网帖翻译

Anthony M Anderson
, Interested and loves spain
This is really an interesting question to answer!!
Spain had advanced weapons such as swords and guns while as for the aztecs and the incas, their weapons were made out of wood. The Spanish Conquistadors did encounter strong resistance from the aztecs in 1521 but on august 1521, they managed to defeat the aztecs.
Spain did get support from native american tribes who were hostile towards the aztecs cause they felt oppressed and thus spanish allied native americans played a role in defeating the aztecs at the battle of tenochtitlan.
As for the inca empire, 168 spaniards did get support from the inca population, native american tribes mostly who fought against atahualpa during the inca civil war as well as pro inca spaniards especially those part of the incan royalty like manco. The spaniards managed to defeat the incas using advanced weapons which overwhelmed the inca forces.
By 1533, the inca empire was defeated however the remnant of the inca empire '’neo inca state'' managed to survive as a spanish vassal. Despite that, most sapa incas resisted against spanish reign. The neo state continued to be a spanish vassal until tupac amaru I in 1571 resisted spanish rule and thus the neo inca state ceased to exist in 1572 with the capture and execution of tupãc amaru I.
Don't forget that francisco pizarro in the inca empire managed to capture atahualpa in 1533.

这真是一个有趣的问题！！！
西班牙有先进的武器，如剑和枪，而阿兹特克人和印加人的武器是用木材制成的。西班牙征服者在1521年确实遇到了来自阿兹特克人的强烈抵抗，但在1521年8月，他们成功地击败了阿兹特克人。
西班牙也实打实地得到了美洲原住民部落的支持，这些部落对阿兹特克人怀有敌意，因为他们感到被压迫，因此西班牙的美洲原住民盟友在特诺奇蒂特兰战役中发挥了作用，和西班牙人联手击败了阿兹特克人。
至于印加帝国，168名西班牙人也得到了部分印加人的支持，主要是那些在印加内战期间与阿塔瓦尔帕作战的美洲原住民部落，以及倾向印加西班牙合作的人，特别是那些像曼科-印加这样的印加王室成员。西班牙人利用先进的武器成功地击败了印加人，使印加人的军队不堪一击。
到1533年，印加帝国被打败了，但印加帝国的残余部分"新印加国"作为西班牙的附庸得以幸存下来。尽管如此，大多数萨帕印加人还是抵制了西班牙的统治。新国家继续作为西班牙的附庸，直到1571年图帕克-阿马鲁一世反抗西班牙的统治，因此新印加国家在1572年随着图帕克-阿马鲁一世的被捕和处决而不复存在。
不要忘记，身处印加帝国的弗朗西斯科-皮萨罗在1533年成功俘获了阿塔瓦尔帕。
原创翻译：龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处

Eduardo Marqués Collado
, Read lots of books, made my own conclussions
Thanks to several different factors:
First, the Spanish didn’t go into the fight alone. The small conquistador expeditionary force received critical support from dozens of American Native tribes, chiefly Totonacas and Tlaxcaltecas, which allied with Cortés and other conquistadors, supplying them with huge amounts of soldiers and resources. Forget about muskets, diplomacy was the most effective weapon, as it gave the conquistadores the numbers they needed. The Spanish empire recognized the native’s contribution in the war effort and let their allied tribes have their own independent nations, fiefdoms and city-states (repúblicas de indios), granted by officially recognized treaties that Spain, unlike other European nations, uphold. Centuries later, when latin american nations fought for their independence, many allied native american tribes sided with the Spanish crown. Needless to say, that inconvenient, messy part of history was swept under a rug in order to make way for neat nationalistic narratives where everyone inside the newborn nation’s borders fought on the same side.
Divide et impera. Both the Aztec and the Inca empire had a lot of native enemies and century-old grudges that Spain successfully exploited. Discard the false “native americans against Europeans” modern tale. Neither native americans nor Europeans are a monolith, nor felt any kind of kinship between their peers. Spain, like any other empire, used the divisions of her enemies. The Aztecs were hated by other American natives thanks to their blood sacrifices. The Inca were hated by… well, the incas, since they were in the middle of a civil war. And so on.
European illnesses did play a pivotal role, but not during the initial conquest, which only had the “usual” plages associated to war and famine, but rather on its aftermath. Like any biologist can tell you, illnesses don’t travel fast when you don’t have fast transportation networks, and they do need time (years, even) in order to kill their hosts, they are not an instantaneous virus bomb. However, its long term effects were indeed devastating, and led to sustained demographic collapse.
Spanish armies had some of the most advanced combat doctrines of their time, and tons of combat experience from the reconquista. Note how Spain was the first European nation to organize a professional army as well. While cannons and gunpowder are hard to ship over an ocean, warfare prowess can be kept intact inside the soldier’s heads. And many conquistadores already had an extensive “frontier mentality”. For them, the Americas presented a familiar extension of the same dynamics that they found on the Iberian peninsula.
And finally, there were indeed, many rebellions against the Spanish rule, as it was to be expected of any invading power, specially during the initial years of the conquest. Aztecs, Incas and Araucans revolted against Spain with varying degrees of success. However, long term dominance over the American territories was achieved thanks to several policies: Co-opting the American native leaders, which became part of the Spanish imperial ruling class (Spain got its first Native American general just 30 years after the fall of Cuzco), allowing the free mixing of races at every social level (the process known as mestizaje), religious conversion which heavily tilted towards syncretism (note how the inquisition was banned from persecuting native americans in order to not add additional religious tensions), and the first native american anti-discrimination laws, which despite of being systematically ignored by conquistadores and landowners, were centuries ahead of their time. The deliberate effort at making the natives an active part of the imperial project had as a result +300 years of control over the Americas. A quite effective policy, if you ask me.

