The Rise And Fall Of The Aztec Empire

the Aztecs lived without plague without a lack of food and without equals this should have been the closest anyone had ever come until then to creating a paradise and yet they waged constant war practiced cannibalism and sacrificed thousands of people alive every year how did the civilization create such a mix of peaceful paradise and violent brutality in this series we're going to look at the Aztecs from the mythical past to the rise of the civilization and until they failed the test of time we're not just going to look at the military accomplishments we're going to look at their politics their culture and their economics and we're going to analyze how their policies in these matters turned them into the dominant Empire in the region and why it wasn't another Empire that rose instead we don't know a lot about the Aztec people before they founded their civilization that's because one of their kings decided to burn all the code access detailing the origin of the Aztec people but luckily another King later tried to recover this part of the history but that too was burnt when the Spanish arrived therefore their history is rooted in myth and legend with various sources scraped together over time from Spanish priests who spoke with the locals who are recovered codex here and death so we do know some things about their past the Aztecs came from the plains of what is currently northern Mexico according to the mythology the Aztec people originated on the island of aslam a stag literally means people of aslam eventually their most important God commanded them to leave aslam to travel to a land of paradise where they will receive good weather and bountiful harvests the name of this God was who which still approached Lee the Sun God he is comparable to a moon rod Jupiter or Odin it is dis God who would guide the Aztec people on their journey to a promised land the migration lasted for centuries each time they would settle a location for a few years or a few decades and then move on howdy Aztec priests would interpret the will of who which still approaches Li directly affected how the people would live and had ripple effects throughout the Aztec history that may not be obvious at first for example on their journey the Aztecs tell of a land named Toula hit a priest build an altar in honor of the faithful God who each teleported Lee advised his priest to go down the hill to an area of meadows and construct a dam to block any water going out this created the first artificial lagoon recorded in Mesoamerican history many animals came to this lagoon such as wild ducks hummingbirds and an array of fish the Aztec people were so happy with this easy abundance of food that they formed a sedentary lifestyle and no longer on earth which still approached thee they went as far as to ask the priests to just give up on this whole migration thing and take the land of Tolan instead but one night lightning rocked the land of Tolan and in the morning the Aztec people woke up to find the bodies of those who had forsaken who would steal a portly their bodies were mutilated their chests lay open and their hearts had been ripped out today scholars mainly see this story as a mythological account of a real event a bloody struggle between two groups for leadership of the Aztec tribe but this event made something clear to the Aztec people which still approached they wanted blood sacrifices from now on the Aztec high priests would offer human sacrifices and extract human hearts for their God to appease his anger and so with all opposition to the great migration dead the ester continued that journey until they arrived at Lake Texcoco and it's the arrival at Lake Texcoco where we finally get some written historical records upon their arrival at the lake they discovered a civilization far more sophisticated than their own cities a feudal system and large temples what is often overlooked in history is what was there in Central America before the Aztec civilization arose when I was in school I was thought that the Aztecs were the first civilization in that region but this isn't so there were already cities everywhere going as far back to Teotihuacan some were independent while others were part of larger kingdoms and pay taxes to a central city in exchange for protection this society was in many ways similar to that of medieval Europe and when the Aztec decided to settle this land the locals were very displeased you see the people in this region practiced something called land ownership a new concept to the Aztecs so the nobles of other towns and cities weren't particularly happy with a bunch of immigrants from North America coming south to take their land on the advice of their God which still Apostoli the Aztec constructed a town erected solid walls and elected a warrior to become their leader this would set a major precedent for all future leaders of the air stack would be warriors a decision that would over time make the Aztecs expansionist this warrior leader told his people to craft weapons to defend themselves with and so the Aztec people evolved from a religious and agricultural society into a militarily aggressive society as the hostilities became worse the a-stack decided to teach all the men women and children how to use all sorts of weaponry to defend their tribe over time the surrounding kingdoms would fight several battles with the Aztec tribe until these kingdoms decided to kill all the a-stack in an ambush but the Aztecs instead ambushed their ambushers ripped out their beating hearts and offered them to the Sun God who which teleports Li and after a few more battles decided that maybe it was a good time to leave this area on the advice on which teleports today the Aztecs sent a diplomatic envoy to the next king whose lands they wanted to settle this land was ruled by the kingdom of cold who Aachen they asked the king for land and were given a patch of inhospitable land with barren soil and poisonous animals they eventually managed to build a town turned the ground fertile and settle into a life of agriculture but which still oppose Lea who had become not just the Sun God but also the god of human sacrifice and war didn't like the sound of a peaceful and quiet life he ordered his people to attack that coal who work on overlords the Stech were crafty and sent an emissary to ask for the hand of the king's daughter she would be crowned as their queen and become the bride of their God which teleports Lea and the King agreed to this marriage when the princess arrived at the tribe for their wedding ceremony the priests took her by her hand and brought her to the temple of a future husband there for priests tore off her clothes a fifth priest emerged with a flint knife he held the knife in the air and cut open her chest with one hand he reached into her still living body grabbed her heart and ripped it out of her chest that night after dinner that same priest appeared before the King wearing the skin of his daughter this spectacle enraged the king and he ordered all of his people who were there for the wedding to kill every last Aztec his daughter will be avenged the ensuing battle was a disastrous defeat for the a-stack what remained of their population fled to an island in the middle of Lake Texcoco in that desperation they sought the counsel of which still approaches Lea once more and he told them that their migration was nearly at an end they were almost at their destination the Aztecs would have their homeland which still Apostoli told them to for a rock with a cactus on top on top of that cactus they would find an eagle nesting and devouring a serpent after some searching the Aztecs finally found it and named their new city 10 not steed lung meaning place of the cactus on the rock at last the long journey of the a-stack had ended in 1325 their God had shown them the Promised Land he told them to build a city here and to start claiming ownership of all the lands that surrounded them the Aztec had found their island paradise they built a temple today God who eats teleports li and they celebrate it but the good times were not to last the a-stack had bigger issues to contend with their capital of Tenochtitlan was located between three larger kingdoms to the east was the kingdom of Ted's cocoa to the south were the cool who were come whom the Aztec had just escaped from after murdering a princess and to the west was the kingdom of azcapotzalco each of these kingdoms controlled several cities and towns while the a-stack only controlled a small amount of people in a small town located on a small island the Aztec fully understood that they did not possess the economic military or political resources to stand up against any of these larger kingdoms and so des tak decided to lay low until such a time