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"Wait until they are mostly sleep and attack at night." The Incas apparently did not fight at night. And why they did not managed to kill the horses, were lik

• inglor_cz 2y ago
  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.
  • MrMcCall 2y ago
    I think they only had stone-tipped wooden spears.
    • inglor_cz 2y ago
      The Incas had bronze and used it for weaponry.
      • MrMcCall 2y ago
        Thanks. I guess bronze verses steel and horses was just not enough.
        • lukan 2y ago
          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?
          • MrMcCall 2y ago
            "Fear is the mind-killer." --Frank Herbert You also need enough love to be willing to be the first to fall in defense of your people. Maybe they didn't even know that the horses could be killed? They could've looked like monsters to the locals. But yeah, the lens of history is far from clear, except for "Fuck the conquistadors." That said, would the locals have abandoned human sacrifice and cannabalism without getting their asses kicked? Who knows? Sometimes, it's just assholes killing assholes, usually with innocents caught in the crossfire.
            • devilbunny 2y ago
              > "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.
              • lukan 2y ago
                "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.
                • devilbunny 2y ago
                  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.
        • pqtyw 2y ago
          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).
          • lukan 2y ago
            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.
      • scythe 2y ago
        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.
        • MrMcCall 2y ago
          Well said and insightful, thanks. And the name-comment synergy slaps, as the youngins sometimes say :-)
  • roenxi 2y ago
    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.
    • lukan 2y ago
      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.
  • bambax 2y ago
    > 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.