1.4 The Conquest of Mexico

The Spanish conquest of Mexico was the logical outcome of the colonization of the Caribbean that began with Columbus. It was mentioned earlier that the conquest of new lands abroad would provide an outlet for the restless energies of the hidalgos. The hidalgos were Spanish noblemen who had fought to liberate Spain from the Moors. While fervent in their faith, the hidalgos expected the crown to pay them for their services. With the Moors now driven from Spain, the hidalgos sought new opportunities for wealth in the New World. Among these young knights was Hernán Cortés, whose story was typical of those who would come to be called Conquistadors, “Conquerors.” Cortés and numerous other young men enthusiastically came to the Caribbean in search of gold. At age 19 he was involved in the conquest of Cuba and later became a trusted lieutenant of Cuba’s Spanish governor, Velásquez. Cuba, lacking gold, proved disappointing to Cortés and when he was offered the opportunity to head an expedition to open trade with the Aztecs of Mexico, he accepted the assignment with enthusiasm. The Aztecs were known to have gold. Cortés, now 34, appealed to other hidalgos in Cuba to join him and raised money and acquired ships in addition to those provided by Velásquez. Velásquez, rightly alarmed that he intended to do more than just seek trade with the Aztecs, ordered Cortés relieved of command. The order arrived too late; Cortés’ fleet had already sailed.

The Aztec Empire in 1519 was at the height of its power and cultural sophistication. The Aztecs, ruling from their capital city, Tenochtitlán (today Mexico City), controlled an empire of over 11 million people. “One may well marvel,” Cortés later wrote, “at the orderliness and good government which is everywhere maintained” (Leonard 153). Political power was vested in a hereditary Emperor whose authority was absolute but dependent upon the advice and support of the priesthood of the Aztec pantheon of deities. A militarist state, the Aztec Empire was the result of earlier conquests of neighboring peoples, who were required to provide the Emperor both loyalty and tribute. War, however, was primarily the means whereby the Aztecs satisfied the demands of their gods for human sacrifice. The blood lust of the gods was such that in 1490 the consecration of a new temple required the sacrifice of at least 20,000 captured warriors. The sacrifice was performed through ritual slaying wherein the victim’s still beating heart was ripped from his body. The grisly horror of the demands of Aztec religion contrasted greatly with the rest of Aztec culture.

Tenochtitlán, a city of some 300,000 people in 1519, had been built on artificial islands in Lake Texcoco, a large expanse of water that dominated the Valley of Mexico. The city was reached by four causeways, each with a bridge that could easily be lifted should the city be attacked. The city was dominated by monumental stone architecture: pyramidal temples, luxuriant palaces and homes for the wealthy, and open public plazas. All buildings, including the adobe houses of the poor, were whitewashed. The city’s streets were paved with stone and lighted at night. There was running water provided through a system of aqueducts to springs on the lakeshore. The city was crisscrossed with canals along which merchants and farmers moved in boats and traded their wares and produce. Everywhere there were flowers – in public gardens and in plots and boxes adorning private homes of both rich and poor. The Aztecs had a strong sense of morality which strengthened both family and community. Justice was exercised through a system of low and high courts. Farming was done through a system of chinampas that surrounded the city. Chinampas were ingeniously engineered artificial islands on which were raised fruits and vegetables. Most of Tenochtitlán’s food supply, as did the gold, silver, and precious stones that constituted the Aztec’s wealth, came as tribute from the distant parts of the Empire. When Cortés’ expedition arrived in the hills above the valley and Lake Texcoco and the magnificent city lay before them, one of the Spanish soldiers asked “whether the things they saw were not a dream” (Leonard 142).

