Dan Snow's History Hit - The Fall of the Aztec Empire

Episode Date: August 14, 2021

In August 1521 after a last stand on the steps of their temple buildings, the Aztec defenders of Tenochtitlan surrendered to the Spanish forces of Hernán Cortés and his Mesoamerican allies. In the aftermath of the battle, the Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlan was sacked. The Aztec empire was a large and sophisticated one stretching at its height from the Pacific coast to the Gulf of Mexico. To talk about the fall of the Aztec Empire Dan is joined by Matthew Restall Director of Latin American Studies at Penn State University. Matthew has written extensively about the Spanish conquest of south and Central America. In this fascinating interview, he challenges some of the commonly held views on how Cortés was able to achieve this feat, how the fall of Tenochtitlan was not the end of the war and the myth of Spanish superiority.

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someone explaining crypto, or switching mobile providers. Except with Fizz. Switching to Fizz is quick and easy. Mobile plans start at $17 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. Hi, everybody. Welcome to Dan Snow's History.

I'm very excited to say this is one of those rare things. It's an anniversary episode, but it's a 500th anniversary episode. On the 13th of August, 1521, after defence of their capital, they involved a last stand on the steps of their religious buildings. The Aztec defenders of Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City, surrendered to Cortes, his Spanish troops, and their Mesoamerican, their Mexican allies. What followed was the Aztec emperor was captured and their capital city was sacked. The Aztec empire had ruled over what we now think of as a fairly loose confederation of

Mexican city-states in the central valley of Mexico from around 1428 until they were defeated in 1521. At its height, this empire stretched in a non-contiguous way across much of central Mexico from the Pacific coast to the Gulf of Mexico today. Perhaps its most famous emperor, Montezuma or Moctezuma, had already been captured by the Spanish net allies at this point. And although the loss of their capital city was a fatal blow, the war and attritional struggle of conquest would go on for months and years to come. To talk about the fall of this Aztec empire in what is now central Mexico, I've got Matthew Restle. He's a historian of colonial

Latin America. He's a professor of Latin American history and anthropology at Pennsylvania State University he's the right man to talk to on this enormous 500th anniversary of one of the most important events as he points out in the last few centuries of world history the arrival of Europeans Spanish speakers in particular in North America Central, and South America would be transformative. If you want to listen to other podcasts on the Aztecs, we've got lots without the ads, available at historyhit.tv. You just go there and take out a subscription, very small subscription, and you get access to all these podcasts, nearly a thousand of them now, and all of our TV shows as well. Head over to historyhit.tv. It's like Netflix for history. You're going to absolutely

love it. I'm very glad to say one of our previous podcast contributors, Camilla Townsend, who just wrote the fantastic award-winning Fifth Son, the new history of the Aztecs. She's been on the podcast before, but she is coming on the History Hit Book Club. She'll be there in October, I think it is. We're going to be reading the Fifth Son. So if you are a subscriber to historyhit.tv, you will be able to apply for book club membership. We're opening up slowly to people. It's UK initially at first. If you want to come and hang out with us and Camilla Townsend

talking all about her new book on the Aztecs, please head to the History Hit website and upgrade your subscription to book club membership. It's a very elite group, folks. You're going to love it. But in the meantime, everyone, here is Professor Matthew Restle. Enjoy. Matthew, thank you very much for coming to the podcast on this momentous anniversary. It's a pleasure to be on it. Thank you for having me.

501 years ago, what was the understanding in the early 16th century about what might lie beyond the Caribbean islands in the south part of North America into Central America? Well, there were a few people who still clung to the idea that the next thing you'd get to, the next place you'd get to would be Asia, would be Japan and China and the Spice Islands and all the wealth there. And there was still hope that that was going to be what the mainland would turn out to be. And failing that, hopefully some slightly more settled and wealthy version of what Spaniards had found in the Caribbean islands. Was there much in the way of intelligence? Was there scouting that we're aware of? Or was this Spanish expedition heading

off into unknown territory? Not completely unknown, because for a full generation, Spaniards had been not only trying to establish settlements in the Caribbean, but they had been engaging in slave raiding expeditions throughout the circum-Caribbean. So not only on the islands, but also along the coast of the Caribbean. And you might say slave raiding expeditions. That's what this whole enterprise was all about. Well, it wasn't supposed to be. It was supposed to be about settlement. But the indigenous peoples that Spaniards found in the Caribbean, their societies were not very conducive to the kind of exploitation that Spanish colonialism involved. And so the shortcut to funding an expedition, if you like, the way to kind of make money in the short term was simply to go to another coast or another island and round up

