The City Of Dreams: The Aztec Conquest Part 1
59:07 Share

Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Whether you're selling your fans' next favorite shirt or an exclusive piece of podcast merch, Shopify helps you sell everywhere.

Shopify powers 10% of all e-commerce in the U.S. Allbirds, Rothy's, Brooklinen, and millions of other entrepreneurs of every size across 175 countries. Plus, Shopify's award-winning help is there to support your success every step of the way.

Because businesses that grow, grow with Shopify. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash income, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash income now to grow your business, no matter what stage you're in.

Hello and welcome to Conflicted, the history podcast where we talk about the struggles that shaped us, the tough questions that they pose, and why we should care about any of it. I'm your host, Zach Cornwell, and this is Episode 7, The City of Dreams. In the year 1526, an investigation was launched. Its scope was massive. Its purview, international.

Judges and clerks and lawyers gathered in musky, candlelit courtrooms on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean. From the seat of the blossoming Spanish Empire in Castile to its most recent possession of New Spain, the area we now call Mexico, witness after witness swore oaths before God and gave their testimony. Priests and mercenaries, sailors and soldiers, great lords and dons, interpreters, artists, cooks, even laborers,

And they all had one thing in common. They all had been eyewitnesses to arguably the single most pivotal event in North American history. And as the lawyers scribbled down each man's words, compiled their documents, and built their cases, one name came up again and again and again. Cortez. It was a name some of the witnesses despised and others worshipped. Everyone seemed to have a story to tell about this man Cortez.

Some gave accounts of monstrous crimes against humanity, of cruelty and deception and murder. Others told stories of bravery, audacity, and cleverness, of superhuman guile and bottomless guilt. One man wrote that Cortes had, quote, no more conscience than a dog, end quote. But what the lawyers wanted to know, what they were trying to figure out, is what exactly had happened just a handful of years earlier.

How had this nobody, a poor aristocrat of no real importance, who'd never commanded men in battle before in his life, brought a 3,000-year-old culture to its knees? How had Cortes, in just two years, completely destroyed, looted, and subjugated a powerful kingdom and all of its allies? One of the largest, wealthiest cities in the world had been reduced to a smoldering ruin. And now, people wanted to know why.

How had Cortes, with just a handful of expat mercenaries and impoverished explorers, brought down the Aztec Empire? But more importantly, where was the money? Where was the gold? And had Cortes given the King of Spain his rightful cut? In short, what secrets were Cortes and his friends hiding? Well, that story starts many years earlier, in Mexico. Modern-day Mexico City has some of the worst traffic in the world.

Its twisting streets are congested day and night with honking cars, trucks, motorcycles, you name it. But at the turn of the 16th century, the exact same location would have been buzzing with a very different kind of traffic. Thousands upon thousands of canoes skimming across a deep saltwater lake spanning an unbelievable 2,000 square miles.

Where Mexico City is today, there used to be a huge lake called Texcoco. And in the center of Lake Texcoco, there was an island. And on this island lay the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. Now, you'll hear a few different pronunciations for the name of this city. Sometimes people say Tenochtitlan or Tenochtitlan. But we're going to go with Tenochtitlan because, frankly, it rolls off the tongue better.

In the year 1519, Tenochtitlan was, by some estimates, the largest metropolis in the world. Bigger than London, bigger than Rome, bigger than Damascus, and maybe even Constantinople. The only cities comparable in size were half a world away, in China. But the city that Tenochtitlan most resembled was Venice. Not in size, Venice was tiny in comparison, but in structure. Tenochtitlan was a floating city.

an interlocking grid of canals and waterways, narrow alleys and sprawling pavilions. As the Aztecs built their city on the lake, they expanded the island little by little, engineering and creating new solid ground through the cultivation of floating gardens. Tenochtitlan was connected to the shores of Lake Texcoco by five huge causeways, stone bridges that stretched for kilometers before they even reached the city itself. And those causeways got a lot of traffic.

Tenochtitlan was the beating heart of the Aztec Empire, which controlled much of the area governed by modern-day Mexico. From the arid deserts in the north to the lush jungles of the Yucatan, the people of Mesoamerica owed tribute, respect, and fealty to the powerful Aztecs. 125,000 square miles and 400 distinct cities all fell under the thumb of the rulers of Tenochtitlan.

Visitors from those client states could have seen the city for miles as they approached it. They would have seen huge temples, towers, and stepped pyramids rising up from the center of a glittering lake, its waters swarming with canoes and fishing boats. Walking along those causeways towards the center of the city, visitors could buy fresh fish, maize tortillas, chili peppers, venison, beans, squash, turkey...

Artisans sold cotton and cloth, finely woven fabrics and intricate jewelry made from silver and jade. And once inside Tenochtitlan proper, the first thing you would have noticed was how clean everything was. Unlike European cities, which at this time were usually filthy and crawling with infectious diseases, that will be important later, Tenochtitlan was insanely clean. They had a highly developed waste management system and an army of street sweepers that kept the public areas spotless.

And the second thing you would have noticed was God. God was everywhere in Tenochtitlan, or more specifically, gods. The Aztecs had a huge pantheon of gods and goddesses, anywhere from 200 to 1,600 individual deities. These gods were colorful and eccentric, and each one had their own cult, traditions, and priests.