得益于几个不同的因素。
·首先，西班牙人并不是独自去战斗的。小规模的征服者远征军得到了几十个美洲原住民部落的重要支持，主要是托托纳卡人和特拉斯卡尔特卡人，他们与科尔特斯和其他征服者结盟，为征服者们提供了大量的士兵和资源。忘掉火枪吧，外交是最有效的武器，因为它为征服者提供了他们所需要的数量。西班牙帝国承认原住民在战争中的贡献，并让他们的联盟部落拥有自己的独立国家、封地和城邦，这些都是由官方承认的条约授予的，而西班牙与其他欧洲国家不同，它确实履行了这些条约。几个世纪后，当拉丁美洲国家为其独立而战时，许多结盟的美洲原住民部落站在了西班牙王室一边。不用说，这段不方便的、混乱的历史被掩盖了，以便为整齐划一的民族主义叙事让路，即：新生国家边界内的所有人都站在同一边作战。
·分而治之。阿兹特克和印加帝国都有很多本土的敌人和百年的怨恨，西班牙成功地利用了这些他们的敌人。抛弃虚假的"美洲原住民齐心协力反抗欧洲人"的现代故事吧。美洲原住民和欧洲人都不是一块紧密无缝的巨石，也不觉得他们和同行之间有什么亲属关系。西班牙和其他帝国一样，利用敌人的分裂。阿兹特克人由于其残忍的血祭，被其他美洲土著所憎恨。印加人被......嗯，印加人所憎恨，因为他们正处于内战之中。等等。
·欧洲人的疾病确实发挥了关键作用，但不是在最初的征服期间。就像任何生物学家可以告诉你的那样，当你没有快速的交通网络时，疾病的传播速度并不快，而且它们确实需要时间（甚至几年）才能杀死它们的宿主，它们并不是一个瞬间生效的病毒炸弹。然而，其长期影响确实是毁灭性的，并导致了持续的人口崩溃。
·西班牙军队拥有当时最先进的作战理论，以及从“再征服运动”中获得的大量作战经验。请注意，西班牙也是第一个组织职业军队的欧洲国家。虽然大炮和火药很难远洋运输，但战争能力可以完整地保存在士兵的头脑中。而且许多征服者已经有了广泛的"边疆心态"。对他们来说，美洲呈现的是他们在伊比利亚半岛发现的同一动态的熟悉感的延伸。
·最后，确实有许多反抗西班牙统治的叛乱，这是任何入侵国都会遇到的情况，特别是在征服的最初几年。阿兹特克人、印加人和阿劳坎人反抗西班牙，取得了不同程度的成功。然而，对美洲领土的长期统治是通过一些政策实现的。与美洲原住民领袖合作，他们成为西班牙帝国统治阶级的一部分（西班牙在库斯科陷落后仅30年就提拔了第一位美洲原住民将军），允许各个社会层面的种族自由混合（这一过程被称为混血）。宗教皈依严重倾向于混合主义（注意，宗教裁判所被禁止迫害美洲原住民，以避免增加宗教紧张局势），以及第一部美洲原住民反歧视法的颁布，尽管被征服者和地主经常性地忽视，但这部法律比他们的时代领先几个世纪。通过有意地使土著人成为帝国这个组织的积极组成部分，带来的结果是对美洲的控制超过了300年。如果你问我，我可以说这是一个相当有效的政策。

