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Having the vassals cities as ally because they hated the Aztec so much helped.

I recommend the fall of civilization episode on the Aztec.

The battle of tecnoticlan was epic. The Spaniard got lucky in many aspect as well.

They would have come back, but really it was a close one. ( we have diaries from Spanish soldiers )

Conquistador by Buddy Levy is also an great source on this topic. He has other books about disastrous expeditions in the Arctic. His writing theme is basically "some guys set out on an expedition and then everything went to shit."

The Aztecs never had a chance, this wasn't even a real war from the Spanish side. The Conquistadors were more like sponsored entrepreneurs. You can think of this as America's first contact with Venture Capitalism. If the first wave had failed, but the potential profits were there, they'd have regrouped and come back with more resources and a new "market penetration strategy".

I recommend Conquest by Hugh Thomas and its long list of notes and citations. A few podcast episodes isn't nearly enough to understand the nuances of the Aztec conquest.

The best sources aren't their diaries but all the depositions and testimony they made while fighting over the spoils. Anyone who survived the expedition spent the next decade fighting over it in Spanish court.

I second this. I watched this episode of Fall of Civilizations podcast(on YouTube) while recovering a few weeks ago, and it's very informative and well-produced (as are all the episodes).

Aztec weaponry was not limited to obsidian blades. They had extremely effective slingers and other ranged weapon types that were devastating even to the armored Spanish. Excepting the cannons and horses, the Aztecs were not really significantly worse off than the Spanish in terms of weapons.

If you had to choose between 100 trained Aztec slingers and 100 Spanish armed with only with their personal firearms, you'd almost certainly want to choose the slingers.

edit: according to conquistador accounts, apparently even the atlatl darts could pierce their armor.

The Guanche, native inhabitants of the Canary Islands, deployed both slings and cast stones (incl. boulders) against the Spanish very efficiently.

It is a rather unknown fact, but the worst colonial defeat of the Spanish ever didn't happen in the Americas, but on the island of Tenerife, where a Guanche chief called Bencomo trapped the Spanish at Acentejo and killed several thousands of them.

It is doubly remarkable, because the Guanche at that time were really living in their Stone Age. Their civilization was nowhere near as developed as the Aztec Empire.

How, then, did an absolutely tiny number of Spaniards regularly defeat large numbers of Aztecs?

They didn't. The Spanish invaders allied with locals, to the point where some of those locals' descendants had special--though not equal--status into the colonial era as the indios nobles.

The numbers were still very skewed

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_conquest_of_the_Aztec_...

It's fairly clear that the numbers on both sides are very rough, but it's not what I would describe as very skewed at all. Also, note the Spanish themselves suffered 50%+ losses, which is a horrific casualty rate for pre-industrialized warfare.

Aside from that, it's historically very common for one side to win even against much higher numbers with good (even accidentally good) strategy and with decisive bold actions, or even just good luck.

edit: also worth mentioning that the Spanish were mostly fighting with their lances and swords, not guns.

Yeah, what you describe is not a remotely hot take. The technical advantage, such as it was, for the Spanish invaders was armor more than guns (though that was also subject to being unsuited for climate, etc.).

The Spaniards allied with other groups the Aztecs had subjugated to increase their numbers.

>>but it might be the second foremost reason why Cortez was able to conquer them - the first being Montezuma’s reticence to slaughter them in the jungle when he first heard of them and his subsequent religious obsession with the white conquistadors, until it was too late and they were well established.

Montezuma was never in a position to slaughter the conquistadors in the jungle. The Tlaxcalans (a rival state to the mexica) engaged the conquistadors in a series of brutal skirmishes (most with the advantage of surprise) on their home turf but failed to make any real progress. Its very clear that the attacking Tlaxcalan warriors suffered horrendous casualties when they engaged the castillans in close quarters combat due to the superior steel weapons(mostly swords) of the latter. Since the Tlaxcalans vigorously defended their independence its hard to argue the Mexica could have done any better fighting at a distance that would have stretched their supply lines.

As for his supposed religious obsession, its unclear and isn't necessary to explain his actions. There is certainly no evidence that Montezuma was confused or acting irrationally; he repeatedly tried to deter the conquistadors from coming and made attempts to play them off against the Tlaxcalans.

