Why do the Spanish always seem to loose?

[Jib]

As I read more about the Buccaneer era it seems that the Spanish always loose in every encounter. They can out number the Buccaneers or be better defended yet they seem to be defeated. Why? The Empire was the strongest on the planet for a long time.

[Raphael Misson]

I believe in part it was because their ships were not designed for speed, shallows or quick movement (turning and so forth). I also seem to recall that they were not nearly as well manned as the Buccaneers, nor nearly as good at fighting. It could even be psychological - they may had less incentive to fight. (This is pure supposition on my part.)

However, it may also be that you're only reading accounts written by the successful buccaneers or people who traveled with them. The Spanish managed to successfully transport a lot of wealth from the Caribbean to Spain.

[Ransom]

I don't know if it has any bearing on the Buccaneers winning, but I've read that the Spanish cannons were notoriously bad, and had a tendency to blow up while being fired. It was rumored that an unscrupulous English exchequer was secretly selling English cannons to the Spanish before the armada was assembled (wish I could remember the book I read that in, but it's been awhile). If the cannons were still being badly cast, might make a gunner a little...gun shy?

[Quartermaster James]

Too loose?

Because they're Spanish!

No! Wait! Wasn't Too loose that French feller?

[Hawkyns]

Tactics and attitude, for the most part. They were very good at subduing what ammounted to a stone age people. Their armour, firearms and horses made them appear as gods to the natives, but once the natives figured things out, the situation changed. And as far as fighting other Europeans, the Spanish were a generation behind. Their rigid hierarchy of church and nobility discouraged independant thought and initiative. The middle class, which was providing the basis for the new armies of Europe was sadly lacking in Spain. Their firearms were behind the times, and where the rest of Europe was abandoning the pike and sword for the musket, the Spaniards were slow to keep up. On ships, they preferred to use field artillery carriages lashed to the rail, instead of the ships carriages that the English used. That meant that they had one shot but were effectively unable to reload during sea battles. They just did not adapt well to the post rennaissance method of war. Some of this was still evident even in the Peninsula campaigns of the Napoleonic Wars.

Hawkyns

[hurricane]

There are many instances of the buccaneers embarking on failed expeditions against the Spanish. But they are merely footnotes in the stories of the buccaneers. And even some of the successful campaigns weren't all that successful because the bulk of the loot had been removed from the towns ahead of time. Even with the famed Sack of Panama, most of the wealth sailed away on a ship before the buccaneers arrived.

That said, the buccaneers were extremely brilliant tacticians. They weren't the best sailors - Morgan himself ran three ships aground. That's not surprising, because they were land soldiers, not sailors, as their later counterparts, the pirates were. While the Spanish used traditional fighting techniques, the buccaneers improvised to make up for the lesser numbers. For example in the battle for Panama, the Spanish (and I don't have me reference materials at the work desk here, so forgive me if I'm off on this), kept in their ranks with their pikemen leading. The buccaneers flanked them, which left the Spanish woefully unprepared. Even the attempt to send a stampede toward the buccaneers failed for they simply broke ranks, shot the cattle and moved on (again, may be mixing battles up here).

When the did fight ship to ship, they relied on smaller vessels and daring tactics that weren't accepted principles of battle. The famed fire ships that Morgan used or sneaking up at night on the rear quarter.

Finally, there was the smart use of marketing and PR. The mere approach of a buccaneer vessel or fleet sent villagers and their soldiers into a fright. Most of the shore batteries were poorly equipped and manned by the poorest of Spanish soldiers and officers. After all, theses outposts, such as Portobello, weren't exactly choice assignments. They were hot, miserable, insect infested and dead ends for careers. The cannons were poorly maintained and the powder and shot hard to keep in good working order in the humidity.

The buccaneers were extremely well armed, great shots and fearless -- at least enough to scare the crap out of the people they were attacking. Most people fled, including the soldiers, long before they arrived on shore.

I could go on but I have to get back to work... :)

-- Hurricane

[Honour Bright]

Arrogance?

Look at the Spanish Armada....

[Silver]

if you want to read about spainish fighting and tactics read the "conquest of Mexico" those guys where out numbered most of the time. it had to take cuning and guts to do what Cortez did. at one point he had to withdraw from engageing the aztec and launch an attack aginist other spainards coming from cuba to capture him.

[MarkG]

Tactics and attitude, for the most part. They were very good at subduing what ammounted to a stone age people. Their armour, firearms and horses made them appear as gods to the natives, but once the natives figured things out, the situation changed. And as far as fighting other Europeans, the Spanish were a generation behind. Their rigid hierarchy of church and nobility discouraged independant thought and initiative. The middle class, which was providing the basis for the new armies of Europe was sadly lacking in Spain. Their firearms were behind the times, and where the rest of Europe was abandoning the pike and sword for the musket, the Spaniards were slow to keep up. On ships, they preferred to use field artillery carriages lashed to the rail, instead of the ships carriages that the English used. That meant that they had one shot but were effectively unable to reload during sea battles. They just did not adapt well to the post rennaissance method of war. Some of this was still evident even in the Peninsula campaigns of the Napoleonic Wars.

