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The Downfall of Aztec Rule, 1519–1521

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The End of Empires

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Abstract

The downfall of the Aztec Triple Alliance (vulgo "Aztec Empire") had many reasons that are well known in research: desastrous epidemics that decimated the indigenous population, the fact that Moctezuma underestimated the Spaniards, the advantage of Spanish translators, the indigenous allies of the Spaniards and their steel weapons—to name only the most important ones.

As a consequence, the Mexica (Aztecs) were politically disempowered, but their culture lives on in syncretisms to this day, in which Franciscan missionaries played a major role.

The memory of the conquest of Mexico—associated with the name Hernán Cortés—has remained alive over the centuries. Right now, in 2021, it is the 500th anniversary of the conquest, so that numerous books and historical conferences have again been dedicated to the topic.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For this in detail: Carrasco (2011).

  2. 2.

    López de Gómara [1540] (1943): cap. LXXVIII, vol. 1, 231. Where he got this information from is unclear. In general, this source raises a lot of questions about who Gómara was and whether he had known Cortés, whether he was even his house chaplain, as Las Casas dismissively claims (Las Casas [1515-1566] (1994), vol. V, 2251; cap. CXV, 2256; cap. CXXII, 2291; cap. CXXIII, 2294, cap. CXLII, 2382, etc.)—or if his name was even just a pseudonym behind which Cortés hides himself. (Duverger 2015: 71-95). See also Jiménez (2001) in general.

  3. 3.

    Martínez (1992): 25.

  4. 4.

    The conquistador Gonzalo de Umbria calculated 36,000 skulls for the Large Skull Framework (tzompantli) in Tenochtitlán. Miralles Ostos (2001): 163; See recent archaeological discoveries: Embury-Dennis (2018).

  5. 5.

    Durán [1570] (1967), vol. 1: lib. I, cap. X, 106.

  6. 6.

    Prem 42006: 22 speaks only of "small garrisons of weir farmers" in particularly hard-fought areas, whose "military effect is uncertain".

  7. 7.

    Prem 42006: 23. Even Sahagún strangely hardly responds to this presumably second highest office in the state of Mexica.

  8. 8.

    Berdan (2003): 40.

  9. 9.

    In the lib. IV. of his Historia general, Sahagún meticulously explains the extent to which the date on which a Mexica was born determined its fate irrevocably. (Sahagún [ca. 1580] (2004): lib. IV., 345-434).

  10. 10.

    More about the history and culture of Mexica as well as further literature: Smith (2012); and Carrasco (2012); or in German Prem (2011); and Riese (2011).

  11. 11.

    See bibliography.

  12. 12.

    See Unos annales [since 1528] (1939).

  13. 13.

    There are reasons to suspect that Vicente Yáñez Pinzón and Juan Díaz de Solis also showed up 1508- 09 before Yucatán: Thomas (2003): 73; perhaps even at San Juan de Ulúa (at today's Veracruz) [Miralles Ostos (2001): 26f.; but against it Manzano Manzano (1988), vol. 2, lám. XIII]. The records of Garay's expeditions have been lost, and the question of the extent to which Portuguese ships have already sailed the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico before Colón will probably never be clarified again due to the loss of sources in the Lisbon earthquake of 1755. The anecdote about the helmet of the Huitzilopochtli is remarkable. (Díaz del Castillo [ca. 1560-1584] (2005): cap. XXXVIII, 96.); Had a European helmet already reached Tenochtitlán before the conquista? Miralles Ostos (2001): 110. The conquistadors do not report that they found such evidence in the Huitzilopochtli temple of Tenochtitlán or anywhere else in New Spain. However, it is doubtful that they would have recognized them at all.

  14. 14.

    See Díaz del Castillo [ca. 1560-1584] (2005): cap. I-XVII, 5-44.

  15. 15.

    See Instrucciones de Diego Velázquez a Hernán Cortés (Santiago de Cuba, 23 de octubre de 1518), in: Documentos cortesianos, vol. 1, (1993): 45-57.

  16. 16.

    "Certifiqué a Vuestra Alteza que lo habría preso o muerto o súbdito a la corona real de Vuestra Majestad". Cortés [1522] (1993), segunda relación: 162. He claims to have already written this in his first letter (1519). This statement is not found in the Carta de Veracruz. If there really was a "primera relación", it has not yet been found.

  17. 17.

    Cédula de Carlos V pidiendo dinero a Hernán Cortés (Valladolid, 10 December 1523), in: Documentos cortesianos, vol. 1, (1993): 276. In this letter the monarch is asking Cortés, "de me enviar la más suma de oro que vos fuere posible".

  18. 18.

    Miralles Ostos (2001): 75.

  19. 19.

    Díaz del Castillo [ca. 1560-1584] (2005): cap. XXIX, 69-71.

