Warriors of History and Legend – The New York Times

Three new books scrutinize the reputations of some legendary warrior groups the Spartans, the Vikings and the Spanish conquistadors.

In THE BRONZE LIE: Shattering the Myth of Spartan Warrior Supremacy (Osprey, $30), Myke Cole pretty much does what the subtitle says. Laconophiles, beware. Cole, a prolific writer of science fiction as well as a previous work on ancient military history, painstakingly examines the evidence from five centuries of Spartan warfare, from 739 B.C. to 207 B.C., and concludes that they were not superwarriors, but reasonably competent war fighters dogged by norms in their military culture that held them back. Overall, he calculates that they posted a battle record of 50 wins, 71 losses and five ties. Not terrible, but hardly dominant, more Chicago Cubs than New York Yankees.

Cole detects several persistent shortcomings in the Spartan approach to combat. They failed to scout their foes and were notably poor at besieging fortifications. They also were slow to adapt tactically, because, he says, their rigidly conservative social culture made them resistant to change. They compensated for these flaws by being well disciplined and well organized.

Those who think people no longer care about history should consider this: Cole reports that his sharp skepticism about Spartan military prowess has provoked death threats against him.

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By contrast, the Vikings were quite as fierce as their reputation, if the account in MEN OF TERROR: A Comprehensive Analysis of Viking Combat (Westholme, $50) is anywhere near accurate. William R. Short and Reynir A. Oskarson, two experts in Viking culture and martial arts, report that Norsemen, if they did not have a weapon in hand, trained to end a fight three ways: strangulation, biting through the neck or trachea and breaking or dislocating the neck. But, they add, Vikings rarely were caught without their weapons, especially their swords, which they revered.

The Vikings were innovative fighters, displaying what the authors term an improvisational nature. They also were fairly high-tech for their time that is, the centuries around A.D. 1000 wielding swords that used advanced metallurgy. Their seagoing ships were able to sail closer to the wind than others and were also of such shallow draft that they could move high up rivers and coves, enabling them to launch surprise attacks in unexpected places.

Fittingly, this book held two surprises for me: First, I had assumed that a battle ax was heavy. In fact it was lighter and sharper than a wood ax, because flesh is easier to cleave than wood, and also because a weighty war ax would fatigue its bearer. A battle ax swung with two hands delivered three times as much destructive energy as a sword, the authors helpfully note. Second, they say that, contrary to the cartoon images, Viking helmets probably did not sport horns. That makes sense: In serious close combat, why give the foe a key point to grab and twist?

The well-named Fernando Cervantes sets out to upgrade the reputation of the 16th-century Spanish conquerors of Mexico and western South America in CONQUISTADORES: A New History of Spanish Discovery and Conquest (Viking, $35). It is a decidedly uphill task. Cervantes, a historian at Englands University of Bristol, concedes that the conquistadors are seen today as brutal, genocidal colonists. But, he argues, that sweeping caricature is partly the result of a powerful sustained propaganda campaign against the Spanish Hapsburgs. He asks us to look beyond the unintended excesses and horrendous brutality. He portrays Hernn Corts, the conqueror of Mexicos Aztecs, as a politically astute and tactically flexible leader. Corts and other conquistadors were able to succeed as well as they did, he notes, because local populations often saw them as liberators who would help overthrow the cruel and exploitative regimes of the Aztecs and, in South America, of the Incas.

I came away unpersuaded. In this work Cervantes engages in a kind of sleight of hand, I believe, by mentioning the enslavement of Indigenous peoples but never really focusing on it. Ultimately, the conquistadors dont really seem to me very different from the Vikings. They were out to raid, to enslave people and to steal whatever they could carry away, usually in the form of gold, silver and precious stones. And they wrangled with one another for those treasures as well as for land and power. Indeed, Francisco Pizarro, the conqueror of the Incas, was killed by other Spaniards in one such dispute. The major difference between the Vikings and the Spaniards seems to be that the Spaniards had a more lasting effect, in part because the Old World diseases they carried with them devastated the people of the New World, who lacked immunities.

Putting these books down, I found myself wondering about how future historians will write in a few centuries about the American mission in Afghanistan over the last 20 years. We went there late in 2001 passionately full of righteous answers just as the conquistadors went to the New World. And, like them, brimming with unequaled military power, we tried to use force to change a culture we did not remotely understand. But then we left. Our recent chaotic exit from Kabul reminded me of a brutal line in Thucydides history of the Peloponnesian War. It was uttered not by a Spartan but by a leader of the Athenians, supposedly the more enlightened people. The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must, he informs the inhabitants of a small, besieged island. That also was, I think, the message that President Biden sent last summer to the people of Afghanistan.

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Warriors of History and Legend - The New York Times