Dominic Sandbrook

No, I don't think so straight away.

But I think the further they get, the more they realize the divisions of the civil wars were a wonderful, wonderful opportunity for them.

Initially, they think of Atahualpa as a potential collaborator.

Yeah, that's what they want, really.

That's what all empires want.

They don't want to fight unnecessarily.

They may have to, but ideally, everyone will collaborate with them.

And in fact, the Spanish will find plenty of people who collaborate with them in the Inca Empire, as they did with the Aztecs.

It's kind of opportunistic militarism, then.

It's basically their mood.

Yeah, I think that's the right way of putting it.

So Pizarro moves out on the 24th of September.

with his men, he's left some men behind to found this new town, San Miguel de Tangarada.

And what that means is that he now has, what is it, 167 men plus him.

So 61 horsemen, 106 infantry.

And there's a brilliant book of historical detective work called The Men of Cuyamaca by James Lockhart, American historian, made in about 1970.

where he really dug into where they're all from and what they all did.

Most of them are from the poorer, more rural, western and southern parts of Spain.

So, Extremadura, Andalucia, and so on.

They're quite young, by and large.