The Rest Is History - 543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God

Episode Date: February 27, 2025

“Anyone who even thinks of abandoning this mission will be cut up into a thousand pieces…I am the wrath of God!” At the height of the age of exploration, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, one story in particular gripped the imagination of European colonialists: El Dorado, a legendary city of gold, hidden in the very heart of the South American Rainforests. But no kingdom sought this prize more furiously than the mighty Spanish Empire. Determined to restore their fortunes with El Dorado’s treasures, they sent countless expeditions in search of the golden city, to no avail. Then, in 1559, the authorities in Lima assembled a new expedition, bigger and better than ever before, under the leadership of the knight Pedro de Ursula. The group he mustered to go with him would prove ill chosen indeed. Among them was his famously beautiful mistress, Dona Inez, and more ominously still, a fierce eyed, limp-footed man by the name of Lope de Aguirre. Little did his companions know that they had a devil in their midst. Aguirre would prove to be one of history’s strangest and most unsettling characters, and one of the great villains of the Spanish conquests of the New World. Cruel and psychopathic, he would eventually violently usurp Ursula’s command, and lead his companions not in search of El Dorado, but further and further into the Amazonian interior, enacting a regime of paranoid terror as they went. It would prove to be one of the strangest, most gruesome, and also the most horrific journeys of all time, replete with murder, betrayal, treason, and above all, madness….  Join Tom and Dominic, as they discuss the iniquitous Spanish conquistador Aguirre, and his journey both into the heart of the South American wilderness, but also into human madness. It is a story of mystery and adventure, gold and greed, horror and death. EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/restishistory Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett + Aaliyah Akude  Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is the restishistory.com. I am the great traitor. There must be no other. Anyone who even thinks about deserting this mission will be cut up into 98 pieces. Whoever takes one grain of corn or one drop of water more than his ration will be locked up for 155 years. If I, Aguirre, want the birds to drop dead from the trees, then the birds will drop dead from the trees. I am the wrath of God. The earth I pass will see me and tremble. Whoever follows me on

the river will win untold riches. We will control all of New Spain and we will stage history as others stage plays. I, the wrath of God, will marry my own daughter and this I have found the purest dynasty ever known to man. Together we will rule the whole of this continent. The Wrath of God! So that was Klaus Kinski, the great German actor, as Lope de Aguirre in the film Aguirre, The Wrath of God, which was made in 1972, directed by Funster Werner Herzog and loosely based on, I mean, one of the most remarkable episodes of European exploration in history, a 16th century Spanish band of conquistadors venturing into the Amazon rainforest in search of El Dorado and it doesn't end well.

And it's one of the maddest films ever made, partly because of course, the conquistadors speak in German and we know that they would have spoken in English, obviously. But also Dominic, I guess because it ranks alongside Francis Ford Coppola's attempt to finish Apocalypse Now as a kind of cinematic folly de grandeur, doesn't it? It does indeed. Because they go into the jungle and it's all terrible and Herzog tries to kill Kinsky. Kinsky's going mad he's got his great bulging eyeballs. Yeah. The making of the film is carnage. It is. And it's holding a mirror up to the carnage of the original 16th century expedition.

Exactly it's very like Apocalypse Now in that sense so they shot it in the early 70s as you say. They shot it on location in the Peruvian Amazon and Herzog at one point threatened to shoot Kinski, his lead actor, and then turn the gun on himself. And that's sort of been reported as he was basically forcing Kinski to film scenes at gunpoint, which I think is a slight exaggeration, but the filming of it was demented. But that actually, of course, reflected the subject matter, which is this, as you say, this expedition that's very, very heart of darkness, actually, the 16th century expedition. It's about European colonizers, colonialists, conquistadors in Heart of Darkness, which we did a podcast on a few weeks ago. You know, they go up the Congo, Joseph Conrad is narrator Marlowe goes up the Congo.

He's in search of this guy, Kurtz, who's lost his mind. Marlowe goes up the Congo he's in search of this guy Kurtz who's lost his mind well in this story it's the people who are going up the river who lose their minds and particularly this bloke Aguirre who I think it's fair to say is one of the strangest and most unsettling characters we've ever done on on this podcast it's really interesting the books about him are often written by some of them are by professional historians but one of the best for example is by a guy called Robert Silverberg who's actually a science fiction writer. Yeah he did so all those books with kind of giant spaceships. Yeah. And he wrote an

absolutely brilliant book called The Golden Dream a history of quests for El Dorado like very scrupulously researched very serious book and he describes Aguirre in this book he he says is the single most villainous figure in the annals of the Spanish conquest which is you know it's quite a high bar to clear and then there's the great historian of the Amazon John Hemming who wrote a brilliant book about the fall of the Incas and he says of a gear a simply cruel psychopathic a man of unmitigated evil yes the people are going to enjoy this. Yeah. Yeah, it's always good to have a character like that on the podcast.

I mean, it is very Heart of Darkness, so very reminiscent of the series we just did on the Congo. But we've also just done an episode on Dr. John Dee, Elizabeth I's kind of great magus. And his great ambition is to track down secrets that will unleash untold wealth. Right. And the whole El Dorado quest. Yes. Sense that there is a golden ruler, a golden city lost somewhere in the jungle, and that if only you can find it, then you will be unspeakably rich. This also is part of the Aguirre story. So it's a kind of fusion of the two, isn't it? It's absolutely part of the Aguirre story. And yet the mad thing about it is there's pretty much only one person in this story

who thinks that El Dorado is a complete myth and a nonsense. And that's Aguirre. There's an argument possibly he's the only sane man on the expedition. Isn't there some historian who says that he's the only man in history to look for El Dorado who didn't want to find it? Exactly. Exactly. Well, we'll come to that that. In fact he tries to dissuade other people from trying to find it. So let's give everybody a bit of context because there would be lots of people who are not familiar with this story at all. So we're in the Spanish Empire in the late 1550s, so that means the Aztecs and the Incas

have been conquered a generation ago, loads of silver is flying back to Europe from Mexico and Peru, but if in your mind you're thinking okay well South America has been conquered by Spain, the story is over. That's not right at all. Spanish rule is very fragile and it's really just confined to the coasts. And Spain itself, although it's very rich and powerful, it's in a kind of world of trouble. So the emperor Charles V abdicated in 1556 and Spain and its empire passed to his son Philip II. He appears to be very rich and powerful but he inherits a great mess. There's huge inflation thanks to all of the silver. Spain has been fighting all these wars in Italy and the Holy Roman Empire. He has to default on Spain's loans straight away. He's got no money.

He's struggling to raise taxes in Spain itself and the obvious place to look is the New World. Let's get more gold and silver from the New World. But the problem is that his authority, and this is going to be really important to explain the political context to this story, his royal authority is very weak in the Spanish colonies. So in Peru for example, you know the Incas have as it were fallen, but there are still only about 4,000 European Spaniards in Peru and Lima and whatnot, and they are fighting these endless civil wars and there are little rebellions and feuds and things and in

1556 a new viceroy called the Marcus of Canete arrived in Lima from Spain and Dominic when he arrives in Lima does he find the lilting of a Spanish guitar he doesn't actually Tom he hears the sound of screams and chaos. Because law and order have slightly broken down in Lima. This is not the world of Pannington Bear, it's this. It's a much darker world. The place is in chaos. There are unemployed soldiers and ruffians everywhere,

total sort of feuds and vendettas. And he has to try to sort this out. You know, he wants to find money to impress Philip II. And you can see why this scenario would appeal to a science fiction writer. Yeah. It's a kind of staple, isn't it? The new colony on a distant planet. Yeah.

