Chronicle on the Conquest of Tenochtitlán

Chronicle on the Conquest of Tenochtitlán

The conquest of Tenochtitlán

The year 1-cane passed, equivalent in the calendar of the invaders to 1519, when they arrived in Mexico-Tenochtitlán news of sightings off the coast. There was talk of huge ships like moutains, populated with bearded white men, eager for gold, women and precious stones, and coming from the east, just as the legend of Quetzalcoatl's return announced. Prophets and priests heralded the end of an age, and the very huey tlatoani, Moctezuma Xocoyotzin, king of the Mexica, seemed convinced of this, after having seen in the sky the spontaneous fire of a Kite plow through the house of the god Huitzilopochtli.

The monarch then ordered the building of watchtowers in Nautla, Toztlan and Milanquactla, to guard the coasts, since there were several towns that had already received bearded visitors in Yucatan. The villagers' strategy, to avoid confrontations, had been to give them what they were willing to do, in the hope that they would leave soon and in peace. Little did the people of Cozumel know what was coming.

Then the news of the battle of Centla became known to all: the Chontales, commanded by their chief Taabscoob, had been defeated when trying to defend Potonchán. It became clear that the visitors were more powerful than expected and that in their wake they were leaving traces of their permanent presence.

For this reason, when the ships finally reached Chalchicueyecan, the calpixque and the priest followed the instructions of their own. Moctezuma, prepared a procession and came with turquoise masks, gold objects and other gifts to ask for the lord of that expedition. They were convinced that Quetzalcoatl himself would reveal himself to them. Instead, the bearded men presented them with a chair, some glass beads, and a helmet - a clear evocation of the warlord, the fearsome Huitzilopochtli.

That news shook the Empire. Everything indicated that the invaders were marching north, in pursuit of the capital, and in a new attempt to dissuade them, the magnanimous Tlatoani sent a new entourage, full of gifts and with the firm recommendation that they go the way they came, because they would not be received in Mexico-Tenochtitlán. Little did Montezuma understand the unquenchable ambition that his gifts aroused in the hearts of the conquerors. Well, it was Hernán Cortés, and not Quetzalcóatl, who was directing his advance towards the Mexican lands.

The founding of an alliance

Quiahuiztlan and Cempoala were the next towns to receive Cortés. They were Totonac peoples vassals of the Mexica, subjected to their power in the region and who, through Juan de Grijalva, had already heard from the Spaniards, and even had a good relationship. That is why when Cortés appeared before the Chicomácatl teuctli he was received in a friendly manner and his promises to help the Totonacs free themselves from the Aztec yoke were well received. The price to pay was to sign a secret alliance with the Spanish.

He wanted the destiny that in those days five Mexican tax collectors arrived in Quiahuiztlán, ready to collect the tribute. Under the advice of Cortés, the Totonacs seized them and allowed them to meet with them. Playing a double role, Cortés pretended to intercede for the tax collectors and achieve the release of two of them, and returned to Tenochtitlán with a false message of friendship on the part of the conquerors: if Moctezuma saw fit to receive them, Cortés promised to help him subdue the uprising Totonacs.

At the same time, the alliance between Spaniards and Totonacs was cemented in Tlapancingo, where a group of Mexica was preparing to attack the Totonacs. And as a sign of the seriousness and expediency of his alliance, Cortes ordered his cavalry to attack the Mexica and easily defeated them. Thus, thirty Totonac peoples, thirteen hundred warriors in total, joined the miniscule army of 400 conquerors.

Arrival in the Valley of Mexico

The march of the conquerors towards Tenochtitlán continued, but their army was not yet sufficient to face the Mexica. Upon reaching Zautla, where they were received by the local rulers, they sent emissaries of peace to the powerful Tlaxcalteca peoples, whose city-states were confederated in a kind of Republic called Tlaxcala, and those who had faced the Aztecs in the so-called “Wars floridas ".

Xicohténcatl Huehue, Maxixcatzin, Citlalpopocatzin and Hue Yolotzin were the Tlaxcalans who received Cortés and evaluated his proposal to be part of the alliance. Some seemed inclined, as did Moctezuma, to attribute certain divine traits to the retinue of the Spaniards, while others distrusted his motives, especially in view of his ambition for gold and his contempt for traditions local.