Many had dedicated temples or pyramids which towered over the city, and the likenesses of these gods and goddesses were carved into stone or jade, painted on walls, or made into golden figurines. This pantheon included figures like the rain god, Tlaloc, the earth goddess, Coatlque, the smoking mirror, Tezcatlapoca, the flayed lord, Xipe-Totec, and the goddess of love, Zoki-Quetzal.

So ubiquitous were the Aztec gods that you'd be hard-pressed to find a house in Tenochtitlan that didn't have some kind of idol inside. But the one god that stood above them all was Huitzilopochtli, the god of the sun, war, and death. The Aztecs were obsessed with death. You might even say that they had a healthy attitude about it. Because in Aztec culture, death was not something to be feared, but embraced.

The duality of life and death was celebrated, not shied away from. And that comfort with their own impermanence comes through really strongly in certain Aztec poetry. Like this one, for example. Quote, Only for a time are we here. Though you are carved in jade, you will break. Though you are made of gold, you will crack. Though you are a quetzal feather, you will wither. Only for a time are we here. End quote.

The Aztecs knew that their world wouldn't last forever. They believed that an apocalypse was coming, an inevitable reckoning that would tear down everything they'd built. There was, however, a way to keep this cataclysm at bay, to delay the end of the world. The sun god, Huitzilopochtli, could save them. Because he wasn't just the sun god, he was the god of war, and blood, and sacrifice.

The Aztecs, as a lot of you already know, practiced human sacrifice. And they did it on an industrial scale. For the sun to rise every day, Huitzilopochtli had to be quenched with large quantities of what the Aztecs called, quote, their most precious water, or blood. Blood was extremely significant in the Aztec religion. It was considered nourishment for the gods. And the Aztecs had a variety of ways to satisfy that celestial appetite.

The most common way was something called bloodletting. People would cut or pierce parts of their bodies, usually the earlobes or the tongue, and spatter the blood like holy water onto the shrines. Now, that was the low-stakes way to appease the gods. But it wasn't enough. A few drops from your earlobe was not enough to get the sun back in the sky every single day.

That took a little more juice, and it was provided in the form of human sacrifices, anywhere from dozens to hundreds and even thousands being killed at one time. In his book Conquest, historian Hugh Thomas mentions one particularly big batch of sacrifices. Quote,

At a festival in 1487, innumerable prisoners died on 14 pyramids over four days, with long lines of victims stretching from the side of the temple in four directions as far as the eye could see. According to some sources, 20,000 people were sacrificed annually in Tenochtitlan. If you were chosen to be one of those sacrifices, you were in for an intricate and brutal experience.

First, you'd be led with other prisoners up the steps of a great pyramid, basically waiting in line to die. For much of that agonizing wait, you'd be able to see across the entire city. You'd hear the crowds of people chanting religious invocations below you. You might be able to see the sun winking off of Lake Texcoco in the distance. And your feet would be sticky with blood. A steady stream of it was usually trickling down the steps, a grim little preview of what waited for you at the top.

Imagine the longest line at the worst amusement park you've ever been to. And at the top, instead of an empty seat and a cheap thrill, five priests would be waiting for you. Their entire bodies would be tattooed charcoal black, their hair matted with congealed blood, and their earlobes would be heavily scarred and ragged from all the ritual bloodletting. And when it was your turn, four priests would stretch your body over a sacrificial stone, each one holding an arm or a leg.

They'd pull you in all four directions really tight so you couldn't move. And then the fifth priest would say a prayer as he produced an obsidian knife made of volcanic glass sharper than a modern day scalpel. Then the priest might tell you what was about to happen spiritually about how you were going to become a companion of the eagle, your spirit soaring high into the heavens where you'd be a servant to the sun god himself for four years.

After your service in heaven had been completed, you'd come back to earth, reincarnated as a hummingbird. You have to admit that doesn't sound too bad. Then, in a motion that only took a few seconds, the priest would make a deep surgical cut underneath your pectoral muscle. You'd reach inside, sever your heart from your chest cavity, and pull it out of your body. Upon contact with the air, the heart would steam as the priest held it up for everybody to see.

and then he'd throw it into a brazier to be consumed by fire and offered to the sun god Huitzilopochtli. It's very gory and very nasty, but from what experts say about the process, it was actually pretty efficient. There wasn't any sawing or hacking. It was a smooth, surgical motion that the priests had refined into an art form. And maybe my brain is just a little messed up, but as bad as I feel for the victims, I also feel a little bad for the priests who had to do this like 200 times in a row.

If you've ever had a job where you've had to do a repetitive task over and over again, it's the worst. These guys had to keep the energy up the whole time, put on a show. I don't know. We all have our cross to bear, is all I'm saying. After the heart removal stuff, you'd think it would be over at that point. But no. Your head would then be severed from your body, just to make sure you were super duper dead, and then they'd kick you down the steps. If this is all starting to sound a little Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, I get it.

That's a fair assessment, but it's worth noting that to the Aztecs, these sacrifices were not for entertainment or sport or pleasure. They were not getting some kind of sadistic kick out of all this murder. They truly, honestly believed that these people were helping to save the world by dying. They believed that they were delaying Armageddon for another 24 hours through the payment of this sacred price.

