The Sons of Inti Shall Not Perish
- Thread starter King of the Uzbeks
- Start date
And here I thought it was dead. Boy was I wrong. Let the Hype Train get on rollin!
Uzbek, I've nominated your TL to compete in the Turtledove Award for Best Early Modern TL, so you can change your sig 
Now, some other poster just needs to Second the nomination below
https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...dern-timeline-nominations-and-seconds.408091/
Just don't leave us waiting too long with the next update!! TAWANTINSUYU STRONK. REMOVE SPAIN FROM THE PREMISES.
Now, some other poster just needs to Second the nomination below
https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...dern-timeline-nominations-and-seconds.408091/
Just don't leave us waiting too long with the next update!! TAWANTINSUYU STRONK. REMOVE SPAIN FROM THE PREMISES.
Done.Uzbek, I've nominated your TL to compete in the Turtledove Award for Best Early Modern TL, so you can change your sig
Now, some other poster just needs to Second the nomination below
https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...dern-timeline-nominations-and-seconds.408091/
Just don't leave us waiting too long with the next update!! TAWANTINSUYU STRONK. REMOVE SPAIN FROM THE PREMISES.
Uzbek, I've nominated your TL to compete in the Turtledove Award for Best Early Modern TL, so you can change your sig
Now, some other poster just needs to Second the nomination below
https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...dern-timeline-nominations-and-seconds.408091/
Just don't leave us waiting too long with the next update!! TAWANTINSUYU STRONK. REMOVE SPAIN FROM THE PREMISES.
Many, many, many, thanks to both of you.
I agree, hopefully this will inspire me to actually get that godforsaken Sun God Achievement, because god bloody hell Spain is killing me...
Also subscribed because this timeline is awesome, and I want to see successful Tawantinsuyu.
Also subscribed because this timeline is awesome, and I want to see successful Tawantinsuyu.
This makes me wonder: How are you planning on treating the issue of the Quipus? It seems that they did somehow encode information, but in OTL the knowledge on how to read them was lost AFAIK. What's the verdict in TTL?
Chapter 1.11: One Last Dance
Chapter 11: One Last Dance.
Andagoya's return to Panama from Peru with little to show for his efforts but scarred soldiers was shocking to the colony. His tales of savages wielding guns atop horses reverberated through Spanish America, a defeat unheard of before for attempts to conquer the natives. Even more disturbing was the news of the fate of Almagro and Pizzaro, captured and presumably giving information to the savages. Rumors spread of the horrors of Peru and the savagery seen there was alleged to have surpassed the Aztecs. But tales of the wealth of the empire the Spanish began to call the "Tainsu" also spread and speculation began about who would redeem Andagoya's failure and seize the wealth of the Empire.
Andagoya himself longed to return and finish the job he felt he had nearly completed, but he was growing older still and his failure tainted any expedition he might lead in the future. In the end he would never sail the Pacific again, contenting himself in becoming the first man to present the riches of Peru to the Spanish Crown and leveraging his (inflated) successes to be appointed to high positions in colonial government.
Some Spanish whispered that only one man on earth could conquer such a mighty and depraved empire. Hernán Cortés, conquer of Mexico. The idea must have intrigued Cortés, who felt inadequately recognized for his efforts. However he must have also remembered the suspicion and plots his control of Mexico had brought down upon him, even from the Monarchs he served, and decided he would not go through the trouble.
Many would make plans to sail and conquer, but like many grandiose schemes most failed to even get a ship. However there was one obvious candidate Sebastián de Belalcázar, the former second in command of Andagoya had never liked playing second fiddle to the older man in the first place and had acquitted himself well during the failed conquest. Belalcázar immediately began organizing upon his return. He took Andagoya's already present caution and multiplied it many fold, training his men as much as he could and demanding that they ceased all other occupations so that they could be properly organized into a force worthy of taking down an empire. Letters were sent to Cuba, Mexico and Spain proclaiming a great crusade against the "greatest pagan empire ever beholden by Christendom" and promising the spoils of victory. Belalcázar worked to get Spanish officials to favor his expedition and his alone over any competition. Most did, seeing a widely accomplished man as the better choice to lead a possible rival in the colonial government game then a complete unknown. Those who despised Belalcázar despised each other too much to really oppose him and his plans, leaving him to quickly snap up the best supplies in Panama. He personally went to Cuba and Mexico to search out the best he could get in the new world for his conquest. In an attempt to get financial support from Cortes Belalcázar declared that he was going to conquer the land of "Nuevo Oaxaca", a pandering reference to Cortes's title. The aging conquistador was apparently not impressed and is not recorded as having given anything to Belalcázar.
