Conquest of the Incas

Most history is about terrible suffering, but some is more terrible than others. This article tells a fascinating story, though the tone is often weirdly gleeful for someone writing about such terrible things. From the article:

There is a part early in Conquest of New Spain when Bernal Dias describes walking into a village and finding a pile of disemboweled native bodies that had been recently ritualistically sacrificed, and then Dias says that such sights were so common in so many villages that he is going to stop describing them, but that the reader should just assume that the Spanish always encountered such spectacles in every single Mesoamerican village or city they entered.

The Incas also did human sacrifices, but nowhere near to the same extent. MacQuarrie mentions it a few times but there were no piles of mutilated bodies in every town. However, the Incas seemed particularly fond of child sacrifices through a practice called capacocha. Like the Aztecs, the Incan leaders demanded periodic tributes from each region of the empire, though giving up a child to be sacrificed was considered a great honor.

…

Little did the Inca know that the end of Huayna Capac’s reign was the beginning of the end of the Inca Empire. In 1528, Francisco Pizarro discovered the Incas while on an expeditionary sailing venture south from Panama. Some of his men briefly went ashore at the city of Tumbes in northern Peru where they learned that the Incan Empire was a thing and that it was ruled by the mighty Huayna Capac. Pizzaro’s expedition then turned around and went back to Panama so Pizarro could prepare a proper invasion expedition and ask the King of Spain for permission to do so. Weeks later, Huayna Capac died of smallpox, which originated in Spanish settlements along the north coast of South America and tore its way north-to-south. The total estimated death toll in the Incan Empire was around 200,000.

…

[W]hat ultimately decided the matter of succession? As with the Aztecs and Ottomans, it came down to warfare and intrigue. The most ambitious heirs were expected to form alliances with weaker sons and then fight each other in civil wars or murder each other covertly until there was one viable heir left. According to MacQuarrie, “the difference between European and Inca versions of monarchy… was that among the Incas bloody dynastic struggles were expected.” They saw it as a meritocratic process for finding the best heir.

…

At Pizarro’s age 15, Christopher Columbus returned to Spain from the Americas. Generations later, many of the early settlers of Jamestown and other colonies in North America were the second sons of nobility and noble bastards who grew up close to wealth but knew they would never have their cut of it due to their circumstances at birth. Likewise, hundreds of similarly-positioned Spaniards found the New World frontier to be a high-risk, high-reward shot at glory and wealth. At age 24, Pizarro was one of the “impoverished, illiterate, and title-less” adventurers who signed up for an expedition to the Caribbean in the name of the Spanish King.

…

MacQuarrie describes the conquest of the Mexican Empire by Hernan Cortes as almost provoking an existential crisis in Pizarro. Cortes was another poor, illiterate (though legitimate) low-tier noble from Extremadura, and he was even a second cousin once removed from Pizarro. After only 15 years in the New World, Cortes had accomplished by far the most successful conquistador expedition in Mexico, rendering himself absurdly wealthy, absurdly glorious, and a Crown-approved governor of a gargantuan piece of land at age 34. By that point, Pizarro was already 43 and had never reached those heights.

With his already sizeable ambitions further inflamed, Pizarro launched his own expedition corporation called the Company of the Levant to find and make a Mexico-sized conquest. His business partner was another key player in the Incan conquest: Diego de Almagro, another illiterate bastard of low nobility, but with an even more “sketchy” past.

…

A few of these conquistadors had been professional soldiers or mercenaries back in Europe, a few more had been on other expeditions in the New World, but most were poor, ambitious men of varying normal professions (ex. sailors, merchants, blacksmiths, masons, etc.) basically buying a lottery ticket for their own cut of the fame and fortune of a successful New World conquest. Many of these soldiers had bought their equipment on credit from crafty New World merchants. In addition, there were a handful of camp followers, including a priest, some African slaves, some female Muslim slaves, and some of the aforementioned merchants who continued selling goods on credit while on campaign.

…

When Hernando Pizarro introduced himself, Emperor Atahualpa finally looked up. He asked Hernando why the Spaniards had been burning Incan subjects alive. Hernando replied with some legalistic arguments for self-defense and then accused one of the native chiefs they had burned to death of being a “scoundrel.”

They stood around awkwardly a bit more, and then De Soto, the allegedly superior diplomat, noticed that Emperor Atahualpa seemed to be purposefully avoiding looking at their horses despite how mind-blowing they must have been. So De Soto decided to get his attention by making his horse rear back on its hind legs and stomp on the ground with a great snort. Amazingly, Atahualpa didn’t budge nor look at the horse, but a bunch of his royal bodyguards freaked out and ran away. Later that day, they would all be put to death by the Emperor for cowardice.

…

MacQuarrie does a better job of describing how the Spanish trounced the Incas than Bernal Dias does with the Aztecs, and by MacQuarrie’s telling, the single most impactful element of Spanish military technology was cavalry.

The Inca simply could not beat armored soldiers on armored horses in open combat, especially when they charged with lances. The Inca tried many tactics against cavalry, including swarming, barricades, and missile barrages, and nothing worked. They did not have strong enough weaponry to seriously hurt either the horse or rider, and together, the cavalry could literally trample groups of Incan soldiers to death. There are many instances in MacQuarrie’s telling of the Incan conquest in which a few dozen Spanish cavalry charged into Incan armies of tens of thousands of warriors and at least inflicted dozens-to-hundreds of casualties with no losses, or at most, won the entire battle and routed the whole Incan army.

…

Bernal Dias’s Conquest of New Spain is a great book, but in some ways it’s extremely repetitious. I can’t count how many times Dias says something like, “a horde of natives fired 100 bajillion projectiles at us, and every single one of us to a man received wounds, but no one died.” It’s the same in McQuarrie’s Last Days of the Incas: constant references to projectile barrages that wounded and annoyed but virtually never killed. At one point, MacQuarrie notes that the only way for standard Incan projectiles to kill a Spaniard was if they happen to hit the bottom of a soldier’s face where the helmet ended, and indeed, there is more than one account of Spaniards having their jaws fucked up by sling-thrown rocks, and such a hit even kills one of the Pizarro brothers.

…

Cortes’s conquest of Mexico was in large part due to his dazzling diplomacy that undermined the Mexican government, built a coalition of loyal anti-Mexican allies, and eventually squashed his Spanish rivals to form a united conquistador force. Meanwhile, Pizarro nearly lost all of his progress in the Incan Empire precisely because he and his lieutenants so badly fumbled the diplomatic and administrative aspects of ruling New Castile that they triggered an enormous country-wide native revolt.

…

[The puppet emperor’s escape] was successfully executed less due to Manco Inca’s brilliance and more due to Hernando’s stupidity. Manco Inca told Hernando that there was a big giant pile of treasure a few miles outside the city coincidentally next to this religious site where he wanted to perform some native ceremonial stuff. The Emperor asked if he could go to the site to do the ceremonies and get the treasure for Hernando, thereby killing two birds with one stone. Hernando said that sounded great and let him go. Manco Inca walked out of the city with his entourage and melted into the countryside to lead the rebellion.