Conquistadors

Origins

The conquistadors grew out of centuries of war in Iberia. The Christian kingdoms had spent generations pushing back Muslim rule, and when Granada fell in 1492, the same year Columbus reached the Caribbean, Spain had many men used to fighting for land and loot. After Columbus, settlers spread through the Caribbean islands, and from there expeditions set out for the mainland during the Age of Exploration. Hernán Cortés landed in Mexico in 1519 with about five hundred soldiers. Francisco Pizarro took the Inca emperor Atahualpa at Cajamarca in 1532 with fewer than two hundred. The arithmetic has bred myth ever since.

Organization & Training

The conquistadors were the private military entrepreneurs of Spain's American century. They were not a royal army. A leader signed a contract with the Crown, or with a colonial governor, and raised a company of volunteers who bought their own weapons, horses and supplies. In return they shared whatever they took, after the Crown's fifth. Most were not professional soldiers. They included minor nobles, craftsmen, sailors and adventurers, and many had fought in the Caribbean or in Italy. Discipline depended on the leader, and quarrels between rival captains were common. Cortés had broken with the governor who sent him, and Pizarro's partners later fought a civil war over Peru.

Weapons & Equipment

Their equipment was Renaissance Europe's in miniature. The most important weapon was the steel sword, made in centers such as Toledo, which could cut through the quilted cotton armor of their opponents. Men also carried lances, the Pike, the Crossbow and the Arquebus. Cortés brought a few small cannon, and ships' guns like the Swivel Gun were used too. Horses, which the peoples of the Americas had never seen, gave a great advantage in open country, and war dogs were used as well. Many soldiers swapped heavy metal armor for the quilted cotton armor of Mexico, which was cooler and stopped arrows. The Morion Helmet, now linked with the conquistadors, became common only with later expeditions from the mid-1500s. Their opponents fought with weapons such as the Aztec Macuahuitl, the Tepoztopilli and the Inca Star Mace, which were deadly but no match for steel and armor.

Notable Actions

Cortés marched inland to Tenochtitlan, the island capital of the Aztec Empire, and seized its ruler, Moctezuma. At the end of June 1520 the Spanish were driven from the city with heavy losses on the night they called the Noche Triste. They returned with tens of thousands of Tlaxcalan and other Indigenous allies, who saw the Aztecs as their enemy too. A smallpox epidemic had already swept the city. After a siege of about three months, Tenochtitlan fell on 13 August 1521. In Peru, Pizarro arrived as the Inca Empire was recovering from a civil war between Atahualpa and his brother Huáscar. At Cajamarca in November 1532 the Spanish ambushed Atahualpa's escort, captured the emperor, took a huge ransom in gold and silver, and then executed him.

Legacy

The conquest was followed by cruelty recorded by the conquerors' own chroniclers. The friar Bartolomé de las Casas published his attack on it in Spain itself in 1552, and Spain debated the ethics of empire as it built one. Disease killed far more people in the Americas than any weapon. Militarily, the conquistadors show how small forces could win by using local alliances and capturing enemy leaders. The world they made, Latin America, is their lasting monument, with all the good and harm that sentence carries.

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