The Tlaxcalans made the mistake of engaging the conquistadors where their cavalry was most effective and allowed them to fortify themselves at Tzompachtepetl, at which point Spanish armor provided to be too effective for Tlaxcalan tactics (send wave after wave of troops instead of overwhelming them). Eventually they just kind of gave in and weren't really defeated in great number before allying against the Aztecs.

In their very first skirmish at the edge of Tlaxcalan territory where it was mountainous and undeveloped, a small scout troop took down two horses out of the sixteen that Cortex had with him. Spanish tactics and discipline were enough to overcome large numbers only when they controlled where the battles happened. If Montezuma had used guerilla tactics during the subsequent trip, it would have been far more effective (he had plenty of spies reporting on their movements so I don't think the logistics would have been that difficult). Cortes even lengthened the journey in part to minimize how much time they'd spend in terrain that favored those tactics.

Maybe "obsessed" is the wrong word but Montezuma was influenced by legends of Quetzalcoatl as a white-skinned, bearded man who opposed human sacrifices and was reluctant to just go out and slaughter the conquistadors. Their religion was definitely an influence in the whole affair beyond just the whole human sacrifice bit.

"in the jungle"

This is relevant. The Aztecs were very able to slaughter the Spanish in the alleys/canals of Tenochtitlan itself:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Noche_Triste

If it weren't for an epidemic of smallpox, the Spanish would have to conquer Tenochtitlan at a very high price in blood. Urban combat negated a lot of the advantages of European steel.

If they slaughtered Cortez and five other Cortezes that came afterwards, it wouldn't matter. Guns, germs, steel, horses, and the seething hatred of the Aztecs by the people they brutality oppressed predetermined their fate.

It took them several more centuries to conquer the Mayan civilization with New Spain as a base of operations. Without the Aztec conquest giving them that foothold, it would not have played out the same way at all. If the Aztec leaders were determined to slaughter them in the jungle it would have been impassable to the Spaniards regardless of how many cannons, guns, or horses they had. Even before the Conquistadors knew that Tenochtitlan existed, they were almost wiped out several times by tribes on the coast.

Montezuma invited the Conquistadors into the city and they even held him as a hostage for months before any fighting broke out. Those alliances took a while to establish and the germs only came later into the campaign when they started sending ships back for more troops during a Caribbean smallpox outbreak.

I recommend reading Conquest by Hugh Thomas. The whole story is fascinating and very nuanced - it took several expeditions to even get that far and Cortez was possibly the luckiest man alive in the 16th century.

The Mayan and Aztec conquests were completely different. The Mayan polities were situated in terrain that was much harsher for an invader, military capability doesn't mean much when a military force can't be effectively maintained in the field against. There also wasn't much incentive for the spanish to extend their domains into the mayan polities at that time. The spanish were far more focused on populous areas where they could extract wealth which was the only way for spanish conquistadors to gather volunteers. Even under these conditions the actual military engagements were very one-sided with most of the Yucatan conquered within thirty years of the Aztec conquest.

Wasn't immunology in the end the biggest reason Cortez conquered them?

When 80-90% of the enemy population dies from unknown diseases, victory becomes much easier.

I wonder why there weren't diseases endemic to the new world that would affect Europeans in the same way that smallpox did to the indigenous populations. Were diseases better able to spread in Europe due to city size/density/public health differences?

Syphilis appeared in Europe in 1493, and it's widely believed the Columbus crew brought it back from America, though last I heard it's not considered 100% proven.

The Old World had bigger cities and more domesticated animals, which promotes epidemics.

I also assume the fact the our species is indigenous to Africa means that's where our natural predators have had vastly longer time to evolve.

Many of the deadliest human diseases including those that ravaged the new world like smallpox, influenza, and measles were zoonotic diseases that originated in domesticated animals. Since the new world didn't have as many domesticated animals, they had fewer zoonotic diseases.

It's also largely an accident of history. The Conquistadors inadvertently introduced smallpox suddenly by sending for reinforcements during a Caribbean smallpox outbreak. The Mayans that the Spaniards spent the next two centuries conquering weren't nearly as quickly exposed and died off in fewer numbers from European diseases.

"Guns, Germs, and Steel", by Jared Diamond, is basically a book-length answer to this question that I would highly recommend.

There are better resources than GGS, actual historians and anthropologists are quite critical of it.

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/pmu2ft/recom...

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/historians_views...

