# Blood and Gold (with Dan Snow)

An episode of [Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1484511465), 23 Apr 2024, 40 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdrl.fm/18db03/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/c0ae8c6e-22f0-4e9b-ac1c-ae390037ac53/48b0afa4-d3aa-4cf8-94bf-b15a00fef61c/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f5a4714-6b10-4ccf-a424-ae390037ac70

Bonus: When Spanish conquistadors arrived in Peru in 1526, it was the beginning of the end for the Inca. Their bloody pursuit of gold, fame and fortune was rife with treachery and deceit. Within a few short years, the once-thriving Inca empire had been decimated. Tim Harford is joined by Dan Snow for a special crossover episode of Cautionary Tales and Dan Snow's History Hit. Tim and Dan first recap the spectacular defeat of the French knights at the Battle of Crécy in 1346, and then draw surprising parallels with the fall of the Inca Empire two centuries later. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:15] Speaker 1: Pushkin. I'm Tim Harford and I'm Dan Snow and this
[0:24] Speaker 1: is a crossover episode of my podcast Cautionary Tales and
[0:28] Speaker 1: my podcast Dan Snow's History here. And I am absolutely
[0:31] Speaker 1: delighted to be sitting here in this little booth with you, Tim.
[0:34] Speaker 2: Because cautionary tails all the face snug, isn't it. It's
[0:36] Speaker 2: very snug. And we've both got long legs. And what
[0:38] Speaker 2: I love is, as a big fan of cautionary Tales,
[0:40] Speaker 2: it's all about disaster, which makes for great content, as
[0:44] Speaker 2: we know, but also things you can learn a huge
[0:46] Speaker 2: amount about human error catastrophe through time, through history. And
[0:50] Speaker 2: I reached out to you, as our American cousins say,
[0:52] Speaker 2: because I've got a story for you. And I've just
[0:54] Speaker 2: returned from a trip to Peru, and there's an extraordinary
[0:56] Speaker 2: tale about an Incan emperor, a Spanish conquistador and ruinous miscalculation.
[1:02] Speaker 1: All about ruinous miscalculations and cautionary tales.
[1:05] Speaker 2: And with absolutely gigantic consequences, which which is the best
[1:09] Speaker 2: kind of cautionary tell of the many I've listened to.
[1:11] Speaker 2: But first him, the deal is, you've got a story
[1:14] Speaker 2: for me. I need something from you, buddy.
[1:16] Speaker 1: I have got a story for you, and it's a
[1:19] Speaker 1: story we've told before in cautionary sales, but I wanted
[1:21] Speaker 1: to get your perspective on it as a brilliant historian
[1:25] Speaker 1: and explainer of history. We are going to go back
[1:28] Speaker 1: to northern France in thirteen forty six, where a motley
[1:32] Speaker 1: band of English invaders is about to go toe to
[1:35] Speaker 1: toe with King Philip's unparalleled killing machine.
[1:40] Speaker 2: So string your bows and strap into your arm of folks,
[1:44] Speaker 2: It's going to be a good one. We're in the
[2:10] Speaker 2: fourteenth century and the Kapetionian miracle has petered out. Tim,
[2:14] Speaker 2: do you know about the Competian miracle?
[2:16] Speaker 1: I feel I'm about to be told about the Kapetian
[2:18] Speaker 1: miracle that brilliant.
[2:20] Speaker 2: Yes, you are the Kapetian dynasty are They are the
[2:22] Speaker 2: ruling family of France, and they are kind of almost
[2:25] Speaker 2: unique in European history by successfully going father to son,
[2:31] Speaker 2: producing a faintly competent male air in every generation.
[2:35] Speaker 1: Which is obviously the only way you could possibly choose
[2:37] Speaker 1: a new leader, right.
[2:38] Speaker 2: Obviously no one, No one doubts that prime geniture. Of course,
[2:40] Speaker 2: any other systems of madness. The House of Cape goes
[2:44] Speaker 2: from strength to strength from the very late to tenth century,
[2:47] Speaker 2: so they kind of nine eighties all the way down
[2:50] Speaker 2: to the early fourteenth century father to son. You know,
[2:53] Speaker 2: you could contrast that, if you like, with Edward Confessor
[2:55] Speaker 2: ten sixty six dying without heirs. Henry the First doesn't
[2:58] Speaker 2: have any sons. As a civil war that follows. There
[3:00] Speaker 2: is a problem with sunlessness in these kind of medieval dynasties,
[3:04] Speaker 2: and the COMPETIONI miracle peters out as three hale and
[3:08] Speaker 2: hearty sons of King Philip the Fourth die one after
[3:11] Speaker 2: the other Bambang and one of their sons as well.
[3:13] Speaker 2: So you just get this complete exterminating event in the
[3:16] Speaker 2: Royal House of France. And guess who on paper is
[3:21] Speaker 2: the closest male heir to that last king.
[3:24] Speaker 1: King of England.
[3:25] Speaker 2: Shockingly the King of England, it's Edward the Third. And
[3:28] Speaker 2: it's this extraordinary thing that the English and French we
[3:30] Speaker 2: might say with the sort of greatest enemies. But our histories,
[3:33] Speaker 2: our stories are lineages that are totally intertwined with each other.
[3:35] Speaker 2: I think it's a great example. Ed With the Third's
[3:38] Speaker 2: mother famous from the film Braveheart. The famous document listeners
[3:43] Speaker 2: Tim was not expecting that one. Anyway, She's a princess
[3:46] Speaker 2: of France and married to Edward the second, so Edward
[3:49] Speaker 2: the third inherits royal blood via his French.
[3:51] Speaker 1: Mother, and he forms the opinion that he, in fact
[3:54] Speaker 1: is the rightful heir to the French throne.
[3:57] Speaker 2: That he argues that the French crown can pass through
[4:00] Speaker 2: the female, very progressive, and it was the opinion of
[4:03] Speaker 2: his cousins in France that it could not, and they
[4:05] Speaker 2: had to get They went back a bit further trace
[4:07] Speaker 2: their link to the throne. So you get the two
[4:09] Speaker 2: hours of Plantagenet and Valois are both fighting now for
[4:13] Speaker 2: the French crown. It becomes known as the one hundred
[4:15] Speaker 2: Years War. What do you think is going on here?
[4:17] Speaker 2: That these two families about to thrust their respective nations
[4:21] Speaker 2: into generations of warfare.
[4:23] Speaker 1: There's uncertainty, it's unclear who is the leader. The moment
[4:26] Speaker 1: you have uncertainty, you have something to fight over. As
[4:29] Speaker 1: long as it's clear who is the boss, who is
[4:32] Speaker 1: the king, there's no reason to go to war. The
[4:35] Speaker 1: whole thing is just caused by a lack of succession planning,
[4:39] Speaker 1: as we might say in the twenty first century, but
[4:41] Speaker 1: because of that, Edward the Third brings his force over
[4:45] Speaker 1: to France and starts rampaging around, causing travel and basically
[4:49] Speaker 1: trying to prove that Philip of Valois is incapable of
[4:54] Speaker 1: being the king of France because you can't protect his
[4:56] Speaker 1: own subjects.
[4:57] Speaker 2: So it's like William the Conqueror landing in Britain and
[4:59] Speaker 2: laying waste to parts of Sussex very deliberately. It's about
[5:02] Speaker 2: delegitimizing that the king. You're saying, A, he shouldn't be
[5:06] Speaker 2: on the throne, he's not legitimate, and b, by the way, useless.
