Give me a break!!!!

[Booga]

The atlatl was not in prominent use when the Spanish first appeared on the scene - it was reinvented/readopted when its effectiveness was realized. I'd imagine by the time its use had spread again the Spanish had plenty of cannon fodder in the form of native auxiliaries to soak up the damage. And muskets weren't really a factor - the few guns the Spanish had were obsolete and of limited utility. They did make effective use of ship-borne artillery in the siege of Tenochtitlan, though.

dismal: Don't believe everything you read. Like it was pointed out before, numbers are often inflated to make a battle seem more impressive. You didn't state a source for that account, but it sounds like a propaganda piece. Cortez needed to make his expedition sound glorious - he was actually disobeying his superiors by fighting the Aztecs and his life depended on garnering support though smashing victories. If he didn't win decisively, he either made it sound like he did or painted overwhelming odds nobody could win against.

Anyway, all this talk of equipment is relative. The man behind all the armor and weaponry is vastly more important a factor, as is good generalship.

[dopp]

Concerning the middle-east and heat, I find it funny that many people forget or do not know that many middle-easterners actually wore quite a lot of armour (chain mail hauberk, lamellar armours of leather or iron, scale hauberks and the Ottomans actually had a sort of plate armour, but not the kind of plate armour seen in Europe, more like the Roman Lorica Segmenta), the genious trick to avoid having all this burn you up was usually to wear loose fitting robes over metal armour, which would keep it from heating up.
Anyway fighting in a hot, humid jungle filled with mosquities who eat you alive and make you sick and devious foliage everywhere sounds like the ninth circle of hell to me, many seem to forget how annoying mosquities actually are!!

I live in such a place, and I'm not sure it's that difficult to manage in a tropical rainforest (but then I'm used to it). Dry socks and underwear are a must, plus plenty of insect repellant to keep the mozzies and their nasty infections away. It will take some time for you to get used to fighting in heavy armor, but as long as you get enough water to replace the fluids you lose, it's not really all that bad. You sort of get used to the heat and humidity after a while, it's the fungus and fever that can kill you if you're not careful.

As for dying of heatstroke in drier climates, one of the two notable fatalities at Agincourt was supposed to have died of exhaustion too, and I don't think France qualifies as arid desert at all.

[Booga]

If you had to run away from longbows in sticky knee-deep mud while wearing a full suit of armor, you'd probably die of exhaustion too ;)

[dopp]

It was an English duke who died of exhaustion (the French suffered far more than just two notable fatalities), although I'm sure many of the French died that way too. They were so tightly packed by the flanking longbowmen and their own numbers that they literally had no space to fight properly and trampled each other to death in a rather messy way.

Edit: While military accounts are often exaggerated, there's little reason to doubt that the Spanish were outnumbered and still cut their way through large numbers of poorly-armed Aztec warriors. Horsemen were intimidating enough to musketeers armed with armor-piercing weapons (then again, accounts mention musket balls rattling off the thick cuirasses and helmets of the heavy cavalry at Waterloo, so maybe not THAT armor piercing), they must have been utterly terrifying even to the best Aztec troops.

[Stlaind]

Actually it was around the period in late M2 that te word "Bulletproof" entered into the english language. It had to do with the piece of armor being tested by a musket having been fired against it, leaving a noticable dent but not a hole.

[dopp]

According to some sources on the French army, the cuirass of the heavy cavalry was specifically 'proofed' by taking three musket balls at 'point blank' range, which I gather didn't have the same meaning as today (for example, 'point blank' for a cannon was something like 300 yards). Due to the difficulty of manufacturing such armor in bulk, this requirement seems to have been relaxed to one shot at 100 yards. We can perhaps conclude that bulletproof armor against the firearms of the time was possible, but just not very feasible outside of a few elite units that needed and could afford the protection. In any case, heavier armor would just mean a return to more powerful muskets and rifles, an 'arms race' that the armor would probably lose eventually.

[JCoyote]

@ dopp: The armor was already becoming impractically heavy when it was getting to the level of stopping musket balls. That's part of why armor was reducing down to a cuirass and helmet, it was just getting too heavy to wear more than that at that level of resistance. Full armor of the "bulletproof" level was exceptionally rare and exceptionally heavy, to the point where you could do little but stay in one spot and let people shoot at you. At that point you start consolidating armor that heavy down to just the most vital areas... like the torso and head.

As far as my reference to the jungles and more armor, I did NOT mean full plate, I meant something more from previous eras. Against the obsidian weapons, wearing full mail instead of a couple pieces of plate would have had advantages. One strange halloween I was running a coffee shop, working behind an espresso machine with a huge party. For my costume I had on my crusader gear, including shirt of black mail and gambeson. I worked behind an espresso machine in addition to cleaning floors and running around taking care of customers for 10 hours that way. (There was a party at the place.) If you are familiar with working an espresso machine in a busy shop, It's more hot and humid than can find almost anywhere in nature. But I managed fine, and I'm not someone who's spent every Sunday practicing in armor. Mail would have been less effective against blunt weapons and impacts, but not completely so, mail and a gambeson can absorb a lot of impact. Throw a hauberk over that and it can take anything the aztecs had available.

It's very much like if we found our current military fighting a horde of people armed only with knives. In that case, as good as our current body armor is against bullets, going to a lighter but larger covering mail would protect more soldiers. Arm yourself to meet anything out there, but armor yourself against the enemy's weapon. Armor against firearms has always compromised the surface protected for level of protection... it's not always the best when your opponent isn't shooting at you.