Nonetheless Panama was overcome with excitement at the prospect of Belalcázar's expedition as he drilled his soldiers publicly. And recruited more people. And rounded up more canon, guns and men. And trained some more. The excitement began to fade as what would have been autumn in Europe began.
Those who had never been to the lands south of Panama began to doubt Belalcázar's bravery. How much of the defeat of Andagoya had been the skill of the natives and how much had been the fact that they had been led by an old man? Was Belalcázar ever going to leave?
Fearful that his chance would be seized by other, less cautious men, Belalcázar rashly declared that he would leave on St. Stephan's day 1538. This cut roughly four months off from his planned preparation time, though his force was still probably the most professional conquistador force ever to have existed.
Belalcázar made good on his promise and departed in the dying days of 1538. His plan was to land at Tumbez as previous expeditions had done and to seize as much of the coast as possible. From there the conquistadores would recruit, willingly or not, as many native auxiliaries as they could to prepare for an assault into the mountains. Once they entered the mountains Belalcázar planned an open battle as soon as he could discover a good defensive position, he had somewhat correctly concluded that while defense with guns was easy learning the art of defeating an entrenched positions was trickier. Such was his plan to emerge as the Conquerer of the Tawantinsuyu.
Like previous landings the local garrison was alerted. Unlike previous landings the local garrison was a massive army headed by Rumiñavi. At the 5th Battle of Tumbez the attack was repulsed with ease, but with very few Spanish casualties. Belalcázar had not been anticipating an easy occupation of Tumbez and simply sailed a bit north sneaking ashore in some Mangrove groves. With his army numbering some 930 men he headed south for a second attack on Tumbez, with his ships sailing along the coast to support the force. Rumiñavi had not been unaware of the direction Belalcázar had sailed and had turned his force north to prepare for a battle against the Spanish. The battle that ensued was named for the groves from which Belalcázar had emerged.
Rumiñavi waited patiently for the Spanish to attack recklessly. They did not. Belalcázar was determined to hold his line, not crash against the superior numbers of the enemy. Rumiñavi was flush with anger and began to prepare for an attack. And so the Battle of the Mangroves began.
A wave of massed club men and a few swordsman were the first to charge the line of Spanish. The Spanish fired their guns and cannon. The charge did not completely scatter but it was blunted and cut down by the line when it was reached. Another attack came and again it was felled. Rumiñavi saw the Spanish success and decided it was time to send in more elite troops. Canon was fired on the Spanish, but Rumiñavi could not afford to use use too much gunpowder, only having a small amount readily available. After the largely ineffective barrage was halted he sent in his best infantry, with mishmash armor stolen from Spaniards and some of the best melee weapons in the empire. But Rumiñavi did not send his pikemen. He had realized their defensive capacity, but did not grasp how useful a mobile group could be and so used them only to hold his own lines, not to attack the Spanish.
This was a mistake.
The third Tawantinsuyu attack was successful at getting into a dense fight with the Spanish front line, but the reserve came in and crushed their assault. So Rumiñavi pulled out his last trick: the calvary.
The Tawantinsuyu calvary at the Battle of the Mangroves was the best in the Empire. Its soldiers had been on horseback for about as long as the Tawantinsuyu had possessed horses. Many were veterans of Quito.
They charged. This was the final gamble Belalcázar had been waiting for, he sent all of his Calvary to face the enemy. The aging conquistador joined the attack himself, admittedly far, far, to the rear. No slight of hand, no grand chess move would win the Battle of the Mangroves, just a head on clash of men riding horses.