[5:09] Speaker 2: And it strikes me that that this kind of twin
[5:11] Speaker 2: track approach, isn't it?
[5:12] Speaker 1: It is now. One thing I was curious about is
[5:15] Speaker 1: why it took the French so long to respond. Edward
[5:19] Speaker 1: and his fairly small army is just laying waste to
[5:22] Speaker 1: French cities, raping and pillaging, and the French don't respond
[5:25] Speaker 1: for a while.
[5:26] Speaker 2: In this medieval period, you can't really afford to keep
[5:30] Speaker 2: men in the field. But most importantly, Edward the third
[5:33] Speaker 2: and one a crushing naval victory at the start of
[5:35] Speaker 2: the Andreds War, and so you've got a flexibility conferred
[5:38] Speaker 2: by having naval superity, so you can land in normally
[5:41] Speaker 2: the Pader Calais, Gland, Brittany. It doesn't make sense trying
[5:44] Speaker 2: to gather up a huge army and keep them all
[5:46] Speaker 2: in one place. A They're going to get sick, They're
[5:48] Speaker 2: going to eat up supplies. That's just not how armies work.
[5:50] Speaker 2: You have to get aristocrats around the country to bring.
[5:52] Speaker 1: Levies with them.
[5:53] Speaker 2: It's kind of slow process, not one that lends itself
[5:56] Speaker 2: to All right, mate, you sit there on the beach
[5:58] Speaker 2: for the next two years and wait for Edward Plantagenet.
[6:00] Speaker 1: What the thing is?
[6:01] Speaker 2: They a bit like Xerxes against all the under the
[6:02] Speaker 2: great You wait until you build up an almost overwhelming force.
[6:05] Speaker 1: Yes, it certainly vastly outnumbers the English.
[6:08] Speaker 2: Eventually to what happens because the Battle of Cressey, it
[6:11] Speaker 2: seems like the French are sort of at the end
[6:13] Speaker 2: of a long day's march. They didn't need to fight
[6:15] Speaker 2: a battle at all. It's quite extraordinary. So the English
[6:18] Speaker 2: are outnumbered and they're far from home. The English do
[6:21] Speaker 2: have this one advantage, which is they choose the battlefield.
[6:24] Speaker 2: It is a gently sloping hill with a windmill at
[6:28] Speaker 2: the top and Edward the third takes up position in
[6:31] Speaker 2: the windmill so he can look over the battlefield. They
[6:34] Speaker 2: have thousands and thousands of longbow men as well as knights.
[6:37] Speaker 2: The English longbowmen have plenty of time to dig in,
[6:40] Speaker 2: they reinforce their position, and they just sit there I
[6:43] Speaker 2: don't know, eating their pork pie or whatever it is,
[6:45] Speaker 2: and waiting for the French to show up. And the
[6:47] Speaker 2: French army, which is probably three times bigger, many more nights,
[6:51] Speaker 2: shows up as the sun is setting behind the windmill,
[6:56] Speaker 2: and one of King Philip's advisors says, let's not attack now.
[7:02] Speaker 1: There's no hurry. We will be charging into the setting sun.
[7:06] Speaker 1: We haven't prepared. Let's all pray and feast and with
[7:11] Speaker 1: God's blessing, we will attack in the morning, which would
[7:13] Speaker 1: have been very good advice to take, and Philip tries
[7:17] Speaker 1: to take it. He orders his army to stop, and
[7:20] Speaker 1: they don't stop. And that was the first phenomenon that
[7:24] Speaker 1: I wanted to explore in Cautionary Tales, because why didn't
[7:27] Speaker 1: they stop wasn't so much that they directly disobeyed him.
[7:30] Speaker 1: It was an emergent phenomenon. Basically, what was happening is
[7:33] Speaker 1: that the men at the back didn't want to stop
[7:36] Speaker 1: until they had reached the front. They didn't want to
[7:39] Speaker 1: be accused of cowardice. And the men at the front
[7:42] Speaker 1: didn't want the men at the back to catch up
[7:43] Speaker 1: with them. They didn't want to be accused of dawdling themselves.
[7:46] Speaker 1: There's this sort of pressure where nobody wants to disobey Philip,
[7:49] Speaker 1: but at the same time, they're not stopping until they're
[7:51] Speaker 1: in the front rank. And if the whole army isn't
[7:53] Speaker 1: stopping until everyone's in the front rank, the whole army
[7:56] Speaker 1: isn't stopping. And what happens is, as the sun is setting,
[7:59] Speaker 1: the advanced ranks of the French forces arrive at the
[8:02] Speaker 1: bottom of this hill, milling around in full view of
[8:05] Speaker 1: the slightly bemused English archers who were standing there, going
[8:09] Speaker 1: what are they doing? At which point King Philip decides, look,
[8:12] Speaker 1: we're kind of committed. Now we're here, we have to attack.
[8:16] Speaker 1: And that's really where the French couples begin.
[8:18] Speaker 2: There are a bunch of lusty, praise hungry, wealth, hungry, egotistical,
[8:24] Speaker 2: insecure young men. They know the easiest thing to be
[8:27] Speaker 2: to do is charge at the enemy, because then no
[8:28] Speaker 2: one could doubt their manliness and their courage over that,
[8:30] Speaker 2: and they want to win glory. And actually, what great
[8:33] Speaker 2: commanders are able to do in great systems, great cultures
[8:36] Speaker 2: are able to get them to subordinate that urge and
[8:38] Speaker 2: do exactly what they're told. And you see time and again,
[8:41] Speaker 2: whether it's Sparta, whether it's Oliver Cromwell's roundheads, whether it's
[8:45] Speaker 2: Genghis Khans Mongols, it's the troops who subordinate that. It
[8:49] Speaker 2: might not make sense to them on the ground. The
[8:51] Speaker 2: enemy's right ahead of me and they're running away. Come on,
[8:52] Speaker 2: what's going on? But you have to assume the general's
[8:55] Speaker 2: got a better intelligence picture of the battlefielder in the
[8:57] Speaker 2: theater of war. And this is the problem with medieval
[8:59] Speaker 2: armies is there just isn't that culture.
[9:02] Speaker 1: I mean, there's an economic side to this, which is
[9:04] Speaker 1: that your shock troops and most important weapon in a
[9:07] Speaker 1: medieval battle is your fully armored knights. And they're also
[9:12] Speaker 1: the richest people on the battlefield. They're the richest people
[9:15] Speaker 1: in your country. So how do you get the richest
[9:17] Speaker 1: people in your country to put themselves absolutely on the
[9:20] Speaker 1: front line. It's a bit of a problem. You need
[9:23] Speaker 1: them because no one else can afford the armor, and.
[9:25] Speaker 2: Critically, you can't afford it, so you can't have a
[9:27] Speaker 2: big central state like the Roman Empire or the British Empire. Game, right, everyone,
[9:31] Speaker 2: You're all gonna be armed with the same kit, do
[9:32] Speaker 2: the same job, and do what you're told.
[9:34] Speaker 1: Yeah, So they have autonomy and you need to give
[9:36] Speaker 1: them an incentive to take risks. And that incentive comes
[9:40] Speaker 1: from culture, which is a culture where these men they
[9:43] Speaker 1: would rather die than be accused of cowardice, which is
[9:47] Speaker 1: great if you want people to fight bravely, but not
[9:49] Speaker 1: necessarily great if you want people to just hang back
[9:51] Speaker 1: and wait till tomorrow.
