Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest

Books, films, and artwork perpetuate the myth that Spanish armies carried out the Spanish Conquest of the Americas. The conquistadors and their men, however, were not soldiers and Spain was only beginning its military revolution when they were active. The Spanish did not have a professional army in the 16th century, nor did Spain have the financial resources to support sending military forces to the Americas. The expense simply would have been too great.

Francisco de Jerez wrote an eyewitness account of Pizarro’s meeting with the Incan emperor, Atahuallpa in 1532, and the violence the Spanish carried out afterward. He specifically writes that the Spanish were not an army, which is what he argues makes their “conquest of Peru” a remarkable feat. Other primary sources confirm this view. Moreover, Cortés’s letters never use the term for soldiers, even though numerous historians and translators use the word. Rather, Cortés says that he had “‘three hundred men’” on foot to accompany him (28). Usually, around one hundred Spaniards plus Indigenous and African auxiliaries comprised most expeditions.

This myth originated in the late 16th century as the Spanish military revolution advanced. The conquistador Bernal Díaz, for example, writing in the 1570s, uses the term soldado (soldier) in his account of Mexico’s conquest. Paintings of the conquest from the 1600s likewise show the Spanish as armed soldiers: “Thus the conquistadors, long after their deaths, all became soldiers” (33), despite the fact that they were usually not professional military men.

However, if the conquistadors and their men were armed and organized under captains, and had some experience in military service, does that not make them soldiers? Some contemporary military historians answer affirmatively. Restall, however, believes it is significant to note that the conquistadors lacked formal training, instead honing their skills in the Americas: “Expedition members tended to be recruited in recently founded colonies, creating a relay system of conquest that meant most participants already had some experience in the New World […] But none of this amounted to formal training” (33). No professional military forces came from Spain. Missions originated through seeking alliances in the Americas, which is confirmed by evidence of the patronage links facilitating the Spanish conquests in Mexico, the Yucatan, and South America.

The Spanish who joined conquest efforts wanted wealth and status rather than payments that professional soldiers would receive. Success meant one might receive an encomienda, for example. The encomienda is “a grant of native American labor. The holder, or encomendero, had the right to tax the natives of a given community or cluster of towns in goods and labor” (35). Moreover, captains funded these private expeditions from which they expected to reap these spoils of war and colonization so that these conquests had “a commercial spirit” (35). Demographic data shows that when the Spanish founded Panama City in 1519, only two of the 75 settlers who took part in this expedition were professional soldiers and all had diverse educational backgrounds. The stereotypical conquistador thus looks different from what most might expect based on this mythology of Spanish military invasion: “a young man in his late twenties, semiliterate, from southwestern Spain, trained in a particular trade or profession, seeking opportunity through patronage networks based on family and home-town ties” (43).

Some historians, such as Ida Altman in her 2004 review for The International History Review, critique Restall’s assertion that the conquistadors lacked military experience, pointing out that many did have prior experience in armed conflicts even if they were not part of what would now be considered a formal army. Restall himself notes at the conclusion of his first chapter that previous Spanish victories, for example in the Mediterranean, provided some experience for future “conquest practices” (26), thereby suggesting that what does or does not count as military experience may be a matter of definition.

Other historians note that Spaniards fought in Italy during the Habsburg–Valois Wars (also known as the Italian Wars), including Pizarro’s father. The conquistador Pedro de Valdivia was a professional military man with experience fighting in Spanish conflicts in Flanders before his departure for the Americas in 1535. Moreover, the Spanish Reconquista (“Reconquest”) of the Iberian Peninsula was only completed in the late 15th century. This was a series of protracted wars that began during the Middle Ages in which Christian rulers struggled for control over Spanish lands against Muslim rulers. Significantly, the last Muslim stronghold, Granada, fell to the Spanish crown’s forces in 1492—the same year Columbus “discovered” the Americas.

However, the Reconquista as a crusade had a distinct religious dimension that conquistadors transported to the Americas, supporting Restall’s assertion that these conquests were not a coordinated, state-sponsored military effort in the modern sense. While Restall may underestimate the military experience of some of the men who went to the Americas, they nonetheless did not constitute a professional, state-run military force.