5281–5293 AM · 1521 CE — 1533 CE · world history
The Fall of the Aztec and Inca Empires
Small Spanish forces destroy the two greatest American empires within a decade.
Cortés takes Tenochtitlan, a lake city larger than the Madrid of its day, with a few hundred soldiers. Twelve years later Pizarro captures Atahualpa and topples the Inca empire. Alliances with subject peoples mattered more than steel and horses—and smallpox mattered most, killing up to ninety per cent of the population.
Sources
Documents of the period
- Spanish colonial documents — the letters of Cortés and the chronicle of Bernal Díaz
Scholarship
- archaeology of pre-Columbian America — smallpox, local allies, and the fall of two empires
Basis: documents and evidence.