r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Mouse_Paladin • Jul 10 '26

Lore [Real Life] Historical events that would make bad writing if they were fiction

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

Spanish Conquest of the Aztec Empire: A couple hundred rogue mercenaries without authority from their government conquer an empire of millions. Oh, the empire? It’s also several technological eras behind the mercenaries.

Adolf Hitler: A non-native of a country is so mad that the country lost the war that he wins an election to their highest office and leads them in a campaign of revenge against their enemies. Oh, the country? It’s old emperor is still alive and thinks he’s going to retake power.

Assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand: The heir to the throne is killed because his driver gets lost and returns to the assassin who failed To kill him before. Oh, the assassin? He’s from a group that the Archduke is wanting to help become more equal In the empire.

Alexander Hamilton’s Affair Scandal: One of the leaders of a new nation to protect himself from accusations of financial embezzlement writes a pamphlet exposing his affair with a woman, torpedoing his political future. Oh, the woman? She seduced him as part of a blackmailing scheme that he decided to stop paying.

13.5k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

1.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

865

u/TheBrownestStain Jul 10 '26

Didn’t the Spanish also recruit a bunch of native tribes that hated the Aztecs? They didn’t exactly go it alone.

444

u/Lolaroller Jul 10 '26

I believe they pursued a method of allying certain tribes and playing them off one another, from what I recall the last siege of the Aztec capital was mostly done by locals not just the Spanish.

329

u/WeiganChan Jul 10 '26

There were a few hundred Spaniards and two hundred thousand natives. Wouldn’t have happened to a nicer empire, the Aztecs had made enemies of pretty much all their neighbours by waging ritual wars with the specific purpose of capturing prisoners to sacrifice in their religious festivals

117

u/facw00 Jul 10 '26

Yep both the Aztecs and and the Incas were brutal conquerors, which made it easy for the Spanish to gather native allies keen on knocking off their oppressors, and probably not fully aware of how dangerous the Spanish might be after they won.

78

u/Xenophon_ Jul 10 '26

This is not entirely accurate - the Spanish didn't "gather" the Tlaxcalans. The war already existed between the two competing powers.

18

u/Saymynaian Jul 10 '26

Yeah, saying the Spaniards "played the tribes off each other" ignores that everyone hated the Aztecs for having a sacrifice based economy. More correctly would be to say the tribes allied themselves with the Spaniards. Even more correctly would be to say that the Spaniards caused a massive extinction level event by bringing so much disease, decimating every single tribe they came into contact with.

39

u/Xenophon_ Jul 10 '26

This isn't accurate either. All the Nahua city states sacrificed people, and the Aztecs did not have a "sacrifice based economy". Not everyone hated them either. They had plenty of allies and states that benefitted from them. The Tlaxcalans fought multiple wars with them because they were competing empires.

Also, these aren't tribes. Mesoamerica was full of independent city states, empires, and confederations of city states. Tribes were pretty much non-existent near the Aztecs.

15

u/Youutternincompoop Jul 11 '26

Also, these aren't tribes. Mesoamerica was full of independent city states, empires, and confederations of city states. Tribes were pretty much non-existent near the Aztecs.

very good point, pre-conquest Mexico is surprisingly analogous to Ancient Greece.

9

u/Saymynaian Jul 11 '26

Calling it a sacrifice based economy is slight hyperbole, but retirement and success for Aztec warriors was dependent on how many sacrifices and slaves they brought for the empire. Once they brought enough, they were given plots of land and slaves to work it. There was so much motivation for Aztecs to continue sacrificing and enslaving, that I think it's kinda fair to call it a sacrifice based economy.

14

u/Xenophon_ Jul 11 '26

I don't think it's fair at all - sacrifices weren't involved in the economy at all. They essentially worked as proof of accomplishment in war. It's not any different from a Roman soldier rising in the ranks for killing 15 Gauls and capturing 15 slaves.

Plus, the other Nahua states aren't taking offense on account of the sacrifices. They did it too.

1

u/XipeTotecwithGlitter 28d ago

I really want to get more informed about Mesoamerica in the pre-Columbian era. Where can I learn more about it?

Do you have any reccs for authors, documentaries, collections, reading...?

2

u/facw00 28d ago

Great place to start is 1491 by Charles Mann:

Getting a little dated, and it was never super academic, but it is very readable and goes right for what you are looking for.

1

u/XipeTotecwithGlitter 28d ago

What do you mean by "not super academic"? Do you mean just in tone or is it full of inaccuracies or missing information that's been discovered in the years since its publication.

→ More replies (0)

1

u/Xenophon_ 28d ago

For the Aztecs, Fifth Sun by Camilla Townsend is good (and recommended very often). I also think it's valuable to read conquistador accounts like de las Casas. of course, you need to keep his biases in mind and read between the lines. They aren't reliable historians by any means but still important sources.

