The City Of Dreams: The Aztec Conquest Part 2
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$45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes. See details. 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 part two of episode seven, The City of Dreams.

If you haven't listened to part one yet, I would recommend you go do that, unless you like starting stories in the middle, in which case, more power to you, I guess. When we last left off, Hernan Cortes and his expedition had just evaded a trap, supposedly set by the Aztec emperor, Moctezuma. After sacking the Great Pyramid at Cholula and burning it to the ground, the Spaniards catch their first faraway glimpse of the Aztec city on the lake, Tenochtitlan.

The morning that the Spanish arrived in Tenochtitlan, Moctezuma woke up with the sun. Huitzilopochtli had been satisfied by the previous day's sacrifices and the apocalypse had been postponed one more day. But now the high priest turned emperor had a very different kind of threat knocking on his door. The gods, strangers, invaders, whatever they were, were waiting outside the city. In the days following the sack of Cholula, Moctezuma knew the jig was up.

And he had to do a little political damage control, so he sent messengers to Cortes emphatically assuring him that this alleged trap the Spaniards had uncovered was absolutely not orchestrated by him, that it was just a lie told by his enemies. In fact, by way of profuse apology, he would be honored if Cortes and his men would come to stay inside the city of Tenochtitlan. No one really knows the truth about whether he ordered the trap at Cholula or not.

But Moctezuma had to have been frustrated. He tried to learn about the Spaniards and only found riddles and prophecies. Then he tried to buy them off, and they just kept coming. Finally, he tried to ensnare them, allegedly, in an ambush, and they thwarted that too. And now here they were, waiting to cross the causeways. So Moctezuma gets up that morning and psychs himself up.

He says prayers, he makes small precise cuts on his earlobes, and offers droplets of blood to the gods. He might have even eased his anxiety with a little downtime in his harem of 150 concubines. And once he was dressed and mentally prepared, he gathers his retinue of bodyguards, priests, elite warriors, and advisors. And he says, quote, We must make our hearts strong to bear what is about to happen, for they are at our gates. End quote.

Meanwhile, the conquistadors were trying to process what they were seeing. Tenochtitlan must have looked like a hallucination to them. One soldier remembered years later, quote, when we saw all those cities and villages built in the water and that straight level causeway leading to Tenochtitlan, we were astounded. These great towns and temples had buildings rising from the water, all made of stone, and it seemed like an enchanted vision from a fairy tale.

Indeed, some of our soldiers asked if this was not all a dream." Even from a distance, the stepped pyramids of Tenochtitlan were so bright and so blinding in the sun, some conquistadors whispered to each other that they must be covered in silver. When Doña Marina tells Cortes that they have permission to approach the city and meet Emperor Moctezuma on the causeways, he's ready. He has his soldiers dressed in full war gear. They're armed to the teeth for two reasons.

One, they want to appear as impressive and frightening as possible. They want to look like gods. And two, they don't know what they're walking into. They'd already foiled one ambush. Maybe this was just another elaborate trap. So Cortes, Alvarado, and his captains mount their horses and ride out onto the causeway, followed by several hundred Spaniards and thousands of their native allies. It must have been a frightening sight.

According to one Aztec who remembered their entrance into Tenochtitlan, quote,

and ahead of them ran their dogs panting with foam continually dripping from their muzzles." The dogs scared the Aztecs especially. The big mastiffs and warhounds that the Spanish brought with them were monsters compared to the tiny chihuahuas that the Mesoamerican peoples raised mostly for food. Plus, the Spaniards had the big lumbering cannons and the firearms and the crossbows. But what frightened the Aztecs the most were the horses.

They'd never seen anything like an armored man riding an armored horse. I mean, the conquistador cavalry were basically mounted knights, and it was a bizarre sight to the Aztecs. Some of them even thought that the Spaniards were centaurs. Cortes only had 16 horses with him at the time, but the fear that they inspired would prove invaluable. Later, he would admit, quote, "'Next to God, our greatest security was in our horses.'" End quote.

All of this was a technological tour de force, and that was very intentional on Cortes' part. Eventually, these two processions, Cortes' war party and Moctezuma's bodyguards, meet on the causeway. Cortes gets off his horse, Moctezuma steps out of his litter, and the two men look at each other. Historian Buddy Levy offers a fantastic description of the initial moments of this meeting. Quote,

As they came face to face for the first time, the two regarded each other. Cortes observed a man five years his senior, regal, perhaps softened from the indulgences of kingship, but lean and dark. His black hair cropped tight, his eyes piercing, deep and meditative. He wore a brilliant green quetzal feather headdress and an embroidered cotton cloak studded with jewels.

His lower lip was pierced with a blue stone hummingbird, his ears with turquoise, and his nose with a deep green jade stone. He moved with dignity and grace. In Cortes, Moctezuma beheld a bearded man, hardened by recent toil and battle, his white face and limbs scarred, his eyes defiant. There was an awkward pause during which Moctezuma leaned forward to smell Cortes, at which point Cortes wondered what to do next.

He would later say of the exchange, quote, I stepped forward to embrace him, but the two lords who were with him stopped me with their hands so that I should not touch him, end quote. It's always weird meeting new people. What can you say? After this awkward silence, the two begin speaking through Cortes' interpreter, Doña Marina. The true content of this conversation and the ones that follow will be debated endlessly over the next five centuries. Are you Moctezuma? Cortes asks.