that they could claim the land that was theirs by the will of which still a portly the Aztec people became hunters gatherers and farmers eventually developing enough to warrant travelling to neighboring towns to trade raw materials in exchange for manufactured goods and other raw materials that were not available to them but as they traded they gained the unwanted attention of those same towns you see these towns were part of the kingdom of azcapotzalco and these towns were being taxed in exchange for protection but now here was a group of people who had recently settled an island benefiting from the safe trade provided by the kingdom of occipital ko and yet paid no taxes this seemed unfair to many and so the king of occipital Co implemented heavy taxes on the a-stack but the ass tax realising their inferiority decided to be diplomatic and sent a committee to treat with the king to plead with him for lower taxes to the king however these were people who settled one of his islands who had traded without paying taxes and who had now dared to ask him to lower taxes so he increased taxes even further these taxes would take such a heavy toll on the a-stack that even the nobility had trouble getting enough to eat knowing that military action wasn't an option the a-stack grudgingly decided to pay these heavy taxes becoming a tributary town of the kingdom of azcapotzalco but this humiliation also made something blatantly clear to the a-stack they needed to drastically modernize their political system in order to keep up with their neighbors tribalism simply wouldn't do anymore and so they to go for the feudalistic system that their neighbors used with a king at the top a Council of Nobles who would rule large parts of territory and lessen nobles ruling small areas but who should be the king well before they knew who should be the king they asked themselves what a good king should be like and the answer to this question was rather simple a good king should be the embodiment of who which steal a parsley on earth strong intelligent and most of all a good warrior and these criteria would stay mostly the same for their entire history as we saw in the beginning with the great migration of the a-stack they had evolved from a religious and agricultural society into a militaristic society and this hadn't changed the a-stack was still warlike and served in the armies of their azcapotzalco overlords so when they had to choose a king they didn't choose him based on his skill in politics or economics they chose him based on the skill in battle and as we will see later on this meant that the Aztec Kings would often resolve problems with military thinking instead of using political savviness intelligence networks or economic skills and their search came to an end when they heard of a man called akima Pixley who the Aztecs believed embodied all the great traits a ruler should have and invited him to become their king and so in 1375 the Aztec tribe became the a-stack Kingdom King akka map Italy is said to have rule this kingdom effectively and he is mainly credited for his domestic policies it is under his reign that the town of Tenochtitlan was turned into a proper city with temples parks wide open streets residential areas canals and even new land added to their Island the kingdom enjoyed a period of peace and growth but as the King grew older however he realized that he would die soon the a-stack needed a successor to the throne but how do you choose a successor do you handpick them do you let them fight it out between them in a bloody civil war do you simply choose your eldest son by tradition I come a peach Lee's answer to this question was a very odd one for a monarch he decided that the people of Tenochtitlan would choose his successor in an election the people would get the votes on which of his seven true born children would succeed him as king he also had one bastard son but we will get to him later this election set a precedent for unlike many European or Asian monarchies the successor of the a-stack was often chosen by the Aztecs while this is the only public election the astok ever had to settle the matter of succession from now on the Council of Nobles who served the king would be the ones who would choose which of the Kings relatives would succeed him and again they usually chose a military leader as their king rather than someone who is trained to be a king and so - in this election the people had chosen the best warrior a stand next leader and continuing that tradition of unpronounceable names then next king was named who it's silly with what their next king was named who would silly Whittle who would silly with whose contribution were mostly political and continued many of the policies of his father after decades of the same policy of laying low paying taxes and forging alliances it finally bought fruits upon the advice of the Aztec Council who would silly Whittle went to the king of azcapotzalco to ask to marry one of his daughters in a political alliance the Royal Council of azcapotzalco was against this marriage realizing that this was merely a political move to request concessions from the king through his daughter nevertheless the King agreed to this marriage and just as the azcapotzalco Council had feared on the wedding day the newest tech Queen asked her father to reduce the heavy tax burden on the a-stack and so through marriage king who would Silla widow finally managed to eliminate many of the heavy taxes his people were forced to pay yes that were now finally free from this burden and able to grow much faster in his later years however there as kaput Sarco overlord went to war against several of the neighboring kingdoms and as you may recall the a-stack had been waging war ever since they got to this part of the world so the a stag joined the army of their overlords and helped to expand the azcapotzalco Kingdom by conquering Tut's cocoa and coal who become but in the middle of these Wars king who would silly Whittle passed away in 1417 he was succeeded by his son Chimel / pakka at the age of 20 King Chimel Popo collect both experienced and useful advice he was completely subjugated to the interests of the council the most important thing he did however was being the grandson of the king of azcapotzalco you see his grandfather doted on the young Aztec King and the Aztec Council made good use of this weakness they continually told Chimel Papa to go to his grandfather to ask for favors you see Mesoamerican politics revolved around favors and tribute friends and allies would grant each other favors be it food laborers or resources but overlords would demand that as tribute from their vassals and so being the vassal the Aztec requested favors from their overlords but with every request the Aztec Council grew more bold after all Chimel / pakka the favorite grandson but he asked that counsel forgot to take it to account the power of the occipital co-counsel for the Council of azcapotzalco was extremely upset that special favors were being granted to the a-stack yes DAC was seemingly less and less like a vassal and more and more like a potential rival this all came to a boiling point when the Aztecs requested that azcapotzalco sent the men and materials to build an aqueduct to Tenochtitlan this was something an overlord would demand from their vassals not something a vassal would request from their overlord and so the Council of at support Sarko concluded that war was inevitable their king however tried to prevent war going as far as to plead with the council to spare his beloved grandson but the council had made up its mind yes that kingdom must be subservient the Aztec people must pay taxes and the Aztec King must die and according to the official record upon hearing of the final verdict the old King died of anguish while there is no proof that he was murdered the timing of his death is very convenient so take that as you will the Council of azcapotzalco needed to eliminate the Aztec threat they decided against open warfare and instead opted for a sharp knife assassins sneaked into the palace of the Aztec King Chimel Pope oka and murdered him in his sleep but they didn't stop there they murdered almost the entire royal family leaving the Aztec in a state of leaderless panic without a strong leader they would surely lose this war and so the Aztec once again looked for a strong leader to lead them in their war of independence and so they looked for a man who was a strong general and of royal blood they found these qualities in a man named it's Kuato the bastard son of the first astac King and the only royal family member who could take on this great burden and so in 14:26 he was crowned king its coatl he first sent a messenger asking for peace but that was refused yes tack would need to fight but they