[9:52] Speaker 2: Your primary objective probably is not that of the King
[9:55] Speaker 2: of France. Your objective is I want to win honor
[9:59] Speaker 2: and fame and be the subject of praise poetry. That's
[10:03] Speaker 2: not a great way to organize an army.
[10:05] Speaker 1: I mean, we should be fair and say that it's
[10:07] Speaker 1: worked fine up until this point, and this battle is
[10:10] Speaker 1: the moment where the English find that the weak point
[10:13] Speaker 1: of the French military tactics and the French military equipment.
[10:17] Speaker 2: So speaking of tactics and equipment economics, you are the
[10:19] Speaker 2: man to talk about the longbow bows made of you,
[10:23] Speaker 2: not peculiar to England and Wales, but really adopted by
[10:26] Speaker 2: the English and Welsh in this period. Is that also
[10:29] Speaker 2: a reflection of culture and the economy, do you think?
[10:31] Speaker 2: Or was it just luck? Definitely not luck. The French
[10:33] Speaker 2: don't take the missile weapons seriously. They have Genoese mercenaries
[10:38] Speaker 2: with very powerful crossbows who they don't really understand, and
[10:41] Speaker 2: they don't respect the archer. The funny thing is the
[10:43] Speaker 2: English felt the same way. So the English used to
[10:45] Speaker 2: sing songs about how the archer was a coward who
[10:47] Speaker 2: dared not come close to his foe. And Edward iid
[10:51] Speaker 2: deliberately set out to change the culture. He decided he.
[10:55] Speaker 1: Was going to build his army around this long bow,
[10:57] Speaker 1: potentially a very powerful weapon, but you need to be
[10:59] Speaker 1: very skilled. So how do you get so many skilled longbowmen?
[11:02] Speaker 1: He made it compulsory to practice archery for two hours
[11:06] Speaker 1: after church on.
[11:07] Speaker 2: Band football for that period.
[11:09] Speaker 1: Yet, oh yes, if you're really saying no, archery is
[11:11] Speaker 1: more important than football, you are making very very strong
[11:16] Speaker 1: statement to the English and the Welsh. And so over
[11:19] Speaker 1: the course of years it becomes clear that the long
[11:21] Speaker 1: bow is very important that the longbow man is to
[11:24] Speaker 1: be respected, even though he is non noble, not a knight,
[11:28] Speaker 1: but is a very important part of the army. And
[11:30] Speaker 1: so you have a large, respected and very skilled forces
[11:34] Speaker 1: of long women who are deployed at Crecy.
[11:37] Speaker 2: And these can shoot fifteen arrows every minute. I have
[11:40] Speaker 2: not been able to achieve that rate rate of shooting.
[11:43] Speaker 1: But they have you practiced for two hours after church
[11:45] Speaker 1: every Sunday. I have not. So this is the setup.
[11:47] Speaker 1: The English longbomen are uphill, so they've got an extra
[11:51] Speaker 1: range advantage. They're dug in. Philip sends the Genoese crossbowman
[11:57] Speaker 1: out to fight. Just take out those English longwomen and
[12:00] Speaker 1: then we'll charge the crossbowman. We're supposed to be equipped
[12:03] Speaker 1: with this huge shield with a spike in the bottom,
[12:06] Speaker 1: and they would carry the shield out onto the battlefield,
[12:09] Speaker 1: the spike into the soft earth and crouch behind the
[12:12] Speaker 1: shield while loading the crossbow. Because the crossbers was very
[12:15] Speaker 1: powerful weapon, very sophisticated weapon, much feared, but slow to reload,
[12:20] Speaker 1: and ideally you reload it with your foot because that
[12:23] Speaker 1: gives you the fall. Quite vulnerable, are you You're quite vulnerable?
[12:26] Speaker 1: But not if you're behind your big shield. Well, remember
[12:28] Speaker 1: the French army arrived on the battlefield in some disarray
[12:31] Speaker 1: with a bit of a pile up, and the shields
[12:34] Speaker 1: are back in the baggage train. These mercenaries, they must
[12:37] Speaker 1: have been furious. They've been marching all day next to
[12:39] Speaker 1: these French knights who were in the saddle. They're tired,
[12:43] Speaker 1: they're hungry. Now they're cented to battle and they don't
[12:45] Speaker 1: even have their shields. So they march uphill to try
[12:48] Speaker 1: to take out the English longbowmen. And then there's a
[12:51] Speaker 1: bit of luck for the English. It's a sudden rain shower.
[12:54] Speaker 1: The English longbow is very easy to unstring, so they
[12:58] Speaker 1: quickly unstring it. They keep the strings under their hats.
[13:00] Speaker 1: Keep it under your hat, keep it under your hat.
[13:02] Speaker 1: The more sophisticated, more complex crossbow you can't do that.
[13:05] Speaker 1: So the genuine grosspermen their strings get wet, which makes
[13:08] Speaker 1: them loose and reduces the range. They're marching up hill.
[13:12] Speaker 1: The hill is now a bit soft because of all
[13:14] Speaker 1: that sudden downpour, and maybe they're a little shy to
[13:18] Speaker 1: get too close to the archers who have that height advantage.
[13:21] Speaker 1: They stop, they fire their first volley and fall slightly short,
[13:27] Speaker 1: and there is not a second volley.
[13:29] Speaker 2: No, because the English starts shooting their longbows and at
[13:32] Speaker 2: quite a long range as well.
[13:34] Speaker 1: Yeah, they just rain down these arrows. They're able to
[13:37] Speaker 1: fire with tremendous rapidity. And the crossbow men, who don't
[13:41] Speaker 1: have their shields, they just break and run. They've never
[13:44] Speaker 1: seen anything like this. They're running back down the hill.
[13:47] Speaker 1: And then some reports claim that King Philip was so
[13:50] Speaker 1: contemptuous of the cross bow men, powerful force who he
[13:53] Speaker 1: misused them completely. He was so contemptuous of them that
[13:56] Speaker 1: he ordered his knights to just charge straight through them
[13:59] Speaker 1: and attack them down. If they've got them away, and
[14:01] Speaker 1: attack the English.
[14:03] Speaker 2: Just engage the enemy.
[14:04] Speaker 1: Yeah, did not go well.
[14:09] Speaker 2: It's interesting, isn't it, through history, the sort of lack
[14:11] Speaker 2: of respect existing hierarchies have for kind of new technology,
[14:15] Speaker 2: new ways of doing things. I reminded that British admiral
[14:17] Speaker 2: who went to an early demonstration of submarines, and he
[14:21] Speaker 2: sputtered that it was underhand, unfair and damn done. English.
[14:25] Speaker 2: It's strange how blind we can be to engaging with
[14:30] Speaker 2: and using this new technology.
[14:31] Speaker 1: But they're also not very interested in the English longbowmen
[14:35] Speaker 1: who are mostly on their flanks. They want to make
[14:38] Speaker 1: contact with the English Knights because their honor cutting down
[14:43] Speaker 1: a bunch of peasants charge for the English knights, so
[14:45] Speaker 1: they just ignore the longbowmen who are raining down these
[14:49] Speaker 1: arrows from a defended position from either side and in front.
[14:53] Speaker 1: And remember the ground is soft, it's uphill. You've got
[14:57] Speaker 1: several thousand Jenuese crossbowmen trying to get off the battlefield,
[15:01] Speaker 1: and the horses are dying under this rain of arrows.
