Tom Holland

And when dawn comes, Kiskis' men are nowhere to be seen.

They've melted away into the mountains.

They think the Spanish can't be beaten.

And they've slightly lost heart.

And Kiskis now begins this long retreat with his army.

I mean, the guy who a few months earlier was on cloud nine because he thought he'd won the Civil War.

He starts this long retreat towards the north, back to Ecuador.

His men are obviously knackered and their morale is ebbing, and we will see how that plays out in the second half of this episode.

But for now, the morning of Saturday, the 15th of November, 1533, Pizarro and Manco, who's, I think, some of the sources say, on a horse, which must have been an amazing sight for the people of Cusco, they ride into the capital city as conquerors.

Now, Cusco, a very popular tourist destination today, is the heart of Inca civilization.

The Incas called it the navel of the world.

It was the political and spiritual center of the empire, famous across the Andean region for its palaces and its architecture and its temples and so on and so forth.

So if you imagine it, Cusco then as now is spread across the foothills at the top of this very fertile, very green Andean valley.

Its buildings then were kind of one story made of stone or adobe and they were thatched.

There was a grid system.

It's very clean.

It's very orderly.

The Spaniards wrote home and said, beautiful paved little roads.

They've always got water channels down the middle.

It's very clean.