HispanicVista Columnists

The Destruction of the Aztec Empire

By John P. Schmal

The conquest of the Aztec Empire, taking place from 1519 to 1521, is a story that has intrigued millions of people over the years. As students and scholars, we were mesmerized by this fascinating story, in which a small band of mercenaries from a faraway land (Spain) made their way to the great Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán, and – against great odds – destroyed the most extensive Mesoamerican empire of all time.

The Aztec Empire of 1519 was the most powerful Mesoamerican kingdom of all time. By this time, the island city of Tenochtitlán had become a city of about 300,000 citizens. And the Aztec Empire itself ruled over more than 80,000 square miles (207,200 square kilometers) of territory extending from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean, and southward to Oaxaca and Chiapas. This empire contained some 15 million people, living in thirty-eight provinces. In all, the Emperor received the tribute of 489 communities. The term, Aztec, is used to describe all the Nahua-speaking peoples in the Valley of Mexico, while the culture that dominated the Aztec Empire was the Mexica (pronounced "me-shee-ka") tribe.

But Hernán Cortés and the Spanish conquest of the Aztec domain is a much more complex story than most people realize. Even with their superior weaponry and tactics, the fifteen hundred Spanish soldiers who took part in this two-year campaign could not have brought down this magnificent empire without assistance. At the climax of this famous campaign, Moctezuma, the highly respected leader of the mighty Aztec Empire, came face-to-face with Hernán Cortés, the leader of a small band of professional European soldiers from a strange land on a faraway shore.

Against insurmountable odds, Cortés triumphed over the great empire. As a master of observation, manipulation and strategy, he was able to gradually weave an army of indigenous resistance against the Aztecs, while professing his good intentions toward Moctezuma. Even more amazing is the fact that the Indian warriors who joined forces with Cortés and the Spaniards were Náhuatl-speaking people, like the Mexica of Tenochtitlán. In effect, the Aztecs were defeated by their own linguistic and cultural brethren.

The key to the Spanish conquest of Mexico was the dissension among the different peoples of the Aztecs' empire. The Aztec overlords made few attempts to assimilate the other cultures to their own and thus provided the basis for a full scale revolt against them which Cortés incited with great success. While the Aztecs were really unable to unify their empire, the Spanish managed to succeed where their predecessors in the area had failed.

On April 22, 1519, a fleet of eleven Spanish galleons, which had been sailing northward along the eastern Gulf Coast of Mexico, dropped anchor just off the wind-swept beach on the island of San Juan de Ulúa. Under the command of a Spanish adventurer named Hernán Cortés, these vessels bore 450 soldiers, 100 sailors, and 16 horses. These horses would be the first horses to walk upon the North American continent. The horse, which eventually became an important element of Indian life, was unknown to the North American Indians who engaged in warfare and hunting without the benefit of this mammal’s help.

As the Spaniards disembarked to set up camp on the dunes behind the beach, they received a friendly reception from the native Totonac Indians, who inhabited this area. Cortés explained that he wanted to travel inland to meet with Moctezuma, “the Lord of Cuhúa.” By this time, Indian runners reaching the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán, some 250 miles to the west in the heart of the continent, reported the arrival of the fair-skinned, bearded strangers and their fearsome “man-beasts” (cavalry).

On June 7, 1519, Cortés led his forces northward to the coastal town Cempoala. As they approached the town, the Totonac Indians started bringing the Spaniards food and gifts. Cortés had heard that the cacique (chief) of the Totonacs, Tlacochcalcatl, who reigned over this area, was an enemy of the Emperor Moctezuma. But the chief was very obese and not able to move around freely. For this reason, he could not come to greet the Spanish force in person.

The coastal city-state of Cempoala, presently under Aztec domination, was made up of some fifty towns. The town of Cempoala itself contained some 14,000 inhabitants. The townspeople gave the Spanish soldiers a very warm reception and Cacique Tlacochcalcatl met with Cortés. The chief of the Totonacs, writes Dr. Marrin, complained that the Aztec “tribute collectors were picking the country clean… like hungry coyotes.” And each year, the Totonacs were forced to send hundreds of children to the altars of Tenochtitlán for sacrifice. For this tribute, the hatred of the Totonacs for the Mexica ran deep. For this reason, Tlacochcalcatl forged an alliance with Cortés.

