Aztec
An ancient empire
Disease
Factors of the empire falling
(Why,Who, How, When)
The Aztecs suffered many factors that led to the whole empire falling. The top three reasons why the empire fell was the diseases, sacraifces/earthquake, and the Spanish Conquest. The diseases and sacrafices made the population drop. Also, the Spanish conquest won so they captured the empire making the empire fall. This happened over several years. It started in 1517 and ended when the city was completley destroyed in 1525. Over these years multiple things happend making the empire lower and lower till defeat.
Sacrifices/Earthquake
Spanish Conquest
When the army was sent out to fight they would often find other people who had diseases. This happened because the people don't have medicine or a cure to stop the disease from spreading. That's why when the disease was spread on to the soldiers, it was spread very easily. Most of the diseases were not deadly and would often go away fast. However, there was one battle when the soldiers came back with the disease called small pox. This disease played a very important part in the decrease of the population. This disease killed many. There was no cure so as it spread it kept killing. For example, if one of your family members got it, there was a 90% chance of it spreading through the whole family and killing everyone in it.
Human sacrifices were made all the time in the Aztec religon. They considered it as a "present" to the gods, so they could strengthen and fight better. This happened often because it was one of their very strong beliefs. They did sacrafices to plese the gods, so they wouldn't stop doing it. Having all these sacrifices made the population decrese tons. Thousand and thousands were killed. After awhile, the population dropped so much that there wasn't anyone left to sacrafice. This made the gods "mad" when the blood wasn't given to them. Before the Spanish came there was in earthquake in the city, Tenochitilan. This caused it to flood the land which made them lose lots of items and things of importance. Having the earthquake made everyone freakout which did not help when the spanish came. The people believed that the earthquake was some sort of sign that that gods were saying the empire is about to fall.
The Spanish conquest was definetly the most significant fall of the Aztecs. The Spanish started the war by attacking the Aztecs in Febuary of 1519. They then later declared victory on August 13th, 1521. In result of this, the Spanish leader, Herman Cortes and Xicotencatl captured the main city, Tenochitilan, and the whole empire surrendered with defeat. Since, they didn't their whole territory was taken away, causing the whole empire to fall. The Spanish came into the Aztecs empire with 500 soliders and lots of canons and enemies. The emperor tried to stop war with offering multiple things. Such as, food, water, supplies, homes, gold, silver, etc. But the spanish would not take it and refused everything except war. After the spanish won they took everything that the Aztecs had and replaced them.
There wasn't exactly a certain somebody to blame this whole thing on. It wasn't anyone's fault that the diseases were spread and no one could cure it. Nor was it anyone's fault that they believed in sacrafices, so people died because of it. It was just something they did that everyone participated in. However, the king possibly could've prevented the war against the Spanish by giving an peaceful alternate or making them move to somewhere else. Also, the fighters could've fought better and trained better. Overall, it was just the way the empire ran that made the empire fall and it wasn't exactly someones fault the way things happened the way they did.
After the empire fell, the Spaniards took over. They did this by destroying the Aztecs in war. Once this was done, they rebuilt everything from scratch. They left nothing the same. This left the Aztecs to nothing, forcing everyone to surrender under the Spanish name and abandon everything.
