The Fall of Tenochtitlan
Part One
Real quick: If you’re into Mexican history, you can get my free book, The Mexico Chronicles. You can also buy The Fall of Tenochtitlan on Amazon. I lived in Mexico for a long friggin’ time and I hosted a podcast about the history of Mexico. It’s kinda my thing. I’m like a weeb, but for Mexico.
This is a 7-part series. Links to all seven parts are at the bottom.
IN MEDIAS RES
An, invading force had taken hostage the emperor of one of the largest cities in the world in 1520. The leader of the group had recently arrested 17 men and charged them with the crime of killing Spaniards. The 17 men were tied to poles and brought in front of the Great Temple, where large pyres were built using wooden weapons like javelins, bows, and arrows as kindling. The leader accused the emperor of sanctioning the Spaniards’ deaths. The emperor was placed in chains and forced to watch as the 17 men were burned at the stake. The crowd observed all this in stunned silence.
A few months later, several lords of the region devised a plan to drive the invaders out of the city, or kill them all. But the plot was leaked, and the leader arrested them, too.
Not long after that, the leader sent some of his men to start building ships back at the coastal city of Veracruz, as there was yet more talk of insurgency. And the army (for lack of a better word) had discovered unbelievable quantities of gold which, of course, was the primary purpose of their expedition.
Then they got news that would put them in an even more precarious position: 18 Spanish warships were anchored at Veracruz. But these were not reinforcements. The leader’s own superior had sent an armada, against him.
CONTEXT
While this series covers events in the history of Mexico, it must also at times look at other nations. In this case, Spain.
As you know, in 1492 Columbus went looking for India and… missed the mark. He stumbled across what we sometimes call the new world. When word of his “discovery” got to Spain, it was on. Expeditions were financed, mercenaries and freelancers were sent, colonies were built (against the wishes of most of the people who already lived there) and everybody was ordered to send a fifth of all riches plundered back to the king of Spain. (This was called the royal fifth — la quinta real.) And, of course, an enormous portion of the wealth of modern Europe can be traced directly back to that era.
Between 1492 and 1519 (the year our story picks up) Queen Isabella of Spain had revoked Christopher Columbus’s authority in the new world (basically on charges of incompetence and tyranny), and colonies were founded in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Venezuela, and Veracruz, Mexico, as well as in several other places throughout the Caribbean. By 1508 there were roughly 10,000 Spaniards living in the Americas.
Right now we’re in 1519, the bleeding edge, the avante garde, of the Spanish conquest of the Americas. Both Columbus and Queen Isabella have died, and we’re about to see the total destruction of a gigantic city, one that the Spanish soldiers themselves described as bigger, cleaner, and more beautiful that any city in Europe at the time.
Some of them, when they first saw the metropolis, asked out loud whether they weren’t stepping into a dream. Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital city, was an island on a lake called Texcoco. It was accessible only by a few long, narrow causeways, parts of which could be removed, cutting off enemy armies from the city itself. It was the kind of impenetrable, unsinkable marvel that the Titanic was.
The imprisoned king mentioned earlier is Moctezuma, the ninth ruler of the Aztec Empire. Tenochtitlan is, today, destroyed and buried under modern Mexico City.
The invaders are portrayed almost everywhere as a Spanish army, but that portrayal isn’t entirely true. The leader of this particular expedition was Hernan Cortes. Cortes was not a soldier, he was a lawyer.
The crews of conquistadors who sailed the Caribbean were basically seaborne multinational corporations, comprised of merchants, blacksmiths, tailors, lawyers, slaves from Africa and the Caribbean, farmers, sailors, and some soldiers.
The conquistadors weren’t even mostly Spanish. In almost every battle leading up to the fall of Tenochtitlan, the conquistadors were heavily outnumbered on their own side by indigenous allies.
The people of Mexico were not all members of the same tribe, and the conquistadors found this out quickly. One tribe in particular, the Tlaxcalans, were eager to use the invading forces to their advantage.
The Aztec Empire was in many ways a brutal one, and Tlaxcala was fed up with paying taxes to their neighbor. These taxes included food, money, and victims to be sacrificed. In a lot of ways the Spanish were a sword in the hands of Tlaxcala, a political tool with which the tribe could free themselves from domination by a nearby rogue state.