The Spaniards helped the Totonacs to expel Moctezuma’s tribute-collectors who apparently fled to a Mexica garrison at Tizapancingo, about twenty miles to the southwest. With a full force of Spaniards, 16 horses, and Totonacs, Cortés seized control of the town. The seizure of this town had a profound effect on both the Spaniards and Totonacs. “The speed of this victory greatly impressed the Totonacs and naturally had the effect of extending their rebellion,” writes Professor Hugo Thomas in “Conquest: Montezuma, Cortés, and the Fall of Old Mexico”, “It also made Cortés even more self-confident; for it suggested to him and to his captains that the Mexica, despite their fame, had no special military qualities, no secret weapons, and little discipline.”

The Cempoalans helped Cortés and his men establish a base on the shore. On June 28, 1519, Cortés formally gave this town the name La Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz (The Rich Town of the True Cross). At this point, Cortés decided to lead his troops westward into the interior of the continent to find and meet with Moctezuma. Cacique Tlacochcalcatl warned Cortés that, on his journey inland, he would confront the people of Tlaxcala and Huexotzinco, two provinces that hated the Mexica equally. With the help of Totonac guides, Cortés planned his march through territory that might represent fertile ground for more alliances.

On August 8, Cortés assembled his army for the expedition inland. He had a force of 300 Spanish soldiers, 150 Cuban Indian servants, 800 Cempoalans and other Totonacs led by a chief named Mamexi. They also had 15 horses, reserved exclusively for the captains of the army. The Spanish army was thus beefed up with more than a thousand native warriors plus 200 porters. With a small party of soldiers and sailors left to hold the fort at Vera Cruz, Cortés commenced the hazardous journey towards the Aztec capital.

Just as they approached the next town, Jalapa, word arrived from the coast that four Spanish ships under the command of Alonso Alvarez de Pineda had arrived at the coast. With a force of one hundred men, Cortés quickly returned to the coast to meet the new arrivals. Although the ships did not arrive with good intent toward Cortés, he had them arrested and then persuaded them to join his army. Cortés then set off to join and reassemble his army.

Finally, on August 16, 1519, as his expedition prepared to move inland from Cempoala, Hernán Cortés mustered an army of 400 Spanish soldiers, 15 horses, 1,300 Indian warriors, seven pieces of artillery, and a thousand tamanes (porters), who helped transport baggage and guns across the land. About 150 of the porters were Cuban Indian servants who were brought along from Cuba. The force brought along many dogs that had been well-trained to fight. The distance from Cempoala to Tenochtitlán is 250 miles, as the crow flies. A fairly large force of 150 Spanish soldiers and sailors and two horses under the command Juan de Escalante stayed at the garrison at Villa Rica de Vera Cruz. Roughly 100 soldiers remained in Villa Rica under the command of Gonzalo Sandoval.

On the road ahead, the allied force faced many obstacles. Shortly after reaching Jalapa, a short distance inland from Cempoala, the altitude of the land rose sharply to 6,000 feet, transforming the climate from tropical to temperate. As they advanced inland, the Spaniards and Cempoalans moved through territory that was firmly in the control of the Mexica. However, at one point, the expedition came across a large wall, some twenty paces wide and nine feet high. The barrier ran for several miles across the valley from one mountaintop to another. Cortés learned from his Indian allies that the wall had been built by the people of Iztaquimaxtitlan to protect themselves from the fierce Tlaxcalan Indians nearby.

Finally, Cortés’ army reached the Tlaxcalan Republic, which was independent enclave deep in the heart of the Mexica Empire that had managed to resist Aztec control. The Tlaxcalans and Mexica shared a common origin, both of them speaking the Náhuatl language. As a matter of fact, both the Tlaxcalans and the Mexica belonged to the Aztec culture, looking back to the legendary Aztlan (Place of the Herons) as their ancestral homeland in the northwest.