That's what you get when you have a scientist try writing a book that's simultaneously popular science and popular history. And judged as a popular history GGS does get a lot of things wrong and isn't up to the standards historians work to hold up. But on more scientific questions like "why there weren't diseases endemic to the new world that would affect Europeans in the same way that smallpox did to the indigenous populations" it does a good job.

EDIT: Really, the reception to GGS is probably one of the best illustrations of what Thomas Kuhn was talking about in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions about different paradigms having different rules that I can recall seeing in my lifetime.

Mainly "actual historians and anthropologists" on reddit and in related circles. GGS is far less controversial outside these circles and often lauded - also by "actual historians and anthropologists".

I have significant doubts about that.

Plagues Upon the Earth is maybe even more on point to the plague bit in particular, with the co-evolution of human society and infectious disease over history taking the front stage.

My understanding is that the leading hypothesis is that:

1. The “Old World” had a much more extensive animal husbandry. A lot of the nastiest diseases human beings pick up come from animal reservoirs. With humans living in closer quarters to animals for a much longer period of time in Eurasia/Africa than the Americas, more diseases crossed over and became endemic among the population.

2. A great amount of the Eurasian continent is along an East-West axis, whereas the Americas are primarily North-South. This means that seasons and climates and climates tended to be more closely aligned, which leads to easier spread of agriculture and domesticated animals, which leads to faster population growth and disease spread.

Eurasia is massive compared to the Americas and has a lot more domesticated animals, so there were more diseases percolating there.

Europe got syphilis from the old world

Not just syphilis. Tropical diseases like yellow fever and malaria decimated european settlers for centuries. That's a large part of why Haiti could break free from France for instance, France would send troops, half of which were dead within months from diseases.

That's also what protected inland parts of Africa from colonisation until the XIX century.

The diseases that you mention are of African origin and, when introduced into the New World, massacred the natives almost as efficiently as smallpox.

Africa is a huge cauldron of human pathogens, which is not that surprising, given that hominids developed there. As a rather tragic consequence, Africans were sought after as slaves, because they were resistent to many of the diseases that killed white or Amerindian indentured workers.

It was also a major reason for bringing in Africans slaves to work the fields, as they survived much longer that Europeans.

Yellow fever and malaria were brought to the New World by Europeans.

I've heard that a few times, but it never made sense to me why that didn't go in the other direction - if the Europeans had diseases the native americans didn't have immunity to shouldn't the native americans have diseases the europeans didn't have immunity to as well? Seems like that should have just balanced out.

Great question! CGPGrey's got a nice rundown: https://youtu.be/JEYh5WACqEk

> the second foremost reason why Cortez was able to conquer them - the first being Montezuma’s reticence to slaughter them in the jungle when he first heard of them and his subsequent religious obsession with the white conquistadors

I've read that the biggest reason of Aztec's fall was their panic fear of horses. Is this not true?

It's true that the natives were initially afraid of horses, but I think that overstates it.

You can find some accounts of earlier battles that went like this:

> The Indians, who had never seen any horses before, could not think otherwise than that horse and rider were one body. Quite astounded at this to them so novel a sight, they quitted the plain and retreated to a rising ground. [...] Our swords had done the most carnage among them, though many were killed by our cannon. Wherever the cavalry made its appearance the enemy had most work to do. The fighting lasted about an hour; and our enemies maintained their ground so well, that they did not quit the field of battle until our horse broke in among them. There were two caziques among the five prisoners we made.

But not much later, the natives recognize the importance of the horses and specifically targeted them:

> Besides all this the Indians kept continually throwing sand in our faces to blind us. Here, indeed, the great mercy of God alone could save us. The chief object of the enemy was to capture one of our horses, in which they did not altogether fail; for, as Pedro de Moron on his well-trained mare, attended by three others of our cavalry, was attempting to break through the enemy's ranks, the Indians wrenched the lance out of his hand, and fell furiously upon him with their broad swords, wounding him severely. They gave his mare such a terrific cut with the same weapon in the neck, that the animal instantly fell down dead.

This from The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo. At any rate, it is perfectly sensible for unmounted infantry to be terrified of horse cavalry. Mounted cavalry is hard for infantry to beat without specialized weapons and tight formations.

Dogs too, A war dog was as terrifying vision to witness for a native.

But also the strategy and combat discipline of units was way superior in the old world.