So this leaves us with the question: what do you call the invaders? I could go way too far and refer to them as the pawns of Tlaxcala. I could make your eyes bleed by using the word “invaders” 700 times per article.
Sometimes I’ll refer to “Cortes’s men,” or “the soldiers,” or “the invaders,” or “the conquistadors,” or “the Spanish,” or “the Spanish and Tlaxcalans.” It’s all the same to me.
Mexico’s history is loosely based on a true story, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the history of the Conquest. You can’t always trust every word of a history book.
BACKGROUND / RECENT EVENTS
In November 1519, Cortes’s Spanish expedition had been greeted on one of the causeways and invited into the city as guests of honor. It was the prototypical meeting of two alien civilizations. Neither side could really believe what they were seeing. Some of the conquistadors sat on giant armored animals the Aztecs described as deer. And the Spanish were about to enter a city unlike anything they had ever seen.
Cortes, for his part, began plotting to capture the place from the moment he saw it. He wanted to deliver the jewel intact to the king of Spain. About a week after the meeting on the causeway, Cortes took Moctezuma prisoner, accusing him of having taken part in an attack on Spanish soldiers. But the arrest was made in private and would be kept secret from the Aztecs. (Although some sources say he wasn’t imprisoned until months later.)
The emperor would continue to govern his empire, but Cortes would be in charge of him. Any actions taken against the Spanish would result in Moctezuma’s execution. He had no choice but to agree, and the 2 men entered into a strange and fascinating relationship of enmity and, friendship and mutual distrust, and eventually Stockholm Syndrome. (Some historians say that Moctezuma began to identify and sympathize with his captors over the next few months, which helps to explain some of his actions near the end of his life.)
NARVAEZ LANDS AT VERACRUZ
Getting back to where we left off at the very beginning of this episode, a few months after the meeting Moctezuma on the causeway, Cortes got the news that his superior, Diego Velazquez (the self-appointed governor of Cuba), wanted him dead or in jail. Cortes had disobeyed direct orders: his mission was supposed to be one of trade. His orders were only to find gold, kidnap indigenous people, and force them into slavery in the mines beneath Cuba. But Cortes had no intention of keeping himself confined to that limited set of instructions. He wanted wealth. He wanted power. He was ambitious, scheming, manipulative, and calculating; and he had found lots and lots of gold at Tenochtitlan. Now, however, Velazquez was threatening to take it all away.
Cortes held a meeting with some of his captains-in-arms, who all agreed that he should risk leaving the Aztec capital, heading to Veracruz, and confronting the officer in charge of the armada, who was called Panfilo de Narvaez.
Narvaez had sent men ashore at Veracruz to speak with Cortes’s highest ranking officer who, upon hearing the men call Cortes a traitor, had his soldiers throw nets over them and take them to Tenochtitlan, where his leader would decide their fate.
Cortes got word of this and met the prisoners outside the enormous Aztec city. He ordered his men to release them from the nets and put them on horses.
He apologized for the treatment they had received in Veracruz, and they entered Tenochtitlan in royal fashion.
He made sure they were well-fed and taken care of. The three men stayed for a few days, during which time Cortes plied them with bribes and flattery. They told him that, with gold, they might be able to convince some of Narvaez’s men to join him.
They were released and sent back to the armada, where they began to do just that. Some of Narvaez’s men deserted the armada and went to Veracruz.
Narvaez took part of his host and began the march to Tenochtitlan.
During this time according to a memoir written by one of the Spanish soldiers, Bernal Diaz, two Aztec gods spoke to Moctezuma’s priests. The gods wanted to leave Mexico because of the treatment they had received at the hands of the Spanish. (And that’s true: the gods had been very poorly treated by the Spanish. In every city, before coming to Tenochtitlan, Cortes would march up to the top of the temple and begin smashing idols and replacing them with crucifixes and images of the Virgin Mary, and just generally being insufferable. So the gods Huitzilopochtli and Tezcatlipoca, had had enough.) They would leave Mexico unless the Spanish were killed.