couldn't do this alone they were but one city in a large Kingdom which they had helped to forge so they turned towards the allies that they had made and emphasized how terrible the azcapotzalco were treating them they first made an alliance with the city of Tetsu Coco that's Coco is located on the other side of the lake that separated them from the rest of the UH Tirpitz Alto territory and so they quickly conquered the remaining lands at Sabbats alko controlled on their side of the lake the Stech meanwhile conquer the lands north of Tenochtitlan and upon hearing of these victories a third city decided to join the rebellion the people of Teleco pom had suffered for too long under the tyranny of occipital CO and joined Tenochtitlan and Tetsu Coco in a desperate war of liberation together they formed the Triple Alliance a strong military political and economic coalition that would be the origin of what would eventually become the a-stack Empire the Triple Alliance met the army of utter Petzl KO in open battle fighting fanatically and quickly overpowering their enemy King eats coatl followed the enemy into the city of utter Petzl KO which served as the capital the aztec invaded the city murdered the majority of the population and ordered the city to be burned to the ground the a-stack had finally gained their independence at supports alko was no more and the a-stack were finally free the a-stack had won a war of independence from their former azcapotzalco overlords yes tak had won liberty and the a-stack had won powerful allies now the air stack needed to decide what to do next first was the issue of what to do with their allies were they going to leave each other alone would they maintain their alliance would they turn on each other secondly was the issue of what to do with the lands of their former azcapotzalco overlords the a-stack and their allies had destroyed the capital but most of the territory was still untouched and so a meeting was held both of these matters leaders from Tenochtitlan Texcoco and click open met and agreed to maintain their alliance instead of more war after all they were not only allies in battle but also through marriage and so they continued their Triple Alliance but what did this Alliance actually entail well each of the three powers would be politically independent with their own King laws and sovereignty merchants could travel freely between the three states and they would support each other in war and its in war particular that the Triple Alliance excelled you see these three states would frequently go to war and they could call upon their two allies to supply troops and resources in the war effort and it's at this point that the Triple Alliance decided how to divide the spoils of war including the territories of azcapotzalco they decided that the spoils from their shared Wars would be shared between the three of them but not equally shared because Stella copán entered the war of liberation late only after Tenochtitlan and Texcoco had already achieved major victories they would receive only half as many spoils as the a stack and texcoco and so they split up azcapotzalco between them with Teleco pan receiving 20% of the spoils and Tetsu cocoa and Tenochtitlan both receiving 40 but with this new territory came the question of governance how do you rule over other towns and cities and the Aztecs simply decided to take over the system of azcapotzalco they would rule indirectly letting their vassals rule themselves as long as they sent biannual tributes worship which teleports Lea and provides soldiers to the Aztec army in times of war in exchange the vassal would receive free access to the markets of the Triple Alliance worship their own gods and receive protection from the mighty Aztec army as a result of this policy conquered towns and cities would maintain their way of life but if their vassal would ever rebel they would quickly be crushed by the Aztec army which was always nearby after all their new territory was close to Tenochtitlan which itself was on a lake and thus very difficult to conquer and this is why the a-stack chose this system yes tech already had a powerful army and nobody would think of rebelling when this army would be able to crush them easily so this was an easy and cheap way of maintaining control as they would have a powerful army regardless of what they had vassals or not and so the a-stack had secured an alliance with two kingdoms secured 40% of any booty gained in shared Wars and established control over their new territories but now they had new problems yes Tech needed to secured in northern and southern border its coatl being the warrior king that he was decided to send in the military rather than finding a less destructive and thus more profitable solution such as expanding the Triple Alliance political marriages all political intrigue its coatl first attacked the kingdoms to the south in order to gain access to that chinampas they were a type of floating garden with fertile soil collected from the bottom of a lake or swamp these chinampas were so fertile that they could be harvested several times per year making them much more efficient than land-based agriculture for more information on the chinampas please see the description next the aztec invaded the region to the north gaining them control over the entire basin and because the chinampas were so fertile and the economics of the region revolved mostly around food and labor the amount of tribute received from these conquests was immense but as more people and tribute flowed into the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan the more people and resources they needed to maintain their growth such as more food clothing or tools as the Aztecs conquered they needed to conquer more in order to maintain their conquests creating an endless cycle of expansion and so the Aztecs would then force to undertake military campaigns outside the basin they called their home as you can see on this map the air stack only controlled a small amount of territory when compared to the total size of Mesoamerica but under King each coatl they conquer the lands of Corona wok and it's around this time that the Aztec Kingdom turned into the Aztec empire while there is no definitive moment when it became an empire it is the first time that the Aztecs ruled over various different states and peoples and it's also around this time that the Aztec became the dominant force in the Triple Alliance what they were still allies of course the Aztecs had far outgrown their allies in a period of only fourteen years and as the Aztec expanded this imbalance would only increase and so from now on when discussing the Aztec empire flick open andthat's cocoa will always be there in the background independent yet closely linked to the Aztecs but no longer a major player in regional affairs after 14 long years in power each scott'll would pass away from a disease in 1440 when he came to power he had found the Aztecs as a vassal state in a much larger Kingdom when he died the Aztecs were an empire far larger than the former overlords ever were as a consequence his funeral was a majestic Display of wealth that lasted for 80 days after this mourning period he was succeeded by his cousin mother Kazuma in waka Mina often simply referred to as mother consumed at the first on his coronation day he was visited by the king of debts koko his cousin thats koko was afraid that the new Aztec King might turn on them one day and came to discuss the future of the Triple Alliance multiple Zoma would proclaim that that's Koko was still their ally but that he couldn't appear weak in front of their subjects and so the two kings agreed on a very odd plan they would have a simulated war where they agreed they would declare war fight a little and then rejoice in an Aztec victory and now that everybody thought he was a strong King Montezuma focused inward he reduced military action in order to pay for various construction projects the most notable of these is the construction of a giant pyramid in the center of Tenochtitlan at the top were two shrine devoted to two important gods first was the shrine of which teleports Li the god of Sun and war the other was devoted to tell a lakh the god of rain and agriculture it stood a hundred meters wide eighty meters in length and sixty meters tall here are some famous buildings for comparison if you want to pause the video and have a look it is important to know that this is not the first temple of its kind it's actually the fourth as you'll recall the first structure of Tenochtitlan was a temple dedicated to who which teleports Li and every King would add materials to enlarge the temple but kazuma's version was the fourth however it is the one that you often see in paintings for years the Aztec empire would focus