"I am," the emperor replies. The two men walk down the causeway for a little bit, struggling with what to say. The normally loquacious Cortes seemed to be at a loss. So, Moctezuma breaks the tension. "You are weary. The journey has tired you, but now you have arrived. Rest now." Before he departs, Moctezuma encourages Cortes to explore Tenochtitlan while he and his men rest and regain their strength.

The Spaniards enter the city on the lake and spend the day absorbing all of its wonders. One very excited conquistador said, "...castellated fortresses, splendid monuments, royal dwelling places, glorious heights, how marvelous it was to gaze on them." They see menageries of exotic animals, jaguars, mountain lions, ocelots, parrots, boa constrictors, and crocodiles.

They're fed a bunch of delicious foods. Yucca, sweet potatoes, turkey, chili peppers, cherries, and chocolate. There was one snack that they discovered that was made from pond scum from Lake Texcoco and made into cakes. But apparently it was actually really good. One conquistador described, quote, It is spread out on floors like salt, and there it hardens.

It is made into cakes resembling bricks. And it's eaten as we eat cheese. It has a somewhat salty taste and when taken with mole sauce is delicious. End quote. The conquistadors are also served something that they called mantequilla de pobre, or poor man's butter, a bright green mash made from peppers and avocados. Yes, that's right, there's a very high probability the conquistadors filled up on guac during their first meal in Tenochtitlan.

As he roams the streets and canals of the city, Cortes is especially impressed with Tenochtitlan's main market. It was packed with people during the day, often as many as 60,000 at a time. And they sold pottery, animal skins, and jewelry. There were food stalls and goldsmiths and street performers. A few of the Spaniards even managed to sneak off with some local prostitutes. Cortes had seen so much since he arrived in Mexico. Jungles, volcanoes, and pyramids.

But even after all of that, Cortes was awestruck at this Venice of the New World. He called it, quote, the city of dreams, the most beautiful thing in the world, end quote. But as historian Buddy Levy notes, quote, Cortes was all the while thinking of how to make it his, end quote. As the Spaniards wander around the city like fawning tourists, one of them is taken to see something very special,

His guide proudly shows him a huge structure, a colossal rack of human skulls, 163,000 of them, all victims of ritual sacrifice. Now, that number is believed to be massively inflated, but it was certainly in the thousands, well beyond counting.

Once the rose-tinted glasses wear off and the guacamole coma subsides, the conquistadors see the extent of the role that sacrifice played in Aztec society. They see captives, women and children among them, held in cages waiting to be killed. They see priests wearing flayed human skin like cloaks. Oh yeah, for real. And at this magnificent market, they see vendors selling human arms and legs for consumption, like cuts of meat.

Now, I'm going to hit the pause button there real quick. Now, when you hear the word cannibalism, everyone tends to go, yep, they're demons, and all sympathy goes right out the window. But let's just pump the brakes for a second and talk about this facet of Aztec life. It is true that the Aztecs practiced cannibalism, but it was not purely for subsistence. They weren't farming humans for food like cattle. In Aztec culture, the consumption of human flesh was a religious ceremony.

After a captive had been sacrificed, the best cuts of their bodies, usually the thighs, were removed and eaten ritualistically by the Aztec nobility. From what we understand, it was a way of honoring the payment given by that person, the offering of their life to keep the sun in the sky for another day and delay the end of the world. But naturally, all of this religious significance is completely lost on the conquistadors. They look at the Aztec gods and see literal Satan,

Remember, Cortes and his men are extremely, zealously Catholic. So in this moment, you have two incredibly potent religions from thousands of miles away suddenly crashing into one another. But Cortes keeps his cool. Human sacrifice in Mexico was not a revelation to the Spaniards. They'd seen it from the very second that they landed on the coast, and they had tried to put a stop to it whenever they could. But at this point, Cortes is in the benevolent,

conversion stage. He wants to turn the Aztecs away from these, quote, demonic idols and towards Christian monotheism. And this is important. If he could deliver this beautiful, wondrous city to the king of Spain and create good Christian subjects for the crown, his rewards would be astronomical. But he's not an idiot. He knows that he's a guest with a few thousand friends in a city of 200,000 people.

So he decides, for now, to proceed with a light touch. Cortes and his captains are taken to meet the Emperor Moctezuma in a formal setting. And this is the meeting that causes historians to get into fisticuffs. Because we don't really know what happened, but paradoxically, the content of this meeting influences the course of events in a huge way. What apparently happened at this meeting is what Cortes says happened at this meeting. We never got the Aztec side of the story.

Which is frustrating, because in the Spanish accounts, Moctezuma's behavior makes absolutely zero sense. So at this meeting, Cortes represents himself not as a god, but as an ambassador of the king of Spain. Which is true. He says he has come to bring the Aztecs into that empire and secure their loyalty and fealty to the Spanish crown. Wow, okay, very direct, Cortes, bold move.

You'd think Moctezuma would chafe at this. You'd think he'd have Cortes seized, imprisoned, or executed for the audacity of the suggestion. But according to Cortes, Moctezuma says, quote,

End quote.

According to Cortes, Moctezuma was so awed by the conquistadors that he gave his empire over to Cortes right then and there, that he acknowledged freely the authority of a king that he had never met, who ruled a land he had never heard of. Historians seem to think that Moctezuma's words were just not interpreted correctly, that he was speaking in metaphors and flowery language, and an offer of hospitality was mistaken by Cortes as one of submission.