Mithur Sheridan
, lives in Madrid, Spain
Those empires where quite bloody, and a bit like rome, they worked only through oppression of outside tribes.
The Spanish conquerors, though very few, were incredibly powerful, due to their tech and their war tactics. They were a coalescing point for all the outside tribes, and they made, freely and happily, pacts with them.
For the Conquerors, the tribal kingdoms were just kingdoms. They did pretty much the same that did a century before in Naples and Sicily, or a few decades before in the south of Spain, or a few years after in Flanders: they made pacts when they could, using the means they had (including political marriages with natives), they fought, they killed, they tricked and they conquered.
For them there wasn’t any difference between a Inca princess and the daughter of the king of Alsacia.
Hell, one of the first governors of Peru was mixed. Nobody gave a shit, except for the natives, who were governed by one of theirs.
If you ask how come that UK defeated Germany in WWII? Well, they made a lot of alliances, and while they played an important part, they weren’t even the bigger player, even if at the end they looked like they were. The Spanish in America were pretty much the same.

这些土著帝国相当血腥，有点像罗马，他们只通过压迫外部部落来运作。
西班牙的征服者，虽然人数很少，但由于他们的技术和战争策略，他们的力量是惊人的。他们是所有外部部落的一个凝聚点，他们自由而愉快地与他们签订了契约。
对于征服者来说，部落王国也只是王国而已。他们的所作所为与一个世纪前在那不勒斯和西西里，或几十年前在西班牙南部，或几年后在佛兰德斯的所作所为几乎一样：他们在可能的情况下签订协议，利用他们拥有的手段（包括与当地人的政治婚姻），他们战斗，他们杀戮，他们欺骗，他们征服。
对他们来说，印加公主和阿尔萨斯国王的女儿之间没有任何区别。
见鬼，秘鲁的第一批总督之一就是混血儿。没有人在乎，除了当地人，他们的统治者以前是他们的人。
如果你问为什么英国在二战中打败了德国？嗯，他们做了很多联盟工作，虽然他们发挥了重要作用，但他们甚至不是更大意义上的参与者，即使最后他们看起来像是。在美洲的西班牙人也是如此。

Luis Ángel Soto Tenorio
, English teacher
For some reason you have only counted Spanish soldiers, while it was actually native soldiers who supported the Spaniards and fought with them against the Incas. Take the case of the Cañari he the Huanca, just two mention two nations.

由于某些原因，你只计算了西班牙士兵，而实际上是本地士兵支持西班牙人，和他们一起对抗印加人。以卡纳里人和万卡人为例，随口就能提到两个民族。
原创翻译：龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处

Thomas Musselman
Natives had no immunity to disease, and in an era before knowledge of virus and bacterium the deaths demoralized people even more than seeing death now does: it looked like the gods viewed the Spanish as chosen since they died less often. See “Guns, Germs and Steel” for the overall explanation: men on horseback with steel blades were superior in battle.
Amerindians were also not united. While the Spanish were not completely united, launching unapproved operations, the locals with the most organized power also were imperialists that had left many enemies happy to team up with the Spanish to overthrow their previous oppressors. If the Indians had united they could have overwhelmed the Spanish but they did not so unite nor consistently and for a long enough time. Seeing a new power in place at first was little different since the Spanish took over previous overlord positions. the Spanish after all mostly were not killing you if you didn’t resist, compared to the Aztecs happy to cut out your heart even if your tribe was pacified.

土著人对疾病没有免疫力，在一个还没有病毒和细菌知识的时代，因此造成的死亡比现在看到死亡更让人士气低落：看起来上帝把西班牙人看成是被选中的，因为他们死的人数少。总体解释见"枪炮、病菌和钢铁"：骑在马背上手持钢刀的人在战斗中占有优势。
美洲印第安人也没有团结起来。虽然西班牙人没有完全团结起来，发动了未经批准的行动，但拥有最多组织力量的当地人也是帝国主义者，他们让许多敌人乐意与西班牙人联手推翻他们以前的压迫者。如果印第安人团结起来，他们本可以压倒西班牙人，但他们没有这么团结，也没有持续足够长的时间。开始看到一个新的势力在那里，没有什么不同，因为西班牙人只是接管了以前的霸主地位。毕竟，如果你不反抗，西班牙人大多不会杀死你，相比之下，阿兹特克人即使你的部落投降了，也会兴高采烈地来挖掉你的心脏。