on the construction of this giant temple until the builders needed larger bricks of stone to carve sculptures out of them but none of the Aztec lands had the required materials and so the Aztecs would need to look abroad mother Kazuma sent a message to the nearby country of Chaka to demand labor and materials for the new temple imagine for a moment that you are a child a king you are an independent state and right next to your borders is a war hungry Aztec empire and you've just received a letter from them demanding you give them men and materiel like you're one of their vassals if you accept this demand that would basically mean you're their vassal to put this into perspective let's say that France would send a message to Brazil demanding that Brazil sent thousands of tons of tropical wood to build an even bigger not freedom that would not go over well with Brazil or the international community that would be seen as a gross lack of diplomacy and that's exactly how the chalk ass saw this - yes that could have sent up trade routes simply by them or requested them as a gift but as stated before the Aztec rulers were warriors not politicians and so with the choker King naturally refused Montezuma sent his armies coloring their soldiers capturing their soldiers and ripping out the hearts of the soldiers for the God who which teleports Li while the bodies would slowly burn on a bonfire whatever else the Aztecs were very inventive in their sacrificial rituals after this victory mato Kazuma resumed military expansion multiplied the Treasury through more tribute and added another six countries to the Aztec realm but all this is not to say that his reign was purely one of building and warring in fact mata Kazuma focused on improving many different aspects of his empire for example he set up a system of universal education for all children both highborn and lowborn with every person gaining access to a center of learning close to them this was centuries ahead of what most other civilizations had at the time he created templates for how cities and towns should be constructed set up a system of courts and judges who handed out specific sentences based on a code of law and created laws or what the classes of commoner noble priests and warrior were and were not allowed to do he also tried to undo some of the policies of its guató for example its quatl believed that no in the past of one's people would make them more likely to rebel so he ordered all historical books to be destroyed both the air stack and those of conquered territories Montezuma however thought that the past was very important and funded an expedition to find their ancient homeland of aztlán while this location is lost to us today Matta Kazuma was confident that his expedition had found it and re-recorded a stack history and this is where we're going to leave for today the aztec reigns supreme their army undefeated and from here things can only get worse in this part I will explain how the Aztec policies play out over the course of the decades to come the Aztec empire after mata Kazuma the first remained largely unchanged in many of its policies from this moment forward Emperor's would be mostly concerned with warfare to expand their empire but why was the Aztec empire always at war well in order to explain exactly why the Aztecs needed to expand we need to look at the four classes of citizens in the Aztec culture the warrior the commoner the noble and the priest each of these classes had become dependent on an expansionist Aztec empire and in turn the Aztec empire was dependent on these four classes in order to expand first the warrior class Warriors had three functions in the Empire to intimidate anyone inside the Empire to stay loyal to the Empire to put down any rebellion that might emerge and to conquer New Territories but in return skilled warriors would receive land in exchange for the military service because yes tact were feudalistic only very few people were allowed to own land commoners worked on the land that belonged to the nobles priests or skilled warriors but here's the problem with that you need warriors to make sure the Empire doesn't fall apart but eventually you run out of land to give to your warriors so you need new land to give to new warriors but while the Aztec empire looked pig on a map only a small amount of the land was actually suitable to live on after all you need to be close to a freshwater source and other people who can create all the creature comforts a retired warrior once and if you needed such land you almost always had to take it from somebody else to make sure the Aztecs maintained their current territory they would need to conquer new territory secondly there are the commoners while they were by far the least privileged they were the most populous and produced the most goods and services in the empire and the more tribute was sent to Tenochtitlan and its colonies the more the population expanded after all there wasn't any plague like an afro Eurasia to keep the population in check but now the Aztecs needed more tribute so that people would have enough food enough tools and enough other products to maintain their relative comfortable lifestyle and in mind that back in the 15th century roughly 99% of your population worked in agriculture just to feed the population so the Aztec empire needed to expand quickly in order to maintain the lifestyle of the current population this expansionism meant more commoners would be able to be born meaning the Empire needed to expand further and faster third is the noble class they were rulers and as a result were very rich and they liked being rich so as the Empire grew so did the wealth of the nobles and so the nobles were very interested in assuring the a-stack kept expanding for their own gain to maintain the Empire and to prevent a communist revolt if they were to run out of supplies as a result they would put someone on the throne who was focused on growing the Empire the current emperor Moctezuma and the previous Emperor its coatl were the greatest reformers of the Aztec empire while the Empire was still young and malleable but after them came a string of rulers who had more brawn than brain all put in place by these Nobles such emperors were easier to control and they were good for expansion so the nobles loved this system eventually making them very corrupt and lastly the priests the bloodthirsty priests who'd like to eat other's hearts out and the priests were not proactively favoring expansion rather they were highly reactionary as the Empire expanded the priests demanded more human sacrifices for the gods this made sense in war the Aztecs would bring back captured enemy soldiers and then ritually sacrificed them in fact a soldier wasn't promoted based on their ability to lead people or kill people they were promoted depending on how many enemies they captured they would be granted knighthoods and privileges depending on how many soldiers they personally captured so as the Aztecs weights more Wars the priests expanded their sacrificial activities and so combining all of this we can conclude that the expanding Empire needed to expand in order to meet the needs of the expanding Empire and this social system worked quite well for the Aztecs at first mother Kazuma had encountered a fledgling Empire and when he died in 1469 he left it a major powerhouse in Mesoamerica he was succeeded by his son Ixia cattle oxycottons rein included large military expansions but he was never able to surpass his father Ixia cattle also faced conspiracies to remove him and his Council of Nobles from power and so he sent an army to completely crush the rebels which sent a message to anyone else who thought he might be weak and to restore his reputation he decided to wage war against the Tuscan state the Turcan were a civilization like the ash tax with a feudalistic government system they were unique in that they made weapons made of bronze something the Aztecs never developed in the ensuing war the Aztec army of 24,000 warriors was almost completely wiped out from now on the thar second state would prevent any Aztec expansion east or northeast in fact the thar second state was so successful that it would outlive the Aztec empire and this was also the first time that two Mesoamerican states clearly defined their territory something that was always a loose concept for them with large parts of no-man's land between various states oxycotin would desperately try to regain his reputation but instead all his military campaigns after this were failures and now an interesting question comes up when people are loyal because they fear your army what happens when your army loses a war well after various city-states received the news that their Emperor wasn't a strong general many decided to rebel and so