Dominic Sandbrook

The veteran conquistador Francisco Pizarro has landed in Peru with around 200 men looking for adventure, for glory and for gold.

And he is convinced that somewhere south along the Pacific coast is this rich and sophisticated kingdom.

And of course, he is right.

This kingdom is Tawantinsoyo, the land of the four quarters, or as we would call it, the empire of the Incas.

one of the largest empires in the world at this point.

From their heartland in Cuzco, the Incas ruled about 12 million people, all the way from Colombia and Ecuador in the north to Chile in the south.

Pizarro has made a stunning discovery.

He's landed at a place called Tumbes and he has discovered that the empire is in chaos.

that's been ravaged by smallpox and by this fratricidal civil war between two claimants to the throne, Huascar, the older brother, who is based in Cusco, and Atahualpa, the younger, who is formerly his viceroy in Quito in Ecuador.

So a very Game of Thrones-style struggle for the throne.

And now Pizarro and his men.

So that is his brothers, Hernando Gonzalo Arjuan, and his lieutenant, Hernando de Soto, great horseman, posh, but sinister, and short.

They can see their opening.

If they can profit from the Inca's divisions, then maybe they can emulate Pizarro's cousin, Hernan Cortes, the conqueror of the Aztecs.

So let's pick up the story from where we left off.

It is midwinter, which means it's what we would call summer in Peru.

Pizarro is still in the far northwestern corner.

He is about 900 miles north of modern day Lima.

So that is about 1,300 miles north of Cusco, the Inca capital.

No, there's not too much hacking, but there's a lot of crossing of rope bridges.