A smallpox outbreak did more to bring down the Aztec Empire than Spanish steel

Hernán Cortés besieged the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan for 93 days in 1521 with a few hundred Spaniards — but tens of thousands of Indigenous allies eager to escape Aztec rule, and a smallpox epidemic that killed much of the city's population, did the real work. The Aztec emperor Cuauhtémoc was captured and later executed, and the city was leveled.

— Hugh Thomas, Conquest: Montezuma, Cortés, and the Fall of Old Mexico — Simon & Schuster, 1993
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