It was hard fought but the Spanish had superior training in pitched calvary battles and had been training intensely for this me moment. They wore away the Tawantinsuyu before turning then back. Then the Spanish began to pursue, accompanied by the infantry that had held the line previously. The pursuit became a rout and soon Rumiñavi was forced to retreat in haste. The Tawantinsuyu infantry was not destroyed or scattered due to a line of pikes that appeared before the Spanish and a hail of crossbow bolts that came down from above. Rumiñavi had lost the battle, but lived to fight another day.
As he returned to the relative safety of Tumbez Rumiñavi faced a great many problems. His calvary was gone aside from a few horses that almost certainly going to reserved for escaping a hypothetical defeat. The Spanish ships were still lurking near the coast, ready to assist in any attempt to take the city. And worst of all the Spanish were collecting allies. Their show of force had impressed old Tawantinsuyu allies, freer now as the empire was forced to contract inwards as the plagues hit it. A chance was seen by many to knock out their oppressors with a new, far less numerous ally.
Rumiñavi balked at the prospect of a siege but also despised to prospect of retreating. So he drew up his forces just inland from the city, away from the coast and the lurking danger of Spanish ships, and prepared for a battle to end this new attempt at conquest. Then the Tumpis, decedents from the pre-Tawantinsuyu inhabitants of Tubmez and a crucial segment of Rumiñavi's lines defected almost to a man, likely offered control of the city by Belalcázar. His position now unstable Rumiñavi was forced to abandon Tumbez and his great gamble.
The Tawantinsuyu Army slinked down the coast into territory that the empire only nominally controlled by this point. The army's size and willingness to use violence got it food, but at the cost of any remaining support and soon villages realized the danger and hid food. Belalcázar meanwhile was playing the part of benevolent liberator, at least until he had all the gold he could find and enough loyalty from enough natives to start the brutal exploitation in earnest.
Meanwhile Atahualpa got word of the new landing and cobbled together the rest of the army that could be spared from crucial functions across the empire, taking his time as Belalcázar took his consolidating and training his native allies. By June Atahualpa was ready and descended from the mountains to face the invaders, bringing Quisquis with him for military advice. Belalcázar caught wind of this and decided his force was ready as well and took his 97 Spanish and several thousand native allies to bear against Atahualpa.
They met in the town of Olmos on June 13th, 1539.
Atahualpa and Rumiñavi met and prepared to defend the town from the Spanish with Quisquis. They arranged their cannon and musket men with the pikes to hold off any calvary charge from the Spanish, what Tawantinsuyu calvary remained could do little more then delay the advance of the Spanish horses. All the gunpowder the Empire possessed was assembled for this battle. It would be a defensive battle for the Tawantinsuyu, they still maintained a numerical advantage and a definitive stand would stem the loss of forces to the Spanish without risking it all.
Belalcázar's plan was an offensive plan that relied on his supreme calvary for victory. The calvary would burst through the Tawantinsuyu lines after infantry attacks had weakened them. Then they would attempt to capture the Sapa Inka and end the battle either by killing him or forcing him to call off his forces. It was a bold plan, unknowingly similar to the one unsuccessfully employed at Quito. However these Spaniards knew what they were facing.
The battle began with Belalcázar sending his native allies, armed at best with copper axes, against the Tawantinsuyu line. Even if the Tawantinsuyu had only possessed pre-contact weapons superior training would have crushed the attack, with European goods it was a massacre. The next charge, led by soldiers on foot, would become muddled in a brutal fight on the line and pikemen broke ranks to fight their attackers one on one, it was forced back. By this point most of the Tawantinsuyu gunpowder was used up, though this was unknown to the Spanish. Once again Belalcázar prepared his men for a calvary charge, accompanied by any remaining native allies.
The fighting was, as always, brutal and in close quarters. More than one Spanish horse was brought down by simply being clubbed in the legs one to many times. Dozens of Spaniards died, but many times their number died on the Tawantinsuyu side. Eventually however the Spanish forced their way through the melee, only to find that the Tawantinsuyu leadership had retreated a little further down the road and reformed another position. With the initiative lost in the horrendous slog through the line Belalcázar did not dare attack again and instead signaled for a defensive position.
