The story of Cortes’ conquering the Aztecs is full of drama. Cortes led a force of less than a
thousand men into Mexico and somehow managed to conquer the Aztecs, who were ferocious warriors and ruled millions of people. How could this be? Any reasonable person looking at the odds would expect that the Aztec gods, who demanded blood sacrifices, would be having the Spaniards for lunch. There are many explanations, but this article will focus on one strength of the Spanish, the use of boats. This may strike you as an unlikely idea, but boats were an important part of Cortes’ force that besieged and conquered the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan.
In fact, boats were so important that Cortes kept command of the boats for himself and delegated command of the three divisions of his army to others. Battles in which both Spanish and Aztecs used boats were very common and there were even some fights that were entirely boats vs. boats. Integrating boats into wargames takes a little creativity. There are problems about rules to simulate land forces and boats fighting side by side. For me, building models of these boats was a challenge. Be ready for something a little bit different.
First, let’s do a bit to quiet the little voice in the back of your head that is saying “This is nuts.” The conquest of Mexico was made possible by a complex mixture of factors. To single out one weapon as decisive is to grossly oversimplify. There, feel better? The Spanish had many technical advantages. Among them were steel armor, horses, wheels, gunpowder, crossbows, and boats. Diseases brought by the Spanish inflicted horrible losses on the Aztecs. The Aztec leaders seemed to believe Cortes was the god Quetzalcoatl returning and treated him accordingly - at least for a while.
The subject peoples of the Aztec Empire bitterly resented Aztec rule which included using subject people for sacrifice. They expected battle to start only after proper ceremony. The Spanish fought for God, glory, and gold. They were willing to do surprise attacks and they killed their enemies in battle. They conducted war as a full time effort to be carried on until victory was theirs. All of this and maybe some other factors contributed to the final Spanish victory, but the focus of this article is boats.
Let’s take a quick look at the history of the campaign. Then I’ll fumble around with rules and provide some model boats. I’ll set up two scenarios and describe sample games of each.
More Conquest of Mexico 1521
Back to Table of Contents -- Lone Warrior #133
Back to Lone Warrior List of Issues
Back to MagWeb Magazine List
© Copyright 2001 by Solo Wargamers Association.
This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com