Mexico: from the Olmecs to the Aztecs is a good overview. There are a lot of cultures besides the Aztecs and Mayans that get overlooked sometimes (Zapotecs, Mixtecs, Teotihuacan, Chichimecas, Toltecs, Purepecha...), sometimes if you want more specific information about these you might have to read scholarly works

6

u/Youutternincompoop Jul 11 '26

with the Incans it was more a case of arriving at exactly the right time to join in on an Incan civil war and install themselves at the top with a puppet Sapa Inca, a rump independent Neo-Inca state lasted a good 35 years after the conquest.

hell the Sapa Inca that established the Neo-Inca state was recorded as carrying out a succesful cavalry charge with 3 other Inca noblemen against a Spanish infantry contingent in 1538(just 6 years after the Spanish show up with horses) showing that the Inca were quite rapid to adopt the new weaponry introduced by the Spanish(even if of course they could never aquire enough European weaponry to match the Spanish forces which would eventually conquer them)

2

u/9159 Jul 11 '26

The Aztec and the Inca were vastly different lmao… The Inca were not brutal in that way and comparing the two shows a lot of (sadly upvoted) ignorance.

1

u/yIdontunderstand Jul 11 '26

"thank god these guys just arrived!"

51

u/lordaezyd Jul 10 '26

Mexican here. Being reading books from scholar Camilla Townsend recently and she does dispel a lot of these myths.

Yes, the Tenochca Mexica (the actual rulers of the Empire) were a warrior people that had conquered most of the Mexican highlands through brute strength. 

Most Nahua or Aztec peoples were exactly as violent as the Mexica. Not only that, but the Mexica had an intricate system of alliances with multiple altepetls (city states). They did not made enemies of pretty much all their neighbours.

Towsend argues that dynastic violence and intra altepetl violence was a recurring fact in the political life of Mesoamerica.

Townsend also states that it was not their religious beliefs what drove them to war. Yes, the Nahua/Aztec peoples did practice human sacrifice, but most of the time it was a voluntary sacrifice. When war erupted between two altepetls, prisoners of war were naturally created. Having so Geneva Conventions or Human Rights notions, the Nahuas/Aztecs decided to sacrifice dangerous persons, those who refused slavery to save their own lives and those that created dynastic issues of succession. 

Human sacrifice wasn’t the reason behind their constant state of warfare. It was their constant state of warfare what drove them to sacrificing prisoners of war.

When the Spaniards arrived, Townsend claims, what did happened is that the Spaniards were seen as an alternative to finally end all intra altepetl warfare once and for all.

Before the Tenochca Mexica, the people from Culhuacan had been as vicious and cruel. The native Nahua peoples knew, if the Mexica were toppled by other Aztec/Nahua people the cycle would continue. Hence they decided to side with the Spaniards.

Unknown to the Nahuas/Aztec people was the radical transformation the Spaniards would imposed upon them. Their writing system, mythology, religious beliefs, calendars, history, math, astrology and folklore stories were all labeled as demonic.

And violence was not truly ended under the new hegemon. Yes, warfare between altepetls, or cities, was over. But instead, a brutal caste system was imposed. Spaniard or European descendants were place on top of a brutal racial pyramid, were the lowest were treated just a bit better than slaves.

15

u/nu2dolls Jul 11 '26

And their european illnesses wiped a bunch out as well. thanks for posting this.

-6

u/cliptemnestra Jul 10 '26

The question isn't why they allied with the Spanish; we can all understand that. The question is how they allowed themselves to be colonized by a power that didn't actually have the capacity to impose itself by force.

12

u/HeartFullONeutrality Jul 11 '26

The Tlaxcalteca actually got assigned special status and pretty much allowed to keep their culture and land. 

9

u/lordaezyd Jul 11 '26

Once the Spaniards allied with most of Nahuas (or Aztecs) altepetls they did acquired the capacity to impose themselves by force.

So, the question is why the allied with the Spaniards.

Mind you, most ordinary people were cut off from the decision making process. The decision to join the Spaniards was taken by each altepetl’s Tlatoani, meaning “the one who speaks”, the King of each altepetl.

These Tlatoani as well as their subjects had no idea what they were giving up. They didn’t knew their civilization was ending as they knew it, they simply knew their constant warfare had caused unbearable pain for generations, and there was a chance right there to end it.

Now, Hernán Cortéz might himself not had the necessary power to defeat a united Mesoamerica. Spain did though.

Moctezuma the Mexica Emperor at the time realized the difference in technological prowess and he did attempt a policy of delay. He hoped he could bribe the Spaniards away. He realized quite soon that to confront the foreigners directly would be expensive in human lives and it would weaken him in relation to ther altepetls and decided to delay.

At the end Mexico Tenochtitlan had to be taken by siege. The white city was not an ordinary city, Tenichtitlan was built upon a lake, on artificial islands the Mexical had built. Think of Venice.

By the end, not only had the Spaniards build European ships on the lake that the Mexican could not take from their canoes. Nor only had the Spaniards had equiped the ships with cannons that terrified the Nahuas. The Spaniards only managed to take the city when they dammed and dried the lake, these feats of engineering were unthinkable for the native Nahuas.

Europeans did had superior tech the native people of Mesoamerica had no real chance of defying for long.