as many people as you could and put them into the slave market, the international slave market between the Caribbean and Europe. So what is happening is Spaniards are sailing along the coasts of the mainland. And in a few cases, for example, the coast of Yucatan in southern Mexico, they see huge stone buildings. They see evidence of cities, of cities of the kind that they have not seen in the Caribbean. That generates an enormous amount of excitement. Because whether you believe that this is some part of Asia or close to Asia or somewhere completely new, the fact is that this is evidence of a settled civilization that could produce an enormous amount of wealth. And it's essentially what Europeans have been looking for ever since Columbus first sailed in 1492. Tell me about the expedition that sets off from Cuba and tell me about its leader. And also, is this an example of orders arriving from the metropolitan centre of the Spanish Empire? Or is this a classic example of

what some historians call the crumbling frontier, where local actors just take it upon themselves and without any confirmation from the top, you start to see this kind of cascading effect of territorial expansion? Yes, exactly. It's more the latter of what you said, not so much a crumbling frontier, but a slowly, gradually emerging frontier. And it's being created not from the center. These are not armies and soldiers being sent by the King of Spain from the center. They are individual actors engaging in entrepreneurial activity. So these are companies and they use the Spanish word compañía, which translates very well to the way we think of the modern word company. They are forming

companies of investors. And those who have the rank of captain are providing ships and weapons and personnel. And those at the very bottom are investing simply their lives to come along and fight. And the end goal is to settle. So the fighting is just a means to an end. It's important to understand that they're not soldiers in an army sent from Spain, that their goal is to find opportunity and to find indigenous peoples, not to kill, that in the short term may be what they think they need to do, but in the medium and long term, find indigenous peoples who can provide them with wealth, who can work for them and among whom they can settle. What that means is that the empire doesn't really yet exist. So they're not being sent by the empire. On the contrary, what the

conquistadors are doing is creating the empire and it's being created from the outside rather than from the center. And so talk to me about this man, Hernan Cortes, who does quite a bit of creating. Yeah, so I have a bit of a bug about Cortes, because he's a massive figure in history. His legend is enormous. And I think we cannot understand him or the events in which he was involved without deflating him or just working our way around him, navigating our way around him completely. Because to me, he's the gorilla in the room that just takes up way too much space and oxygen for us to see events really clearly. He happened to be in the right place at the right time in 1519 when the expedition that he had set sail from Cuba. But if we look at his life as a whole, we can see this guy is in a great general.

He's an amazing politician. But what he is able to do is make alliances with the right people and to be duplicitous at just the right moments and to rewrite the script when he needs to in order so that he himself can survive. And you have to remember, Dan, that most of the Spaniards who sail to Mexico to settle there to attack the Aztec empire, most of them die in the course of that war, two and a half years.

Not very many survive. Very few live long enough to die more or less of old age back in Spain. In fact, some historians have said Cortes was literally the only one. That's a guy who knows how to survive. And because he's not a hot head like his fellow captain, Pedro de Alvarado, because he's more concerned ultimately with saving his own skin, he actually emerges as a perfect kind of leader. Because people like Alvarado think, ah, it's okay, Cortes can be the guy who's nominally head of everything. But look what his track record in the Caribbean, in Cuba, he didn't do anything. He was just a cattle rancher. He was a notary for 15 years.

There's no evidence in his record up to that point that he's going to be the guy they can't control. And they assume that when the time comes to it, he will share the spoils of victory and they will be able to participate in everything. And he doesn't. He essentially stabs them in the back. Why? Because he's a great operator. He's that kind of politician. So is he selected for this expedition? Or is this a case of him raising one of these companies you mentioned and attracting volunteers and investments and going for it himself? Oh, he's got this complicated relationship with the governor of Cuba, a guy called Velazquez.

And he really works that guy, right? He convinces him, I'll be your man because if we find anything, and what we mentioned earlier about the Spaniards seeing evidence of Maya cities along the coast, right? They know there's something there. They don't know anything about the Aztecs, the Aztec empire yet. What Cortes says to Velazquez, if we find something, don't worry.