  20. 20.

    Glantz (2013).

  21. 21.

    Cortés [1520] (1993): segunda relación, 192.

  22. 22.

    In 1984 Todorov put forward the thesis that Cortés succeeded in conquering Mexico mainly because of his genius for communication. However, he relied primarily on Sahagún, which he uncritically reads as an objective representation of history. Communication was certainly an important issue, but not the only one.

  23. 23.

    Díaz del Castillo [ca. 1560-1584] (2005): cap. XLVI, 113.

  24. 24.

    Ibid, cap. XLVII, 115.

  25. 25.

    Buceta (2010).

  26. 26.

    Cortés [1520] (1993): segunda relación, 197.

  27. 27.

    Stenzel (1980), Camilla Townsend (2003) apparently does not know Stenzel at all and does not reach his argumentative depth either.

  28. 28.

    Miralles Ostos (2001): 130.

  29. 29.

    Cortés [1520] (1993): segunda relación, 176-183.

  30. 30.

    Díaz del Castillo [ca. 1560-1584] (2005): cap. LXIII, 153.

  31. 31.

    The depictions of Bernardino de Sahagún, who refers to Aztec eyewitnesses, are marked by apocalyptic and retrospective historical interpretations that have little or nothing to do with historical facts. Rozat Dupeyron (1993).

  32. 32.

    The episode that Vázquez de Tapia reports in relation to his and Pedro de Alvarado's mission to scout the lagoon of Mexico from Tlaxcala speaks for this. On the way there, he says, the Tlaxcaltecs tried to kill them. The Aztecs in their company would have saved them, but not shown them the way to Tenochtitlán, but led them to a spot of the lagoon from where they could only see the city in the distance. On the shore of the lagoon then he would not have scouted the Aztecs but Motecuhzoma incognito scouted them instead. (Vázquez de Tapia [ca. 1544] (1953): 36; somewhat different: Cervantes de Salazar [1575] (1985): lib. III, cap. LII, 246) Díaz del Castillo [ca. 1560-1584] (2005): cap. LXXX, 193-194 claims that Vázquez de Tapia had a fever on the way, so that they had to return before reaching the lagoon. This calls the whole episode into question.

  33. 33.

    Las Casas, Brevísima relación de la destruición de las Indias [1552], in: Obras, vol. 10, (1992): 49-50.

  34. 34.

    Cortés [1520] (1993): segunda relación: 191-194; López de Gómara [1552] (1943): vol. 1, cap. LIX, 193.

  35. 35.

    Sahagún [ca. 1580] (1927): lib. XII, cap. XI, 477ff.

  36. 36.

    Lienzo de Tlaxcala. ca. 1550-1585] (1979): lámina 9; Díaz del Castillo [ca. 1560-1584] (2005): cap. LXXXIII, 200.

  37. 37.

    Cortés [1520] (1993): segunda relación, 210-211.

  38. 38.

    Díaz del Castillo [ca. 1560-1584] (2005): cap. LXI, 146-147 puts the saying in the mouth of a vassal Motecuhzomas that he can master everything he wants to do. He himself calls him "rey desta Nueva Expaña". (Ibid., cap. XCVII, 259). Cortés describes him as more splendid than any other "sultan" or pagan ruler (Cortés [1520] (1993): segunda relación, 247-248).

  39. 39.

    Cortés [1520] (1993): segunda relación: 216.

  40. 40.

    Sahagún [ca. 1580] (1927): lib. XII, cap. XVII, 493 Immediately after Motecuhzoma gave his welcoming address to Cortés, the Náhuatl version reads: "Then they took him by the hand/guided him in this way/grabbed him with their fist/showed him their love./And the Spaniards see him, watch him/continue on foot/they climb up (on horseback), descend again/by looking at him". On the same page it is explicitly said that Motecuhzoma was captured since then, and no one dared to defend him.

  41. 41.

    Martínez (1992): 252.

  42. 42.

    Huber (2018): 79-168.

  43. 43.

    Tapia [after 1547] (1939): 79 and Díaz del Castillo [ca. 1560-1584] (2005): cap. XCIII, 243.

  44. 44.

    Díaz del Castillo [ca. 1560-1584] (2005): cap. CXXV, 338-339.

  45. 45.

    The best study of all conquistadors who fought under Cortés is Grunberg 1993—on over 3,300 pages. 1,212 he was able to identify of approximately 2,100 conquistadors who joined Cortés in 1519-21, including at least one black African, 17 Portuguese, 13 Italians, five Greeks and one Flemish. (Ibid.: 30.)

  46. 46.

    Cortés [1520] (1993): segunda relación: 269-270.

  47. 47.

    Durán [ca. 1579-1581] (1967), vol. 2: cap. LXXV, 546.

