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It's 1519. Hernan Cortes is appointed by Diego Velazquez to sail to Mexico to open trade. Cortes however wants to establish a colony. After some brief encounters in the Yucatan, Cortes sails to Mexico and meets representatives of Moctezuma and the Aztec Empire. They welcome Cortes to their country, but insist he must stay on the coast.
After Cortes makes an alliance with the Totonacs, he heads inland to Tenochtitlan. He fights several battles with the Tlaxcala, and eventually concludes the Spanish Tlaxcalan alliance. Moctezuma tries to stop him, but this only leads to the Massacre of Cholua. The Spanish are initially welcomed to Tenochtitlan, however when relations sour, they feel compelled to kidnap the Emperor.
The situation becomes even worse when Pedro de Narvaez lands with 1400 soldiers to arrest Cortes on behalf of Velazquez. But Cortes manages to win over Narvaez's men, tripling his forces at little cost to himself. He heads back to Tenochtitlan, but the situation there is already salvageable. During the Noche Triste almost 3/4 of Cortes's men are massacres.
But Cortes rallies his troops and goes on the offensive. He is helped in this by a smallpox epidemic sweeping over Mexico. The Siege of Tenochtitlan begins in May, 1521. After a 93 day siege, the Aztecs surrender, and the emperor Cuauhtemoc is captured.

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0:00 Start
0:28 Cordoba and Grijalva
2:35 Cortes's Expedition
3:40 Tabasco
5:42 The Aztec Empire
7:43 Cempolla
10:53 Tlaxcala
15:36 Cholua and Tenochtitlan
17:31 Capture of Moctezuma
19:08 Narvaez
20:27 Noche Triste
22:54 Siege of Tenochtitlan


#SpanishEmpire #HernanCortes #ConquestOfMexico