The Rest Is History - 391. The Fall of the Aztecs: The Last Emperor (Part 8)

Episode Date: November 23, 2023

Tenochtitlan, once the glittering jewel at the heart of the mighty Aztec Empire, has fallen. Hernán Cortés stands triumphant, the master of this New Spain. Or so it seems. For the last Aztec emperor, Cuauhtemoc, is still alive and well. And in the jungles of Mexico and Honduras, a dark and bloody story is only just beginning … In the final episode of this astonishing journey, Dominic and Tom discuss the aftermath of the fall of Tenochtitlan, the fates of Cuauhtemoc, Cortés and Malinche, the experiences of the local population and the story of Mexico in the decades after the Spanish conquest. As this mighty epic draws to a close, they also explore the Black Legend of Spanish imperialism, and discuss the long-term repercussions of the conquest and its status in the context of world history and politics today. *Dominic’s book The Fall of the Aztecs is available now from bookshops across the UK - the perfect Christmas present!* *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in New Zealand and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. up for the adventure. This iconic, award-winning vehicle has been redefined with a distinctive, modern design. A reimagined exterior features compelling proportions and precise detailing.

Built with integrity and purpose, the interior boasts robust, durable materials. Whether it's the all-terrain capability, ample cargo capacity, or innovative camera technology, the Defender 110 lets you go further and do more. And with seating for up to seven, everyone can enjoy the journey. Learn more at Land land rover.ca broken spears lie in the roads we have torn our hair in grief the houses are roofless now and their walls are reddened with blood. Worms are swarming in the streets and plazas and the walls are splattered with gore. The water has turned red as if it were died 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 we have chewed dry twigs and salt grasses we have filled our mouths with dust and bits of adobe we have eaten lizards rats and worms that was a translation of a now what lament probably written in the 1540s. And the phrase broken spears, it's been described as perhaps the most famous Nahuatl phrase in English because it was used as the title of the translation of a book by the Mexican historian Miguel León Portillo. But Dominic, would you like me to do a linguistic deep dive here even if you don't i'm still going to do it i'm just going to say yes then because apparently broken spears is a mistranslation really it should actually be shattered bones shattered bones and the reason

i know this is because it's a footnote in camilla townsend's wonderful book fifth son yeah where she discusses it so we like to go deep, don't we, in this podcast? And I hope that people will be impressed with my command of now what Spanish-English translation. Tom, what's lovely about your linguistic analysis here is this is the first time in this mighty series that we've had an introduction that I didn't write. Okay. Yes. And that's commendably modest on your part because of course we're doing this series because your new book for children, The Fall of the Aztecs is out. And I guess that after the seven episodes we've had, I mean, it puts in perspective perhaps the challenge of rendering this story, not just for children, but for adults as entertainment. Because on one level, I mean, there's no question, it's unbelievably entertaining, dramatic, extraordinary story, the inspiration for so much science fiction that has been written since. On another level, I mean, it is a deeply

traumatic narrative, isn't it? And the horrors with which it culminates, you know, brains splattered and hair torn out in grief and all that i mean this is very upsetting and unsettling i think there are two dimensions to this tom so at one level you can say that's all history to some extent isn't it of course people are fascinated with history we read it for pleasure so many of us but so often what it describes is very dark and people are always drawn to the extremes that That's why books on the world wars are so successful. Well, I suppose, but I suppose also the sacking of cities. I mean, it lies at the heart of the two great traditions that underpin the West's cultural

inheritance, the Greek and the biblical. Yeah. The sacking of Troy, the sacking of Jerusalem. Yes. But also, Tom, I mean, any history, but whether it be for children or for adults, actually, there's a balance between kind of prurient voyeurism, pornography of violence, I suppose you might call it, and being sufficiently sensitive and respectful towards people in the past whose lives were destroyed.

The other element, of course, is that this has an additional dimension in recent years, because this is one of the great foundational moments of European colonialism. So it carries a kind of charge now that it might not have done 50 years ago, certainly in the West. Except that it does come to carry a charge in Protestant countries, doesn't it? So we, as English speakers, are heirs to that Protestant tradition. The black legend, Tom. The black legend. Yes.

