Catalan Company

[Papewaio]

Well, with people like those it is no wonder they conquered the New World 4 generations later... I mean, if even the Byzantines and Ottomans could not withstand them...

What the Byzantines lost 90% of their people due to small pox and other western diseases before encountering the Catalans?

The two situations are not quite comparable due to the differences in technology and disease resistance alone. Beating the Byzantines and Ottomans was an achievement of skill at arms. The Americans was one of luck... if the Alaskan land bridge was still functioning at least the locals might have had disease resistance... that or be a Chinese/Japanese/Korean stronghold...

[SwordsMaster]

What the Byzantines lost 90% of their people due to small pox and other western diseases before encountering the Catalans?

The two situations are not quite comparable due to the differences in technology and disease resistance alone. Beating the Byzantines and Ottomans was an achievement of skill at arms. The Americans was one of luck... if the Alaskan land bridge was still functioning at least the locals might have had disease resistance... that or be a Chinese/Japanese/Korean stronghold...

You can't seriously blame colonisation of a whole continent on smallpox... Speaking of skills of arms, the spanish were so profficient with rapier and main-gauche dagger that many times their enemies refused to accept duels with these weapons from spanish soldiers and officers.

Later, in the XVI and XVII century, the spanish soldiers were so feared, there were times enemy soldiers would desert when they learned it was a spanish tercio they were facing.

[Papewaio]

There were entire villages and nations that had no one left alive because of the spread of western diseases advanced quicker then the westerners themselves.

The diseases were enough to significantly weaken any nation that might have had a chance in putting up a moderate fight.

[Kraxis]

You can't seriously blame colonisation of a whole continent on smallpox...

Now remember that in Europe smallpox had a fatalityrate of ca. 30%. That is plenty bad to devastate any nation if it is an epidemic.
However in the New World there was no inherent defense to it. 80-100% was the norm (though of course 100% is not literal, just effectwise)... Tell me if any people can resist if they have 20% of their population left?
Why is it that within a few years the central American population dwindled from about 20 million to 2 million? Either the Spanish spent all their days killing people (industrialscale killing is pretty hard when you have only got muskets and swords), or something else did it.

Sure, the conquistadores did a swell job. They were outnumbered heavily, and when they faced their enemies initially there was no smallpox. However bythe time of the siege of Tenochtitlan it was over for the Aztecs...

[SwordsMaster]

It is still admirable. Even with 2 million left, do you think Spain could afford 2 million soldiers in the field?

And as you said, initially it was more of a few hundred soldiers against thousands if not hundreds of thousands at a time. Famously Cortes had only 200 men when he began his campaign.

[Watchman]

You show me the state that can wield a decent army with well over half the population dead of strange plagues... The Aztecs and other native high cultures were at the level of developement where professional specialization had long been the norm; milita systems or no, at any given time the vast majority of the populace had to be engaged in primary production else the whole lot starved.

That said, the Europeans did have a considerable superiority in personal weaponry, tactics and military tradition. They'd spent the last millenia honing it and gone through several major leaps forward only recently. For their technology the native armies were very good and highly organized, but there's only so much you can do with a fairly clumsy obsidian-edged sword-club and quilted armour against some of the best all-steel warlike cutlery ever made, tempered steel body armour and highly developed heavy shock cavalry...

Heck, most of the Conquistadors hed never even been in the military. Although the societies of the time being what they were, quite considerable amounts of combat training (both for militia and purely, uh, personal use) was startlingly common among civilians. This was a period when lethal rapier fights were a perfectly normal occurrence in cities, murder quite literally "at the drop of the hat" commonplace in the coutryside, everyone who could went armed by default, and increasingly brutal and long-lasting wars laid waste to entire small states after all...

[The Stranger]

It is still admirable. Even with 2 million left, do you think Spain could afford 2 million soldiers in the field?

And as you said, initially it was more of a few hundred soldiers against thousands if not hundreds of thousands at a time. Famously Cortes had only 200 men when he began his campaign.

i doubt that in a population of 2 million, 2 million can fight. I think there were more left then 2 million but that is not the point. The spanish did not conquered on their own, they made clever use of the rivalry of the clans/citystates present in middle-america. They defeated the aztecs with the help of the enemies of the aztecs (name slipped away) and those native warriors did the hard fighting, the spanish mere scared the enemy with musket fire and artillery. And cortez had more then 200 men... 200 riders maybe... but definitly more men. Apart from that, they had more crossbows than muskets and were quite spare with their ammo... had the aztecs been kinder for their enemies and enviroment the spanish never would have conquered america. had the natives joined togethrer to face the spanish threat (which was no threat when they arrived, more than 200 but not a big army) the spanish would have also conquered nothing.

[SwordsMaster]

Of course. The spanish had no merit whatsoever. They just showed up, and the americans conquered themselves, and then all kneed and bowed and looked pretty. and Cortez put the King's face on the coins and they all lived happily ever after.

[Watchman]

Crossbows and muskets are powerful but very slow. The only real use in the context of fighting armies the size the native empires wielded would be sniping officers and such, nevermind now that getting more gunpowder in the circumstances was a bit of a problem, although artillery (what there now was) had enough sheer psychological effect to give some real edge.

The Conquistadors' chief edge lay in their overwhelmingly superior melee combat gear. A period long cut-and-thrust sword was an excellent weapon, and one thrust would have gone right through the quilted armour of the native soldiery while one swing could sever a head or limb. In comparision the native Stone Age weaponry struggled against even that selfsame thick cotton armour, nevermind now the steel breastplates and helmets of the Europeans (who apparently at some point ditched the breastplates as unnecessary burden and started wearing the native textile body armour instead). Although the Incas apparently used heavy copper axes the invaders regarded as rather dangerous, but the far superior speed and agility of the European swords presumably largely nullified the advantage.
And then there was the cavalry. Few as they were, as long as they held close order they could ride right through the native infantry with impunity bordering on the ridiculous, as the locals lacked any and all of the know-how and weapons required for facing armoured lancers without getting slaughtered (to be fair they were well on their way to figuring out the pike, but all organized resistance collapsed before anything came out of it). The psychological implications should be fairly obvious.

Ergo, the Conquistadors' native allies mostly fought in their tried-and-true manners - but with the ironclad foreigners acting as elite shock troops and linebreakers, which would have been a very decisive advantage particularly against the Aztecs whose curious military tradition had some quite unfortunate inherent weaknesses against just this sort of thing.

Native communities that relied on guerilla tactics in rough terrain were apparently a by far more daunting prospect for the Conquistadors to fight (at least one expedition was lost entirely against just one such group), but here the horrifyingly contagious new diseases inadverdently brought along tended to settle the matters in a fairly short time. I've read what was left of the Mayas at the time - a confederation of independent city-states - was also a surprisingly tough nut to crack, as each and every city had to be reduced individually (no Inca to capture there) plus their style of warfare was apparently also of the troublesome hit-and-run variety.

[SwordsMaster]

... Add to all of this the particular state in which Spain was at the time: Reconquista just finished with an indecent amount of landless lower nobility that lived from and for war exclusively, the firmly established belief that working with their hands was dishonourable, and the only true craft of an hidalgo (gentleman) was war to the point of even barbers carrying swords in Spain, and you get quite an explosive mix.