From Conquest

This book tells how a small party of well-led adventurers fought against a large static monarchy. It is also a study of a clash between two empires. Both were imaginative and inventive. Though different, they had some things in common: they held many things sacred, they had conquered others, they loved ceremonial. Both were by most standards cruel, but cultivated. Both intermittently dreamed of conquering what they thought of as "the world". Both were possessed of powerful beliefs which their leaders looked on as complete explanations of human life.

Thomas, Hugh. Conquest: Montezuma, Cortés, and the Fall of Old Mexico. New York: Simon & Shuster, 1993, xi.

That's the opening paragraph from Hugh Thomas's book on the conquest of Mexico. It pretty much sums up succinctly exactly why I find the subject of those wars so fascinating. A few years ago I read the accounts of the conquistadors and some other Hugh Thomas books. I plan on reading this one soon. After, of course, In God's Path: The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire. 

I guess I like empire.