over the coming years more and more a bell popped up that needed to be put down this put further strain on the Aztec military capabilities as they still needed to expand or else their empire would implode but also needed to divert troops from the frontlines to put down rebellions upon his death in 1481 oxycotin left the empire in a state of upheaval and weakness he would be succeeded by the most incompetent leader in all of astac history his brother T shocked she shocked embodied everything that was wrong with the Aztec empire for example when T shock ascended the throne he decided to put down a rebellion to show his power so he decided to make an example of a small town this should be an easy victory the Aztec army versus a small town the Aztecs had defeated countless other towns but T sock lost this easy battle against a minor town and out of the whole campaign he gained only 40 prisoners t sock was unskilled in battle indecisive and had no interest in military expansion he would soon die under suspicious circumstances most likely poison tee shot was succeeded in 1486 by a man who was the exact opposite of him a man named Al weed solo the youngest son of Emperor mater Kazama he developed new military strategies and expanded the Empire's reach from the Caribbean Sea all the way to the Pacific Ocean he managed to quell many rebellions but new ones would always keep popping up as the Empire expanded new subjects became new potential rebels but he is best remembered for the completion of the grand temple in the center of Tenochtitlan the one started by mater Kazuma the first an event that is infamous even today and is in fact the very reason why I wanted to make this series in the first place so I could animate this the entire empire was invited to join the opening from the lowest slave to the highest noble and anybody living in Tenochtitlan itself was forced by imperial decree to join the festivities the emperor would stand at the top of the temple with his chief adviser and his four most powerful Nobles the drums started playing as the first glimpse of the Sun their God who which teleports li rose over the horizon a line of prisoners and slaves would slowly walk up the temple until it was their turn to come before the priests there one by one their hearts were ripped out of them like an efficient slaughterhouse it is said that so much blood flowed from the temple that it was completely covered in blood the people would bring jars and wait at the bottom of the temple for the blood to slowly trickle down then collect the blood and go home to spread the blood on their houses and fields to anoint them in this holy blood it is said that 80,000 and 400 were slaughtered in only five days in a highly choreographed ritual of murder many historians think the Aztec exaggerated this number to instill fear in their enemies and put the number closer to ten or maybe 30,000 regardless one can only imagine the horrible smell of a city covered in a rotting blood of their slaves and enemies how each soul also created colonies around the Empire to spread the Aztec culture and to have more direct control over far-off territories keep in mind that they did not have the wheel for use in transport so any food and materials would need to be carried on people's backs the Aztecs believed that almost any other form of transport is lazy furthermore how it subtle declared that any Freeborn male must be trained as warriors at the age of 18 to secure Aztec interests while I would subtle had reformed and centralized the Empire quite a bit it would be too little too late for when he died in 1502 the Empire was still in great turmoil despite a string of military victories they never managed to put down more rebellions that were popping up these issues would become the problem of successor the son of emperor Ixia cattle a man named otaku soma so-called joadson often referred to as simply mater consumed at the second by the time he comes to power the Aztec empire was turned into a vast empire with lots of trade for commoners rebellions and war for the Warriors human sacrifices for the priests and beautiful metal crafted ornaments and a corrupt government for the nobles and despite being corrupt the Aztec leadership by this point had become well aware that their empire was in trouble but saw no sustainable way of stopping these issues we today have historical evidence to point to various alternative economic social and governmental systems you could go with the approach the USA used for example and simply build colonies on lands of weaker countries and slowly expand that way with a United culture and a strong trade militaristic and legislative incentives to remain part of the original country but the Aztecs lived in an isolated area of the world and their collection of historical examples to draw upon used similar systems as the Aztecs and so the Aztec leadership was forced to invent a new strategy one they hoped would solve all their problems do the same thing they have been doing up until now but do it even more from now on vassals whom the Aztecs thought were loyal were given new lands and privileges but anyone who was perceived as disloyal would have a large portion of that population taken away for human sacrifices far more than previous Emperor's did now that they had a new shiny temple to use reminding the friends and families of those who were sacrificed what happens when you rise up against the Aztecs but as the Aztecs became more violent the more cities wanted to leave the Aztec empire fearing they might have their own hearts ripped out one day and so more cities rebelled and as a result the Aztec became more brutal hoping that that would quell future rebellions but instead this gave ever more credence to the prospect of getting the hell away from these people and as more rebellions popped up the Emperor became more paranoid mother Kazuma ii started seeing enemies everywhere even if they were still loyal ordering more brutal retaliations leading to further imbalance and on and on and on it went this paranoia can be seen best when a comet appeared in the sky the Aztecs thought that comets stood for doom and signaled the end of an empire and emperor Moctezuma ii was deeply disturbed by this sign of the gods mother Kazuma decided to kill all the high priests for failing to predict this comet flying by just to give a comparison imagine if the king of Saudi Arabia decided to murder the entire Sunni Islamic leadership or if the Prime Minister of Italy decided to kill the Pope and all the Cardinals in Vatican City that is how much power this emperor had and how large his paranoia had grown and so we eventually arrived in 1519 the Aztecs have been caught in a spiral of more expansion more rebellion and more brutality the Aztec story started as death of the underdog slowly and steadily becoming the top dog but then we sought the a-stack going from top dog to a sick dog a sick dog suffering from its own inability to govern itself in a sustainable way the S that came to a point where the current policies doomed them but at the same time it was too late to reverse course if they became benevolent towards their own subjects that would likely have been perceived as a sign of weakness and thus increasing the amount of rebellions instead of reducing them and so the Aztec empire could only choose between collapsing and collapsing and all that was needed was for some event to light the spark that will bring the collapse of the central governing structure of the Empire and strange reports were just and filtering into the Emperor reports of strange shapes in the sea of mountains that move across the water we have never encountered alien life but to the Aztecs the coming of the Spaniards was like aliens landing on earth Spain had arrived on the shores of the Aztec empire in 1519 with an army ready to conquer the obviously weaker and primitive army of the air stacks the Spanish were seen as gods but he natives and easily defeated the Aztecs with powerful guns and impenetrable armor this is the story we learn in history books but this story is propaganda the Spanish did not come to invade the Spanish were not seen as gods by the Native Americans and the Aztec were not defeated with superior weapons this propaganda came about for three main reasons one because the Spanish needed to look strong to the world two because it truly believed their Christian people to be superior to the polytheistic Aztecs and three because the Aztecs and the Spanish did not truly understand the country they were at war with but before we can start talking about the wall we need to look at the two contrasting empires that are about to clash on one hand are the air stacks they ruled indirectly over a large Empire most of which consisted of tributary States they had alienated