In which what the Spanish do in Mexico, oddly drawing on Spanish witnesses. I mean, so Bartolomé Las Casas, the friar whose records of Spanish atrocities we have cited regularly throughout these episodes, but Protestants draw on this to construct an image of the Spanish as uniquely oppressive and satanic. Yes. So to mention two writers that we've talked about a lot in this series, if people want a sense of the kind of debate, they could just read a book by Matthew Restle, on the one hand, who emphasises what he sees as the near-genocidal approach of the Spaniards. And then you read Fernando Cervantes on the other, who is very keen to dispel what he sees as the black legend, and to say the Spanish are not uniquely greedy and rapacious

and sadistic as they were painted by Protestant writers from the 16th century onwards. And so to what extent do you think the tradition exemplified today by Matthew Restle today, he's writing in English. I mean, he is English. He's not writing as a practicing Protestant. But to what extent do you think the sense of the Spanish conquest as something to be condemned is an inheritance of those deep, deep Protestant traditions? That's a good question. I mean, it's dressed up in progressive rather than Protestant language, isn't it? But the themes are quite similar. The themes are similar, right. And the Protestant tradition of the Black Legend,

the idea of the Spanish as greedy and sinister and sadistic, has had a long afterlife. That said, when you go into the details of the conquest and then what happens immediately afterwards... They are dark. They are pretty dark. Okay, so should we get into them and then perhaps we come back to looking at how this story has been processed and understood over the centuries? So we ended last time, Tom. We're in August 1521. The city of Tenochtitlan has fallen, but of course, history doesn't stop there. Actually, there's one thing that Camilla Townsend's book, Fifth Son, is brilliant at saying. It's brilliant on that, isn't it? People don't say, oh gosh, this is the end of a chapter in history. The Spanish conquest has

happened. For a lot of people, life is rolling on with all its vicissitudes. Cortes is still desperate to find gold. The whole operation, the whole enterprise that he started all these years ago was based on making his investors, co-investors rich. And it's clear that he doesn't find as much gold as he wanted to. Quite quickly, the Spanish are beating and torturing their prisoners. Do they manage to dredge any out of the lake? I think they don't, actually. There's some indication they sent divers into the lake and they couldn't find it. Maybe it's lost. So it could be buried beneath the streets of Mexico City to this day. It could be conceivably because, of course,

that lake is now Mexico City. That's one of the extraordinary things that you go to Mexico City and you are walking over the lake on which these naval battles and things happened. So they don't find anything like the gold they expected. Some of Cortes' men mutter and grumble and say, well, Cortes and the captains have probably got it all for themselves. I mean, this is a standard kind of conquistador theme. The ferocity of the Spanish, I think, is partly explicable because of their frustration. They pillage some of the lakeside towns. There's stories about them setting dogs on priests and dignitaries and things in an attempt to torture out of them the location of all this hidden gold that they're convinced is there.

And this kind of lust for gold has been motivating them in their atrocities right from the beginning. Yeah. I'm quoting the Ennio Morricone soundtrack from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Very good. Very good. People say lust for gold. I mean, they want gold not because they have some peculiar fixation with gold, but because gold is divisible and portable. Can be transferred back to Spain. Exactly.

They can transfer it back to Spain. It won't rot. It won't, you know, it's the best resource through which they can make themselves rich. But they just haven't got enough. Cuauhtémoc, after all those empty promises, Cortés tortures him, the emperor. They tie him to a pole. To find if he's buried gold. If he's buried gold.

They pour oil on his feet and they set his feet on fire. And the eyewitness account says he said nothing to them. He merely smiled as if he were taking a steam bath. And there were some amazing murals. We talked about these in one of our live shows, Tom. Yeah. The amazing murals by David Siguieros and other kind of Mexican muralists. These are in Mexico City.

And they show Cuauhtémoc being tortured by the Spaniards, and the Spaniards look like these terrifying kind of stormtrooper-like figures because these murals are done in the 1930s. And Melinche watching as well. Melinche watching through a sort of gap in the Spaniards' helmets. Cortés, meanwhile, he has established his headquarters, as we said last time, in Coyoacán. You can see his headquarters.

It's this kind of low-level, one-story, red-painted, very Spanish-looking kind of mansion complex. On one level, Cortes has been a great winner. All his gambles have paid off. There is talk that he is called your highness by his fellows. There's talk that he's going to award his captains knighthoods. There are even some rumors that he will call himself a king. He's so far away from Spain. Of course, he doesn't do that. He's always a bit anxious because of course he has broken the law. Right. And he has the fat and jolly Velazquez. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Back in Cuba to deal with. I know, Tom, what you're thinking. You're thinking that you're Cortez and I'm Velazquez. Well, I'm not saying it, no. Yeah. You're cruel, rapacious,

and ultimately a cold person. I'm a saying it, no. Yeah. You're cruel, rapacious, and ultimately a cold person. I'm a great hospitable guy. No, I was thinking more that I'm Moctezuma and you're Cortez. You're a formidable... You've taken me prisoner and forcing me to do endless episodes on the Aztecs. Yeah. That's so harsh because I'm desperate to do them as well. It's an unworthy joke. So when I'm gone, you'll say of me, ultimately a mediocre and dishonest man.