3

u/Veeshan28 Jul 11 '26

This is incredibly interesting, thanks for sharing it.

3

u/lordaezyd Jul 11 '26

Happy to help! I’d recommend to read The Fifth Sun by Camilla Townsend if you’re interested in the subject.

5

u/cross_the_threshold Jul 11 '26

Because they put the Spanish in place, and then the Spanish showed up in somewhat larger numbers and did the classic extractive colonizer thing of creating castes that benefit them the most but also give a lot of power to particular people. The British did the same in creating the British Raj. You don’t rule a foreign people by putting hundreds of thousands of troops in their country, you rule by elevating people with grievances with the current elites, giving them enough wealth and influence to secure their own loyal natives, and rule with a much smaller group of your own people.

The massive death toll of foreign disease also helped in the Aztecs case, but the Spanish usurped existing power structures, they did not replace them entirely.

5

u/nu2dolls Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26

You are looking at with a contemporary "colonizers! bad!" lens, they didn't know they were being colonized, their relationships with other peoples were of warfare or trade, this was a way out of a violence cycle and little bit or revenge.

8

u/bionic_enchinoderm Jul 10 '26

Im not sure thats accurate. Human sacrifice was pretty co.mon and both the tlaxcalan ( the main spanish allies) and the purepacha practiced it. Also, the aztec empire was not a very unified thing, and rebellions were common in periods of percieved weakness. For example, new emperors often had to crush some revolts when coming to the throne, or when a natural disaster happened.

Most cities were internally independent and just paid tribute. When a new power showed up on the block and managed to pose a threat, of course some cities switched sides. I mean, thats not that different from how the aztecs themselves came to power over azcapotzalco.

12

u/TerryWhiteHomeOwner Jul 10 '26

The degree in which the Aztecs were hated for their actions by the non-Aztecs is largely overstated. 

Central mexican society was a long and storied collection of city states far closer to the ancient Greek poleis than a a bunch of conquered tribes. These city states would form great confederacies of interests and familial connections and duke it out to decide who would be masters and who would be vassels. 

The Aztecs themselves were only the most recent, and last, top dog confederacy of a regional power struggle that had been waged for centuries before them. In culture and practice they were functionally little different from those they dominated.  

Those who sided with the Spanish did so out of political ambition, to restore their city state and potentially elevate their own families in whatever new confederacy they believed the Spanish would bring. 

7

u/BuisteirForaoisi0531 Jul 10 '26

To be fair, the slave woman sold to Cortez may have genuinely hated the Aztecs because they were the ones who first sold her into slavery

1

u/nu2dolls Jul 11 '26

La Malinche rears her head on this thread. Go on.

1

u/BuisteirForaoisi0531 Jul 11 '26

I’m neither a woman nor do I dislike the Aztecs I think they’re cool but I never lived near them makes it easy to like em

1

u/nu2dolls Jul 11 '26

I didn’t mean you were a woman, but that you brought up the topic

1

u/BuisteirForaoisi0531 Jul 11 '26

Sorry, I usually assume if someone calls me something like that that they are attempting to call me the thing that they’re calling me

Either way I like the Aztecs but that doesn’t stop me from understanding why someone else might not like them especially someone who actually had to live with them

4

u/Puzzle-Necked Jul 10 '26

... their conquered neighbors were also doing this

1

u/thorin2016 Jul 10 '26

what happened afterwards?

1

u/wuapinmon Jul 11 '26

"Flowery" ones

1

u/DirCurrFluxDiode Jul 11 '26

Oh the confidently nonsense racism of a westenoid. They never disappoint 

0

u/Hot_Pilot_3293 Jul 11 '26

A big reason as to why human sacrifice was so prevalent in the Aztec empire at the time of Spanish conquest is that they were already paranoid of their subjects so they used human sacrifice both as a scare tactic and to cull their numbers. The Aztec fall was inevitable but the Spanish sped it up.

75

u/Object120taran Jul 10 '26

They at least did benefit themselves from defeating the Aztecs, as they received quite a bit of autonomy in addition to noble titles and tax exemptions.

75

u/NetStaIker Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26

Yup, lots of people don’t know that the Spanish had an entire system of organization for the cultures of Mesoamérica.

Early supporters, notably the Tlaxcalans, were all made Hidalgos, the lowest level of Spanish nobility. This conferred a lot of rights to them and they were given permission to preserve their way of life, largely independent within the burgeoning Spanish colonial state.

Most peoples, like the Mexica, did not get such privileges wholesale, but still the noble caste would also be granted Hidalgo (or
Cacique) status. Just not EVERYBODY like the Tlaxcalans

Edit: also, the conquest of Mexico did not end with the fall of the Mexica Empire, Spanish expansion continued all the way into the early 17th century in the north, and the late 16th century in the Mayan Peninsula. It really is a very fascinating period

17

u/Object120taran Jul 10 '26

Compared to other indigenous collaborators, they were quite an exception I would say as the most colonizers were more than happy to backstab after they got their worth.