But whatever the case, Moctezuma did not display strength at this meeting, and Cortes had a nose for human weakness.

Emboldened, he starts throwing his weight around. He asks to see the temple of Huitzilopochtli, the god of war and sacrifice, which was a tremendous honor and privilege. Moctezuma is a little taken aback, but he politely agrees. They get up there and Cortes notices that the walls are almost black with layers of dried blood, three inches thick in some places, and the stench of death is everywhere. Revolted, he turns to Moctezuma and says, quote,

I do not understand how such a great lord and wise man as you are has not realized that these idols are not gods, but bad things called devils. Please allow us to place our sign of the cross here, as well as a picture of the Virgin Mary, and you will see how afraid your gods will be. End quote. Moctezuma is appalled. Quote, Had I known that you would say such dishonorable things, I would not have shown you my gods.

Despite this testy exchange, Cortes keeps pushing and pushing. And finally, he hatches a plan. Cortes the gambler was about to roll the dice yet again. So Cortes requests another meeting with the annoyed Moctezuma.

Maybe the latter thought that he was going to get an apology. Instead, Cortes, flanked by Alvarado and 30 armed men, stormed the throne room. He stands over the dumbfounded emperor and tells him, quote,

Initially, Moctezuma tells Cortes to go F himself. One of the conquistadors who's looking out for Moctezuma's guards angrily whispers, quote,

This moment is massively important. As historian Buddy Levy puts it, quote,

Hernan Cortes' brazen, bloodless coup was perhaps the most audacious and astonishing takeover in the annals of military history. Deviously and deceitfully, Cortes had played on Moctezuma's trust, generosity, and hospitality, and then struck from within. End quote. Cortes now had the emperor on a puppeteer's string, and he moved fast to crush any dissent.

He assembled 15 of the most powerful lords in Tenochtitlan, including Moctezuma's son, and had them burnt alive in a public square.

The citizens of Tenochtitlan could only weep at this astonishing act of cruelty their emperor had ostensibly permitted. The conquistadors stay in Tenochtitlan for the next six months, and Moctezuma develops what some modern experts have identified as full-blown Stockholm Syndrome. He surrenders to his more irrational, paranoid, and superstitious delusions about Cortes.

that this Spaniard was some mix of prophecy, God, and invader. He just completely gives up. But oddly, Moctezuma and Cortez develop a warmth between each other during this time. Cortez rarely lets the emperor out of his sight, and the two spend tons of time together in some kind of twisted, parasitic friendship.

They play board games together. Alvarado likes to join in these games too, and whenever the red-haired enforcer gets caught cheating, Moctezuma laughs and scolds him. They all go to local sports events together. They sail the waters of Lake Texcoco together on pleasure cruises. Moctezuma even gives a few of his daughters away to Cortez and Alvarado as mistresses. It's this bizarre wolfpack camaraderie that's just the saddest thing in the world.

Because while Moctezuma thinks Cortes is his friend, the manipulative Spaniard's affection was conditional. The emperor had to be a good little political prop if he wanted to stay alive. Everything seemed to be going pretty well for Cortes. He had the emperor wrapped around his finger. His men were making inventory of all the gold in the city for seizure and delivery to Spain. A shrine to the Virgin Mary had even been erected on the top of the main temple. Things were going according to plan.

But then Cortes gets some very bad news from the coast. An armada of 18 warships had landed at Veracruz, and the town was crawling with soldiers. Spanish soldiers. The vengeful governor of Cuba had sent a military force to put an end to Cortes' rogue expedition, clap him in chains, and most likely execute him. All of Cortes' careful planning was about to unravel. ♪

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One of the things that seemed to really define Hernan Cortes as a person was his ability to improvise under intense pressure. Time after time, he displayed a talent for adaptability and creative thinking in the face of existential threats. So when he hears that the governor of Cuba, the man who he'd basically given the middle finger to that day on the docks, has sent an army after him to bring him home, he knows he can't stay in Tenochtitlan. He has to go meet this challenge head on.

He immediately gathers up a majority of his conquistadors and native allies and departs for the coast. But before he leaves, he tells his friend, Pedro de Alvarado, his second-in-command, that it is his responsibility to hold their position in Tenochtitlan with a small number of men, and especially important, to keep Moctezuma under guard at all times.

Sources say that before Cortez left, he also met with Moctezuma to tell him that he was leaving. And the two men reportedly hugged one another, suggesting that after six months of constant companionship, their friendship wasn't as fake as Cortez would have liked to admit. And with that, he races back to meet the threat on the coast at the town he founded, Veracruz.

The punitive force from Cuba was four times the size of the one Cortes had at his disposal. But as he and his men hike through the jungles, rivers, and swamplands, he has time to formulate a plan. On the night of May 28, 1520, it was pouring rain at the town of Veracruz, a town now controlled by Spaniards who had come to capture Cortes and put an end to his rogue expedition.

That night, in the midst of a heavy downpour, these men realize they're under attack by Cortez's soldiers. Confident in their superior firepower, they go to return fire with the cannons, but for some reason, they can't shoot them. They can't fire them. The cannons have been stuffed with wax in the night by stealthy men from Cortez's camp, so these guys go to jump on their horses, but the saddles just slide off and they fall into the mud. Cortez's men had cut the straps in the night.

