The absence of knives in the Aztec knight's equipment may reflect the effectiveness of their cotton armor. A number of secondary sources, apparently following Sahagun, refer to its ability to resist even heavy weapons (Hassig 1988, Pohl ill. Hook 2001, Sayer 1985, Martín Gómez 2001).

I often see replica Aztec knives for sale, and have always wanted to purchase one. However, as it could not be reasonably added to my present knight costume, I prefer to wait until I can work on one for an Aztec priest.

References:
http://www.forensicfashion.com/ReferencesInPrintEnglishH.html
http://www.forensicfashion.com/ReferencesInPrintEnglishP.html
http://www.forensicfashion.com/ReferencesInPrintEnglishS.html
http://www.forensicfashion.com/ReferencesInPrintSpanishM.html

Wow, how is such cotton armour made? It could resist heavy weapons. I know a though thick gambeson could do the trick, they are made of stiffened linnen. But seeing the aztec warrior s depicted, they seem like pretty agile pyjama wearing warriors to me. :-P no offence, just curious. What I always wondered, what are their helmets made of?

Does someone know something of their battle tactics? To me they dont seem the type of troops that march at ya in close ranks. More stealthy, sneaky, im here...haha and now im here tactics.

Regards!
Sander

Ruel!

How have you been?

As popular as ever with the ladies, I see. I'd watch out for Henry though, those protruding cod pieces can be quite the rival to your otherwise impeccable charms!

I will (hopefully) be doing a bit of supplementary research on my paper armor thesis on the effectiveness of brine-soaking for quilted and laminated paper armor, and will include quilted cotton armor as a comparison. Whether or not the Aztec's actually soaked their armor in brine of course is a debate that will no doubt continue for some time, but I hope to show the *effectiveness* of brine-soaked versus non-brine soaked samples as a comparison.

Best,

Karl

Ah, obsidian knives in combat...

Well the primary drawback is their fragility, but the overall lack of reach (particularly compared to a two-handed "sword" inset with obsidian flakes along both edges) wouldn't help much either.

Hey Karl -- nice to see you here!
*By odd coincidence, just last week I came across a secondary source making reference to Aztec helmets, describing them as "made of wood or paper" [my emphasis]. I just added the passage to my notes, Life of the Aztecs in Ancient Mexico 1987, s.v. "Costume":
http://www.forensicfashion.com/1487AztecWarrior.html
I wish it had given a source for this statement; all other discussions of Aztec helmets describe them as wooden.

* Other knight-types historically have used knives and daggers for close-range fighting to stab between joints in armor, so it's not unreasonable to think Aztec knights might have had their own. But with affirmative evidence we should err on the side of skepticism.

* PS: I think it's my masks the girls like, not me. Out of costume, I can't get the time of day... :confused:

Sander,
By all accounts the Aztec army in the 15th century was a large and highly organized force with tactical differentiation, which engaged in regular battles and sieges with troop numbers in the thousands. The knights of the kind I'm trying to reconstruct with my costume would have been the heavy infantry, supported by skirmishers, light infantry, and missle troops. You might want to consult Hassig (1998) for a book length study, or Pohl ill. Hook (2001) Aztec Warrior and
Pohl ill. McBride (1991) for quick overviews.

References:
http://www.forensicfashion.com/ReferencesInPrintEnglishH.html
http://www.forensicfashion.com/ReferencesInPrintEnglishL.html
http://www.forensicfashion.com/ReferencesInPrintEnglishP.html

More posing with Conquestador vs Aztec warrior please!
-I love it! :D

Thanks for the heads up on the paper reference!

If need be, I can contact the author or his publisher and try and get an answer firsthand.

Thanx Ruel, I honestly had no idea! Even sieges! That surely indicates a culture with a militairy systhem that knows what they were doing. I must admit my knowledge of south America is very limited. How did Spain with limited supplys and troops won their territory for themselves?

Something to keep in mind that gunpowder was very limited on many of the expeditions during the fist half of the 16th century. . The bulk of the missile troops were crossbowmen. I often think the physical effect gets overdone. Much of it initially was likely psychological.


RPM

Among all the complex reasons the Spaniards won, the most important must certainly have been disease. According to Diamond 2009 p200, smallpox from Cuba killed half of the Aztec population, including the last emperor, during the Spanish invasion. See also Innes 1969; Wood 2000.

Despite these disadvantages, the Aztecs still held out for nearly half a year against the Spanish-Tlaxcalan siege, which has been claimed as the longest continuous battle in history (I can't remember the source just now). All things considered, I think they accounted themselves well against impossible odds.

References:
http://www.forensicfashion.com/ReferencesInPrintEnglishD.html
http://www.forensicfashion.com/ReferencesInPrintEnglishI.html
http://www.forensicfashion.com/ReferencesInPrintEnglishW.html

Ruel,

A very good point. I was reading an account by some one who had been on Cortez's second expedition and the editor has some estimates of how sickness brought by the Europeans really devastated the indigenous populations. He even included some clues that the Spanish could see these illnesses at work.

The text I use for my World History class states that the Aztec Empire may have had as many as 25 million people and by the third quarter of the 16th century had as few as 2 million people(Peter Stearns, World History in Brief). Cohen believes the population was about 20 million and dropped to 1.6 million (Cohn, Mark. Health and Rise of Civilization. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989). Of course there are people who argue that the death toll is much lower but it seems a large number of scholars agree that the Aztec population suffered some 60-90% within the first sixty or seventy years of Spanish interaction.

Johan,

We actually know more or less how much powder Cortez has a much of his inventories for men and equipment survive. He might not have had just a handful but these soldiers must have been very sparing in the use of gunpowder for the small quantities they had on hand. Even with corned powder you need a fairly high powder to ball weight ratio for cannons. In my notes I have some 30 crossbowmen and 12 arquebusiers for his last expedition, though this is of 530 soldiers and may simply be to reinforce other previous forces he had left in New Spain.

RPM

Thanks for those references Randall -- I'll look them up. Ever since reading Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel and Crosby's Ecological Imperialism, I've been fascinated with the biological/epidemiological dimension of history. I also feel those works utterly destroy arguments like those of Gavin Menzies' 1421 which claim a major pre-European contact event from China (or elsewhere). If those events happened, why weren't there similar die-offs? I imagine that must frustrate you as a history professional as well.

References:
http://www.forensicfashion.com/ReferencesInPrintEnglishC.html
http://www.forensicfashion.com/ReferencesInPrintEnglishM.html