their own subjects through their own brutality it was rarely a matter of if a city will rebel but when a city will rebel the Aztecs were likely close to collapse from the endless rebellions like many empires before them in Mesoamerica Spain on the other hand saw great potential in their new American colonies they had discovered the Americas less than 30 years ago and had set up various colonies but the Spanish crown didn't invest a lot into these new colonies instead they gave permits to people to conquer these lands but they would have to fund such wars themselves that the people who established the first colonies were mostly ruthless businessman or common people joining such an expedition to get a share of the profit there was no real Spanish army in the Americas yet and this meant that the Spanish conquerors known as conquistadors couldn't win an open battle in fact they would often have to ally with other tribes using their limited yet advanced weapons to impress and intimidate natives into submission while the native allies served as their army but not all Spanish people are brutal conquerors some were traders who saw a great value and selling cheap European products for the new resources the Americas had to offer on one of these expeditions they heard from the local Mayans of a land overflowing with gold somewhere northwest of the Mayan civilization when this expedition returned to Cuba the governor of Cuba began seeing dollar signs in his eyes the governor had just conquered Cuba and let's be honest Cuba didn't sound nearly as profitable as the land of gold but he needed permission from the crown first in order to conquer this land so he sent a request to Spain asking permission from the king of Spain to conquer this land of gold but he also needed information about this new land before he could conquer it so he sent his trusted brother-in-law a man named Hernan Cortes on an expedition of trade and exploration he made Cortes sign an agreement that he wouldn't conquer the land of gold but Hernan Cortes followed the sixty second rule of acquisition the riskier the road degraded the profits he realized that whoever will conquer this land would likely be assigned by the king to rule it and in a society where gold is your currency conquering a land that was apparently overflowing with gold was too good of a price so Cortes secretly decided to conquer it for himself and so Cortes set sail with eleven ships carrying 630 people but most of them were not warriors in fact most of them had never even been near a real battlefield he only had a few hundred native Arabic warriors from Cuba thirty crossbowmen and twelve arquebus years but this is the army Cortez would use to conquer the Aztec empire but to rule over people you need to speak with them so Cortez went looking for some translators and he found exactly what he was looking for just eight years before a Spanish expedition got shipwrecked in Mayan territory they were captured by the Mayans forced to work as slaves eventually rose up to become war chiefs of a different tribe married Mayan women at the first half European half Mayan child and would eventually fight against the Spanish when they would try to conquer the Mayans their lives is basically already a pre made Hollywood movie but some of them decided to join Curtis s expedition they were able to translate from Spanish to Mayan then he also got a Mayan slave woman who could translate between Mayan and the Aztec language she would eventually learn Spanish and become curtis's wife and chief translator in Mesoamerica now that he would be able to speak to the Aztecs it was time to head to the Aztecs and so Aaron and Oh Cortes made it to the Aztec empire he founded a town and then headed north to the teutonic Confederacy they had been conquered by the Aztecs over 50 years ago and were taxed heavily by their astac overlords he met with the leaders and before long the Teutonic Confederacy had joined the Spanish cause and were an open rebellion during their meetings the total knocks gave Cortes golden jewelry reinforcing the false notion that the Aztec empire was a land of gold and Cortez took several Aztec tax collectors as prisoners and offered them as gifts to the Titone acts but here is an interesting question Cortes at most had a few hundred people with him why did so many vassals of the Aztecs want to join the Spanish cause in this early stage when he only had a few hundred people well there is a common myth that the natives thought that the Spanish were gods or godlike but the only evidence for this comes from the Spanish of course people with pale skin and shiny metal armor horses and letter guns and cannons they certainly gave the Spanish a certain stature amongst the natives who had never seen such a thing but they weren't stupid they didn't actually think the Spanish were gods in fact whenever there isn't a source to counter that of the Spanish such as during private meetings the Spanish would often claim that the Aztecs were completely willing to subjugate themselves to the Spanish Empire of course now one common theme of the Aztec history is war death and blood in fact this is common in most Mesoamerican cultures the Teutonic Confederacy practiced human sacrifices themselves and were no strangers to war so having witnessed all you've seen so far let me ask you do you think they would just give up without a fight would they capitulate simply because someone in shiny clothing walked up to them the Teutonic Confederacy didn't join the Spanish because they thought they were in divine presence they joined the Spanish to get the hell away from the brutal Aztec empire and it's at this point that Emperor Moctezuma the second started paying attention to the Spaniards who had landed on his Shores the Emperor was aware of the Spanish landing on a shores almost immediately he had sent some ambassadors to Cortes who had witnessed the firepower of guns and cannons but the Emperor was a busy man and this was just one of several problems he had to deal with but now that became a different story now Cortes had taken away one of his tributary States this was troubling Cortes had decided to head straight for the Aztec capital not necessarily to start a war it was probably too early for that as he didn't have the manpower yet but he did want to see the city for himself before he'd conquer diem hyah soon courtesies expedition arrived at the Telex Carla Confederacy they are this hole right here in the middle of the Aztec empire they were a confederacy of about 200 different towns and tribes but without a central government the location of this Confederacy couldn't have been any better for Cortez you see it was located very close to where Cortez had landed and reached almost all the way to Tenochtitlan itself it was a bit curious why the Aztecs never conquered them after all they were so close and did not have a central government this should be an easy victory many historians believe that the Aztecs kept the Confederacy intact so that they could always go there if they needed a quick victory on new captives and they had imposed a full embargo on the Confederacy to keep them in a relatively weak state but when Cortes marched into cluck Skala territory with an army of a supposedly a-stack tributary state they were expecting another war Cortes and his people were almost immediately attacked curtis used his cannons guns and horses to hold off the enemy but soon the Telex kala had completely surrounded Cortes and his army little Excalibur embargoed and surrounded by the air stacks how could they know these people came from somewhere else but after three days of battle and Cortes sending desperate messages of peace the Telex Cala leader finally realized that they were not a stack and so he decided to meet this white man Cortes convinced the Telex Cala that his only goal was to conquer the Aztecs and the track Scala could become important subjects in this new empire Cortes wanted to forge the Telex Cala realized the Aztec would kill them all anyway at some point in the future so if the option is between certain destruction with the air stacks and possible survival was the Spanish then the option is easy to make and so Cortes had gained a second ally and now mother consumed at a second started treating Cortes seriously he had sent embassadors to Cortes to convince him to turn back later mato Kazuma would send gifts of silver and gold trying to placate the Spanish but all that did was convinced them that the Aztecs must be extremely rich and so a worth conquering Cortes would write back to his king of his successes and how easily he was able to extract gold from the Aztec empire all in an attempt to gain the Spanish King's favor now he continued his travel to the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan and moved his army to the city of Cholula Cholula was a religious city with few warriors protecting it instead they put their faith in the gods and their prestige to keep them safe Cortes who didn't follow their gods nor was he impressed by their prestige decided to move to this city while on his way to Tenochtitlan but instead of being greeted by the nobility like before they were greeted with little fanfare and this is where the Aztec and Spanish chronicles differ from each other the Spanish claimed that there was a plot to murder them in their sleep and so the Spanish confronted their leader in the main temple who admitted that they were ordered to resist the Spanish but had not followed up on those orders so Cortes captured the Cholula leaders and set the temple on fire because of the layout of the city most people who lived close to the temple were nobility so most people who died in the fire were nobility while most commoners managed to escape death the Aztecs would claim that this was an unprovoked attack by the Spanish they claimed that if there was some sort of plot that it was all the fault of the local commander of the garrison but regardless thousands of people were killed and the city was burned down there was no denying it anymore the Spanish were a force to be reckoned with and from now on no city would ignore the Spanish anymore and even emperor Mata kazuma had to admit that his attempts to placate the Spanish with gifts of gold and silver had failed so he sent a message to Cortes inviting him and the Spaniards to Tenochtitlan and meet the Emperor himself an Aztec poem rhetorically asked who could conquer Tenochtitlan who could shake the foundation of heaven the answer to this poem had always been nobody could but the air stack would soon find out that no city is impenetrable Cortes arrived on the lake that's cocoa in the middle was the vast city of Tenochtitlan the city had changed a lot since we last talked about it the city suffered from floods so the Aztecs had decided to go dutch a few hundred years early and build a dam to prevent these floods the city had grown so large that it now held a quarter of a million people and the city had been connected to the mainland with giant causeways and it is on one of these cosway's the mother Kazuma ii came out to greet Cortes and almost immediately the two sides suffered from massive communication problems Cortes tried to embrace the Aztec emperor but touching the Emperor was illegal so Cortes was restrained moto Kazuma handed Cortes valuable gifts this was a normal custom where two equals would exchange gifts but contests didn't give anything in return insulting the Aztecs yet nonetheless mother Kazuma offered the Spanish to live in his father's Emperor ixia Cottle's palace what they were in the city inside this palace the Spanish found a large amount of treasure which was axials inheritance to Matta Kazuma while they couldn't bring it back with them yet the Spanish did plan on stealing the inheritance as soon as possible things escalated even further when the Spanish asked to put a cross and a picture of the Virgin Mary two important Christian symbols alongside the Aztec gods on top of that great pyramids and just in case the significance of this is lost on you this would be like an Indian delegation asking to put a giant golden statue of Buddha in the center of Mecca or Vatican City as you can imagine the priests were furious and the request denied then some Aztecs killed several Spanish soldiers at Veracruz and the Spanish response while they held the emperor hostage to ensure their own safety and this was just in the first week internet stood lung and while the Aztecs wanted to attack the Spanish and drive them from their soil the Emperor was afraid the Spanish would kill or replace him so for half a year Montezuma was the puppet Emperor of Cortez and while they stayed in the capital they were getting a pretty good idea of how brutal their houses were so let's take a closer look at how the Aztecs were brutal by selecting three random gods the rain guards fertility God and fire guard the ring guard required tears so they would beat a child in front of their friends and family and only when the child and their loved ones had cried enough with the child be drowned the tears would bring rain obviously or maybe a priest decided a woman looked like the fertility god then they would first get you drunk force you to drunkenly dance your way to the nearest temple and then remove your head the blood that came out of the neck would bring fertility to the crops try not to think about this next time you go to a bar or perhaps the fire guard needed another sacrifice then you'd first get drugged to anesthetize you then they will tie you up and if you think that still isn't hot enough they would throw you onto a fire when you are nice and crispy but still alive they will take you out of the fire to finally remove your heart while the Spanish probably didn't witness all these types of sacrifices it does back the question how could the Spanish see them as anything other than utter savages how could these good Christians approve of such behavior how could they not think they were superior to the Aztecs but the Aztecs thought this was the holy duty they believed that if they did not provide enough blood to their gods that the world would come to an end the Sun would stop rising and the world would be covered in an endless long night and it went deeper than that the Aztecs simply couldn't understand the Spanish obsession with gold they didn't understand the very reason they were there and this makes sense when you don't have a monetary system based on gold then gold has no more value than the jewelry you can make out of it the Aztecs didn't understand the Spanish because they were stupid they didn't understand the Spanish because they had never even conceived of the idea that something with little inherent value could be used as currency the Aztecs had a currency based on cocoa beans which you can make chocolate out of and chocolate has obvious value I mean look at this forget the gold standard we need the chocolate standard but remember when I told you that if a Spaniard wants to conquer territory in the Americas then they would first need a permit from their monarch well Cortes never got that permit and by now Spain had sent an expedition to rein Cortes back in so curtis had to leave to solve this issue taking his most disciplined soldiers with him while leaving the least reliable ones back into not state LOM which resulted in the remaining spanish soldiers deciding it was a good idea to Massacre thousands of unarmed Aztec nobles not long after people gathered around the palace where the Spanish had been living and put it to siege inside their own City and for the only time in history the Aztecs chose a new emperor while the old one was still alive they chose quillo walk the brother of Mata kazoom at a second he was in strong opposition to let expand yurts in that city so he seemed to be a good replacement the Spanish who still held on to X emperor Montezuma ii sent him to the balcony to persuade the people that they should let the spanish go back to the shores in peace but remember what the Aztecs thought were good emperors they believed an emperor should be a strong warrior a brave leader and the embodiment of the Sun God who which still Apostoli instead they were spoken to by a man who let himself be captured let himself become a puppet and now asked them to peacefully let the Spanish go we don't know exactly what happened but mother Kazuma was killed that night both sides accusing the other of regicide but regicide oh no the Spanish had to escape with all that gold of course while sneaking out of the city they were spotted and were forced to cut themselves through the Aztecs to make it out of the city most of them would drown in the canals as their armor and stolen gold dragged them down but while they were alive the new emperor wasn't as diplomatic as mother Kazuma had been Kilowog had the retreating Spanish forces attacked until they arrived in flux kala and while they were seeking refuge in Tallaght Scala the Spanish began to prepare for an invasion of Tenochtitlan they received reinforcements from Cuba after curtis convinced everybody to join his side and he received an estimated 100,000 soldiers from taluk Scala and various Aztec tributary states on top of that Cortes managed to convince almost everybody else to remain neutral meaning the a-stack couldn't rely on the tributaries for support but while the Spanish had been preparing they also began wondering wondering why the great armies of Tenochtitlan didn't lay sheets to telex Scala and do away with the Spanish force once and for all well a smallpox epidemic started ravaging the empire an