These creative, tactical choices allow Hernan Cortes to completely incapacitate this enemy force from Cuba. In a matter of hours, Cortes had creatively and decisively eliminated the threat. But here's the best part. Cortes had just quadrupled his force. He tells these men about the riches waiting for them in Tenochtitlan, and they are all immediately on board with his leadership.

He absorbs these new recruits and now has over 1,200 Spanish mercenaries at his command. Cortes had about two seconds to enjoy this windfall before bad news found him again. First, he learns that the second he'd left Tenochtitlan, Moctezuma had been secretly sending messengers to these Spaniards from Cuba, coordinating and trying to make a deal that would lead to Cortes' capture. His friend, Moctezuma, had betrayed him. The next piece of news is even worse.

Pedro de Alvarado and his men in Tenochtitlan were surrounded and besieged by 200,000 enraged Aztecs. All hell had broken loose in the City of Dreams.

Weeks prior, Pedro de Alvarado was feeling liberated. With Cortes racing east to deal with the threat from Cuba, Alvarado was free to step out from under his friend's shadow. He was making the decisions now in Tenochtitlan. And the first decision he had to make came in the form of a request from Moctezuma himself. The puppet emperor was asking permission to hold a festival. A huge festival that they held every year to honor their gods.

It was extremely important and the entire calendar year revolved around it. Alvarado, surely with a whiff of superiority, says he will allow this. As long as there's no sacrifice at the festival. Now, this is like telling a Baptist congregation to not say the word Jesus. But Moctezuma seems to agree. But in the weeks leading up to the festival, Alvarado starts to get increasingly paranoid.

Maybe he was buckling under the weight of responsibility in Cortes' absence, but he starts seeing threats everywhere. First, one of the women who brings the conquistadors food is found hanged, and then food stops getting brought to them altogether. Alvarado smells a conspiracy. He hasn't forgotten the narrowly eluded trap in Cholula, and he gets increasingly obsessed with the idea that the Aztecs are secretly planning to murder them all.

He also gets very resentful towards Moctezuma, who didn't have nearly the same reverence for the fiery-haired second-in-command as he did for the golden boy, Cortes. Alvarado says of Moctezuma, quote, that dog who doesn't treat me as he used to, end quote. Alvarado then has three random Aztecs taken prisoner and tortures them for evidence of a plot against his tiny garrison of conquistadors.

They put burning logs on their stomachs and before long, these Aztecs are screaming about a plot to kill and sacrifice the Spaniards. In his book, Conquest, historian Hugh Thomas insists that there was very little hard evidence for any plot, but Alvarado felt in that moment the sobering reality of his situation. He was living in the middle of a strange city, surrounded by water, inhabited by people who regularly sacrificed humans and ate their bodies.

So the day of this big festival finally arrives. It's massive. It's like Mardi Gras times a billion. And the whole city is alive with activity and religious singing and dancing. At the center of this festival is a gathering of all the nobility in Tenochtitlan. The greatest scholars, priests, warriors, and advisors. The creme de la creme of Aztec society. As part of this festival, they would all dance together and play music, beating drums and blowing flutes,

They'd get drunk on pulque, which is an alcoholic drink made from the agave plant. They'd also take hallucinogenic mushrooms and try to make a connection with their gods. The dancing was beautiful, according to the Spaniards. They thought it was, quote, even better than the Zambra of the Moors, end quote. It was a joyous event, a celebration. But in the midst of all this joy and dancing, the nobles of Tenochtitlan, some 2,000 people, hear the doors of the temple slam shut.

Then they hear a single word shouted by a voice they knew very well. Quote, mueran, or let them die. They see Alvarado and his men encircling the room, armored head to toe, brandishing swords and shields and lances.

According to one Aztec source who remembered what happened next, "They surrounded those who danced. They went among the drums, and they cut off the arms of the one who beat the drums, and afterwards his neck and his head flew off, falling far away. They pierced them all with iron lances, and they struck with iron swords. Of some they slashed open the back, and the entrails fell out. Of some they split their heads, and they hacked their heads to pieces."

They ran everywhere and searched everywhere. They invaded every room, hunting and killing. End quote. A Spanish priest who was there remembered later, quote, The blood of the chieftains ran like water. It spread out slippery and a foul odor rose from it. End quote. After this massacre, Alvarado, covered in blood, triumphantly says to his men, quote, He who begins the battle wins the battle. End quote.

Immediately following this surprise attack, Tenochtitlan explodes. The Aztecs freak the hell out. And rightfully so. Alvarado had just decapitated their social structure. Almost every educated and powerful person in the city had just been hacked apart on their holiest, most sacred day.

The conquistadors are attacked as they march back to Moctezuma's palace. Stones, arrows, and darts rain down on them. Alvarado is hit in the head by a stone and starts bleeding profusely. He makes it back to the palace and grabs Moctezuma, saying, quote, see what your people have done to me, end quote. Moctezuma says, quote, Alvarado, if you had not begun it, my men would not have done this. You have ruined yourselves and me also, end quote.

At this point, the palace is surrounded. The doors are barricaded and the conquistadors, likely exhausted from just butchering 2,000 unarmed people at a dance party, are realizing they made a huge mistake. An Aztec ringleader outside the palace screams so loudly that they can hear him, quote, "'If you do not free Moctezuma soon, you will be properly killed and then cooked with chocolate. We shall do this because you seized our Moctezuma and touched him with your filthy hands.'"

