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Were the Spanish alone, or did they have local help? Cortes had lots of local help against the Aztecs. (Other tribes didn't much like the Aztecs. Cortes star
by anamax 4y ago
Were the Spanish alone, or did they have local help?
Cortes had lots of local help against the Aztecs. (Other tribes didn't much like the Aztecs. Cortes started a preference cascade.)
- inglor_cz 4y agoCortes had a lot of military help from other nations such as the Tlaxcalans, true. Pizarro, not so much. The Incas weren't as universally hated as the Aztecs and in fact their state lingered on for decades (a rump one around Vilcabamba) after the initial conquest of Cuzco. What certainly helped him was something unintended - the bloody civil war of succession between Atahualpa and Huascar that sapped a lot of strength and cohesion from the empire. Contemporaries described the main battlefield of that civil war as "full of bones as far as an eye can see".