How many men did cortes have

They also gave him gifts in the form of 20 women. According to some accounts, he sunk all but one of his ships before sending the intact one back to Spain. There would be no retreat for his men, only conquest.

By the time he arrived in Mexico, the Aztecs had come to rule over small states and some 5 to 6 million people. He used deadly force to conquer Mexico, fighting Tlaxacan and Cholula warriors before turning his attention on the ultimate prize: taking over the Aztec Empire.

He left 80 Spanish soldiers and a few hundred Tlaxcaltecs under the command of Pedro de Alvarado to hold Tenochtitlan until he returned. The enraged Aztec forces eventually drove his forces from the city. During the Spanish retreat , Montezuma was killed and much of the plunder the Spanish had taken was lost.

His forces defeated the Aztecs in Battle of Otumba on July 7, , and he regained control of Tenochtitlan by August 13, The Aztec Empire had fallen.

He sent more expeditions out into new areas, including what is present-day Honduras. Why did a strong people defending its own territory succumb so quickly to a handful of Spaniards fighting in dangerous and completely unfamiliar circumstances?

The answers to these questions lie in the fact that at the time of the Spanish arrival, the Aztec and Inca Empires faced grave internal difficulties brought on by their religious ideologies; by the Spaniards' boldness, timing, and technology; and by Aztec and Inca psychology and attitudes toward war. The Spaniards arrived in late summer, when the Aztecs were preoccupied with harvesting their crops and not thinking of war. From the Spaniards' perspective, their timing was ideal.

A series of natural phenomena, signs, and portents seemed to augur disaster for the Aztecs. A comet was seen in daytime, a column of fire had appeared every midnight for a year, and two temples were suddenly destroyed, one by lightning unaccompanied by thunder. These and other apparently inexplicable events seemed to presage the return of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl and had an unnerving effect on the Aztecs.

They looked on the Europeans riding "wild beasts" as extraterrestrial forces coming to establish a new social order. Defeatism swept the nation and paralyzed its will. The Aztec state religion, the sacred cult of Huitzilopochtli, necessitated constant warfare against neighboring peoples to secure captives for religious sacrifice and laborers for agricultural and infrastructure work. Lacking an effective method of governing subject peoples, the Aztecs controlled thirty-eight provinces in central Mexico through terror.

When the Spaniards appeared, the Totonacs greeted them as liberators, and other subject peoples joined them against the Aztecs. Montezuma faced terrible external and internal difficulties.

Historians have often condemned the Aztec ruler for vacillation and weakness. But he relied on the advice of his state council, itself divided, and on the dubious loyalty of tributary communities. The major explanation for the collapse of the Aztec Empire to six hundred Spaniards lies in the Aztecs' notion of warfare and their level of technology.

But for the Aztecs, warfare was a ceremonial act in which "divide and conquer" had no place. The Aztecs killed many Spaniards. Any resistance was brutally crushed: Many indigenous enemies were captured as slaves and some were even branded following their capture.

The sacking also allowed the Spaniards to build up their large personal retinues, taking captives to use as servants and slaves, and kidnapping others for exchanges and ransoms. Growing in number to roughly 3, people, this group of captives vastly outnumbered the fighting Spaniards.

For an assault on a city the size of Tenochtitlan, the number of Spanish troops seemed paltry—just under 1, soldiers, including harquebusiers, infantry, and cavalry. Even so, the siege of Tenochtitlan was not a given. Wounded in one leg, the Spanish leader was ultimately rescued by his captains. Finally, on August 13, , the city fell. The loss of human life was staggering, both in absolute figures and in its disproportionality. During the siege, around Spaniards lost their lives compared to as many as , Aztec.

After the conquest of Mexico, he and Malinche, an Aztec woman who served as his interpreter, had a son together. The marriage to Caralina only ended when she was found dead under mysterious circumstances in The conquest of Tenochtitlan and the subsequent consolidation of Spanish domination over the former Aztec Empire was the first major possession in what became the Spanish Empire.

This vast territory would reach its greatest extent in the 18th century, with territory throughout North and South America. In just a few years, he would lose many of his lands in the New World. Despite being made a marquis years later, the Conqueror of Mexico did not have a glorious end.

In , at the age of 62, he died in a village near Sevilla, Spain, embroiled in lawsuits and his health broken by a series of disastrous expeditions. Decades of rapid expansion in the Americas seemed to have eclipsed his own exploits, and few bells tolled for the man whose ruthlessness and cunning transformed the Americas.

All rights reserved. History Magazine. Oldstone, Oxford University Press , , p. War in History, vol. Accessed May 18, But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you.

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