Full of gun runners and smugglers and desperados. That's exactly what it is. I think we should assume that almost everybody in this story, who we mentioned at this point almost, has an enormous scar running from their eyebrow right down to their chin or something. A weapon with a personal nickname. Exactly. Yeah.

Gutsplitter. Yeah. The widow weeper or something of that kind. Anyway, at about this point, when the Marcus of Cignete arrives in Lima, an Amazonian Indian chieftain arrives in Peru from the east. And it's very like the sort of barbarians on the periphery of the Roman Empire. There are all kinds of movements of people who are pushing other people because of the arrival of the Europeans.

So it's caused kind of chaos among the tribes. And this bloke is taken, the leader of this tribe is taken to see the Spanish authorities and he says, we've traveled a long way, we've traveled along the Amazon and I have seen lands rich in gold and the Marcus of Kenyette's eye, you know, he raises his eyebrows to this. Yeah, he's so brilliant. And this tallies with two things that people in the two great colonial cities of the western side of the continent, which are Lima and Quito now in Ecuador, this tallies with two

things that they believe. First of all, 10 years or so earlier, a man called Francisco de Oriana had led one of the great expeditions in all history, the first European expedition on the whole length of the Amazon. And he had traveled for 4,000 miles. And he, Oriana, reported that he had seen very large, very rich settlements, people who lived in towns, people who wore fine woven clothes with great pottery and loads and loads of silver. And for centuries people have assumed since then that this was all nonsense and just a fable but actually now the trend among historians of Amazonia is to say actually Amazonia

probably was more built up than we think and there were more people there and they were more sophisticated and they're all killed in the long run, a lot of them by disease and things, so they've been discounted ever since, but archaeologists now think there was a lot of truth in this. And then the second thing is that in Lima and Quito, people have been swapping stories about this place called El Dorado, and this seems to have originated as a very garbled and exaggerated and confused report of what the Spanish were doing on the other side of the continent in Colombia,

where they were conquering a people called the Muisca. And these Muisca were quite rich, and this basically became embellished and garbled into a story of a land so rich that the king could sort of paint himself in gold dust, throw a load of gold into the lake every year in a religious ritual and there's gold everywhere and there's a lake full of gold and all of this kind of business. Because El Dorado is literally the golden man isn't it? The golden one. Exactly. So the Marcus de Canete anyway, he arrives in Lima and there's all of these different rumors hanging around, all the stuff out there in the Amazon, who knows, and his great brainwave is, and it's really smart,

I'll get rid of all these ne'er-do-wells with their scars by saying to them, lads, why don't you go off on a massive expedition to go and find El Dorado? Because if they do find it, he'll be the man who saved Spain's finances. He can send all the gold back to Philip II, and that's great. If they don't find it, and they'll die. Brilliant. Brilliant. He's rid of them. It's win-win. So to command the expedition, he appoints a fellow called Pedro de Asura, who is a knight from Navarre, from Pamplona. Everyone says he's very brave, he's very gallant, he's very headstrong.

He's actually not without experience. He has been serving in New Granada, which is Colombia, for about 10 years. He's already gone on some El Dorado expeditions. No joy really. But he's not a complete idiot. So he is appointed to lead the expedition. He is told when you conquer the province of Amagwa and Dorado you will rule it as governor. And he thinks, well brilliant, because this is of course what conquistadors want. They want a slice of territory and they want an official

appointment so that they can make money out of it. That's what all this is about. It's what Cortez, Pizarro, all of these people. So Ossua, over the next year or so, he gathers his team, he gets a very very large expedition by the standards of the day, about 400 Spaniards and thousands of Peruvian Indians, native Peruvians I suppose people might call them now, and it's the largest European force for the next two centuries to enter Amazonia. I have to say most of the people on this expedition are not people with whom one would choose to go on holiday. They're kind of gangsters, mercenaries, ex-cons. They're hard men, I think it's fair to say, Tom. And they start building all these rafts and brigantines on the edge of Amazonia that they will use to go into the kind of river network. It's kind of a spaghetti western only in a jungle.

Exactly it's a spaghetti western or so we're going to be doing some episodes about Harold Hard Roger going into the lands of the Rus and I think there's a slight Viking element to this kind of slightly terrifying men who would be no strangers to a facial tattoo. Yeah kind of venturing in search of gold and hopefully some slaughter a lot of stubble though exactly yeah this is a slightly sweatier version I think it's probably fair to say anyway in the summer of 1560 before he sets off a sewer gets a letter from a friend and the friend says to him look you're

making two dreadful mistakes mistake number one you are taking your mistress. What donya in yes to atienza? Please tell me she is incredibly ugly Please tell me she's not absolutely gorgeous Tom so gallant It's for our own good and for the good of the expedition So no, she said to be the most beautiful woman in all of Peru that is mad disastrous 400 desperado's and one woman Yeah, so she's a young widow. She's probably mixed race or mestizo. There are like four or five eyewitness accounts written after the event. On this issue they're frustratingly inconsistent. So some say she's a woman of unimpeachable honor. Others say she's a little bit free with her affections. So it's hard to know

the truth there Tom. I think you listeners just make up their own minds. Anyway, a Suez Mate says, you are mad to take her with you. Nothing good will So it's hard to know the truth there Tom. I think you'd be listeners just make up their own minds Anyway, a Sue's mate says you are mad to take her with you Nothing good will come of it and I quote greater evils will follow than you can possibly suppose and I have a sense They're not right. Yes. Well, especially as the friend also says you're not just taking quite bad men Some of the men you're taking are unbelievably bad men and he says the worst is a man called Lope de Aguirre. So we know from a letter that Aguirre later wrote to Philip II, which we shall come on to. Aguirre had been born in 1510 in the Basque country. He'd come to Peru in his early 20s. He'd worked as a horse breaker and a general enforcer. That's a terrifying TV,

isn't it? And there's a wonderful account based on other accounts by a Franciscan monk with Fré Simon and Simon said of Aguirre He was of short stature and sparely made ill featured the face small and lean beard black The eyes like a hawk and when he looked he fixed his eyes sternly particularly when angry So he's generally a slightly Unsettling presence. Yeah. All the chroniclers agree that he talks a lot. He's very roughly spoken. He's incredibly bad tempered and he's incredibly vengeful. And when you think this is in the context

of the Spanish Conquest of South America. Yeah. And people are saying now this bloke, you know, he's crossed the line That's very disturbing. So he's always being kicked out of towns He really is a spaghetti western character and as phrase simon says he has a limp Which I always think is an unsettling sign in the conquistador because he's been shot in the leg phrase simon says he was driven from one province to another and was known as Aguirre el Loco, the madman. Right.

So he's signed up to this expedition. And the other thing is he's brought with him his daughter. So his daughter, he had a daughter with an Indian woman and his daughter is called Elvira. And how old is she? 13. 13 years old. Oh, so he's taking her to school. Well, she always travels with him and apparently he is completely devoted to her.

Like this is his real soft spot. Right. You know, he takes Elvira very seriously. But, I mean, should anyone be listening and think you've taken their children out of school? Don't. Just don't do it. You have to pay a fine, don't you, in England? This is a salutary warning, I think, of what could happen, what could go wrong.