[15:04] Speaker 1: So the charge just breaks down in disworder. It's not
[15:06] Speaker 1: that thousands of French Knights are killed, but just the
[15:09] Speaker 1: they cannot sustain the momentum, and the few that reached
[15:13] Speaker 1: the English lines are thrown back and they have to
[15:15] Speaker 1: withdraw in disorder and put themselves together, and they decide
[15:19] Speaker 1: what to do next.
[15:20] Speaker 2: It's so interesting you say that, and how people, especially
[15:24] Speaker 2: at officers, especially the members of the League, how they
[15:26] Speaker 2: want to go to war. I'm reminded of the Spanish Armador,
[15:30] Speaker 2: when the British ships developed this idea of cannon staying
[15:33] Speaker 2: off Spanish ships and just blast them with cannon. Not
[15:35] Speaker 2: very gentlemanly, really. I remember reading about one Spanish officer
[15:38] Speaker 2: who would shout it stood in the rigging shout, brandishing
[15:40] Speaker 2: his sword and shouting at the English, calling them Lutheran
[15:43] Speaker 2: hens because they didn't come alongside and fight as you should,
[15:46] Speaker 2: hand to hand on each other's quarterdeck and the cannon
[15:49] Speaker 2: ball to the face and presume exactly presumably so in
[15:52] Speaker 2: the same way you know, early cavalryman didn't want to
[15:54] Speaker 2: go and fight in tanks like, no, it's not what
[15:55] Speaker 2: I've signed up. But it's not what my dad did,
[15:57] Speaker 2: it's not my older brothers have done. So your point
[15:59] Speaker 2: there is so fascinating. They don't, by the way, people
[16:02] Speaker 2: who are interested. There is also a cautionary tales about
[16:04] Speaker 2: how the British army invented blitzkrieg and then forgot all
[16:08] Speaker 2: about it. Tims, with most of my content, it's stolen
[16:11] Speaker 2: from stuff that you've done previously. But I just go
[16:13] Speaker 2: through your backhut re splicing it so Tim, the first
[16:16] Speaker 2: charge gets thrown back and then begins this absolute killing fields,
[16:20] Speaker 2: longbow arrows raining down, repeated French charges, chaos.
[16:25] Speaker 1: Because the French do it again and again and again
[16:29] Speaker 1: and again and again, and the same thing happens every time.
[16:32] Speaker 1: It's just getting more and more difficult. The battlefield is
[16:35] Speaker 1: gett muddier and muddier. Are the stories of French nights
[16:37] Speaker 1: drowning in their own helmets every time they try to
[16:40] Speaker 1: do it. There's more dead men and more dead horses
[16:43] Speaker 1: on the battlefield, and they're not really reaching the English.
[16:46] Speaker 1: I mean, occasionally there is a bit of a skirmish,
[16:48] Speaker 1: but fundamentally they're thrown back every single time, and every
[16:50] Speaker 1: single time with tremendous skill. They wheel around at the
[16:53] Speaker 1: bottom of the battlefield. It's getting darker and darker. They think, well,
[16:57] Speaker 1: what should we do. Let's do it again.
[16:59] Speaker 2: But I bet that also that bit's important. I bet
[17:00] Speaker 2: it's not the king going right everybody. I bet it's
[17:02] Speaker 2: just sort of individual nobles going on my honor, follow me,
[17:06] Speaker 2: and then it's sort of that kind of chaotic, crumbling frontier.
[17:09] Speaker 1: I do this one famous example, which is the blind
[17:11] Speaker 1: King John. He's about fifty, he's lost his sight about
[17:15] Speaker 1: ten years previously, and he asks to be led into
[17:19] Speaker 1: battle even though he can't see, which I think is
[17:22] Speaker 1: a fantastic illustration of both the courage and the heroism
[17:25] Speaker 1: and just the stupid futility of it. Because of course
[17:28] Speaker 1: blind King John of Bohemia is immediately killed, and then
[17:31] Speaker 1: of course everyone sings songs about what a great hero
[17:34] Speaker 1: he was. But there we go. That's the French approach,
[17:36] Speaker 1: all summed up, and.
[17:37] Speaker 2: You can imagine him going forward with his little bodyguard,
[17:39] Speaker 2: and then other people think, oh, there's something else going on,
[17:41] Speaker 2: they join, and then everyone's like, oh, we're going up again.
[17:43] Speaker 1: I mean, it seems so stupid to us. But this
[17:46] Speaker 1: is where I got very interested in cautionary tales about well,
[17:48] Speaker 1: what is going on? This is the French military culture
[17:51] Speaker 1: of the time. What does it even mean to have
[17:53] Speaker 1: a culture? And of all places, I found an explanation
[17:56] Speaker 1: in the Harvard Business Review all about corporate culture and
[17:59] Speaker 1: how it worked. And one of the things they said
[18:01] Speaker 1: in this article that the culture is a thing that
[18:04] Speaker 1: you have in common with other people. It's everywhere in
[18:07] Speaker 1: a way that it means that you don't ness necessarily
[18:09] Speaker 1: see it, and it's not articulated. It's implicit rather than explicit.
[18:15] Speaker 1: It wasn't that the French Knights came up with the
[18:20] Speaker 1: wrong answers, is that they didn't even ask the questions,
[18:25] Speaker 1: why are we doing this? Why don't we just wait
[18:27] Speaker 1: till morning. The English are completely outnumbered. We're in France,
[18:30] Speaker 1: We're surrounded by friendly territory. Let's wait till dawn and
[18:35] Speaker 1: have another go, or maybe even just dismount and walk
[18:38] Speaker 1: up there. We could walk up there and kill them.
[18:40] Speaker 1: We've got such numerical superiority. But no, we have to ride,
[18:43] Speaker 1: we have to charge. And because of their culture, which
[18:47] Speaker 1: had served them very well up to that point, they
[18:49] Speaker 1: weren't even able to ask those questions, let alone come
[18:52] Speaker 1: up with the answers.
[18:54] Speaker 2: It's extraordinary. But the English are unable to turn this
[18:57] Speaker 2: sort of battlefield advantage. So this tactical success that there
[19:00] Speaker 2: unable to win. The third never becomes King of France.
[19:05] Speaker 1: He strolls off to Calais, which the English then hold
[19:09] Speaker 1: for many, many decades afterwards. But they don't hold much else.
[19:12] Speaker 1: I mean, the battle is a catastrophe for France, even
[19:16] Speaker 1: if it's not a particular triumph for the English, because
[19:20] Speaker 1: so many French nobles die on this battlefield.
[19:22] Speaker 2: It was one hundred years war. Ultimately, the English deal
[19:25] Speaker 2: is that Warrant and the French do adapt the culture changes.
[19:27] Speaker 2: They adopt gunpowder weapons a lot more so, perhaps crushing
[19:32] Speaker 2: defeat is where culture starts to change.
[19:34] Speaker 1: Culture can change, and it often changes with learning from
[19:38] Speaker 1: your mistakes. But it takes time.
[19:40] Speaker 2: Tim a man who's met and have made any mistakes, Thank.
[19:43] Speaker 1: You very much. But Dan, this was such fun. I
[19:45] Speaker 1: shall shall remind people that they can listen to the
[19:49] Speaker 1: Battle of Crecy in the caution Retales archives. And of
[19:52] Speaker 1: course the one or two listeners who have not yet
[19:56] Speaker 1: encountered Dan Snow's history hit well now they know that
[19:58] Speaker 1: they must subscribe and you can find it wherever you
[20:01] Speaker 1: get your podcasts. But we're not finished. We will be
[20:03] Speaker 1: back in just a moment after the break. And when
[20:06] Speaker 1: we return, we're shifting contents, we will be shifting centuries,
[20:11] Speaker 1: and Dan Snow, we'll be telling me another cautionary tale
[20:14] Speaker 1: about another mighty power that failed to comprehend its opponent.
