How a Few Hundred Spaniards Toppled Empires

The Totonacs, for instance, viewed the arrival of the Spanish as a critical opportunity to liberate themselves from generations of Aztec subjugation.

Similarly, the Tlaxcalans, initially adversaries, eventually shifted their allegiance to Cortés, becoming invaluable guides and military reinforcements.

This strategic alliance with the Tlaxcalans provided Cortés with the numerical and logistical strength necessary for a breakthrough against the Aztec Empire.

While firearms played a role, their slow reload times made them less impactful than often portrayed in popular history.

Steel armor and helmets rendered indigenous weapons, crafted from wood, stone, and obsidian, largely ineffective, giving Spanish soldiers superior protection.

Horses served as a vital shock weapon, creating panic and breaking formations in indigenous armies that had no prior exposure or effective counter-tactics for cavalry.

Despite warnings from his council, including Cuitláhuac, against allowing outsiders into Tenochtitlan, Moctezuma chose to invite the Spanish into the capital.

Si Sheppard suggests that this decision, though seemingly a misstep, might have been Moctezuma's best defensive option, aiming to contain Cortés as a guest rather than letting him freely agitate subject peoples across the empire.

A preemptive strike by Pedro de Alvarado during a major Aztec festival, targeting the warrior aristocracy, triggered a widespread uprising against the Spanish.

The massacre unified the Aztec population in their resistance, leading to a direct confrontation.

Cortés returned to Tenochtitlan to find his forces under siege and Moctezuma II, who had been captured, killed by his own people due to perceived collaboration.

The subsequent Spanish retreat from Tenochtitlan, known as La Noche Triste (The Tragic Night), resulted in devastating losses for Cortés's forces.

The final campaign against Tenochtitlan saw Mesoamerican peoples rally in vast numbers, seeing the Spanish as a conduit for their revolt against Aztec hegemony.

Spanish conquistadors constituted less than 0.5% of the total army, with the overwhelming majority being indigenous troops allied against the Aztecs.

The conquest was not merely a Spanish victory but rather the outcome of a broad coalition of hostile native groups exploiting the arrival of the Spanish to settle long-standing grievances.

Despite his envoy's warnings that the Spaniards were untrustworthy, Atahualpa sought to assess what the Spanish could offer him rather than eliminating them.

He notably tested the Spanish horses by ordering a ceremonial charge that stopped mere inches from his face, demonstrating an almost theatrical confidence.

This overconfidence extended to executing his own generals for showing fear in the presence of the Spanish, further signaling his misjudgment of the true nature of the threat.

Mesoamerican and Andean warfare doctrines, characterized by loose formations with significant space between warriors, proved disastrous against European cavalry.

This loose spacing allowed horses to easily blast through indigenous formations, a stark contrast to European tactics of dense, disciplined infantry designed to neutralize cavalry charges.

The lack of institutional knowledge and established military doctrine among indigenous leaders made it nearly impossible for them to adapt their battlefield strategies effectively in real-time against this novel threat.

The speed of the Spanish conquests was unprecedented, with the Aztec Empire falling in just two and a half years and the Inca Empire within a decade.

This rapid collapse coincided with the introduction of European diseases and profound psychological trauma, leading to the swift disintegration of indigenous social structures.

The victims of these invasions simply did not have enough time to adapt their military doctrines or develop effective countermeasures against the European tactics and technology before their societies crumbled.

Only a small elite within these empires spoke the imperial languages, Nahuatl for the Aztecs or Quechua for the Incas, indicating a widespread cultural and political disconnect.

The Inca, with an empire of 10 million, and the Aztecs, controlling 100,000 subjects, were themselves imperial forces that had imposed their rule on diverse populations.

Sheppard argues that the Spanish succeeded by inserting themselves into these fragile imperial orbits, which, despite their geographic expanse, were ruthlessly dictated by a tiny elite.

The highly hierarchical nature of Aztec and Inca societies, with absolute loyalty invested in their supreme leaders (the Huey Tlatoani and Sapa Inca, respectively), made them uniquely vulnerable.

The capture of this single individual, whether the Sapa Inca or Huey Tlatoani, destabilized the entire system and allowed the Spanish to functionally govern through intermediaries or puppet rulers.