Certainly don't go to the Amazon with a group of ne'er-do-wells. No. Pedro de Assur, the commander of the expedition, completely ignores this letter, which is madness. And on the 26th of September 1560 he sets off with his expedition into the tributaries of the Amazon. And right from the start, surprise surprise, things start to go wrong. They've built all these ships but there are massive leaks on them and he has to leave all but one of them behind. What, so he's setting off and he's got all these ships built and then he can't take any

of them? Except for one? He can take one, Brigantine, and then loads of rafts. Why doesn't he wait to fix them? Because it takes ages! And you know, because the people are getting very impatient. And to be honest, I've had to cut out already a lot of feuding. Okay.

There's been a lot of feuding already. I'm getting a really bad feeling about this. Right. So they all cram into these rafts, but Asua insists on keeping one cabin just for himself and Dona Ines and that does not go down well with the other people on the expedition. As phrase Simon says, the people were in such a state of ill humor that they almost mutinied. And this is before they've left. This is before they've left. Anyway, they set off. After a few weeks, they reach a river called the

Maranhon, which is the main source of the Amazon so that runs from the Andes Sort of down and eastwards deep into the jungle so if they follow it they will be swept along ultimately towards The Atlantic yes, they're going from west to east from left to right exactly. I mean it's a heck of a way It's 4,000 miles. Yeah, they're not intending to go to the Atlantic by any means They think they'll go into Amazonia and there'll be a sort of Aztec style kingdom and they can seize its gold, make themselves the masters of it, then go back to Peru and say, brilliant, we've done it. And so they're not particularly worried about how they're going to get back coming up river

against the current. They have not thought this through, I think it's fair to say, because we shall see quite quickly they start to some of them say how are we getting back? Yeah I think for some of them it probably is always an option that they may have to continue all the way and then loop around the top of South America and we shall return to this idea. Anyway after a while they find their first native villages. Frey Simmon reports that you know the people were very impressive, they had woven cloth sort of shirts and things. So they had, you know, this is not a totally unsophisticated civilization by any means,

but they don't find any gold. And the Spaniards become increasingly restless. Surprise surprise. As the weeks go by and they go deeper and deeper into the jungle, there's a lot of muttering that a sewer is more interested in dallying with Donnie and yes than finding gold there's no hint of gold what's going on clearly a sewer finds it very difficult to impose his authority on all these hundreds of kind of ex cons what is the structure of control does just depend on his charisma or yeah and he has a series of lifts their tenants that he employs who are

constantly bickering and feuding among themselves I mean these are people who there's not a military expedition these are not people who are constantly bickering and feuding among themselves. I mean these are people who, it's not a military expedition, these are not people who are used to following orders, these are people who are used to being their mercenaries, they're kind of adventurers. I don't want to speak out of turn Tom, I feel that you would be very uncomfortable in this environment. I wouldn't like it at all. No. I'd stand on the margins wringing my hands. I mean I've been on tour with you when there was just four of us. Yeah. And I just can't see you enjoying this atmosphere, the sweat and the lack of shaving, if nothing else, because you're always a clean shaver man.

I am. Anyway, they proceed down the river. Frey Simons says of Usua, he's too merciful and at times his acts savored of weakness. But then he does that classic thing that quite weak leaders do, which is from time to time, he kind of lashes out and inflicts severe punishments on people randomly. And so people say, well, you don't know where you stand with him. You know, he's not consistent. So they're not happy.

They capture an Indian girl at one point and they say, these people that Oriana met who are called the Amagwa, you know, all these years ago when he went down the Amazon, where are they? And she says, well, I've never heard of these people. And they realise with a sense of horror, we could be hundreds of miles from where these people live. If El Dorado exists, it could be 2000 miles away. Because I suppose in a jungle where you have no idea what the landmarks are, distance just becomes an abstraction.

And no proper map. Yeah. No sense of anything really but just the sort of the green vastness and the sound of the snakes slithering in the undergrowth and strange monkeys screaming in the night you know that's basically what they snoring exactly now after a while this other brigantine their shipwrights are clearly massively incompetent because this other brigantine springs a leak

and they have to move everything out of there onto these rafts. So the German film version bears very little resemblance to reality, but the one thing it does have is a lot of raft action. And that is true to life because they are on these rafts, starts pouring rain, then the rainy season, by Christmas 1560, it's the rainy season, it's constantly raining, they've got no shelter, they're soaked, they've run out of food, they're really miserable and they are totally and utterly lost. And this is when Aguirre really enters the story. He and one of his mates, who's a man called Sal Duendo, are going round and muttering to the others.

First of all, Aguirre says, this business about El Dorado is clearly absolute total tosh. Like this is just a stupid children's story. We should go back to Peru and just start rampaging through Peru and steal the gold of Peru if we really want gold that badly. And secondly he says, Asua is a terrible leader. He spends all his time with his mistress, Dona Ines, who's basically the real mistress of the expedition. He is selfish and I quote, an enemy of giving away and a friend to receiving which I quite like as an expression and he is gonna force us to stay in the jungle until we're grey-haired old men and you know if we don't act we're gonna get deeper and deeper and we're gonna be

just completely lost and we'll all die. I mean he's got a point with both hasn't he? I mean he's not wrong there. Egiri is a madman in many ways and we shall see he does behave unbelievably badly even by rest his history standards but in this he's not actually wrong. Yeah. So when he goes around saying this people say well who's going to be in charge and Aguirre to his credit he doesn't say myself. He says there's a young nobleman who's traveling with us called Don Fernando de Guzman. His birth and merits are worthy of greater honors and he says to Guzman, he goes to Guzman, he says to him, look if we get rid of Usua and you take over the leadership of the expedition, Philip II may well initially be annoyed but when he hears the circumstances he would consider it a good service and he will specially reward you. And he says to Don Fernando at this point, look we won't kill Usua, we'll just

leave him by the side of the bank or something. I mean, by the way, I mean, that would be effectively to kill him. I imagine I mean, it's not like he's going to make a new life for himself in the jungle. Anyway, Don Fernando, as I think is you can expect with the man who goes around calling himself Don Fernando, he's a very vain man. Right. And he is and I quote, swelled up by the wind of ambition he gave thanks for what they offered him and assented to all their projects there was something in the air that night there was a bright Alan Partridge's son is

called Fernando yeah I imagine these people as being very similar right so don't for now it says right I'm in okay let's get this plot started and at that point a gear a says yeah there's one slight change actually we probably will kill us you after all. And Don Fernando is shocked by this, but he's in too deep, he's implicated in the plot, so he can't back out. But I mean, it's ridiculous to be squeamish as you said, because to just dump him on the side of the river, I mean, is a death sentence anyway.

Probably more merciful to kill him. That would be my attitude. I would have hardened up by this point. You and I are completely on the same page on this. So on New Year's Day 1561, they're camped in this village by the side of the river. Asua has sent some of his key lieutenants to scout ahead, and that gives his opponents the perfect opportunity. And as darkness falls, a group of Aguirre's men gather outside Asua's hut, and they find him lying in his hammock talking to a

pageboy. And he says to them, sort of in a friendly but suspicious way, Caballeros, what seek ye here at this hour? And they kind of, I imagine there's a lot of cackling. They draw their knives and swords, plunge them in and that is the end of Pedro de Osirio, he is dead. And then they start shouting, it's interesting what they shout actually, they start, Liberty, Liberty, long live the king, the tyrant is dead. So at this point they're trying to dress it up as an act of loyalty to Philip II. They've had a bad leader, they've got rid and the king will be very happy. Six semper tyrannus.