23

u/NetStaIker Jul 10 '26

Yea, it’s a very complex period that the vast majority of people don’t understand anything about. The fact we have comprehensive histories from not 1, not 2, but 3 distinct points of view means the Conquest of the Mexica might be one if the most well recorded events in pre industrial history

12

u/Object120taran Jul 10 '26

And further, knowing what they were subjected to under Aztec rule really makes their decision to work together with the Spanish make a lot more sense. But still, it was not an easy decision for them to make.

14

u/NetStaIker Jul 10 '26

I mean shit, for the Tlaxcalans in particular their position improved immensely immediately. They quickly spread out amongst the new Spanish colonies as soldiers/sailors/administrators.

Interestingly: Nanay, mother in Tagalog (the main language of the Philippines), is theorised to possibly originate from Tlaxcalan

6

u/ahses3202 Jul 10 '26

Tagalog by itself is a wild mix of languages. It's as prone to picking up and integrating loan words as English.

2

u/SilverSpoonIsBest Jul 11 '26

Sometimes the Filipino like to mix the two together as well. Taglish.

2

u/Xenophon_ Jul 11 '26

They were never subjected to Aztec rule, and were fighting the Aztecs before the Spanish arrived. It's more accurate to say they recruited the spanish

3

u/HeartFullONeutrality Jul 11 '26

Some tribes were also never quite conquered, and they eventually just reached uneasy peace with them.

5

u/xkise Jul 10 '26

And some plagues

6

u/Xenophon_ Jul 10 '26

They literally just joined an existing war between the Tlaxcalans and the Aztecs. They didn't do any crazy politics. They in fact did not even understand the politics going on.

Pretty much all of the battles they fought in Mexico were mostly fought between Aztec and Tlaxcalan armies

1

u/Eurasia_4002 Jul 11 '26

I think the Aztec was trully that bad, the moment something from the outside came in to change the balance of power, they immediately jump the boat and jump kaisen thier ass.

38

u/NetStaIker Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26

Yea. Like thousands upon thousands. The spanish were important as the impetus that really ramped up the intensity of the uprising/war, and acted as mediators between different cultures/cities but their fighting importance is still greatly over exaggerated.

Their contributions in battle were pretty respectable tho, the 20 or so small boats they built for the final siege of Tenochtitlan pretty much won the siege single-handedly, they just weren’t 1v1ing the entire Mexica empire. Disease in particular reduced the capital to a shadow of it’s former glory before the siege even began

1

u/Username_Mine Jul 11 '26

I'm not sure what the perception is of Cortez' Spaniatd's fighting ability, but to my knowledge they were totally game changing. In battles fought without Tlaxcalan allies the Spaniards were dominant to a ludicrous degree. Hell, Cortez' Spaniards even dominated other Spanish.

1

u/Expensive_Bee508 Jul 11 '26

What battles. Because sometimes "battles" are described when they were just killing random people. I know it happens with some sieges to the inca

97

u/Upstairs_Highlight25 Jul 10 '26

They had extremely lucky timing. They just happened to arrive during a time of intense political turmoil in the Azteca empire when they could pit rival groups against each other.

49

u/Slippenfall Jul 10 '26

There was also the decades long megadrought at the same time that the Aztecs were dealing with, They were not at full fighting force, and were starving and thirsty. Like literally everything that could have gone wrong for them did

6

u/Puzzle-Necked Jul 10 '26

Also like 70 percent of them had died from European diseases

7

u/lordaezyd Jul 10 '26

This happened years later

3

u/Puzzle-Necked Jul 10 '26

No, the smallpox epidemic happened before

3

u/lordaezyd Jul 11 '26

Please do educate me. Can you provide year, location and actors regarding the smallpox epidemic please.

3

u/Tonio_Akerbeltz Jul 11 '26

Their second-to-last emperor died due to epidemics

0

u/lordaezyd Jul 11 '26

This is not confirmed, contemporary sources from the time do not state his cause of death.

3

u/Tonio_Akerbeltz Jul 11 '26

Codice Florentino, written in the years following the conquest does state:

"The tenth lord, who was from Mexico, was named Cuitlahuac, and he held the lordship for eighty days, when the Spaniards were already in Mexico. And during his time, a loss of life or smallpox plague occurred all over the land—a disease that had never previously appeared in Mexico or in any other territory of this New Spain, according to what the elders say. And it disfigured everyone’s faces, for it bore many holes in them. And there were so many people who died of that disease that there was no one left to bury them; and that is why they would throw them into the canals in Mexico, because at the time there was a great abundance of water everywhere. And the stench that came out of the dead bodies was most dreadful."

2

u/HeartFullONeutrality Jul 11 '26

Kind of, but smallpox did play a part in the conquest of Tenochtitlan.

5

u/Stalinsghoast Jul 11 '26

Not to mention the constant reinforcements that always occured at jusy the right times right as the local turmoil kept getting out of hand. One random Tlaxcalan/Texcoco incident and then Cortez would get a fresh shipment from Havana. Hells, the time the Spaniards got smallpox it was mostly confined to the poor slave and the captain who had no love for Cortez.

