Steel Empire Torrent Download [hacked]
Jason Ramgel
The Spanish conquest of the Aztecs was terrible. It was a prolonged period of pestilence, famine, torture, rape, plunder, destruction, conquest, cultural eradication, and general misery, with a short term death toll of something like 600,000 (including military and civilian casualties), and a long term death toll in the millions.
And yet part of me thinks it was totally awesome. That portion of my brain that grew up on Total War and Civilization games thinks the concept of a small number of hyper-technologically sophisticated foreigners led by a verified psychopath waging war on an empire of pyramid-dwelling, polygamist, slave-owning, human sacrificing pagans with the fate of a largely uncharted landmass at stake is incredibly cool. And no one can convince me otherwise.
My main takeaway from the book is that the Aztecs were a highly unique civilization that I desperately want to learn more about. They offer great insights into how a society with radically different structures and norms might function. Whether it was due to their relative geographic isolation, unusual environmental factors, or achievement of a high level of technology for a pagan tribal society, the Aztecs seemed to follow very different civilizational paths than the ancient Greeks, Persians, Chinese, and Indians, despite being at a fairly comparable level of development by the 1500s.
The Mexicas were an ethnic/tribal group which migrated from the modern-day US into Mexico and eventually founded the city-state of Tenochtitlan. They subjugated the surrounding cities and eventually achieved a stable hold over central Mexico by allying with two lesser-city states, Texcoco and Tlacopan, which were not Mexica, but spoke the same Nahuatl language. The emerging political union is referred to as the Aztec Empire.
You know how in some history games like Civilization or Crusader Kings, you can select your style of government or succession process or economic system, and the game gives you various bonuses and costs based on your choices? The Aztec Empire is like a player who just picks their craziest options without any concern for how it impacts his playthrough.
By the early 1500s, the Aztec Empire led by the Mexica people out of Tenochtitlan was at roughly the civilizational development level of the European Classical era. Their population and civic growth was based primarily on the cultivation of maize (primitive corn), with supplements from fishing and hunting. A complex trade network was developed throughout central Mexico based on weaved cloth (from wild cotton), chocolate, gold, food, basic manufactured goods, and slaves.
The Aztec Empire had a singular monarch chosen from among the top noble families via consensus. Tenochtitlan ruled as a dominant city state which extracted tribute from subjugated cities and villages throughout the year. The two junior city-state allies, Texcoco and Tlacopan, received about 1/5th of the annual tribute each. In the generation prior to the Spanish conquest, the Empire was in the process of centralizing its government and converting away from tribute towards taxation managed by a bureaucracy.
The Aztecs had no alphabetic writing system, but used a pictographic system typically understood by priests and the most educated nobles. Most important knowledge, especially religious knowledge, was maintained via oral tradition. The Aztecs had a numeric system at least on par with that of the ancient Egyptians.
The Aztec religion was a polytheistic paganism based on a cycle of universal annihilation and rebirth. The religion had a dedicated caste of priests, lots of officially-sanctioned mythological stories, and its pyramidal temples dominated Tenochtitlan. The religion was the source of authority for Aztec governance, war, and morality.
Unlike in traditional Islam where each man is allowed up to four wives, the Aztecs had no limit. Every man of any social level was permitted to marry as many wives as he saw fit. Wives could be of any social background for any man, and the wives could be free or enslaved.
The result is a system which encouraged a snowballing of wives. While successful Aztec warriors might have one free wife and maybe a second slave-wife, the Aztec nobles commonly racked up dozens of wives. Chiefs and kings would purposefully collect wives from subjugated villages (both voluntarily and involuntarily) to maintain diplomatic relationships and increase prestige. At the height of the Aztec Empire, household sizes spiraled into the hundreds and noble dynasties reached into the thousands.
The first wife was always given a primary status position. All other wives were legally equal at a lower level, but in practice, they would rise and fall upon the affection and respect shown by their husbands. Top-tier wives might closely advise their husbands on political and financial matters while bottom-tier wives were rarely visited and basically used as baby factories.
