[Brent Coomes]

I'm researching on what the normal Spanish Solider would have on them during the invasion of the Philippines. I know that it would most likely be a cut and thrust type swords.

But wich ones?

The reason I'm looking in to this is to narrow my searching down. I'm working on some of the fine points on wich the Spanish Swordsmanship had influenced the Filipino Martial Arts (FMA). So fare I've only been able to find some material on the Spanish Rapier School but even with this I have seen some influence. If any one can help or point me the right direction thank you.


Brent

[Gordon Frye]

Hi Brent, hopefully I can send you in the right directions to properly answer your questions. I am pretty much ignorant of the specifics of the Spanish occupation of the Philippines, but since it was a part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain (modern Mexico) I shall leap to various conclusions based upon the assumption that there was a significant amount of overlap in arms and equipment between them.

First, I recommend you check out these guys: http://mywebpages.comcast.net/calderon/ They have put together a nice bit of historical research on the mid-16th Century Spanish Explorers. Although they're interested in Hernando de Soto's expedition in particular, and although he was based out of Havana, Cuba rather than Mexico, there are again some overlaps that are instructive. There is some nice information on Mexican-made maille that may be of help to you as well. I suspect that much of the early equipment used in the South Pacific by Spaniards was of Mexican manufacture if it were not European in origin.

I would also suggest digging into your local college library and getting on inter-library loan (if they don't have it on the shelf... they probably don't) George Hammond and Agapito Rey's "Don Juan de Onate, Conquistadore of New Mexico". There are muster lists of the arms and equipment, down to the tents, books and animals that the colonists brought with them for the expedition of 1598 which was the foundation of the present State of New Mexico. Another book in the same series (all by University of New Mexico Press, 1940, BTW) by the same authors is "The Coronado Expediton, 1540-42" which also shows the muster rolls of the participants and lists their goods and arms.(One of the great things about studying Spaniards of this period is that they were absolutely manic about recording stuff, and everything that they did was notarized and signed, and almost ALL of it is still sitting in the Archives of the Indies in Salamanca right now, including the information you seek on the Philippines. It's just waiting for some archivist to dig it out and write a few hundred books on it all!)

For a broad overview with some interesting specifics, another good place to get an idea of what the Spaniards were doing in the New World is in Harold Peterson's "Arms and Armour in Colonial America", 1959, and it's available as we speak by Dover in reprint. I highly recommend it. It goes into some detail as to the arms and equipment used in Florida (part of the Governorship of Cuba) as well as using the information from the above books in slightly more accessable form on both the Coronado and Onate expeditions from the Viceroyalty of New Spain. It's well worth the few dollars it costs, as it also delves into some of the background information on Spanish arms and armour from the Reconquista of the late 15th Century.

You might also check out the Osprey Men-at -Arms series on The Conquistadores and The Conquest of Mexico. Although there are some minor flaws which I take issue with, overall they're a good source for new hands.

All of this of course doesn't give you any specifics about the Spanish Conquest of the Philippines, but hopefully it will give you somewhere to start, and give you a working knowledge of what was available to the common soldiers of the era in the Viceroyalty of New Spain.

Good luck!

Gordon