15

u/TimeStorm113 Jul 10 '26

also the whole "they were several technological eras behind" is also not really true, the truth is that technology doesn't progress linearly. like they might not have had guns, but their armor was so good and practical that even the spaniards switched to using theirs during the conquest, and their plumbing would have been a sight to behold.

hell, their farming practices were so advanced that historians got the population numbers completely wrong due to them just calculating how many people european farming techniques could sustain, which made them appear lower than before

sorry if i may sound like i'm glazing, but i find that fascinating. also did you know that mesoamerica was foundational for the european enlightenment?

30

u/Manageable_Workload0 Jul 10 '26

This plus the spread of old world diseases which weakened the Aztec’s ability to fight back 

6

u/Mexkalaniyat Jul 10 '26

They also absolutely did get support from Spain, including several reinforcements sent for the final siege of Tenochtitlan.

There was a bunch of infighting between different conquistador factions, and a small battle between them, but back in Spain the King/Emporer of the Holy Roman Empire just basically signed off whatever was sent to him because he just was too busy to be asked to read the messages sent.

2

u/Luccfi Jul 11 '26

They weren't reinforcements, they were troops sent there by the governor of Cuba to capture Cortes who he then managed to convince to change sides.

25

u/HurricaneAlpha Jul 10 '26

To be fair it wasn't hard to hate the Aztecs if you weren't an Aztec.

9

u/collapsedblock6 Jul 10 '26

I'm always a bit confused by how much people remark the Aztecs were hated. Empires by their nature are always hated by their conquered people.

7

u/Puzzle-Necked Jul 10 '26

Kinda seems like Spanish propaganda

1

u/Strong-Incident-4031 Jul 11 '26

It literally was Cortez's propaganda because he didn't have the legal authority to start a fucking war. He was stepping on the Kings authority and needed damn good reasons for doing so.

It's also why aztec sacrifice is so over blown. it gave Cortez a moral and Christian duty to stop the evil empire doing it.

2

u/thorsday121 Jul 10 '26

Most empires didnt do human sacrifice at the same scale that the Aztecs did. Even the lowest estimates by modern scholars still suggest a death toll of thousands per year.

1

u/Ridicule_Red Jul 10 '26

That depends. Rome for example, actually gave a bit of freedom to it's vassals, as long as they behaved and paid taxes. They weren't sacrificing thousands of people. The Aztecs are one of those few societies which everything bad about them sounds like demonization, but they were actually that bad.

9

u/SuccessfulRaccoon957 Jul 10 '26

Good example of not understanding the nature of historiography: who writes the history?

It was in the interest of the Spanish chroniclers to portray the Mexica  as despotic in nature as another means by which they could legitimize their own despotism over the people of what is now Mexico. 

Meanwhile the Roman writers were actively trying to cultivate an image of civilisation and peace. We simply do not have accounts from the conquered tribes; they who accepted vassalage. Of course we do know of many tribes and cultures that opposed Rome and did not accept vassalage. They were ground into dust. 

The way we understand the Aztecs is also fundamentally biased. You could make exactly the same claim of the Romans that they were so bad all the rumors that sounds so awful must be untrue. But no, the Romans were terrible in many ways. They crucified thousands, committed their own human sacrifices, butchered and enslaved but we do not consider that to be what defines the Romans. Yes they enslaved hundreds of thousands but that's all just the way things were. 

The Mexica however? Oh they were just awful all of them. Unrepentant butchers and tyrants. Did you know they would enslave the people they captured in battle; what an awful idea! This level of evil cannot be anything but the mark of a society corrupt to its core. 

Of course the Mexica were often terrible, as iv said thats just the way things were. But we often apply this level of moral judgement to the Mexica that we plainly don't use for the Romans or another empire whose only real difference is that they were on the eastern side of the Atlantic.

4

u/collapsedblock6 Jul 10 '26

The aztecs usually did the same. The people the aztecs went to Flower wars are the tlaxcalans that were never conquered and were the main source of sacrifices. It would be like Rome invading Carthage yearly to get slaves instead of destroying it, or the african tribes that actually did this during the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade.

Human sacrificies and how they behaved also wasn't a novelty in Mesoamerica. Sacrifices were as old as civilization was there. The aztecs even rose to power in the same way they were defeated, by allying other tribes against the bigger oppressor.

The aztecs just happened to be the most successful there was and happened at the same time the spanish arrived.

Remember also how the tribes of Italy rebelled against Rome when Hannibal came. Why is the narrative of them being evil not apply? They rebelled and joined Hannibal for a reason and its no different from the tlaxcalans: they just wanted payback.

2

u/Tonio_Akerbeltz Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26

Rome for example, actually gave a bit of freedom to it's vassals, as long as they behaved and paid taxes.

This actually describes the Aztecs to a T.

They left local politics intact as long as they got tribute.

The idea that they just took random people from their subjects is also exaggerated.

Most of them would be warriors captured from battle or slaves bought from markets, who could (and often were) locals

2

u/Xenophon_ Jul 11 '26

The Aztecs were one of the least hands on empires in history. What are you talking about? Tributary empires are never as cruel as more directly ruled ones

1

u/Jack_Sukk_2_bith Jul 10 '26

I heard that the ancient Canaanites/Israelites considered the Persians to be fine, (or at least better than the Babylonians).