A bad man. Yes. And a mediocre. Well, anyway, this particular mediocre man, although I don't think he is mediocre, I think he is a terrifyingly ruthless opportunist. So that autumn, to Velázquez's horror, Charles V confirms Cortés as governor, captain general. Because the scale of his achievement is evident, do you think?

Yes, I think he has no choice. Rather than the wealth that he's sending. I mean, he is sending some wealth. He's sending something. He's not sending nothing. But I think you're right. The stories that are going back to Europe, I mean, it must seem barely believable. Yeah. Is Cortés a hero across Europe? This is the interesting thing. Even at this point, it's not modern wokery to say Cortez is a very, very ambiguous, if not downright dislikable figure. Because even at the time,

I think there is an unease. I think Charles V, for example, would say that he is very uneasy with the idea of kind of rampaging in to somebody else's kingdom, toppling them and just taking it. Kings don't tend to like that kind of behavior. Right, because all the legalism that surrounds the narrative of Moctezuma handing over his empire to the king, I mean, who cares what the Mexica think among the Spaniards? It's about how they're presenting it to people back in Europe. Exactly. It needs to seem legal. Exactly. Exactly.

It cannot just be a ruthless land grab. So even at this point in the early decades of European colonialism, there is a sense that just to barge in willy-nilly, kill everybody and take their lands is wrong. You have to have a legal pretext. And that's why there's all this fiction of Montezuma surrendering his kingdom and then the Aztecs being incited into this disgraceful rebellion. And also this is laying foundations for the sense that indigenous peoples do have rights to the lands that they inhabit, which will be woven into the international law that emerges in the 19th century. Yeah, absolutely. And by the way, jumping ahead of

ourselves, people like the Tlaxcalans, they are very jealous of those legal rights and their role as allies of the Spaniards. And they maintain it for many, many years to come, centuries to come, that they are self-governing. They have special privileges under the Spanish crown. And they do. Yeah.

And if they're ever challenged, they go to law. They go to court. They will send people to Spain to fight for their rights. And the Spanish will often acknowledge that. So the legalism is not just a fantasy or a fiction. It's real. Yeah. And that is the kind of the paradox of it, that the crimes of the conquistadors are judged by the same legal system that the Spanish are also bringing in. Yes, exactly. And that's another theme throughout European colonialism. It is. Absolutely, it is. On Cortés himself. Some of our very keenest listeners may remember

Cortés actually has a wife. I know. Since episode one. Cortés has a wife that Velázquez had forced him to marry on Cuba, Catalina Suárez. Now, she has been waiting all this time to find out what's going on with her husband, who's off in Mexico. She hears the news that he's won, and he doesn't call for her. And eventually,

she runs out of patience, and she and her sister travel to Tenochtitlan themselves. And they get there late summer, early autumn. Oh, hello, darling. Exactly. Now, she is welcomed as a queen. People say, gosh, Cortes' wife, the wife of His Highness Cortes, the new master. Hurrah, hurrah for her. His mansion, the accounts that we have, Melinche gives birth to a little boy whom she christens, Martin Cortes. So that's kind of giving the game away a bit. And then something extraordinary happens. On All Saints Day, the 1st of November, Cortes holds a party at his house in Coyoacan. There's music and stuff, dancing and all this. And Cortes and Catalina

are seen quarreling or exchanging harsh words or something. And she goes to bed before him, and then he follows. And in the middle of the night, he wakes the house and he says, a terrible thing has happened. I found my wife dead in her room. She must have had a fit. I knew she had a very weak heart. What a terrible business. She must have accidentally thrown herself out of the window kind of thing. Exactly that. Very few people are allowed to see her body. She's buried in great haste. And from that point onwards, among the other Spaniards, there are rumours that he killed her, that he murdered her, he strangled her because she was in the way. Cramping his style.

Because he lost patience with her shouting at him about his mistresses. Who knows? And those rumours never, ever go away. And I don't think you have to be unduly harsh or censorious to think that that is part of a pattern with cortez he uses women and he dumps them and he dumps them and he is a brutal man but also the other thing must be that he has been in command for so long and he has been reaching out after what he wants for so long that the idea that he's going to pay attention to the strictures of anyone is a fantasy. Yes, I think that's absolutely right. Because conquering Tenochtitlan was the high point in his life and he doesn't really know what to do with himself, I think, afterwards. He clearly fancies himself as the master of Mexico.