  48. 48.

    Díaz del Castillo [ca. 1560-1584] (2005): cap. CXXVI, 341.

  49. 49.

    Aguilar [1560] (1980): 70f.

  50. 50.

    Decisive: Cortés [1520] (1993): segunda relación: 272.

  51. 51.

    Bei Durán [ca. 1579-1581] (1967), vol. 2: chap. LXXVI, 552 one can read: "When the Spaniards fled from Mexico […], this story says that the Mexicans went into the apartments to look for their king Motecuhzoma to execute in him no less cruelties than in the Spaniards had executed and that, going to look for him in the apartments, they found him dead, with a chain at his feet and five stab wounds in the chest, and next to him, many chiefs and lords, who were imprisoned together in his company, all stabbed to death.”

  52. 52.

    Cortés [1520] (1993): segunda relación, 279.

  53. 53.

    Cortés [1520] (1993): segunda relación, 280.

  54. 54.

    The source statements to the killed vary very strongly from 150 (Cortés) to 1,170 (Oviedo). For the source discussion see Martínez (1992): 273 and Grunberg (1993): 103.

  55. 55.

    Pedro the Alvarado who commanded the rearguard is said to have saved his live by an impressive jump over one of the gaps. Till today the location in México City is called “salto de Alvarado”. All his men except four or ten Spaniards were killed. (López de Gómara [1552] (1943): vol. 1, cap. CX, 311.)

  56. 56.

    This becomes clear not least in the Lienzo de Tlaxcala, a large-format picture story only preserved in copies, in which the Tlaxcaltecs rendered their services in the conquista for the Spanish crown. Marina alias Malinche alias Malintzin plays an outstanding role here. She is often accompanied by the Cortés, drawn of the same size as he is (lám. 9 [Cholula], 45 [Tenochtitlán]). She even acts as a commanding officer or at least messenger of commands for the Spaniards. She often performs the same gestures as Cortés (lám. 11, 27, 28, 29), so that both figures merge in principle. The fact that Cortés was also referred to by Indians as "Malinche" is also passed down in the chronicles. (Díaz del Castillo [ca. 1560-1584] (2005): cap. CLVI, 507, for example: Cuhautémoc addresses Cortés as "Señor Malinche".)

  57. 57.

    Cortés had 13 dismountable brigantines, each with a small gun, built in Tlaxcala under the direction of the shipwrights Martín López. See Cortés [1520/1522] (1993): segunda relación, 306 and tercera relación, 311 and 374.

  58. 58.

    Cortés [1520] (1993): segunda relación, 286.

  59. 59.

    The best proof of this can be found in the letter that the troops of the Cortés wrote to the Emperor: Carta del ejército de Cortés al emperador (Oct. 1520), in: Documentos cortesianos, vol. 1, (1993): 156-163.

  60. 60.

    For the entire Central Mexican region, the highest estimates for 1519 are based on approx. 25 million inhabitants, for 1568 only slightly more than 2.5 million. (Borah/Cook 1962: 5).

  61. 61.

    López de Gómara [1552] (1943): vol. 1, cap. II, 291.

  62. 62.

    Vázquez de Tapia [ca. 1544] (1953): 46.

  63. 63.

    Martínez (1992): 41.

  64. 64.

    Martínez (1992): 280-282.

  65. 65.

    There is little evidence to support the estimation of army strength, since the conquistadors themselves in their reports always exaggerate this unrestrainedly with their opponents, but only sporadically mention those of their allies in order to emphasize their own achievement. Here one get the impression again and again that an unbeatable bunch of Spaniards fought their way through endless seas of enemies.

  66. 66.

    Díaz del Castillo [ca. 1560-1584] (2005): cap. CLII, 476.

  67. 67.

    E.g. Informatción promovida por Diego Velázquez contra Hernán Cortés (Santiago de Cuba, 28.06.-06.07.1521), in: Documentos cortesianos. Vol. 1. (1993): Diego de Ávila, 201.

  68. 68.

    Unos annales [since 1528] (1939): § 348, 155. This passage can only be found in the copy Ms. Mex. 22bis, page 47.

  69. 69.

    Díaz del Castillo [ca. 1560-1584] (2005): cap. CLVI, 509-510.

  70. 70.

    Díaz del Castillo [ca. 1560-1584] (2005): cap. CLVI, 510-509.

  71. 71.

    Humboldt: Mexico-Werk, book III, vol. 4, [1825-27] (1991): 257.

  72. 72.

    Cortés [1522] (1993): tercera relación, 427.

  73. 73.

    E.g. Muñoz Camargo, Ms. Hunter [ca. 1550-1599] (1984), cuaderno 13.

  74. 74.

    Gibson (1964), Lockhart (1992).

  75. 75.

