The Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés landed in Mexico in 1519 with about 500 men, sixteen horses, and a few small cannons. The Aztec capital Tenochtitlán — one of the largest cities in the world at the time — fell to him roughly two years later. Specifically when?
Cortés didn't take Tenochtitlán by Spanish military superiority alone. He had about 1,300 Spaniards and tens of thousands of Indigenous allies — primarily Tlaxcalans, the Aztecs' chronic enemies. The *Noche Triste* in 1520 was the Spanish retreat after an uprising, in which Cortés lost two-thirds of his force; the August 1521 fall was the second go. Smallpox brought by Spanish carriers had also killed perhaps a quarter of Tenochtitlán's population during the siege. 12 October 1492 was Columbus's first landfall — twenty-nine years earlier.
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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