For more than two hundred years, the Tlaxcalan nation lived in the shadow of the Mexica and their rapidly expanding Aztec Empire. Starting in 1325, the Mexica had begun building an empire with their ever-growing military force. They subdued most of their neighboring city-states and compelled the people to surrender part of their production as tribute. By 1440, the Mexica had spread their influence as far south as Guatemala.

Although the Mexica put together an extensive and powerful empire, Tlaxcala never fell into their hands. Surrounded on all sides and blockaded by the Aztecs, the Tlaxcalans had been subjected to almost continuous warfare and human sacrifice for many decades. Because of their economic isolation, the Tlaxcalans had no cotton with which to make their clothes. Nor did they have any salt, bird feathers or precious stones. The Mexica, in essence, had established an embargo that laid siege to the Tlaxcalans and denied them most of the materials other Indian groups took for granted.

In 1519, Tlaxcala was a small, densely populated province with a population of about 150,000. Tlaxcala was actually “confederation of four republics,” ruling over some 200 settlements. Some historians believe that Tenochtitlán could have overwhelmed Tlaxcala without too much difficulty, and the reason it did not is probably that it wanted a nearby source of victims for the human sacrifices. Therefore the Aztecs maintained an almost perpetual state of war with Tlaxcala, but never actually conquered it. Also, the Aztecs seem to have regarded the frequent battles as a convenient way of testing and training the young Mexica warriors.

This state of perpetual war was very hateful and degrading to the Tlaxcalans and by the time that Cortés arrived in Tlaxcala, the confederation represented fertile grounds for an anti-Mexica alliance. However, the Tlaxcalans, very suspicious of the strangers, were in no mood to accommodate the Spaniards and their Indian allies. Cortés and his Indian allies were forced to fight several battles with the fierce Tlaxcalans, who – unlike the other aboriginal groups – seemed to have no fear of the Spaniards’ horses.

In one of the worst battles, some sixty Spaniards and several horses were wounded by the enemy. But, on the following day, Cortés led a punitive expedition, burning several Tlaxcalan towns and killing many of the Indians. After three days of battles, the Spaniards had lost 45 men who died in battle, died of wounds or succumbed to disease.

However, as he watched the Spaniards prove themselves in battle, the Tlaxcalan King Xicotenga was very impressed and decided to allow Cortés' army to pass through the confederation on its way to Tenochtitlán. As the Spaniards entered the Tlaxcalan capital on September 18, they were welcomed into the town as if they were heroes. For twenty days, Cortés and his army stayed in Tlaxcala. As his men recovered from their wounds, Cortés forged a relationship with Xicotenga and other Tlaxcalan leaders. Xicotenga agreed to provide necessary provisions and manpower to the Spaniards. This change from hostility to alliance was brought on by Cortés's claims that he was opposed only to the Aztec empire and that there would be a place for Tlaxcala in a Spanish-dominated Mexico.

Xicotenga saw in Cortés a powerful ally who could help the Tlaxcalans destroy the Mexica and undermine the power of the Aztec Empire. The alliance between the Spaniards and Tlaxcalans is one of the most important events in Mexican history. This alliance of the Europeans with the Totonac and Tlaxcalan Indians gave birth to a formidable coalition, which would eventually lead to the downfall and destruction of the entire Aztec Empire. The allegiance of the Tlaxcalans with the Spaniards would become an enduring partnership, lasting several centuries.

On November 1, 1519, Cortés and his army of European mercenaries and indigenous warriors left the Tlaxcalan capital. As many as 6,000 Tlaxcalan warriors had been added to the ranks of Cortés' force, but most of his Totonac allies had to return to their homes on the Gulf Coast. While Indian laborers carried the cannon and baggage in the center of the formation, Tlaxcalan warriors and Spanish horsemen marched along the flanks and with the rear guard.

