28 Seven !Myths of the .

Spanish Conquest

He talks to "his soldiers:' and he gives away his interpreter and lover, Malinche,
"to one of his soldiers:' In addition to the predominance of military terminol­
ogy to describe Spanish expeditions and the ubiquitous use of the term "sol­
dier" to describe the conquerors, the Spanish royal state is typically granted a
monolithic, directive role in Spanish expansion.2 The sum of all this is what I
have called the "myth of the king's army:'

F
In the eyewitness account by Francisco de Jerez of the 1532 events at Cajamarca­
the Pizarro-Atahuallpa encounter and subsequent massacre of Andeans-the
conquistador reminds his readers that the Spaniards did not constitute an army. �EL�UQ!.
Jerez's point of reference was not the Spanish army, for such a thing was still
ill defined even in Europe in the 1530s, but the Roman army of ancient times. Escrit11.r.rk11!J/J-f�
The triumph of the Pizarro-led Spaniards, in what Jerez most prematurely Coro111sf'a:fil!vo'rtk{g_-:­
calls "the conquest of Peru," is thus presented as even more extraordinary !J-mfias,,_J G,YtJ11i/lr;,
and impressive precisely because it was not the achievement of "paid cap­ /e GsGffrv·
tains and armies:' 3
Other accounts by Spaniards who participated in Conquest campaigns ne cada festa,
confirm Jerez's assertion. For example, some modern historians who refer to
the "soldiers" who invaded the Mexica empire quote the letters written by
Cortes himself, thereby lending apparent authenticity to the use of the term.
But the word always turns out to have been inserted by historians or by
Cortes's English translators; where the Pagden edition has "three hundred
foot soldiers;' Cortes himself writes trescientos peones, "300 men on foot."4
Cortes not only avoids the word "soldier" but reveals in his letters to the
king, despite his efforts to portray himself as firmly in charge, that the men
following him are as much a motley bunch of individuals as Jerez's compa­
triots at Cajamarca would be.
If the conquistadors themselves made it clear in the 1520s and 1530s that
no armies were sent by the king of Spain to the Americas during these de­
cades, what is the origin of the myth? Are we simply influenced by our own
senses of what modern armies are like? No doubt this has much to do with
the perpetuation of the myth. We are accustomed to legal, armed activity be­
ing the monopoly of highly institutionalized national forces. Understanding
sixteenth-century Spanish expeditions requires a leap of imagination.
But the myth also has roots in military developments in Spain in the mid­
to-late sixteenth century and the changes in terminology that accompanied
those developments. The 1615 illustration of Atahuallpa's seizure at the top
of Figure 5 seems to contradict Jerez's eyewitness description and show the
Fig. 5. Title page to the sixth volume ofAntonio de Herrera's
men of Cajamarca as soldiers. In fact, tracking the use of soldado, the Spanish
Historia General de los Hechos de los Castellanos (1615).
term for "soldier," is revealing. Cortes does not use it in the 1520s, nor does
29
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