Exactly. The camp is in total uproar because people can hear the shouting and screaming. They butcher another of Ursua's lieutenants who's a man called Vargas who's come out in his cotton armour. So this is one thing the German film gets wrong. They're all wearing enormous metal armour in the German film but in reality they'd have worn sort of Aztec or Inca style cotton padded quilted armour. But the metal makes them look sweatier. I mean it's a good for the visuals. And wearing a quilt in a film just looks ridiculous. It's not intimidating. No no no. So then of course, with staggering predictability, they immediately break into the wine stores. They all drink this

wine get absolutely wasted. They round up us you as other mates, they kill them as well. They don't kill Donya Ines. I was going to ask about her. What's her fate? So she's just hanging around in her own heart. She's not mentioned at this point, we know she's mentioned later on so she's just presumably quaking in her heart very anxious. I mean these don't seem the kind of guys who would necessarily be 100% chivalrous towards the mistress of someone they've just killed. I have to tell the listeners if they've already formed a great attachment to her as a character the second half will make will make challenging listening. So they then assemble the next day with massive hangovers and Don Fernando is the new leader and he says, I've decided we'll continue the search for El Dorado because when we find all this gold, the king will forgive the murders and

he will give us handsome rewards. So we should draw up a document explaining the Spanish are so legalistic, aren't they? They did this all the time in the conquest of Mexico. Do you remember when we did that serious They're always drawing up requirements and reading out legal documents to people who don't understand them and things So I've got a question which is this is a highly dangerous expedition Everyone knows that this disease and wild animals and people with blowpipes and all that kind of stuff Why would they ever confess to having murdered this guy? Why don't they just say, oh, he died of some disease or something? I mean, it just seems a bit odd.

There's a lot of them that remember they were troubled with 400 people. I suppose they think the news will come out. I suppose. Yes, I suppose. And because some of the people there were not party to the plot and perhaps a little bit displeased about it. So they think it's better to have an excuse. So they drew up this legalistic document.

Don Fernando signs first and then Aguirre steps up and he signs his name as follows. He writes Lope de Aguirre the traitor. Wow. And there's great gasps and shock and Aguirre laughs. And how does he laugh Dominic? I imagine a demonic laugh at this point. So I'll do a variety of laughs later on. There'll be a lot of opportunities, put it that way. That was terrifying. He says, you have killed the King's governor, one who represented his royal person, clothed with royal powers. We have all been traitors. We have all been a party to this mutiny. I mean, again, he's not wrong, is he?

No. See, again, there is an alternative explanation which is the only sane person in a world of fools. I mean there is a kind of Shakespearean quality to this where it's the villain who speaks the truth like kind of Richard the third or Iago or whoever. Yeah well because of what he says next he then says to the assemble company this business about El Dorado is demented even if we found it, there is no way Philip II would allow us to keep it. He would send in viceroy's and governors and bureaucrats. It's madness to be wasting our time on this. We should go back to Peru. There's a load of treasure there. Let's kill everybody in Peru and take the treasure. That's just a much more sensible way of proceeding. There's a huge argument. The council breaks up and

this issue is unresolved. So they set off downstream again, deeper and deeper into the Amazon. Now, by this point, Aguirre has clearly realized what perhaps some of the others have not yet woken up to. There is no way actually that they're going to be able to get back upstream. Because by now the current is getting stronger and stronger. It's really strong. You know, the Amazon, these are big rivers. There is no way with these terrible rafts that they're going to be able to go

back the other way. You know, the more I hear about him, the more you like him, the more I like him and the more I think I would have rallied behind him. Well, we'll see if you could maintain that position in the second half. I'm aware that it doesn't end well. So they now discover they've got massive holes in their rafts. They have to stop by the side of the river and build new ships. That takes them three months. I mean day after day, hammering and stuff, you know, cutting down trees to make nails and planks and things. They've got no food, they're living off wild fruit and I have to say their own horses because they had horses on these rafts so they're now eating them and Aguirre actually is quite pleased about this because he thinks if we eat all our

animals there's no way we can sort of settle down or be tempted to capture towns and you know all this stuff we'll just have to keep going all the way to the Atlantic and get out of here which is basically what I want to do and I think it's about this point that the mood really really starts to darken what do you mean starts to darken yeah Yeah, because that was all prellies. That was all quite jolly. Because previously when they'd got on reasonably well with the native population, they had done a bit of trading. Of course, there'd been a bit of violence, but nothing completely off the scale. Now there's a lot of fighting and basically the word spreads the Spaniards are bad guys.

And whenever they go out to look for food food they're often ambushed by Indians. There's also a huge row, one of endless huge rows inside the camp. Some of Don Fernando's friends say, look you actually need to get rid of Aguirre, but he doesn't have the guts. He demotes him as second in command and the problem is Aguirre, as we've established, is a very vengeful man. So Aguirre just notes this slight, he hides his fury and resentment, but he's determined one day that he will get his revenge. So we come to March 1561. Don Fernando and Aguirre call

another meeting. You can sense that the mood is getting very paranoid. They begin by demanding that every man pledge his loyalty to Don Fernando by God and the Virgin and then Aguirre addresses the men and he says Look, we've been talking the plan has changed. We are gonna forget about El Dorado now We are going to seize the wealth of Peru and we will crown Don Fernando Guzman Our general by the grace of God Lord and Prince of Peru the main and Chile to whom by right these kingdoms belong." Wow, there's a twist. He says, we for swear our allegiance to the King of Spain and Aguirre makes this huge pronouncement. He says, from this day forward I pledge myself to my Prince, King and natural Lord Don Fernando and I swear and promise to be his faithful vassal and to die in his defense. So that's a death sentence, isn't it? And then he turns to Fernando, he bows and in front of everybody, he kisses his hand

as the new Prince of Peru. And Tom, I hate to tell you, but with that traitor's kiss, the real nightmare begins. Brilliant Dominic. Okay, so it's been an absolute pleasure jaunt up until now, but in the second half we will find out how, as Dominic just said, the nightmare begins. Hello, welcome back to The Rest is History. We are with Aguirre, the Wrath of God, the Traitor, El Loco, the Madman, the Epithets are piling up and Dominic, none of them are good and none of them looking good for Don Fernando

Who is in nominal charge has just been proclaimed by gear a basically Lord of the whole of South America So he must be feeling pretty pleased, but I'm guessing Don't know just something telling me he's not gonna be around for long. Guess what the clock is ticking for Don Fernando So he's the Prince of Peru, but they're lost in the middle of the jungle. So it's fair to say his title is purely nominal at this point. And Aguirre says, look, this is how we're going to get out.

I've got my plan. We'll finish building these brigantines, these ships. When they're ready, we will sail all the way down the Amazon, another 2000 miles or whatever to the Atlantic, dead easy. Then we will head to an island called Margarita, which is off the coast of Venezuela. There there's a Spanish base. We will take that base. We'll get supplies. We'll recruit people there. Then he says, we'll sail up to Panama. We'll seize the capital. We'll kill all the royal officials.