As Cortés traveled westward through mountain towns and villages, many of the Indians living along this path told him of their cruel treatment at the hands of the Mexica overlords. Through these meetings, Cortés began to understand the depth of this hatred and fear. He also recognized that many of these people would be potential allies in a showdown with the Mexica.

From the mountain passes overlooking the great Valley of Mexico, the Spaniards and Tlaxcalans witnessed for the first time the great splendor of Tenochtitlán as it spread out along the valley floor. Before long, the mountain pass, with the Valley in full view, descended to lower altitudes, eventually bringing Cortés and his forces to an altitude of 7,400 feet above sea level on the valley floor. As they made their way through the valley towards Tenochtitlán, the Spaniards arrived in one town, where the King of Texcoco welcomed them.

The Texcocans provided their alien guests with gifts, food, and assistance. Soon after hearing about the Christian religion, many Texcocans, including the king, decided to convert to Catholicism. Before continuing on to the capital, the Spaniards performed several religious services, baptizing the king and other Texcocan nobles.

On November 8, 1519, the coalition army reached Xoloco, just outside of Tenochtitlán, where they were greeted by hundreds of emissaries of Emperor Moctezuma, the ruler of Tenochtitlán and the Emperor of the mighty Aztec Empire. As they were brought into the city, the Spaniards stared in awe at the architectural precision of the city. Filing across the southern causeway of the capital, Cortés and his men were greeted with much ceremony by a retinue of lords and nobles headed by Moctezuma himself. The Tlaxcalans, marching alongside their European allies, were equally impressed by the splendor of their traditional enemies.

Greeted by Moctezuma, the Spaniards and Tlaxcalans were offered housing and provisions by the Mexica. Moctezuma showed his Spanish guests around the city and entertained them with splendid banquets. By this time, Moctezuma and the other Mexica lords had already heard about the devastation that Cortés and his allies had inflicted upon several of the Aztec villages on his journey westward. Moctezuma also recognized the potential danger of a Tlaxcalan-Spanish alliance and hoped to avoid a confrontation. Moctezuma and some of his inner circle may have believed that the arrival of Cortés on Mexican shores was the fulfillment of an old prophesy in which the legendary Quetzalcóatl would return to Tenochtitlán.

After several days of negotiations and touring, Cortés and his officers suddenly took Moctezuma as a hostage. Bringing the monarch to his barracks in the great city, Cortés persuaded him to dispatch messengers to the surrounding communities to collect gold and silver. Moctezuma's imprisonment within his own capital continued for eight months.

On April 19, 1520, more Spanish ships appeared along the eastern coast. As Cortés suspected, the Governor of Cuba - his personal enemy - had sent soldiers under Panfilo de Narvaez to arrest Cortés for insubordination. Leaving his friend, Captain Pedro de Alvarado, in charge of his troops in Tenochtitlán, Cortés quickly departed from Tenochtitlán with 266 Spanish soldiers to confront the newly arrived Spanish force on the Gulf Coast. Although Narvaez's troops numbered three times greater, Cortés and his small army defeated Narvaez in a battle near Veracruz. After this battle, Cortés - a master of manipulation - persuaded most of Narvaez's troops to join him, after promising them a share of the spoils when Tenochtitlán was brought under Spanish control.

However, when Cortés and his men returned to Tenochtitlán, he found out that Pedro de Alvarado had provoked an open revolt by massacring 600 Aztec nobles during the Feast of Huitzilopochtli. Fighting had broken out, and soon the Spaniards and their Tlaxcalan allies found themselves under siege within the palace of the great city. An attempt to get the Mexica monarch to calm his subjects failed when Moctezuma was killed by a hail of stones.

Moctezuma was succeeded as Emperor by Cuitlahuac, who immediately set out to organize a determined resistance to the Spanish forces. As the month of June approached its end, Cortés realized that he would have to exit the city or face annihilation by a numerically superior force. On July 1, 1520, 1,250 Spaniards and 5,000 Tlaxcalans attempted to flee the city. This night - often referred to as La Noche Triste, the Night of Sadness - was a disaster for both the Spaniards and Tlaxcalan forces. As they fled the city, the Mexica forces fell upon them, killing 450 Spanish soldiers, 4,000 Tlaxcalans and 46 horses.