The Aztec word for sacrifice, "Neshti Lawalitzi," literally means "act of payment." But all of this begs the question, who were these people getting sacrificed? Was it random? Were the priests just plucking names out of a hat? No, actually. The majority of sacrifices were prisoners of war, captives taken from neighboring cities. In the 1400s, the Aztecs had established their magnificent capital city and quickly conquered the neighboring areas.

and these subject territories essentially became sacrifice farms for the Aztecs. The constant daily need for new sacrifices meant that a steady flow of slaves and captives had to always be pouring across the causeways of Lake Texcoco into Tenochtitlan.

And these other cities despised the Aztecs for it. They hated being thrall to the insatiable appetites of the Aztec gods. But to be fair, it's worth noting that the Aztecs did not invent human sacrifice in Mesoamerica. It had been around since 5000 BC in the region. And many of these other kingdoms did it too, but the lords of Tenochtitlan practiced it on an unprecedented scale. And the resentment among those conquered cities was extremely potent.

This was not a land of peace and harmony. Sitting atop this powder keg was a man you have very likely heard of before, the emperor Moctezuma II. He's sometimes called Montezuma too, but apparently Moctezuma is closer to the original name in the Aztec language. So we're going to go with that. The most important thing to understand about Moctezuma is that he was intensely religious. Even for an Aztec, this guy was a zealot.

Religion dominated every Aztec's life, but it was especially real and vivid for Moctezuma. In fact, before he had been selected to be emperor, he had been a high priest. He knew his way around an obsidian knife and a chest cavity, if you know what I'm saying. Now, Moctezuma is a fascinating person because for the majority of his life, he acted a very certain way. He was austere and conservative. He was very quiet in public but loved to talk in private.

He was a bookworm, he was capable of warmth and friendship, but also deceit and vanity. He was, by all accounts, a pitiless snob who looked down with disgust at the lower classes. Early in life, he'd experienced a family tragedy. His sister, married off to a neighboring kingdom, had been strangled with a cord in the street for the act of adultery, quote, as if she had been a peasant, end quote.

The indignity of her death had to have enraged an elitist like Moctezuma. But the thing about Moctezuma that historians seem to struggle with is the discrepancy between how he acted for the majority of his adult life and then the series of decisions he made during the story you're about to hear. Something broke inside Moctezuma, and no one knows why. It is an intimate mystery, an enigma of personality. How can someone be the way they are all of their life?

and then be so fundamentally shaken down to their very core that they just shatter into a thousand pieces. The story of the collapse of the Aztec Empire is, at its core, a story about a relationship, a dynamic between two men, a connection that, at moments, if you squint, could even resemble a friendship. Two people from very different, but also very similar cultures.

intensely religious, deeply conservative, and fundamentally violent societies. Cultures that would soon collide in a hemisphere-shaping conflict. Now, we've met one of these men, the great emperor of the Aztecs, Moctezuma II. The other man was on the other side of the world, in Spain. Ryan Reynolds here from Intmobile. With the price of just about everything going up during inflation, we thought we'd bring our prices down.

1492 was a big year.

In many ways, it was the year the Spanish Empire was born. A hat trick of world-shaping events had taken place in the span of those pivotal 12 months, and odds are, you're already very familiar with at least one of them. Almost every person in the world knows that 1492 was the year that the incessantly debated Christopher Columbus made landfall in the, quote, new world and opened the door to the colonization of the Americas.

But don't worry, we're not going to talk about him. We all know that story. Columbus's voyage was certainly a watershed moment in history, but two other important things happened that exact same year. For centuries, the Christian kingdoms of Spain had been locked in a vicious crusade against the Moors, the Muslim rulers of the southern half of Spain. But in 1492, led by the monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, the Christians finally achieved their stranglehold over the entire Spanish peninsula.

The Reconquista, or Reconquest, was complete. In one fell swoop, the kingdoms of Spain were united under the banner of Christ. Well, almost. With the Moors defeated and sent scampering back to North Africa, Ferdinand and Isabella decided to continue their campaign of religious cleansing.

In the summer of 1492, they expelled every single Jew that they could find from their kingdom. And in the span of a few months, 200,000 Jews were stripped of their land, their wealth, and sent packing. And with the news that old Chris Columbus had delivered a buffet of fertile islands in the West Indies, it was undeniable. Spain was on the rise. The Moors had been formidable opponents, and the Spaniards that had fought to crush them were talented, zealous killers.

And one of the soldiers that had taken part in those campaigns was a man named Martin. Martin was an excellent horseman, a fighter, and a devout Christian. And he had a small son who worshipped him. And he taught his only son how to ride horses, swing a sword, and above all, praise God. This little boy was named Hernán, or Hernán. Hernán was only seven years old when word spread throughout Spain of a newly discovered paradise in the west.

a vast sea of tropical islands turquoise waters and sugar-cane fields of strange new people other worldly cultures and sinister idols he might have doodled imaginary depictions of these places in the margins of his bible during mass

But Hernan was no stranger to cultures dissimilar from his own. He'd grown up in the Spanish city of Medellín, where he would have regularly seen exotic Moorish architecture and bought groceries from Jewish merchants. And as Hernan grew from a boy into a man, a restlessness began to take hold.

