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The Spaniards nominated the Manco Inca to act as a puppet emperor of the Inca with the Spaniards monitoring every move. 3 of the 4 Governors were killed. After the Conquistadors came, there was practically no social structure from the Inca's and it was all based on European Social classes.

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Pettinger, Tejvan, and Sarah Johnson. “What Happened to the Spanish Gold from the Incas?” Economics Help, 10 Jan. 2018, www.economicshelp.org/blog/7785/concepts/what-happened-to-the-spanish-gold-from-the-incas/.

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What happened to the Spanish Gold from the Incas? - Economics Help

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Spanish travellers took gold from South America - what happened to it? Where did it go? The ironic consequence of why all the gold damaged the Spanish economy.

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Pressel, Andria. “The Inca Empire: How 200 Conquistadors Brought It Down.” TheCollector, 9 Oct. 2023, www.thecollector.com/inca-empire-conquistadors/.

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Pizarro and his 168 conquistadors were the first Europeans to make contact with the Inca Empire. In roughly less than two decades, the Spanish - many of whom were not professional soldiers - brought down an Incan army that was hundreds of thousands of men strong and by far the greatest military force within a thousand miles. While the very idea seems ludicrous, further analysis shows a number of reasons for the conquistadors ' swift domination of the Incan military.

The Fall of the Inca Empire

The Inca Empire was consolidated by Topa Inca Yupanqui (r. 1471-93) and his successor, Huayna Capac (r.1493-1525), in the 15th and 16th centuries. Through diplomacy, trade agreements, and battle, they overcame the warring chiefdoms and pulled together over 12 million diverse peoples across some 690,000 square miles, nearly quadruple their original territory. In addition, the Inca Empire built over 1,500 state edifices and nearly 15,535 miles of state roads to connect and protect its people. Even before Christopher Columbus arrived in the New World in 1492, the Incas possessed the largest empire in the Americas.

However, this newly expanded empire didn't last long. After Huayna Capac's death, a civil war erupted between his heir and an illegitimate son, Atahualpa. The conflict ended with a major battle near Cuzco in 1532 with Atahualpa the victor, nearly simultaneous with Francisco Pizarro's arrival off the coast of Peru.

The meeting between Atahualpa's court and Pizarro's conquistadors was peaceful until Atahualpa rejected the Spaniards' offer of Catholicism. Then, Pizarro launched an attack, slaughtering some 7,000 Incas and kidnapping Atahualpa without losing a single man himself. Within a year, the Spaniards conquered the Inca Empire's capital of Cuzco, executed Atahualpa, and replaced him with the puppet emperor Manco Inca Yupanqui. However, the young emperor escaped in 1536 and led a guerrilla insurgency against Spanish rule.

The war started with the siege of Cuzco in 1536, where Manco Inca's massive forces somehow failed to oust the handful of Spanish conquistadors from the city. The Incan army retreated to the fortress of Ollantaytambo, which served as a base to launch guerrilla attacks against Pizarro and other Spanish columns trickling into Peru. However, Manco Inca was forced to continue retreating to the mountain city of Vilcabamba, which Gonzalo Pizarro sacked in 1539. Manco Inca's murder in 1544 ended the bulk of Spanish-Inca conflict, though pockets of resistance continued for decades more.

Who Were the Spanish Conquistadors?

Francisco Pizarro and the 168 members of his original company largely consisted of men seeking to escape Spain's rigid social hierarchy. They included the impoverished, illiterate, illegitimate, title-less, or all of the above. Other than marrying up, successful military campaigns in the New World offered the only way for these men to better their status. Thus, it became common practice for these wealth-seeking entrepreneurs to sail to the New World and join forces to pursue their common goal: to strip wealth from native populations. Far from being professional soldiers, most started as lower-class laborers. A man's share of the booty was directly proportionate to the equipment he invested, be it weapons, armor, or a horse.

In 1532, Pizarro was 54 years old with three decades of fighting experience under his belt in the Americas. He was accompanied by a number of other noteworthy conquistadors who made names for themselves, such as Hernando de Soto and Diego de Almagro. But even with a handful of battle-hardened leaders, how did this company of opportunistic, unprofessional, armed entrepreneurs defeat the Incan army?