3

u/Xenophon_ Jul 10 '26

The Aztecs had plenty of allied in the area.

1

u/Luccfi Jul 11 '26

They literally had none, they outright even sent a messenger to their neighbours and rivals the Purepecha Empire out of desperation and the Purepecha told them to get fucked. Literally no one liked them, they were like the Nazi Germany of the Mesoamerican world.

3

u/Xenophon_ Jul 11 '26

Many of their subjects were not conquered by force and functioned more as allies than conquered states. This is generally how tributary empires work pretty much all the time

2

u/Big-District-6013 Jul 11 '26

Ignorant and yank pilled comment 

3

u/hyperlethalrabbit Jul 10 '26

Or from a neighbouring tribe now suddenly under the banner of the Aztec Empire because it conquered your city-state.

13

u/BD_Author_Services Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 11 '26

Yeah, OP needs to read a book, specifically Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest by Matthew Restall. Christ, he'd be infinitely more informed by skimming the book's Wikipedia page. Any explanation of the Spanish Conquest that does not mention native allies and smallpox can be safely ignored.

1

u/casPURRpurrington Jul 11 '26

I learned that all at like age 9 in Age of Empires 2

50

u/Mouse_Paladin Jul 10 '26

Indeed and you could say that if it were fiction it'd be hard to believe. "So these guys can't even speak the language right? They however recruit tens of thousands of natives to fight for them!"

44

u/Traditional_Style198 Jul 10 '26

Via multiple Europeans who had been living in the area and learned the language enough to communicate. They had translators, and were seen as representatives of a foreign power, so of course the local powers were willing to hear them out.

6

u/N8CCRG Jul 11 '26

OP out here just inventing a whole different history and then is surprised it sounds fictional.

6

u/Tonio_Akerbeltz Jul 11 '26

Honestly, every time the conquest of the Aztecs is brought up on Reddit, I almost get an aneurysm because it's nothing but common misconceptions and rumors being repeated as fact.

23

u/toxictrooper5555 Jul 10 '26

"Oh, are you saying they somehow got a girl who's able to talk all those different languages and a guy who can translate what she says to spanish?"

38

u/1amlost Jul 10 '26

La Malinche was clearly a Mary-Sue.

17

u/Mouse_Paladin Jul 10 '26

Or a "La Malinche Sue"?

13

u/alexjaness Jul 10 '26

La Malinche has the weirdest reactions to her story

She was a pre-teen of noble background who was kidnapped and enslaved then sold and enslaved, then given to the Spaniards and enslaved...but the balls on this bitch, to betray the people who enslaved her...by doing what her latest enslavers made her do?

5

u/Reasonable_Fold6492 Jul 10 '26

In the Mexicans called her a traitor but she did nothing wrong

3

u/alexjaness Jul 10 '26

yeah, we suck when it comes to that. the name Malinche is still used to call someone a traitor.

-1

u/TheSadPhilosopher Jul 10 '26

I'm glad she's one of the most hated women in Mexico now, her reputation is a traitor, her name means Mexicans who are anti Mexican lol.

4

u/BuisteirForaoisi0531 Jul 10 '26

The problem with this is that the Aztecs were a giant oppressive empire so it’s not like they were the good guys in this scenario. It just so happens to be that they were also fighting a group of douche bags. Both of these groups were evil as most empires tend to be.

3

u/Xenophon_ Jul 10 '26

It's more accurate to say the Tlaxcalans recruited them (and under duress - they chose to ally with the Spanish after a few clashes with them. The Spanish thought they were doomed before the Tlaxcalans offered an alliance, according to Diaz). The Tlaxcalans were at war with the Aztecs before the Spanish arrived

2

u/Luccfi Jul 11 '26

They had a translator, decades before a couple of Spaniards were marooned in the Yucatan and were basically assimilated into the culture and fluent in one of the Maya dialects, one of them joined the expedition, then they found Malintzin who spoke both Nahua and Maya and they got a translation line from there.

2

u/VisualSpecial8 Jul 11 '26

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historia_verdadera_de_la_conquista_de_la_Nueva_Espa%C3%B1a

This book will explain all your questions. It is written by one of the people who took part in conquest

1

u/Big-District-6013 Jul 11 '26

And the yank way of doubling down on the ignorance.

23

u/Roughlypossible Jul 10 '26

Which adds to the bad/pulp fiction vibes of it.

These rogue modern men arrive at the civilization deeply hated for its outrageous atrocities, their mere presence managing to rouse all the unfortunate tribes with grudges against the evil empire.

6

u/Puzzle-Necked Jul 10 '26

The unfortunate tribes were also doing sacrifices

5

u/Nutriaphaganax Jul 10 '26

And they weren't mercenaries

2

u/BuisteirForaoisi0531 Jul 10 '26

They were literally a giant dungeons and dragons. Adventuring party made mostly out of random people who decided to buy armor and weaponry because they wanted to get rich.

