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> Armed with years of practice, detailed anatomical knowledge, and obsidian blades sharper than today's surgical steel, they made an incision in the thin space

> Armed with years of practice, detailed anatomical knowledge, and obsidian blades sharper than today's surgical steel, they made an incision in the thin space between two vertebrae in the neck, expertly decapitating the body. I found this little bit of rhetorical flourish very amusing because there’s a lot packed in that statement that’s painfully relevant to the fall of the Aztecs. It’s true that obsidian can be cleaved to be sharper than some random surgical implement but it’s relatively brittle and prone to breaking when used in combat. That’s great if you’re an Aztec warrior who’s social standing depends on collecting live bodies for sacrifice or a priest cutting someone up, 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. History could have turned out very different but from the beginning, even without the guns and cannons, the Spaniards were always better equipped for life or death combat than the entire Aztec society and all their vassal cities.

dopidopHN 3y ago
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 )
- r2_pilot 3y ago
  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).
- rhyme-boss 3y ago
  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."
- throwup238 3y ago
  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.
- pg_1234 3y ago
  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".
baal80spam 3y ago
> 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?
- jmorenoamor 3y ago
  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.
- Amezarak 3y ago
  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.
Amezarak 3y ago
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.
- FredPret 3y ago
  How, then, did an absolutely tiny number of Spaniards regularly defeat large numbers of Aztecs?
  - khuey 3y ago
    The Spaniards allied with other groups the Aztecs had subjugated to increase their numbers.
  - eropple 3y ago
    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.
    - FredPret 3y ago
      The numbers were still very skewed
      - Amezarak 3y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_conquest_of_the_Aztec_Empire 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.
BurningFrog 3y ago
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.
- yowzadave 3y ago
  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?
  - achates 3y ago
    Eurasia is massive compared to the Americas and has a lot more domesticated animals, so there were more diseases percolating there.
  - Joshuatanderson 3y ago
    "Guns, Germs, and Steel", by Jared Diamond, is basically a book-length answer to this question that I would highly recommend.
    - HeatrayEnjoyer 3y ago
      There are better resources than GGS, actual historians and anthropologists are quite critical of it. https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/pmu2ft/recommendation_whats_the_contemporary_equivalent/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/pmu2ft/recom... https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/historians_views#wiki_historians.27_views_of_jared_diamond.27s_.22guns.2C_germs.2C_and_steel.22 https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/historians_views...
      - Symmetry 3y ago
        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.
kspacewalk2 3y ago
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.
- throwup238 3y ago
  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.
  - cpleppert 3y ago
    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.
deleted 3y ago
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cpleppert 3y ago
>>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.
- inglor_cz 3y ago
  "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 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.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- throwup238 3y ago
  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.

dopidopHN 3y ago

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 )

r2_pilot 3y ago
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).
rhyme-boss 3y ago
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."
throwup238 3y ago
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.
pg_1234 3y ago
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".

baal80spam 3y ago

> 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?

jmorenoamor 3y ago
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.
Amezarak 3y ago
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.

Amezarak 3y ago

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.

FredPret 3y ago
How, then, did an absolutely tiny number of Spaniards regularly defeat large numbers of Aztecs?
- khuey 3y ago
  The Spaniards allied with other groups the Aztecs had subjugated to increase their numbers.
- eropple 3y ago
  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.
  - FredPret 3y ago
    The numbers were still very skewed
    - Amezarak 3y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_conquest_of_the_Aztec_Empire 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.

BurningFrog 3y ago

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.

yowzadave 3y ago
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?
- achates 3y ago
  Eurasia is massive compared to the Americas and has a lot more domesticated animals, so there were more diseases percolating there.
- Joshuatanderson 3y ago
  "Guns, Germs, and Steel", by Jared Diamond, is basically a book-length answer to this question that I would highly recommend.
  - HeatrayEnjoyer 3y ago
    There are better resources than GGS, actual historians and anthropologists are quite critical of it. https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/pmu2ft/recommendation_whats_the_contemporary_equivalent/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/pmu2ft/recom... https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/historians_views#wiki_historians.27_views_of_jared_diamond.27s_.22guns.2C_germs.2C_and_steel.22 https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/historians_views...
    - Symmetry 3y ago
      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.

kspacewalk2 3y ago

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.

throwup238 3y ago
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.
- cpleppert 3y ago
  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.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

cpleppert 3y ago

>>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.

inglor_cz 3y ago
"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 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.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
throwup238 3y ago
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.