[20:20] Speaker 1: Back soon we're back. I am sitting here with Dan Snow,
[20:33] Speaker 1: the historian, the host of Dan Snow's History Hit Now. Dan.
[20:37] Speaker 1: When Spanish conquistador has arrived in Peru in fifteen twenty six,
[20:41] Speaker 1: it was the beginning of the end for the Inca.
[20:43] Speaker 1: As you well know, a bloody pursuit of gold, fame
[20:46] Speaker 1: and fortune was rife with treachery and deceit, and within
[20:49] Speaker 1: a few short years the once thriving Incan Empire had
[20:54] Speaker 1: been decimated. Now, Dan, you've recently returned from a research
[20:58] Speaker 1: trip to Matcheu Picchu in Peru. Where should we start?
[21:02] Speaker 1: Should we start with the man at the helm of
[21:04] Speaker 1: this Brookly invasion, Francisco Pizari.
[21:07] Speaker 2: Oh, just a remarkable figure of We could go back
[21:10] Speaker 2: even further because actually the conquistors might have arrived in Peru,
[21:15] Speaker 2: but they're diseases had arrived earlier. And I think that
[21:17] Speaker 2: forms the absolute foundation for everything we're talking about here.
[21:20] Speaker 2: It's now thought that something like nine out of ten
[21:24] Speaker 2: Indigenous Americans, so that's people North and South American and
[21:27] Speaker 2: the Caribbean, they succumbed to European diseases small pox typhus
[21:32] Speaker 2: in the century or a couple of centuries after Christopher
[21:36] Speaker 2: Columbus arrived.
[21:37] Speaker 1: Yeah, so Columbus Columbus arrived in fourteen ninety two. We're
[21:39] Speaker 1: now talking about fifteen twenty six, so they've it's only
[21:43] Speaker 1: been thirty odd.
[21:44] Speaker 2: Years, but the disease have traveled faster than the Spanish.
[21:47] Speaker 2: As you can imagine, from person to person and.
[21:50] Speaker 1: We've had an illustration of holy that can happen.
[21:52] Speaker 2: We we certainly have. And the Spanish obviously the first
[21:56] Speaker 2: it's a little toe hold in the Caribbean, and then
[21:58] Speaker 2: it's it's islands, several islands, and then famously you get
[22:02] Speaker 2: Cortez who goes to Mexico and topples the Aztec Empire
[22:05] Speaker 2: at the beginning of the sixteenth century. And so the
[22:07] Speaker 2: Spanish tentacles are now extending out to the so called
[22:09] Speaker 2: New World, and Peru is a little bit later than that.
[22:13] Speaker 1: So tell me Francisco Pizarro, who was he Bizarro?
[22:17] Speaker 2: Well, he's the kind of man that you'd expect to
[22:20] Speaker 2: rise at a time of upheaval. That change represents huge
[22:26] Speaker 2: opportunity to people like him who are ambitious. He was
[22:29] Speaker 2: born in fourteen seventy eight. We think he was a
[22:31] Speaker 2: legitimate She was born to a woman, a very humble
[22:33] Speaker 2: birth that he's described as a swineherd. And he's a
[22:37] Speaker 2: man who therefore has got very little to lose. He
[22:39] Speaker 2: seeks the opportunity. If you're a settled our ascritcher, if
[22:42] Speaker 2: you're the Duke of Medina Sedoni, you don't tend to
[22:44] Speaker 2: take your life in your hands, cross the Atlantic and
[22:46] Speaker 2: try and hack out a life in the new World.
[22:49] Speaker 2: And so he goes with a bunch of other adventurers.
[22:53] Speaker 2: Really yeah, hard men, ambitious, nothing to lose, nothing to
[22:58] Speaker 2: get back for.
[22:58] Speaker 1: And he's not an official representative of the Spanish crown,
[23:01] Speaker 1: but he sort of has permission to go and have
[23:04] Speaker 1: a crack, doesn't he.
[23:05] Speaker 2: Yes, Spanish colonialism, even the Spanish it can't often afford.
[23:10] Speaker 2: It's not We're going to raise an army of ten
[23:11] Speaker 2: thousand men and a fleet of ships and send them
[23:13] Speaker 2: all under chosen officers, and everything will be done a
[23:15] Speaker 2: cooint to Spanish law. So you send out these ruffians
[23:19] Speaker 2: and if they're successful, the state will kind of backfill
[23:22] Speaker 2: it and move in afterwards. And if they disappear into
[23:24] Speaker 2: the wilderness the jungles of Central America, you go, well,
[23:27] Speaker 2: no great loss. And so he and his brothers put together.
[23:30] Speaker 2: He goes on in one of the first expeditions across
[23:32] Speaker 2: the Isthmus of Panama in fifteen oh two. And by
[23:34] Speaker 2: the fifteen twenties he's wealthy enough, he's got enough of
[23:37] Speaker 2: a reputation to gather a little band of follows. I mean,
[23:40] Speaker 2: it's not unlike the Vikings.
[23:41] Speaker 1: You could say he's got fewer than two hundred, hasn't Ye.
[23:44] Speaker 2: These are war bands. They're setting out from secure bases
[23:47] Speaker 2: on islands in Central America and other places, and they're
[23:50] Speaker 2: just seeing what they see.
[23:51] Speaker 1: But he has his sight set on a treasure city.
[23:54] Speaker 2: Yes, there's some idea rumors. There's rumors of a city
[23:57] Speaker 2: of gold in what we now call Peru.
[23:59] Speaker 1: Peru. We should say, for people who don't have the
[24:01] Speaker 1: Atlas to mind, is it's on the Pacific cases on
[24:03] Speaker 1: the west side of South America.
[24:04] Speaker 2: You've got it, the Spanish establishment, place like Columbia on
[24:07] Speaker 2: the on in the Gulf of Mexico. You go across,
[24:09] Speaker 2: and then he start looking down that west coast of
[24:12] Speaker 2: South America, that at the spine of the Andes. And
[24:15] Speaker 2: there were rumors, were rumors because there was a huge
[24:17] Speaker 2: amount trade and exchange in this period before the Europeans arrived,
[24:20] Speaker 2: and the rumors of the glittering civilization with lots of
[24:22] Speaker 2: gold and lots of silver, and.
[24:25] Speaker 1: The Incan civilization is indeed enormously impressive.
[24:28] Speaker 2: And it was enormously impressive, enormously sophisticated, but critically, not
[24:32] Speaker 2: only are they in the process of undergoing this extraordinary
[24:36] Speaker 2: mortality event that the Inca emperor, for example, dies and
[24:39] Speaker 2: his two sons are then thrown into civil war against
[24:42] Speaker 2: him another succession. Now that it's a big session crisis,
[24:45] Speaker 2: and so these two sons are fighting, and suddenly these
[24:48] Speaker 2: Europeans appear on the northern edge of the empire. Tiny
[24:51] Speaker 2: little band of soldiers, they can't do that much harm,
[24:53] Speaker 2: but the empire is in absolutely is wrestling with diseases.
[24:57] Speaker 1: I mean millions of people, I think millions of people.
