The Fall of Tenochtitlan

On November 8, 1519, after a total of 275 miles of marching and fighting through the mountainous country to the Valley of Mexico, Cortes had finally arrived at the gates of Tenochtitlan. Cortes rode at the head of his army's column, awe-stricken as most of his men were at the Aztecs great city. Cortes describes his meeting of Montezuma in a letter to King Charles, exclaiming that they were received by about two hundred chiefs, all barefooted and dressed in rich livery. Montezuma approached from the center of a beautiful, wide street accompanied by two lords on either hip. After Montezuma and the lords performed their greeting ritual by kneeling and kissing the ground, Montezuma and Cortes walked the streets and exchanged gifts, with Cortes even giving Montezuma his own necklace of pearls and diamonds. Montezuma, despite being severely conflicted with welcoming the unwelcome guests who had turned subjects against him, gave Cortes and his men an entire palace to themselves. Cortes goes on to compare the size of the city to Cordoba and Seville, saying that the streets were wide enough for ten horsemen to ride alongside each other.

Now that Cortes had finally gotten into the city, his next objective was shielding himself from possible attacks. He and his officers worked to come up with a plan, however all seemed desperate. Cortes wanted to more time to plan, however reports from the Tlaxacalan of Aztec attacks on Veracruz forced him to act. Cortes and his captains assembled and sent off an envoy informing Montezuma that he would be coming to the palace. Upon arriving, Cortes promptly accused Montezuma of the reports he'd just gotten, which Montezuma denied. He expressed a desire for Montezuma to return with the Spaniards to their quarters until the matters were resolved. While initially hesitant, due to his fear of the Spaniards, Montezuma eventually agreed.

While Montezuma was a captive of the Spanish, he was treated with great reverence. Spanish soldiers removed their helmets in his presence, he was allowed to see his family and counselors, and Cortes even punished his soldiers who didn't show respect for the Aztec King. He was allowed to roam where he pleased and was even allowed to worship in his temple, even though the Spanish greatly opposed Aztec religion. In the weeks he was held prisoner, Montezuma and the Spanish bonded as Montezuma learned the Spaniards by name and they in turned garnished a deep respect and admiration for him.

It was as if the Spanish had seized control of Tenochtitlan simply by controlling its King, however this power was threatened when a second, substantially larger, Spanish expedition was sent by the governor of Cuba to arrest Cortes. Despite the progress Cortes had made, he was still in the New World illegally as he had been sent for the express purpose of exploring and trading with the indigenous people, not to conquer them. Cortes took the majority of his troops to meet this expedition, killed the commander, Panfilo de Narvaez, and absorbed a large portion of the expedition into his own force. He left a small garrison in Tenochtitlan to oversee the Aztec empire in his absence. The garrison commander, Pedro de Alvarado, killed a large crowd of celebrants at a religious festival that involved human sacrifices, claiming that the Aztec were planning an attack. It is not known if his reasoning was true, but regardless, this sparked a rebellion among the Aztec people.

Cortes and his new army of 1,000 Spaniards, 80 horsemen, and 3000 Tlaxacalan marched back to the city. In the confines of the city, the cavalry was of little use and could not be effectively utilized, nor could the infantry form ranks as easily. This is the reason for the large loss of Spanish lives. The Aztec forced the Spaniards out of the city and killed many of the Spaniards that accompanied Cortes in the process. During the Spanish retreat, Cortes ordered Montezuma to attempt to calm his people. It is controversial as to exactly what transpired, however the most likely version is that Montezuma was hit in the head by a rock thrown from the angry Aztecs, who exclaimed they had denounced him as King. Cortes expresses in his letter that days later when Montezuma was found dead, it sat deeply with him and his men. This night was referred to as La Noche Triste, “The Sad Night” by the Spanish.

The Spanish defeated a large Aztec army at the Battle of Otumba on July 14, 1520 during their retreat, allowing the Spanish to escape. Spanish heavy infantry formations were employed in this battle, using tight ranks and overlapping shields and pike ranks to hold a line against the Aztecs. The heavy infantry was key to the Spanish victory at Otumba, and in many other battles fought in the Conquest. The tight knit groups of armored soldiers were easily able to defeat the loosely ranked Aztec formations The Aztec force was much larger than the Spanish force, but was easily routed by the Spanish cavalry force due to Aztec troop formation and the inability of the Aztec to tactically cope with cavalry.

Aztec troops were deployed in a highly organized, but relatively open manner that allowed Aztec warriors to wield their weapons, macahuitl, with efficiency, and without harm to their own troops. Macahuitl are wooden swords tipped with razor-sharp obsidian blades. Aztec warriors preferred to capture their enemies instead of out-right killing them, to be used as sacrifices for their gods. They always sought to give an opponent an honorable death, a sentiment the Spanish did not share. Horses were unknown to the Aztec, so they had no previous military experience against mounted enemies. The cavalry, capitalizing on this, purposely targeted commanders to leave the Aztec army in further disarray.

Cortes then retreated to Tlaxcala, where he bolstered his forces with over 200,000 native troops, mostly Tlaxcalan, that were tired of Aztec rule. Tlaxcala was a primary enemy of the Aztecs in their Flower Wars, and had lost many lives to the Aztecs. The Tlaxcala were also interested in improving their social standing, their access to power, and to curry favor with the Spanish. With these reinforcements, the Spaniards returned to Tenochtitlan in 1521 and destroyed the city, effectively ending the Aztec empire. Cortes’ plan was to deploy a siege that would cut off Tenochtitlan’s food supply, and forced the last emperor of the Aztec, Cuauhtémoc, to surrender.

A major portion of Cortes’ victory was due to his tactical planning and turning Aztec allies against their empire. However, in more rural areas of the Aztec empire, guerilla fighting continued for many decades against the Spanish by still-loyal Aztec warriors. The most famous account of the Conquest is of Cortes’ letters to the King of Spain, Emperor Charles V. Cortes put a great emphasis on the barbarity of the indigenous people due to human sacrifices and ritual practices to justify his actions against the Aztec. These accounts were most likely exaggerated, but the Aztec did practice a large amount of human sacrifices.

While the Spanish Conquest was the first time in history that a European nation conquered another part of the world, it is interesting to note that without the enormous amount of assistance given to the Spanish by the indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica, the small Spanish force would have been destroyed very easily by such a large army. Many scholars view the Spanish Conquest as not a Spanish conquest at all, but rather a native Mesoamerican revolution against a cruel and blood-soaked empire. The Spanish, in this regard, are seen more as catalysts that gave the indigenous people the hope and the will to free themselves from Aztec rule.