I will respect that you are ultimately the man who holds the license. And this is the license to be, in Spanish, an adelantado. It is the license to adelantar, to invade and conquer. And it's really important because if you have that piece of paper, it means you then have the right to go back to the crown and say, I achieved a conquest and a settlement and I had

the license and therefore I request the right to be granted the governorship to rule in the name of the crown. And the crown takes that license very seriously. So Velazquez has the license and Cortes says, don't worry, I'll be working for you. And then before the expedition sails So Velazquez has the license and Cortes says, don't worry, I'll be working for you. And then before the expedition sails, Velazquez realizes he's made a mistake. There's different stories about people whispering in his ear or him just, you know, waking up in the middle of the night going, oh my God, Cortes, that guy, you can't trust him for a minute. What have I done? And he tries to stop the expedition sailing. Our memory of this has been written by Spaniards, mostly who were creating the legend of Cortes.

So there's a great cinematic moment, which is almost certainly apocryphal, of Velazquez, you know, standing on the dock, waving his sword, come back, come back, and Cortes saying, bye, see ya. So whether we want to accept that as being true or not, that is sort of the essence of what happened. And sure enough, Cortes turns out to be completely duplicitous.

Almost immediately, he begins campaigning and machinating in order to get the Adelantado license for himself and cut Velázquez out of the picture. So Cortés arrives initially, as you've mentioned before, in the Yucatán, which we associate with the Maya. What is there when he gets there? And when does he decide to keep going north up that coast and set his attentions on central Mexico? So always with this, there's two stories. In any incident or any aspect of this history that we talk about, Dan, there's always two stories. There's the one that was established by the Spaniards and is the one we mostly accept and know. And then there's the other one which historians are still uncovering and which we are constantly kind of arguing about, which is

messier and more complicated and I think actually more interesting, but also does not always grant Spaniards the credit for knowing what they're doing. So I think the closer to the real story there is they simply don't know where they're going. All they know is the two previous expeditions who'd sailed along that coast had gone from what is now the Maya Riviera, Cozumel, right, near where Cancun eventually would be, and around the coast, around into the Gulf of Mexico, and up towards what is now the United States, but towards what becomes Veracruz. And those previous expeditions had seen more and more evidence as they sailed of cities, civilized societies. One of them, in fact, had been attacked by a huge

Maya army on a beach. I would argue the Spaniards were severely defeated. The leader of the expedition was wounded and dies of his wounds. That Spanish expedition then retreats back to Cuba immediately. So there's evidence not only of civilization, cities, these are organized armies that can give a Spanish force a really hard time. So they go in that direction. And they're encouraged to do so by the Mayas that they have encountered. Well, here's a good chance for me to ask the question from your article that everyone wants to know about. So you mentioned Maya encouragement, and that strikes me as one of the key bits of this story that often people forget.

It is a story of collaboration as well as conquest, isn't it? And the Mayas aren't the first people in that part of the world who Cortes will form arguably decisive relationships with. Yes. And I think the key thing there to remember is that indigenous peoples in this story are not passive. They're not only reacting. And because the story that we know so well, the traditional story was set by the Spaniards, therefore, indigenous peoples appear very much in kind of the supporting role, right? That they put in simple categories, like, you know, there's a kind of a good Indian, bad Indian. I'm doing scare quotes, which I realize you don't appear on the audio, but I'm not endorsing those categories.

I'm saying this is a category that Europeans use, including the English in North America, right? There's either the good Indians, these indigenous peoples who cooperate and collaborate. And then the bad ones are simply ones that engage in what we would think it was perfectly reasonable acts of resistance when you've got foreign people arriving, enslaving women and killing men and trying to force you into a colony, right? So thinking about those two categories and then unpacking those categories allows us to then place indigenous leaders in a kind of a central role, promote them if you like, to being leading actors in the story along with Spaniards. And when we look at it that way,

it changes our perception of the entire story. Now we're no longer assuming that with Spaniards. And when we look at it that way, it changes our perception of the entire story. Now we're no longer assuming that the Spaniards know what they're doing, no longer assuming that they are manipulating indigenous leaders to get what they want. Instead, we can start seeing it the other way around. And I think that's where it becomes really interesting. And that's where the story starts to make more sense. In fact, that indigenous leaders are manipulating the Spaniards in whatever way seems to make sense to them. So if you're a Maya ruler on the coast of Yucatan and these foreigners are appearing in their ships, you want them to move on. They came on the ships. Of course, they're going to go somewhere else. It doesn't make sense that they're

going to stop right there forevermore, right? Get them to move on. And if that means engaging in the kinds of treaties that they want to engage in, the kinds of rituals, which from the Spanish point of view is they accepted our sovereignty. We won. They agreed to become Christian. They accepted the sovereignty of the King of Spain and so on. So this is not actually a victory by the Spaniards. What this is, is the Spaniards being manipulated by indigenous peoples and also a certain amount of sort of wishful thinking on the part of the Spaniards, right by indigenous peoples, and also a certain amount of sort of wishful thinking on the part of the Spaniards, right? That concept is important for understanding what happens when Cortes then meets Montezuma in the heart of the Aztec empire. If we kind of get a sense of the