Finally, distrust was stronger and an attack was organized on the Spanish-Totonac army, which was numerically inferior to the Tlaxcala forces. If the attack was successful, the Tlaxcala leaders reasoned, they could win the favor of the Mexica; if not, they would find a scapegoat and accept the alliance.

The Tlaxcala attack took place on September 2, 1519. For the first time Cortés was afraid of being annihilated in those lands. The insistent Spanish offers of peace were rejected by the natives, who promised instead to feast with their white meat and offer their hearts in sacrifice to their gods. But fate favored the Spanish: Tlaxcala spies were discovered and tortured. The spies were forced to expose the position of the indigenous army and, after a fruitless series of combats, the Tlaxcalans surrendered on September 18: they gave compensation to the Spaniards and joined their forces, to march with them towards Mexico-Tenochtitlán.

After massacring the Cholultecas, the traditional enemies of the Tlaxcalans who refused to sign their alliance, Cortés and his army arrived at the Valley from Mexico. The ancient city of Tenochtitlán stood on an island in Lake Texcoco, linked to the mainland through three main roads. It was November 8, 1519, corresponding in the indigenous calendar to the 8-ehecatl day of the Quecholli month of the year 1-acatl.

The tense calm before the storm

After having failed in his numerous attempts to dissuade Cortés from visiting Mexico-Tenochtitlán, the huey tlatoani Moctezuma Xocoyotzin and his vast entourage welcomed the European conquerors with an exchange of gifts. Moctezuma was a hardened warrior, but also a religious man, so he was still insecure about the the divine sense of the visitors, whom he lodged in the Axayácatl palace, near the sacred precinct of the town. Some sources even assure that, after meeting in private with Cortés himself, the king of the Aztecs agreed to be a vassal of Carlos I of Spain.

Meanwhile, on the coast, tensions between Totonacs (eager for liberation) and the Mexican tax collectors reached their highest level. The war did not wait and a Spanish garrison defended its allies from the attack of the Aztecs, not without suffering casualties in the process. Seven Spanish soldiers died and the head of one of them, named Juan de Escalante, was sent to Moctezuma to the capital, as evidence of the human and mortal nature of the invaders.

The tlatoani, horrified at the events, hid the news from his guests, while assessing the situation from him. Peace in the empire hung by a thread. But the Spaniards also found out what happened through their Totonac emissaries, and on November 14 they demanded an exemplary punishment for the guilty: to be burned at the stake.

Moctezuma agreed and, under the pretext of never having ordered the attack, summoned the tlatoani of Coyoacán, Cuauhpoca, his son and fifteen other leading Mexica, who were executed as requested by the Spanish people. The tlatoani witnessed the horrendous spectacle escorted by Spanish soldiers and wearing shackles, as he was then considered a prisoner of the Spanish.

Likewise, the inhabitants of the empire, astonished at the submission of their king, watched impassively as he gave all the gold to the Spaniards and the effigies of their gods were demolished, to be replaced with images Christian a mass was even celebrated at the top of the Templo Mayor. The true intentions of the Spaniards were exposed when they asked Moctezuma to request as much gold as possible from the vassal peoples of his empire.

A sudden change of plans

Cortés was not a man on good terms with Spanish authority. The distribution of the new lands, the appointment of authorities and the attempts of the metropolis to control the distribution of the riches gave rise to infighting between the conquerors themselves, and Cortes and his men were considered deserters and traitors. His assets in Cuba, in fact, had been confiscated by Diego Velásquez, who appointed Captain Pánfilo de Narváez at the head of a secret mission to arrest or kill the conqueror.

While a smallpox epidemic raged in Cuba, Narváez set sail for Mexico in the footsteps of Cortés and sent official notices to Gonzalo de Sandoval, Cortés's cousin, so that he could take his side. Also, upon landing, he contacted a group of Totonacs who were creating a plan to free Moctezuma, probably repentant of his alliance with the conquerors.

