Lured by reports of gold jewelry spotted on natives of what is now Mexico, Spanish adventurer Hernan Cortes landed a force of 530 men at a village on the Gulf of Mexico, and led them on an eight-month march to the Aztec temple of Tenochitlan...
Fired by opportunity and greed, Cortes kidnapped the Aztec leader Moctezuma, and demanded the king's ransom in gold. A few months later Cortes invited Aztec nobles to the city's central plaza for a traditional feast. With the nation's leaders unguarded and unarmed, Cortes unleashed his horses, swords, and cannons - technology unknown in the New World - and killed them all. After that, the conquest of Mexico was a mop-up operation.
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