I am afraid last months posting of my City of the Pyramid has thrown me into to research mode. Although I have known the of Cortez's conquest of Mexico since my youth, I had not appreciated the size of the city. According to my sources it was a city of 200,000 souls at a time when the largest cities in Europe, London and Venice, were only 100,000. Seville the largest city most of Cortez's had seen was probably only 60,000. To conqueror it with only 600 men took some
cojones, definitely not first level fighters. Above is a woodcut from 1524 based on the conquistadors descriptions. Below are a couple of more contemporary illustrations from Wikmedia based on the archaeological evidence.
I urge you to examine the allies that the Spanish had, among them the Tlaxcaltec:
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlaxcalans
I think the Spanish 'victory' was claimed by Cortez, but was probably much more complicated and was, in fact a joint effort of other native societies aligning against the Aztecs.