If you’ve studied more religious history than I have it may not surprise you to hear that soldiers on one side of a crusade might actually have believed in the existence of their enemies’ gods. If Bernal Diaz had written his memoir today he probably would have said something like “Moctezuma reported that his priests had received word from their gods,” etc, etc; thereby placing the existence of the Aztec gods behind several layers of “he said, she said.” But no, he just comes out and says it: their gods are mad and they want to leave Mexico.
Moctezuma relayed this message to Cortes, telling him it would be best if the Spanish left at once. But here’s the thing: several months before, Cortes had ordered his ships destroyed, to show his men that they would not be returning to Cuba or Spain anytime soon.
When Moctezuma gave him this message Cortes ordered ships to be built on the coast and asked the Aztec emperor to keep his captains from attacking.
Unbeknownst to Cortes, Moctezuma and Narvaez had been secretly exchanging messages and gifts. Moctezuma saw an opportunity to get rid of the Spanish. Narvaez was telling him that he had come to help the Aztecs and kill Cortes.
The mood among the Spanish was tense. Bernal Diaz writes that they never took off their armor during this time, not even to sleep, and they always had their weapons close by. Even the horses were saddled and kept ready for battle or escape at a moment’s notice. Diaz got so used to this that later on in life, on his estate in Guatemala, he slept in his clothes and without a bed. He would only use his bed when important visitors came.
Cortes got word that Narvaez was marching on him. He embraced Moctezuma, who looked sad, though he offered to send 100,000 of his warriors — ostensibly — to help smash Narvaez. His real motive was probably to unite his Aztec soldiers with Narvaez’s men in order to get rid of Cortes’s army. Or maybe he hoped to end all the Spaniards — Narvaez included — right there on the coast. No one really knows.
Later on, Malinche would tell Cortes that the emperor’s sadness was likely false. It seems pretty clear, now, that she was right.
Malinche, like the Tlaxcalans, was vital to Cortes’s mission in Mexico. Spain’s conquest model always involved the use (willing or unwilling) of native interpreters, and that’s the role Malinche filled. She deserves an episode or two all to herself, and I fully intend to give her that, because what little we know about her makes her even more fascinating.
For now, what you need to know is that every time Cortes and Moctezuma spoke — it was through Malinche. She may have, for unknown reasons, held a grudge against the Aztecs and there are debates about to what degree she played the two men against each other and used them for her own purposes (maybe by intentionally mistranslating some things). She was young (about 19 or 20), she might have been sold into slavery by her parents, and eventually she gave birth to one of Cortes’s sons. And although it’s inconceivable that their son, Martin, was actually the first child by a Spaniard and a native Mexican, she is nonetheless sometimes called the mother of modern Mexico.
THE MARCH TO CONFRONT NARVAEZ
The conquistador split up his forces. He left about 120 men in Tenochtitlan and took roughly the same number with him. The march brought them quickly to a city called Cholula, where they waited to be joined by 260 men stationed at Veracruz. They left Cholula.
Narvaez was now moving north to a city called Cempoala, where Cortes had made friends with the chief a year before — on his march to the Aztec capital. Cortes had given gifts to the chief, which Narvaez confiscated. His men were surprised that Cortes had acquired fame here, since he was considered pretty insignificant back in Cuba.
About 2 days after leaving Cholula, Cortes came upon a group of Spaniards who told him that Narvaez and Moctezuma had exchanged presents and that Narvaez seemed to wanna conquer Mexico for himself.
Always calculating, Cortes distributed about 15,000 pesos worth of gold among the men who marched with him.
This is an important detail: some historians have given the impression that the Spanish soldiers were fighting without the promise of pay, but that’s just not the case. They were there to get rich.
They didn’t get paid up front (and some of them never actually got paid at all) but they had all been promised land, titles, power, slaves, and gold.
Along the way Cortes and Narvaez sent messages back and forth, at times getting mad and arresting the messengers. At one point Narvaez suggested a meeting, but somebody warned Cortes against it. It was an ambush. The plan was to hide some cavalrymen men (led by a man called Juan Yuste) behind a hill. During negotiations, the cavalry would attack, hopefully killing or capturing Cortes.
