543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God

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 therestishistory.com. This season, a new hot deal has arrived at Metro.
$25 a line for four lines with all the data you need and four free Samsung Galaxy A15 5G phones.

Getting Metro's best deals is easy.

No ID required, no activation fees.

Get a new number or keep your own.

It's up to you.

That's four lines for $25 a line plus four free phones.

Visit a store or go online today.

Only at Metro by T-Mobile.

When you join Metro Plus Tax, for a limited time, it's subject to change.

Max one offer per account.

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 with her found the purest dynasty ever known to man.
Together we will rule the whole of this continent i am the wrath 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's 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 kinski kinski'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

I'm not sure. 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 kinske to film scenes at gunpoint which i think is a slight exaggeration but the film 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, his narrator, Marlow, 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 cover 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 says he's 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 aguirre simply cruel psychopathic a man of unmitigated evil yeah so 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.
And the whole Eldorado quest, this 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. Yeah, 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 in fact he tries to dissuade other people from trying to find it so let's give everybody a bit of context because there'll be lots of people who are not familiar with this story at all so we're in the Spanish Empire in the late 1550.
So that means the Aztecs and the Incas have been conquered a generation ago. Loads of silver is flowing 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 in explaining the political context of this story, his royal authority is very weak in the Spanish colonies. So in Peru, for example, the Incas have, as it were, fallen.
But there are still only about 4,000 European Spaniards in Peru, in 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 Marquis of Cagnetti arrived in lima from spain and dominate 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 fair to say 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 the second 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.
Gut splitter. Yeah.
The widow weeper or something of that kind. Anyway, at about this point, when the Marcus of Cunyete 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 Kenyete'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 along the whole length of the Amazon. And he had travelled 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 were 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's a lot of truth in this.
And then the second 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 caniette 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 brain wave is and it's a 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

I'm going 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 asua who is a knight from navar 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 amagua 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 a sewer over the next year or so he gathers his team he gets a very very large expedition by 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 Hardraja 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 doña iniesta atienza please tell me she is incredibly ugly please tell me she's not absolutely gorgeous tom's so gallant well but it's for her own good and for the good of the expedition so no she's said to be the most beautiful woman in all of that is mad disastrous 400 desperados and one woman yeah so she's a young widow she's probably mixed race and 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 it's hard to say so it's hard to know the truth there tom i think you listeners must just make up their own minds anyway a sewers 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 wrong 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 cv isn't it and there's a wonderful account based on other accounts by a franciscan monk of fray simon and simon said of a gira 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 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 been you know kicked out of towns he really is a spaghetti western character and as fray simon says he has a limp which i always think is an unsettling sign in a conquistador because he's been shot in the leg fray simon says he was driven from one province to another and was known as agire 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 out of 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 um i mean you know 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'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 Osuera, 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 really bad feeling about this right so they all cram into these rafts but a sewer insists on keeping one cabin just for himself and doña in yes and that does not go down well with the other people in 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 maraillon 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 yeah 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 yeah and they can seize its gold make themselves the masters of it then go back to peru and say brilliant we've done it you know and so they're not particularly worried about how they're going to go 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.
Fray Simon 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 civilisation 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 Assua is more interested in dallying with Doña Inés than finding gold.
There's no hint of gold. What's going on? Clearly, Assua finds it very difficult to impose his authority on all these hundreds of kind of ex-cons.
What is the structure of control? Does it just depend on his charisma or? Yeah, and he has a series of 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 used to following orders. These are people who are used to being, they're 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.
No. The sweating, the lack of shaving, if nothing else, because you're always a clean shaven man.
I am. Anyway, they proceed down the river.
Fray Simon says of Ursua, us 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 afflicts 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 were called the amagua 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 realize with a sense of horror we could be hundreds of miles from where these people live well dorado exists he could be 2 000 miles away because i suppose in in a 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 sound of snakes slithering in the undergrowth and strange monkeys screaming in the You know, that's basically what sloths snoring exactly now after a while this other brigantine their ship rights were 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 so in the rainy season that 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 called Sal Duendo, are going around 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, heua is a terrible leader he spends all his time with his mistress doña inez 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 going to force us to stay in the jungle until we're gray-haired old men and you know if we don't act we're going to get deeper and deeper and we're going to be just completely lost and we'll all die i mean he he's got a point with both hasn't he i mean he's not wrong there agirai 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, 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 Ursua 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 Ursua. 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 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 so bright alan partridge's son is called fernando yeah i imagine these people as being very similar right so don fernando says right i'm in okay let's get this plot started and at that point aguirre says yeah there's one slight change actually we probably will kill a sewer 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, it's 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 men gather outside a sewer's hut and they find him lying in his hammock talking to a page boy 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 they draw their knives and swords, plunge them in, is the end of pedro do 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 yeah as an act of loyalty to philip the second they've had a bad leader they've got rid and the king happy.
Six semper tyrannous. Exactly.
The camp is in total uproar because people can hear the shouting and screaming. They butcher another of Ursula'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 cottonded quilted armor but the metal makes them look sweatier i mean it's a good for good for the visuals i'm wearing a quilt in a film just looks ridiculous that'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 well.
They don't kill Doña Inés. I was going to ask about her.
What's her fate? So she's just hanging around in her own hut. She's not mentioned at this point, but we know she's mentioned later on.
So she's just presumably quaking in her hut, 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 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 series? 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 there's disease and wild animals and people with blow pipes 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 you know some disease or something i mean it just seems a bit odd there's a lot of them that remember they were trouble 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 parted to the plot and perhaps a little bit displeased about it so they think it's better to have an excuse so they draw 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 andre 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 Richard III or Iago or whoever. Yeah, well, because of what he says next,

