European militaries had to train the fear of horses out of their infantry. The normal human reaction to being swarmed by galloping cavalry is to flee. Keeping formation under such conditions is hard.

What would help the Incas would be pikes. Lots of pikes. Hard to know why they didn't copy them from the Spaniards.

> The normal human reaction to being swarmed by galloping cavalry is to flee

Yes, and that's why crowd control with mounted police is still very effective today.

I thought pikes when I was reading the article. My wild guess was maybe a materials science problem and that for some reason they couldn't mass-produce them with the tolerances they needed to fight cavalry.

A wooden stick rammed into the ground alone is enough to stop a charging horse. The faster it charges, the quicker it would penetrate itself.

But this was a lesson long known in europe, but not in the Andes. Still, kind of baffling. I suppose religious motives played a role as well in not trying out those simple solutions.

The Incas had bronze and used it for weaponry.

The Incas had bronze, but didn't take full advantage of its use in weapons because they didn't have metal armor or shields, which are uncommon in Bronze Age cultures because copper is much less plentiful than iron. There was no time to redesign their weapons to fight armor in the middle of an invasion.

Sure, bronze pikes would have stopped the cavalry, but you need years if not centuries of mounted warfare to figure that out.

Well said and insightful, thanks.

And the name-comment synergy slaps, as the youngins sometimes say :-)

Very few weapons could cause significant damage to someone wearing plate armour though. Steel swords didn't do much either.

Maces, war hammers, pollaxes and such were quite effective because armour doesn't protect you against blunt force. Inca or any other Native Americans didn't really have enough time to adapt before it was too late (especially with the epidemics hitting them so hard).

Armor does protect you against blunt force, but you will still feel the hit. And a strong one to the head, will knock you out. But compared to unprotected .. there is still quite some protection.

Pointy hammers were rather effective for pinching through the armor, not creating concussion.

And all the armors had weak spots.

Against charging horses even a phalanx of long sharpened (and hardened in fire) wooden sticks would be enough.

Ropes with stones flung under their legs.

Killing them with arrows - really that part confuses me. The horses had in some cases some armor - but why didn't the other horses not fell from the missile barrage?

Humans aren't fearless automatons though. Shock cavalry is called that for a reason. Also I'm not sure Inca used bows as ranged weapons in warfare that much? It was mainly slingers (probably could be reasonably effective? Note sure. Or spears or other thrown weapons (when the effective range is 30 meters and a horse is galloping towards you, well.. it would be effectively suicidal to try even if you hit anything)

> long sharpened (and hardened in fire) wooden sticks would be enough.

Also extreme discipline and training. Unprofessional armies even in Europe didn't do that well either. e.g. the Battle of Böblingen was about as one sided as some of the battles between the Spanish and Incas or Aztecs.

"when the effective range is 30 meters and a horse is galloping towards you, well.. it would be effectively suicidal to try even if you hit anything"

One person on its own, yes, but we are talking about thousands of people. Meaning the horses charge frontal, the infantery there (without Pikes) might get smashed - but those on the side would have a clear shot. Unless they all panic.

"Battle of Böblingen"

And wikipedia says 2:1. That is not in the same ballpark as 100:1 like with the conquisatores.

The optimal tactics aren't necessarily that obvious during the first few engagements when you encounter a completely alien force and a way of fighting.

And by the time you start figuring these things out the Spanish already have thousands of allied soldiers from other tribes that you have subjugated fighting on their side.

e.g. when the Inca finally started trying to fight back back in earnest like in the siege of Cuzco the ratio was closer to 1:2 and the Inca were probably too reluctant to engage due to their experience in the initial battles. After that it was already way too late since the empire was reduced to a rump state with limited resources and the balance of power shifted.

Same happened in Mexico. Just like in Peru the early engagements for the Spanish were generally considerably easier than the final battles where they had 10s of thousands of soldiers fighting for them.

At the end of the day both of those empires were just a house of cards waiting to collapse. Europeans didn't do even remotely as well in less centralized areas. e.g. even against urbanized societies like the Maya who survived for much longer and successfully fended off several expeditions since the Spanish basically had to conquer each city state one by one.

> "Fuck the conquistadors."

I don't know the story of the Inca very well, but I did just read about Cortes' conquest of the Aztecs (Buddy Levy, Conquistador), and the primary moral of the story that I got was "if you believe in human sacrifice of other people, and if the tribute you demand of vassal states is a certain number of their sons and daughters, don't be surprised if they follow some other dude who's got better gear". He'd have gotten nowhere without native allies, and lucky for him the Aztecs had managed to make enemies out of just about everyone else nearby.

Was he a good person? I think we can firmly say "no". Was he worse than the Aztecs? That's a tougher question. If you were an Aztec, almost certainly. If you were one of their subject peoples who cut an early deal with him, almost certainly not.

"If you were one of their subject peoples who cut an early deal with him, almost certainly not."

If you ask the descendants of those people, you might get a different answer.

Because even the highest ranking "natives" in the new order were still lower, than the lowest white conquisator.

Being under the rule of the Spaniards in Mexico was no ball of fun, but then again being under the rule of the Aztecs (if you weren't one) wasn't either. I'm not qualified to judge the details.

For sure not. And if I would be destined to be sacrificed to one side, I probably would prefer being a badly treated slave for the other side. But in general I likely would have prefered to have no more Imperial master.