Cortes

[Franconicus]

How did Cortés manage to conquer the Aztecian empire with just a handful men. Aztecs were extremly militaristic and agressive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moctezuma_II

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Answer:

Tehcnological Shock, Divide and Conquer Tactics, Decap Strike.

1) Aztec technology had little hard metal, no steel, and no gunpowder. Cortes' men were armed with firearms, wore steel defensive gear, had steel blades, and rode horses into battle (speed despite armor, shock, power). The shock of a weapon that killed at a distance, almost invisibly was palpable. Moreover, even the bravest Aztec warrior would have found it difficult to penetrate Spanish armor with an arrow or obsidian blade -- only in numbers would they have an advantage. The shock effect in battle has long been realized as the best counter to numbers, and Cortes used it well.

2) Cortes had LOTS of allies against the Aztecs, in the form of subjagated peoples who were willing to rise up against them. Without these warriors to augment his own conquistadores, he would not have prevailed.

3) He took out (captured) Monctezuma early in the effort. Such a decap strike against a centralized-power government is always effective at diminishing the coordination and focus of enemy efforts. The effort was, of course, a bit underhanded -- but it left Cortes with less coordinated foe.


Seamus

[SwordsMaster]

Yup, Seamus is mostly right. And to add to that was the fact that Cortes' men had no choice but to win which added significantly to their bravery.

Obviously Cortes allied with the native tribes, he and his 500 conquistadores would not be able to stand against the 10000+ aztek army, but they were indeed a force every local chief wanted in his service and Cortes played with that turning them on each other and recruiting indians to bulk up his own ranks. Never forget that Cortes was son of a shepard, so he knew how to deal fear and awe the lower classes.

[Kraxis]

Don't forget that he actually got a few 'refills' from Havanna after his first somewhat disasterous trek to Tenochtitlan. So many in fact that the Havannan governor went after him and had to fight a battle with him. Havanna was pretty much depopulated by this.

So we are talking about a couple thousand in all, at the least. But if we look at the time where he had the most men I think it was 1600 which declined rapidly to the legendary 500. It seems that it more or less always settled around 500.

Btw, while the Aztecs did use those macana swords (obsedian swords), and that they were less than useless against armour (broke into pieces upon impact), it was the least used weapon. The two most used weapons were the sling with baked clay bullets (big ones too) and the basic heavy club. The first was greatly feared by the conquistadors, and with good reason while the other could seriously injure even through the breastplates. Of course the club had little chance against a sword, but it was handier and less likely to cause harm to yourself in constricted environments. As was proven when they made contact with one of the subject tribes and was ambushed by them until both realized they could use each other.

Lastly, don't underestimate the impact smallpocks had on the Aztecs. They were quite weakened by it, and in time they would almost die out along with most other locals. Imagine half your army is either ill or dying from some unknown ailment, try to guess howthe rest of the army would feel. "Nah... We have the gods on our side, this is just a passing problem." Morale would be basement low.

[nokhor]

the morale factor was one of the biggest. the biggest animal the aztecs had probably seen was a puma, and then these guys come in riding these gigantic beasts called 'horses' that are twice as big. and these aren't nice little domestic horses either but warhorses that are bred to be aggressive and huge. and the warriors are invulnerable and have magic wands that make the sound of thunder. and all they have to do is look in your direction and point their wands and you die. not to mention cannon.

and the apocalyptical imagery must have been potent too. imagine if tomorrow spaceships appear over the 20 biggest cities in the globe. our weapons including nuclear prove useless, and out of one of them come what appears to be angels, and a human who claims to be jesus and is about to commence the second coming. and can do various miracles to prove it. there will be massive social chaos caused by the adherents and opponents of the relatively few space invaders.

and of course the diseases brought from the old world arrived months to years before an organinzed invasion by conquistadors.

[Steppe Merc]

He came dancin' across the water, with his galleons and guns...

[GoreBag]

The invasion itself was covered pretty well by Seamus, but left out the point that Cortes was eventually invited to see Montezuma (a forced invitation, I think, but I'm not sure) and Cortes killed him, proclaiming his own Montezuma's place. The rest of the campaign was mostly putting down rebellions and a few other tribes.

[Brutus]

I'd advise you to read Bernal Diaz del Castillo's Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España, translated into English as The conquest of New Spain (available at Amazon, I believe... I myself have the Dutch version). He was one of Cortés' original soldiers and his account is quite interesting.

[Franconicus]

I do not think that the weapons of the Spanish were decisive. They had guns but no Winchesters or Colts like the US Americans. The guns of the Spanish had a similar range as the arrows and a lower fire rate. The Spanish had cannons and horses and they were terrible but the number was quite low.

