ConflictSouth America
The Inca empire falls
A hundred and sixty-eight men against an empire of ten million
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The disease ran ahead of the Spanish — it spread faster than they travelled, and probably killed the emperor and his heir before any European reached the Andes. Atahualpa filled a room with gold as ransom and was killed anyway. Resistance continued at Vilcabamba until 1572, and revolts invoking the Inca broke out as late as the 1780s.
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Pizarro captured the Inca emperor Atahualpa with fewer than two hundred men. It was possible because smallpox had already killed a great part of the population, and because the empire had just come through a civil war over the throne.
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Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org