he then says to the assembled 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 viceroys 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 realised 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, see if you could maintain that position in the second 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 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 because that was all prelude that was all quite jolly because previously when they'd got on reasonably well with the native population they had done a bit 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, 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.ernando 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 going to 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 Maine and Chile, to whom by right these kingdoms belong. Wow, there's a twist.
He says, we forswear 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 defence.
So that's a death sentence, isn't it? And then he turns to Don 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 this episode is brought to you by the Swedish clothing brand Asket now Now, Dominic, in our episode on tailoring and the history of the suit, one of the most salient things you get a real sense of while stood in a tailor's on Savile Row is that historically clothes were made with love and care so that they would last for a very long time indeed. And I think it's a shame in today's age of fast fashion that it is hard to come by clothes that stand the test of time.
But Tom, honestly, you don't have to go to the lengths of getting a bespoke suit tailor-made to own clothes that are made with that same sense of love and pride. There are very few companies left that have that real focus on quality and longevity, but one of them is Asket.
They work almost exclusively with organic and natural materials milled in Italy and Portugal and made in factories built on generations of craftsmanship. Every product is worn for months by the two founders, stress testing every stitch and seam before it's approved for production.
And as a result, they have just one single permanent collection. It's around 50 garments offered in three lengths for every regular size that are meant to be around forever.
And there are no discounts ever. If you don't need anything, don't buy.
Have a look at the collection yourself. Visit asket.com.
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 aguirre basically lord of the whole of south america so he must be feeling pretty pleased but i'm guessing tonight just something telling me he's not going to be around for long guess what the clock is ticking for don fernando i think it's fair to say it's on 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 2,000 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 Panamaama 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 rain you've only eaten kind of overripe fruit for the past month and a horse 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 capturing of fleets, crossing of isthmuses and multiple South American countries.

You might say, I find this an 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 over maybe they had a few laughs along the way so they set off they go into the river network again of amazonia eventually 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 a tribute an interesting looking tributary he says don't even look at it like 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 sort of riverine labyrinth they're eating fish they're 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 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 senor salduendo who had been his ally earlier on he's started sleeping with doña iguena 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 donya inez 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 carry on and yomoso yomoso will be reappearing in the story in a colorful manner these two guys turn up with daggers to kill donya in yes 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. He 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 a gear in his 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 a gira'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 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 it 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 of course he does and.
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 uh 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 the gear ace people did say law right to the end that would be me i mean if he was like una 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 armor 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 cavallero in 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 saw 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 amagua again because he's really wedded to this plan of sailing around the top of south america in some way 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 agiray that although he'd killed those whom he feared he never felt secure from the survivors and i think that definitely true.
At this point, he really starts getting into his garrotting. So there hasn't been a lot of garrotting so far.
But now, I mean, I can't stop the narrative every five minutes for all the garrotting. 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 a satanic nihilist so fray simon says that agir at this point banned his men from praying and he said throw away your rosary 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 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 like the judge in um blood meridian yeah blood meridian or the marquis de sard or something there's 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 you know which is great news for them because it means that they're clearly um approaching the atlantic it's really hot and humid in venezuela in july which is where 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 animals and mudflaks.
And a couple of the Spaniards say, come on, this is a bit harsh. I mean, we've been travelling with these guys for months.
And Aguirre says, right, you've got to go. And he has them garrotted or shot, people who 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, I agree, it says, brilliant, and he celebrates by garrotting 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, 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 unsheathe their swords and level 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 big wigs 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 sign that there is clearly some kind of serious political motive behind all this it's not just kind of insane nihilism because clearly there this is an attack on the idea of authority and royal authority. And what I think was 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 Cortez in Mexico, when we did that episode, 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 nationalism would be anachronistic because the Basques are proud mountain people? I mean, a lot of these people are from the 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 from santo domingo and he has a big ship and he gets away in this 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 at this point some of his men tried to defect and he was quote furious and rave 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 resentment perhaps i think there definitely is a bit of class resentment and actually sort of jumping ahead in the 20th century in particular some latin american historians, this guy's not a madman. He's a class warrior.
He's a socialist. He is a Marxist avant la lettre.
Possibly going a little bit far. Is that 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.

