Tenochtitlan was the capital of the Aztec empire and probably the largest city in the Americas at the time that Spanish Conquistadors arrived in the New World. It was located roughly where Mexico City is today. It fell to the Spanish in 1521 CE.
Ultimately, the conquistador military fail described above didn't make much of a difference. The city fell anyway. Still, technologically, the Spanish edge over the Aztecs in 1521 CE was modest.
But European diseases to which the indigenous people had no immunity and which the Spanish didn't understand well enough to spread intentionally if they'd wanted to do so, was the decisive factor.
In the case of the Aztecs, in particular, the Aztec deaths were mostly due to Salmonella, based upon examination of bodies in mass graves in Mexico. Small pox was the biggest Old World disease leading to mass death, often before Europeans arrived, in much of the rest of the Americas.
2 comments:
... and salmonella would hit Tenochtitlan disproportionately, being stuck in the middle of a shallow stagnant lake, around which the besiegers had all the fresh clean mountain water they could drink.
Smallpox would have hit all sides equally during the siege.
Which brings me to the real reason the Spaniards won: they were able to mount a siege. How did that happen? - because the Spaniards had native allies. Maybe a million of them.
Interesting conjectures.
Re stagnant lake v. clean mountain water - the key point is that salmonella is an Old World pathogen not present in the Americas before European contact and ordinarily isn't normally found in water.
Re a possible millions of Native allies. I'm not aware of historical evidence to this effect but would welcome citations to establish it.
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