Cameron Walker
, Adjunct Professor
Prior to actual contact, diseases such as Smallpox. Measles, and Influenza was devastating indigenous populations all over the Americas. This seriously weakened them, but the Spanish also had the advantages of guns, steel swords, and war horses (never seen before in the Americas). The Spanish were able to gain allies among the enemies of the Aztecs, which increased their fighting forces in the tens of thousands. Finally, the Spanish were a tight-knit fighting force, while the Aztecs had only a layer of professional warriors overseeing an army made up mostly of farmers. Once they killed the leaders, the army was much less effectual. The Aztecs also practiced a ritualized form of warfare with the ultimate goal to capture as many high-ranking warriors as possible to take back for sacrifice. The Spanish strategy was to destroy and kill as many of the enemy as possible. Once the Spanish conquered the Aztecs, they began to declare the indigenous beliefs and practices as illegal and began the forced conversion to Christianity.

在实际接触之前，天花、麻疹和流感等疾病在美洲各地肆虐。麻疹和流感正在摧毁美洲各地的土著人口。这严重削弱了他们的力量，而且西班牙人也有枪支、钢剑和战马（在美洲从未见过）的优势。西班牙人能够在阿兹特克人的敌人中获得盟友，这使他们的战斗力增加了数万人。最后，西班牙人是一支紧密团结的战斗力量，而阿兹特克人只有一些专业的战士来监督一支主要由农民组成的军队。一旦他们杀死了领导者，军队的战斗力就会大打折扣。阿兹特克人还实行一种仪式化的战争形式，其最终目标是尽可能多地俘获高级战士，带回献祭。西班牙的战略是尽可能多地摧毁和杀死敌人。一旦西班牙人征服了阿兹特克人，他们就开始宣布土著人的信仰和习俗为非法，并开始强迫他们改信基督教。

Hunter Eden
, Writer
Thanks for the A2A.
Spain had the deadliest ally in the world on its side: smallpox.
The Aztecs defeated the Spanish, nearly slaughtering them when they finally rose up against Cortes’s puppet regime. If it hadn’t been for the deadly smallpox epidemic that struck Tenochtitlan after that, Mexico could very well still be speaking Nahuatl. When Pizarro got to Peru, the Incans were exhausted from a civil war provoked by a succession struggle between Atahualpa and his brother Huascar—the result of their father Huayna Capac’s sudden death from smallpox.
Also, the Spanish made good alliances. Cortes managed to (fairly ingeniously, though I don’t like the bastard) utilize resentment of the Aztecs among other groups in Mexico (especially powerful states like the Totonacs and Tlaxcaltecs) to his advantage. Conquistadors in Peru managed a similar diplomatic coup, though it was more drawn out.

谢邀。
西班牙有世界上最致命的盟友站在他身边：天花。
阿兹特克人打败了西班牙人，当他们最终起来反对科尔特斯的傀儡政权时，几乎屠杀了他们。如果不是那之后致命的天花流行病袭击了特诺奇蒂特兰，墨西哥很可能还在讲纳瓦特尔语。当皮萨罗到达秘鲁时，印加人因阿塔瓦尔帕和他的兄弟华斯卡之间的继承权之争而引发的内战而疲惫不堪--而这是他们的父亲华纳-卡帕克突然死于天花的结果。
此外，西班牙人还建立了良好的联盟。科尔特斯设法（相当巧妙地，尽管我不喜欢这个混蛋）利用墨西哥其他群体（特别是像托托纳克人和特拉斯卡尔特克人这样的强大国家）对阿兹特克人的怨恨来为自己谋利。秘鲁的征服者们也成功地进行了类似的外交政变，尽管过程更加曲折。

Tomaž Vargazon
, Practicing atheist
Christian Desaix
, PhD History, Louisiana State University
A key factor was that neither Inca nor Aztecs were long-running established empires. Both entites only became empires in living memory.
Aztec empire began as an alliance between Mexica peoples in 1428 C.E. and went on a spree to subdue their neighbors. Most lands were brought under their empire only ten or twenty years before the Conquistadors came to the region.
The Aztecs were not adored by their subjects. You can only take a mans’ child away to be tortured and sacrificed to your gods so many times before he will seek out ways to stop you. Conquistadores provided the subjugated peopels of Mexico that option and they rallied to the Conquistador cause.
History says Aztec empire was defeated by Cortes and his 3000 men, but they also had approximately 100,000 native allies to counter the 100,000 or so Aztec warriors. Aztec empire would not have fallen to the Spanish without those allies.
The Inca Empire has a similar story, it was established about ten years after the empire of the Aztecs, wrecked by internal strife and plagues brought over by Europeans. The Inca nobility saw the Spanish as the lesser evil and welcomed them as their new rulers, after they had deposed of their political enemies.
Plagues helped too, but Latin American empires weren’t so much conquered by the Spanish as they were liberated from their rulers, who were in turn replaced by the Spanish. For quite a while the Spanis were seen as liberators, or at least the lesser evil compared to the myriad of domestic rulers. By the time attitudes could shift the European plagues combined with colonization already ensured resistance was futile and the natives would become colonial Spanish, their cultural diversity added to the Empire on whom the Sun would never set.