His original plan was to build himself an entirely new capital. So not far from Mexico City, there is an entirely new Spanish city So not far from Mexico City, there is an entirely new Spanish city called Puebla. Beautiful city, actually. It looks like a Spanish city. And that was their original plan. But eventually, Cortes clearly fancies the idea of becoming basically the new emperor of the Aztecs. So rebuilding Tenochtitlan and building a new city on the ruins of the old. And he will lay claim in inhabiting that city, he will lay claim to the prestige of Montezuma and his predecessors. And so what's impressive about this, and as you say, I mean, they're very beautiful, these buildings that are built in the earliest years

of the Spanish conquest, is that they must be built by Mexican workmen. Oh, they are. They absolutely are. I mean, so they adapt to the expectations of renaissance architecture very rapidly they do that's a very good point tom so cortez gets an architect from europe to design the new city a guy called alonso garcia bravo the plan is that basically it will be stratified on ethnic lines so the center will be spanish mansions for the conquistadors and the mexica will be confined to the outskirts. So again, another colonial theme being established.

There you go. Yeah. They tear down the temples. They use the, I mean, could you get greater symbolism? They use the stones of the great temple to build the new cathedral in Mexico City, a cathedral which incidentally is currently sinking. So the cathedral in Mexico City is gradually collapsing, which is an extraordinary thing. They also use the stones to build a massive new palace is gradually collapsing, which is an extraordinary thing.

They also used the stones to build a massive new palace for Cortes, which still stands. It's in the center of the Zócalo in Mexico City. But as you say, Tom, the people who actually do the work are the Mexica, the Aztecs themselves. A visiting friar or monk said that he couldn't believe how enthusiastic they were. He said they seemed to be delighted by doing the work, and they were particularly fascinated by the Spanish building technology. So the carts and the wheelbarrows and the hammers and the chisels made of iron and all of these kinds of things. Well, this is one of the themes of Camilla Tansen's book, that actually the conquered don't just sit around and kind of gaze into the abyss, that they do pull themselves together. Yes.

They do say, well, you know, day will follow and night will follow. And so it goes on and they carry on living. They do. Because this monk says, there was such a great fervor that the laborers sang and their songs and their voices barely ceased at night. He's not going to make that up. No. I wouldn't have thought.

So life does go on in a sense. The city ends up being renamed, of course, Ciudad de México, because the Spanish apparently struggle with the name Tenochtitlan, but also, of course, a new name. Yeah, a new start. Signals, a new era, though they use the word Mexica, México. But some of the cities follows the street plan of Tenochtitlan, actually. So you can sort of stand in places and think, you know, I'm standing now where the gate was. And there's a mural where Cortés and Montezuma are supposed to have met. And there are stretches, aren't there, of canals?

There are still some canals in the south of the city, exactly. Yeah. As for the rest of Mexico, the estates that belong to the Mexicas, the emperors and so on, they are parceled out. They're called encomiendas. Big estates in each encomienda is given to a different conquistador. The landscape itself is changing all the time, of course, because they are bringing over, as in the Caribbean, cows, pigs, sheep, all of these things, and new crops, things like olives and grapevines and things to grow in the new world. But the funny thing about this, you see, what makes it so ambiguous and so interesting is that the people who are working on these lands

are not slaves. They're more like peasants in feudal, medieval Europe. And actually, the question which Camilla Tantan's book, Fifth Son, really brings out is, how much do people notice that something has changed? Because up in the villages and away from the centers of habitation, life goes on. Yes, exactly. Exactly so. So, of course, they're also utterly ravaged by the smallpox. So for most people, I think this is probably the year of the smallpox rather than the Spaniards. If you're working in the fields, do you even see the Spaniards?

You know, you're conscious that your tribute payments go to somebody different. And the Aztec aristocracy, it's not like the norman conquest they're not all decapitated the heirs of moctezuma i mean this is why they buy into the idea that moctezuma had submitted to the spanish it's because it gives them a claim you know that they can then use in spanish law courts to keep hold of their lands they do it very successfully because they end up being treated with respect. The Spanish are very, very deferential towards rank and legalism and hierarchy and all these kinds of things. But you have to convert to Christianity to get that. If you convert to Christianity, if you say, God, I love Charles V. I can't get enough of Charles V. I'm so delighted to be living in this new Spanish imperium. If you do all these things, then you can have your own

estate. You can prosper. You can go to Madrid and sue the king for your historic privileges and all those kinds of things. I mean, of course, that's not to say it's sweetness and light and there's not all kinds of exploitation and violence. Well, Matthew Restles, the final chapter in his book on Moctezuma meeting with Cortes gives a terrifying portrait of it. I mean, it's like the kind of Nazi occupation of Poland, mass rape, slaughter. How would you square his portrayal of the horrors of it? With Camilla Townsend's. I mean, Camilla Townsend is saying that people, they live lives as they must do. But I have also read accounts that say that actually there are whole reaches of Mexico where the Spanish barely reach,

where people continue to worship the old gods. Which is certainly true. It would come as news that Tenochtitlan had fallen. Yeah. So, I mean, if you're in the eye of the storm, then it's terrible, but equally, you know, it could just completely pass you by. I think it's a very complicated picture, Tom. And actually, to impose one verdict on the whole thing is wrong. Because, of course, there are some places, I mean, Tlaxcala most obviously.

