Building an empire like no other

Like the Aztecs to the north, the Inca started as a subject people under the thumb of

previous Peruvian empires. Incas started flexing their muscles in the twelfth century.

In the 1430s, a ruler called Pachacuti repelled an invasion by a neighboring people and

went on to increase the size of the Inca Empire until it encompassed parts of today’s

Chile, Bolivia, and Ecuador.

By the sixteenth century, Pachacuti’s successors controlled more land than any South

American people before them. Like the Romans (more on them in Chapter 5), the

Incas brought the leadership of the people they conquered into the Inca fold,

rewarding those who joined and making cooperation easier than resistance. Also like

the Romans, the Incas were wonderful engineers. Inca stonemasons built fortifications

of giant granite blocks fitted so perfectly together that a knife blade still won’t

penetrate a seam today.

Just as remarkably, the Incas maintained a 19,000-mile road system, and the

government sent fleet-footed messengers along those roads, with runners stationed

every 11/2 miles. Using this system, they could send a message 150 miles in a day.

The ruling family held everything together, a fact that proved to be the Inca’s undoing.

All Pizarro had to do was overcome the royals and the empire toppled. He

accomplished that in 1532, by base trickery.

Accepting the invaders’ invitation

In 1532, Francisco Pizarro invited the king of the Incas, Atahualpa, to a meeting at

Cajamarca, a city away from his capital. When the king arrived along with his

enormous royal retinue, Pizarro kidnapped him, surprised his followers, and killed

several hundred of them. The victims included the king’s family members. Atahualpa

tried to ransom himself, but Pizarro wanted to use him as a puppet ruler. Atahualpa

didn’t go along with it, refusing to convert to Christianity. So Pizarro killed the king,

too. Then he and his troops marched to Cuzco, Atahualpa’s capital city, capturing it in

1533.

The Spanish spent about 30 years beating down revolts throughout former Inca lands

(and fighting among themselves as they fought Indian rebels), but they were fully in

control of the empire by the 1560s.

The 1969 film The Royal Hunt of the Sun is adapted from a hit British stage play

and tells the story of Pizarro and Altahualpha’s encounter. Unlike the play, which

was revived in London in 2006, the movie wasn’t a box-office success.

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