The key to Spanish success during the conquest of the Incas Just 169 soldiers accompanied Francisco Pizarro as he campaigned from northern Peru through the Andes before ultimately capturing the Inca capital of Cusco, defeating tens of thousands of soldiers in their wake. There is no single answer to the success of the Spanish in their conquest of the Incas, rather a culmination of different factors. Here we share some of the most important factors that played a role in their success in overthrowing the Empire. The power of the Sword The most obvious answer to explain Spanish success was their swords. Despite many believing that gunpowder and firearms were the key cause of the Spaniard’s seeming invincibility, it was in fact the devastating precision and effectiveness of the Spanish blade that allowed them to literally cut through thousands of Inca warriors. The best swords came from Toledo, and the art of sword-making here had reached a high at the time of the conquest. In addition, the Spanish had far superior armoury to the indigenous warriors, who, not having iron, had only developed such weapons as clubs and a type of sling shot. Forming Tactical Alliances Following the example of Hernando Cortes, who utilised native alliances in his conquest of the Aztecs in Central America, Pizarro tactically befriended peoples that were hostile to the Inca Empire, and used their dislike of Inca rule to insight them to rise up and assist the Spaniards in their defeat. One of the most famous resistors against the Incas were the Chachapoya people, who lived in Peru’s northern sierra. This was a civilisation renowned for its fearsome warriors and famed shamans, and they thrived in this region from 800AD to the mid-1500s. They had been hostile to Inca intentions to control their land long before