Francisco Pizarro could not read or write. He grew up tending pigs in one of Spain’s poorest regions, illegitimate and ignored. Yet this uneducated swineherd crossed the Atlantic, marched into the heart of the Andes, and overthrew the largest empire in the Americas with fewer than two hundred men — one of the most audacious and brutal conquests in recorded history.

This episode traces Pizarro’s improbable rise from illiterate pig farmer to conqueror of Peru, examining the ambush at Cajamarca, the ransom and execution of the Inca emperor Atahualpa, and the civil wars among the conquistadors that ended with Pizarro’s own assassination.

• Pizarro’s impoverished origins and the expeditions that nearly killed him before Peru
• The ambush at Cajamarca — how 168 Spaniards captured an emperor and his army
• Atahualpa’s room of gold ransom and his execution despite paying it in full
• The Spanish civil wars in Peru and Pizarro’s assassination by rival conquistadors