    Don Carlos (04.07.1523), In: Libro primero de actas. (1889): 211-212.

  76. 76.

    For the fate of the descendants of Motecuhzoma see Alvarado Tezozómoc [ca. 1570-1600] (2004): § 304g-324e/299-315.

  77. 77.

    Hinz (2005): 517.

  78. 78.

    E.g. in Texcoco: Gruzinski (1988): 26.

  79. 79.

    In the Náhuatl version it literally says: "Then they prayed to him, said to him: ' It hears the God!/it worships him (greets him)/his vassal Motecuhçoma.'" (Sahagún [ca. 1580] (1927): lib. XII, cap. V, 264). The political opponents of the Cortés already presented a similar picture in the past, so that it is not unlikely that Cortés actually allowed himself to be worshipped God-like in the beginning. E.g. Informatción promovida por Diego Velázquez contra Hernán Cortés (Santiago de Cuba, 28.06.-06.07.1521), in: Documentos cortesianos. Vol. 1. (1993): Juan Álvarez, 205.

  80. 80.

    Sahagún [ca. 1580] (1927): lib. XII, cap. I, 453-546.

  81. 81.

    Cortés [1520] (1993): segunda relación: 197.

  82. 82.

    E.g. Martínez (1992): 39.

  83. 83.

    E.g. Carta de Fr. Toribio de Motolinía (02.01.1555), in: Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, vol. 7, (1867): 279.

  84. 84.

    Not only López de Gómara [1552] (1943): vol. I, cap. VIII, 62 reports of a Cortés cross flag with the Latin banner alluding to Constantine: "Friends, let's follow the cross. And when we have faith, we shall prevail in this sign". Miralles Ostos (2001): 117 also mentions further evidence in the sense that Cortés saw his expedition as a crusade.

  85. 85.

    Tapia [after 1547] (1939): 70.

  86. 86.

    This also applies to the Indian districts, so that Alexander von Humboldt already in 1803 "finds almost no trace of old Mexican buildings". (Humboldt [1808-1811] (1991): 268).

  87. 87.

    Benavente [1540] (1914): resigned. I, cap. I, 17.

  88. 88.

    Cortés [1522] (1993): tercera relación, 427.

  89. 89.

    Díaz del Castillo [ca. 1560-1584] (2005): cap. CLXXVII, 649. This fascinating chronicle is still a mystery today. Only when all his comrades were dead did Bernal write down his experiences—allegedly. It remains unclear where he was able to get all the information from and why Cortés never entrusted a command to this alert mind. Duverger (2015) even believes that none other than Cortés himself wrote the chronicle. Grunberg (2017), probably the best connoisseur of the conquistadors, vehemently rejects this thesis. Indeed, it seems that Duverger did not sufficiently evaluate the edition of Barbón Rodríguez, who also compiles a number of other sources on BDC. But the mystery remains.

  90. 90.

    Previously, a Mexican destroyer (Fletcher class) had already borne the name “Cuauhtémoc” from 1970.

  91. 91.

    See the list in the Spanish Wikipedia article on Cuauhtémoc.

  92. 92.

    See in more detail. Hinz (2005): 635-780.

  93. 93.

    Phelan (1956).

  94. 94.

    To name at least: Captain from Castile, Director: Henry King, USA, 141 Min., (1947).

  95. 95.

    Prominent: Stucken 1918-1922 or Jean-Yves Mitton's comic series Quetzalcóatl (1998-2008).

  96. 96.

    Thomas (2003), 78.

  97. 97.

    A list of historical conferences, also the one in Stuttgart that was organized by the author, Xavier-López-Medellín and other colleagues, can be found here: http://www.medellinhistoria.com/blog_1/realizaciones_nacionales_e_internacionales_con_motivo_del_v_centenario_de_la_llegada_de_cortes_a_mexico__186 (checked 27.05.2021) Hinz and López-Medellin (2021).

  98. 98.

    Alejo Santiago, Jesús y Leticia Sánchez Medel. “Expertos reaccionan a cambio de nombre del Árbol de la Noche Triste y Puente de Alvarado.” Milenio, 10 de marzo, (2021). https://www.milenio.com/cultura/cambio-nombre-arbol-noche-triste-genera-reacciones.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. PH Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany

    Felix Hinz

  2. Musterinstitut, Münster, Germany

    Felix Hinz

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  1. Stiftung Universität Hildesheim, Hildesheim, Germany

    Michael Gehler

  2. Universität Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria

    Robert Rollinger

  3. University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Philipp Strobl

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Hinz, F. (2022). The Downfall of Aztec Rule, 1519–1521. In: Gehler, M., Rollinger, R., Strobl, P. (eds) The End of Empires. Universal- und kulturhistorische Studien. Studies in Universal and Cultural History. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-36876-0_20

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