Si Sheppard

How did a few hundred Spanish soldiers topple two empires? – Si Sheppard

Si Sheppard

Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro dismantled the Aztec and Inca Empires by leveraging superior cavalry, steel weaponry, and firearms alongside a strategic playbook that exploited internal civil wars and indigenous rivalries. These Spanish conquistadors, often acting as private entrepreneurs rather than state agents, captured central leaders to paralyze centralized command structures while relying heavily on thousands of native allies who outnumbered the Europeans by over ninety-nine percent. Ultimately, the conquests were facilitated by catastrophic Old World disease epidemics that decimated local populations and triggered a European "Price Revolution" through the influx of American silver.