Now the Spanish wanted more than just gold from the Aztecs. They had managed to gain control of Tenochtitlan once, and they wanted it back. They also wanted revenge for the conquistadors who had been killed. At Tlaxcala, the soldiers healed and Cortes built up his army with both Spanish and local allies. Spanish reinforcements arrived from other areas. And, increasingly, the native peoples joined with the Spanish because they felt optimistic that they would be able to defeat the Aztecs.
Back in Tenochtitlan, the people began to think that they had seen the last of the Spanish and breathed a sigh of relief. Then, in September, the Aztecs suffered a terrible blow. Smallpox, brought by the Spanish to all of the New World, raced through the population. Diseases such as smallpox had been present for so long in Europe that many Europeans had been exposed to them and had some immunity against their effects. But the peoples of the New World had never encountered these diseases and had no immunity at all and no medicine to relieve the coughs, fevers, blisters, and sores that came with smallpox.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS
The Great Misery
Bernardino de Sahagun (ca. 1499-1590) was a spanish priest who was sent to Mexico to convert the native peoples to Christianity. Sahagun eventually learned Nahuatl and collected Aztec writings and conducted interviews in that language. He and his students compiled 12 books from these native sources. Some of the writings were translated into Spanish, but most were not. They are now known as the Florentine Codex or General History of the Things of New Spain.
This is what the Florentine Codex had to say about the smallpox epidemic:
To move, to raise themselves, to stretch out on their sides, or lie face down, or upon their backs. If they stirred they cried out with great pain. Like a covering over them were the pustules.
On some the pustules broke out far apart. They did not cause much suffering, nor did many die of them. Many others were harmed by them on their faces; face and nose were left roughened. Some had their eyes injured by them; they were blinded. Many were crippled by it—though not entirely.
The pestilence lasted through 60 day signs before it diminished.
It caused great misery. Some people it covered with pustules, everywhere, the face, the head, the breast, etc. Many indeed perished from it. They could not walk; they could only lie at home in their beds, unable
(Source: "The Fall of the Aztecs." Conquistadors. Available online. URL: Http://www. pbs. org/conqulstadors/cortes/cortes_e03.htm. Accessed June 22, 2008.)
The epidemic lasted for just over two months and left thousands dead. Cuitlahuac may have been one of the victims, although historians are not sure. In any event, he died in 1520 and Motecuhzoma Il’s nephew Cuauhtemoc (r. 1520-1521) was chosen as tlatoani. The young man possessed the bravery needed in a leader during this time of crisis.
Meanwhile, Cortes prepared his counterattack. It had been almost two years since Cortes first arrived in Mexico. The handful of Spanish soldiers who had come on his first expedition had been reinforced by Narvaez’s surviving men and also by additional ships from Cuba. Cortes’s father even sent a shipload of men and supplies from Spain.
Eventually, even long-term allies like the Acolhua, Nezahualcoy-otl’s people, started splitting away and joining with the Spanish. They thought they were gaining their independence from the Aztec Empire.
They had no idea what they were getting into: 300 years of Spanish colonial rule, impoverishment, and loss of power.
In December 1520, Cortes’s troops and allies marched toward the heart of the Aztec Empire. Using native workers, the Spanish had built 12 brigantines (a type of sailing ship) that Cortes planned to use to cross Lake Texcoco. More than 8,000 Native Americans took apart and carried the ships to the lake, then reassembled them. Cortes’s plan was to set up a siege. In this military tactic, an army surrounds a city or fort and prevents it from receiving supplies or more troops.
When Cortes arrived, he cut off the island on which Tenochtitlan was built. On May 30, 1521, the Spanish launched the brigantines they had brought in pieces to the shores of Lake Texcoco. They used their ships to attack the Aztecs on the causeways and to stop canoes from crossing the lake to bring supplies. The Spanish cut the flow of fresh water into the city. Cortes knew that a city without food and water could not survive.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS
Broken Bones Littered the Road
In the years after the Spanish invasion, several Aztec poets wrote elegies—poems written for the dead or after a great loss. Here is part of one found in Tlatelolco. it dates to the 1540s or 1550s.
Note the powerful image of shields, which are meant to defend the city, being used in desperation to toast a few worms for a starving person or to protect a crumbling wall.
Thus in our place this happened; we saw it, we will marvel at it. The crying, the pity caused us to suffer exhaustion.
Broken bones littered the road; crushed heads, roofless houses, walls were made red with blood.
Worms crawled through noses in the streets; the house walls were slippery with brains.
The water was dyed red with blood. Thus we went along; we drank the brackish water.
Still, there an adobe foundation, here a well protected with a shield.
Still, in vain someone might toast something on a shield.
We ate tzompantli wood, grass from the salt flats, the adobe bricks, the lizards, mice, bits of dust.
Worms were toasted on a shield; there, on the fire the meat was cooked. They are it.
(source: courtesy of John frederick schwaller, translator, copyright 2008, all rights reserved.)
When it became clear that the Spanish were a serious threat, the Aztecs defended themselves fiercely and heroically, and adapted to Spanish styles of fighting. But they were abandoned by their allies and subjects and besieged in Tenochtitlan. They held out as long as they could, with Cuauhtemoc valiantly leading them. But their fresh water and food supplies were cut off and they were starving, drinking salty lake water, and eating worms, mice, weeds, and anything else they could find.
Cortes was amazed by the city of Tenochtitlan and did not want to destroy it. The Spanish wanted to conquer Mexico and then live as noblemen on big estates with the native people working for them and paying tribute to them. But in the end, because the Aztecs refused to surrender, destroying Tenochtitlan was the only way he could conquer it.
The Aztecs held out for 80 days. During that time, Cortes and his troops landed on the southern shore of the island. They fought their way through the city, advancing street by street, meeting heavy resistance. They destroyed entire calpullis to prevent Aztec warriors from ambushing them.
Slowly, the whole southern part of the island gave way to the Spanish attack. But conquering the entire island would take more than two months. Finally, Cuauhtemoc realized his people could not win and he surrendered. The historian Alva Ixtilxochitl later wrote, “On the day that Tenochtitlan was taken, the Spanish committed some of the most brutal acts ever inflicted upon the unfortunate people of this land. The cries of the helpless women and children were heart-rending. The Tlaxcalans and other enemies of the Aztecs revenged themselves pitilessly for old offences and robbed them of everything they could find” (quoted in The Fall of the Aztecs).
After his defeat, Cuauhtemoc was taken prisoner by Cortes and tortured. The conquistador finally executed Cuauhtemoc in 1525, when he feared the former Aztec tlatoani might lead a rebellion against Spanish rule.
World History