Weaponry: A Dire Disadvantage

The size of the Inca Empire testifies to its advanced military equipment and stratagems in conquering its neighboring peoples. However, the very equipment that worked well against its neighbors proved to be less than effective against the conquistadors. Incan warriors were armed with clubs, bows and arrows, bronze or bone-tipped spears, wooden slings and stones, and stone or copper-headed battle axes. They were masterful at hand-to-hand combat and deadly precise with their projectile weapons. Incan fighters protected themselves with shields and armor made of cotton, hides, palm, wood, and metal discs. These proved to be very effective protection against spears and arrows while being light enough to allow the army a high degree of mobility.

However, Incan weaponry was not well-suited for fighting Spanish steel and guns. Indeed, the conquistadors were armed with the most cutting-edge weapons technology in the world. Not only did Spanish weapons cut through Incan armor like paper, but conquistador metal armor made Incan weapons almost entirely ineffective.

Another major disadvantage was cavalry. Horses were completely foreign to the Incas when the Spanish conquistadors arrived. Their closest familiarity was the llama, which is effectively used as a load-bearing and meat-producing animal but is not capable of being ridden. Though Pizarro's force included only a small cavalry-some 37 horses-the psychological impact of the cavalry's masterful maneuverability and brutal efficiency was enormously debilitating for Incan fighters. And, of course, a conquistador on horseback could inflict damage much more easily than his compatriot on foot.

Tactically Inadequate

Historically, the Incas dominated Peru through preparedness and numbers. If the enemy rejected the initial terms of surrender, the Inca Empire unleashed its massive army to obliterate them. Because of this, generals preferred either sieges or battles over open terrain, and their overall lack of flexibility in adapting to new techniques against the conquistadors cost them thousands of soldiers and perhaps the war.

The siege of Cuzco lasted nearly a year, from May 1536 to March 1537. Manco Inca mustered over 100,000 troops and 80,000 auxiliaries (some sources say as many as 400,000 total) and began his assault, quickly occupying most of the city while the 196 conquistadors and their 500 native allies held out in two large stone buildings in the main square. After narrowly avoiding being burned to death after their buildings were set on fire, the conquistadors counterattacked. They battled brutally in the streets and citadels for days, the Spaniards using their horses to devastating effect. Thereafter, the assaults and counterattacks were more sporadic until, finally, many of Manco Inca's farmer-soldiers returned home for the planting season, forcing the Incan army to withdraw to Ollantaytambo some forty miles away. From there, Manco Inca would be hunted through the Andes until his death at the hands of renegade Spaniards in 1544. Throughout the siege and battle of Cuzco, thousands of Incas died while the conquistadors sustained minimal losses.

Though the Incas did construct obstacles and pits in an effort to counter their horsepower, the conquistadors were able to overcome these attempts and maintain their devastating killing spree. Additionally, the conquistadors used the Incas' religious warfare rituals and dislike of nocturnal fighting against them multiple times to gain the advantage. The Incas' traditional advantages of size, logistics, and speed were neutralized by the conquistadors' advanced weaponry and discipline. Ironically, the speed that allowed their massive armies to muster, pivot, and disperse on command did not guarantee swift adaptability to the loss of their traditional advantages.

This is not to disparage the few Incan generals who gradually found strategies to defeat Spanish parties. Before his death, Atahualpa's general Quisquis was beginning to learn that he could neutralize Spanish horses by stationing his forces on steep escarpments. Similarly, Quizo Yupanqui conducted a brilliantly successful campaign in the north against the Spanish forces in Lima and Juaja, cutting their lines of communication and preventing them from reinforcing Cuzco. Quizo adopted the highly effective practice of ambushing Spanish columns in the Andes' narrow gorges and raining boulders on them, wiping out four entire cavalry units with minimal casualties. But unfortunately, these fringe adaptations couldn't make up for the slaughter at the heart of the Inca Empire.

