Part 15/20:
The conquest was remarkably efficient: they seized Tenochtitlán using psychological warfare—playing the “board game” of diplomacy, mistaken seriously as divine-meaning, and then using the chaos to their advantage. The Spaniards exploited internal fissures, angry subordinate states, and their unknowable dominance of disease to topple an empire of twenty million in just a few years.
The impact was staggering: the population plummeted by over 90%, and the entire civilization’s worldview was shattered. The spiritual, political, and social fabric of Mesoamerica was torn asunder—centuries of cultural continuity wiped out overnight.