We'll take control of the Spanish fleet based in Panama. We will rally the colonists of Central America and we will cross the isthmus of Panama and launch a seaborne invasion of Peru and seize the gold of Peru now if you were standing in the middle of the jungle Soaked with rain you've only eaten Kind of over ripe fruit for the past month and a horse and Dominic. I'm imagining a lot of leeches Yeah loads of leeches And Dominic, I'm imagining a lot of leeches. Yeah, loads of leeches. When someone outlined this plan to you, which involves a lot of travel, a lot of capturing of implausible captures in your fleets,

crossing of isthmuses and multiple South American countries, you might say, I find this implausible. You might equally say, well, what's the alternative? Yeah, well, that's what they say. They say, fine, let's give it a go. Why not? What's the worst that could happen? I think it's fair to say they haven't really thought that through because the worst that can happen is probably a lot worse than they're imagining.

Well, I'm not sure about that, actually. I mean, being proactive is better than just sitting there and being eaten by leeches and dying in the middle of nowhere. That's true. At least to try. And as we'll see, maybe they had a few laughs along the way. So they set off, they go into the river network again of Amazonia, eventually they built the ships.

We're in April 1561. This is the point at which Robert Silverberg says in his book, in all the records of South American conquest, Aguirre stands out as the only man who ever went to great lengths to avoid finding El Dorado. Because whenever they see an interesting looking tributary, he says, don't even look at it, keep going, he's got his plan, he doesn't want anything to interfere with it. Again he's right! Of course he is, they don't want to get lost in this maze of rivers. It's a terrible sort of labyrinth, a sort of riverine labyrinth, they're eating fish, they are living off turtles and

manatees. That's terrible, manatees are endangered. Perhaps this is why. El Loco. They're all incredibly emaciated, They're all going a bit mad. After a few weeks, Don Fernando, who's still hanging around, some of his friends say to him, this is mad. I mean, the El Dorado thing was pretty mad. But this idea about looping around and conquering Peru is absolutely bonkers. It's never going to work. Let's get rid of Aguirre. But they delay too long. They talk about about it but they don't do it they have a sort of complicated plan they're going to invite him aboard a ship and stab him and all this

and in the meantime word leaks out and so Aguirre finds out about it and he decides he will strike first so the first person that he gets rid of is his friend Señor Sal Duendo who had been his ally earlier on he's started sleeping with Dona Ines and Aguirre finds that disgraceful. And he denounces his former friend as a traitor. He sends his men to overpower him and to butcher him with knives, which they do. He says, actually Dona Ines is a massive drain on this expedition and a distraction. She's got to go. And he sends two of his henchmen, who are called Carion and Yomoso. Yomoso will be reappearing in this story in a colourful manner. These two guys

turn up with daggers to kill Dona Ines and the various chroniclers and eyewitness accounts really go to town on this. They're said to have stabbed her so ferociously that she drowned in her own blood. One account says they took an unnatural delight in mangling what had once been so beautiful. Another, even the most hardened men in the camp at the sight of the mangled, that word again, the mangled victim, were broken hearted, for this was the cruelest act that had ever been perpetrated. But Aguirre, he doesn't mind. His thinks it's great.

I mean, it's what he wanted. It's what he ordered. So that's not true, because he's clearly the most hardened man in the camp and he doesn't care. Yeah, that's true. Actually, you're quite right. And you've pointed out a terrible discrepancy in the sources. I have. Oh, Tom, this is the kind of forensic detail that marks us out as a great history podcast. So Don Fernando has been sort of watching all this impotently and is horrified. But as our sources say, he now has just become a quivering

jelly of a man. He became fearful and changed in appearance, but he didn't protect his person with more care, nor take Aguirre's life, nor seek to rally more friends, for he had become so timid and listless that for care of his own life he took but little note. It seemed that he carried death in his eyes. So the end comes for him a few days later. they're camped on an island in the middle of the river. Aguirre's men burst into his hut, they kill his chaplain first, stabbed him so ferociously that the sword pinned him to the mattress. Then they go by Don Fernando's kind of hammock and he wakes, and Aguirre said to him very gently, don't be alarmed, your excellency.

And then they killed all Don Fernando's friends while he was just sort of lying there in his hammock looking mournful. And then they shot Don Fernando with their arquebuses and hacked him to pieces with their swords and threw him in the river. So that's the end of him. So he never becomes King of Peru. He never became King of Peru at all. He just floated down the Amazon in bits. It's a warning never to have dreams above your station.

That's what it is. That's exactly what it is. You should always be kept in check. Accept your lot, don't aim high, don't follow your dream. So the next morning everybody wakes up and Aguirre addresses the whole camp and he says look I did this for the safety of the army because if Don Fernando had been allowed to live we'd all have perished. He says please everybody he says please consider me from now onwards your friend and companion. You will not be disappointed for you can scarcely conceive how much I desire to administer to your pleasure and contentment.

And he says to maximise everybody's pleasure and contentment a few quick ground rules from now on all private conversations are outlawed and you can no longer go around in groups to stop conspiracy. To stop conspiracies, we can have no more of this plotting. I mean that's rich given from the chief plotter but he says look there's been far too much plotting and he also appoints a kind of praetorian guard for himself of Basques with arquebuses. So actually behind that I think there may be a sort of serious point which is that there are clearly internal feuds and rivalries. Aguirre is a Basque himself and it may well be that it's very hard for us to detect. There is perhaps an issue here between Castilians and Basques or something like that.

And the sources, are they Castilian or Basque? They are Castilian by and large and as we will see the sources, I do believe that a lot of this happened, that a lot of what is being reported is true but I think the spin they are putting on this is very particular as we shall see because these are eyewitnesses who have been part of a rebellion against the King of Spain and want to excuse themselves by explaining how they were being misled by a madman So it may be that Aguirre isn't less mad. Less mad. I mean more like Unai Emery, the Basque manager of Aston Villa. Right, not a madman. Not a madman at all. A very good manager. But you would follow him into the jungle Tom, would you not? I

absolutely would. I'd do whatever he said. But I mean if it all went wrong. Would you then smear him as a loco? You claim that he had a limp and stuff? I'd like to think I'd stay loyal. Right, well some of Aguirre's people did stay loyal right to the end. That would be me. I mean if he was like Unai Emery, I mean not if he was like Klaus Kinski. Yes. Just putting that on the record. Fine. Yeah, you wouldn't follow a German is what you're saying. I wouldn't follow a very sweaty guy with bulgy eyeballs who's wearing too much armour, but I would follow a twinkle-eyed

charismatic leader of men in a tracksuit or actually Emery's very kind of dapper yeah he's never wears a tracksuit no he doesn't very kind of dapper coat and scarf. Do you know what he is? He's courtly. Yeah he is. A word one would often use of a Spaniard. Yeah courtly is absolutely the word you're right he actually has kind of quite a 16th century face I think like a kind of Cavalier in a an El Greco painting right they're now in I guess where are they they are in northern Brazil they've got completely lost do we know how far they've got to get to the Atlantic now they're well over halfway they are now probably go round about a river called the Rio Negro

so they're heading across the border into what is now Venezuela and just to ask no one has ever done this before? No, they have no idea where they are. Now actually at one point they see campfires, they see lights burning on the horizon and they have a few guides left, a few native guides. Some of the guides say, God, this could be it. This could be the land of the Amagua, these people who are very rich. And Aguirre is furious at this.