Alvarado draws a dagger and he holds it to Moctezuma's throat and he tells him to call the mob off. The emperor sadly agrees to do this. He goes outside and says, "Oh Mexica, hear. We are not the equal of the Spaniards. Let battle be abandoned. Let the arrow and shield be stilled." The mob, stunned into silence, slowly disperses.

For them, their emperor might as well have died right there. The once powerful high priest was, they could see, a shadow of his former self. It broke their hearts and it made them very angry. As Cortes rides back into Tenochtitlan a few weeks later, he finds a ghost town. No one comes out to greet him. The massive city on the lake is eerily silent.

He's followed by over a thousand conquistadors, most of whom are seeing this city of dreams for the first time. But all the splendor and bustling activity they had been told about on the way had completely evaporated. The Aztecs were in mourning for their slaughtered nobility. Cortes storms into Moctezuma's palace and he finds his best friend Alvarado exhausted and starving. He demands to know what happened and Alvarado tells him the truth.

The fear about an attack, the festival, the massacre, everything. Cortes says, quote, but they tell me that they asked your permission to hold the ceremony and the dances, end quote. Alvarado realizes he has no leg to stand on. He triggered a catastrophic falling out between the Aztecs and the Spaniards. As one conquistador later said, quote, bad became worse, end quote. But Cortes can't bring himself to punish his friend.

He loves him like a brother. Instead, his fury turns to Moctezuma, who he'd learned had recently collaborated with his enemies from Cuba. Moctezuma tries to speak to Cortes, but the Spaniard won't even look at him. Quote, Why should I be moderate to a dog who had secret relations with my enemies and does not even give us anything to eat? End quote.

The Aztec emperor falls into a deep depression. The Stockholm Syndrome relationship with Cortes had broken him into a thousand pieces. He had been the ruler of a powerful empire, the most beautiful city in the western hemisphere, and now he was a glorified pet. He had to have been wondering how things had gotten to this point. One compromise and concession after another.

By this time, the mourning period had ended in Tenochtitlan, and the city was coming alive again with a burning anger for the Spaniards. The leaders of the Aztec resistance had wide open eyes. These were not gods. They were just cruel men from far away who'd come to steal their wealth and spit on their religion. And it was all because of Moctezuma, who they called, quote, that whore of the Spaniards, end quote.

One of the resistance leaders said, quote, Does he think that he can call us to fight for the empire which he has abandoned out of fright? Would you not want to obey him? Because already he is no longer our monarch, and indeed we must give him the punishment which we give to a wicked man. End quote. The Aztecs surround the palace again, and the Spaniards and their allies are trapped inside. Cortes is furious. He wanted to deliver Tenochtitlan without violence to the king of Spain. Quote,

I would sooner be cut to pieces than leave this city. End quote. But Alvarado and his captains convince their leader that it's over. They need to leave. So Cortes tells his men to start melting down all the treasure that accumulated into compact bars for transport. All in all, it ended up being eight tons of gold and silver. But Cortes the gambler has one last card left to play.

He sins for Moctezuma. The emperor couldn't even be bothered. He responded, Quote, Quote, Quote,

That is not the answer Cortes wants. So the Spaniards haul the emperor up and take him out to the balcony of his palace to address the screaming mob outside.

Moctezuma reluctantly begins to speak and is immediately pelted with a hail of stones and projectiles. His people had lost all confidence in him. Many hated him for letting Cortes and his butchers into their sacred city. They don't see anything worth saving in this man. Moctezuma is hit three times in the chest and the head before the Spaniards raise their shields and take him back into the palace. Moctezuma II, emperor of the Aztecs and lord of Tenochtitlan,

died alone and afraid the very next morning. Cortes insisted later that the emperor had died from the wounds his own people had inflicted upon him. But Aztecs who later found his body said he was riddled with stab wounds, ostensibly made by Spanish daggers. Both stories are plausible. At that point, unable to pacify his own people, he'd outlived his usefulness to Cortes. It is absolutely possible that the conquistadors decided to finish their puppet off rather than care for his wounds.

At this point, Cortes and his men realize they have no choice but to make a break for it, to fight their way out of Tenochtitlan and make it to the safety of their native allies. So they load up all the gold, strap on their armor, and they run. The Aztecs had anticipated this. They demolished parts of nearly all five of the causeways to prevent the Spanish from escaping. All the causeways are impassable, except for one.

Once the Aztecs realize the Spaniards are trying to leave, the city turns into a hornet's nest. It's a bloody, violent retreat. Any Spaniards who are too slow get captured and dragged off to be sacrificed. Cortes is leading the front of the column and Alvarado is leading the rear. And as the conquistadors retreat, they're firing cannons into the masses of Aztecs, ripping dozens of people apart at a time, but the warriors just keep coming.

Their ammunition for their muskets and crossbows quickly run out, and it just turns into an all-out brawl.

The conquistadors manage to break out of the city and get on to the last remaining causeway, the bridge connecting the city to the shores of Lake Texcoco. By this point, the entire city is after them. The waters of the lake are swarming with canoes and boats. Warriors are firing arrows and slinging rocks. As one Spaniard said, quote, The whole lake was so thick with canoes that we could not defend ourselves. A great crowd of Aztecs charged down on us to kill and wound our men who could not help one another.

And most disastrously, all the gold and silver ingots that the Spaniards had collected spill and scatter across the causeways and fall into the lake, vanishing into the depths.

