He thought nothing of sacrificing 12 indians a day.

He ruled the capitol city with around 400,000 people, bigger than any European city at the time. He had ~3000 armed soldiers permanently guarding his residence. And countless slaves within. His chefs prepared around a hundred meals for him at each setting, from which he could sample. He claimed to keep over a hundred women pregnant at all times.

His empire stretched about as far his people knew there were people to conquer, and other than a few constant headache tribes, everyone in Mexico paid tribute. He received mined gold, precious stones, and countless slaves on a daily basis.

His capitol city was a perfect fortress. To approach it, one had to travel through hundreds of miles of difficult terrain scattered with cities and village filled with his subjects, ready at a moments notice to overwhelm hostile approachers. All the paths to the capitol cut through mountains and through passes and over bodies of water, perfect for ambushes and attack.

And the city itself was perfectly defensible. It was built on a series of natural and manmade islands in the middle of dozens of lakes. Paths to the city were along narrow and long bridges, stretching for miles, sometimes only 10 or 20 yards wide, which were built disconnected. Temporary connectors were laid out, but could be sabatoged or removed at any time. His defense included thousands of soldiers in canoes.

Trying to breach the city on one of these bridges? They could just tear out the connector, strand your army on a narrow stretch of bridge, no way forward or backward, only 5 men abreast and miles in a line, while they pwn you from the water.

Into this situation marched Cortes, with at most 5 or 600 men. They could have been stopped at any city during the march, and Montezuma knew they were coming and had sent a dozen messengers to say, "stop and go back, here have some gold".

Cortes had to cross these bridges, where his natural advantages - about twenty horses, a dozen cannons, and spanish military training (fight in a square) were completely useless.

Cortes got to the city and, if Montezuma so desired, could be prevented from fleeing. And once inside, the spaniards were outnumbered 500:400,000.

DESPITE ALL THIS SHIT, Montezuma acquiesced in them coming and put them up in a mansion. Even then, he could have surrounded them and wiped them out in an afternoon. But he kept meeting with Cortes and conversing about pussy and religion and history.

Cortes was no idiot and knew the numbers, knew his odds, but still desperately scheming to find a way to conquer the city and the god-emperor.

His final ploy was this: "Hey Montezuma, I have this letter here (see, we write words on paper) that says some Spanish were killed back on the coast at your orders. My king, the mighty King of Spain, won't like this. And so even thouhg I know this rumor is total bullshit and you would never do such a thing, protocol requires that I, haha, kind of take you as prisoner. You will need to come live in our mansion and have your liberty curtailed. Don't worry! We are friends. This is all bullshit, haha, but I have to do it. Sound good?"

And Montezuma agreed! Lmao. He moved into the Spanish residence and ran his empire from there, under Spanish guard. At any moment he could have whispered to an indian, "attack", and hundreds of thousands of his subjects could have fallen on the europeans with only stones, and even if a few hundred got got by cannons and gunfire, whitey would be dead before nightfall.

But Cortes kept pushing. "So hey we, um, need to tear down your idols. No offense. We need you to appear with us in front of the crowds and pledge loyalty to the King of Spain. Its no big deal, really, you don't have to mean it, haha."

Montezuma did all this, and of course his people were disgusted, rioted, stoned Montezuma off his perch, and the battle broke out.

By that point, Cortes had built boats for the lakes, turned factions of indians against each other, and somehow in all the disorganization, won the battle.

Craziest victory ever and I cannot wrap my brain around Montezuma just letting it get that far.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5637930&forum_id=2)#48364595)

There’s a lot wrong with your post but this is perhaps the most egregious, Cortes had tens of thousands of allied tribe warriors who were essential to his victories.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5637930&forum_id=2)#48364685)

He most certainly did not have "tens of thousands" of them. In most of the historical documents, the bulk of the indians work was in dragging the cannons and gear along behind the spanish. Granted these are spanish documents and probably inclined to exaggerate spanish accomplishment and minimize indian help, but its lol to think he rolled with some massive indian army, who just suddenly realized they could overthrow the empire.

And even granting your numbers, which are complete bullshit, the capitol city (whose name Im also not googling for spelling), had almost half a million people -- and all the defenses Ive described.

And Montezuma and his predecessors clearly ruled ruthlessly from this city with no real threat from indian subjects for hundreds of years.

So if your point was, "it was not a big deal that cortes breached the city, he had the numbers and anyone in my high school could have done it", youre deluded

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5637930&forum_id=2)#48364733)

we know roughly how many people montezuma had in his city. we know roughly how it was designed. we know how successful his rule had been against any challengers. and we know nearly exactly how many spaniards were in the traveling unit which arrived.

even allowing, as poster above argues, that they had indian help... the odds against them were astronomical. 100:1 is realistic.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5637930&forum_id=2)#48364740)

Any other proposed explanation is some far fetched rube goldberg

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5637930&forum_id=2)#48364754)

I come from nothing, fatal troubles are waiting for me at each stop behind me, death is omnipresent and Ive accepted it, ive already risked the house, have nothing left to risk and no gains to bank on, so really may as well aim for the absolute stars in terms of glory, riches, renown. Death is 100x better than failure, so lets fucking goooooooooooooooooo.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5637930&forum_id=2)#48364796)

https://www.amazon.com/History-Conquest-Mexico-William-Prescott/dp/1541266722/

i'm sure there are a bunch of woke modern ones, too.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5637930&forum_id=2)#48365036)