Hawkyns

Not only did they use field carriages, they did not standardize the bore. Each cannon had its own store of balls which would be too loose or two large for the other cannons. This is a boon for archeologists who can identify shipwrecks by the mix of guns they carried.

The Armada relied on soldiers. They had a higher proportion of soldiers than sailors. On the other hand, the English had more sailors than soldier. The Spanish planned on boarding. The English literally sailed rings around the Spanish and relied on cannons.

The Spanish militia defending Panama was poorly trained and deserted. They also placed too much faith in a herd of cattle - the planned on disrupting Morgan's men with a stampede. It didn't work.

On the other hand, to the English and Americans, the Spanish were the boogey men, a lot like the Nazis in modern fiction - someone evil who had to lose. There is an entire body of folklore known as the Black Legend about Spanish evils. This includes the Spanish Inquisition (never as bad as you hear) and abuses against Indians (no worse than other countries). The Back Legend was used to justify colonizing American lands that Spain claimed (the forfeited their claims by being evil) and the GAoP (they stole their gold from the Indians so it was ok to steal from them).

Mark

[Quartermaster James]

This includes the Spanish Inquisition (never as bad as you hear)

Oy vey Maria!

[CaptainSatan]

I suspect that an unsuccessful attack by pyrates would result in less paperwork (historical documents).

Edited August 20, 2009 by CaptainSatan

[blackjohn]

They were sitting at the top of the heap... they became complacent... it happened with and will continue to happen to all empires...

[Capt. Bo of the WTF co.]

Mark G and blackjohn have it nailed down. Remeber, the history you read was not written by the Spanish, but by "everyone else" after the fact. And as blackjohn points out, we ourselves (USA) are facing this same situation right now. History repeats itself and we seem to never learn from it. I have said many times that if history was used as a sea-chart, where the reefs, shoals, safe-lanes and harbors are clearly marked so that we know where to go and where not, instead of as an instruction manual for perpetual failure, the world could be an all around decent place to live by now.

Bo

[Fox]

Mark G and blackjohn have it nailed down. Remeber, the history you read was not written by the Spanish, but by "everyone else" after the fact...

I recommend The Voyage of the Armada by David Howarth for a good, readable English language account of the Armada from the Spanish documents. One of the things that struck me was the lack of arrogance: Medina Sidonia and the Duke of Parma, commanding the Armada and Spanish army respectively, both wrote to the King saying that the operation could not succeed as it was planned. Phillip II also doubted the total success of the Armada and sent orders for negotiation to Parma.

[Jib]

I seem to recall reading that the Spanish and the French treated the native poulations much better than the English and the Dutch.

I also will mention "Empire of Blue Water". While not a favortie here I found the depiction of the Spanish very interesting. They constantly lost money in Europe fighting the wars and with a broken economy. The treasure fleets were like a pusher to a herion addict. They needed more and more and more!

Do we have tales of failed Buccaneer attacks on the Spanish?

[Capt. Bo of the WTF co.]

The French were the best of the Europeans in dealing fairly with the natives, with some exceptions of course. The Spanish, after conquest, then began taking measures to protect and preserve some of the native culture in Mexico, not so much further south into the Brazilian and Argentinian areas. I am taking a graduate level course in the History of Mexico this semester. we'll be starting out @ 1500 and going from there, as pre-columbian history is not very well documented and a relatively 'new" feild of study. Anything turns up for this period that is worth repeating (in the Bucc. period), I'll post it.

Bo

[MarkG]

I seem to recall reading that the Spanish and the French treated the native poulations much better than the English and the Dutch.

I also will mention "Empire of Blue Water". While not a favortie here I found the depiction of the Spanish very interesting. They constantly lost money in Europe fighting the wars and with a broken economy. The treasure fleets were like a pusher to a herion addict. They needed more and more and more!

Do we have tales of failed Buccaneer attacks on the Spanish?

The Spanish government started started granting rights to the natives in the early 1500s. Of course the colonial government ignored them but they did make the effort.

The Spanish tended to conquer native populations and merge with them. People of native ancestry make up a large proportion of countries that are former Spanish colonies. Former English colonies have tiny native populations.

The French traded with the natives but didn't try to conquer them. The established a few cities but they spent more effort on trade. They were surprisingly well-traveled. Much of the French activity was along the Mississippi.

The English and Dutch thought that they were being more humane - they lived separate from the Indians and made no attempt to conquer them. This failed once the English started coming over in numbers and needed more land. Peaceful co-existence turned into displacement. There was still a a strong coexistence group until the massacre of 1622. After that the Virginia colonists were pretty much anti-Indian.

In New England, the English couldn't raise tobacco and the land was harder to farm so there was less population pressure. Relations were pretty good until the 1670s.

Of course, all of this is an over-simplification but you get the idea.

