"When we gazed upon all this splendor at once, we scarcely knew what to think, and we doubted whether all that we beheld was real. A series of large towns stretched themselves along the banks of the lake, out of which still larger ones rose magnificently above the waters. Innumerable crowds of canoes were plying everywhere around us; at regular distances we continually passed over new bridges, and before us lay the great city of Mexico in all its splendor." Those are the words of Bernal Díaz del Castillo, a Spanish soldier, upon first seeing the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan in 1519. At the time, the Aztec Empire was the most powerful Mesoamerican kingdom of all time, with 80,000 square miles of territory and some 15 million inhabitants. Just 2 years later, the empire would crumble, utterly defeated by European forces staking a claim for Spain. But did you know, the leader of this exploit, Hernán Cortés, had defied Spanish authority and run off to conquer the Aztecs with less than 500 soldiers? Let’s fix that.

Sources: 

• New York Times "After 500 Years Cortes Girlfriend Is Not Forgiven"
• New York Historical Society "Live Story: Malitzen (La Malinche)"
• Thoughtco "Ten Facts About Hernán Cortés"
• bizarreandgrotesque.com "Gonazlo Guerrero and Geronimo de Aguilar, Two Spanish Men who Were Captured by the Mayans"
• The Borgen Project "Facts About Indigenous Poverty in Mexico"
• History.com "How Hernán Cortés conquered the Aztec Empire"
• New World Encyclopedia "Battle of Tenochtitlan"
• Live Science "Hernán Cortés: Conqueror of the Aztecs"
• houstonculture.org "The Indigenous People of Central Mexico"

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