There was a lot of politics and infighting during the march, but the end result was that the 2 men were unable to reach an agreement. A skirmish was therefore inevitable.
Cortes divided his soldiers into 5 groups. His cousin, Diego Pizarro, led 60 men whose job was to seize the enemy’s artillery. Sandoval led 80 who would arrest Narvaez, or kill him if he resisted. A 3rd division was led by a cousin to one of Narvaez’s men. The cousins had recently quarreled, so the job for this division was to subdue the cousin and his men. Another division was to arrest one of Narvaez’s captains. Cortes would lead the 5th division and deploy those men wherever they were most needed.
He promised 1,000 castellanos to the man who captured Narvaez. Actually, it was for the first person who “laid their hands” on him. The 2nd, 3rd, and 4th would also get hundreds of castellanos. (What’s a castellano? Well, it was equal to 485 maravedis. What’s a maravedi? It was a copper coin equal to a 96th of a Spanish gold mark. A gold mark was about 230 grams. Got all that?)
Cortes knew the value of well placed bribes, and as the 2 armies got closer, several of Narvaez’s men had already been seduced by the gifts of gold sent by their leader’s enemy.
I say “enemy” but that’s not quite the case. The 2 men had been allies. They had gone together on previous expeditions in the Caribbean. One of Narvaez’s men even said that Narvaez saw Cortes sort of like a son and didn’t want to fight him. But the so-called, self-styled governor of Cuba — their superior Diego Velazquez — had given him orders.
Nonetheless, 2,000 pesos were offered to the man who killed Cortes or Sandoval, if they attacked.
THE BATTLE AGAINST NARVAEZ
On May 27th Cortes came to the outskirts Cempoala. They found two sentries, one of whom escaped. The other they captured and… let’s say extracted information from. He said most of the cavalry and arms were outside the city, while Narvaez and his men were camped out near the temple.
The escaped sentry ran back to Narvaez and warned him about the attack, but before the men could prepare themselves adequately, a few of Cortes’s soldiers had sneaked to the top of the pyramid and attacked. They pushed past the guards easily and were soon fighting in the dark of Narvaez’s quarters.
Narvaez himself swung a two-handed broadsword, but didn’t do much damage.
Sandoval shouted at his men to burn the building down. The fire burned Narvaez’s feet. He lost an eye to one of Sandoval’s pikemen and surrendered. Five of his men were dead. He and a few of his captains were placed in chains while fighting continued outside.
Some of his men had holed up in a church, where they refused to surrender. Cortes pointed artillery at the building and fired. This was an unbelievable act, and people did not soon forget it.
When word got around that Narvaez had surrendered, his men finally gave up. The final death toll was 15 on Narvaez’s side and 2 on Cortes’s.
“You must think it a great thing to have captured me,” he said to Cortes, who responded to the contrary: it was one of the easiest things he had done while in Mexico. And, considering everything they had gone through up to that point (almost none of which I’ve even mentioned in this article) it was probably true.
Historians point to several factors that led to the outcome. Certainly bribes swayed a lot of people, but Cortes also struck at night (a few hours before Narvaez expected them) giving him the element of surprise. Narvaez thought he would be attacked at dawn, so he was unprepared. His men might have been lulled into a false sense of security due to their greater numbers. It had rained earlier, dampening some of Narvaez’s gunpowder. And, crucially, Narvaez was not well-loved by his men, whereas Cortes had won his men’s respect and loyalty through leadership and promises of wealth.
After the battle Cortes offered land and gold to many of the defeated soldiers, who quickly joined him. He told them about the gold he had found back in the Aztec capital. They set off for Tenochtitlan, and one of the men had a disease called smallpox, which would play a major role in the coming events.
If you enjoyed this piece, you are truly a person of impeccable taste. You’re also a reader. You got to the end of a LONG article. There’s a lot more of this stuff in my free book, The Mexico Chronicles. Click that link. Or this one. Or even this one. I don’t even want your email. You can literally just download the book onto your Kindle. Or there’s a PDF, if that’s what you prefer.
Part 2 is here
Links to all articles: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