Plagued by hunger, disease, and the pursuing Aztecs, Cortés' army fled eastward in an attempt to reach Tlaxcalan territory, where they would try to organize reinforcements. However, on July 8, the retreating army came upon a legion of tens of thousands of Aztec warriors sent by Cuitlahuac. There, at the battle of Otumba, Cortés forces' managed a smashing victory that dissuaded the Aztecs from pursuing the Spaniards and their allies any farther.

Four hundred and twenty Spaniards and a mere 17 horses limped into Tlaxcalan territory. All the survivors, including Cortés, were wounded, and very few firearms or ammunition were left. As the battered army made its way into Tlaxcala, they were greeted by their Indian allies and given refuge. It goes without saying that the Spaniards would not have survived their ordeal without the help of their Tlaxcalan allies.

The Tlaxcalan chiefs called on Cortés during this dismal time and laid out their conditions for further assistance. The author Richard Lee Marks writes that the Tlaxcalans requested "perpetual exemption from tribute of any sort, a share of the spoils, and control of two provinces that bordered their land." Cortés agreed to these conditions and, as Mr. Marks observed, "Spain substantially kept its promise" to the Tlaxcalans "and exempted them from tribute for the entire period of the Spanish rule in Mexico, nearly three hundred years."

The Spaniards, however, also received more important support from another, unexpected ally. "While the Spaniards rested and recuperated" in Tlaxcala, wrote Mr. Marks, "it occurred to Cortés and his men to wonder why the great armies from Tenochtitlán were not pursuing them." The Aztecs had not attacked or laid siege to Tlaxcala, giving the Spaniards and Tlaxcalans precious time to heal and recover from their catastrophic defeat. Later, Cortés would learn that an epidemic of smallpox had devastated Tenochtitlán.

Brought to the shores of Mexico by an African sailor, "the disease had spread with amazing rapidity through the coastal tribes and up into the highland." The disease spread quickly among the Indians, according to Mr. Marks, because they "were in the habit of bathing to alleviate almost any ailment that afflicted them. These baths were either communal or the same bathing water was used consecutively by many. But after someone with an open smallpox sore entered the bath, the disease was transmitted to everyone who followed." The Spaniards, however, never bathed. Although they occasionally washed off the dirt and blood when they had to, "they believed that bathing per se was weakening." And the Tlaxcalans, "always in a state of semi-siege," were not yet exposed to the smallpox.

"Reviewing their narrow escape," writes the author Michael C. Meyer, "many of the Spanish veterans wanted nothing more to do with the Aztecs. It required all of Cortés's force of personality and subtle blandishments to prevent mass defections and rebellion among his men. Cortés, who seems never to have wavered in his determination to retake Tenochtitlán, began to lay plans for the return." In Tlaxcala, Cortés gained great power over the council and began to form a huge new army to attack Tenochtitlán once again. Reinforcements arrived from Vera Cruz to assist in the campaign, while more Tlaxcalans prepared to join Cortés' army. The Captain-General's army left Tlaxcala in late December of 1520 on its march to the Aztec capital.

With an army of 600 Spanish soldiers and more than 110,000 Indian warriors, Cortés intended to occupy the city of Texcoco and blockade Tenochtitlán from there. In the Spring of 1521, the refreshed army systematically conquered most of the Aztec-inhabited towns around Tenochtitlán, all the while receiving more reinforcements. The Spanish and Tlaxcalan force was bolstered by the addition of some 50,000 Texcocans. In addition, another 200 Spanish soldiers had arrived from the coast to help in the offensive.

