Dominic Sandbrook

There were stories of the end of the world and things like that.

But you don't get a massive sense that people think this is the end of days.

These people are the heralds of some terrible doom.

all of this kind of thing, I think actually most people are making much more pragmatic political considerations.

I mean, you can do both, can't you?

Rather than apocalyptic or eschatological ones.

We don't have really that much evidence of people thinking in apocalyptic terms about the coming of the Spaniards, but we do have evidence about them making kind of Machiavellian calculations about what they can do with this new variable of 168 people

with the horses in particular.

I think that's what Atahualpa is doing, by the way.

I think Atahualpa is sitting there in Kayamaka.

He's thinking about the civil war.

All the evidence actually for the next year or so is that that's pretty much all Atahualpa is thinking about is the civil war.

I think he thinks these will be excellent mercenaries.

Exactly.

I think their military technology really interests him.

And he thinks, brilliant, I can use this to finish off Huascar's faction, complete my victory in the civil war.

There's no reason for him to think this is an existential threat.

The Spaniards, of course, know what happened in Mexico to Montezuma.

He doesn't know.

He's never heard of the Spaniards before.