the Spaniards only conquered the Aztecs because of dumb luck
...And tons of help from the many locals that the Aztecs oppressed.
By, um, raiding them for human sacrifices and other resources.
The Nahuatls were the only people in the entire New World with the concept of fractions. Spanish children studied fucking Euclid.
The most advanced civilizations in the New World were barely experimenting with copper, forget bronze. The Spanish were already casting steel.
And a routine workday for a Spaniard was usually lethal overwork for the natives of the New World, because Europe’s agriculture was so much more advanced, and could provide far more calories. The average Nahuatl man was I think about 5′2″; the Spanish man was 5′6″.
The Spanish interpreter in dealing with the “Aztecs”, and their Tlaxcala rivals, was the daughter of a Tlaxcaltec noble who was sold into slavery when her family fell on hard times. (She was given to Cortes as a present; he formally freed her before taking her as his mistress, because the Spanish didn’t have sex slaves, unlike the Nahuatls.) When Spanish nobles fell on hard times, they took teaching jobs or joined the army.
And sure, “dumb luck” is what it’s called when your cannons are so good, the entire civilization that invented gunpowder bans contact with your people, because your guns threaten to completely upend their social order. Did we forget the New World wasn’t the only other civilization the Spanish dealt with? East Asia imposed the fucking Star Trek Prime Directive on themselves because Europeans were so much more advanced, they might as well have been space aliens.