Effectively, it's a republic under the King of Spain. Tlaxcala's are left alone. Europeans are not allowed to settle in Tlaxcala. They've done brilliantly out of this. They've defeated their age-old enemies. They now have a new imperial overlord in the King of Spain, but the King of Spain regards them with affection because they're his allies. So as far as they're concerned, great.

Anything but the Mexica. If you're one of the Mexica or their allies, life is terrible and you are subject to the violence of the conquistadors. Your family could have been sold into slavery, all of these things. Awful. But if you're in an outlying region, and particularly the further away from Tenochtitlan you are,

and the more rural, the more difficult to reach, the chances are you could live your life and never lay eyes on a Spaniard, I would guess. And of course, in some of these parts, those are really difficult to reach. In the Yucatan, for example, I mean, there... They still supposedly worship Tlaloc to this day, apparently. I don't know if that's true or not. I mean, there are parts that are not even nominally conquered until the end of the 17th century. So the idea that the conquest of Mexico is done and dusted by the early 1520s is obviously completely wrong.

And Dominic, one other thing that happens within, what, a decade of the fall of Tenochtitlan is that the Virgin Mary appears to a peasant. Oh, right. Yes. I thought we'd get onto that. And speaks to him in Nahuatl. Yes. So that's the Virgin of Guadalupe, who supposedly appears to a guy called Juan Diego,

who gets a sort of image imprinted on his cloak. What is so interesting about that story, Tom, is first of all, it probably didn't happen because the accounts that we have come are later and it's probably been kind of back projected. And secondly, the place where that happens, which is a hill called Tepeac, which is north of Lake Texcoco, was already a pilgrimage site. I think this is a really interesting element of the story. So it had been sacred to the Aztec goddesses Tonantzin and Chico Mecoatl, who are the goddesses of the earth and a farming kind of fertility.

So very like the way that the Parthenon, the temple to Athena, becomes a church dedicated to the Virgin. Exactly. So when people are going to this shrine, the shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe, they are not necessarily completely breaking with the shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe, they are not necessarily completely breaking with the traditions of their ancestors. They're actually going to the same place their ancestors might well have gone to. But also, the Virgin weeps over the sufferings of her dead son. I wonder if that is a way in for people to this new

understanding of the supernatural. Yeah. No, Tom, on the religious element, I know the religious element you obviously find fascinating and understandably so. I mean, this is the most obvious of all the changes that sweeps over what they call New Spain, what becomes Mexico. But even then, it's so complicated because it's quite syncretic, isn't it? The friars who arrive in Mexico, they say, well, we've got to make allowances for these people. We've got to allow them to keep up some of their old customs. So for example, they're very happy to allow the indigenous Mexican people to worship in open-air chapels that are like their old temples. And the stonemasons who carve the things in the true that they use the old sacrificial stones to build altars and things i just wonder whether the story of suffering and the underdog the suffering yes and

resurrection because the idea of life coming from the dead is what underpins the cult of chippy totech you know wandering in flayed skins might seem a long way from Good Friday, but there is a kind of narrative there of hope emerging from the bleakest despair that perhaps does speak to people. I mean, Mexico does end up a very Catholic country. It does. I don't know. I don't know enough about it. Tom, I think that's very plausible, but there's another element to it, which is, of course, Christianity is the religion of the winners.

Yes, of course. I mean, that absolutely goes without saying, but it has always been a paradox, Christianity. You know, it is the religion of the winners. It's the most practiced religion across the world. But at the same time, it offers a peculiar sense of identification with the divine to those who have suffered, those who have, you know, been tortured or persecuted. Anyway, listen, Dominic, let's take a break here. And when we come back, perhaps we could look at what happens to some of the protagonists in this story. And then, you know, just kind of have a brief think about what exactly the status of this episode is in the context of world history and perhaps of the politics today. Very good. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment.

