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