The Power of Burning Your Ships: How Harnan Cortes Led the Spanish Conquistadors to Victory In Mexico

‘’Never place all your eggs in one basket’’ and ‘’always ensure to have a back-up plan or plan B to fall to should your original plan not come through’’ are some of the age-long wisdoms you may have likely heard of. However, these perspectives to life, like many others, have their contrariant worldviews some of which have been attributed to some past heroes and heroines who have applied them to break limits during their heydays.

The contrariant sayings such as ‘”Burn your ships’’, “face your plights head on’’, “win or die trying’’, “no retreat no surrender’’ etc are being used to signify the great fits one is capable of achieving through a unidirectional engagement of the mind. It is often thought that locking on a single course inspires focus and gives room for intrinsically motivated intensity which are important ingredients of victory.

The meaning and beauty of this philosophy can be traced back to an event that happened more than five hundred years ago when the Spanish conquistador led by General Hernan Cortes went into war with the Mexicans.

In 1519, Hernan Cortes and his men had to face a significantly larger army. Cortes had to think of a strategy that would help him have victory on the battlefield despite being outnumbered by the Mexicans. He then loaded his soldiers into boats, sailed to the enemy’s country, unloaded soldiers and equipment and gave the order to burn the ships that had carried them.

Motivating his men before the battle, Corte said, pointing at the burning ships, ‘’you see the boats going up in smoke. That means that we cannot leave these shores alive unless we win! We now have no choice – we win or we perish.’’

Hernan Cortes and his men left the battlefield victorious. And Harnan Cortes became the first man in 600 years to successfully conquer Mexico.