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Notes -
I always love a good conquistador story - in some ways they're the closest thing we have to experiencing actual alien invasions and both Mexico and Peru saw stories that are better than most fiction. I would advise everyone to read the Peru one for sure - literally a few hundred men with a few horses soloed tens of thousands of soldiers with no native support - it's fairly wild.
Back to your point, I think this is where the clinical definitions of PTSD come in that I linked to before. PTSD is not being afraid, or guilty, or experiencing agitation seeing your comrades get sacrificed one by one by people you cannot stop and then going to fight them anyway. I am not a psychiatrist, but as I understand it PTSD goes much much beyond that, it's post for a start, and your Spaniard exhibits fear during a multi day battle in the Mexican capital that he masters and fights on to victory in the campaign. He meets critera A - experiencing trauma, but that's kind of a baseline of being in combat. However, the others are clearly not met, remembering an old fear during a multi day battle as a soldier is extremely far from PTSD and I encourage the reader to run down the list for themselves to see the stark differences. I see no "Persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the traumatic event(s), beginning after the traumatic event(s) occurred" exactly the opposite there, he's discussing it and saying I was afraid, it was correct to be, but we overcame. Also, no "Negative alterations in cognitions and mood associated with the traumatic event(s), beginning or worsening after the traumatic event(s) occurred, as evidenced by two (or more) of the following:" for an extended period afterwards, and the same for all the other markers - this is someone overcoming an understandable fear in the immediate term, not PTSD.
I would also caution you to read Bret's admonition again about defining the strength of evidence you would need prior to your search - you are going to see historical evidence of people following battles, near misses, sieges etc. being on edge and jumpy, especially if the danger/war is still present. That is not PTSD, it is being a sensible human, unless it goes into the clinical territory above. Civilians following a siege would be prime material for PTSD, but as far as I understand we do not see it nearly as much as in modern times (Malta being a classic too where it is absent), and the silence is very very interesting. Certainly SOME must have met the threshold for PTSD, the Siege of Vienna would be a prime candidate to cause it and I would assume that rates climbed well before WW1, but there is still a hole where the evidence would be if it was in any way common.
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