Horses were, he suggests, the late-medieval equivalent of jeeps and Sherman tanks. We should not, however, exaggerate their importance. The Spanish had a very small number—initially sixteen in Cortés’ invasion and sixty-eight in Pizarro’s—and these would have provided little or no benefit in the most decisive of the conquistadors’ campaigns, such as the three-month siege of Tenochtitlan in 1521 or against the guerrilla tactics used in the 1536 Inca rebellion.
