Italian Wars
Various Spanish and Italian soldiers who participated in the Italian Wars emigrated to the Americas and turned into conquistadors there. Experience in the Italian Wars was a decisive factor when organizing squadrons of conquistadors in the Americas. However chronicler Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés reacted against Spanish conquistadors who boasted a background in the Italian Wars, writing that any veteran in the Americas must have "failed to become rich, and if he was once rich, he must have gambled the riches away or [somehow] lost them". Fernández de Oviedo also claimed the Italian Wars were fought in more comfortable conditions than conflicts in the Americas. Francisco Sebastián in Hernando de Sotos expedition through southwestern North America, was a veteran from the Italian Wars. He noted that conditions of warfare in America were harsher than in Italy because no plunder of value could be obtained from "naked" Indians with bow and arrows.