But Narváez's hopes of capturing Cortés were not rewarded: his emissaries were greeted with gifts of gold in Tenochtitlán and they soon secretly switched sides. Cortés then left Tenochtitlán with the bulk of his forces, ready to confront Narváez in Cempoala, and although the army of Narváez was superior in number to that of Cortés, he was not prepared for the ambush. Bribed by Cortés, many of Narvaez's soldiers sabotaged the cannons, dipped the gunpowder, and cut the girths of the horses. The victory was swift and overwhelming.

The start of hostilities

Meanwhile, in Tenochtitlán, the Mexica prepared to honor the god Huitzilopochtli through rituals accustomed, which consisted of a series of dances in which warriors, priests and captains participated, totally unarmed. Cortés's troops, in command during his absence, granted them permission and once the Mexica were gathered in the sacred courtyard, the Spaniards closed all the exits and carried out a slaughter.

In that treacherous attack, known as the Massacre of the Greater Temple, many of the military, religious, and cultural authorities of the empire, sparking general outrage from the Mexica. The rebellion of the Aztecs had begun. Not even Moctezuma's own pleas could calm the population, who besieged the palace of Axayácatl where the Spanish had locked themselves up, after kidnapping Tlatoani himself. Without water or food, they resisted for 20 days, at the end of which Cortés returned with his army and finally Moctezuma's body was delivered to the people.

There are different versions of Moctezuma's death: some chroniclers affirm that the Spaniards stabbed him in the back once they understood that the people no longer obeyed them; Others claim that the king climbed a wall to try to speak to the mob and that he received a stone that caused him to fall and die. Be that as it may, the Spanish were expelled from Tenochtitlán on June 30, 1520, in the midst of a costly retreat in which numerous Cortés troops perished.

The Mexica people chose a new tlatoani: Cuitláhuac, brother of Moctezuma himself, who prepared himself for war against the Spanish. Thus began the bloody military campaigns to the north, west and south of Tenochtitlán, As the Spanish forces and their Tlaxcala allies faced death against the Aztecs. And the end point of this conflict took place between May and August of the year 1521, with the siege of Tenochtitlán.

The fall of Tenochtitlán

The end of the Aztec empire came amid chaos. The rest of the Spanish troops, exhausted after a long and bloody campaign, were divided between the ambitious and vengeful who longed to defeat the Aztecs, and those who preferred to abandon the conquest or at least return to Veracruz to wait reinforcement. While the indigenous people of Tenochtitlán, Texcoco and Tlacopan signed a Triple Alliance (Excan Tlahtoloyan) for a last stand against the Spaniards, while they resisted the smallpox epidemics that decimated their population.

The siege of the city lasted three months, and more than 40,000 Mexica died (plus those killed by hunger and pestilence) in exchange for 50 lives of Spanish soldiers. The army that attacked Tenochtitlán mixed Spaniards, Tlaxcalans, Chalcas, and Texcocans, which made the fall of the Empire in a war between enemy Mesoamerican nations, instigated by the ambition of the conquerors.

In 1522 the authorization to found the viceroyalty arrived from Spain. The gold of the city was distributed among the conquerors, and the sending of Catholic missionaries and evangelizers was requested from Spain. Cortés distributed the lands among his caudillos and formed the new brigades to fight the resistance in the rest of Mesoamerica.

References:

• "Chronicle" in Wikipedia.
• "Site of Tenochtitlán" in Wikipedia.
• "Conquest of Mexico" in Wikipedia.
• "Conquest of Tenochtitlán" in the CCH Academic Portal from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
• "Fall of Tenochtitlán: how to explain the great alliance of Mexican peoples that helped the small Spanish army to conquer Mexico 500 years ago" in BBC News World.
• "The Fall of Tenochtitlán" in History Today.
• "Battle of Tenochtitlán (Mexican History [1521])" in The Encyclopaedia Britannica.

What is a chronicle?

A chronicle it's a kind of narrative text in which real or fictional events are addressed from a chronological perspective. They are often narrated by eyewitnesses, through personal language that uses literary resources. Usually considered as a hybrid genre between journalism, history and the literature, the chronicle may cover types of narration very different, such as the travel chronicle, the chronicle of events, the gastronomic chronicle, and so on.

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