What, though, was the fate of the conquered? They all paid tribute, though in different amounts according to the extent of their resistance and the products of the region. And while any tribute paid diminished the wealth of that region, the burden as always fell on the commoners. They paid their assessed quotas to their ward heads from which it flowed to the king in the traditional manner, except that the local king was now no longer the top of the tribute system. The king in turn paid a portion of what he received to the Aztec empire.
Of course, the reliability of new tributaries remained in doubt, as they were near their traditional allies who might offer assistance. In most cases, the relatively weak former allies did not present a problem to the Aztecs, but occasionally cities were conquered that had formidable allies, such as Tepeyacac (Tepeaca, Puebla), which had been allied to Tlaxcallan. To ensure that there would be no relapse, Tepeyacac was uniquely required to give as part of its tribute a captive to be sacrificed in Tenochtitlan. As this captive could not come from the other Aztec tributaries around it, the demand effectively forced Tepeyacac to engage in continuous war with its former allies, creating a constant friction between them and minimizing the likelihood that they would break away from the Aztec dominions (Matricula de Tributes 1980: 11v; see also Hassig 1988: 350).
Compliance with the Aztecs’ tribute demands did not guarantee peace in the system, though, and revolts were not uncommon. The simple exercise of power to compel compliance is not sustainable in the long term. There is little reason to assume that tributaries grew comfortable with the status quo. But the Aztec system achieved peaceful coherence more subtly than simply by economic extraction backed up by the fear of force.
For instance, merely complying with the tribute demands altered the local social system by reducing the noble class in the tributary cities. Because of the limits on how much the commoners could produce and how much of that could be extracted in tribute, the loss of some tribute siphoned off by the empire resulted in the swelling of the Aztec noble classes and the shrinkage of tributary nobles in the provinces. While the data are slim, the “four-degree principle” that seems to have prevailed among the Aztecs was probably sustained by the influx of tribute, without which three degrees of kinship perhaps represented a more typical limit. And if such had been the case in the provinces, their economic loss may have reduced the local nobility closer to two degrees of kinship before the social drop, generating considerable disaffection in lesser nobles though perhaps greater loyalty and coherence among the uppers.
Another change arising from being conquered was the receipt ofanother wife for the tributary king, a practice that was often reciprocal, with the subordinated king giving one of his daughters to the Aztec ruler. While this might appear to be a symbolic gesture cementing the new relationship, its consequences went much further. The impact of an additional wife from a tributary ruler was minor for the Aztec king’s domestic order. But it had enormous consequences for the tributary ruler.
World History
