Reasons to Hernan Cortes Success in the Spanish Conquest of the Aztec Empire

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Hernan Cortes led the Spanish Conquest of the Aztec Empire with a little more than 500 Spaniard soldiers; he was fighting on enemy territory and against an Empire of around 15 million people. It wasn’t just one or a couple things that came into play to help Cortes defeat the Aztecs but a series of events and a series of luck on Cortes’s part. Many different events led to Cortes gaining the upper hand in the Spanish Conquest of the Aztec Empire. The Aztecs were thought as barbarians by the people of Mexico due to their traditions of human sacrifices. The reason this is important is because it gave Cortes the opportunity to act as a hero to the people of Mexico. Marina and Geronimo de Aguilar played an active role in the Spanish Conquest of the Aztec Empire because they were Cortes’s translators, giving aid to Cortes when needing to speak with Indian tribes. Small pox and the spread of other diseases were also a reason for Cortes’s success against the Aztec Empire because of the enormous swipe it took out of the Aztec population. Cortes also was very lucky with a few events taking place to the Aztec Empire which led Aztec’s leader, Montezuma, to believe that Cortes was a god. Technology played a large part of course; the Spaniards had greater weaponry and firepower than the inferior technological Aztecs. Cortes’s ties with other Indians can possibly be the most influential to Cortes’s victory over the Aztec Empire because it strengthened the Spanish army immensely. As stated before, many events came into play to give Cortes victory over the Aztec Empire. Human sacrifice was very common with the Aztec’s but it was feared and frowned upon by the common people. The reason for the human sacrifices was to feed and give respect to certain gods which the Aztecs believed in. The Aztecs sacrificed anywhere from 10,000 to 50,000 people per year. Most of the

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