In 1519 the Aztec Emperor was Moctezuma (Montezuma). He was 40 years old and had been in power since 1502. Once dynamic in his diplomacy and as a military commander, Moctezuma was becoming increasingly moody and isolated himself in his palace keeping company with priests and soothsayers. He was troubled by recent omens that seemed to signal the return of the god Quetzalcoatl, the legendary god-king of the Toltecs, ancient predecessors of the Aztecs. Quetzalcoatl was believed to have been pale-skinned with a dark beard. Having brought civilization to the Toltecs, the god-king went into exile but promised to return from the east some 500 years in the future. The time of the god’s promised return was fast approaching and word had arrived from the coast that pale-skinned beings armed with thunder and lightning had come from the eastern sea. They had come in floating palaces and when on land became one with stag-like beasts they had brought with them. Moctezuma was alarmed and uncertain: were these strangers to be feared and resisted or were they the minions of Quetzacoatl to be welcomed? He would send gifts and hope the visitors would either leave or reveal their true intent.

When Cortés’ expedition landed on the Mexican coast, the Spaniards were welcomed by the native peoples with friendly curiosity. Cortés’ communication with the Mexicans was through an Indian woman, given the Christian name Doña Marina. Cortés originally took her as his mistress. Beyond her beauty he was impressed with her intelligence. She learned Spanish quickly, was knowledgeable in the language of the Aztecs, and had a strong understanding of Indian politics and ways of thinking. She became his interpreter and most trusted advisor. If anyone were responsible for Cortés’ future success as a conqueror, it was Doña Marina.

How was it possible for the Spanish to challenge the power of the Aztecs? As the Aztecs could muster an army of thousands of warriors, Cortés’ 553-man force seemed tiny and insignificant. But the Spanish had a military advantage in that they wore metal plated armor and were armed with long lances, swords, crossbows, muskets, and cannons. Cortés and several of his officers had horses (the stag-like animals reported to Moctezuma). This, too, gave the Spanish an advantage as the native Mexicans had never before seen a horse and believed the horse and its armed rider to be one fantastic being. Military tactics also favored the Spanish. For the Spanish combat in battle was intended to kill the enemy. For the Aztecs battle was not to kill but to capture enemy prisoners. And, Cortés had other advantages. He knew from Doña Marina that the various subject peoples of the Empire resented Aztec domination and would join the Spanish in opposition to Moctezuma. And, he also knew that the Aztec Emperor thought he was a god.

Before moving into the Mexican interior, Cortés founded a small settlement that he named Vera Cruz. He then ordered the dismantling and burning of his ships. All would be committed to the success of the expedition; there would be no return to Cuba or Spain. As the march progressed inland, Cortés’ force grew as discontented Indians voluntarily joined the Spanish. Doña Marina acted as his chief negotiator in securing their loyalty. Those Indians who resisted and were defeated were compelled to join as well. Among the latter were the Tlaxcalans who, despite their defeat by the Spaniards, would prove to be among Cortés’ most reliable and ferocious allies.

Moctezuma, heretofore undecided as to a course of action, sent a diplomatic mission to Cortés inviting him to come to Tenochtitlán in peace. On Cortés’ arrival (November 1519), Moctezuma, with great ceremony, personally welcomed the Spanish and their Indian allies. Doña Marina again served as interpreter and assured the uneasy Emperor that Cortés had come in peace. Relations, however, soured and Cortés ordered the Emperor taken into Spanish custody. The Aztecs, still believing that Cortés might be Quetzalcoatl, offered no resistance. On learning that Velásquez had sent an army to Mexico to take control, Cortés hurried back to the coast. He prevailed on the troops to join him and returned with them to Tenochtitlán only to find the city in rebellion against the Spanish. During his absence, the officer that Cortés had left in command of the Spanish forces in the capital brutally slaughtered some 600 leading Aztecs, causing a major Indian revolt. On Cortés appeal, Moctezuma attempted to urge an end to the resistance but was mortally wounded in a shower of arrows shot in the confusion. Refusing assistance, Moctezuma died three days later. With great loss of men and arms, the Spanish were ultimately driven from the city (July 1520). Cortés’ effort to conquer Mexico seemed destined for humiliating failure.

