How Cortés Destroyed the Aztec Empire With 500 Men

Subscribe to Carnax for a new long-form conquest documentary. Hernán Cortés landed near Veracruz in 1519 with roughly five hundred men, and the Aztec empire was gone within two years — but not because of those five hundred. Three levers did the work, used over and over: alliance with the peoples the empire had spent generations dominating, the emperor held hostage inside his own capital, and a smallpox epidemic that arrived in 1520 and killed a ruler before the siege even began. On the night of 30 June 1520 the Spanish were driven out of the city and many drowned weighed down by the gold they had taken. Tenochtitlan did not fall until August 1521, after ninety-three days. SOURCES Cortés, Cartas de Relación · Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España · the Florentine Codex, compiled by Bernardino de Sahagún with Nahua informants · Matthew Restall, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest · Camilla Townsend The Tlaxcalans chose their side and won. Within a generation they had a Spanish empire instead of an Aztec one. Knowing only what they knew in 1519, was there a version of that choice that ends well for them? CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro 2:19 The Empire They Were Walking Into 6:47 The Translator Who Built The Alliance 8:14 The First Lever: Alliance 11:06 The Second Lever: The Hostage 14:59 The Third Lever: Disease 17:42 The Noche Triste And Its Aftermath 19:07 Three Piles Of Paper 21:35 The Navy, The Siege, The Fall 25:48 What It Cost Inside The City 26:40 The Allies Who Lost The Peace 29:12 The Real Shape Of The Conquest 29:59 Outro #Tenochtitlan #Moctezuma #Malinche #Tlaxcala