[dopp]

Yes, I was talking about the cuirassiers, who wore that sort of 'cut-down' armor and yet still couldn't be sure that it was completely 'bulletproof', because it was difficult to manufacture armor to that quality. A lot of 'cuirassier' regiments never even received their armor, and many of them tossed it away as being too heavy for the level of protection they received.

Nowadays of course, the return to citizen armies (at least in part) demands effective armor protection for the rank-and-file as well, or so some military historians have concluded. People are going nuts over kevlar and liquid armor and powered armor and so on.

[MilesGregarius]

Edit: While military accounts are often exaggerated, there's little reason to doubt that the Spanish were outnumbered

The Spaniards were no doubt heavily outnumbered, but Spanish claims still have to be taken with a good dose of skepticism.

[dopp]

The Spaniards were no doubt heavily outnumbered, but Spanish claims still have to be taken with a good dose of skepticism.

Well, the commentator himself (whoever he is, no reference to prove its authenticity) takes their claims with a healthy pinch of salt, but it seems quite clear that they won and the account is fairly consistent with other, more verifiable, battles of Europeans vs natives. Wellington is supposed to have defeated 200,000 Indians (of which maybe 15,000 were actual warriors) with less than 10,000 Redcoats, even though they had disciplined musketeers, twice as much artillery as him and plenty of cavalry on their side. Europeans know how to fight and do it really well.

[Oleander Ardens]

The atlatl was not in prominent use when the Spanish first appeared on the scene - it was reinvented/readopted when its effectiveness was realized. I'd imagine by the time its use had spread again the Spanish had plenty of cannon fodder in the form of native auxiliaries to soak up the damage. And muskets weren't really a factor - the few guns the Spanish had were obsolete and of limited utility. They did make effective use of ship-borne artillery in the siege of Tenochtitlan, though.

One sidenote: The Atlatl is a rather powerful weapon. It increases the momentum and range of a dart greatly, and was used to hunt Mammuts. However, believe me or not, killing an armored man with a missile is more diffícult than killing a large mammal.

But, thanks to the Longbow-craze armor is greatly underestimated, especially mail with paddings. A heavy arrow with a sharp and slender (1:4/5) head shot from a good traditional yew bow with a medium to heavy drawweight can come out of the far side of a cape buffalo as long as not too many heavy bones are in the way. The same asset has great difficulties to pierce the combination of a medium gambeson and good mail protecting a flexible body.

A heavy dart of a strong thrower could penetrate a coat of mail, but i hardly think that it happened to often and under battlefield conditions...

In any case I think that the Jaguar warriors are way too strong compared to the finest soldiers of the old continent, be it the JHI or the Tercio

Cheers
OA

[Snoil The Mighty]

OH REALLY IS IT

GET A LIFE - Snoil the Weak

Here's your complimentary crying towel 8>D

[rickinator9]

Nice necropost!

[VersusAllOdds]

Oh just don't get me started on the reasons why Aztec warriors sucked in real life...

1) They used wooden, stone, and only in best cases obsidian weapons. I would like anybody to explain to me how would glued stone to wood be able to last for longer than a few hits. Their weapons had a tough time piercing their own woven armour, let alone the one of steel. The Spaniards realized that and had their metal armour changed into the Aztec one, since that was enough. That goes to prove how much the Aztec DPS sucked.

2) The Aztecs were a terribly religious people. Too religious for their own good. They had very serious doubts that the Spaniards were actually divine, they greatly feared gunpowder, not to mention horses. They thought that a horseman is a beast that can at times split into a man and a horse. Their morale was generally low when fighting Europeans due to those facts.

3) As I already said, their armour was very considerable against their own blunt and barbaric weapons, however how any cloth, no matter how tight, would sustain a thrusting blow from a steel weapon is beyond me. Their nobles wore armour of gold, gold which can easily be bent by force of fingers... Secondly, Spaniards also used gunpowder against which no armour is existant.

4) Their military doctrine was pathetic. They had no formations, or basically any battle tactics whatsoever. Diaz mentions that sometimes they were so tightly packed that Spaniard gunpowder fire couldn't miss hitting the flesh

5) And finally, the most crucial reason why Aztecs were absolutely dreadful against Cortez: they didn't try to kill the enemy, they wanted to capture him. So, they try to grab a guy, and he cuts at least several of them in the process. Once they do, his friends jump in, and Aztecs try to capture them aswell. Then, in an all out massacre, they release their buddy and are ready to go on massacring again. Yes, Aztecs basically didn't try to kill the enemy, because they needed hearts for sacrifice.

I don't understand what's with people actually prefering the Aztecs to the Spanish. They were barbaric, they relished in slaughtering tens of thousands, and sometimes even hundreds of thousands, of people to their gods, pulling out their hearts, and yet the Spanish Inquisition and their own religious fanaticism is twice as notorious today.

All anti-Spanish skeptics should realize that Cortez had a rag-tag band of less than 1000 warriors, who were no knights or too experienced warriors, and that they basically destroyed a civilization who's people counted in the millions. That's all I can say of the Aztec warriors. They didn't exterminate civilians, they were much more merciful towards the Indians than Aztecs were, and by far. The Tlaxcalans, Spanish allies, are known to have slaughtered thousands of Aztecs in revenge for their own feuds, and have caused much more suffering than Spanish....