Regrouping his surviving forces, which included several thousand of his Tlaxcalan allies, Cortés then sought a new strategy for conquest. He would take Tenochtitlán by water. The metal works from his original fleet were moved overland from Vera Cruz and a fleet of small ships, armed with cannon, was built on the Texcoco lakeshore. Fortune seemed to favor Cortés. A new force of Spanish soldiers arrived at Vera Cruz, this time to join Cortés, not resist him. And, an epidemic of smallpox, against which the Indians had no immunity, swept through the city critically weakening Tenochtitlán’s manpower. Before taking the fleet out on the lake, Cortés’ forces cut the aqueduct to the city and destroyed the chinampas. Tenochtitlán was thus effectively cut off from further supplies of food and water. Cortés’ ships sailed out on the lake on Easter Day, 1521. A desperate effort by the Aztecs to attack the Spanish using war canoes was easily thwarted. The Aztecs no longer controlled the lake. The causeways into the city could no longer be defended. The taking of Tenochtitlán would not be easy. The Spanish and Tlaxcalans advanced across the causeways and, meeting stiff resistance, forced their way into the city. The battle for Tenochtitlán would last three months and would see brutal and bloody fighting in which terrible atrocities were committed by both sides. Thousands of the city’s inhabitants were massacred. Other thousands starved to death or died of smallpox. The bodies of the dead were eaten by the city’s starving defenders.

The battle for Tenochtitlán ended in August 1521 when Cuauhtemoc, the last Aztec Emperor, was captured trying to escape the city. The Emperor ordered his forces to surrender. The Spanish then allowed the surviving inhabitants to evacuate the city. It was the end of the Aztec Empire. The Spanish then looted the city for whatever might be of value. The great stores of golden treasure that they had sought were not found. Much of the gold had been hidden or secreted out of the city before the siege began. Cuauhtemoc died under torture, in an attempt to force him to reveal where the treasure was hidden. It was in the lake, he told them. If it was, it was never found. Still, enough gold and riches were found to make Cortés’ fortune for the rest of his life. He was now undisputed ruler of an expanse of territory larger than Spain itself. Pledging fidelity to King Charles, Cortés now became Viceroy of Mexico with the power to oversee its colonization, economic development, and transformation to Christianity. As for the Aztecs? Of the Conquest, Hammond Innes writes:

The Aztecs had indeed passed out of history …. Their vanished civilization remains a remarkable one. In Mexico today there is no vestige of the exquisite Venetian beauty of their waterborne city; the Spaniards destroyed it utterly. Worse, in their determination to root out idolatry and plant their own religion, their priests destroyed much of the Indian civilization, the idols, the featherwork, the jewelry, the libraries of their sacred records, the picture writings. And the people themselves were enslaved. (Innes 195)

Cortés would die in 1547. In 1521, as conqueror of the Aztecs, he was at the height of his political and military career. He would continue to live in Mexico, although he did make a several-year visit to Spain where, in 1528, he was welcomed by King Charles, now Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. On his return to Mexico, he would suffer the indignities of accusations of corruption and found it increasingly difficult to work with the growing bureaucracy of Spanish colonial government. Restless on his large estates, he spent several years at sea exploring Mexico’s Pacific coasts. He returned to Spain in 1540 and participated in Spain’s unsuccessful attempt to seize Algiers. His last years were spent on his estate near Seville. [1]

Sources for The Conquest of Mexico are at the end of Section 1.5.

[1] And what of Doña Marina? Following the conquest of Mexico, Cortés, who had fathered a son by her, had her married to one of his officers. She had a daughter by that marriage. She is believed to have died in 1527, probably still under 30 years old. Before her death she had the occasion to return to her home village where she was reunited with her mother who had originally sold her into slavery long before Cortés acquired her. Her mother, fearful that her daughter might punish her, tearfully appealed for mercy. Doña Marina forgave her and told her how much her life had been improved by becoming a Christian and how full her life had been since. She remains a controversial figure in Mexican history. Was she a heroine or was she a traitor? She is known by the label La Malinche (the Captain’s woman, the Captain being Cortés). Today Mexican Spanish-speakers use the word malinchista to mean "one who prefers foreign things."