Mark

[blackjohn]

Also, I think the notion of the Spanish being constantly defeated is just a matter of perspective. The Spanish Empire lasted from what, about 1500 to almost 1900. A 400 year empire is pretty impressive if you ask me. Compared with that, the Pax Brittanica was just a flash in the pan. And the Pax Americana, maybe nothing more than a spark?

[Joe Pyrat]

The Spanish are the forgotten people in history as we teach it here in the US. Want an eyeopener; become a living-history volunteer at the Castillo de San Marcos or Fort Matanzas in Saint Augustine, it certainly was for me. Also you might research La Leyenda Negra (The Black Legend) which was described and the term coined by Julian Juderias in his 1914 book of that name. La Leyenda Negera may just be the most effective piece of disinformation ever concieved as it is still impacting how we view the Spanish some 300 years later. They really were/are much more than a convient victim for pirates/bucaneers/privateers/French/British/etc.

[hurricane]

I think the Aztecs and Mayans would disagree about how kind the Spanish were to them. Even now, they are reviled in some areas. I know that the people of the Abacos consider Columbus to be on a par with Hitler in terms of the genocide of the natives there. He's not the hero we all learned about in school who sailed the ocean in 1492.

Traveling to other countries (as I'm sure many of you have) you learn quickly that our version of history is so Euro- and American-centric that you wonder what the history experts were smoking. I'm sure the Romans wrote their history that way too, as did the British. And it amazes me how people in other countries have a more well rounded understanding of our history as well as their own while we are so ignorant of others.

-- Hurricane

Edited August 21, 2009 by hurricane

[Raphael Misson]

I have traveled internationally quite a bit, but I don't know that I would say that that other folks have a "far better" understanding than we do. That is to make the same mistake as saying we have a better understanding. Other folks just have a different perspective. This is why I am fond of saying that there is precious little of what we think is "truth" in things like history. The "truth" of history often depends on what works best to support your opinion.

Edited August 21, 2009 by Raphael Misson

[MarkG]

I think the Aztecs and Mayans would disagree about how kind the Spanish were to them. Even now, they are reviled in some areas. I know that the people of the Abacos consider Columbus to be on a par with Hitler in terms of the genocide of the natives there. He's not the hero we all learned about in school who sailed the ocean in 1492.

Traveling to other countries (as I'm sure many of you have) you learn quickly that our version of history is so Euro- and American-centric that you wonder what the history experts were smoking. I'm sure the Romans wrote their history that way too, as did the British. And it amazes me how people in other countries have a far better understanding of our history as well as their own while we are so ignorant of others.

-- Hurricane

But Columbus was Italian!

Actually, he was a pretty hands-off governor, preferring to leave his post and go exploring any time a tough decision needed to be made. He was relieved of his post after only a few years. The Columbus=Hitler thing comes as an offshoot of the Black Legend. Since Columbus brought the Spanish, he must be responsible for everything that the Spanish did.

Now, if you want to talk about cruel empires, let's talk about the Aztecs.

Mark

[hurricane]

Cruel is in the eye of the beholders. And actually, the Mayans had them beat - cutting the hearts out of live sacrifices is pretty cruel. But we're judging that from our own European perspective... we like to think we're must more civil, but it wasn't so long ago that we were chopping heads off with a guillotine.

Back to the subject at hand - there were many cases where the Spanish repelled the buccaneers -- I can think of a few aborted raids on Cuba and Morgan's first battle was a failure as the buccaneers failed to take Santo Domingo. Mansvelt attempted to take Cartago in Costa Rica but was turned back by superior Spanish forces.

-- Hurricane

[Hawkyns]

The Spanish are the forgotten people in history as we teach it here in the US. Want an eyeopener; become a living-history volunteer at the Castillo de San Marcos or Fort Matanzas in Saint Augustine, it certainly was for me. Also you might research La Leyenda Negra (The Black Legend) which was described and the term coined by Julian Juderias in his 1914 book of that name. La Leyenda Negera may just be the most effective piece of disinformation ever concieved as it is still impacting how we view the Spanish some 300 years later. They really were/are much more than a convient victim for pirates/bucaneers/privateers/French/British/etc.

Don't know about this black legend. After doing some research on it, it seems like a PR campaign designed to excuse the Catholic church and its Spanish client state. Everything I read hailed back to trying to excuse the Inquisition, put a good light on the conversion of the indiginous peoples, and shift the blame to the rest of Protestant Europe.

Hawkyns

[Guest]

Hey... we are all forgetting the religious bit.....

If you were a Protestant...... Englishman' Scottish, or Dutch,,,, (I can't quite figure out why they were so nasty to the French who were Catholic though....)

You got to go the the Inquisition and be tried as a Heretic first... If you survived that... then you were tried as a Pyrate....

Nasty Religious War ......

OH... but that isn't PC... so we should never talk about that sorta thing...........

<But God is on my side... so I don't have to worry about that anyway....>