two mentalities and see how that plays out, several months later, Spaniards land on the coast of what becomes Mexico in April of 1519. And they're not in the center of the empire until November. That great meeting between Cortes and Montezuma is on November the 8th. And so all those months are months in which we can then unpack the Spanish version of those events in which the Spaniards are in control. Cortes is a sort of a mastermind of this extraordinary, as the Spaniards are in control. Cortez is a sort of a mastermind of this extraordinary, as the Spaniards put it, this extraordinary achievement, just a few hundred Spaniards, an empire of many millions, a story which is compelling because it's kind of a heroic one. It's one that defies credibility. It's very cinematic, but it's not true. It simply doesn't make any sense. Let's

just not look at it as the basis for like a great two hour movie and said, look at it as real history and actually an event that changed the course of human history. Human history is never the same after this. Human history for all the thousands of years that humans have lived up to this point has been one of divergence. People gradually moving to different parts of the world and not knowing about each other. And now from this point on, it's going to be convergence and there's no turning back. We are now at this point on this track towards where we are now, Dan, where everybody knows the whole planet and we're part of this one complex community. You're listen to Dan Snow's history on the 500th anniversary of

the capture of the Aztec capital, we're talking about that fateful moment. More after this. Romans, gods, Spartans, the wars of Alexander the Great's successors in incredible, entirely necessary detail. The Ancients podcast is kind of like Dan's show, except it's just ancient history. We've got the leading experts. We've got the big topics from ancient Vietnam to the fall of Rome. Subscribe to the Ancients on History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny,

you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Some things just take too long. A meeting that could have been an email, someone explaining crypto, or switching mobile providers. Except with Fizz. Switching to Fizz is quick and easy. Mobile plans start at $17 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. Speaking of this complex community, those months, as you mentioned, after Cortez lands and before he actually marches inland and meets the Aztec ruler Montezuma, what is he doing?

How is he politicking and building alliance? He is encountering a series of well-armed and well-organized city-states. And from his point of view, what he's doing is convincing them through diplomatic means and military means, because there's considerable amounts of violence, that they should accept the sovereignty of the King of Spain, accept the true faith of the religion that he's bringing, and ally with him. Essentially to abandon whatever arrangement they are in, which the Spaniards are gradually beginning to understand what we would think of as the Aztec Empire. There's this empire there.

To abandon that and instead shift their allegiance to him. That's the story according to the way that he tells it. Now, in fact, what makes more sense is for us to understand that the Spaniards don't know where they are. They have no map. No Europeans have been in here before. There is no previous knowledge. And so there are actually two things going on that they don't really want us to know about. One is they're fighting among themselves. They spend four months essentially on the beach going up and down the coast. There's all kinds of infighting. Some Spaniards kill other Spaniards. There are arrests. There are tricks played on other Spaniards to try to cut them out of what's going on. Eventually, they decide to write a letter to the king of Spain, which effectively stabs Velazquez, the governor of Cuba, in the back.

And then that is then sent back to Spain. This is before they've even marched inland at all, right? But one of the Spaniards actually betrays that betrayal by letting Velazquez know what's going on. And so Velazquez then sends ships to Spain. lets Velazquez know what's going on. And so Velazquez then sends ships to Spain. So now there's two diplomatic missions in Spain, chasing around each other and chasing the king, trying to find the king in Spain, because the Spanish monarchy is still peripatetic and is not settled in Madrid as the capital doesn't exist yet. So all that drama is going on in order for the Spaniards to be given the right to rule something that they haven't even seen yet.

They don't even know what it is. It's all this kind of wishful thinking in their head. I mean, they're right. There's something even more amazing than they could possibly imagine waiting for them. So all that is going on. While there's conflict and battle, the peoples who live on the coast mostly are Totonaks. So they're a different ethnic group than most of the people within the Aztec Empire. And they are subject to the Azte group than most of the people within the Aztec empire. And they are subject to the Aztec empire. They pay tribute to the Aztec. But the Aztecs are right there because the Totonacs are a subject state. So there are Aztec emissaries and warriors and so on in among the Spaniards from the very moment when the Spaniards arrive. So the first thing that's going on, the Spaniards are fighting among themselves. The second thing that's going on