He loved street gambling and partying. He loved women, especially the married kind. And despite his austere Christian upbringing, he was always in search of the nearest, cheapest thrill. But ultimately, Hernán the young man was just deeply, fundamentally bored.

For a young guy, living in the shadow of the Reconquista, it might have seemed like all the honor and glory had been soaked up already. His father's generation had achieved the ultimate victory, the defeat of the Moors, the unification of Spain under the one true God. But now that well was dry as a bone. What was left for men like Hernan? Certainly no money. His father Martin had been a poor soldier and had very little wealth to bequeath to Hernan.

So the young man spent some time wandering, seducing girls, and playing games of chance, seeking some way to make his fortune. To his friends and acquaintances, Hernan possessed an arrogance and already acted like he was worth a million bucks. One said that he, quote, behaved as if he'd been born in brocade, end quote. Brocade apparently is a type of very expensive silk sheet. I had to look that up. That tells you something about me. There you go.

So, listless, penniless, and bored as hell, Hernan arrived at a fork in the road. He'd recently become aware of two potentially lucrative opportunities. One was in Italy, as a soldier fighting in some religious war. The other was an offer of employment from a distant family connection, the governor of Hispaniola in the West Indies. It was a huge decision.

Hernan could go to Italy, fight in wars for Christendom as his father had done, or he could roll the dice and book passage for this distant, exotic land people were calling the New World. Always the gambler, 22-year-old Hernan Cortes stepped onto the deck of a ship bound for the Caribbean in the summer of 1506.

In that exact same year, an especially bright comet was observed all over the world. Civilizations from both hemispheres recorded descriptions of it. The Japanese said it was, quote, a large sphere with a bluish tint, end quote. The Chinese made mention of it also, and the intellectuals of Central Europe took note of it too. But its significance was especially felt in the city on the lake, Tenochtitlan.

The Aztecs were accomplished astronomers. Not quite as ingenious as the Mayans to the south, but they took great interest in the movements of the sun, moon, and stars. The study of the heavens was intrinsically linked to the Aztec religion, and they believed that they could discern meaning and symbolism from what was happening far away in the vacuum of space.

Makhtazuma might have been lounging on the roof in his palace in Tenochtitlan, sipping on a cup of frothing chocolate, when he noticed this comet burning across the night sky. And reportedly, it made his blood run cold. In the previous ten years, he and his priests had been observing an above-average amount of celestial phenomena.

To quote historian Hugh Thomas, there was, quote, a comet in 1489 and a total eclipse in 1496, end quote. And another comet was, quote, said to have fallen sharply in the sky, to have divided into three, and to have scattered sparks throughout the Valley of Mexico, end quote. Recently, the temple of the war god Huitzilopochtli had inexplicably gone up in flames, quote,

There was also a series of floods on the lake where people reported that the water began to literally foam and froth. To Moctezuma, these were not random occurrences. This was a chilling pattern of celestial warnings, and the intensely religious emperor felt the prongs of existential dread sinking into his daily thoughts. He was convinced that something was coming. In reality, these kinds of astronomical phenomena were entirely normal.

But the Aztecs, and Moctezuma in particular, saw hidden meaning in everything. Even the most mundane occurrences could symbolize something huge. One superstition in particular, to quote Hugh Thomas again, quote, anyone whose path was crossed by a weasel might expect a setback, end quote. Now, you might be tempted, after hearing those anecdotes about Moctezuma, to think, oh, those silly superstitious Aztecs.

But how often have you half-jokingly walked around a ladder rather than under it? Or insisted on wearing your lucky jersey before your favorite team plays an important game? Superstition is woven into the experience of being human. It was just cranked up to 11 in Aztec culture. So, Moctezuma summoned his magicians and priests, and he begs them for clarity on these frustrating omens. He wanted to know, quote,

Whether we are going to be struck down by sickness, by hunger, by locusts, by storms on the lake, or by droughts, and whether it will rain torrentially, tell me if we are menaced by war, or if we must expect sudden deaths, or deaths caused by wild beasts. Do not hide the facts from me."

The magicians just kind of shrugged and replied, quote, What can we say? The future is already determined. What has to come will come. Since it is bound to happen, you can only await it. End quote.

Makhtazuma did not like that answer. He had these mystics thrown into prison, and then he commanded his soldiers, "...to kill their wives and all of their children, and to destroy their houses." They did do that. According to one Aztec source, "...they killed the women by hanging them with ropes, and the children by dashing them to pieces against the walls. Then they tore down the houses and even rooted out their foundations."

Moctezuma had always been a harsh ruler, but these occurrences had set him on an edge that could quickly turn homicidal. And just 150 miles away, only four to five days by boat, the threat that he could feel in his bones but could not name was beginning to rise. In 1518, our old friend Hernan Cortes was a rich man. He'd made extremely good use of his first decade in the New World.

The hungry 22-year-old adventurer had initially arrived in the Caribbean port of Hispaniola and leveraged his connections with local officials to score some lucrative gigs. As he interacted with these officials more and more, Hernan Cortes quickly came to realize what a startling gift for language he possessed. Cortes was a natural wordsmith and he used his talent to flatter, manipulate, and beguile.

