The Spanish Conquistadors During the Age of Exploration

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During the early 1500s Europe looked to expand it’s territory into the New World. Spain was avid about exploring the New World, which is now modern day Mexico, in hope to find riches. There had been rumors of cities of gold and silver going around Europe. Spain hired conquistadors, explorers of the New World, to make the dicey trip across the Atlantic Ocean that many European countries would make during the Age of Exploration. Hernan Cortes led an expedition of Spanish conquistadors to venture into America.
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Cortes landed in Mexico in 1519 and he was caught off guard by what and who he stumbled upon. He was expecting to find a city of gold and silver waiting for him but instead it was a very different, dangerous foreign land. Cortes and his conquistadors landed and were shortly greeted by the indigenous Aztec people. Cortes sets out for the Aztec people’s capital, Tenochtitlan, where he meets Moctezuma, the Aztec emperor of Tenochtitlan.

Cortez greets him with gifts but his cordiality ends abruptly as Cortez takes Moctezuma hostage in his own land.
The Spaniards were surprised to find their “new land” inhabited but their diseases, like smallpox, and their violence towards the natives killed off the Aztecs. After two years of conflict between the Aztecs and the Spaniards, the Spanish had overthrown the Aztec’s capital and destroyed their notorious civilization. The Spaniards conquered Mexico and accomplished their goal to gain wealth from the land’s silver and gold.
I lived in Tenochtitlan as an Aztec hunter; I had two sons and a beautiful wife who enjoyed living in the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan.
It was one of the biggest cities in the world; it was rapidly growing due to its growing army and rapid population growth due to advances in farming and infrastructure. We formed alliances with surrounding civilizations and lived a peaceful life for the most part. One day things changed, people around town we acting different. I heard anxious rumors about white bearded men covered in bright, shining armor and brought gifts for our leader, Moctezuma.
The white men began to introduce us to what they called “Christianity” and told us that we needed to follow God’s teachings to go to heaven. My family and I obeyed the white men but avoided them at all costs because they had violent tendencies. People began to worry when Moctezuma went missing and more and more white men showed up in our city. One of the white men named Hernan Cortes began to boss us around more and more.
My best friend went up to him and tried to approach him and he lashed out his sword and struck him dead. From then on our town was never the same, a bloodbath broke out over the next few days. I was upset that these cruel invaders were destroying our extravagant city but they were ruthless and only worried about our gold and silver not our lives. We decided to flee the Moctezuma for our safety, as we looked back we saw the white men with their armor slaughtering and pillaging our ancient city that had centuries and centuries of culture being destroyed at the expense of the white man’s pursuit of riches.
Hernan Cortes created history by valiantly sailing across the Atlantic and landing blindly in the New World without a clue to what they were going to find. When they landed Cortes and the Spanish Conquistadors continued to impress the rest of the world, they were able to go into a totally foreign country and obtain the riches it had to offer and demolish an ancient civilization that had been there for many years. Cortes’ mission was to travel to Mexico and find gold and silver to further build Spain’s wealth. It was an even more impressive feat when considering the powerful civilization that he defeated while doing so. Cortes would go on conquests during his exploration to conquer more land in the New World from the indigenous people.
The most infamous battle that happened during these conquests was the Massacre of Cholula because it showed the Spaniard’s brute power while displaying that they were also smart about their attacks. It happened in 1519, Cortes and his men aimed to take down the Aztec people of Cholula but he knew that he would need assistance from an outside source, other than his men. Cortes and the Spaniards thought of a plan, they knew that the Tlaxacalan people were enemies of the Aztecs and they knew the land and the way that the Aztecs fight better than any of the Conquistadors did. With the help the help of the Tlaxacalan, Cortes and his men successfully destroyed the Cholutecans/Aztecs in a forceful manner. They were so terrified of the Spanish forces that many Chalutecans took their destiny in their own hand and committed suicide by jumping off of their pyramids so they wouldn’t have to face the savagery that the white men brought.
his men decided to attack the Chalutecans then because they realized how exposed they were and how devastating a surprise attack would be. Although the Spanish would use the Requiremento as war guidelines that featured Christian principles because the Spaniards goal in the New World was to spread Christianity and find the city of gold, El Dorado, and become rich. The Spaniards didn’t follow the rules of their warfare document; at times they fought in a cruel and unfair manner. The Requiremento featured beliefs of forgiveness and mercy, but the Spanish did not follow these values. They attacked the Chalutecans, for example, mercilessly and brutally, which was not part of their agreements stated in the document.
The Aztecs took the Requiremento very seriously and this put them at a disadvantage against the Spaniards. They followed the guidelines of the document in wartime and that’s why they were massacred. The Chalutecans offered homes and hospitality to the Spaniards because it said to do so in the document, but this kindness would prove to contribute to the Spaniard’s success. A witness in the Tlaxacalan army said that, “The Cholutecans understood and believed that the God of the white men, who were his powerful sons, was more potent than their own.” This shows that the Chalutecans believed that the Spaniards were more powerful than them because they saw they brutality in warfare and accredited that to having God on their side.
In the Massacre at Chalula Cortes shows that not only does he have a powerful army but he also has ingenious fighting techniques. Previous to the battle at Chalula, Cortes schedules a meeting with the leaders of the Chalutecans that was supposed to be friendly, but Cortes catches them off guard and kills them as soon as they meet in the city. After he killed the leaders of the city, his troops poured in and started massacring the rest of the Chalutecan society. A Spanish historian, Bartolome de Las Casas, shared his account of the battle by saying that the Spaniards were welcomed into Chalula by their leaders and they were offered a house to stay. Cortes and

Moses Shelton

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