is that the Spaniards are unaware of how much they are being manipulated by not just local indigenous leaders, but by the Aztecs themselves. than the Spaniards are about Montezuma and the Aztecs. And as a result of that manipulation, the Spaniards are drawn right into the middle of the small kingdom, if you like, controlled by the main enemies of the Aztecs in the area, who are the Tlaxcalans. And the Spaniards see that as simply part of their brilliant strategy of finding the enemies of the Aztecs and convincing them to ally with the Spaniards. But it's the other way around. The Aztecs manipulate them. So they are confronted by the Tlaxcalans. There's a series of brutal battles and Spaniards lose a lot of men. Mostly what's happening is the Spanish are getting wounded and then they're suffering infections from their wounds. And right at the point at which the Tlaxcalans, at a cost of many

of their men, could wipe out the Spaniards, they essentially sue for peace and say, okay, guys, come into the city. And the Spaniards are there for weeks while their Tlaxcalans are feeding them, tending to their wounds, the whole thing, right? A moment which, and you can predict exactly where this goes, even if you haven't read the different versions, the Spaniards are going to say, this is us brilliantly convincing them to be our allies. And later on, that mythology grows and grows to the Clash of Colons accepting Christianity, even to the battles just being wiped out of history and versions in which the Clash of Colons just simply welcome the Spaniards as bringing the true faith and freeing them from the tyranny of the Aztecs and so on. In reality, the Tlaxcalans are saying, hey, these guys put up a hell of a fight. For us to wipe

them out would have cost us an enormous number of men because it's not all about guns, germs, and steel. I would say that the guns part really should be eliminated from that formula, but steel weapons really make a big difference. They do make a big difference. So Clash Collins say, if we make these guys our allies, we can do some things here. We can really firm up our borders. We can maybe expand our control over this valley so that we don't have to worry so much about the enmity of the Aztecs who are across the mountain range in the other valley. And so that alliance that is created is absolutely crucial. But from the get-go, I think we need to flip it around and see it the opposite way from

the way in which the Spaniards have tried for 500 years to make us see it, and mostly succeeded. That's fascinating. That little throwaway comment, we should take the guns, other guns, germs, and steel, that really is interesting. So the primitive early 16th century firearms were not the decisive edge that would deliver this land into Spanish control. No, not at all. Rifles are centuries away from being invented. Pistols don't exist yet. These are very clunky weapons. They're really huge cannons that Europeans are beginning to deploy against each other. They're not part of this war yet, right? So the cannons that they do

have are small and they can be effective under certain circumstances, but they're not very practical and they're very difficult to move around. And the guns that Spaniards have are arquebuses, which take two or three minutes to load one bullet in. And in a combat situation, they're really useless, even if your powder is not wet. And this is a hot, wet part of the world where your powder gets wet very easily. So no, those guns are most useful if you grab the barrel and use it as a club. Guns really don't play a role. Steel weapons do play a role. And to some extent, the defensive armor that Spaniards have, but full armor is not that readily available. It's not very practical in very hot climates. And the Spaniards soon learn to adopt the kinds of protective clothing that the Aztecs themselves have against their own weapons.

So I would take guns out of it. Steel, keep in it. Germs is important. But really, if we're just talking about germs and steel, we're missing so much of the human element and the complexity of that and trying to understand how it is that the Spaniards end up settling in an area when, if I'm right, it is not because they achieve some superhuman conquest of a powerful civilized empire against a weak, superstitious barbarian one, right? That's what the Spaniards would have us believe. I think that's totally wrong. And we have to flip that around. And then, of course, that opens up all these other great questions, which people say to me, well, if the Spaniards didn't achieve this incredible conquest,

why are we talking in Spanish? And I'm imagining in these conversations with faculty in Mexico, why are we talking in Spanish and not in Nahuatl, in Montezuma's language? So this is less the miracle conquest and more a kind of prosaic conquest, much in the manner of other conquests that we see around the world, a conquest of logistics and diplomacy and numbers on either side, and less of this kind of magic dust that we've come to think of as Cortes possessing. Yeah, absolutely. I think of it in the context of European conquests, European imperialism and colonialism by not just the Spaniards, but Portuguese, the Dutch, the French, the British. We want to see it in that kind of context. And therefore, that also helps us to understand how that magic dust doesn't exist. And therefore, those conquests are not absolute

