How Did Francisco Pizarro Capture Atahualpa at Cajamarca?

Si Sheppard says Francisco Pizarro captured Atahualpa by copying Cortés: seize the person at the top of the hierarchy, in a place where horses and gunpowder could shock fighters who had never seen them.

Pizarro, a distant cousin, met Cortés, took the playbook, and sailed down the west coast of South America into Peru. The Inca realm was in civil war. The previous Sapa Inca had died in 1525, and his sons Atahualpa and Huáscar had turned on each other. Atahualpa had just won and was heading to Cuzco to be enthroned when word came that strangers were seeking him. Sheppard says 168 men had entered the Andes. An envoy warned that they were not men of good faith and could be burned where they slept. Atahualpa still wanted what they could offer. He met Pizarro at Cajamarca in 1532 after sending a blocking force of tens of thousands to cut off any retreat.

Inside a narrow courtyard, Pizarro opened with artillery and muskets, then the horses, and Atahualpa was taken. Dwarkesh Patel puts the Inca realm at some 10 million people and the Spanish force that day at about 160 to 190 men, against an army in the high tens of thousands. Sheppard says the cannons did relatively little physical damage. The Inca had never heard gunpowder, so strangers who seemed to control thunder were devastating, and the only Spanish injury was a cut to Pizarro's hand.