I’m listening to a lecture set about the history of warfare, and happen to have just finished the section on the conquest of Mexico. The presenter believes that steel swords made a very big impact, and also thinks that the nature of Native society, with the elites so distinct from the commoners, made it possible for the Spanish to “decapitate” the state, as it were, and impose their own military-religious superstructure with modest disruption, or even improvements, for the Indian peasantry.
The true tragedy is the epidemics, for which nobody can be blamed.
Their first battle against an Indian tribe was against 300 to 1 odds. And in the first battle against the Aztecs:
From Warren Carrol's book pg 31:
"Cortes and his 300 Spaniards turned their backs to the shore (and marched toward the Aztecs)... the odds against them were precisely 10,000 men to one". Bernal Diaz wrote:
"Let the curious reader see whether there is not much to ponder over in this which I venture to write, and whether there were ever in the universe men who had such daring". These Spaniards went to mass every day, practiced the Angelus, three times a day, and followed the breviary, and more. Hardened from 700 years of fighting to regain Spain from their conquerers, militant Islam, they KNEW that without God they could do nothing. Their victory over the Indians was of God.
Their first battle against an Indian tribe was against 300 to 1 odds. And in the first battle against the Aztecs:
From Warren Carrol's book pg 31:
"Cortes and his 300 Spaniards turned their backs to the shore (and marched toward the Aztecs)... the odds against them were precisely 10,000 men to one". Bernal Diaz wrote:
"Let the curious reader see whether there is not much to ponder over in this which I venture to write, and whether there were ever in the universe men who had such daring".
These Spaniards went to mass every day, practiced the Angelus, three times a day, and followed the breviary, and more. Hardened from 700 years of fighting to regain Spain from their conquerers, militant Islam, they KNEW that without God they could do nothing. Their victory over the Indians was of God.