Cortez knew how to win people over, to make them like him. He was the kind of person you could walk into a room furious at and then leave feeling like he was your best friend in the world. Historian Hugh Thomas says that, quote, Cortez talked well, always having the right expression for the occasion and agreeable in conversation. In his way, he was already experienced in politics. He had that capacity of all successful men of being able to conceal his real intentions until the pair which he coveted was ready to fall.

Quintet.

But then, Cortes was introduced to a man who would one day become his closest friend in the world, a young adventurer by the name of Pedro de Alvarado. Alvarado was, in many ways, the opposite of Cortes. Whereas Cortes was gaunt and kind of average-looking with a patchy brown beard, Alvarado was, according to most sources, dazzlingly handsome.

He had bright red hair and a meticulously groomed mustache. And where Cortes could turn a phrase, Alvarado could twist a knife. He was already gaining a reputation as a pitiless thug, with an unrivaled capacity for violence and cruelty. Of the two, Alvarado was the more experienced conquistador, or conqueror. He had also been employed by the governor of Cuba for years and had just returned from an expedition into the coastal jungles of the Yucatan.

He'd brought with him golden trinkets that fascinated the governor and spurred talk of another, larger expedition to journey deeper into the interior. Cortes was particularly interested in Alvarado's shiny souvenirs. For him, there was no such thing as too rich, and he suspected that these little trinkets were just the tip of the iceberg.

By candlelight, Alvarado told Cortes of the coastal civilizations he'd only briefly encountered, of what he called, quote, the secrets of the land, end quote. He talked about the stepped pyramids, the strange gods, and the talent of the native goldsmiths, of thick jungles and colorful macaws.

Cortes was enraptured, and when he saw the opportunity to lead this new expedition into the mainland, he jumped at the chance. Cortes poured every penny he had into financing the expedition. He bought ships, supplies, weapons, armor, and horses, and together with Alvarado, he recruited men to his cause. The two made a very persuasive team, the smooth-talking Cortes and the flashy, vainglorious Alvarado.

Before long, they'd assembled hundreds of conquistadors to join their expedition. But at the last second, the governor of Cuba changed his mind. Cortes would not be commanding the expedition. He would not even be joining the expedition. Naturally, this infuriated Cortes, but it didn't surprise him. As Cortes' star had risen over the years, he and the governor had gotten into spats, both personal and professional. And now that tension was coming home to roost.

On the morning of November the 18th, 1518, the governor, his name was Velazquez, is urgently woken up by an assistant. This assistant tells him that something is going on down at the docks. So Velazquez throws on his clothes and hightails it down to the harbor. There he finds Cortez and his men, heavily armed. Anchored in the harbor, he sees six fully stocked ships ready to depart.

Cortes, the governor realizes, is leaving without his permission. Cortes had gotten wind of the decision to relieve him of command and had outmaneuvered the governor. Velazquez says to Cortes, quote, Cortes responds, End quote.

Cortez was mocking him, and the stunned governor could only watch slack-jawed as Cortez, Alvarado, their 530 men, and six ships disappeared over the horizon. ♪

The land down under has never been easier to reach. United Airlines has more flights between the U.S. and Australia than any other U.S. airline, so you can fly nonstop to destinations like Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. Explore dazzling cities, savor the very best of Aussie cuisine, and get up close and personal with the wildlife. Who doesn't want to hold a koala? Go to united.com slash Australia to book your adventure.

Today, if you go to the island of Cozumel, just off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, you'll find colossal cruise ships, packed with tourists and karaoke machines, jet skis, and frozen margaritas. But in 1518, some very different ships were anchored in the turquoise waters of that tropical island. The Spaniards who splashed ashore onto the white sands of Cozumel were at this point outlaws.

By defying the governor of Cuba, Cortes had put a price on his own head, and he intended to pay that bill one way or another. The men of Cortes' expedition were not an official military force. They were armed adventurers, mercenaries, and pirates. They included battle-hardened veterans of previous expeditions like Pedro de Alvarado, the red-haired second-in-command, but also 18, 19-year-old kids who were just trying to make a buck.

This was not a crack team, to be frank. But cohering them all into an effective unit was the implacable will and irresistible charisma of Hernan Cortes. He and Alvarado had trained them very well, and they believed that they were ready for anything. After the brief stop in Cozumel, Cortes and his men made their way around the Yucatan Peninsula and landed on the southern coast of Mexico. It was not a comfortable place to set up shop.

At the time, this part of Mexico was dominated by thick jungles and mangrove swamps. The conquistadors would have been baking in their heavy steel armor, pouring sweat, and constantly swatting away mosquitoes. As they made their way inland, up the twisting rivers and through dense vegetation, some of the younger conquistadors were amazed at the colorful birds and chattering spider monkeys. They had no idea that in a few short months, those exotic sights would seem quaint by comparison.

Little did they know, Cortes and his men were trespassing in an area called Tabasco,

Yes, like the hot sauce. The people there, the Tabascans, did not like these pale strangers with ugly hair on their faces tramping across their territory. So they decided to do something about it. As the conquistadors are making their way upriver, thousands of warriors descend on the tiny Spanish expedition. But their darts, arrows, and slings are no match for the steel swords, crossbows, and breech-loading cannons of the Spanish.

