How a few hundred Spaniards toppled two empires of millionsSi Sheppard – How did a few hundred Spanish soldiers topple two empires?

Most of the soldiers Cortés brought into Mexico were local peoples who resented Aztec rule, and Pizarro simply copied the same play in Peru.

In 1519 Cortés set out from Cuba with a few hundred men. Two and a half years later the Aztec empire, six million strong, had a new master. A decade on, Pizarro took an Inca empire of some ten million with about 160 men.

It was not the guns

Matchlocks reloaded too slowly to keep frightening anyone after the first volley. What killed was steel armour, long Toledo steel blades, and horses. The Americas had no horses and no beasts of burden at all — the Inca had llamas, the Aztecs only turkeys and Chihuahuas.

Against warriors who fought in loose order with gaps between them, cavalry simply rode through the line. And when things went badly, the horsemen outran anyone chasing them.

The empires were dismantled by their own subjects

The Aztecs and the Inca were both small elites taxing many conquered peoples. The Tlaxcalans had been encircled by the Aztecs for decades, cut off even from salt, and saw the Spaniards as their way out.

At the final assault on Tenochtitlan the Spaniards were perhaps half a percent of the force; the rest were Mesoamericans settling scores. In the siege of Cuzco the Spanish garrison actually gained local allies as the months wore on.

They did fight back

The Aztecs pulled the Spanish into a city of canals and causeways where horses were useless, and stoned them from rooftops. The Inca flooded rivers, used bolas to tangle horses' legs, and lashed captured swords to long poles as pikes.

But the learning curve was brutally steep, their empires were already coming apart, and disease was spreading. There was no time to turn improvisation into doctrine.

In one line: Pizarro did not win with gunpowder. He found the people inside the empire who most wanted it gone.