[25:00] Speaker 2: Largest empire in the history of the Americas for the
[25:02] Speaker 2: rival of the Europeans. Are stretching from I think parts
[25:05] Speaker 2: of Columbia, southern Colombia down to Margentina and Chile, and
[25:10] Speaker 2: a remarkable empire, extraordinary road network. No written language, but
[25:16] Speaker 2: you must have done something on.
[25:17] Speaker 1: This to language. No, actually I studied at primary school.
[25:21] Speaker 1: Fascinating but also no horses. So it's an enormous civilization.
[25:25] Speaker 1: It's a very sophisticated civilization. But they're in crisis. They're
[25:29] Speaker 1: losing tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people
[25:32] Speaker 1: to small pox. They are in the middle of a
[25:35] Speaker 1: civil war. War. Pizar shows up up.
[25:37] Speaker 2: They've got other problems, which is they're enormous sophisticated, but
[25:40] Speaker 2: they lack gunpowder weapons. They lack horses, they lack beasts
[25:44] Speaker 2: of burden. The biggest domesticable animal in South America is Alarma,
[25:49] Speaker 2: and Alarma cannot carry nearly as much way as a horse.
[25:51] Speaker 2: They have no wheeled transport. That's what's so fascinating and
[25:54] Speaker 2: mind blowing about this place. They're capable of building fortresses,
[25:57] Speaker 2: enormous rocks, enormous stones, which which made the Spanish believe
[26:00] Speaker 2: when they first set eyes upon them they were the
[26:02] Speaker 2: work of angels. But Pertin, that's what you like talking about.
[26:04] Speaker 2: They also have a cultural problem. They're a way of
[26:06] Speaker 2: making war appears to be very different to the European
[26:09] Speaker 2: way of making war, and that is essential for the
[26:11] Speaker 2: story that comes next.
[26:12] Speaker 1: Yes, so Atahoulpa, the ruler of the Inca Empire, he
[26:17] Speaker 1: decides he's going to meet Pizarro. And I love the
[26:21] Speaker 1: way that you told the story in your podcast of
[26:23] Speaker 1: Adahopah showing up with his bodyguards and with his vast
[26:27] Speaker 1: army and with his enormous display of wealth. Well, as
[26:29] Speaker 1: I said, with the French knights. It wasn't that he
[26:32] Speaker 1: came up with the wrong answer. It's that there were
[26:34] Speaker 1: certain questions that he didn't even ask about what Bizarro
[26:38] Speaker 1: might do. So what did Bizarro?
[26:39] Speaker 2: It didn't occur to him. His own subjects were not
[26:42] Speaker 2: allowed to look him in the eye. He was the
[26:43] Speaker 2: ruler of a vast empire. He was a divine figure. Really,
[26:48] Speaker 2: it didn't occur to him that this ragged, sun burnt
[26:51] Speaker 2: joker with you know, a couple of hundred men behind
[26:54] Speaker 2: him would do something as audacious as what in fact
[26:56] Speaker 2: Pizarro does. You're meant to have a parley, there's meant
[26:59] Speaker 2: to be a discussion, a meeting, a sort of a
[27:01] Speaker 2: diplomatic moment, and bizarre just breaks all the rules. And
[27:04] Speaker 2: as Atowelpa and as Bizarro was sort of about to
[27:07] Speaker 2: meet in this town square, Bizarro's secreted away all his
[27:11] Speaker 2: horses and men and they all jump out, ambush, terrified.
[27:14] Speaker 2: If you've never seen for horses for US fourt against horses,
[27:16] Speaker 2: gunpowder weapons.
[27:17] Speaker 1: So terrifying.
[27:18] Speaker 2: Anyway, my kids love riding them and they scare me
[27:22] Speaker 2: to death. So yeah, you know, terrifying war horses charging
[27:25] Speaker 2: through these narrow streets, and there is this moment of
[27:27] Speaker 2: extraordinary chaos, and in that there is opportunity, and Pizarro
[27:32] Speaker 2: physically grabs the suppa Inca, grabs Atwhelpa, slaughters his men.
[27:38] Speaker 2: He's decapitated this mighty empire, like the Northern Barbarians seizing
[27:44] Speaker 2: the Emperor Augustus upon landing in Rome and holding into
[27:47] Speaker 2: ransom for the way.
[27:48] Speaker 1: I feel that if that happened to the Romans, yes,
[27:50] Speaker 1: the emperor was taking prisoners, somebody else would be in charge,
[27:53] Speaker 1: and the problem, perhaps because of the civil war, or
[27:55] Speaker 1: perhaps because such an occurrence has never struck them as possible.
[27:59] Speaker 1: There's no chain of command. It's not clear who's now
[28:02] Speaker 1: in charge, a little bit like Stalin's approach to government.
[28:05] Speaker 1: The power is concentrated remarkably in this one person in
[28:08] Speaker 1: this and is now a hostage if this one person,
[28:11] Speaker 1: and it fragments the empire. So some of these northern
[28:14] Speaker 1: groups take the opportunity to establish a bit more autonomy,
[28:17] Speaker 1: a bit more independence than they can adjoin Bizarro and
[28:19] Speaker 1: so yeah, we didn't like the incre anyway, and some
[28:22] Speaker 1: notables within the empire kind of go over to Bizaro, thinking, oh, well,
[28:25] Speaker 1: I can use these Spanish classic Miami's enemies, my friend.
[28:29] Speaker 1: They don't understand the existential threat that Pizarro represents because
[28:33] Speaker 1: they think it's just it's just one hundred and eighty guys. Guys,
[28:36] Speaker 1: we can get rid of them, event we can pay
[28:38] Speaker 1: them off.
[28:38] Speaker 2: They don't realize that there are just cities bursting with Europeans.
[28:42] Speaker 2: You know, the demographics is all wrong for this, and
[28:44] Speaker 2: they're able to transport across the Atlantic. They're able to
[28:46] Speaker 2: arrive in greater and greater numbers. You know, they're able
[28:48] Speaker 2: to supply gunpowder, weapons, horses, and a level required to
[28:52] Speaker 2: kind of topple the empire. The Inca and the peoples
[28:54] Speaker 2: of the Inca Empire can't get their heads around the
[28:56] Speaker 2: nature of this challenge.
[28:58] Speaker 1: Yes, we should talk about what happens to Atahoulpo himself,
[29:01] Speaker 1: which is rather sad.
[29:03] Speaker 2: Well, it's very sad, and he realizes that the Spanish
[29:05] Speaker 2: are obsessed with gold, and gold doesn't really have a
[29:07] Speaker 2: monetary value. In the Inca Empire, gold is a sort
[29:11] Speaker 2: of sacred material. It's a symbolic representation of the Sun
[29:16] Speaker 2: of divinity and Krikansha. In Cusca, the Inca capital, it's
[29:19] Speaker 2: the Temple of Gold. The walls were so coated with gold,
[29:22] Speaker 2: and there was lots of golden ornamentation in it, and
[29:24] Speaker 2: he offers it all to the Spanish and he says,
[29:26] Speaker 2: if I fill this room full of gold, will you
[29:28] Speaker 2: let me go? And it's estimated to be sort of
[29:31] Speaker 2: three hundred million dollars or something in today's money, but
[29:33] Speaker 2: it's a vast amount of gold and silver from around
[29:35] Speaker 2: the empire. He says, yeah, deal, He says deal, of course,
[29:38] Speaker 2: there's yeah, deal mate, Yeah, brilliant ive knows fault. Well,
[29:40] Speaker 2: he can't release the Inca emperor. Overnight, you know, Bizarro
[29:43] Speaker 2: becomes one of the richest men in the world. And
[29:46] Speaker 2: again they misunderstand that in the Inca world, lots of
[29:48] Speaker 2: warfare and lots of conflict is about capture and about
[29:52] Speaker 2: the obligations of the captor and the captured and giving
[29:55] Speaker 2: your word. And then the Inca would often expand their empire.
