Tea at Trianon: Why Did the Inca Empire Fall So Quickly?

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, January 25, 2026

Why Did the Inca Empire Fall So Quickly?

From How Stuff Works:

The Inca Empire once controlled much of western South America, stretching from modern Ecuador to northern Chile. Its fall was not the result of a single battle but of a deadly combination of internal conflict, disease, and the arrival of Spanish conquistadors. The Inca Empire was the largest empire in the Western Hemisphere before European contact. Ruled by the Sapa Inca from the capital city of Cusco, the empire relied on a sophisticated Inka administration, vast road networks, and a powerful Inca army.

The Inca civilization united millions of people across the Andes, including regions near Lake Titicaca, the Ecuadorian coast, and present-day Peru. When Inca emperor Huayna Capac died, likely from a European disease brought indirectly through Central America, a power struggle erupted between his sons. The resulting Inca civil war between Atahualpa and his brother devastated the empire. Although Atahualpa won the civil war, the conflict fractured Inca leadership and drained military strength. (Read more.)