Catalan Company

[SwordsMaster]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_Company

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almogavars

Pretty damn impressive. They had to be spaniards....

[King Henry V]

Or Catalans, as the case may be.

[The Wizard]

Why did they have to be Spanish?

[IrishArmenian]

They were Catalan/Catalaun.

[The Wizard]

Indeed, but why did they have to be? I'm curious as to this pronouncement by the original poster.

[SwordsMaster]

Indeed, but why did they have to be? I'm curious as to this pronouncement by the original poster.

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...

[Vladimir]

Exactly. It's like he's never seen Gladiator.

[The Wizard]

Well, I'm not sure, but IIRC most of the soldiers that were Conquistadores, and those that fought for them, came either from Castille or the mountains of Northern Spain. And I'm not sure how many Catalans served in the Spanish army, either... most of them probably in the old Aragonese dominions of the East, which is where the Catalan Company originated (Sicily, to be precise).

[IrishArmenian]

I thought the Catalans had an unofficial independence, probably becuase I wouldn't want to fight them.

[The Wizard]

The Catalan Company was not unique amongst its peers. Plenty of French, English, and Italian (condotierri) mercenary companies abound in the Europe of the Hundred Year's War.

[Kraxis]

One has to remember that the primary source forthe Company's adventures comes from one of the very members who was with them.

No doubt they did what is claimed, but the circumstances and numbers might not be entirely perfect.

[IrishArmenian]

Good point Kraxis. Is Cataluan a romance language?

[KARTLOS]

yes, there is very little difference to spanish

[Trajanus]

As to where they came from.

Catalonia was divided into a few counties with no one lord in overall control. The most powerful was the County of Barcelona.

Aragon proper was to the west and north-west of the region of Catalonia. Eventually the Aragonese and Barcelonan families married and took control of the overall area.

[matteus the inbred]

Amusingly, the Catalan Company apparently continued to fight under the banner of Aragon despite leaving Aragonese service under a cloud after backing the wrong heir in a dispute and being deemed guilty of treason...it seems to have been mostly made up of Catalans and Aragonese; technically it had some Alan mercs/allies but these were hired by the Byzantines, and neither the Company nor the Alans liked each other in way whatsoever, particularly as the latter were responsible for the assassination of Roger de Flor.
Their warcry 'desperta ferre' says it all really...

'Awake the iron!'

Fascinating stuff...I always like the 14th/15th century mercenary companies, Friossart's 'Reminiscences of the Bascot de Mauleon' are one of my favourite bits of his work. Ransoms, money, looting and even a bit of fighting...

[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...

[IrishArmenian]

yes, there is very little difference to spanish

I Thought it was closer to French. It sounds like it if one reads The Count of Monte Cristo, but that could be the author's bias, that or their are to dialects of Catalan/Catalaun, which would make sense. The one closer to Marseille would be closer to French and the dialect closer to Barcelona would sound more Spanish. By the way, this is not fact, just my "maybe" rant.

[Trajanus]

I think it unlikely because of the large natural barrier between Spain and France the Pyrrenees.

Catalan is a dialect itself, and was spoken all over Catalonia. I'm sure however that the very small percentage of people who lived in the mountains may have had a slight derivative to include some local Toulouse words etc. But not I think in Catalonia itself.

[Watchman]

You'd be surprised how much traffic tended to go through all those mountain passes.

[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.

[Watchman]

I seem to recall reading most of particularly the early Conquistadors came from the already established colonies in the Caribbean though. This does not as such mean much, recall; most of the pirates/corsairs of diverse nationalities that were such a pain in the side of the Spanish Main later were similarly purely private civilian enterpreneurs, even if governements were often more than willing to invest in their operations and cover their butts in return for a suitable cut of the profits...
And those fellows on occasion managed to storm cities.

[Kraxis]

I seem to recall reading most of particularly the early Conquistadors came from the already established colonies in the Caribbean though. This does not as such mean much, recall; most of the pirates/corsairs of diverse nationalities that were such a pain in the side of the Spanish Main later were similarly purely private civilian enterpreneurs, even if governements were often more than willing to invest in their operations and cover their butts in return for a suitable cut of the profits...
And those fellows on occasion managed to storm cities.

They did. Cortez even had to fight a battle with the governor of Cuba becasue he had wasted far too many of the few Spaniards in Havanna in his first, and none too successful, foray into Aztec lands. Over time he had used perhaps as many as 5000-7000 Spaniards, while his army was generally no larger than 1200-1500. Seems to indicate that it was far from a safe venture, in fact it was more likely you died than survived.

It also clearly says a lot about the individual Spanish male and his ability to fight. However, it was the warless warriors who had the most to gain from the New World. So the composition of the population was considerably more warlike and better trained through personal experience or that of their near family. Also, while Cuba was considered 'tamed' it wasn't really safe yet. There were still local indians who weren't too happy about how they were treated, so there really was a good incentive to be good with weapons.
However they were not fulltime troops, but that was not needed. What was needed were good fighters who would stick together. And that was very much likely. I mean which selfrespecting Spaniard who had a plantation on Cuba with Indian 'slaves' or just kicked the local Indian about in Havanna, would leave his fellow Europeans for them in the heat of battle. No, he would be too proud, and perhaps a little too scared to leave them. And that created the strong focalpoint in battle.

The tribes you are looking for are inumerable, in effect there were only a few real Aztec cities. The rest payed tribute. But the main allies of Cortez would be the Tlaxcala and the Texcoco, the latter abandoning their evil overlords for the Spanish, while the former were the ritual enemies used for captives.