The conquistadors slaughter the Tabascans, despite overwhelming numbers. Now, there are a few key reasons the Spanish were so effective against the Mesoamerican warriors, but we're going to come back to that dynamic a little bit later. For right now, all you need to know is that it's not even close. And the Tabascan chiefs quickly surrendered to this strange but deadly handful of foreigners.

They shower Cortes, Alvarado, and the rest of the conquistadors with food and gifts. Turkey, fruit, maize tortillas, jade figurines, turquoise masks, and most importantly, gold in every form. Gold dust, gold idols, gold earrings. But at this point, Cortes is running into a little problem called the language barrier.

The Spanish had a guy with them who'd spent some time with the Mayans and knew that language. But the southern third of North America is a huge place. There are dozens of languages and thousands of dialects. You might as well have a guy from Egypt trying to translate Vietnamese for you. But the Tabascans give Cortes one last gift. And this gift would prove to be the most valuable possession he ever acquired. A weapon more powerful than all the Toledo steel and gunpowder muskets in the world.

The Tabascans present Cortes with a small group of women, slaves who can cook and clean. One of them is a tiny young woman named Malinche. In another life, Malinche had been royalty. But after her father had died, her mother remarried, and Malinche had been sold into slavery so she wouldn't pose a threat to her half-brothers. But being a princess had meant she'd gotten an education, and part of that education included languages.

Among other dialects, Malinche could speak Nahuatl, which was the dominant language in the Aztec Empire. This princess-turned-slave, combined with the Spaniard who could speak Mayan, gave Cortes the key to unlocking communication in the region. He could now convey his thoughts, words, and opinions to the Mesoamericans with much more accuracy than before, an advantage that would prove to be extremely valuable.

Through Malinche, Cortes asked the Tabascans where all this gold had come from, and one word was said over and over again, Mexica. That word, Mexica, which is spelled Mexica, Malinche translated that that was the local name for a powerful people to the north, a vast empire ruled by a high priest from a beautiful city floating on a lake.

And just like that, Cortes knew about the Aztecs, their city, and the wealth that they possessed. But Cortes wasn't the only one who was learning things.

Back in Tenochtitlan, Moctezuma was getting constant intelligence reports on the movements of these strangers from across the sea. The emperor of the Aztecs had a vast spy network, which reported back to him with details on the Spaniards and their position. And Moctezuma was very curious about who they were and why they had come. Now, this is the point in the story where the details surrounding Moctezuma's mindset get very murky.

There's a lot of scholarly debate surrounding the Aztec emperor and his reactions to learning about the Spanish. The big problem is that most of what we know about Moctezuma comes from Spanish sources, and the few Aztec sources we do have were very likely pressured to conform to the Spanish version of events. So sadly, we can never truly know the mind of a man like Moctezuma and what moved him to act the way that he did. But there are a few interpretations.

The least charitable of these interpretations is that upon hearing about the Spaniards, their steel armor and loud gunpowder weapons, Moctezuma was suddenly seized with an existential religious terror. He became convinced that Cortes and his men were literal gods, wayward deities who had come to overthrow him and take control of his empire. He got it into his head that Cortes was the second coming of a god called Quetzalcoatl or the Feathered Serpent.

To Moctezuma, there were too many coincidences to ignore. Exhibit A. Quetzalcoatl was often depicted with a beard. The Spanish had beards, and the Aztecs did not. Exhibit B. Quetzalcoatl was supposed to wear an elaborate helmet, similar to the curving steel ones that the conquistadors wore.

Exhibit C, the year that Cortes landed, 1519, was called the Year of the Reed in the Aztec calendar, and the Year of the Reed was Quetzalcoatl's year. And most unsettling to Moctezuma, the Year of the Reed was prophesied to be particularly dangerous for monarchs. Quote, On the Year of the Reed, he strikes at kings. End quote.

There were also little visual coincidences that deepened Moctezuma's anxiety and reinforced his suspicion that these were gods coming to usurp his throne. For example, some of his spies had observed the Spaniards on Good Friday, a day on which the devout Cortes would have been wearing black. Well, wouldn't you know it, black was one of the key colors for Quetzalcoatl.

Honestly, it's almost too many coincidences, which is why some historians utterly reject the narrative that the Aztecs thought Cortes was a god at all. In his book, When Montezuma Met Cortes, historian Matthew Restall asserts that this divine angle was mostly propaganda spread by the Spanish after the Aztec Empire had been destroyed, and that they actually deliberately misrepresented details of the Aztec religion to support that narrative.

And it's hard not to see his point, or at least give all of these hyper-specific coincidences a healthy bit of side-eye. It's almost too neat and tidy. The truth seems to have been a lot more nuanced. Regardless of what thoughts were swirling around in Moctezuma's mind, one thing we do know for sure, he was alarmed and curious. He needed to learn more about the Spaniards and he needed to make contact. So he sends a small group of emissaries to meet with the enigmatic and dangerous figure from the east.

