to be fair, the vikings in their pagan era were as bloodthirsty as the aztecs, but amazing sailors, raided all of europe and plunder every monastery along the coast, many forget how the pope send cruzades to northern germany and scandinavia to "purify" the pagans that did commit human sacrificies, mainly in sweden and norway, it was like a switch when christianization started, they stop doing sacrificies, but were still amazing warriors end up working for the bizantine emperor about alvarado, it was another man of his time, but whitout doubt there was greed as motivator for many conquistadors rather than expanding the word of god, thats why the fraile bartolome de las casas wrote his books about what happened in this times
Mexico