Cortes can only watch as his fortune disappears in the chaos of the retreat. The canal was soon choked with the bodies of men and horses. They filled the gap in the causeway with their own drowned bodies. Those who followed crossed to the other side by walking on the corpses. The conquistadors fight their way out of the city, across the lake, and into the surrounding countryside for two whole days.

At one point, Cortes personally leads a cavalry charge that drives the Aztecs back, and he loses two fingers in the process. They manage to limp back to the friendly territory of their indigenous allies in Tlaxcala. In the end, 870 Spaniards are dead, thousands of their native allies are dead, and their gold and silver is at the bottom of the lake. Alvarado, covered in cuts and bruises but alive, searches for Cortes in the aftermath of the retreat.

He finds his friend lying on a cot with a fractured skull, two crushed fingers, and completely unresponsive. Cortez had fallen into a coma. ♪

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.

La Noche Triste, or the Night of Sorrows as the Spaniards called it, had been a complete disaster. Cortes' departure for the coast had destabilized his hold over the city, and Alvarado's massacre during the festival had triggered a violent endgame that could only result in their expulsion from Tenochtitlan.

When Cortez wakes up from his coma a week later, wracked by fever and throbbing headaches, he learns the full extent of the disaster. A few days later, his men place a letter in front of him. It had been signed by nearly all of them. Shivering from fever, stinging from cuts and lacerations, he reads this petition. It says, quote,

"We ask and beg your excellency, and if necessary, demand, that you leave this city with all the army and set off for Veracruz." It goes on to say that they expected Cortes to compensate them all financially for this disastrous expedition into a hostile empire. After the horrors of La Noche Triste, everyone just wants to go home. Cortes calmly sets the letter down and asks to be left alone. Then he begins writing.

The wordsmith wasn't whipped yet. He was going to squeeze every last drop of charisma from his mangled body and make his case. Finally, he stands in front of them and delivers a speech. Quote, What nation of those who have ruled the world has not once been defeated? What famous captain, I say, ever went home because he had lost a battle or been driven out of some town? Not one, certainly, for if he had not persevered, he would not have conquered or triumphed.

Victories are not won by the many, but by the valiant. Fortune favors the bold. End quote. Something about his delivery, his words, or just the look in his eyes won the Spaniards over. They agreed to stay and finish the job. By hook or by crook, Tenochtitlan would be theirs. And the Tlaxcalans, the native allies, pledged to stand with them as well. Quote, We have made common cause together, and we have common injuries to avenge.

Without the support and help of these allies, Cortes and his men would have all died or starved. According to one Spaniard, without them, Back at the city on the lake, the Aztecs were starting to pick up the pieces after the Spanish occupation.

Their emperor was dead, their upper classes were decimated to near extinction, their idols were in ruin, and their gods were angry. But at least the Spaniards, the false gods, were gone. But just as the Aztecs are starting to cobble together some sense of normalcy in the weeks after La Noche Triste, their bodies start to fall apart. Huge portions of the population become afflicted by a mysterious illness. Quote,

End quote.

The long causeways and deep waters of Tenochtitlan had protected the Aztecs for centuries, but they were utterly defenseless against smallpox. The Spaniards had unwittingly brought that deadly disease with them into the heart of Mesoamerica. The native peoples of North America were no strangers to disease. They had dysentery, malaria, syphilis, skin diseases, brain diseases, every kind of affliction under the sun.

but they had no immunity to smallpox. And it rips them to pieces. The Spaniards had deployed a chemical weapon against the Aztecs without even knowing it. 40% of Tenochtitlan's population will die of this disease over the course of three months.

Cortes, slowly healing from his wounds, starts to brainstorm on how he can possibly besiege a massive city like Tenochtitlan. His previous plan, infiltration and manipulation, had crumbled to pieces along with the psyche of Moctezuma. He realizes that to bring the City of Dreams to its knees, he has to control the water surrounding it.

So he sets his engineers to work on constructing a small fleet of compact warships called brigantines. They're not big, only 40-50 feet long. Sailboats, essentially. But their thick hulls will be able to roll over the Aztecs' fragile canoes. His plan is to build brigantines in the safety of allied territory, then disassemble them and carry them over land to the banks of Lake Texcoco.

In the meantime, more and more Spanish soldiers are arriving from the Caribbean colonies. Word has spread of Cortes' lucrative discoveries in the interior, and his force has swelled considerably. Alvarado and the rest of the gang, the survivors of La Noche Triste, have healed both physically and psychologically. But most importantly, the Aztecs are losing allies one by one.

There's this common perception that Cortes and his fellow Spaniards overthrew the Aztec Empire by force of arms alone, that their European weapons, technology, and tactics were so advanced that their victory was a foregone conclusion. Well, that idea of European exceptionalism is just not accurate at all.

In reality, by the merit of their presence alone, the Spaniards had triggered a civil war. Remember, the Aztecs were despised by many of their vassal states, and the second that a destabilizing element was introduced into the equation, it gave them a figurehead to rally around for the purpose of destroying the cruel, unquenchable gods of Tenochtitlan. Ultimately, Cortes wasn't a battering ram, he was a doorstop.

a convenient wedge between the fragile tensions in the region that allowed an insurrection to detonate in the heartland of the Aztecs.