It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip and on our Q&A we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. dot com hello welcome back to the last segment of our eight part epic on the fall of the aztecs and dominic we said at the end of the previous part that we would look at what happens to some of the protagonists in this story so first of all cortez what happens to some of the protagonists in this story. So first of all, Cortez, what happens to Cortez? Well, before we do that, Tom, just one last thing. If anybody is still listening, if you've made it through, congratulations, you are the hardiest of the hard. Rest is history, aficionados. Well done. And thank you for listening so far, because I don't think,

Tom, we've ever done anything in this detail. So Cortez, the story of Cortez is the story of all conquistadors really. They all just fall out with each other once they've won and everything is very miserable. And they generally prove not to be as good at governing as they are at conquering. I mean, all he's ever been is a sort of low rent notary. So why would he be the great kind of chief executive of a state? Of course he wouldn't. If you don't like the conquistadors, you'll be pleased to hear that most of the conquistadors come to relatively sticky ends or die in obscurity or die poor because they've been sued by each other or they've been in some way punished by the Spanish crown or whatever. In Cortes' case, Cortes is there in Mexico City. And in 1524, he sends one of his most trusted

allies, one of his most trusted captains, a guy called Cristobal de Olid, off with 500 men to Honduras in the south, because they've heard that Central America is the place for gold. Still this thirst for gold. In absolutely classic conquistador fashion, Cristobal de Olid stops on his way in Cuba, where he meets their old friend, Diego Velasquez, and agrees to do a deal with him and to sell out Cortes and to establish a separate principality in Honduras. Cortes goes absolutely mad when he hears this, and he decides to pursue Ollid down to Honduras. Now, Cortes thinks of himself as a very grand man these days, so he takes a huge company with him. 3,000 native troops, Tom, a chamberlain, a steward, a butler, a waiter,

eight footmen, several jugglers, and a musical band. You wouldn't want to travel anywhere without jugglers. Well, thank God there were no Mayim artists. If the French had got there first, Tom, rather than the Spanish. Well, Mayim artists have played an important part, haven't they, in the early stages of the story, because it was the only way for the Spanish to communicate with the Native Americans. Exactly. Now, he takes Melinche with him, by by the way and it's on this trip that they pass her old native village the place where she'd been born all those years before coatzacoalcos and he gives her her native village as her own estate her own encomienda and also cortez who

is the father of her son he says i will marry you to one of my comrades a guy called juan jaramillo so that she will become a Spanish. So you are now Spanish. Have Spanish legal rights. You have Spanish rights and your child will have Spanish rights. You know, you might think, well, who wants to be married to some nobody? But actually, this is a big deal for Malinche. Yeah, it's kind of green card.

He crucially also on this expedition to Honduras, Tom, he takes the last emperor of Mexico with him. He takes Cuauhtémoc. So his feet must be, he's had them burned. He has with his burned feet. He goes. So, I mean, can he walk? I can't imagine he can walk if he's had his feet burned. I don't know. Has he been carried in a litter or something? Yeah, or trudging or on horseback.

You can't trudge if you've had your feet burned. This is a very good question, Tom. Sometimes when the rest is history, we just have to admit that we don't know. And this is something that I don't. I mean, is he on crutches? Who knows? Okay. All right.

It's a horrible situation for him. They get there and they get stuck basically in the jungles of southern Mexico. They're going very, very slowly. It's incredibly hot and humid. This is your classic kind of leeches. Eldorado kind of. Eldorado sinking into bogs, kind of weird beasts

baying in the night. That kind of... Snakes coiling in the branches overhead. This is exactly what happens. And at some point in late February 1525, there's a very garbled,

confused incident. What sources there are utterly contradict each other and it's impossible to tell what's going on. Somebody, we don't know who, could be one of the mexica it could be a local maya could be a spaniard they come to cortez and they say there's a plot to kill you to assassinate you on this trip and actually cuartemoc and the other aztec nobles are behind it is this real is this just a pretext we don't know has he gone mad exactly basically the upshot is the spaniards

get cuauhtemoc and they hang him from a tree and that's the end of him and bernal diaz who is there yet again he gives him a final speech to cortez in his final words cuauhtemoc is still addressing cortez as melince and he says to him apparently oh melince now i understand your false promises and the kind of death you've had in store for me. You're killing me unjustly. May God demand justice from you as it was taken from me when I entrusted myself to you in my city of Mexico. Well, I mean, if he's misgendering, Cortez. Well, yes. He deserves all he gets. Do you know what happens to his body? I don't actually. Do you? No. Maybe it's still there. Should we do some live research on the Bodleian?