He says on pain of death, nobody is to look at this town or talk about it or mention the Amagwa again, because he's really wedded to this plan of sailing around the top of South America and then crossing the Isthmus of Panama and then seizing the gold of Peru. He's right. Well, he's also at this point, very, very paranoid. So Fray Simon says, so many were the fears that disturbed the wicked conscience of Aguirre, that although

he'd killed those whom he feared, he never felt secure from the survivors. And I think that's definitely true. At this point, he really starts getting into his garroting. So there hasn't been a lot of garroting so far, but now, I mean, I can't stop the narrative every five minutes for all the garroting. Just assume that it's constant. I mean I can't stop the narrative every five minutes for all the grotting just assume that it's constant I mean it's a more merciful way to go than stabbing someone to death so perhaps he's coming around to him well this I think you would disagree with Tom because I think there's a hint of a kind of satanic nihilism I love it a satanic nihilist so phrase Simon says that Aguirre at this point banned his men from praying and he said throw away your rosaryary beads, you don't need them. He said, if you're worried about your souls,

you should play dice with the devil. It's a good phrase. And then he says, he's very Friedrich Nietzsche actually. He said, he told his men that God had heaven for those who chose to serve him, but that the earth was for the strongest. He knew for certain there was no salvation and that being in life was to be in hell and that he would commit every species of wickedness and cruelty so that his name might ring throughout the earth and even to the ninth heaven he's like the judge in blood Meridian yeah blood Meridian or the Marquis de Sade or something there's a a kind of ideological sadism to him, I think, of this, but if this is to be believed. They now enter the Orinoco River and the river

is widening, which is great news for them because it means that they're clearly approaching the Atlantic. It's really hot and humid in Venezuela in July, which is when they're there. And Aguirre is very hot-tempered. He says, we've got all these porters and guides with us, let us abandon them here. So they abandon them on the riverbank and they're crying and they're desperate. And there's nothing there. I mean, it's nothing there at all. Kind of dangerous animals and mudflats. And a couple of the Spaniards say, come on, this is a bit harsh. I mean, we've been traveling with these guys for months. And Aguirre says, right, you've got to go. And he has them garrotted or shot, people try to protest and then at last on the 1st of July 1561 they enter

the Atlantic this incredible voyage they've covered 4,000 miles in nine months they've lost about half of the original party at this stage but they're still alive 17 days later they glimpse the island of Margarita when they see the island Aguirre says brilliant and he celebrates by grotting two more of his men who he thinks could conceivably betray him to the authorities when he gets there and then they sail to the island and he sends a messenger ashore to ask for help with the words we are ordinary sailors lost at sea. And presumably this is quite convincing because they must look an absolute

mess after. Yeah. How long have they been in the jungle? Nine months. Nine months. They've been there nine months, they're emaciated, they're sodden, they're filthy. The governor completely believes this so he turns up with his officials, it's all very very friendly and Aguirre says, you know, would it be all right if we came on shore? Can we take some exercise and bring our weapons just to practice? And the governor says, yeah, great. So they march ashore as though they're kind of on parade. It's very well planned. And then they sort of unsheathed their swords and leveled their guns. And they take the governor and his officials hostage. So this is obviously not a huge place. You know, you're talking about hundreds of people rather than thousands. But because as we said at the beginning, the Spanish presence is quite thin, it's quite thinly spread. So they march into the main town of Margarita. They seize the fort, they

lock up the governor and all the other bigwigs. They break into the treasury, they steal all the gold that's been stored, ready to be shipped to Spain. They burn the account books, which to me is a sign that there is clearly some kind of serious political motive behind all this. It's not just kind of insane nihilism, because clearly this is an attack on the idea of authority and royal authority. And what I think we'll see runs through this is Aguirre and some of the others clearly have a deep resentment. He's already said if we capture El Dorado Philip II will take it from us and give it to aristocrats and viceroys and bureaucrats and of course that had you know for Cortes in Mexico when we did that episode that that series a couple

of years ago that had kind of happened to him. He'd conquered it all and then been sort of pushed out and so I think that's at the back of their mind. I wonder also is there a kind of element of Basque and nationalism would be anachronistic because the Basques are proud mountain people. I mean a lot of these people are from a kind of Spanish periphery so you know famously Cortes and his allies in Mexico a lot of them had come from Extremadura, the sort of borderlands. And again, Aguirre is from a borderland. He's not from metropolitan Spain, Castile, from, you know, one of the great cities. And I think there probably is

a fair bit of resentment actually of kind of royal officials. But also Spanish, Castilian kind of authority. Exactly. And actually, we'll see, there'll be more proof of this in a second. One great problem for them is that a missionary is visiting Margarita, has stopped at Margarita while they're there, a man called Montesinos, a guy from Santo Domingo and he has a big ship and he gets away in this in the chaos. Bad news for Aguirre. It's very bad news, he goes off to the mainland and this is the point at which word of Aguirre's return and his kind of misconduct begins to spread across the Spanish colonies. So from this

point onwards he has lost the element of surprise that I think was so important to him and I think this is the point at which dare I say he really does begin to lose the plot. So up to this point with all the garroting I think there has still been an element of rationality but we're told that at this point some of his men tried to defect and he was, quote, furious and raved like a madman, foaming at the mouth with rage and passion. He has them captured, he garrots them, their bodies are displayed with the message, these men were executed because they were faithful vassals of the King of Castile. Perhaps another bit of evidence for your point, Tom.

Or of kind of class represent of Castile. Perhaps another bit of evidence for your point Tom. Or of kind of class representent perhaps. I think there definitely is a bit of class representent and actually sort of jumping ahead in the 20th century in particular some Latin American historians said this guy's not a madman he's a class warrior he's a socialist he is a Marxist avant la lettre. Right possibly going a little bit far is it based on the evidence so far. But he issues orders, he says we must round up all the, and I quote, bishops, viceroys, presidents, auditors, governors, lawyers and procurators, as well as the caballeros of noble blood. In other words,

the gentlemen. These people have been sucking the indies dry. What he, and he doesn't mean from the native inhabitants, he means from us. We have won, you know, through our sweat and our violence, we have won this land and this gold and it has been sucked from us by pen pushing bureaucrats, you know, elitist establishment types, chinless toffs. And I think that is definitely there. So at this point, there's a bit of a reign of terror in Margarita. The richest citizens are locked up, their money is stolen, the governor is garrotted and his officials are garrotted. Aguirre is now ruling with a kind of rotifier. So if anybody hesitates to garrot somebody he garrots them as well. He says you know if you've got to be in on this and now there's a really

really terrible moment. We talked about this on stage didn't we and I always used to really enjoy this part of the story. He hears a rumor that the royal troops have landed which is not true and he goes out to face them and he leaves his chief lieutenant who's a guy called Martin Perez in charge of the fort and when he gets back after this false alarm one of his other men they're all feuding the whole time one of his other men says Martin Perez has been plotting against you, which is not true. Aguirre says, right, bring him in. He comes in. Aguirre's men kind of leap out from behind the furniture or something and stab this man

and shoot him with an arquebus. But Perez is not killed. He's hideously wounded. Kind of blood and entrails are everywhere and he manages to, like a sort of Frankenstein's monster, he lurches out of the room. Then imagine this lovely colonial mansion. Holding in his guts. A wooden balustrade leaving this and he's like lurching like a monster down the corridor.