Atahualpa must have sighed in relief, as his new line was made of troops hastily organized from the south, who had no true knowledge of Spanish warfare.
Who won the Battle of Olmos?
Certainly the best of the Tawantinsuyu had been shattered, but more troops would be streaming down soon from the mountains and the simple numbers imbalance that created would allow the Sapa Inka to throw wave after wave of his own men at the Spanish and win the day. But such a victory would come at the cost of more men, in an empire rapidly declining in population. And what would happen when the Spanish came again?
Belalcázar had won the day, nominally, forcing his opponent from the field of battle, but at the cost of so many of his own men and horses. The prospect of forcing his way up a mountain pass was out of the question and he was to a certain extent trapped between humiliation in Panama and destruction in New Oaxaca.
So to put it simply the Battle of Olmos managed to be a Pyrrhic victory of a sort for both sides.
Perhaps that is why Atahualpa offered to meet with Belalcázar and why Belalcázar did not reject it out of hand.
Andagoya's return to Panama from Peru with little to show for his efforts but scarred soldiers was shocking to the colony. His tales of savages wielding guns atop horses reverberated through Spanish America, a defeat unheard of before for attempts to conquer the natives. Even more disturbing was the news of the fate of Almagro and Pizzaro, captured and presumably giving information to the savages. Rumors spread of the horrors of Peru and the savagery seen there was alleged to have surpassed the Aztecs. But tales of the wealth of the empire the Spanish began to call the "Tainsu" also spread and speculation began about who would redeem Andagoya's failure and seize the wealth of the Empire.
Andagoya himself longed to return and finish the job he felt he had nearly completed, but he was growing older still and his failure tainted any expedition he might lead in the future. In the end he would never sail the Pacific again, contenting himself in becoming the first man to present the riches of Peru to the Spanish Crown and leveraging his (inflated) successes to be appointed to high positions in colonial government.
Some Spanish whispered that only one man on earth could conquer such a mighty and depraved empire. Hernán Cortés, conquer of Mexico. The idea must have intrigued Cortés, who felt inadequately recognized for his efforts. However he must have also remembered the suspicion and plots his control of Mexico had brought down upon him, even from the Monarchs he served, and decided he would not go through the trouble.
Many would make plans to sail and conquer, but like many grandiose schemes most failed to even get a ship. However there was one obvious candidate Sebastián de Belalcázar, the former second in command of Andagoya had never liked playing second fiddle to the older man in the first place and had acquitted himself well during the failed conquest. Belalcázar immediately began organizing upon his return. He took Andagoya's already present caution and multiplied it many fold, training his men as much as he could and demanding that they ceased all other occupations so that they could be properly organized into a force worthy of taking down an empire. Letters were sent to Cuba, Mexico and Spain proclaiming a great crusade against the "greatest pagan empire ever beholden by Christendom" and promising the spoils of victory. Belalcázar worked to get Spanish officials to favor his expedition and his alone over any competition. Most did, seeing a widely accomplished man as the better choice to lead a possible rival in the colonial government game then a complete unknown. Those who despised Belalcázar despised each other too much to really oppose him and his plans, leaving him to quickly snap up the best supplies in Panama. He personally went to Cuba and Mexico to search out the best he could get in the new world for his conquest. In an attempt to get financial support from Cortes Belalcázar declared that he was going to conquer the land of "Nuevo Oaxaca", a pandering reference to Cortes's title. The aging conquistador was apparently not impressed and is not recorded as having given anything to Belalcázar.
Nonetheless Panama was overcome with excitement at the prospect of Belalcázar's expedition as he drilled his soldiers publicly. And recruited more people. And rounded up more canon, guns and men. And trained some more. The excitement began to fade as what would have been autumn in Europe began.
Those who had never been to the lands south of Panama began to doubt Belalcázar's bravery. How much of the defeat of Andagoya had been the skill of the natives and how much had been the fact that they had been led by an old man? Was Belalcázar ever going to leave?
