Quote:Also, the way the Spanish manipulated them politically was unthinkable to the Aztecs and Incas. If I recall correctly, the Aztecs welcomed them into their cities, and once in the capital, the kidnapped the emperor. They demanded ransom money, with the Aztecs paid, and then the killed the Emperor regardless. It was a form of social warfare they were not used to.
I think you have mixed some events of the conquest of Mexico and Peru.
In the conquest of Mexico the Spaniards landed in Yucatan and they capture the city of Tabasco. There, after a time, the natives assembled a numerous army of about 40,000 men (the number seems to be excessive) to definitivly finish with the Spaniards. They were armed with bows, atlatl, macana (type of wooden sword with sílex edges) and slings. Cortés, with his little troops of about 400 men armed with pikes, crossbows and arcquebuses, in addition to 32 horses and some cannons, defeat the natives army, starting a legend of dreadful and strange beings half man half horse (the natives didn´t know the horse) that would cross the Aztec empire seeding the terror. When Cortés arrives at the city of Mexico, Moztezuma offers him a warm welcome fearing a direct confrontation with the Spaniards and attempting to make them an ambush within the city. But Cortés, fearing that, takes prisoner Moztezuma at the first occasion. The relation between both is from then ambiguous, until the point of which the people of Moztezuma blames him of cobardice and of collaborating with the Spaniards. There was a very violent revolt against the part of the city where the Spaniards were settled, and roofs and streets of the houses were covered materially with darts and stones. Then Moztezuma, that was prisioner in that place, was asked to go out on a balcony and try to calm his people, but there he would receive the insults of his people and an accurate stone from a sling that broke him part of his head, because of which he died. After all the Aztecs knew how to use the sling. And they continued using it and theirs other weapons, forcing the Spaniards to leave the city. One year later the city would be conquered definitively by Cortés and then all the country.
As far as the conquest of Peru, it was the most amazing and fast battle of the history, because it lasted half an hour and it consisted of an astute ambush to about 30,000 men in the great square of the city of Cajamarca, where the Spaniards were installed, near of the site where Atahualpa have gathered a great army to wait for the arrival of the Spaniards. Pizarro dispatched messengers with presents to Atahualpa so that he comes to the city to talk and to know personally. Although Atahualpa communicates that he will go without armed people, he went with 30,000 men, almost the totality of his army, thinking that a small group of forward adventurers will not dare to attack him and his people. When they all were within the city, Pizarro himself takes prisoner to Atahualpa, and ordered to appear the cavalry that went against the people, and also the arquebuses came into action (both things completely unknown for the natives), seeding the panic between the multitude locked up in the square, that flees terrified and were clogged in the gates, and acting hastily and killing themselves in their eagerness to escape. It was the typical massacre in an enclosure produced by the panic. After, the cavalry went after the people outside the city making thousands of prisoners. Everything finished in just half an hour. Therefore, it seems that the Incan slingers not even had time nor heart to take their slings, that surely were hidden in their clothes.