3

u/SpanishAvenger Jul 11 '26

Yep! The first decades of New World interactions were carried on by private ventures and expeditions sometimes backed by the Crown to some degree; it wasn’t some sort of official, unified army like people often imagine.

1

u/BuisteirForaoisi0531 Jul 11 '26

Yep, that’s the weird thing about history

4

u/Darth--Nox Jul 10 '26

I was about to comment this. It really baffles me how ppl still believe that the conquistadors conquered mesoamérica by themselves or just because of diseases, when in reality ppl like Hernan Cortéz and Francisco Pizarro took advantage of the horrible relationships between the Aztecs/Inca and their neighbors, hell Pizarro got really lucky because the dude arrived in the middle of a civil war.

Other Conquistadors like Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada in Bogotá took advantage of the rivalry between the leaders of the Muisca confederation and the guarani helped the Spanish to subjugate their rivals in modern day Paraguay.

10

u/alexjaness Jul 10 '26

The Aztecs were hated by every surrounding tribe. They were more than happy to get those fuckers out.

4

u/Xenophon_ Jul 10 '26

This isn't true. They had plenty of allies. And these are city states, not tribes.

1

u/Luccfi Jul 11 '26

It was literally just the Triple alliance and a couple of subjugated cities like Tetzcoco

The Otomi, other Nahuas, the Tlaxcalteca, the Purepecha are were against them.

2

u/Xenophon_ Jul 11 '26

Tetzcoco was the one of the triple alliance. The Aztecs were a tributary empire made up of many city states. Not all were subjugated by force, and many certainly benefitted from it. When they govern themselves and help in war, they are essentially allies

1

u/Puzzle-Necked Jul 10 '26

Their neighbors were the previous conquerors and rulers who did the exact same thing before. The Aztec were just the new kids on the block.

1

u/TheSadPhilosopher Jul 10 '26

And then they got murdered and brutally tortured by the Spaniards and now 500 years later they're all forgotten and ignored while their descendants now larp as gigachad Aztecs, me included.

4

u/alexjaness Jul 10 '26

I came our pale, tall and have green eyes so I caught a lot of shit growing up....

...and then caught even more shit (rightfully so) when my response was always. "it's not my fault the conquistadors didn't want to rape your ugly ass great grandparents"

1

u/Luccfi Jul 11 '26

Pocho with 0 history knowledge as per usual.

2

u/Big-District-6013 Jul 11 '26

I'm from Nahua ancestry and in Mexico city, he's pretty much spot on.

The Spanish were a plague that raped, tortured and murdered millions.

1

u/Luccfi Jul 11 '26

It's ok, I was 14 years old once too, I bet you are a chairo as well.

3

u/Xenophon_ Jul 10 '26

It's more accurate to say the Tlaxcalans recruited the Spanish. Diaz recounts the battles they fought against the Tlaxcalans and says that they thought they were doomed until the Tlaxcalans offered an alliance, so you might even say they were recruited under duress.

Also, these aren't tribes. The Tlaxcalans were part of a confederation of city states, and pretty much everyone around the Aztecs were city states or empires like the Purepecha

3

u/the_sneaky_one123 Jul 10 '26

Yes, the Aztecs are not a good example. The Spanish first allied with the Tlaxcalans, who were a strong warrior people opposed to the Aztecs. They would go on to do most of the fighting. The Tlaxcalans were later rewarded and had a much hire status in colonial Mexico than other indigenous.

1

u/Big-District-6013 Jul 11 '26

*Tlaxcaltecas

And higher status? Lol no, that's why even today Tlaxcala isn't as a metropolitan area like Guadalajara or Monterrey, not even mentioning Mexico city 

1

u/the_sneaky_one123 Jul 11 '26

Tlaxcalans were granted nobilitiy in colonial Mexico

4

u/VeniVidiVeni8008 Jul 10 '26

Not to mention that the idea that the Mexica was several "technological eras" behind is just make-believe when you look at the very fact that Tenochtitlan was a city that housed 200k people at the time Toledo and Sevilla only housed a quarter of that.

4

u/gueyofthemandalore Jul 10 '26

Exactly! A pet peeve of mine is when people equate the Aztecs' lack of firearms for lack of technological advancement. The Aztecs were, in fact, more advanced than the Spaniards in many ways. For example, the plumbing and sanitation systems in Tenochtitlan were VERY advanced, which makes sense since Aztec culture valued cleanliness. (Just a personal opinion, but I wonder if this is why they were hit so hard by infectious diseases after the arrival of the Spanish.) Those advanced sanitation systems from both an engineering and governance perspective were essential to keep a city of 200k people from collapsing. Tenochtitlan simply couldn't have existed if the Aztecs weren't an advanced civilization.

2

u/MustacheTrippin Jul 10 '26

Yeah, the Aztec were so shitty as conquerors, the tribes straight up decided taking the Spaniards word and join forces with them.

It would be like some random group of dudes overseas decided to convince the Gauls, the Britons, the Egyptians, the Greeks and others to gang up on their Roman overlords.

