Hernán Cortés and a small Spanish expeditionary force conquered the Aztec Empire between 1519 and 1521. About how many Spanish soldiers did Cortés actually have when he landed at Veracruz?
Cortés landed in April 1519 with approximately 500 Spanish soldiers, 16 horses, and a few small artillery pieces. His effective army for the actual conquest of Tenochtitlán was substantially larger because he had recruited tens of thousands of indigenous Mesoamerican allies — most importantly the Tlaxcalans, whose enmity with the Aztecs was older than the Spanish arrival. The decisive 1521 siege of Tenochtitlán was fought by perhaps 1,000 Spaniards and 75,000 Tlaxcalan and other allied warriors. The conquest's other substantial weapon was smallpox, which arrived with Cortés's force in 1520 and killed perhaps 40% of the central Mexican population before the final siege.
Read the full facts →The Aztec Empire (more precisely the Triple Alliance of Tenochtitlán, Texcoco, and Tlacopan) was the dominant Mesoamerican state at the time of the Spanish conquest in 1519–1521. Centred on the lake-city of Tenochtitlán in central Mexico, it ruled a tributary network of approximately 5–6 million people and was destroyed by the combined forces of Hernán Cortés, his Spanish soldiers, and the Aztec subject peoples who joined him.
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