[29:58] Speaker 2: There was capture notables, the notables would swear allegiance and
[30:01] Speaker 2: there would be an exchange of kind of divine gifts
[30:04] Speaker 2: and things, and then the Inca would be happy for
[30:06] Speaker 2: that arrangement to exist. I mean, there was no sense
[30:09] Speaker 2: in which you needed to exterminate your enemy which is
[30:12] Speaker 2: what the Europeans are so good at and so as well.
[30:16] Speaker 2: Despite having given it a bizarre all this gold, he
[30:19] Speaker 2: is tried. He's put on trial for treason, you know
[30:22] Speaker 2: Spanish king, which are remarkable, and he's sentenced to being burnt.
[30:25] Speaker 2: He asked Bazara for mercy. He says, please don't burn me.
[30:27] Speaker 2: In the afterlife of the Inca require mummification take place.
[30:31] Speaker 2: Bizara relent, says fine, He garrots him. Then he burns
[30:34] Speaker 2: the cops.
[30:34] Speaker 1: Anyway, just in case there was any doubt that Bizarro
[30:38] Speaker 1: was not a nice man.
[30:39] Speaker 2: No, he terrible, the horrible person in many ways, very
[30:44] Speaker 2: effective unfortunately this example. But in fifteen thirty three there's
[30:48] Speaker 2: this moment. Actually a lot of people think that was
[30:50] Speaker 2: the great moment and it was all Spanish conquered after that.
[30:52] Speaker 2: But in fifteen thirty three there's a really interesting moment
[30:55] Speaker 2: that with Bazarro moves south with these indigenous allies. At
[30:57] Speaker 2: this point people who see advantage to the end of
[30:59] Speaker 2: the Inca, and they capture Cusco, the Inca capital, and
[31:03] Speaker 2: then fascinatingly, there is a battle that the Inca do
[31:07] Speaker 2: seem to get their heads around what's happening. Here and
[31:09] Speaker 2: despite succession, crisis, disease, fragmenting of their empire, they do
[31:14] Speaker 2: assemble a huge force.
[31:17] Speaker 1: Let's pause this conversation with Dan Snow for a moment.
[31:20] Speaker 1: Cautionary tales will be back after the break.
[31:31] Speaker 2: People focus traditionally on bizarre season out to Alper, but
[31:34] Speaker 2: I think this is really the most exciting and interesting moment,
[31:36] Speaker 2: and it's this battle for Cusco, and it's still a
[31:39] Speaker 2: very small number of Europeans. They've got indigenous allies, they've
[31:43] Speaker 2: got horses and guns, but importantly, if you again for
[31:45] Speaker 2: your listeners, they've got a culture of warfare that is
[31:48] Speaker 2: just fundamentally different. And I'm minded also of the Comanche
[31:51] Speaker 2: in North America. You think about moments in North America,
[31:54] Speaker 2: Indigenous Americans, they enjoy spectacular success over British Spanish colonial forces.
[32:00] Speaker 2: They kind of enjoyed their success own the battlefield, take
[32:03] Speaker 2: home some slaves, and go and celebrate and all disperse
[32:05] Speaker 2: their communities. What they don't do is what modern proto
[32:08] Speaker 2: industrial European armies are capable of doing, which is immediately
[32:11] Speaker 2: marched where the center of gravity of your enemy is
[32:13] Speaker 2: and slaughter everybody, and so their fields with salt you know,
[32:18] Speaker 2: we've won a big battle. We've won this battle on
[32:20] Speaker 2: the Monongehala River. We've won this battle here, just celebrate.
[32:22] Speaker 2: It's great. And yet Europeans they come back again and
[32:26] Speaker 2: again and again and again. And unless you kind of
[32:29] Speaker 2: march on Albany, murder everyone there and then march on
[32:32] Speaker 2: New York, and you cannot drive the English out of
[32:35] Speaker 2: New England, for example.
[32:36] Speaker 1: And New York.
[32:36] Speaker 2: So in the same way here, the Inca do get
[32:39] Speaker 2: to the point they build up this big army, but
[32:41] Speaker 2: then to our eyes they're just very, very poor, and
[32:44] Speaker 2: they're use to it. What they need to do it
[32:45] Speaker 2: just get into Cusco and attack Pizarro and his band
[32:49] Speaker 2: of Ruffians until they are all dead.
[32:51] Speaker 1: Because it's thousands and thousands.
[32:53] Speaker 2: Hundreds, we think it's one hundred thousands.
[32:54] Speaker 1: One hundred thousand against a few hundred, a few hundred.
[32:56] Speaker 2: They have got indigenous allies and they are important, but
[32:59] Speaker 2: in terms of the Europeans, we think it's just a
[33:01] Speaker 2: few hundred still. But again there's no sense of the
[33:03] Speaker 2: magnitude of what is about to happen to them. If
[33:06] Speaker 2: Europeans gain a toe hold in this part of them.
[33:09] Speaker 2: There are ships of reinforcements and priests and engineers and
[33:14] Speaker 2: soldiers and settlers who are about to arrive.
[33:16] Speaker 1: Rather than so rather than charging into Crisco and going
[33:19] Speaker 1: house to house. Yeah, well i'm sounding about the blood
[33:22] Speaker 1: first here. You know. That's that's what the Europeans would
[33:25] Speaker 1: have done if the tables were turned. They don't do that.
[33:27] Speaker 2: They do that, they spend They spend a lot of
[33:28] Speaker 2: time in religious observances. They know a hopeless situation when
[33:32] Speaker 2: they see what they think they do and expects bizarre
[33:34] Speaker 2: to come out and say, alright, yeah, you're right, lads,
[33:35] Speaker 2: I submit to you. We're going to go through a
[33:38] Speaker 2: kind of formal process of submission, and that's going to
[33:40] Speaker 2: confer obligations on me. This is how they would traditionally
[33:43] Speaker 2: do things. They don't realize that Bizarro is going to
[33:46] Speaker 2: fight the last man and the last bullet, and then
[33:48] Speaker 2: he's going to counter attack them, and then when they
[33:50] Speaker 2: knock him down, he's going to get up and fight again.
[33:52] Speaker 2: That's just not what they're expecting. But by this stage,
[33:54] Speaker 2: in fact, so when February fifteen thirty six and Pizarro
[33:59] Speaker 2: Francisco bar He's left it to his brothers, Hernando Gonzale
[34:02] Speaker 2: and Juan, so they're in charge of the defense of Cosco.
[34:06] Speaker 2: There is an attack into Cusco and there is some
[34:08] Speaker 2: house to house fighting. Their army's massive. European observer said
[34:12] Speaker 2: it was like a carpet of black on the hills
[34:15] Speaker 2: around Cusco during the day, and at night it's like
[34:17] Speaker 2: a starry sky from all the campfires. They enjoy enormous advantages,
[34:20] Speaker 2: but then critically the Inca, they've wasted time, and it
[34:23] Speaker 2: means that the Bazzar's brother Quan is able to use
[34:25] Speaker 2: that time. He's able to launch this extraordinary counter attack.
