Cortes's Assassination of the Aztecs

Cortes' men were a rough lot, and their mines were on gold cuba. Their families anything but fighting the aztecs. He could not cnquer an empire with men so divided and untrustworthy. So he seized the conspirators and had the two ringleaders hanged. Next, he bribed his pilots to bore holes in all the ships and then announce that worms had eaten through the boards of the vessels,. Pretending to be upset at the news, cortes ordered what was salvageable from the ships to be taken ashore and then the hulls to be sunk. Holes had been bored, and only five of the ships went down. But when more ships