Cortes may have not been the feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl, but he was a snake. In the early months of 1519, the conquistadors were feeling pretty confident about their situation. They had an interpreter, the intelligent and beautiful Malinche, who the Spaniards had baptized and renamed Doña Marina. That, by the way, is the name that we'll be using for her from now on. They had also acquired native allies,

And best of all, they'd gotten a little taste of the gold and riches that the region could offer, which was a huge morale bump for the men. But Cortes still had a problem. It didn't matter how much gold the conquistadors discovered, if their expedition continued to be seen as illegal by the Spanish government, they would just be forced to hand it all over and be thrown in prison for their efforts.

So Cortes, Alvarado, and his most trusted captains devise a plan. If they created a new town, a new coastal colony in the name of the King of Spain, they would be legal overseers of that colony. That meant that they could operate on their own authority, accountable only to the King of Spain himself, and immune to any consequences the vengeful governor of Cuba might try and put upon them.

So on June 28, 1519, Cortes founded the city of Villarica de la Vera Cruz, rich town of the true cross. And with that, boom, Cortes had ostensibly full legal legitimacy to continue his expedition. The few men who resisted this coup, Cortes had flogged or hanged. One of them even had his feet cut off. Now, what happens next, you've probably heard before if you know anything about this story.

As the legend goes, Cortes assembles his men on the beach, burns his ships, and says, there's no turning back now, boys. Either we conquer this land or we die in the attempt. Well, that's actually kind of a myth.

Cortez did scuttle his ships, but not in a display of theatrics. The timber, sail canvas, rigging, and supplies were needed to construct the town he had just founded. They wouldn't do any good to anyone just anchored and rotting in the water, so he disassembled the ships and had everything brought ashore to be used in the fortification of Veracruz.

The ship-burning bit was absolutely a little storytelling flourish added by Cortez and his biographers later. It's hard to know where the truth ends and the myth-making begins. That's why we have to take everything Cortez says with a huge grain of salt. A snake masquerading as a feathered serpent. So, around this time, Moctezuma's emissaries arrive. To the conquistadors' delight, they bring loads and loads of treasure.

Cortes and Alvarado thought that they had seen gold before, but this was on a whole different level. The gifts were carried on golden plates, according to one conquistador, quote, as large as carriage wheels, end quote.

In his book Conquest, Hugh Thomas gives an inventory of all the gifts the Aztec emissaries brought to Cortes. Quote, End quote.

The Aztecs, among other things, were prolific artists. Their goldsmiths were some of the most talented in the world at the time, easily on par with anything being made in Europe, a fact even Cortes had to acknowledge. Quote, So realistic in gold and silver that no smith in the world could have done better, and in jewels so fine that it is impossible to imagine with what instruments that they were cut so perfectly. End quote.

Moctezuma's plan, it seems, was to buy Cortes off. He was beginning to grasp how dangerous these strangers were, regardless of whether they were gods or not, and he hoped that the Spaniards would be satisfied with this heap of treasure and just go away. Not only that, they would be so awed and humbled by the wealth Moctezuma could just casually give away that all ideas of moving inward towards the Aztec capital would be abandoned. It was a power move, essentially.

Well, Moctezuma did not know Cortes. He did not know Alvarado. And he did not know the men who'd sailed halfway around the world to earn a fortune. These gifts only succeeded in whetting their appetites for more. The conquistadors realized that if the emperor could just give this much away, how much more gold was hidden away at this mysterious city on the lake.

So Cortes, Alvarado, Doña Marina, and 350 Spaniards set off north towards Tenochtitlan.

The route is punishing. These guys suffered every imaginable discomfort. Malaria, dysentery, heat stroke, jungle rot. It is awful. Their Tabasco guides take them deeper and deeper into the interior, and they cross mountain ranges, rivers, and valleys. The steel armor the conquistadors wear in that heat, in full sunlight, can reach 200 degrees, scalding hot. It'll burn your fingertips off.

So the Spaniards quickly learned to adopt the light, cotton armor the Mesoamericans favored. It was breathable and offered a decent amount of protection, nothing compared to being encased in steel plate, but you can't hike through jungles and mountain passes with that on.

And it's worth noting that as greedy and as violent as the conquistadors were, it's hard not to admire the audacity of these adventurers. But you have to remember, they had no idea what they were walking into. At this time, they didn't realize that Mexico was part of a larger continent called North America. They thought it was just an especially big island off the coast of China. These were not moral men, but they were brave.

That bravery would be tested very soon as Cortes and his men entered a kingdom called Tlaxcala, which happened to be the greatest enemy of the Aztecs. They despised Moctezuma and the lords of Tenochtitlan. Cortes, always the savvy politician, realized that he could use this.

Initially, the Tlaxcalans resist, but after a short battle, the Spanish defeat them. It wasn't a cakewalk, though. One Spaniard said, quote, they put so much fear into us that many of us asked for confession, end quote.

But the Spanish do win, and after the battle, Cortes gathered up 17 of the prisoners and had their thumbs cut off. Then he sends them back to their rulers as a message. Well, message received. Before long, Tlaxcala has pledged its support, and Cortes has an army of native warriors at his back. From what we can tell, many of the Mesoamericans did seem to believe that Cortes and his men were gods or demigods at this time.

According to one soldier in the expedition, they, quote, called us Tules, which is their name for both their gods and evil spirits, end quote. They were especially fascinated with Pedro de Alvarado's bright red hair, which reminded them of the radiance of the sun. They immediately started referring to him as Tonatia, which was one of their sun gods.

