This is hopefully the first in a series in which I take a historical look at the unique units in the real-time strategy game Age of Empires II. In this game the different civilizations share mostly the same units, with different civilization bonuses and varied accessibility to certain techs and upgrades making them unique. Each civilization can build a castle, where it trains a unique unit (some get secondary unique units in other buildings). These units are a big part of what makes each playable civilization unique. I will attempt to go in alphabetical order of the civilizations included in the HD edition and explain the background of each unique unit. I will also include a comparison to the in-game and real-life units.
First up is the Aztecs. They get the Jaguar Warrior. It is an infantry unit with an attack bonus against other infantry. The Mesoamerican civilizations in Age of Empires II also get the Eagle Warrior, which was in reality another warrior class equal to the jaguar warriors. I will get back to the in-game unit once I’ve gone through their history.
The Jaguar Warriors were called Cuauhocelotl in the Nahuatl language. For easer typing I will simply call them jaguar warriors. The main primary source comes from a Spanish writer. Bernardino de Sahagun, a Franciscan friar, arrived in Mexico a few years after the fall of Tenochtitlan the Aztec capital, and the assumed extinction of the jaguar warriors. He took great interest in the natives’ culture and, using native sources and artists, wrote the Florentine Codex, a history and ethnography of the Aztecs in their own Nahuatl language. Along with the later Mendoza Codex, this source is referred to by all historians of the Aztecs. I have looked at several scholarly works on the Aztecs (as well as a couple heavily illustrated histories) and actually found some dispute over a couple widely accepted facts about the jaguar warriors and their wars.
 |
| Image of a Jaguar Warrior from the Florentine Codex |
The Mexica
The Mexica, more popularly known as the Aztecs, entered the Valley of Mexico in the middle of the 13th Century. This region consisted of city-states, and the newly come nomads had to find a place to settle down. They were not the feared warriors they would become, and found themselves driven off their attempted homes by more powerful city-states. In 1325 the Tepanecs gave them permission to settle on an island in Lake Texcoco. It was here that they saw an eagle perch on a cactus, holding a snake (or colored bird depending on the story). The eagle was the animal of Huitzilopochtli, the sun god. The Mexica believed that his foretold that this was their true home, and from there they would harvest enemy warriors and their hearts, represented by the eagle’s prey, for Huitzilopochtli. This image has been immortalized on Mexico's national flag.
In the early half of 15th Century, the Mexica had formed the Aztec Triple Alliance. This was a union of three city-states: Texcoco, Tlacopan, and Tenochtitlan. Tenochtitlan was the center of the military and it was here that jaguar warriors were bred and trained. The Aztecs conquered much of what is not central Mexico. They were constantly at war, though much of the warfare was highly limited within the (some say ostensibly) religious Flower Wars. The Aztecs were actually a recent power, with most of their conquests taking place less than a hundred years before Hernan Cortes and his Spanish military adventurers arrived. Who knows what course Mesoamerica may have taken if the Aztecs' process of conquest was not so unexpectedly halted.
 |
| Map detailing the stages of Aztec expansion. Note the pockets of unconquered territory. (https://www.historyonthenet.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/800px-Aztecexpansion.png) |
The Path of the
Jaguar
When
a boy was born, his mother would hold him up and give a ritual speech, laying
out his life’s mission. “Precious little jewel, here you are come into this
world. War is your task. You shall give drink, nourishment and food to the sun
and to the earth. There within the battlefield your name will be inscribed.” Thus
from birth Aztecs boys were prepared for a life in the military. Their chores,
consisting of carrying heavy objects, were designed to build up their muscles.
Their food intake was carefully rationed. Any laziness, or culturally perceived
laziness, was met with brutal punishments. The simplest were beating. The giver
of the punishment might also sting the child’s skin with agave thorns, or roast
chili peppers in his face so that his face burned and his eyes watered.
At
age 15 the youth would have to choose his career path. Regardless of what he
chose, he would be expected to participate in military at some point. Even the
more scholarly path of the priest expected its adherents to go into battle and
seek out captives for sacrifice. For commoners, the most prestigious entryway
into the military was the telpochcalli, a school run by experienced warriors.
According to Bernardo de Sahagun, this was where the Aztecs produced soldiers
who would join the ranks of the eagle or jaguar warriors. Life at the school
was tough. In addition to the physical beatings, the students were denied many
pleasures. One exception was singing and dancing. This was encouraged to build
camaraderie and hone their coordination as a unit. At festivals they would be
allowed to conduct mock battles, as well as play the Mesoamerican rubber ball game that was highly popular in Mesoamerica (and still played today, albeit with some chances, as ulama). These honed
their skills and rewarded the victors with oft denied pleasures such as food.
