4. Hernan Cortes Conquered an Empire Through Treachery, Massacre, and Genocide
En route to the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes subdued the natives en route. Those who resisted were massacred, as occurred in the city of Cholula, which rampaging Spaniards destroyed, while killing up to 30,000 Cholulans. By the time he reached Tenochtitlan, Cortes had a large army of natives, surrounding his core of Spaniards. Foolishly, the Aztec ruler Montezuma II invited Cortes and his men into his palace and plied them with lavish golden gifts, which only ignited their greed. Cortes treacherously seized his host, and keeping him a hostage, ruled the Aztec Empire through the captive emperor.
Soon thereafter, Cortes had to leave Tenochtitlan to deal with rival conquistadors and left behind a Spanish garrison. In Cortes’ absence, his garrison massacred thousands of Aztecs in Tenochtitlan’s Great Temple, triggering an uprising. Cortes rushed back to Tenochtitlan and trotted out the captive Montezuma in an attempt to placate the natives, but the livid Aztecs stoned the puppet ruler to death. Cortes fled Tenochtitlan, then returned with a powerful army that demolished the city in bitter fighting. The natives became serfs, and between massacres, mistreatment, overwork, and Old World epidemics, their population crashed from an estimated 30 million when Cortes arrived, to a mere 3 million by 1568.