The arrogant Alvarado probably loved this. But divinity aside, the Tlaxcalans realized that this Spaniard Cortes is a dynamic shifting agent of change in the region. And maybe with his help, they could finally overthrow their old enemies, the Aztecs. So with these new allies, thousands and thousands of them, Cortes continues onward towards Tenochtitlan.

But standing between him and Moctezuma City on the lake, there was a very different city. It's called Cholula. Yes, again, like the hot sauce. There are a lot of hot sauce names in this story. Cholula is the Mecca of the Aztec Empire. It's not as big or as magnificent as Tenochtitlan, but it's very important because at the center of this city, there's a massive pyramid that's remarkable for two reasons.

Reason number one, at this time, the pyramid at Cholula was the largest pyramid in the world, even bigger than the Egyptian pyramids at Giza. Just try and wrap your head around that because I can't. Reason number two, this pyramid is dedicated to the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl. Now, if you remember, that's the god that everybody thinks Cortes is. So Cholula rolls out the red carpet and the conquistadors enter the city.

Cortes, or Quetzalcoatl as some of the locals think, is taken up to the top of this massive, indescribably huge pyramid. And he gets to look out across Cholula at the 430 smaller pyramids and towers dotting the city. Even Cortes can't help but get a little choked up at the sight of it. He says, quote, it was more beautiful than anything in Spain, end quote. But as the conquistadors stay in Cholula, they start noticing something really weird.

There are barely any women or children around. This is a city of 10,000 people and it seems to be only occupied by warriors. So Doña Marina, Cortes' interpreter, strikes up a conversation with an occupant of the city. And this person warns Doña Marina that she has to leave now, to get out, because Moctezuma has set a trap for the Spaniards and she should leave and save herself.

But Doña Marina was ride or die loyal to Cortes. This was a man who'd raised her up from an enslaved dishwasher. Also, they were having a sexual relationship. I'm sure that helped a little bit. But anyway, she was not going to betray the Spaniards. So after hearing of this plan, she runs straight to Cortes and tells him. He's intrigued, but he wants proof. So he has Alvarado round up a pair of priests and has them tortured within an inch of their life.

They confirm that Moctezuma had set this trap, and it was supposed to happen sometime in the next few days. The Spaniards, apparently, were to be captured, killed, or sacrificed. Cortes had heard enough. He rounds up all of the nobles in the city of Cholula, and once they're all in the same room, the conquistadors bar the doors. They draw their swords and load their crossbows. Cortes turns to the terrified nobles and says something to the effect of, quote,

Back in Spain, where I come from, we have a punishment for betrayal. And that punishment is death. The conquistadors butcher the unarmed nobility of Cholula. It's a massacre. And it's not a quick process either. It apparently took about two hours to kill them all. After that, Cortes lets his army of indigenous allies into the city and Cholula is sacked and destroyed. The Great Pyramid burns for two days straight.

Back in Tenochtitlan, the Emperor Moctezuma hears that Cholula, the religious epicenter of the empire, had been wiped off the map. In that horrifying moment, he realizes that this Cortes could not possibly be Quetzalcoatl. What god would destroy his own temple? If they were gods, they weren't Aztec gods. This was something else entirely. Rising above the burning ruin of Cholula, the Conquistador Sea of Volcano,

It's a huge cinder cone, which the locals called Popocopetl, or the hill that smokes. In the days after the sack of Cholula, smoke and ash are just pouring into the sky, quote, like an arrow, according to one conquistador. It must have looked incredible. Cortes and his men certainly thought so. They'd never seen a volcano in their lives. So the Spaniards send one of their men up to the summit to check it out.

He gets as close to the top as he can stand it, but it's so hot that his clothes literally catch on fire. He quickly pats out the flames and he looks out over the landscape to the north. In that moment, from the top of that volcano, the Spaniards get their first glimpse of Tenochtitlan. In his own words, that man saw, quote, "...another world of great cities and towers and a sea."

and in the middle of it, a very great city. End quote. Just 50 miles in the distance, he could see the massive Lake Texcoco, and glittering like a jewel in its center, the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. They had finally arrived.

Well, that brings part one of this story to a close. In part two, we're going to take a look at the explosive confrontation between the conquistadors and the Aztec Empire. That episode will be coming very, very soon.

But before I let you go, just a few updates and some general housekeeping stuff. The show is on Twitter now. So if you'd like updates on future episodes, visual and photo references for previous episodes, and a semi-daily dose of like interesting historical facts, just go ahead and give us a follow.

And lastly, if you're enjoying the show and you're liking these stories and this content, please remember to rate and review and of course subscribe. And I love getting feedback. So if you have any constructive criticism or just some nice words for the show, I'd love to hear from you. This has been Conflicted. Thanks for listening.

I'm Ken Harbaugh, host of Burn the Boats from Evergreen Podcasts. I interview political leaders and influencers, folks like award-winning journalist Soledad O'Brien and conservative columnist Bill Kristol about the choices they confront when failure is not an option. I won't agree with everyone I talk to, but I respect anyone who believes in something enough to risk everything for it. Because history belongs to those willing to burn the boats. Episodes are out every other week, wherever you get your podcasts.

guests.