Why Did The Spanish Conquer The Aztecs

When it came to facing the Spanish, the Aztecs were at a severe disadvantage. The Aztecs had just finished building the main parts of their vast empire and defeated the other tribe that were the rulers of the land that their empire now sat upon. Then, all of a sudden, these strange people show up with all these strange and foreign objects and the Aztecs didn’t know what to do. As the Aztecs would soon find out, the Spanish had come to conquer land, not make allies. The Spanish were able to conquer the Aztecs because they had an advantage. They had new tools and weapons that the Aztecs had never seen before, they were invited in by the Aztecs, and they had allies. The first big advantage that the Spanish had over the Aztecs was that the Spanish lived in the new world where as the Aztecs still lived in the old world and because of that the Spanish had equipment that the Aztecs had never seen before. The Spanish came to the land in ships that the Aztecs called “floating mountains” because they had never seen anything remotely close to a ship before. The Spanish also had metal armour, horses, and guns. The Aztecs only had what they could make out of the earth around them and they were all mesmerized by the new things that the Spanish had
During their first encounter with each other both groups seemed peaceful and acted like they could be allies so the Aztec emperor invited the Spanish to stay with them for a little while. This gave the Spanish the advantage because it let them see how the Aztec empire was set up. Some of the Spanish even noticed that around the same time every day the nobles would gather in the palace while the Emperor talked to them. So, after the Spanish gathered some knowledge about the Aztecs, they kidnapped the emperor and he became the Spanish’s puppet. Now the Spanish’s plan to conquer the empire was set into