and immediate and permanent. They initiate a gradual, messy, violent process of attempted colonization that goes on for hundreds of years. Right. so we've got the Chachkalans and Cortes have come to some sort of agreement. Is this when they advance towards the Aztec heartland? Yes, so then they advance in towards the Aztec heartland, where they are then diplomatically received by Montezuma, by an emperor who actually has been observing them all along and gradually drawing them in because he's absolutely fascinated by them. He wants to know as much about them as he can. He has an incredible collection of libraries and zoos. If you want, he's kind of a

master museum director slash zookeeper slash provost of a university or something. Maybe that's going a little bit far, but he has a great thirst for knowledge and he wants to know as much about them as he can. And so he draws them into the heart of his empire. And is he right to do so? Well, they're not complete savages. They don't immediately turn around and attack him and start trying to take over his empire with violence. They do after six months. But for six months, they are there as his guests. Now, the story that you'll read in most of the history books is that Montezuma surrendered to Cortes

and Cortes then begins to run the empire from the inside. It's a fantastic story. It's complete nonsense. They are at the mercy of the Aztecs and they are guests of the Aztecs and they are guests of the Aztecs. An arrangement that obviously is actually kind of amazing that it lasts six months, I think, that kind of arrangement you would think would begin to break down before that. I'm always arguing against the importance of Cortes, but I think in this particular case, Cortes does take

some credit for holding the violence at bay because he understands that in reality they are guests of the emperor and yes that's not a sustainable situation they've got to try and turn the situation around but if they do it with violence there's just a couple of hundred of them and they're surrounded they're in the center of an empire of millions and tens of thousands of warriors and he knows that's a bad idea. So when does that violence break out? When he's not in the city. When he's left to go to the coast to confront another Spaniard who's been sent by the governor

of Cuba, who knows he's been betrayed, sends a fleet of ships with 1,100 men to confront Cortes. And Cortes goes down to the coast. And according to the Cortez-centric version, he brilliantly manages to convince the guy to change sides. But actually, the story I like better is a story of two brothers. One is with Cortez and one has come from Cuba. And the two brothers, there's supposed to be a face-off between two armies, but the two brothers walk across the field and one brother says, what's going on? What's been happening here? And he's like, we are in this incredible city. We've spent the last six

months in this city. It's amazing. It's all just wine, women in song. The wealth of this place is absolutely astonishing. And so the brother who's comes like, okay, so let's just join up. Yes, that's it. And then those Spaniards come back. But meanwhile, who's in charge back in Tenochtitlan? Who's in charge of the Spaniards, not the empire, is hothead Pedro de Alvarado. And so violence breaks out. The Spaniards all come back into the city. There's warfare going on. They are being attacked, killed. They know that eventually they're all going to be wiped out. And so they break out of the city in the rain in the middle of the night in an event called La Noche Triste, the tragic night or the sad night. And that's the name we know it by because that's the name the Spaniards called it, because most of the Spaniards are killed in that escape. Now, very recently, as you probably know, the name of La Noche Triste has officially been changed in Mexico to La Noche Victoriosa, has officially been changed in Mexico to La Noche Victoriosa, the victorious night. So there's something really interesting that is now happening 500 years later in Mexico with this quintennial, with a politicization of it. I mean, what would you expect politicians to do with a

historical event? Of course, that's sort of their job to politicize it, right? And they're doing it in a very kind of simple, you might argue it's simplistic and argue against it, but it's certainly kind of a simple attention-grabbing way and just flipping that switch. So instead of it being the tragic night, it's the victorious night. Because the Aztecs kill most of the invaders, the invaders who they brought in as guests, who then turned on them and started killing them. They've gotten rid of most of them and sent them packing out into the countryside and off the Spaniards go.

This is history's heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you.

Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Some things just take too long. A meeting that could have been an email, someone explaining crypto, or switching mobile providers. Except with Fizz. Switching to Fizz is quick and easy. Mobile plans start at $17 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. I'm having slightly anachronistic but parallel thoughts about Boudicca, the warrior queen, the rebel against Rome, being placed in a huge statue outside Parliament in a kind of Victorian,

slightly similar perhaps impetus there. So then Cortes, when he comes back, does he accept a state of war? When he comes back, is it as an invader this time? It's absolutely as an invader. And I think here, the two stories that I've been trying to convince you of really develop in a more complex way, but in a very kind of similar way. In other words, Cortes is trying to later convince everybody that he's now creating an absolutely masterful alliance of not only former enemies of the Aztecs, the Tlaxcalans, but more and more of the subjects of the Aztecs. And this is partans, but more and more of the subjects of the Aztecs. And this is part of the way in which the Spaniards are laying the foundations for a very negative

