Andrew The Conquest February 9, 2014

There was a point in the history of the world where the European and American colonies were unaware of each other’s existence. This changed drastically during the conquest of the Americas when Hernan Cortes landed in South America and eventually helped lead one of the most unbelievable conquests in world history. Cortes had arrived in South America with just about 500 soldiers. It was with these soldiers that he had managed to defeat and conquer one of the most militarily powerful civilizations in the New World. The Aztecs could field up an army of one quarter million battle tested soldiers at any given time. Even with these circumstances, Cortes was still able to defeat and conquer the Aztecs using various strategies and techniques that were vital in the conquering process. One of the biggest advantages that Cortes and his men had was the possession of superior military technology “… such as iron weapons and gunpowder…” which is something that the Aztec’s had never seen before. Canons were used to devastate the walls that were built as defenses by the Aztec’s and which led to the downfall of the civilization. Although the Spanish had a large weapon advantage, they were still outnumbered drastically. This led to the recruitment of some of the Aztec’s subject peoples “… who supplied him with thousands of warriors”. These warriors added large numbers to Cortes’ army and he was able to suit them up with iron armor and weapons that created a distinct advantage on the battlefield. Although these provided great advantages for Cortes and his men, one of the most distinct factors that resulted in the Spanish victory resulted from the diseases that were brought over from European expansion. Diseases like smallpox, influenza, and measles had developed in western civilizations and immunities were built up on the disease among Europeans but to American Indians this disease had never been encountered. Therefore this led to no such antibodies being developed to fight off the disease in which it had eventually devastated much of the Aztec society. This reduced the Aztec number greatly to the point where the water surrounding the civilization became undrinkable and was tainted with blood from victims of the disease. This conquest was apart of one of the biggest losses of life in human history. “Overall, the death of 80 million people, close to one-fifth of human kind” was wiped out from the beginning of contact of Europeans and Americans. It was with this major epidemic that the Spanish were able to conquer the Aztecs along with their advanced weapons. If these events had not taken place it is possible that Cortes would have had no chance of beating the clearly larger and tougher enemy. This shows that the stars aligned for this conquest, and the massive loss of life was just a simple stepping-stone to the discovery and conquering of the Americas.