To secure their motivation, Cortés sank his ships to make sure they had no option but to succeed or die. Without the escape hatch of going back to Spain on the boats, the soldiers’ best option was to fight with Cortés. Translation errors led some to believe he burned the boats, but now we know he just had them damaged to the point of sinking. Nonetheless, burn the boats lives on as a mental model for crossing the point of no return. (Sometimes people also say crossing the Rubicon, referencing Julius Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon River with his troops in 49 B.C., deliberately breaking Roman
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