@coreyloucks4865

6 days ago

I find this topic was extremely fascinating. Ive recently been doing a lot of research on it for my own writings in fantasy because I like to build it from inspiration from history and unique cultures and what I learned was surprisingly far different than what was taught in history class when I went to school and what has been glorified in media. The war against tenochtitlan seemed more like a rebellion by the indigenous who were subjugated by tenochtitlan rather than a true conquest by the Spanish. The Spanish really only had around 600 men but when they finally conquered tenochtitlan, there was over 100,000 indigenous warriors who joined them. I never knew that when I first was taught about the Aztec empire. of course the word Aztec was only applied to the mesoamerican tribes who all spook roughly the same language or style that made up the empire of tenochtitlan who originally belonged in a coalition of three different city-states, however tenochtitlan went on a conquest of the surrounding tribes, building an empire that was built on conquest. Those conquered by tenochtitlan were subjugated and forced to give slaves to the city state and were all willing to rise up against tenochtitlan. When the Spanish arrived, they came solely for gold rumored to be in the americas. Cortez had no approval by the Spanish king for war and at one point when Cortez was invited to Tenochtitlan by the “emperor” which is called Huey Tlatoani, who was Montezuma II who wasn’t your typical Aztec ruler. Most of the previous rulers were warriors and after a series of bad rulers that had strings of defeats, Montezuma II took the throne and was the son of the previous ruler, Axayacartl, however unlike those before, he wasn’t a strong military leader unlike those before him unable to subdue the enemy people of Tlaxcala, however he did centralize the administration of the government and established a tax system. When Cortez first arrived Montezuma wanted to make peace with him by offering him many gifts of gold which only further incentivized Cortez to want to bring down their empire to get a hold on the land for more gold. They eventually invited Cortez to the city where Cortez took the emperor captive in his own city, keeping him as a puppet, within his own city, Cortez was called back to Spain to answer to the king for what he perceived as this unapproved war. By the time Cortez came back, the men he left in charge ended up getting violent with those in tenochtitlan with the result of the emperor getting killed and the Spanish getting driven out with lots of casualties. This resulted in with Cortez recruiting or rather helping the subjugated indigenous tribes to rise up against tenochtitlan in such a huge violent uprising, leaving the city in ruin. As stated above, there were over 100,000 indigenous warriors fighting against tenochtitlan while only 600 Spanish fought alongside them. That and most of those in tenochtitlan became sick because of the Spanish. I found that very fascinating and the fact that we learn things far differently as the Spanish being these conquerors who tamed the savage indigenous was pretty false and total bs.

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