In contrast, dispersed peoples like the Comanche or Maya, lacking a single point of failure in their leadership structure, proved much harder for the Spanish to defeat, leading to prolonged conflicts.

European conquistadors demonstrated an asymmetric ability to learn and adapt from each other's experiences, while indigenous societies remained largely insular.

Cortés notably applied lessons from the conquest of Hispaniola, improvising effective strategies against the Aztecs based on prior colonial encounters.

A decade later, Francisco Pizarro directly followed the established playbook of Cortés, leveraging detailed knowledge of his predecessor's successful tactics.

The Incas and Aztecs, operating in closed worlds, did not share or learn from each other's military experiences, hindering their ability to develop collective defenses against the Europeans.

Upon his capture by Cortés, Moctezuma II underwent a complete psychological transformation, shifting from a pitiless autocrat to a seemingly willing puppet of the Spanish.

Atahualpa, in a similar predicament, attempted to bargain with Pizarro, mistakenly believing that European kings operated under a reciprocal code of honor.

Pizarro, however, was characterized as a 'freebooting entrepreneurist pirate' rather than a diplomat, and he acted in bad faith, ultimately leading to Atahualpa's demise.

Moctezuma's cooperation with the Spanish eventually led to his own people disposing of him, illustrating the profound breakdown in indigenous leadership under duress.

The influx of wealth primarily funded Spain's military efforts, such as the victory against the Ottomans at Lepanto in 1571, rather than fostering internal growth.

Si Sheppard notes that the economic development of the society plateaued and remained stagnant for hundreds of years following the initial intense resource extraction.

The economic divergence between the northern and southern United States in later centuries serves as a parallel analogy, illustrating the contrasting outcomes of productive versus extractive economic approaches.

This difference in colonial economic models had profound and lasting impacts on the respective societies and their development trajectories.

Reshaping a society's core faith and cultural practices during wartime, especially for military expediency, proved to be an effectively impossible task.

This challenge is comparable to the difficulty modern societies face in abandoning deeply held moral principles for purely military advantages, highlighting the profound cultural barriers to adaptation.

Si Sheppard likens this feat to dropping 100 modern Marines into 18th-century England and expecting them to control Parliament, underscoring the improbability and magnitude of the Spanish success.

Hernán Cortés openly admitted his motives to Moctezuma's envoys, famously stating, "My men and I suffer from a disease of the heart that only gold can cure."

The Spanish employed extreme brutality, including the use of hunting dogs against civilians, as a deliberate tactic of terror and control.

Sheppard argues that the term "genocide" accurately describes these actions, emphasizing the intentional and widespread nature of the violence inflicted.

The narrative of humanitarianism often presented for the conquest is dismissed as mere "window dressing" for a brutal process of colonization and resource extraction.

While Spaniards engaged in personal rivalries within their own ranks, they would invariably unite against any existential threat to their presence.

Indigenous groups like the Tlaxcalans and Aztecs, however, were unable to overcome their deep-seated historical hostilities to form a unified front against the Spanish.

The Tlaxcalans, for instance, explicitly refused to aid the Aztecs, viewing their conflict with the Spanish as an internal Aztec problem, stating, "No, we are enemies and always have been and always will be. This is your problem, and maybe you’ll get taken out. No loss to us."

Crucially, the Spanish were the "only game in town" for indigenous empires, meaning there was no external power or alternative alliance they could leverage against the invaders.

The British, through the Royal Navy, maintained decisive control over sea lanes, allowing them to project power effectively, unlike French forces in India.

Corporate structures, such as the East India Company, enabled a professionalized, merit-based management system with boards capable of hiring and firing leaders.

Monarchical systems, in contrast, often suffered from the instability of "bad kings" or succession crises, creating vulnerabilities ripe for foreign exploitation.

The bulk of British military power in these conquests was provided not by British regulars but by mercenary forces and local Indian sepoys.

The entire Spanish conquest operation was, in essence, an early form of raw, unbridled capitalism, characterized by pooling assets for high-risk, high-reward ventures.

Many conquistadors were "hidalgos," petty nobility who lacked significant assets but sought to combine resources to finance these dangerous expeditions.

They operated as "compañeros," or partners, driven by profit motives similar to those of Vikings or later Dutch traders, showcasing a deeply capitalist endeavor.