The Spanish came to Mexico and while traveling there one of Cortes s men contracted smallpox The soldier that contracted smallpox then died in the war not from smallpox and his body was looted by the people of the Tenochtitlan This caused one of the Aztec to contract smallpox From there on the disease spread to the other Aztecs rapidly killing more than 3 million Aztec LiveScience This gave the Spanish an advantage because while the Aztec were severely affected by it the Spanish had built an immunity to the disease and were much more healthy Not only did the disease weaken the Aztecs health but also their trust in their leader Montezuma The Aztec blamed the leader for bringing smallpox to them They believed that he should have sent the Spanish away while they could instead of trusting them With weakened health and distrust in their leader the Spanish were able to easily cut down the Aztec Another away the Spanish were able to defeat the Aztec is a sociological one The Spanish military was much more advanced than the Aztecs When the Spanish first arrived Cortes and his men were vastly outnumbered Cortes knew that fighting with 600 men would be suicide so he started to recruit men from Europe that were willing to fight with him By recruiting Cortes was able to create an army of 200 000 men TheHistoryJunkie The amount of men recruited not only affected the war between the Spanish and Aztec but also the type of men recruited
The Spanish and European warriors were highly trained from the recent wars such as the fall of Rome They showed no mercy when it came to killing whereas the Aztec based war off beliefs and would try to capture the men so they could sacrifice them later to the gods One of the biggest military advantages that the Spanish had were the use of horses Horses allowed the Spanish to move from one place to another and send new information quickly Which meant the Spanish could advance quickly or retreat quickly The Aztec had never seen an animal being rode so when they seen a man on top of an animal they were in shock which worked to the Spanish s advantage PBS Current issues we have now are usually solved by trade or a compromise war being the last resort Trade is a much better technique than what the Spanish did because trading with other countries makes it so that each country happy One trade the U S does is with Africa The U S gives them clean water and help and in return they buy products from the U S because they look at the U S as an ally and they want to return the favor This is a win win because the US is making a profit and Africa is receiving fresh drinking water Whereas the Spanish went in and their only mindset was to take over the Aztecs territory If the Spanish would have tried to compromise with the Aztec there wouldn't had been as much death and it would have been easier for the Spanish to achieve their overall goal of gaining power