If you want to, Tom. Okay. So this is live research on the Bodleian. The modern-day town of Excateopan in the state of Guerrero is home to an ossuary purportedly containing his remains. Oh, but that word purportedly, Tom, is a bit of a... An archaeologist who was a passionate indigenista excavated the bones in 1949. Theo has put in the chat, that's exactly where I thought it was. I don't believe that Theo is telling the truth there.

I think that's yet another unreliable source. A scholarly study of the controversy was published in 2011 and argued that the available data suggests that the grave is an elaborate hoax. Oh no, Tom. Compared by local as a way of generating publicity. Well. And that subsequently supported by Mexican nationalists who wished to use the find for political purposes.

So I can't believe that they would have allowed his remains. No, I think it's unlikely. Right, so that's the end of Cuauhtémoc. The trip to Honduras, it turned out, was a total and utter waste of time. Olid had already been captured and executed by somebody else. So Cortés then troops very miserably back to Mexico City. Of his original party that set out of 4,000 people, there were just a few hundred left,

absolutely standard kind of conquistador jungle expedition. They've all been killed by hunger or disease. Malinche not killed. She goes on to have another daughter called Maria. But once she gets back to Mexico City after this trip, that is the last we ever see of her. It's generally thought that she probably died at the end of the 1520s. So how old would she have been then? Early 20s, I suppose? Something like that. Late 20s. Yeah. Something like that, Tom. We don't even know when she was born, you see. We don't have much of a sense of her age even. There's a house in Mexico City. I went to look at it earlier this year, 95 Republica de Cuba Street. And it's a very dilapidated looking house, actually. And it's claimed, almost certainly erroneously,

that this is where she lived in Mexico City. And people say, if you go there after nightfall, you can hear a ghost crying. I wonder what she's crying over. Well. Guilt, bereavement, regret. Yeah, I don't know. I didn't hear the ghost, so I can't answer that question.

Have we got any listeners who've heard the ghost of Malinche sobbing and have some sense of what it's about? Yeah. Cortez gets back to Mexico City and for such a cunning man, he's made an absolute schoolboy error. If you're a conquistador, you never leave your base because if you leave your base once you've got it, somebody else will take it from you. And he arrives back in Mexico City to find it in total chaos. People are arguing about who's in charge. He's also in a mess

because Diego Velazquez has never forgiven him. And for the rest of his life, he is beset by lawsuits and legal cases and accusations being made by Velazquistas saying that Cortes is corrupt. Cortes is taking bribes. Cortes is not ruling justly. So he's the first European leader on the North American continent to find himself harassed by lawsuits. Exactly. But not the last. But not very good, Tom.

So he basically spends the rest of his life between Spain and Mexico. He ends up losing the title of governor. So this is very Columbus, isn't it? It's the same arc. It's very Columbus. It's very Columbus. He tries another expedition, again, very Columbus, where he goes up to California. He goes up to Baja California and he lands there and he doesn't find anything worthwhile.

He ends up back in Spain by the 1540s, a completely obscure, forgotten man living in an estate near Seville. And he dies in Seville in 1547. He's not a big celebrity by then. It's not like Hernan Cortes has died, one of the great figures of the age. Gosh, what a moment in history. It's actually, he's forgotten by them. It's not like Hernan Cortes has died, one of the great figures of the age, gosh, what a moment in history. It's actually, he's forgotten by now. But books about him are coming out, aren't they? They are, but people are ambivalent about him even then. There's a sense of him,

to some, he's a hero. What's his name? Gamara. Gamara, his former secretary, has written this memoir. I mean, he just writes a kind of mad hagiography. Total hagiography. And even then, there are a lot of people who say it is a hagiography. Cortés has a lot of enemies. His body ends up being taken back to Mexico City. So again, this is very Columbus. And his bones are currently in the chapel of the Hospital de Jesus Nazareno, which supposedly he founded, the Hospital of Jesus of Nazareth,

which is near the spot, so people say, where he first met Montezuma on the causeway. But of course, Cortes is very much without honor in Mexico. In Spain, he is well regarded. There's a statue of him in Medellin. He was on a Spanish banknote as recently as 1992. Wow. So the fateful year. Yeah, of course. The anniversary of Columbus. But if you look for sort of traces of him in Mexico, Tom, they're all incredibly unflattering. They are, you know, murals showing him as a monster. The Diego Rivera one showing him as a knock-kneed green syphilitic. Exactly.