And he doesn't mean from the native inhabitants, he means from us. We have won this, 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 richer 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 so if anybody hesitates to garrote somebody he garrotes 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 Peres 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 in a sort of, imagine this lovely colonial mansion.
Yeah, 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 agiris men are chasing i shouldn't laugh it's a terrible scene agiris men are chasing him like 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 mean, his entrails are everywhere. Aguirre spots one of the men clearly looking a little bit green.
Yeah. And this is a guy called Anton Yamoso, who had been one of the murderers of Doña Inés.
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 Yo is terrified and he protests his innocence and agiris seems completely unmoved and you know he's kind of reaching for the garrote and yamoso drops to his knees by the disemboweled body of martin perez you know he basically wants to prove his loyalty he shouts curse this traitor i will drink his blood and then as fray simon 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 Yemoso has proved his loyalty, which is great.
On 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 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, 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 in 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 cross 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 madman is on the loose we'll sort this out he burns his ships a very kind of you know Alexander the Great Alexander the Great 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.
And fortunately, he recovers from the fever. Madder than ever.
You keep saying this, that he 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. Do you? 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 brains 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.
That's fair to say. Yeah, he did.
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 fanciers uh slaughtered around him they get to valencian he writes this mad letter to philip ii which many historians have written about they 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 gira thy vassal am an old christian of poor but noble parents of the town of oñate 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 there has 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 pretend, 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 agiray 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 gire the wanderer so as john hemmings 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 he 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

in the 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 el escorial yeah this would have livened up his day i think no just end the stuff about tax returns and things and suddenly you get that let's get to the end of the story aguirre ends up cornered in this town called barquisimeto 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 barquisimeto 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 torrents i'm 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 Marlow hero. He totally is, isn't he? So he gets to Barquisimeto.
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 Aguirre's men.

So some of them start to slip away.

He says, the time has come.

I think we should garrote some more of my men, the sick and the unwilling.

Let's have a little purge. We'll be a leaner, more efficient outfit.

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'll see he literally is the last person with him so actually the drinking the blood yeah it was a genuine sacrament yeah it kind of was aguirre has a massive meltdown in the 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 27 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.
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 boat, Yemoso, the blood and brains man.
And Aguirre says, why are you still here? You know, why haven't you left me? And Yemoso says, so moving. He says, we were friends in life.
I will live or die with you. And Aguirre, we're told, made no reply.
He was crestfallen and lost. So that, I think, is lovely.
What follows, perhaps less so. Aguirre goes to his room and he gets out his arquebus is gone and he goes to find someone we haven't mentioned elvira who has been there the whole time age what's she now 14 god she must be so embarrassed yeah dad 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 willed it 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 bass country down because he pulls out a dagger and stabs elvira through the heart does his daughter yeah it 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 he now turned the dagger on himself but he doesn't actually what happens is moments later royal troops burst into the apartment aguirre picks up the arquebus again but he's shaking so much that he can't fire it, and he bursts into tears.
After all that, he has a soft heart after all. The soldiers lead him outside.
There is talk of a trial, but actually, here's an 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 don't want the truth to come out.
Because of course they don't want the truth to come out of their own complicity. And two of his old gunners volunteered to do it.
You talked about Shakespeare or sort of 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 yeah so that's the end of lope de giri 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 you 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 verna herzog 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 Bulkin. 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 Boulken 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 Sardian pursuit of all that is cruel and brutal and all of this.
That's why I think that it'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, I mean, it's a coup, isn't it? It's an attempted coup.
It is. And as Evan Balkin 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 peron or whoever it might be hugo chavez in venezuela the country with which aguirre is most closely associated so hugo chavez's culture ministry, I read in Evan Bulgin'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 a bit of an ironic one there.

I mean, you could say that he kills her

to preserve her honour

and say that she, you know,

a fate 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, our closing point.
The most famous of all European travellers who went to Latin America was a guy called 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 the rest is history.com adios very exciting