Dominic Sandbrook

And he sends three volunteers.

Three.

I know, three volunteers with an escort all the way across the Andes south to Cuzco.

And they get there in early April and they're greeted by Atahualpa's general, Kisikis, who is occupying Cuzco.

Now, we'll talk a lot about Cuzco next time, so we don't need to massively go into it now.

But just to talk about the temple, Cotacancha, this was the holiest place that there was for the Incas.

It's the temple of the sun.

The Inca, of course, is the son of the sun.

There is this herb garden, there's a convent, there's an astronomical observatory.

John Hemming calls it the Mecca of the Inca Empire because pilgrims would come from all over the Andes to visit this place.

And even though Quisquis is a northerner who's put Cuzco under military occupation,

He's shocked when the Spaniards say, we've come to basically rip out the gold from this temple.

Not at all.

And they're very rude.

He's very shocked that they're uncouth and they abuse the women of the temples.

That's all we're told.

I think we can guess, given the Spanish behavior earlier in the last episode, exactly how badly behaved they are with the women of the temples.

Yeah.

I know, and there's only three of them.

Insane, isn't it?