Fearful that his chance would be seized by other, less cautious men, Belalcázar rashly declared that he would leave on St. Stephan's day 1538. This cut roughly four months off from his planned preparation time, though his force was still probably the most professional conquistador force ever to have existed.
Belalcázar made good on his promise and departed in the dying days of 1538. His plan was to land at Tumbez as previous expeditions had done and to seize as much of the coast as possible. From there the conquistadores would recruit, willingly or not, as many native auxiliaries as they could to prepare for an assault into the mountains. Once they entered the mountains Belalcázar planned an open battle as soon as he could discover a good defensive position, he had somewhat correctly concluded that while defense with guns was easy learning the art of defeating an entrenched positions was trickier. Such was his plan to emerge as the Conquerer of the Tawantinsuyu.
Like previous landings the local garrison was alerted. Unlike previous landings the local garrison was a massive army headed by Rumiñavi. At the 5th Battle of Tumbez the attack was repulsed with ease, but with very few Spanish casualties. Belalcázar had not been anticipating an easy occupation of Tumbez and simply sailed a bit north sneaking ashore in some Mangrove groves. With his army numbering some 930 men he headed south for a second attack on Tumbez, with his ships sailing along the coast to support the force. Rumiñavi had not been unaware of the direction Belalcázar had sailed and had turned his force north to prepare for a battle against the Spanish. The battle that ensued was named for the groves from which Belalcázar had emerged.
Rumiñavi waited patiently for the Spanish to attack recklessly. They did not. Belalcázar was determined to hold his line, not crash against the superior numbers of the enemy. Rumiñavi was flush with anger and began to prepare for an attack. And so the Battle of the Mangroves began.
A wave of massed club men and a few swordsman were the first to charge the line of Spanish. The Spanish fired their guns and cannon. The charge did not completely scatter but it was blunted and cut down by the line when it was reached. Another attack came and again it was felled. Rumiñavi saw the Spanish success and decided it was time to send in more elite troops. Canon was fired on the Spanish, but Rumiñavi could not afford to use use too much gunpowder, only having a small amount readily available. After the largely ineffective barrage was halted he sent in his best infantry, with mishmash armor stolen from Spaniards and some of the best melee weapons in the empire. But Rumiñavi did not send his pikemen. He had realized their defensive capacity, but did not grasp how useful a mobile group could be and so used them only to hold his own lines, not to attack the Spanish.
This was a mistake.
The third Tawantinsuyu attack was successful at getting into a dense fight with the Spanish front line, but the reserve came in and crushed their assault. So Rumiñavi pulled out his last trick: the calvary.
The Tawantinsuyu calvary at the Battle of the Mangroves was the best in the Empire. Its soldiers had been on horseback for about as long as the Tawantinsuyu had possessed horses. Many were veterans of Quito.
They charged. This was the final gamble Belalcázar had been waiting for, he sent all of his Calvary to face the enemy. The aging conquistador joined the attack himself, admittedly far, far, to the rear. No slight of hand, no grand chess move would win the Battle of the Mangroves, just a head on clash of men riding horses.
It was hard fought but the Spanish had superior training in pitched calvary battles and had been training intensely for this me moment. They wore away the Tawantinsuyu before turning then back. Then the Spanish began to pursue, accompanied by the infantry that had held the line previously. The pursuit became a rout and soon Rumiñavi was forced to retreat in haste. The Tawantinsuyu infantry was not destroyed or scattered due to a line of pikes that appeared before the Spanish and a hail of crossbow bolts that came down from above. Rumiñavi had lost the battle, but lived to fight another day.
As he returned to the relative safety of Tumbez Rumiñavi faced a great many problems. His calvary was gone aside from a few horses that almost certainly going to reserved for escaping a hypothetical defeat. The Spanish ships were still lurking near the coast, ready to assist in any attempt to take the city. And worst of all the Spanish were collecting allies. Their show of force had impressed old Tawantinsuyu allies, freer now as the empire was forced to contract inwards as the plagues hit it. A chance was seen by many to knock out their oppressors with a new, far less numerous ally.