Townsend tells a story of one noble Aztec patriarch who had 117 sons, including a bunch who died in war and one he executed for insurrection. As you would expect, in a society where very rich people had tons of sons and no formalized succession mechanism, intra-dynastic wars were very common and very brutal.
First, there was the institution of slave-wives. These were not slaves that were liberated and then immediately married (as was the custom in ancient Rome). These were slaves who were kept in slavery as they married a free man. This practice provided a massive bonus incentive for warriors who could go off to war, help conquer a new village, and then capture their very own slave-wives to bring back home.
And as mentioned, as much as it might suck for a woman to get captured and turned into a slave-wife when her village was conquered, at least it provided some potential for a better life. She might be whisked away to live in an awesome pyramid in Tenochtitlan where she could eat chocolate all day and spit out sons for a grateful noble lord. Or she might end up living in a cramped apartment with a resentful first wife and eat nothing but corn for the rest of her life. It was all a dice roll.
On the other hand, I wonder if this process allowed for easier integration of conquered peoples into the Empire. Again, it must have sucked to be conquered and enslaved, but at least your children will be Aztec citizens and be afforded the protection of such a powerful people.
Human sacrifices were at least a monthly affair in the Aztec Empire. Sacrificial victims were almost always adult men captured in battle or conquered villages, though exceptions were sometimes made. The honored champion was typically laid down on a stone tablet, then a warrior or priest would cut a hole in his chest and rip out his heart. There were always crowds in attendance, but Townsend says that contrary to popular belief, the whole affair was an intensely solemn occasion. The people watched in silence as an individual truly took one for the team (ie. humanity). A good sacrificial subject was one who faced his terrifying death boldly, or at least stoically. A bad sacrificial subject screamed and cried and begged for mercy until he was put out of his misery.
Townsend explains that there was even an Aztec scam where incompetent nobles would go to another city, buy up a bunch of slaves, and then bring them back home and claim to have captured them in battle. The noble would then give them to the priest and have them sacrificed for the prestige boost, which sounds like a move straight out of Crusader Kings 2.
Powerful lords would amass many tributaries, both through conquest and voluntary surrender for the sake of protection. Tribute was usually paid in food and goods, though slaves could also be part of the deal. Competent lords would maintain and expand their power by extracting enough from their vassals to enrich themselves and keep their vassals too poor to become a threat. Incompetent lords would either be overthrown by mistreated vassals or supplanted by stronger insurgent lords.
This goes a long way towards explaining why so many Aztec Empire vassals defected to the Spanish. Many lesser lords were ordered to round up their own people, put them in chains, and march them off to have their hearts torn out on the top of pyramids, or force the same terrible fate on other innocent cities. It was a vicious cycle.
Unsurprisingly, most of the early Aztec history recounted in the book is an endless procession of civil wars. The more powerful a lord became, the more wives he had, the more sons he had, the greater chance the succession process would fail, and the greater chance the vassal lords would back their own son claimants for power. As a result, powerful Aztec states rose and fell rapidly, and much of the overall economic and population gains were consumed by infighting.
For 100 years, the Aztec Empire cruised along steadily growing its territory and manpower. Population estimates are all over the map, but Townsend puts Tenochtitlan at 100K in 1500, while this random syllabus I found online says the number was twice as high. In comparison, at the same time, Paris had 200K, London had 50K, and Rome had 45K, all of which are far more reliable estimates. The total population of the Aztec Empire peaked somewhere around 4-6 million, which was about equivalent to England in the mid-14th century.
Moctezuma II succeeded the throne in 1502 at the age of 36. Before coming to power, he was known for his generalship, toughness, and charisma. Once on the throne, he led an expansion of the Aztec Empire to its greatest territorial height, and happily sacrificed thousands in celebration. For the first time in Aztec history, some priests were given the full-time job of disposing of sacrificial corpses.
But Moctezuma was not just a butcher. He channeled his authority and prestige into serious administrative reform by essentially trying to convert the Aztec Empire to feudalism. He, like so many Aztec lords, found the tribute system cumbersome. Different goods were sent at different times of the year in inconsistent amounts, and it was annoying to coordinate how to disburse tribute to hundreds of lords in a complex hierarchical system.
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