Conquest of the Azores the rapid Spanish conquest of the Azores, facilitating the integration of the Kingdom of Portugal and its colonial possessions into the Spanish Empire. Following a day's fighting, forces of the island of Terceira were defeated by Spanish Tercios, using the strategies and tactics of Álvaro de Bazán. A few days later, a contingent of Spanish-Portuguese troops landed on the island of Faial, where they defeated and captured a garrison of five French and one English companies (700 men in total). At the end of the campaign, approximately 9,000 Portuguese, French, Italian and English were captured by the Spanish. The French,
History of the Azores fact in Christopher Columbus' notes, and it was one reason why Columbus presumed that India was on the other side of the ocean. In "A History of the Azores", written by Thomas Ashe in 1813, the author talks of the discovery of the islands by Joshua Vander Berg of Bruges, who landed there during a storm on his way to Lisbon. This claim is generally discredited among academics today. As were local stories of a mysterious equestrian statue and coins with Carthaginian writing that were purportedly discovered on island of Corvo, or the strange inscriptions found along the coast of