From ricks@swcp.com Mon Dec 10 07:23:26 2001
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From: "Richard Seddon" <ricks@swcp.com>
To: <classics@u.washington.edu>
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Subject: Re: "Providence," Rhode(s) Island, & Mexico
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2001 08:21:09 -0700
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Hello:

If the gangs of warriors that besieged Troy had run into a Roman cohort or
Cortes's small army they might have left the plains of Troy in a hurry.  A
Roman cohort would probably have had exactly the same level of success with
the Aztec as Cortes. The difference is between the warrior as the
maneuvering unit and an army as the maneuvering unit.  Many carelessly
equate warriors with a particularly brave soldier.  An individual warrior
might defeat an individual soldier and probably would but a group of
warriors is just that a group of individuals.  A group of soldiers forms a
unit that is much stronger than the summation of its parts.  The Aztecs were
comfortable with war as a series of individual battles between individual
warriors.  These battles were highly formal with many unproductive formal
elements.  These individual warriors were just no match for the units of
highly maneuverable cavalry that the Spanish used.  The Aztecs went to
battle as a mob and then fought as individuals.  The Spanish went to war as
an army and fought as units of mutually supportive soldiers.  In my mind I
see solitary Aztec warriors being engulfed by 10 Spanish soldiers while 30
other Aztec warriors looked on;  untrained and unsure as to what to do to
help their brother.

The Spanish and the Aztecs were like pomegranates and eggs.

Rick Seddon
McIntosh, NM, USA

.