Despite commanding armies of tens of thousands, Inca generals were so disoriented by the unheard-of capture of their divine emperor that they offered no resistance. This complete bewilderment allowed a handful of Spaniards to dictate terms to a vastly superior force.

Focused on winning his civil war, Atahualpa fatally misjudged the Spanish. He saw the small group as a potential asset—a source of mercenaries, horses, and superior swords to be captured and repurposed. He never considered them an existential threat to his empire, which sealed his fate.

The Spanish didn't defeat the Inca Empire at its height. They arrived after a smallpox epidemic killed the emperor and a subsequent brutal civil war between his sons shattered the empire. This left the civilization politically fractured and militarily exhausted, making it ripe for conquest by a small force.

The absolute divine authority of the Sapa Inca meant that capturing a single man, Atahualpa, effectively paralyzed a 12-million-person empire. With no alternative power structure, his generals were bewildered and leaderless, allowing a tiny Spanish force to maintain control.

Francisco Pizarro's initial success was built on a partnership with Diego de Almagro. By negotiating a vastly superior royal deal for himself, he sowed the seeds of a bitter rivalry. This internal feud between the co-founders would fester and ultimately prove fatal to their entire enterprise and their lives.

To provide legal cover for killing Atahualpa, Pizarro held a rudimentary trial. The emperor was charged with a mix of political and religious crimes like regicide and incest, demonstrating the Spaniards' deep-seated need to frame their actions within a legalistic framework for their king.

In a surreal display of dominance, Francisco Pizarro held a formal dinner with Atahualpa just hours after slaughtering thousands of his followers. He then had a mattress prepared for the Inca emperor to sleep beside him, a bizarre and intimate assertion of absolute control.

The famous moment where Atahualpa supposedly threw down a prayer book, sparking the massacre, was a manufactured pretext. The Spanish, already in ambush positions, simply needed a justification. The book ending up in the dust—whether thrown or dropped—provided the trigger for their pre-planned attack.

Atahualpa prioritized defeating his brother Huascar over addressing the existential threat of the Spanish. He viewed the conquistadors as a temporary factor to be managed, not a permanent invading force, a miscalculation that cost him his empire and his life.