Each factor was undoubtedly worth many hundreds of soldiers to Cortés and Pizarro.įor all of that, one might have expected the highly organized, militaristic societies of Mexico and the Andean highlands to survive at least the initial contact with European societies. Wells’ War of the Worlds can suggest to us. All of these factors combined to deal to the Indian a shock such as only H. Many explanations suggest themselves: the advantage of steel over stone, of cannon and firearms over bows and arrows and slings the terrorizing effect of horses on foot-soldiers who had never seen such beasts before the lack of unity in the Aztec and Incan empires the prophecies in Indian mythology about the arrival of white gods. Societies which had created huge empires through generations of fierce fighting collapsed at the touch of the Castilian.Īfter four hundred years the Spanish feat still seems incredible. A few hundred Spaniards defeated populations containing thousands of dedicated warriors, armed with a wide assembly of weapons from the stone and early metal ages. Cortés and Pizarro toppled the highest civilizations of the New World in a few months each. T he most sensational military conquests in all history are probably those of the Spanish conquistadores over the Aztec and Incan empires.
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