Rumiñavi balked at the prospect of a siege but also despised to prospect of retreating. So he drew up his forces just inland from the city, away from the coast and the lurking danger of Spanish ships, and prepared for a battle to end this new attempt at conquest. Then the Tumpis, decedents from the pre-Tawantinsuyu inhabitants of Tubmez and a crucial segment of Rumiñavi's lines defected almost to a man, likely offered control of the city by Belalcázar. His position now unstable Rumiñavi was forced to abandon Tumbez and his great gamble.
The Tawantinsuyu Army slinked down the coast into territory that the empire only nominally controlled by this point. The army's size and willingness to use violence got it food, but at the cost of any remaining support and soon villages realized the danger and hid food. Belalcázar meanwhile was playing the part of benevolent liberator, at least until he had all the gold he could find and enough loyalty from enough natives to start the brutal exploitation in earnest.
Meanwhile Atahualpa got word of the new landing and cobbled together the rest of the army that could be spared from crucial functions across the empire, taking his time as Belalcázar took his consolidating and training his native allies. By June Atahualpa was ready and descended from the mountains to face the invaders, bringing Quisquis with him for military advice. Belalcázar caught wind of this and decided his force was ready as well and took his 97 Spanish and several thousand native allies to bear against Atahualpa.
They met in the town of Olmos on June 13th, 1539.
Atahualpa and Rumiñavi met and prepared to defend the town from the Spanish with Quisquis. They arranged their cannon and musket men with the pikes to hold off any calvary charge from the Spanish, what Tawantinsuyu calvary remained could do little more then delay the advance of the Spanish horses. All the gunpowder the Empire possessed was assembled for this battle. It would be a defensive battle for the Tawantinsuyu, they still maintained a numerical advantage and a definitive stand would stem the loss of forces to the Spanish without risking it all.
Belalcázar's plan was an offensive plan that relied on his supreme calvary for victory. The calvary would burst through the Tawantinsuyu lines after infantry attacks had weakened them. Then they would attempt to capture the Sapa Inka and end the battle either by killing him or forcing him to call off his forces. It was a bold plan, unknowingly similar to the one unsuccessfully employed at Quito. However these Spaniards knew what they were facing.
The battle began with Belalcázar sending his native allies, armed at best with copper axes, against the Tawantinsuyu line. Even if the Tawantinsuyu had only possessed pre-contact weapons superior training would have crushed the attack, with European goods it was a massacre. The next charge, led by soldiers on foot, would become muddled in a brutal fight on the line and pikemen broke ranks to fight their attackers one on one, it was forced back. By this point most of the Tawantinsuyu gunpowder was used up, though this was unknown to the Spanish. Once again Belalcázar prepared his men for a calvary charge, accompanied by any remaining native allies.
The fighting was, as always, brutal and in close quarters. More than one Spanish horse was brought down by simply being clubbed in the legs one to many times. Dozens of Spaniards died, but many times their number died on the Tawantinsuyu side. Eventually however the Spanish forced their way through the melee, only to find that the Tawantinsuyu leadership had retreated a little further down the road and reformed another position. With the initiative lost in the horrendous slog through the line Belalcázar did not dare attack again and instead signaled for a defensive position.
Atahualpa must have sighed in relief, as his new line was made of troops hastily organized from the south, who had no true knowledge of Spanish warfare.
Who won the Battle of Olmos?
Certainly the best of the Tawantinsuyu had been shattered, but more troops would be streaming down soon from the mountains and the simple numbers imbalance that created would allow the Sapa Inka to throw wave after wave of his own men at the Spanish and win the day. But such a victory would come at the cost of more men, in an empire rapidly declining in population. And what would happen when the Spanish came again?
Belalcázar had won the day, nominally, forcing his opponent from the field of battle, but at the cost of so many of his own men and horses. The prospect of forcing his way up a mountain pass was out of the question and he was to a certain extent trapped between humiliation in Panama and destruction in New Oaxaca.
So to put it simply the Battle of Olmos managed to be a Pyrrhic victory of a sort for both sides.
Perhaps that is why Atahualpa offered to meet with Belalcázar and why Belalcázar did not reject it out of hand.
Is this the beginning of lukewarm relations with Spain? Or does Belalcázar still think he has a trick up his sleeve?