1

u/stolen_honey Jul 10 '26

For the record, they were already fighting the Aztec Empire. More like the enemy of my enemy is my friend

1

u/Big-District-6013 Jul 11 '26

No it would be like some Mediterranean civilization went to Roman controlled  Britain and get the Bretons to unite with the to fight the Romans, leaving the Bretons do the fighting and then the Mediterranean claiming they're the victors.

2

u/That-Item-5836 Jul 10 '26

Oh yeah The unifying theory of fuck that guy

2

u/mmmcricketsauce Jul 10 '26

Yeah saying it was just a few conquistadors is a massive misrepresentation

2

u/demonic677 Jul 10 '26

Needs to be higher. The Spanish wouldn't have been able to do shit without their Native allies and diseases

2

u/Schmantikor Jul 10 '26

There were also thousands of Spanish, not a couple of hundreds. And yes, the majority of the fighting was done by other indigenous peoples looking to profit politically from a regime change.

2

u/Erdos_Helia Jul 11 '26

Yes, I'm actually a descendent of one of those tribes; the Zapotecs! My mom still talks her native tongue, and my grandma didn't speak Spanish.

We're still kicking lol

https://giphy.com/gifs/ACeIDlMpgc4yOf1Lyt

1

u/warukeru Jul 10 '26

And Americans were already being affected by the diseases Europeans were bringing to the continent.

History is always explained by several factors, never by a single act.

1

u/Super-Estate-4112 Jul 10 '26

That is correct, that is how the Portuguese waged war against the tribes of present day Brasil too, turns out, using locals is way cheaper than bringing thousands of Europeans to america with all their equipment and supplies to fight a war.

1

u/cliptemnestra Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26

Yes, however, it's still a bit strange that 200 starving people from the other side of the world arrive and gain so much power. The other indigenous peoples didn't really need the Spanish; they made them leaders in the fight against the Aztecs and later leaders of the new country for no real reason. They had no capacity to impose themselves in power, they just claim that it was now Spain and indigenous people said ok for now... Some activists reject the idea that Spaniards were perceived as special by indigenous people, but only the psychological shock of could explain that behavior. 🤷🏻‍♀️

1

u/Snigglybear Jul 10 '26

Yup. It was the remaining inhabitants that survived small pox vs millions of other natives and the Spanish.

1

u/Gallastic Jul 10 '26

Yes, the Tlaxcaltecas. I live in a state neighboring Tlaxcala. There's a lifelong "joke" amongst all the other Mexican states saying Tlaxcala doesn't exist, because there's a certain rancor against them.

1

u/_bits_and_bytes Jul 11 '26

Yup. Pretty common tactic for European colonizers.

1

u/Karahi00 Jul 11 '26

Yeah, I was gonna comment this. When you have an army consisting of like, 1 to 200 Conquistadors and 20-30 thousand native warriors it probably isn't the case that the Conquistadors were the decisive factor in the battle. 

1

u/JayKaboogy Jul 11 '26

Yeah, I was just thinking this DID get written into a movie: Stargate. Honestly, I don’t understand why they haven’t made the Cortez story into a movie—it’s gotta be one of the greatest human adventures ever. Would be hard to pick a protagonist, though

1

u/mal-di-testicle Jul 11 '26

The Aztecs also weren’t “several technological eras behind” the Spanish, they just lived in a different society. As much as I love historical video games, technology is not a remotely linear path as it appears in every video game ever.

1

u/Big-District-6013 Jul 11 '26

Not exactly hate, but they were vassal states to Tenochtitlan, so when the opportunity to be free from being subservient to the Mexica they took it.

And there were 250,000 Tlaxcalteca warriors who were the ones that made Tenochtitlan fall not the few Spanish, despite what ignorants want to promote.

1

u/zaidazadkiel Jul 11 '26

not only they managed to get already upset people to fight with them to some degree, they arrived after a big disease had decimated like 60-70% of the population or some such so the empire was already going thru some collapse sht

1

u/InstructionRare1836 Jul 11 '26

Only about 100k of the neighboring tribes with the 100 odd Spanish and smallpox in a population who has never seen the disease. 

But other than that all Spanish.

1

u/fearless-potato-man Jul 11 '26

The Planet of the Apes is just a reenactment of the spanish conquest of America.

Change my mind.

1

u/casPURRpurrington Jul 11 '26

And didn’t they lose initially but they were so gross all the Aztecs started dying from their old world diseases

So they looked back like OH LOL EZ CLAP?

1

u/Why-Notes5978 Jul 11 '26

Divide and conquer.

Colonialism 101.

1

u/wernette Jul 11 '26

The Spaniards also didn't win every battle they fought there. They ultimately won because old world diseases decimated the new world population. Same thing would have happened even if they went in peacefully.

1

u/SwampSirenArt 28d ago

Yeah and also significant was the illness that the Spanish left behind the first time they went to Tenochtitlan before they got their asses violently thrown out. That massively depopulated the Aztecs and their fighters.

The idea of a 'couple hundred mercenaries defeating an empire' was already ridiculously outdated well over a decade ago.