一个关键因素是，印加人和阿兹特克人都不是长期存在的既定帝国。这两个实体都是存在于人们的记忆中的帝国。
阿兹特克帝国开始于公元1428年，是墨西哥人之间的联盟，并疯狂地征服他们的邻国。大多数土地在征服者来到该地区的十年或二十年前才被纳入他们的帝国版图。
阿兹特克人并不被他们的臣民所敬仰。你把一个人的孩子带走，让他受折磨并献给你的神灵，这样的次数多了，他就会想办法阻止你。征服者为墨西哥被征服的人民提供了这一选择，他们团结起来支持征服者的事业。
历史上说，阿兹特克帝国是被科尔特斯和他的3000人打败的，但他们也有大约10万名本地盟友来对抗10万名左右的阿兹特克战士。如果没有这些盟友，阿兹特克帝国不会落入西班牙人之手。
印加帝国也发生了类似的故事，它是在阿兹特克人的帝国建立大约10年后，被欧洲人带来的内乱和瘟疫所破坏。印加贵族把西班牙人视为较小的邪恶，在他们废黜了政敌后，欢迎他们成为新的统治者。
瘟疫也起了作用，但拉美帝国与其说是被西班牙人征服了，不如说是从统治者那里解放了，而这些统治者又被西班牙人取代了。在相当长的一段时间内，西班牙人被看作是解放者，或者至少是与无数国内统治者相比较小的邪恶。当人们的态度发生转变时，欧洲的瘟疫加上殖民化已经确保了抵抗是徒劳的，当地人成为了西班牙的殖民地，他们的文化多样性被添加到日不落帝国之中。

Levtraru Kallfülikan
Actually, everyone in Mesoamerica practiced sacrifices and the Spanish were not seen as liberators from evil rulers. The Aztec empire was just so hands off and didn't interfere with it's subject cities and towns that they still viewed themselves and essentially were still indepedent city-states with their own goals and amibitions. The Spaniards were actually used by the Tlaxcalans and other peoples, who wanted to steal from the Aztecs so that their own nations could thrive. That’s why the Spaniards HAD to give them countless benefits after begging them to join the Spanish empire. In the battle of Tenochtitlan, the Spanish only managed to outnumber the starving Aztecs because smallpox killed up to half of the city’s population, which led to many states joining the Tlaxcalans out of fear. What led to racial and ethnic stratification in most of Spain’s American “empire” were diseases and their role on Amerindian populations.
The Incan empire was a real, centralized empire and not similar to the Triple Alliance at all like you claim. In the Incan empire, the Spanish worked for the elites and were not welcomed as rulers. Their major accomplishment was the capture of Atahuallpa, (A noble and not an emperor, ruler or claimant to the throne like a lot of deceiving sources claim) which was planned by the elites to free the cruel Emperor Huascar and involved the killing of thousands of innocent, unarmed citizens instead of soldiers. Atahualpa killed Huascar as soon as he was captured, which obviously placed Huascar’s family in power rather than the Spaniards. The capture of Atahualpa did not give the Spanish any sort of authority over the empire and at no point did the Incan elites see the Catholics as the lesser evil.
From 1532 to 1537, there were only 9,000 Spanish Conquistadors in the Tawantinsuyu and they were only auxiliaries/mercenaries of the Incan elites. They gained status and wealth (Not authority) by providing cavalry, artillery, technology, Mesoamerican forces and Afican slaves (Of which 1,000 were labeled Negros de Guerra as they had vast military experience) to the Huascarist faction in their war against the smaller Incan faction. Even with the 15,000+ Mesoamerican soldiers that arrived in the Andes, the Spanish were vastly outnumbered, had their armies led by Incan generals many times and tried to run away when things got too violent for them. The Spanish Church only began co-ruling some parts of the Andes alongside the Incas in 1537, after the rebel Manco Inca destroyed the empire in his war against his own brothers.
Manco Inca was stopped, (by the Huascarist Incan faction, not by the Spanish. We actually have letters from Francisco Pizarro and other conquistadors crying for help and trying to escape during that period) but the capital city was still obliterated, the vast majority of ethnic claimants to the throne were dead and the empire collapsed, which led to a lot of vassal states gaining complete autonomy. Francisco Pizarro, who never lived in a palace, was killed by other Spaniards in 1541 and the Viceroyalty was later established with the approval of their Incan allies (who still practiced all kinds of idolatry) only because the Incas would remain as aristocracy, above most Spaniards. The Spanish weren’t really rulers in the complete sense of the word before the 17h and 18th centuries. They “allowed” Incan males to marry Spanish ladies, etc and, while there were some changes, such as the Sapa Inca being replaced by the Viceroy, the Viceroy’s authority stilll didn’t reach 25% of what used to be the Tawantinsuyu by the 1580s.