When Cortes and his small but replenished force of conquistadors marches back towards the valley of Mexico and Tenochtitlan in the spring of 1521, they're backed by 20,000 native allies. The army was so huge that according to historian Buddy Levy, if you were to stand in one spot as it marched past, it would have taken three hours until the very last man marched past you. This coalition arrives on the shores of Lake Texcoco and Cortes puts his plan into motion.

He has 13 of the brigantines, the gunboats, and they're going to sail into the lake and keep the Aztecs from leaving the city by water. They also serve the purpose of choking off food supplies to Tenochtitlan. And these gunboats are reinforced by 16,000 allied native canoes. And Cortes leads this armada himself, and the ships work like a charm. They roll over the Aztec boats and smash them to splinters. And the bronze cannons tear the warriors to shreds.

According to one Aztec source, quote, so many were killed that all of the Great Lake was so stained with blood that it did not look like water, end quote. The second part of Cortes' plan was to gain control of the causeways, the bridges that connect Tenochtitlan to the shores of the lake. And Cortes sends divisions of conquistadors, aided by native allies, to slowly move down the causeways and press the Aztec defenders tighter and tighter back into the heart of the city.

In May 1521, Cortes tightens this noose. Alvarado destroys the primary aqueduct that brings fresh water into the city, and the defenders are forced to drink the brackish salt water directly from the lake. Dehydration and dysentery set in. According to one Aztec who survived the siege, quote, "...there was no fresh water to drink, only stagnant water and the brine of the lake. The only food was lizards, swallows, corn cobs, and the salt grasses of the lake."

End quote. But there was one thing that the Aztecs would not do. One Spaniard remembered, quote, End quote.

Even when they were literally starving to death, the Aztecs would only practice cannibalism for religious purposes, not survival. But the Aztecs fight incredibly bravely. The elite warrior class of the city belonged to special orders called the Eagle Knights and the Jaguar Knights. They dressed up in elaborate costumes that featured eagle feathers and jaguar skins and these like flaring, intimidating headdresses. One conquistador testified later, quote,

To defend the head, they wore things like heads of serpents or tigers or lions or wolves. And the man's head lies inside the animal's jaws as though it were devouring him." These warriors carry wooden clubs studded with blades of obsidian or black volcanic glass. And they're incredibly sharp, but they're also very fragile because these weapons were ultimately designed to maim, not to kill. In war, the Aztecs' usual goal was to capture enemies for sacrifice, not kill them outright.

but the Spanish weapons were made of steel, specifically engineered for maximum lethality. This capture versus kill dynamic was the root of the lopsided disparity between the efficacy of the Aztecs and the Spaniards in combat. The Aztecs were also not very organized.

You know how in like martial arts movies, the hero will be attacked by one enemy at a time. He punches one guy out and the others just kind of stand around waiting for their turn to fight him. And so we roll our eyes a bit and say, well, if they just rush him, it'd be over. Well, the Aztecs fought like that one rank at a time. All the Spanish have to do is kill one rank and then wait for the next line of guys to walk up, kill them and so on and so forth.

Some conquistadors said they killed so many men in this way that they could barely lift their arms after fighting. As long as they had strength to push a sword into a human body, they could keep up the fight. But it was still a psychologically taxing experience. The Aztecs were passionate fighters, and Cortes even remembered their, quote, "...shouting and screaming that made it seem like the world was coming to an end." End quote.

The siege of Tenochtitlan devolves into a street-by-street, house-by-house bloodbath. To conquer the Aztecs, Cortes had to transform and disfigure the face of the beautiful city he had coveted so intensely. The causeways and canals are filled in with rubble to make them easier to cross. The houses and temples are burned, block by block, to remove cover for the defenders. This process takes two and a half months.

And as the Aztecs get pushed further and further back, confined to smaller and smaller pockets of the city, the conquistadors start to lose control over their allies. These native warriors loathed the Aztecs, and that hatred was boiling over in gruesome fashion. Unarmed Aztec men, women, and children are butchered by the Ploxcolans.

Many of them are sacrificed, revenge for all the generations of captives who've been carted off to die atop the pyramids of Timotitlan. Their ferocity disturbed even the battle-hardened conquistadors. Cortes admitted, quote, There was not one man among us whose heart did not bleed at the sound of these killings. End quote. Finally, on August 13th, 1521, the Aztecs capitulate.

They're led by a nephew of Moctezuma, a man named Cuauhtemoc. And he personally surrenders to Cortes saying, quote, Ah, Captain, I have done everything in my power to defend my country and keep it out of your hands. And since my luck has not been good, I beg you to end my life. That would be just. And with that, you can finish with the Aztec kingdom, since you have destroyed and killed my city, end quote.

But Cortes has no patience for flowery exchanges right now. He quickly turns the conversation to the thing that was on every single Spaniard's mind. Where is the gold? He asks, referring to the eight tons of treasure they'd lost during La Noche Triste. You forced us to drop it here, and now you will produce it all. All Moctezuma's nephew could do was shrug. The gold was gone. No one could find it.

Well, the Spanish search high and low for it. According to one observer, quote, "...even in women's nostrils they looked for it." End quote. Finally, Cortes decides he's done playing games. He orders Cuauhtémoc, the last emperor of the Aztecs, tied to a pole. And the Spanish pour oil over his feet and set them on fire. Cuauhtémoc is able to endure this torture for a few minutes before he finally breaks. And he tells Cortes the truth.