The Incan army lost Atahualpa's top three generals, Quisquis, Chalcuchimac, and Rumiñavi, while leading hostilities during and following Atahualpa's captivity. Chalcuchimac and Rumiñavi were both hunted down, tortured, and executed by the conquistadors, while Quisquis was murdered by his own troops after he refused to allow them to disperse and return home. Because of this, Manco Inca lost half of his leadership before he even started-in fact, as a young and naïve puppet emperor, he had helped the conquistadors end Atahualpa's generals. Once he realized the Spaniards' duplicity and began his own resistance, he would very much regret not doing more to sustain Incan leadership.

Despite the loss of Atahualpa's generals, Manco Inca still had two very capable commanders in Tiso and Quizo Yupanqui, as well as captain Illa Tupac. After escaping from Spanish custody, he sent Quizo Yupanqui to attack the conquistador settlement at Lima while the rest of his army launched the siege against the Spaniards entrenched at Cuzco.

One could say that Manco Inca's most brilliant general, Quizo, was killed by the rigidity of Incan tradition. After proving the most flexible and successful of all the Empire's commanders through his northern campaign, he was compromised by Manco Inca's traditional view of warfare and lack of appreciation for the conditions of his northern successes.

The emperor ordered Quizo to destroy Lima quickly and return to help end the conflict at Cuzco. Because the Incan army's rigid discipline did not allow Quizo to disobey a direct order from his divine emperor, he laid siege to Lima despite the terrain not allowing him to utilize his newly-devised and wildly effective ambush tactics. His forces suffered severe losses in the initial skirmishes, being easily overrun by Spanish cavalry on open ground. Finally, he decided to lead a final assault on the city, during which he was killed and his campaign ended. In this way, Manco Inca caused the death of his finest general by overestimating his invincibility and not understanding the reasons behind his successes. With Quizo's death, the Incas lost their best hope for defeating the Spaniards.

As for Manco Inca's last general, Tiso Yupanqui, he was defeated by 1538 and surrendered to the Spanish. Less than a year later, they executed him by burning him alive. Captain Illa Tupac continued fighting for years in the mountains but was ineffective without support. Unfortunately, Manco Inca did not make the most of his commanders' potential.

Discord and Internal Enemies

Due to the size of the Empire, the Incan army was primarily made up of non-Incas required to serve as a form of tribute. Rather than being distributed evenly, these peoples formed ethnic groups led by their own local commanders. While Quechua served as the Empire's lingua franca, communication was still difficult between groups, especially during battle. Difficulties in communication were only exaggerated by the sheer size of Incan armies, reaching up to 100,000 in some battles.

In addition to the inevitable confusion of trying to manage so many disparate peoples, not everyone was loyal to the Inca Empire, especially groups newly integrated under Inca rule. The conquistadors' 500 native auxiliaries bore the brunt of the casualties at Cuzco, saving many if not all of the conquistadors' lives. Native informants also provided invaluable services in making up for the Spaniards' severed lines of communication, telling them about the movements of Spanish columns as well as insider information of Incan leadership.

How 200 Spaniards Defeated the Inca Empire

While the Inca Empire's army came tantalizingly close to eradicating the Spanish intruders, it was outmatched by the conquistadors' superior equipment as well as its own internal flaws. Incan leaders were slow to recognize the threat posed by the foreigners, slow to adapt to a brand new way of warfare, and undermined by internal discord and its own traditions.

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The Inca Empire: How 200 Conquistadors Brought It Down

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The massive Inca Empire was brought to its knees by less than 200 Spanish conquistadors, who killed tens of thousands of Incan warriors.

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Staff Writer. “Economy of the Inca Empire.” Discover Peru, www.discover-peru.org/inca-economy-society/. Accessed 27 Sept. 2023.

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Central Economy

The Incas had a centrally planned economy, perhaps the most successful ever seen. Its success was in the efficient management of labor and the administration of resources they collected as tribute. Collective labor was the base for economic productivity and for the creation of social wealth in the Inca society. By working together people in the ayllu (the center of economic productivity) created such wealth that the Spanish were astonished with what they encountered. Every citizen was required to contribute with his labor and refusal or laziness was punishable with the death penalty. Labor was divided according to region, agriculture would be centralized in the most productive regions, ceramic production, road building, textile and other skills according to ayllus. The government collected all the surplus after local needs were met and distributed it where it was needed. In exchange for their work citizens had free clothing, food, health care and education.