Once a youth was ready for war, he went to the battlefield as a porter for a more experienced student. The first few captures were very important. The first capture gave a soldier the rank of tlamani. Those with two became cuextecatl (gaining a conical hat). Three captures made on a papalotl, a butterfly warrior. Once a soldier had captured four enemy troops, he gained the right to wear the uniform of the jaguar or eagle warrior. Ascension into this warrior rank also gained him entry into the nobility, though he would still be placed lower than the noble-born in social status. Further captures allowed them to deck out these uniforms. A warrior who continued to rise in experience and glory would eventually choose between two final paths. One was to become a major officer in the army. The other was to join the cuahchique, an elite regiment devoted to eternal combat. Some compare this regiment to the Viking berserkers. These were the highest achievements a common-born Aztec could attain. Those born into hereditary nobility could rise even higher into the Otomil or Shorn One rank.
 |
| This Osprey Military Publishing illustration shows a jaguar warrior in blue-purple hues. |
Spirit of the
Jaguar
Among
the jaguar warriors’ weapons was the machuahuitl. This was a wooden sword with
a sawed edge. The cutting edge was linked with obsidian blades and bitumen
adhesive. The tepoztopilli was their equivalent of the pole-axe and carved and
fitted like the sword. The swords tended to go to veteran warriors, as it was
more dangerous to fight in the front line. Those with the long-armed
tepoztopilli would stand behind them and thrust over the shoulders of the front
rank. If any used a ranged weapon, it would be a bow. Slings were commonplace
among peasant soldiers, but bows required more training. Because weaponry had
grown more deadly over the 14th and 15th Centuries, many
warriors carried large circular shields called chimalli.
 |
| An Aztec sword (https://www.ancient-origins.net/sites/default/files/field/image/Obsidian-sword.jpg) |
Jaguar warriors dressed to channel the spirit of their titular animal. They wore hard, wooden helmets fashioned like the head of the titular animal. Their faces showed in the “mouth” of the helmet. On their bodies they were quilted cotton armor. This could not deflect the blow of a weapon and would not even stop a projectile, but it did a good job of absorbing the impact and minimizing the chance of a serious wound. Over this cotton armor was the ehuatl, a tunic that was usually heavily ornamented with dyes and/or feathers and pelts. Uniforms did not indicate unit, but the level of experience and honor of each warrior. Thus the experienced, heavily decorated elite warriors could identify newer soldiers that they had to look out for and train.
There is some dispute as to the material of the jaguar warrior uniforms. The popular belief is that they actually wore jaguar skins. The evidence for this is the large tributes of jaguar pelts to the emperor. Illustrations in the Codex Mendoza show jaguar warriors sporting different colors. Some believe they had access to dyes, while others, seeing no firm evidence of this decorative substance, believe they in fact constructed their uniforms out of feathers. These feathers would have been laid out to emulate the pattern of a jaguar pelt. Other historians speculate that they wore patterned cotton uniforms. With these alternate explanations, the tributed jaguar pelts would have been used to decorate the homes and thrones of the Aztec royal family and certain nobles. Regardless, they emulated the look of the most revered predator of Mesoamerica.
Religious
Warriors
The god of the jaguar warriors was naturally Tezcatlipoca. Tezcatlipoca was one of the most powerful deities of the Aztec pantheon. Among his areas of control were the night, hurricanes, various forms of magic and sorcery, obsidian, and various chaotic elements such as temptation and discord. Jaguar warriors were most concerned with three specific areas of his rule: war, jaguars (which he would morph into), and sacrifice. He received a large share of the human sacrifices. The other favored deity of the warriors was Huitzilopochtli, the war god. This deity was also the sun, so human sacrifices were needed to feed him or else the world would face eternal night. Eagle warriors, an equal rank to the jaguar warriors, were devoted to this particular god.
While
horrific, human sacrifice by the Aztecs did not involve shrieking captives. The
captured warriors understood they were being slaughtered
to honor the gods (or at least put up a pretense of doing so). In fact the captor would refer to his captive as “my beloved
son” and vice versa “my beloved father.” After the captive had his heart ripped
out by the priests, he would become a ritual meal. One of his thighs would go
to the Emperor. The other went to his captor, who kept it as a trophy in his
house. The scale of human sacrifice is also said to be highly exaggerated, even
for such a violent and warlike society. Spanish conquistadors are
responsible for the exaggeration, claiming that up to tens of thousands of people a year had
their hearts torn out on Aztec pyramids. One source even claimed over 80,000 over 4 days! This of course would legitimize their conquest of a cruel and barbaric people (and give them the ostensible mission of Christianizing the natives; thus the conquistadors too justified their violent streak with religion). The overcounting of heart-tearing ceremonies should not be used to downplay the various
forms of blood and human sacrifice many of which the jaguar warriors did not
take part in. Actually the heart-ripping of warriors was not the worst, with archaeological
evidence supporting the beating and killing of infants for the rain god Tlaloc.
