The text wrongly claims that the Spanish defeated the Aztecs because of their iron weapons. Actually, the Spanish were vastly outnumbered, so their weapons alone were irrelevant in the battle. The Spanish had alliances with Indigenous peoples who opposed the Aztec Empire, giving them a much larger army. That defeated the Aztecs.
Cortez had around 500 men. Even if you get rid of 99% of the local population, which they didn't, they'd have been outnumbered in to an absurd degree.
In the battle of Frankenhausen, Germany, 1525, German peasants went up against armored soldiers and the casualties were 5000 peasants dead vs 6 armored soldiers. The technological advantage before modern firearms for formal armies was enormous, even in Europe, even without the help of imported European diseases.
Numbers like that are almost always the same story. I wasn't familiar with that exact battle [1] but it also matches the pattern. It's not like the peasants actually took on the soldiers, but rather you had some peasants inexplicably leave a town, and organize themselves within a circling of wagons, a 'wagon fort'. That wagon fort was then fully encircled, and 'ambushed' starting with artillery.
The peasants immediately broke and fled, which is where you get the crazy ratios from - fleeing armies are extremely vulnerable and near harmless. Had they fought, they likely would have inflicted far greater casualties on the military forces. However given there were roughly comparable peasant and military forces, the outcome was not in question, so it would have been suicide. Of course so was fleeing.
bugake · · focus · HN ↗
dainank · · focus · HN ↗
- European diseases
- superior weaponry
- alliances with local Aztec enemies
The first wave of smallpox killed 5-8 million and is by far one of the greatest factors.
somenameforme · · focus · HN ↗
narrator · · focus · HN ↗
somenameforme · · focus · HN ↗
The peasants immediately broke and fled, which is where you get the crazy ratios from - fleeing armies are extremely vulnerable and near harmless. Had they fought, they likely would have inflicted far greater casualties on the military forces. However given there were roughly comparable peasant and military forces, the outcome was not in question, so it would have been suicide. Of course so was fleeing.
[1] - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Frankenhausen" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Frankenhausen