The Incas did not use money, in fact they did not need it. Their economy was so efficiently planned that every citizen had their basic needs met. Economic exchanges were made using the barter system by which people traded with each other for things they needed. Archaeologists believe that there was no trading class in the Inca society. However there was external trading in small scale with tribes outside the empire mostly from the Amazon.

The Ayllu

The Incas created the most successful centrally planned economy that contributed to the creation of social wealth in Inca society. The ayllu was at the center of the Inca Empire economic success. Ayllus were composed of families that lived near each other in the same village or settlement. Ayllus also provided social cohesion as people who were born in one a yllu also married within the ayllu. Each ayllu specialized in the production of certain products depending on its location. Agricultural ayllus were located close to fertile land and produced crops that would be optimized for the type of soil. Their output would be given to the state which in turn would redistribute it to other locations where the product was not available. Surplus would be kept in collcas, storage houses along the roads and near population centers.

Other ayllus would specialize in producing pottery, clothing or jewelry; skills were transferred from generation to generation within the same a yllu. Ayllus produced virtually anything necessary for everyday living which will be distributed by the state to other ayllus. The abundance and diversity of resources and its availability during bad crops and war made the population loyal to the local government and to the Sapa Inca..

Collective labor and taxes

There were three ways in which collective labor was organized:

The first one was the to help a member of the community who was in need. Helping build a house or help a sick member of the community are examples of ayni.

The second was the or team work for the benefit of the whole community. Examples of minka are building agricultural terraces and cleaning the irrigation canals.

The third one was the mita or the tax paid to the Inca. Since there was no currency taxes were paid with crops, cattle, textile and specially with work. Mita laborers served as soldiers, farmers, messengers, road builders, or whatever needed to be done. It was a rotational and temporary service that each member of the was required to meet. They built temples and palaces, canals for irrigation, agricultural terraces, roads, bridges and tunnels; and all without the technological assistance of the wheel. This system was a balanced system of give and take. In exchange the government would provide food, clothing and medication. This system allowed the empire to have all the necessary produce available for redistribution according to necessity and local interests..

Quipus

The Incas and their predecessor did not develop a writing system, however they created the quipu to keep track of transactions. The Quipu or Khipu were fringes of color strings attached to a horizontal string and made of cotton or llama wool. The hanging strings would contain knots which carried a meaning. There were different types of knots such as the single, figure eight and the four turn long knot. The position in which the knots were tied, the sequence of the knots and the color of the string had a particular meaning.

The Incas used the quipu as an accounting system to record taxes, keep track of livestock, measure parcels of land, recording census, as a calendar, keep track of weather and many other uses.

The largest quipu has 1,500 strings. The oldest quipu found was in the Sacred Cit of Caral Supe and dates from around 2500 BC..

The tenure of land

The use of the land was a right that individuals had as members of the ayllu. The curaca, as the representative of the ayllu, redistributed the land to each member according to the size of their families. The dimensions of the land varied according to its agricultural quality and it was measured in tupus, a local measurement unit. A married couple would get one and a half tupus, for each male child the couple received one tupu and for each female half a tupu. When the son or daughter started their own family each additional tupu was taken away and given to the new family. Each family worked their land but they did not own it, the Inca estate was the rightful owner. The land was used to provide subsistence food for the family.

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Economy of the Inca Empire | Discover Peru

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The Incas had a centrally planned economy, perhaps the most successful ever seen. Its success was in the efficient management of labor and the administration of resources they collected as tribute. Collective labor was the base for economic productivity and for the creation of social wealth in the Inca society.

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The Incan empire had notably one of the best economic systems in all of the early civilizations.

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There were 3 kinds of collective labor, Ayni, Minka and Mita. Ayni was helping your neighbor in need, by making a house or helping a sick person. Minka was teamwork for the benefit of the community such as building terraces. Mita was the tax paid to the Inca. Since there was no currency taxes were paid with crops, cattle, and with work. Mita laborers served for whatever needed to be done. It was a temporary service that each member of the Ayllu was required to meet. In exchange for the help and work, the government would provide food, clothing, and medication. This allowed the empire to have all the necessary items for redistribution.