empire that had never even conceived of the concept of a plague was all of a sudden dealing with one of the worst diseases humanity had ever seen the play killed tens of thousands including the Emperor himself the ravaged a-stack quickly elected a new emperor a man named Cuauhtemoc the other son of Emperor our weed subtle the two sides would fight various battles sometimes the Aztek would win and often the Spanish would win for the Spanish and their allies managed to get an army together that far out matched that of the Aztecs one by one the Spanish army managed to conquer the surrounding cities of Tenochtitlan with Cortes making the ancient city of Texcoco his space of operations and it's at Texcoco where the greatest works of Aztec literature were being held and it's at that scho Coe that the Spanish would burn those libraries to the ground which is why we know so little about the Aztecs and many of our sources come from after the conquest the siege of Tenochtitlan lasted for nearly eight months the first problem was that the city was only approachable through the causeways that meant that only a few warriors could stand side by side and were vulnerable on their flanks by attack from canoes after Spain lost the first battle on the causeway they scuttled their ships dragged the individual pieces all the way to the lake then rebuilt the ships in the lake and Spears and arrows were no match for both bullets and cannonballs they also destroyed the aqueduct depriving the people of sufficient freshwater and they blocked all the causeways depriving people of sufficient food and only when everything was against the Aztecs did the Spanish manage to push the Aztecs back on a great causeway the Aztecs fought on to the ends the falling Texcoco and talaq open they fought from the long causeway to the narrow canals they defended their Island City whatever the cost they fought on the streets they fought at their temples they fought at their homes they never surrendered they were defeated even after the Spanish and their allies entered the city it would take another three weeks before the last of the Aztec forces were defeated after which they sacked the city for an additional four days it is estimated that a hundred to two hundred forty thousand people died and thousands of survivors were brought back to track Scala for sacrifice but what happened to Mesoamerica after the conquest what happened to the a-stack after all despite the hundreds of thousands of deaths there was still tens of thousands of a-stack people left while their city was to become the new capital of the new Spanish colony of New Spain which the Spanish renamed Mexico City because the Aztecs refer to themselves as mesh Iike the Emperor was tortured and eventually executed the Aztec people were nearly wiped out as mostly children and the elderly survived the carnage but parts of the civilization endured to this day in modern Mexican society even though their empire was destroyed with the capital with the not still undefeated there wasn't really anyone left to pay tribute to that was until the Spanish visited these tributary States demanding they pay tributes having just faced down plagues there was no other alternative but to capitulate they became part of the colony of New Spain and over time this colony would conquer all surrounding civilizations Mayan taraskin and many more on one hand people weren't being sacrificed anymore Cortes made that practice illegal but the Spanish would slowly implement a system of centralization to make new Spain's government structures similar to Europe's it would take away power from individual states and incorporate it into a single unified state eroding many of the individual cultures inhabiting Mesoamerica at a time for example the Aztecs had universal education the Spanish replaced this system with church teaching limiting the amount of people with an education down to a handful and death Great Pyramid in Tenochtitlan was taken down to build a cathedral this temple wasn't rediscovered until the 20th century and when silver was discovered thousands were sent to their deaths in the silver mines their deaths would drive the economy of New Spain and would eventually caused the Spanish inflation that would end Spain as a superpower the Spanish would send missionaries to convert local people's with varying degrees of success the locals and the Spanish didn't understand each other's religions due to the same communication issues mentioned earlier with the locals creating hybrid religions incorporating parts of their own religion and Christianity Christianity was as incomprehensible to the local population as the Aztec religion is incomprehensible to us today at least I hope nobody in my audience is sacrificing their neighbors to the Sun but it is not to say that all civilizations were worse off not at all the italic scholar in particular were given a higher status and were often given more prestigious roles they supported the Spanish in various Wars and intermarried with the new Spanish colonists creating an ethnically mixed nobility in New Spain and F ro Eurasia I gained access to chocolate for thousands of years people had to live without chocolates but we also got tobacco and tomatoes so it's not all good after the Spanish conquered the Aztec empire the Spanish would soon forget the native allies when they would write the history books the Spanish conquistadors with attribute their victories mostly to Spanish might Spanish steel and God's will they would in fact believe that their conquest of the natives their brutal treatment and their forced conversion to Christianity were a great benefit to Native Americans and this is somewhat understandable when you have been taught your entire life that people who aren't Christian will be sent to eternal Hellfire if you are taught that Christian civilization is the greatest civilization to have ever existed then it's understandable that you think you're spreading goodness then you believe you're spreading the greatest way of life and saving their souls and who could argue against death and so for centuries the narrative of the righteous Spaniards was propagated throughout the world but the greatest lesson of all is that the Aztec empire didn't fall because they were invaded nor was a disease plague killed the people and the Spanish merely gave the rebellious subjects a leader to unite behind no it was the a-stack who killed the Empire it was their failed political system that doomed them in the end if they had centralized if they had answered problems not with weapons but with benevolent policy if they had created a unifying culture then the Spanish wouldn't have found any allies and disease wouldn't have been their undoing true it is unlikely a colonial European country would live in peace with a technologically inferior country and while it's likely that the Aztec empire would have fallen anyway dead dawn did not need to come so soon so suddenly or so savagely if the Aztecs had put better leaders on the Empire's throne a better culture in people's minds and a better political system as that government but this did not happen instead the Aztec gave the most convincing argument against feudalism brutality and the rule through fear because one day your vassal will rebel one day your people will revolt one day a government will no longer be feared and when that happens governments fall from the earliest civilizations all the way to the 21st century governments failed to learn this lesson thinking that they will be different but they are not look at any government which rules through these methods and they will follow a similar collapse as the Aztecs did you like this series and want more of it then let me know in the comments what do you want me to cover a Mayan city-states the history of Teotihuacan or perhaps you'd like to learn more about other Mesoamerican states such as the Tarascon State tell me down below about that because otherwise I'll find other topics to cover if people don't really like these videos

Channel: History Scope

Views: 1,969,480

Rating: 4.7749538 out of 5

Keywords: mesoamerican history, fall of the aztec empire, history scope, avery thing, rise and fall of the aztec empire, tenochtitlan, origin of the aztec, aztec human sacrifice, aztec pyramid, cortez, hernando cortes, spanish invasion aztec, spanish aztec war, moctezuma, founding of aztec empire

Id: KWmo9r0hnM8

Length: 79min 3sec (4743 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 28 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Daveed84]

From it's rise to it's fall

its*, "it's" always means "it is" or "it has"

[u/JohnnyTeardrop]

The fall of the Aztecs in two words: Hernan Cortes

[u/SirSuarezX]

read : https://www.amazon.com.mx/AZTECAS-MEXICAS-EL-IMPERIO-MESOAMERICA/dp/8477375968