People screaming and running in terror and stuff and Aguirre's men are chasing him. I shouldn't laugh, it's a terrible scene. Aguirre's men are chasing him, still trying to stab him and shoot him and stuff and Eventually they corner him, I mean literally in a corner and they manage to finish him off They cut his throat and it's a terrible scene. I mean his entrails are everywhere Aguirre spots one of the men clearly looking a little bit green yeah, and this is a guy called Antonio Mosso who had been one of the murderers of Dona Ines and And this is a guy called Antonia Mosso who had been one of the murderers of Dona Ines and

Aguirre says you don't look like you know, you don't seem to be enjoying this. Were you part of his conspiracy? Do you hold so lightly the love that I feel for you? And you're most so is terrified and he protests his innocence and Aguirre seems completely unmoved and he's gonna reaching for the garrote And you're most so drops to his knees by the disemboweled body of Martin Perez. He basically wants to prove his loyalty and he shouts, curse this traitor, I will drink his blood. And then as Frey Simón reports, putting his mouth over the wounds in the head with more than demoniac rage, he began to suck the blood and brains that issued from the wounds and swallowed what he sucked as if he were a famished dog.

And Aguirre says to him, oh, brilliant. You know, you and I are very much on the same page. You're clearly on the side of the angels. And so Yamoso has proved his loyalty, which is great. On the one hand, it seems so grotesque as to be an exaggeration. And on the other hand, so kind of revoltingly unspeakable that you'd think someone wouldn't make that up. They wouldn't make it up and it's a very detailed story. It's a very detailed story with names, kind of dates, places.

So it's so hard to tell what the truth of this is, but undoubtedly there is a lot of very genuine violence. And I don't think there's any doubt that they have gone, because he would often say to his men, if you're thinking now the King of Spain can take us back, you are greatly mistaken. We are in so deep now that we just have to keep going. Well that signature, the traitor, I mean that's really what kicks it off isn't it? It is. I mean he's not wrong. He recognised I think straight away there's no way back from this. When we're in we're all in. So now he decides right we're going to have to carry on with the rest of the plan. We'll cross to the mainland. He has an exciting new flag which he's had specially made, a pirate flag of course. It's black with red crossed swords on it. I mean honestly if you were

you were at some new world port and you saw a ship with that flag sailing towards you. You'd run a mile. I don't want to be having to either have my brains drunk by somebody or drinking somebody else's brains. No. I mean I wouldn't even drink your brains Tom to be frank. Oh I'm glad that's on the record. So they crossed to the mainland. It takes them eight days on the 7th of September, 1561. They arrive on the coast of what's now Venezuela and it's deserted. The word has spread that he's coming and the people have been told, evacuate the towns.

We're sending troops that this mad man is on the loose. We'll sort this out. He burns his ships. A very kind of, you know, Alexander the greats, Alexander the greats detail. Exactly. He burns his ships and he says he orders, he's got heralds and he says, go and proclaim a war of fire and blood against the king of Castile and his vassals. He marches on this

town called Valencia and he's in a very sort of Mr Kurtz mode at this point. So he's been carried in a hammock. It's incredibly hot. He's got a fever. He's completely emaciated We're told by the sources He was reduced to a skeleton at the point of death and I suspect at this point some of his men are thinking I really hope he dies if there's some way we could get out of this, but he doesn't die Unfortunately recovers from the fever madder than ever you keep saying this that gets madder than ever Yeah, you don't think he was mad before? I think he's reached a certain level of madness a few pages back to be honest. I think he's reached a certain level of madness several minutes ago.

I think there's still some way to go, frankly. I mean the whole drinking the brain stuff. The drinking brains is poor, I agree with that. I think you have to be pretty mad to be madder than that. He let the Basque Country down there, I think Tom was about to say. So he celebrates his recovery by executing a man called Gonzalo and Gonzalo's crime is that he'd gone off without permission to catch some parrots. That's the laugh. I think at this point there's a lot of, there's a lot of great laughter, as parrot fancy as a...

Slaughtered. Slaughtered around him. They get to Valencian and he writes this mad letter to Philip II, which many historians have written about this, say, is one of the maddest letters in Spanish history. Well, all history you might say. I mean, let's pick it up. It is properly mad. He says, King Philip, son of Charles the Invincible, I, Lope de Aguirre, thy vassal, am an old

Christian of poor but noble parents of the town of Onyate in Biscay. Actually, an old Christian is an interesting line because it's a reminder that actually Spain was not entirely Christian until relatively recently. Yeah, so he's contrasting himself with the Jews and the Muslims who've converted. Exactly. So he's saying, I am of loyal, you know, Spanish stock. And he says, for 54 years I did the great service in Peru in the conquest of the Indians and I did all this in your name and I didn't ask your officers for payment, but you have been very cruel and ungrateful to me and my companions for such good service. Again, the hint of the political resentments that may lie behind this. We won these lands while you remained

quietly in Spain. Remember, King Philip, that thou hast no right to draw revenues from these provinces since their conquest has been without danger to thee." Again, that point. He complains a lot about the cruelties which thy judges and governors exercise in thy name, the oppression of thy ministers, who give places to their nephews and their children, who dispose of our lives, our reputations and our fortunes. So, you know, there are all these kind of nepo babies coming over here and taking the big jobs. Also in a very 16th century theme, resentment of the religious orders, the corruption of the morals of the monks is so great. They tell you that they're converting Indians, but actually they are enemies of the poor, they're avaricious, gluttonous and proud.

The poor, by that he's again not speaking about the Indians, he's speaking about Aguirre and his compadres. Yes, exactly. And then there's an ending which I very much enjoy. Because the great thing about this is he lurches from one thought to another in the same sentence. So he says, my comrades and I pray to God that thy strength may ever be increased against the Turk and the Frenchman and all others who desire to make war against thee. But because of thy ingratitude, I am a rebel against thee until death, signed Lope de Guerre, the wanderer. So as John Hemings says, an extraordinary document,

a mixture of rebellious defiance, megalomania, and self-pity. Robert Silverberg says, few kings had ever received such a message from a subject, shifting kind of attitudes within the space of sometimes the same sentence and the tragedy is Philip the second probably never even got to read it because there's no evidence that you did read it must have

been intercepted by a royal official and who filed it under M for mad I mean to be fair to Philip though I mean he does love reading a letter that's basically all he's doing isn't it yeah he's sitting in a very gloomy in LS Corial yeah this would have livened up his day I think. Just endless stuff about tax returns and things. Exactly. And then suddenly you get that. Let's get to the end of the story. Aguirre ends up cornered in this town called Barquise Meadow in Venezuela. A lot of his men have deserted. There's an awful lot of foaming at the mouth. There's a very famous incident while he's marching into Barquise Meadow. It's pouring with rain and their horses are slipping and sliding in the mud.