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Ayllus were families that lived near each other in the same village and provided social cohesion as people who were born in one Ayulla also married within the Ayulla. Certain Ayulla specialized in the production of certain things. Agricultural Ayllus were close to fertile land and produced crops. Other Ayllus made pottery, clothing or jewelry. Output from specifc Ayullas would be given to the state which and the be redistributed to other locations.

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Cartwright, Mark. “Inca Civilization.” World History Encyclopedia, https://www.worldhistory.org#organization, 2 Sept. 2023, www.worldhistory.org/Inca_Civilization/.

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The Inca civilization flourished in ancient Peru between c. 1400 and 1533 CE. The Inca Empire eventually extended across western South America from Quito in the north to Santiago in the south. It was…

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The Inca government was very well organized, being run by nobles.

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Each quarter was placed under a governor who reported directly to the king. These governors were blood relatives of the king and were placed in the noble class as Capac Incas. There were local administrators who reported to over 80 regional-level administrators who reported to the governor. Then these four governors would report to the king himself in Cuzco.

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The Incan empire was divided into 4 quarters, named the Four Suyus. The whole empire was called Tahunatinsuyu by the Incan people which means ¨the land of four corners.¨ Chinchaysuyu is the north quarter, Antisuyu is the east, Collasuyu is the south and Cuntisuyu is the west.

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I have found that the Inca Empire has a structured government with different social classes.

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The highest tier of the Inca was the Sapa Inca. They believed that the Sapa Inca was descended from Inti, the Incan sun god. Therefore the Sapa Inca ruled with complete authority.
The Sapa Inca had many wives and tons of children with said wives. There was one main wife named Coya and the Coya was the Sapa Incas sister, to ensure royal blood stayed in the family. The Sapa Inca always had full authority over the entire empire.

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Nobles were leaders who helped administer the empire. They received fine gifts and certain privileges lower classes didn't get. They paid no taxes and could marry more than one wife. There were 3 tiers of nobles, ordered in most to least power:
Capac Incas - these were considered relatives of the emperor
Hahua Incas - these people did not share the royal blood
Caracas - they were leaders of people conquered by the Incas

Capac Incas controlled the emperor's land, valuable resources, and the most important jobs such as government, army, and priesthood.

As the empire grew they did not have enough nobles and nominated ¨Incas by privilage¨ called the Hahua Incas.

Caracas frequently gained the jobs of collecting taxes and officers that made sure everyone followed Incan rules.

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The emperor was a divine, chosen by the gods. The emperor was always the highest in power and the supreme ruler over all four suyus.

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Commoners who worked as farmers and herders. Commoners were required to support the government, both through the products of their labor and by working on government-sponsored projects. Inca farmers grew a variety of crops,
including beans, peanuts, squash, peppers, and over 20 types of corn and hundreds of types of potatoes. Inca farmers were required to give most of their crops to the government. The government placed the crops it collected in storehouses
throughout the empire. The food was then distributed to warriors, temple priests, and people in need.

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Inca Class Structure - Folsom Cordova Unified School District, www.fcusd.org/cms/lib/CA01001934/Centricity/Domain/1168/Inca%20Class%20Structure%20Readings.pdf. Accessed 29 Sept. 2023.

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The Spaniards discovered a great lot of gold and silver and began to take control of the mines and steal all of the gold and silvers from the Inca's. Gold and silver was used as a decoration instead of money since the Inca economy was tax and work based with no money. This caused Spaniards to be able to pay off debts and fund "religious wars."

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Francisco Pizarro along with 168 conquistadors met the Incas and their meeting was overall peaceful until Sapa Inca Atahualpa rejected Catholicism. After this rejection, Pizarro launched an attack on the Incas, killing 7000 and capturing Atahualpa.

In only a year, the Spaniards conquered the Incan empire and killed Atahualpa. The seige caused hundreds of thousands of Inca's to die and be captured while the conquistador sustained minimal losses.