view of the Aztec empire and Aztec civilization and culture, which persists to this day, and I think is completely wrong. I think it's very important for us to try as much as possible to completely rethink the Aztecs and to take out of our view of the Aztecs all of these negative elements that the Spaniards implanted. And one of them is the idea that their rule was so tyrannical and bloodthirsty that all their subjects, city-states, were afraid of them and hated them and therefore welcomed the Spaniards and were so relieved that the Spaniards had come to free them. That's a great old imperial trope. I mean, Dan, you've seen that a million times. Oh, here come the European imperialists. And what do the indigenous subjects do? They welcome them. That's a great old imperial trope. I mean, Dan, you've seen that a million times. Oh, here come the European imperialists. And what do the indigenous subjects do? They welcome them.

Oh, thank you for bringing us civilization or the true faith or whatever it is. But thank you for freeing us from our previous life of barbarity and tyranny, right? And so that is right there in the way in which the Spaniards are depicting the Aztecs. If we take that out, it raises the question, well, okay, so why does the war in the next year end up with, on August the 13th, 1521, Tenochtitlan being overrun? How does that siege happen if it's not Cortes creating brilliant alliance? It's because the war up to that point has dramatically destabilized central Mexico. And the arrangement that existed is now completely up in the air. And every city-state leader has to now rethink his relationship with his neighbors and his relationship with the central powers to see how he can survive as leader, but also how he can protect his own people.

how he can survive as leader, but also how he can protect his own people. And if we go kind of city-state by city-state, we can see these individuals making these decisions and a number of times shifting sides during the course of the war. We don't have time to talk about all of them, but I think the key one to think about is Ištlilzočík, which I'm butchering his name. It's a hard-knock one. Ištlilzočík. Ishizochit, which I'm butchering his name, it's a hard-known one, Ishizochit. His father was the ruler of Texcoco, which was the number two city in the empire. It's across the lake from Tenochtitlan, same size as Tenochtitlan, very important. These two cities look at each other across the lake there. But Texcoco definitely was number two in this, what's sometimes called the triple alliance of the empire, the three main cities. His father was the ruler, the Tlatoani, we could call him king, dies a few years before

the Spaniards arrive. There's a succession dispute between him and his brothers. He uses the arrival of the Spaniards and the war that has developed to strengthen his position, to gain total control over his kingdom at the expense of his brothers, and then to use the Spaniards as his allies to attack Tenochtitlan. What city becomes the base of the Spanish operation against Tenochtitlan? Texcoco. Is there a battle when the Spaniards get there against the Texcocans? No, not at all. They are welcomed in, which of course the Spaniards say, oh, well, you know, we're the best. We're in the habit of winning. It's our superior technology. They're afraid of us.

There's all kinds of reasons they come up with opposed to the real one, which is Ishtia Xochitl has gone out and met with Cortes and convinced him, come and use this as your base of operations. From my city, you can see Tenochtitlan. And from there, you can launch these small ships, these brigantines, which the Spaniards build

in order to battle against the army of canoes, of warriors in canoes. So Ischiazotl is manipulating the Spaniards to consolidate his own position and then shift the balance of power within the empire to make that city the center, not Tenochtitlan. In the short run, he's successful. He consolidates his position. He continues to rule after the end of the war. In the years that are supposed to be the years of Spanish colonialism and New Spain is now the name of the kingdom, not the Aztec empire. But he continues to rule in that position until he dies of natural causes. In the long run, does Texcoco become the capital? No. Tenochtitlan evolves into Mexico City. So in the long run,

his dream is not realized, but that's not sufficient grounds for us to judge his strategy or even to question that that was a strategy at all. It's certainly not grounds enough for us to just remove him and make him on the sidelines to just be an indigenous ruler who's manipulated by the brilliant Cortes and so on. I think characters like that need to be put back in the center of the picture, and that makes it far more interesting. And it also allows us to see how the Aztec empire isn't a weak edifice that crumbles

as soon as the brilliant Spaniards arrive. It isn't a tyranny in which all subjects hate those who are ruling. Instead, it's a loosely confederated empire that can break up in the middle of a brutal war in which tens of thousands of people are being enslaved tens of thousands are dying from epidemic disease there's an incredible disruption to the system and it can temporarily fall apart under those kinds of pressures and those kinds of circumstances. And a testimony to its

ultimate strength is how it does kind of reform and come back together at the end of the war. And only gradually over decades does it evolve into New Spain. You've mentioned there the epidemic. Into 1521, is that when we start to see these Eurasian diseases, another factor that tips the balance here? It's another factor. It's a tricky factor to deal with because clearly there's a horrific set of pandemics and people are dying in large numbers and you don't want to downplay the impact of that.

