how the fuck did they lost?

>>1578308
Conquerers always talk up their enemies to make themselves seem amazing.

>>1578308
Turns out that everyone the Mexica had subjugated hated them and the Spaniards used that to their advantage. Who would have guessed?

>>1578308
Combination of a brilliant Cortez and a very fractured and resentful "empire". That bubble was probably bound to pop at the next bad harvest or plague. That's not to diminish Cortez' feats though, he got it to pop in just the way he wanted.

>>1578308
Cortez had tens of thousands of native allies to fill his ranks.

Interesting thing to note. Tlaxcala could have ended Cortez campaign before it began. They had besieged Cortez fort and were starving them out before diplomacy made them realize they'd be better as mutual allies against the Aztecs.

>>1579564
how did they initially communicate? I guess Columbus had made contact a couple decades ago so there were spanish speaking natives who could translate?

I always have this picture in my head of these natives seeing the white man & his horses for the first time so its hard to imagine them understanding spanish at all.

>>1579630
Cortés met his first translator after spending a couple of weeks in mainland, prior to that he communicated through gestures. Ten years before his expedition a group of Spaniards shipwrecked on their way to Cuba and only two men survived, Francisco de Aguilar and Gonzalo Guerrero. Guerrero became a commander of a Mayan chief, while Aguilar got rescued by Cortés.
His second translator joined the expedition after defeating the Mayans of Centla, when he recieved a group of slaves as a peace offer. Among them there was a young woman, Malinalli, who could speak Nahuatl (Aztec) and Mayan. Albeit her past is unclear, some say she was an Aztec sold as a slave to the Mayans, others say she was a Tlaxcalan noble who lost her family in the war.
Initially, she translated Nahuatl to Mayan and Aguilar in turn Mayan to Spanish, but she managed to translate Nahuatl to Spanish directly after a few months.

>>1579520
Most of their enemies were Tlaxcalans though, who were surrounded by the empire and economically isolated.
Last time a major drought took place, during Moctezuma I's reign, many had to sell themselves and their children as slaves to the Totonac, but there was no uprisings nor overthrow attempts