Hernán Cortés

“the conquistadors were maybe one half of 1% in raw numbers of that force. The overwhelming majority were other Mesoamerican peoples who see this as their final reckoning with the Aztecs.”

“The Europeans are learning from each other, but the natives are not learning from each other... Pizarro just knows the whole details of what Cortes did a decade earlier.”

“my friends, why are we fighting? We have the empire at my disposal. Join with me and we can share in the riches. So he wins over the vast majority of this new force. It becomes effectively reinforcements.”