The food supply is compromised. There's warfare. The men are in and out of the town, off into battles and they come home and they see family members are dying of smallpox or something, which is a miserable, horrible death. But on the other hand, I think it's also important to remember that this is primarily a warfare between and among indigenous peoples. The final battle of August 13th, 1521, when Tenochtitlan falls, over 99% of those attackers are indigenous. Spaniards are less than 1% of the people fighting.

So everybody that's indigenous is infected by those diseases. So to argue that Tenerife Springtown falls and the Aztecs are defeated because of disease doesn't completely make sense when you consider that the attackers are also suffering the same way. So I think what we want to do with disease is not see it so much as a factor that explains,

oh, why the Spaniards defeated the Aztecs, but it's a factor that explains how the whole region can become so destabilized, so traumatized, that almost anything is possible, that there's a kind of a chaos in this war. And who actually emerges victorious and so on is not really anything to do with disease, it's to do with all of these other factors. Ultimately, this is an incredible tragedy. This war is a massive tragedy. It's not a glorious conquest. It's a deeply tragic moment in human history that symbolically is part of that turning point as we move towards globalization. Just quickly, 500 years ago, the scale of that siege, as you mentioned, Tetchcokan city was a base.

The lakes around Tenochtitlan were full of ships. Giant causeways were constructed. I mean, this was warfare on an enormous scale. It's on an enormous scale, and there are tens and tens of thousands of people involved. And it's an impressive technological engineering moment, but not simply one that can totally be credited to the Spaniards. I mean, what the Spaniards do is impressive, but they're less than 1% of the attackers, right? So it's indigenous peoples are also manipulating the environment in order to bring about the siege in a way that they have done in order to build that city. I mean, the city itself is an incredible engineering feat. And the Spaniards realized that. And they want to seize it, but

they also don't want to destroy it. Because it's more impressive than any city that they'll have seen in Europe. It's beautiful. Aesthetically, it's astonishing. And in engineering terms, it's amazing as well. And part of what is amazing about it is how well positioned it is for defense. And yet you mentioned they didn't want to destroy it. It was pretty thoroughly destroyed in the storm in August 1521. The traditional story, the way we look at that is, oh, the city is destroyed. It's destroyed by war and the Spaniards then issue edicts saying, no, indigenous peoples can be in the city, has to be completely empty. And if anyone's found, they'll be hung.

That's kind of that way we see it, as if it's just reduced to rubble and ashes. And then like a phoenix, Mexico City rises out. But in fact, as Mexican historians have long ago pointed out, that's not the case. There are indigenous families that continue to live in amongst the rubble. That's not the case. There are indigenous families that continue to live in amongst the rubble. And when the city is rebuilt, it looks very, very much like the city before it, except for what's going on right in the center, where the old pyramids and temples and palaces are gradually converted into Spanish buildings.

But that takes place over a number of years. And initially, the Spaniards are not living in the city. Their base is outside the city in order for this kind of building program to take place. But who's doing the building? It's indigenous people who have been enslaved in the war, essentially turned into slave laborers. And then gradually, there's a cooperation between community leaders in the city and Spaniards so that instead of just enslaving the population and setting them to work,

the Spaniards can then go through those indigenous leaders in order to say, yes, we confirm you in your position of authority. You are still in a position of leadership in this community, in this neighborhood, the Spanish word that becomes used is the barrios, right? In these neighborhoods, and you have to provide some labor for us to clear the rubble from the parts that were destroyed and to build Spanish palaces. But meanwhile, you can also rebuild your own houses and so on. So the Phoenix rising from the ashes is a totally oversimplistic way of looking at how this city persists and survives in many more ways than it has changed. That indigenous people continue to live there,

they are the vast majority, they continue to call it Tenochtitlan, and they continue to rule themselves, they have their own town council. So essentially, there's a kind of a double rulership system, there's the Spanish bureaucracy, and there's the indigenous bureaucracy that exists to some extent in parallel, and to some extent subordinate to the Spanish bureaucracy. You have painted a very much more nuanced and fascinating picture than the traditional myths, to some extent in parallel and to some extent subordinate to the Spanish bureaucracy. You have painted a very much more nuanced and fascinating picture than the traditional myths. So thank you very much for that, Matthew. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much. It was nice to meet you. school history are strong. This part of the history of our country, all work out and finish.

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