How did Hernán Cortés and his conquistador’s, who were in now Mexico, have enough ammunition to fight the natives while staying for years 1519–1521
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They didn’t have much ammunition, the vast majority of their fighting was with melee weapons.
I read the books long ago but I remember that some of his soldiers descended to Popocatepel Vulcano to pick up sulfur to create powder. The full story is so unbelievable that if you watched it on a movie you would not believe it. I recommend reading history of new Spain from Bernal del Castillo
The Spanish weren’t the Aztecs’ only enemies. The Aztecs went on a conquest spree and forced the conquered lands to provide thousands of human sacrifices.
Because of this, a lot of the locals really didn’t like the Aztecs.
When Cortes attacked the Aztecs’ capital, his army was about 400 Spaniards and 100,000 Native Americans.
Guns were not the main super-weapons of Cortez, steel swords/weaponry were far more important to the conquest of the Aztec’s. It was with these weapons, supported by large numbers of fighters from other native tribes who had a pre-existing hatred for the Aztec’s, that enabled Cortez’s victory.
There are a lot of reasons the conquest of the Aztecs went the way it did but since this is ELI5 I will oversimplify all of it in a few bullet points.
1. The Aztecs had a lot more enemies than just the Spaniards. The Aztecs themselves had conquered many tribes and these tribes were itching for a chance to rebel. This was used against the Aztecs so the vast majority of the conquering army was not even Spanish.
2. Guns, armor, and horses were very intimidating to the natives at the time. They did not have large animals that could be ridden and certainly didn’t have any history with explosions or metal armor. Try to imagine a man clad in impenetrable clothes galloping at you on top of what looks like a giant monster firing loud weapons of fire that could take your arm off. It’s scary. Many large armies could be chased off just with a couple volleys.
3. They weren’t always fighting or even fighting at first. The Spaniards spent a good while engaging in diplomacy before fighting broke out.
4. They were sporadically resupplied.
Any battle in the 16th century would end up in hand-to-hand combat even if both sides had firearms, the rate of fire was quite low. The Arquebus the Spanish would have a reload time of 30-45 seconds in ideal condition with a rested well-well-trained user. People get exhausted so 40 shots per hour would be the sustained rate. Because of the limit in range an opposing enemy force could simply run toward the enemy, there will be some losses but they can’t be stopped and the result is hand-to-hand combat.
The Spanish main advantage was metals. The people of America did not have the technology to make steel like the Europeans could. They did have gold and silver which is metal but it is not suitable for weapons or armour. They had some boze that was used is head of clubs, they were somewhere between the stone and bronze age in weapon technology
The Aztecs used wooden swords with obsidian blades on the side. Obsidian is a glass-like rock that can produce razor-sharp edges that can cut through fabric and flesh with ease but it is brittle and will shatter if you hit metal with it.
The conquistadors had metal armour and metal weapons. They alos have heavy cavalry with armoud rides and horses with lances and swords. This is what was primarily used to conquer the Aztec empire, not firearms. Crossbows would have been the most common ranger weapon not fire arms.
The firearms of the day were efficient against heavy enemy cavalry, the could penetrate the armor. So quite useful in Europe but in the Americas taking potshots at the opposing side to to scare them with something that did not know what it was that could kill them at a distance. So the usage was again enemy morale.
They did have artillery too, a cannon was used in the siege of Tenochtitlan, but the ammunition usage was not be enormous.
[https://www.thoughtco.com/armor-and-weapons-of-spanish-conquistadors-2136508](https://www.thoughtco.com/armor-and-weapons-of-spanish-conquistadors-2136508)
It should be said that the Spaniards did not capture the Aztec empire alone. They did not just wage war against everyone they met. The [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlaxcaltec](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlaxcaltec) which had been the enemy of the Aztecs for centuries saw an opportunity with the help of the Spaniards to crush their enemy.
There were around 3000 Spaniards in total alongside 80,000-200,000 Tlaxcaltecs, they were just the largest indigenous allies of Spain. The Totonac provides around 10,000 men along with other groups.
It is extremely unlikely that Spain would have managed to capture the Aztecs alone with their small force. They were not invincible around 1000 or 1/3 died in battle, the indigenous allies lost tens of thousands.
The Tlaxcaltec did nominally become subjects of Spain but in practice, the large governed their own land independently. The Spanish government recognized Tlaxcala as an allied city instead of a conquered one.
No one has mentioned this. Disease.
In addition to their local allies, the Spanish were fighting an army that was 1/10th of what it was at the beginning because everyone else had died because of European diseases.
Simple: They minimized the amount of fighting they did.
The Spanish built a coalition of the Aztec Empire’s enemies… and they had just come off a conquering spree. That coalition did the bulk of the fighting, and the Spanish got to play mop-up with those who were left.
Spaniards had been in the new world for over 15 years, they would buy supplies directly from Cuba at a steady rate.
The Spanish called upon local cities to supply them with copper and bronze arrows, because metalworking did exist in the New World.
Spaniards would adopt local weapons due to supply issues, nit all spaniards were wearing full knight armor and carryung a gun.
Another detail is how the Spanish and Aztec weapons matched up.
Spanish cannons were something that the Aztecs were unprepared for. Walls have be built differently to resist cannon fire than pre-gunpowder siege equipment; they need to have a thick base and an outward slope that will disperse the impact. For anything else, a straight vertical wall will work fine, with a lot less effort…but a cannon shot to the lower wall will bring the whole thing down.
Spanish handheld guns were still quite primitive. Pre-measured cartridges hadn’t been invented yet, so each required the musketeer to manually load the powder, shot and wadding, measuring in the field. This means that the guns had a fire rate of only about one shot per minute. They were also inaccurate smooth bore weapons, meaning that they were only effective when fired in volleys. Most battles opened on a volley, then a few more as the enemy closed, but that was all. So we’re talking maybe five shots *per battle.*
The Spanish swords were top notch. Spain had an unusually pure vein of iron that made world-renown steel. Their armor was of similar quality. The result were weapons that pierced Aztec armor and cut their shields to ribbons.
On the other side, the standard Aztec armament was a basically a hatchet, with an edge formed of obsidian shards. They were razor sharp, and could kill a man easily…but not through steel armor. These weapons would literally shatter on Spanish mail and plate. They were also ineffective against Spanish cavalry, which they’d never had to defend from before.
Lastly, the Aztecs only had one domesticated animal (llamas). The Europeans had had several, and typically lived in the same buildings as their animals to conserve fuel during harsh European winters. This means that Europeans had built up immunity to a lot of diseases that the Aztecs had never encountered, and the Aztecs lack of their own close-kept livestock meant there were no equivalent diseases in the Americas.
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