实际上，中美洲的每个部落都有自己的祭祀活动，西班牙人并没有被视为从邪恶统治者手中解放出来的解放者。阿兹特克帝国对其下属的城市和城镇不闻不问，不加干涉，他们仍然认为自己基本上还是独立的城邦，有自己的目标和愿景。西班牙人实际上是被特拉斯卡兰人和其他民族所利用，他们想借助西班牙人从阿兹特克人那里窃取神器，以便他们自己的部落能够繁荣发展。这就是为什么西班牙人在乞求他们加入西班牙帝国后不得不给他们无数的好处。在特诺奇蒂特兰战役中，西班牙人设法在人数上超过了饥饿的阿兹特克人，因为天花杀死了该城市多达一半的人口，这导致许多部落因恐惧而加入了特拉斯加人的行列。导致西班牙大部分美洲"帝国"的种族和民族分层的是疾病和它们对美洲印第安人口的作用。
印加帝国是一个真正的、中央集权的帝国，完全不像你所说的那样与征服阿兹特克的过程相似。在印加帝国，西班牙人服务于精英们，作为统治者并不受欢迎。他们的主要成就是俘虏了阿塔瓦尔帕（一个贵族，而不是像很多欺骗性资料所说的皇帝、统治者或王位继承人），这是精英们为了解放残酷的华斯喀尔皇帝而策划的，此人涉及杀害成千上万手无寸铁的无辜公民而不是士兵。阿塔瓦尔帕一被俘就杀死了华斯喀尔，这显然使华斯喀尔的家人而不是西班牙人掌握了权力。阿塔瓦尔帕的被俘并没有给西班牙人带来任何对帝国的权威，印加精英们也没有在任何时候把天主教徒视为较小的邪恶。
从1532年到1537年，只有9000名西班牙征服者在塔万廷苏尤，他们只是印加精英们的辅助人员/雇佣兵。他们通过提供骑兵、大炮、技术、中美洲部队和非洲奴隶（其中1000人被称为Negros de Guerra，因为他们有丰富的军事经验），在华斯喀特派与较小的印加派的战争中获得了地位和财富（不是权威）。即使有15000多名中美洲士兵抵达安第斯山脉，西班牙人的人数也远远不及印加，他们的军队多次被印加人的将军所领导，当战事变得太过激烈时，他们还曾试图逃跑。西班牙教会直到1537年才开始与印加人一起共同统治安第斯山脉的一些地区，而在此之前，叛军曼科-印加在与自己兄弟的战争中已经摧毁了这个帝国。
曼科-印加的叛乱最终被阻止了，（是被华斯喀特印加派系阻止的，不是被西班牙人阻止的。我们实际上还保存着弗朗西斯科-皮萨罗和其他征服者的信件，他们在那个时期哭着求救并试图逃跑）但首都仍然被抹去了，绝大多数的王位继承人都死了，帝国崩溃了，这导致很多附庸国获得了完全的自治权。从未住进过宫殿的弗朗西斯科-皮萨罗在1541年被其他西班牙人杀死，后来在他们的印加盟友（仍然奉行各种偶像崇拜）的批准下建立了总督府，印加人将继续作为贵族，地位高于大多数西班牙人。在17世纪和18世纪之前，西班牙人并不是真正意义上的完整统治者。他们"允许"印加男性与西班牙女士结婚，等等，虽然有一些变化，如萨帕印加被总督取代，但到1580年代，总督的权力仍然没有达到过去塔万廷苏尤的25%。