Tom Holland

Yeah, so Tubac Hualpa suddenly basically falls ill and then he dies.

And this is very bad news for Pizarro, because he's lost his puppet emperor.

And he summons all the local bigwigs, and he says, well, who should be the emperor now?

And some people say, there's some bloke who's a brother of Huascar, who's called Manco, who's off in Cuzco.

And other people say, no, no, he's no good.

Get one of Atahualpa's sons.

And they can't agree, and there's basically a stalemate, and there's no decision for the time being.

So I leave that thought, that hanging.

There's a vacuum there.

Meanwhile, the Spanish are preparing for the last section of the march, which is the most dramatic bit, which is crossing the central Andes towards Cuzco.

And this is real kind of, you know, rope bridge, climbing impossible cliff faces, all of this kind of thing.

So there's an account by Pedro Sancho, Pizarro's secretary, on one of many of these mountain ascents.

Looking up at it from below, it seemed impossible for birds to scale it by flying through the air, let alone men on horseback climbing by land.

And yet they do it with all their kind of native porters and, you know, camp followers and stuff.

There are two more skirmishes with the Keaton army who are still hanging around at a place called Vilkaswaman and Vilkakonga.

But both times, although the Spanish are outnumbered, they manage to drive their attackers back.

And the interesting question is why the Incas are not able to defeat the Spaniards, because they massively outnumber them.

Well, because when you say Incas... Yeah.

I mean, it's specifically the Incas from the north, right?

Yes, the Keatons, as I guess we should call them.