To quote a passage from Buddy Levy, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote

That gold and silver is never fully recovered. The lion's share of gold they do find is allocated to the King of Spain, Cortes, Alvarado, and the other captains. The rank-and-file men, who'd fought and bled and endured as much hardship as anyone, barely get anything. According to Hugh Thomas, quote, After those payments, the horsemen in the expedition received 80 pesos. Crossbowmen and other special forces gained between 50 and 60 pesos.

The rest, less. Everyone thought these sums were ridiculous. After all, that was a time when the purchase of a mere sword cost 50 pesos, and a crossbow, 60.

This financial outrage would be the substance of countless investigations and legal proceedings in the years that followed. Many of the juicier details we know about the conquest of Mexico come from the testimony of those disgruntled soldiers who accused Cortes of profiteering and unnecessary brutality towards the indigenous population. In his later years, Cortes wormed, bribed, or murdered his way out of any consequences related to these legal proceedings.

Two judges in his cases died of mysterious circumstances, one at Cortes' own dinner table. But in 1521, shortly after the Aztecs had surrendered, the 36-year-old Cortes looked out over the conquered lakeside metropolis he had once called the City of Dreams. All he saw now was a smoking hellscape. Quote, End quote.

Another Spaniard said, "...to go down from Veracruz to Tenochtitlan is like traveling from heaven to hell." The Aztec survivors are allowed to leave their conquered city. One Spaniard was moved by the sight. "...for three whole days and nights they never ceased streaming out, and all three causeways were crowded with men, women, and children so thin, sallow, dirty, and stinking that it was pitiful to see them."

One Aztec survivor wrote a poem about this apocalyptic defeat. Quote,

The water has turned red, as if it were dyed, and when we drink it, it has the taste of brine. We have pounded our hands in despair against the adobe walls, for our inheritance, our city, is lost and dead. The shields of our warriors were its defense, but they could not save it. End quote. The story of Cortes, Moctezuma, and the fall of the Aztec Empire is as much myth as it is history.

Sadly, the Aztecs never really got to tell their side of the story. Most of what we know about them, their religion, their practices and their motivations, even the way they looked, all come from the victorious Spaniards. As you've heard, there are some indigenous sources, but they were created after the war and in cooperation with Spanish friars, so their accuracy is not above scrutiny. So honestly, we don't know for sure how much of this happened the way the Spanish said it happened.

Cortes certainly was trying to mythologize himself as much as possible. His letters to the King of Spain are full of puffery and self-aggrandizement. He was even hesitant to give credit and praise to close friends like Alvarado. And there's one line from Cortes that's just totally hilarious because it so transparently shows his motivations. At one point, he's supposed to have assembled his men and given one of his many motivational speeches. Quote,

So, what can we take away from a story like this? A story of two violent, hyper-religious societies colliding into one another in a life-or-death struggle.

Well, it changed the world, for one. The Spanish Empire transformed the face of the Western Hemisphere. The cross-pollination of the Spaniards and the indigenous Mexica created a vibrant, multifaceted culture that endures to this day, thrives to this day. Cortes and his interpreter, Doña Marina, had a son in 1522, whom they named Martin, after Cortes' father.

Martin, or Martin Cortes, is believed to have been the first mestizo, or person of both Spanish and Mesoamerican heritage. But as to how to feel about the Aztecs and the Spaniards respectively, I mean there are no heroes in this story. The Aztecs were cruel, warlike, and murdered thousands of people in the name of their religion.

The conquistadors' arrival unleashed a tidal wave of death, disease, and displacement that snuffed out a complex, highly developed culture and opened the door to a repressive system of colonialism. It was nothing less than cultural genocide. It's a tragedy from every angle you look at it.

But for better or worse, it shaped the modern world. People tend to place a lot of importance on Christopher Columbus in regards to this era of history. But as European seafaring technology advanced, the North American indigenous civilizations were living on borrowed time. It was only a matter of time before someone found it and exploited it.

But only a man like Cortes, with such a specific mix of charisma, cruelty, and creativity, could have maneuvered so decisively and dismantled the Aztec civilization so swiftly. I'm not trying to glorify the guy. He was a monster by today's standards. But the Aztec conquest seems to be an example of right man, right place, right time.

Cortes built the settlement that would become Mexico City on the ruins of Tenochtitlan, and as the city grew, the lake slowly vanished, swallowed up by the juggernaut of urbanization. It became part of the Empire of Spain, and would remain so for exactly 300 years, until the country of Mexico was created in 1821.

The remnants of the main temple of the Aztecs, the Templo Mayor, can still be visited today, but it's hard to even imagine the city of dreams once existed in the spot shared by the loud, traffic-y streets of Mexico City. Towards the end of his life, a conquistador named Bernal Diaz remembered with fondness, and perhaps a bit of sadness, how he felt when he first laid eyes on that city rising from the lake. Quote,

It was all so wonderful that I do not know how to describe this first glimpse of things never heard of, seen, or dreamed of again. This has been Conflicted. Thanks for listening. I'm Ken Horbaugh, host of Warriors in Their Own Words, a podcast that presents the unvarnished, unsanitized truth of what we have asked of those who defend this nation.

As a country, we need these stories more than ever. Stories from Americans who have borne the battle, including 30-year-old remastered interviews with veterans from World War I recounting their time in the trenches of Europe, and with veterans from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and from our most recent conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other battlefields Americans may never have heard of. Hear their stories by listening to Warriors In Their Own Words wherever you find podcasts.