One
ritual in which jaguar warriors directly participated was the gladiatorial
execution of high-ranking prisoners. To signify a victory over an enemy, the
Aztecs would give one or more of their leaders a weapon (sometimes not even a
real one), but nothing else. Fully armed and outfitted soldiers would then take
him on one by one until he was killed. This was of course no fair match. The
victim was expected to keep his honor by fighting, but symbolize his people’s
defeat by dying quickly. Sometimes, however, one was able to take out one or
more of the Aztec warriors. The most famous example was the Tlaxcallan captain
Tlahuicol. He killed the first warrior to come at him. He continued to survive,
killing at least eight jaguar and eagle warriors. The Aztecs were so impressed
that they no offered to spare him and make him a commander in their army. He
replied that this would be an insult. Instead he would willingly undergo
sacrifice to Huitzilopochtli.
 |
| The gladiatorial sacrifice of Tlahuicol as depicted on Osprey Publishing's Aztec Warrior. |
The
jaguar warriors participated primarily in the Flower Wars. The Flower Wars are
often presented not as outright schemes of conquest, but as ritualistic
affairs. The competing sides would literally arrange a time and place for
battle with equal numbers of troops on both sides. The end goal was to honor the
gods through warfare and the acquisition of captives, who would be sacrificed
to one of several major Aztec deities. The nature of these Flower Wars has also
been used to explain the failure of the Aztecs to advance their weaponry (they
fought in hopes of making captives), setting them up for cataclysmic defeat at the
hands of the Spanish conquistadors.
 |
| A depiction of a Flower War |
A jaguar warrior would try to stun rather thank kill his opponent. If he was able to do this, he would quickly hogtie his prisoner and drag him to a line of other prisoners. The captive would be placed in a wooden yoke. After the battle was over, the Aztecs would march their line of prisoners to Tenochtitlan. These wars could also results in tributes to the victors, providing resources for the Aztec Empire.
In his book on Aztecs in the Peoples of America book series, the historian Michael Smith expresses the belief that the image of the Flower Wars was a propagandized cover for the Aztecs’ failure to conquer several neighbors, foremost among them Tlaxcalla. When the Spanish asked why they did not completely conquer this region that literally sat in the middle of their empire, they said they “could easily do so; but then there would remain nowhere for the young men to train, except far from here; and, also, we wanted to always people to sacrifice to our gods.”
Ross
Hassig’s earlier work, Aztec Warfare,
provides a middle ground between these two views. He argues that the Flower
Wars were ritualistic in nature, but also provided a long-term plan of conquest
for the Aztecs. The Aztecs were able to minimize the scale of their wars with
certain foes, allowing them to devote resources elsewhere. While the numbers of
men on both sides in a given battle would be equal, the Aztecs boasted larger
reserves of manpower. Thus each battle would wear down their enemies’ reserves
until they no longer were able to effectively block a full-fledged invasion.
Then the Aztecs would conduct a complete war to finish off their weakened
enemy. In short, the Flower Wars were a pragmatic and somewhat scheming way to
wage battle, upheld by notions of honor and religion.
The Tlaxcallans certainly felt that they were in a serious war. When the Spanish arrived in 1519, they told the newcomers that their foreign trade had been cut off and constantly harassed, but boasted that they had yet to be conquered. The ensuing Spanish-Tlaxcalla alliance was a severe test of the Aztecs’ system of warfare. Now they not only had to wage a full war against Tlaxcalla, but also against an alien foe that wore advanced armor, wielded iron weapons, and rode strange deer. This is likely why Emperor Moctezuma II acted accommodating toward Hernan Cortes and his conquistadores, hoping to avoid such a war. It still came and in 1521 the Aztec Empire was shattered and conquered itself. The Jaguar warriors and other esteemed warrior groups had built up a fearsome reputation, but they could not anticipate the advanced weaponry of the Spanish.
Game vs. History
The
Jaguar Warrior unit in AOEII wields a
club. Clubs were another form of melee weapon they did carry in real life, and
in fact the weapon was gifted to them after the first capture of an enemy
warrior. The shield also appears to be accurate. The outfit is less accurate. In
the game the Jaguar Warrior wears a jaguar pelt. The use of an actual pelt may
or may not have been true, but the warrior in the game is also showing off his
body from the front. As discussed earlier, jaguar warriors wore much more
clothing for protection. In the game the Jaguar Warriors excel against enemy
infantry, but have difficulty with archers and heavy cavalry. This does reflect
their weaknesses against the Spanish firearms and horses. Spanish cavalry must
have been particularly frightening to face off against. Mesoamericans, and in
fact all of the Indian peoples, had no previous context for the image of men riding large beasts into
battle. Naturally, to provide a balanced experience, the game gives the Aztecs
a much better chance against European and Asian civilizations.
Sources
“The Aztec
Warrior: Rank and Warrior Societies.” https://www.historyonthenet.com/aztec-warriors-rank-and-warrior-societies.
Carrasco, David.
City of Sacrifice: The Aztec Empire and
the Role of Violence in Civilization. Boston: Beacon Press, 1999.
Hassig, Ross. Aztec Warfare: Imperial Expansion and
Political Control. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988.
Mursell, Ian. “Mexica
Jaguar Warriors Did Not Wear Jaguar Skins.” https://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/aztefacts/jaguar-warriors-did-not-wear-real-jaguar-skins.
Pohl,
John M. Aztec Warrior: AD 1325-1521.
Oxford: Osprey, 2001.
Smith,
Michael Ernst. The Aztecs. Malden:
Blackwell Publishers, 1998.
Somervill,
Barbara A. Empire of the Aztecs. New
York: Chelsea House, 2009.
No comments:
Post a Comment