I think there were several factors:

1. The strangeness of the Spanish; they just did not fit in the pattern of the Aztecas. So they did not know what to do.
2. The Aztec Empire was strong but not stable. There were many half independant cities paying tribute to Technotitlan. They were willing to support the Spanish.
3. The leader of the Aztecs was totally confused. Although he seemed to be an agressive militarist he did not know what to do with the Spanish. He hesitated when he could have killed them easily.
4. Smallpocks! Kraxis is right, again. There were three epidemics that killed 75% of the population of the mesoamerican population. The first in 1520-1521 broke the resistance of the Aztecs.
5. The change of leaders. The society and army was focused on the leader. Montezuma did not act until he died (propably killed by his own people). The next one died soon after that in 1520 (I guess the pocks).

[econ21]

I read that the Aztecs fought in a different way from that which evolved in Europe. They typically aimed to capture, not kill. My impression is that it was almost like traditional tribal warfare - ritualistic, constrained. Cortes's men fought in the more murderous and militaristic European fashion developed in Europe since the Iron Age. They were helped by their superior technology, but I suspect a similar small force of Romans, Vikings or Spartans might also have cut a swathe across the doomed Aztecs.

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

The population of Mexico in 1519 was some 25 million but by 1600 after the Spaniards arrived with new diseases and unscaled brutality the native population was between one and two million. The math is quite scary.

The majority of the Aztec population that was destroyed in the final siege of Technochitlan was mainly done by the native auxillaries of the spaniards which was at least 70,000 strong. The majority of these were victimised by the Aztecs in some form or another durong the Empire at its height some 40 years before.

The one slim chance the Aztecs had to bring about the end of the Spanish( for the moment anyway) was after the night of sadness when Montczuma was either cut down by the spanish or killed by a projectile launched from the Aztec mob. The Spaniards were forced out of the city loosing alot of their force with many of the new recruits from a new expedtion refusing to leave their heavy loads of booty which allowed them to be caught and either cut down or captured to be later sacrificed. The close knit streets allowed no cavalry charges and allowed the Aztecs to bring down the cumbersome enemy.

At that moment the conquistadors were ready to be finished but the Aztecs choose the plain of Otuma to do it. This flat ground was perfect for the Spanish cavalry and the Aztecs were routed with hideous loss and this allowed Cortes to reach friendy territory and prepare for the final attack on the Aztec city.

The disease factor should be looked at as it effected at least 25 percent of the Aztec population of the city as the siege began which no doubt effected its fighting strength. The siege was also hardly fought and was not an easy victory for the Spanish and her native allies but after the battle of Otuma which allowed the Spanish to reform her fighting force the defeat of the Aztecs was inevitable

Cortes was Brave as he was ruthless but died in poverty and forgotten by the Spanish in the period. As we know the Aztec were brutal of that there is no doubt but the arrival of the Spanish doomed the native population of the Americas. They were seen as barely human and were slowly near exterminated to achieve insatiable goals.

[Franconicus]

I read that the Aztecs fought in a different way from that which evolved in Europe. They typically aimed to capture, not kill. My impression is that it was almost like traditional tribal warfare - ritualistic, constrained.
Surely the Aztecs had a different way to fight. But you should not underestimate them. They were aggressive and militaristic. They dominated the whole region by military force. They even had elite warrior fraternities.
They had wars to conquer and wars to make prisoners only (flower wars).

[Watchman]

It's not so much that the Aztec sword-clubs were inefficient against metal armour; they didn't apparently work all that well even against the thick quilted vests the Indian soldiers commonly wore as body armour, and the Spaniards also often preferred to swap their breastplates to. It's really that compared to the steel cut-and-thrust swords of the Spaniards, the products of almost two millenia of nigh-uninterrupted evolution in sword cutlery, they were hopelessly slow and clumsy weapons, and moreover as mentioned earlier the Aztec goal was captives not corpses. Captives was what soldiers were promoted by. Captives were what the Aztecs pretty much fought their wars for. Captives were normally aquired by attacking the limbs of the foemen to disable them. But a badly wounded man isn't yet dead, and if his compatriots can keep you from hauling him off and he gets treated after the battle there's a good chance he'll be fit to fight again...

The Conquistadors fought simply to kill their enemies, and with much better weapons. Plus they had cavalry. Good cavalry. The Conquistador horsemen may have been a far cry from the highly-trained armoured monsters the pikemen of Europe had to fend off, but so long as they kept together they could ride across Aztec lines with virtual impunity. Armoured shock cavalry is nasty. It took the Europeans almost half a millenia to devise truly reliable counters for it. The Aztecs (and for that matter othe rIndians), well motivated by sheer desperation, were well on their way to figuring out a fair few of those counters, but just plain ran out of time.