He shakes his fist at the heavens and he shouts, Does God think that because it rains in Torrance I am not going to reach Peru and destroy the world? Then he does not know me. Brilliant. I compared him to a Shakespeare hero, but actually he's now turning into a kind of Marlowe hero. He totally is, isn't he? So he gets to Bar is he metto? They're surrounded by royalist troops outside the town. I mean they are literally Tom They're literally eating the dogs. They're like the people of Springfield, Pennsylvania

Supposedly the local governor issues promises an amnesty to a gear ace men So some of them start to slip away. He says, the time has come, I think we should garrot some more of my men, the sick and the unwilling, let's have a little purge, we'll be leaner, more efficient at it. And even his lieutenants, his loyalists say to him, oh come on, that's going too far. What about the bloke who drank the blood? The bloke who drank the blood actually stays there. Well, you will see, he literally is the last person with him. So actually the drinking of the blood. The bloke who drank the blood actually stays there. Well you'll see he literally is the last person with him. So actually the drinking of the blood. Yeah it was a genuine sacrament. Yeah it

kind of was. Aguirre has a massive meltdown in middle of October. He summons all his men, what remain of them. He puts a dagger to his chest. He says why don't you cut out my heart. He says I have killed a lot of people but I quote I want you to understand that I did it in order to protect your lives and for the benefit of all. It's real kind of self pity here. This does not unfortunately impress them, so most of them defect. And on the morning of Monday the 27th of October 1561, those who are left say, could we please go out and make a last stand against the royalist army.

He says fine. They go out of the town and as soon as they get out of the town they kind of drop their weapons and start shouting, Long live the king, god save the king. And they defect as well. Aguirre is gutted by this. The only person who's left is this, Yamoso, the blood and brains man. And Aguirre says, why are you still here? You know, why haven't you left me? And Yamoso says, so moving, he says, we were friends in life. I will live or die with you. And Aguirre, we we're told made no reply

He was crestfallen and lost So that I think is lovely What follows? lesser Aguirre goes to his room and he gets at his arquebus is gone and he goes to find someone we haven't mentioned Elvira who has been there the whole time age was she now 14 God she must be so embarrassed Yeah, that's add as he's really let her down And he goes in and he says to her

My daughter my love. I thought I should see you married and a great lady But my sins and my great pride have wielded otherwise Commend yourself to God my daughter and make your peace with him for I can't bear that you would be called the daughter of a traitor." And that's quite moving. Perhaps a little more prosaic is he then also says, I don't want you to become a mattress for the unworthy, which, you know, you know what that means. Yes, of course. Elvira is extremely disturbed by this, falls to her knees and starts pleading. She says, Father, Father, Satan is misleading you. And she's got a maid called Juana who manages to wrestle the gun from his hands. But then he really lets himself, Elvira and the Basque Country down because he pulls out

a dagger and stabs Elvira through the heart. Stabs his daughter. Yeah, kills his daughter. There's a twist. I thought that he was going to kill himself. No. Well, you would think it would be a more satisfying story in a way if you now turned the dagger on himself but he doesn't actually happens is moments later royal troops burst into the apartment again picks up the arquebus again but he's shaking so much that he can't fire it he person to tears. After all that yes soft heart after all the soldiers lead him outside there is talk of a trial but actually.

Soldiers lead him outside there was talk of a trial but actually His important thing loads of his old cronies who defected are there and they say oh no, no trial no trial We should just kill him straight away because they they want the truth because of course they don't want the truth to come out of Their own complicity and two of his old gunners Volunteer to do it you talked about Shakespeare or sort of from Jacobean drama or something So in true Jacobean drama style the first shot doesn't quite kill him, but he's still able to talk, and he says, that has done the business, even though it hasn't. So then they have to shoot him again. He's now dead. They cut off his head and they put it in an iron cage. They cut off his hands. They wanted to send his hands on a kind of

tour. So they sent his hands to the towns of Merida and Valencia, but the soldiers got bored of carrying them. One of the hands ended up being thrown in a river, and the other one was thrown to the dogs to eat. So that's payback for his men eating all the dogs. Yes, I suppose so. So the dogs have had the last laugh, which is nice. They have, yeah.

So that's the end of Lope de Aguirre, and I guess the question, very briefly at the end, is what it actually means. Does it have to mean anything? I think it does. I like a bit of a meaning. Do you not like a meaning, Talmad? love a meaning what that this is very out of character It's just the random madness, but maybe it isn't you see so for some people so I guess for Werner Herzog in that film It's not random madness

You could say it's Joseph Conrad style heart of darkness you go into the heart of the jungle your complicity in colonialism Leads you into evil. I mean, that's how some people have interpreted the story. Alternative explanation, of course, is that it's rather like Mr. Kurtz. It's about the human condition and it's about, you know, we've all got a Lope de Aguirre, a brain-sucking, daughter-murdering madman inside us, whether we like it or not. And that's actually how most historians, they have said he represents human evil in its purest form. Or there's the he's a revolutionary. Well that's I think the more interesting explanation and there's a very recent book by an American writer called Evan Balkan. I think it was his PhD

called Wrath of God and he argues he was the first revolutionary. I mean South America has loads of revolutionaries Che Guevara most famously. He argues that Aguirre makes sense politically, that you put him into the context of mid-century Spanish America, very flimsy colonial control, endless feuds, endless revolts, huge resentment of royal authority and Balkan points out all the accounts we have of him are from people who were complicit in the revolt and what they needed to do afterwards was to convince the Spanish authorities that it hadn't been political, that they had been coerced by a uniquely demented and demonic leader.

Well, the demonic presumably, because then it would explain how they had been seduced, that effectively they've been the victims of witchcraft. Exactly. That Aguirre represents, that's why that point, the thing about, oh, he doesn't want to go to heaven, he's determined to throw himself into this kind of sardine pursuit of all that is cruel and brutal and all of this that's why I think that's very important to them to make that point to say there was no political context to this at all it was an exercise in pure demonic evil by a madman but there clearly was a political context it's the signing his name as a traitor that kicks off the whole well well, I mean, it's a coup, isn't it? It's an attempted coup.

It is. And as Evan Balkan says in his book, Latin American history is a saga of rebels and populists and strongmen who appeal to the common man against overweening royal or state authority. You know, Simon Bolivar or whoever it might, or Juan Perón or whoever it might be. Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, the country with which Aguirre is most closely associated. So Hugo Chávez's culture ministry, I read in Evan Bolton's book, I think, had a section on its official website praising Aguirre as a quote, soldier, traitor, pilgrim, father, lover, dreamer. I think Father is probably an ironic one there. I mean you could say that he kills her to preserve her honour and say that she, you know, her fate is worse than death. I mean I guess that's how you could frame it. I mean

that's how he's casting it. And there is clearly a very magical realist quality to the whole story. There definitely is a magical realist and maybe this would be our last closing point. The most famous of all European travellers who went to Latin America was Alexander Humboldt, German. He went to Venezuela in 1799 and he reported that the locals there said to him that at night strange ghostly fires danced over the plains. He wrote, This fire, like the willow, the wisp of our marshes, does not burn the grass. The people call these reddish flames the soul of the traitor Aguirre, and the

natives believe that the soul of the traitor wanders in the savannas like a flame that flies the approach of men. Well Dominic, what an eerie note on which to end and what a week it's been. We've had angelic voices and we have had the fires of demons. And in a sense, we will be having both next week because we are back with season three of the French Revolution. And of course, Tom, members of the Rest is History Club will get all four episodes of that series on Monday.

And if you want to join them, you merely have to sign up at therestishistory.com. Adios. Very exciting. That's the way I go. Goodbye. of that series on Monday. And if you want to join them, you merely have to sign up at therestishistory.com. Adios. Very exciting. That's the way to go. Goodbye.