[34:29] Speaker 2: You never do this if you're wildly outnumbered in a
[34:33] Speaker 2: terrible position. The Ink would never expect this. He launches
[34:35] Speaker 2: his cavalry. They break out. So the Inker goes the
[34:39] Speaker 2: cavalry of all treat that they've disappeared, but he circles
[34:41] Speaker 2: them around and they attack the Spanish citadel on the
[34:44] Speaker 2: hilltop above Cousco. This beautiful, stunning hilltop, giant walls, hugely
[34:50] Speaker 2: powerful position, and the Spanish, to the absolute consternation of
[34:54] Speaker 2: the Inca, like launched an attack on this strong point.
[34:57] Speaker 2: Not unlike blitzkrieg that you've mentioned earlier. The Spanish are
[35:00] Speaker 2: very good at identifying the center of gravity, the kind
[35:02] Speaker 2: of cerebral cortex of the enemy, and just trying to
[35:05] Speaker 2: kill it repeatedly. And the incur have just got no
[35:07] Speaker 2: way of comprehending this, no way of dealing with it.
[35:10] Speaker 2: And the Spanish I have these technological advantages as well.
[35:12] Speaker 2: And so there's this huge battle that takes place in
[35:15] Speaker 2: the hills above Cusco, and Juan Bazar at this point
[35:18] Speaker 2: is mortally wounded, yes, smashed in the head with a
[35:21] Speaker 2: stone from a slinger. But the Spanish achieve enough of
[35:25] Speaker 2: a victory for the Inca to kind of withdraw and
[35:27] Speaker 2: think again, sometimes you don't know you're in an exponential fight,
[35:30] Speaker 2: and if you if you knew you're in one, you
[35:31] Speaker 2: would you would act a bit differently. So the inc
[35:33] Speaker 2: instead they kind of withdraw and think about how they're
[35:35] Speaker 2: going to do it. But by withdrawing it helped further
[35:37] Speaker 2: fragments their coalition. It further encourages the Spanish and their
[35:42] Speaker 2: indigenous allies. You're seeding the battlefield to the Spanish, and
[35:45] Speaker 2: of course what they should do. We just throw every
[35:47] Speaker 2: last man, every last stone, every last weapon club at
[35:51] Speaker 2: the Spanish. But they don't do that.
[35:53] Speaker 1: Culture, I think is fascinating. We don't know what. We
[35:56] Speaker 1: don't know. We don't discuss what it never occurred to
[35:59] Speaker 1: us to discuss. In the cautioning tale about the Battle
[36:02] Speaker 1: of Cressy, I reflected on my own profession, journalism, and
[36:06] Speaker 1: I saw a wonderful talk I thought it was wonderful
[36:09] Speaker 1: time by the editor in chief of the Washington Post,
[36:11] Speaker 1: Marty Barron, who great, great figure in journalism. This is
[36:15] Speaker 1: a few years ago, and he was reflecting on the
[36:18] Speaker 1: fact that Trump was portraying the media as the enemies
[36:21] Speaker 1: of the people, that the newspaper's business model was in
[36:25] Speaker 1: absolute crisis because of social media and Craigslist, so that
[36:29] Speaker 1: they were losing money. Many of the American people just
[36:32] Speaker 1: thought that newspapers such as the Washington Posts were fake news.
[36:35] Speaker 1: So nobody believes them. They're the enemies of the government,
[36:38] Speaker 1: and they're losing a massive amount of money.
[36:40] Speaker 2: Brilliant diagnosis.
[36:40] Speaker 1: It is brilliant diagnosis. What do we do? And Marty
[36:43] Speaker 1: Baron said, we need to do our job back to basics.
[36:46] Speaker 1: He cited the Washington Post principles from the nineteen thirties,
[36:49] Speaker 1: and at the time I thought, yes, stand up for
[36:52] Speaker 1: traditional journalism. And it was only afterwards I thought, this
[36:56] Speaker 1: is like the INCA, this is like the French Knights.
[36:59] Speaker 1: You are about to be wiped out. And what is
[37:02] Speaker 1: your response. Do exactly what we've been doing up till
[37:05] Speaker 1: now that has brought us to this moment of crisis.
[37:07] Speaker 1: Do it again. And so I think the important message
[37:10] Speaker 1: is it's not just about some medieval knights in armor.
[37:14] Speaker 1: It's not just about this amazing culture from South America
[37:17] Speaker 1: from centuries ago. It's about the way that we all
[37:20] Speaker 1: have our blind spots to do with the culture in
[37:22] Speaker 1: which we're raised.
[37:23] Speaker 2: Yes, I'm just really struck, and particularly as I get older,
[37:27] Speaker 2: I realized that the conservatism that can creep up on
[37:30] Speaker 2: you small sea, in middle and older age, and sometimes
[37:34] Speaker 2: in the face of a changing world. If you're a
[37:36] Speaker 2: World One general, if you are a German senior officer
[37:39] Speaker 2: in the Love Fatha during the Battle of Britain, if
[37:42] Speaker 2: you're a Japanese admiral, you have lived your whole life
[37:46] Speaker 2: living and breathing in an institution its value, absorbing its culture,
[37:49] Speaker 2: propagating its culture. That the idea of dismissing that, well,
[37:55] Speaker 2: it feels literally revolutionary and the extent to which people
[37:59] Speaker 2: would almost rather be defeated. They would almost rather die
[38:04] Speaker 2: on the battlefield than change. And it's easy to laugh
[38:09] Speaker 2: at that when you're a young history student, but the
[38:11] Speaker 2: older I get, the more I think, well, maybe that's
[38:13] Speaker 2: me as well.
[38:15] Speaker 1: I've been speaking to Dan Snow. Dan is the host
[38:19] Speaker 1: the creator of Dan Snow's History Hit. That is an
[38:22] Speaker 1: amazing show available wherever you get your podcast. Dan's recently
[38:25] Speaker 1: made a fantastic four part series on the INCA, which
[38:29] Speaker 1: you can find by searching Dan Snow's History Hit. Matthew Pitchew,
[38:34] Speaker 1: We'll be back again with another Cautionary Tales on our
[38:36] Speaker 1: regular schedule. Really, all that it falls to me to
[38:39] Speaker 1: say is Dan, thank you so much for joining us
[38:42] Speaker 1: in caution Me Tales.
[38:42] Speaker 2: I'm as a longtime fan. It's been a huge honor.
[38:44] Speaker 2: Thank you very much.
[38:48] Speaker 1: For a full list of our sources, please see the
[38:50] Speaker 1: show notes at Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales is written
[38:56] Speaker 1: by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright. It's produced by
[38:59] Speaker 1: Alice Fines with support from Marilyn Rust. The sound design
[39:03] Speaker 1: and original music is the work of Pascal Wise. Sarah
[39:07] Speaker 1: Nix edited the scripts. It features the voice talents of
[39:11] Speaker 1: Ben Crowe, Melanie Gushridge, Stella Harford, Jammas Saunders and rufus Wright.
[39:16] Speaker 1: The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work
[39:19] Speaker 1: of Jacob Weisberg, Ryan Dilly, Greta Cohne, Vitel Millard, John Schnaz,
[39:25] Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody and Christina Sullivan. Cautionary Tales is
[39:30] Speaker 1: a production of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at Wardoor Studios
[39:35] Speaker 1: in London by Tom Berry. If you like the show,
[39:39] Speaker 1: Lee's remember to share, rate and review, tell your friends,
[39:44] Speaker 1: and if you want to hear the show ad free,
[39:46] Speaker 1: sign up for Pushkin Plus on the show page in
[39:49] Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot Fm, slash Plus, inticlyty

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