When those Conquistadors (who really did fight off virtual armies by their lonesomes a few times too) were joined by entire armies of the Aztecs' enemies, and provided said armies with some truly powerful shock troops to use as line-breakers, it's a small wonder the Aztecs were in dire straits.

Incidentally I understand the Conquistadors tended to have a lot harder time against folks who fought with similarly straightforward heavy-infantry tactics (such as the Incas, who to boot were using early Bronze Age grade weaponry; the invaders probably got a few really lucky breaks with those guys), or simply didn't have a monarch to decapitate such as the Mayan city-states. To make things even more interesting for them some smaller folk groups relied heavily on guerilla tactics (often well honed against the very empires the Conquistadors demolished)... Well, a fair few conquest outings did end up in bloody failures.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

The invasion itself was covered pretty well by Seamus, but left out the point that Cortes was eventually invited to see Montezuma (a forced invitation, I think, but I'm not sure) and Cortes killed him, proclaiming his own Montezuma's place. The rest of the campaign was mostly putting down rebellions and a few other tribes.

Nope, I mentioned the decap move. I thought he'd been captured though, and not killed outright.

Seamus

[GoreBag]

Yes, you did, but not that it was a betrayal. Details, but it helps paint a picture of the man.

[Rodion Romanovich]

As I remember it, Cortes was near losing and getting killed several times. First I think he travelled towards Tenochtitlan and succeeded in capturing Montezuma, thus being able to peacefully take control over the city through diplomatic methods etc.

Then heard of a Spanish force coming after him, because he hadn't obeyed orders. His orders were to open trade with the azteks, not conquer them. He quickly retreated to the coast and attacked the Spanish camp in the night, and won despite inferiority in numbers, and according to the legend he was aided by some glowing insect that was common in the area - it looked like flashing muzzles and confused the opponents.

However, he left a completely incompetent replacement in charge of Tenochtitlan, and the replacement governor collected all aztecs unarmed, promising that they would get to hold a ritual sacrifice party they hadn't held in a long time. When they were trapped in the town square, he ordered his men to attack and kill the unarmed men. However, many aztecs survived and now gathered a force and the Spanish ended up besieged in a small part of the city.

When Cortez came back he failed to relieve them and ended up besieged together with them. Thanks to a very daring plan they managed to escape from the siege, but only a very small number of them made it out of the city alive and back to the Spanish camp at the coast.

Cortez now assembled a new force by living as a pirate and capturing Spanish equipment and men passing the coast, forcing them to either help or get killed.

When the force was big enough, Cortez returned to Tenochtitlan, still with important help from his local allies, and by creating small boats and using very mobile cannons they could get full control over the lake in which Tenochtitlan was situated, then assault the city and conquer it.

[Kraxis]

The Aztec wars were in the end for captives, but initially they too had conquered for land and tribute. One poor citystate was left alone in the middle of Aztec controlled territory. Then it would be the beatingboy whenever the Aztecs needed captives. A formal declaration of war was made with a shield and feathers (I think), then the Aztec army would beat the crap out the inexperienced (well the army was destroyed ever so soon that no experienced cradre can have been possible) and smaller army, then go home and sacrifice the captives (though not all at the same time, then the Aztecs would be without captives again too soon).
So obviously the Aztecs were surprised and outraged that the Spanish would go to war with the intent to kill.

Now we have covered all the rational aspects, we have to consider the religious one too.

The Aztec downfall was indeed foreseen by themselves. I don't remember if the year was foreseen, but the legend said it would come in the form of a white man (incidentally the same form as the feathered serpentgod would take now and then) with a beard coming in sailing cities from the east. So naturally this white bearded man coming from the east with sailing cities was treated as nothing less than a god initially. And since he was the harbinger of destruction it is safe to say that the Aztecs were scared, especially when he finally did begin to fight them.

Btw, Moctezuma's successor was Cautemoc, a warrior (logical choice really). Too bad for them he died of the pox.

[Franconicus]

Maybe Montezuma was right. He did everything to avoid a miliotary confrontation. He even offered Cortes his treasure. Maybe he felt that he could not win. Even if he had killed all the Spanish more would have come. The only chance he had was become a Spanish colony. Cortes seemed to be willing to leave Actekian society as it was. With him as governer and with a change to Christianity. Aztekian noble men already learned Spanish and to read and write. However, the Spanish that came after Cortes were not less bad than he was. And they did not want to have an Indian society under Spanish rule but only Indian slaves.