima.

And Chalcuchima is midway between Cusco and Cajamarca.

And both of these guys have about, I don't know, 40,000 men or something.

Now, there's a third general who we don't need to worry about right now called Rumunyawi, who is much further north.

He's in Quito in the kind of home base of the Atahualpa side of the civil war divide.

Atahualpa says to these three generals, stay where you are, don't interfere with the ransom, wait for it to be collected.

The foreigners will go once the ransom is paid and we can get on with the business of finishing off the war, killing our enemies and cementing control of the empire.

The question, I suppose, is would his generals have tried to rescue him anyway?

And I would guess probably not, because everybody is so disorientated and baffled.

In his brilliant book, The Conquest of the Incas, John Hemming makes the excellent point that basically, in most places the Europeans conquered, Europeans had arrived multiple times before they actually turned up for good.

You know, missionaries had come, traders, envoys.

What's very unusual about the conquest of Peru is basically the Spanish do it all in one go.

So these generals have literally never seen a European.

They've never heard of a European until they hear some mad guys with beards have turned up and captured the emperor.

They didn't even know Europe existed.

As we will see, they didn't even look the emperor in the eye.