In May 1521, Captain-General Hernán Cortés, with 900 Spaniards, 118 crossbows and harquebuses, fifteen bronze cannons and three heavy guns, thirteen brigantines, and as many as 150,000 Indian warriors, approached the entrance to Tenochtitlán. The siege of Tenochtitlán lasted from May 26 to August 13, 1521. The Mexica put up a fierce resistance until their people were reduced to eating worms and bark from trees. Towards the end of the siege, recognizing that the Mexica were nearly incapacitated by hunger and dehydration, the Captain-General ordered a full-scale assault on Tenochtitlán.

On August 13, 1521, after a 79-day siege, Tenochtitlán finally fell. In later years, Aztec historians would state that 240,000 Aztecs died in the siege. While many of the warriors died in battle, others, including most of the women and children, died from dehydration, starvation and disease. Of the 150,000 Amerindian allies fighting alongside the Spaniards, more than 30,000 are believed to have perished.

The anthropologist Eric R. Wolf stressed the great contribution of Cortés' Indian allies in the capture of Tenochtitlán. Wolf writes that "Spanish firepower and cavalry would have been impotent against the Mexica armies without" the support of the Tlaxcalans and the Texcocans. The allies "furnished the bulk of the infantry and manned the canoes that covered the advance of the brigantines across the lagoon of Tenochtitlán." In addition, "they provided, transported, and prepared the food supplies needed to sustain an army in the field. They maintained lines of communication between the coast and highland, and they policed occupied and pacified areas."

Finally, writes Dr. Wolf, the Indian allies also "supplied the raw materials and muscular energy for the construction of the ships that decided the siege of the Mexican capital." In conclusion, he states that while "Spanish military equipment and tactics carried the day," the "Indian assistance determined the outcome of the war."

The author Charles Gibson, in his work "Tlaxcala in the Sixteenth Century," has explored the intricacies of the Tlaxcalan alliance with the Spaniards in great detail. He notes that even after the surrender of the Mexica capital, the Tlaxcalans continued to offer support to the Spaniards. They accompanied Cortés to Pánuco in 1522, and joined Pedro de Alvarado's expedition to Guatemala in 1524. In 1530, several thousand Tlaxcalans accompanied Nuño de Guzmán in his bloody campaign into northwestern Mexico.

After the conquest of the Mexica, the Tlaxcalans were given special concessions, and to some extent, they were able to maintain their old form of government. The special relationship of the Tlaxcalans with the Spaniards continued well into the Sixteenth Century. They accompanied the Spaniards into battle in the Mixtón Rebellion (1540-41) and the Chichimeca War (1550-1590) in Nueva Galicia. For their services, the Tlaxcalans were well-regarded by their Spanish allies. Even today, one of the states of Mexico is named for them: Tlaxcala. The conquest of Mexico, it can be said with a fair amount of certainty, was, in fact, the result of a great coalition forged between Hernán Cortés and the Tlaxcalan people. This alliance was further strengthened as other indigenous groups lent their support to the Spaniards and Tlaxcalans.

Note: The Rise of the Aztec Empire is discussed in an earlier edition of Hispanicvista.com at:
http://hispanicvista.com/HVC/Opinion/Guest_Columns/110804schmal.htm

Sources:

Nicholas Cheetham, "New Spain: The Birth of Modern Mexico" (London: Victor Golancz Ltd., 1974).

Diego Muñoz Camargo, "Historia de Tlaxcala" (Alfredo Chavero, ed.: Mexico, 1892).

Nigel Davies, "The Aztecs: A History" (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma, 1980).

Richard Lee Marks, "Cortés: The Great Adventurer and the Fate of Aztec Mexico" (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994).

Eric R. Wolf, "Sons of the Shaking Earth" (Chicago: Un of Chicago Press, Phoenix Books, 1959).

John Schmal is an historian, genealogist, and lecturer. With his friend Donna Morales, he coauthored "Mexican-American Genealogical Research: Following the Paper Trail to Mexico" (Heritage Books, 2002) and "The Dominguez Family: A Mexican-American Journey" (Heritage Books, 2004), which is available at:
http://marketplacesolutions.net/secure/heritagebooks/merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=HBI&Product_Code=M2527