The Crisis & Contenders
This lethal European disease swept through South America ahead of actual Spanish arrival, killing the Emperor and his heir.
What is smallpox?
This is the exact year that negotiations over borders and tribute collapsed, sparking open civil war.
What is 1529?
This was the name of the final, decisive showdown of the civil war, fought just outside the gates of Cusco.
What is the Battle of Quipaipan?
This Spanish conquistador landed on the Peruvian coast precisely as the devastating civil war was concluding.
Who is Francisco Pizarro?
The entire Inca Civil War was a brutal family feud fought between Huáscar and Atahualpa, who shared the same father but had different mothers, making them this specific type of sibling.
What are half-brothers?
This was the name of the eldest, designated successor who died from the epidemic alongside his father.
Who was Ninan Cuyochi?
Huáscar launched his early pre-emptive offensive northward into the lands of this specific regional tribe.
Who are the Cañari?
The northern general Chalcuchimac secured victory at Quipaipan by orchestrating this specific military tactic.
What is a tactical trap / hidden ambush?
This is the exact month and year that Pizarro and his 168 conquistadors arrived to ambush the Inca elite.
What is November 1532?
Atahualpa had a massive military advantage because he spent years fighting alongside his father on this specific volatile frontier of the empire.
What is the northern frontier?
This rival brother was crowned in the holy capital city of Cusco and was supported by the traditional southern nobility.
Who was Huáscar?
Early in the war, Atahualpa was captured near this city, but managed to dig his way out of prison and escape.
What is Tomebamba?
Huáscar was deeply humiliated and compromised when northern soldiers dragged him off of this royal vehicle.
What is a royal litter?
This is the highland resort town where Atahualpa was resting and celebrating when the Spanish arrived.
What is Cajamarca?
After capturing Atahualpa, the Spanish used his secret execution of Huáscar as a legal pretext to execute Atahualpa using this specific method in 1533.
What is strangulation (or the garrote)?
This brother governed from Quito and held the loyalty of the empire's veteran military forces.
Who was Atahualpa?
Atahualpa ordered Tomebamba completely leveled to the ground after its leaders committed this act against him.
What is betrayal (or siding with Huáscar)?
After capturing Huáscar, Atahualpa’s victorious armies immediately marched in to sack and occupy this imperial capital.
What is Cusco?
While locked in a Spanish prison, Atahualpa secretly ordered this action to prevent his brother from making a deal with Pizarro.
What is the execution of Huáscar?
Atahualpa used this brutal military approach—including massacres and leveling cities—as a warning to force other provinces into submission.
What is a scorched-earth policy?
These are the names of the two elite, battle-tested northern generals who backed Atahualpa's army.
Who are Quizquiz and Chalcuchimac?
Name one of the two major northern mountain battles where Atahualpa's veteran forces crushed the southern conscripts.
What is the Battle of Chimborazo (or Mullihambato)?
To permanently eliminate any future rebellions or rival claims, Atahualpa's forces executed these people along the highways.
Who were Huáscar's wives, children, and top ministers (his extended family)?
The Spanish successfully exploited the deep internal wounds of the civil war by making military alliances with these groups.
Who are anti-Atahualpa factions and local ethnic groups (like the Cañari)?
If the Spanish conquistadors had arrived just five years earlier, they would have faced a completely healthy, fiercely unified empire under the absolute rule of this Sapa Inca.
Who was Huayna Capac