Exactly. All of that stuff. Books about him as a war criminal and all this kind of stuff. And actually, there are kind of, you know, neighborhoods of Mexico City named after some of the Mexica protagonists. So for example, Cuauhtémoc, but there's no Aynan Cortez unless I'm mistaken. So Cuauhtémoc is, I mean, he can be presented as a martyr. Absolutely, he can. And, you know, we're talking about what happens to his bones and the desire to manufacture it. I mean, he is of appeal to nationalists. Yes, yes. He's an inspirational figure to indigenous Mexicans

because he held out to the last. He never surrendered. He never told the Spanish there was all this hidden gold. He smiled when they burned his feet. He gave a defiant speech when they were executing him. He's a formidable person. In a weird way, I think his reputation is higher than Montezuma's. Actually, not a weird way at all.

Not a weird way at all. I mean, Montezuma is despised, isn't he? I think very harshly. Yes, I agree harshly. As for the other protagonists, just before we talk about the ramifications of the story, Diego Balazquez, who basically was the guy who wanted New Spain for himself, he dies in his bed in the 1520s. So he dies by conquistador standards.

Not such a bad ending. Panfilo de Narvaez, you described him as that wildling from Game of Thrones, Tom, with the big red beard. The guy pitched up, Cortes gouged out his eye on the coast. He leads an absolutely ridiculous expedition, even by conquistador standards, where they go up to Florida again. They end up being attacked by Native Americans in Florida. They end up building boats and going across the southern shore of the United States towards Texas. And he ends up being drowned in Galveston, Texas.

And the rest of his expedition, this is the very famous Cabezo de Vaca expedition, they end up as slaves in Texas and they end up walking 2,000 miles home to Mexico City. One of those bonkers stories of the conquistadors.

Pedro de Alvarado in his gilet, you know, very much a kind of- Lads on tour member of the university rugby club yeah theo's just written lad in the chat but a very violent one he kind of rampages randomly across the kind of highlands of central america guatemala honduras el salvador trying to carve out his own kingdom he tries to get involved with the conquest of the incas but he arrives too late and actually people who think he sounds like a terrible person would be pleased to hear he comes to a very pathetic end. He gets crushed beneath a boulder or something, doesn't he?

A combination of horse and boulder. So he agrees to help a friend put down a revolt, they say revolt in inverted commas, in Zacatecas, which is in central Mexico. And his horse slips on the hillside and falls on top of him. And apparently at that point, then a boulder rolls down the hill and crushes him to death. It seems unlikely that the boulder would, it's just a coincidence, the boulder would also roll. Anyway, I'm not going to dig into that story too. He ends up flat. Yeah.

Flattened his back. Exactly. He's flattened. And the two other people we should mention are Melinche's son by Hernan Cortes called Martin. He goes to Spain. He ends up becoming a page to Philip II of Spain. He joins the Spanish army, fights for the Spanish, comes back to Mexico, is involved in various sort of incomprehensible political plots and things, and ends up dying sometime

towards the end of the 16th century. There was a statue of him put up, wasn't there? And Cortes and Malinche in Mexico City. That's right. Very controversial. And somebody stole the image of Martin and it's never been found. Yes. It was a very controversial statue because it was seen as celebrating European colonialism. And the other interesting character is a girl that we've mentioned a few times, 11 years old. Tequich Potzin. This is lordly daughter.

Lordly daughter, the daughter of Montezuma. She ended up living with cortez when cortez was in coia waka and cortez said come and live with me i shall look after you and basically she ended up having cortez's daughter so it's again it's quite a dark story leonore but actually her life ended by these standards it didn't end too badly she ended up being given a big estate because she was Montezuma's daughter. Yeah. So it's her legal right. She ended up with a massive estate. I think some people say the biggest in all of New Spain. And she lived there quietly with her daughter

and actually seems to have been very popular with both Spaniards and indigenous people. And she died in 1551. So actually things ended better for her than you might have anticipated. A bright note on which to end that roundup. But of course, Dominic, we shouldn't forget lots and lots of nameless people, dead, raped, exploited. We said we mustn't forget them. No, no, no.

And of course, I mean, the big thing, the thing that underlies this whole story that matters more than any of the details we talked about is the coming of smallpox. That is the thing that tips the balance of the whole story and fundamentally alters the demographic picture of the Americas. Now, some people, sometimes when they tell that story, there's an element of blame, like it was the Europeans' fault for bringing smallpox. They should have known better and all this, but of course they have no concept. There was no way

they weren't ever going to bring it. The Europeans were going to arrive at some point and when they did, these viruses were bound to come with them. And diseases are taken back across the Atlantic, aren't they? I mean, they're not as devastating. Well, this is the Columbian Exchange, isn't it, Tom? I mean, it's the landmark moments in human history when so many fruits, vegetables, seeds, animals, all these kinds of things are taken back and forth. And the new in the old world which are previously for thousands of years been detached from one another and ignorant of one another where they become united and it's often a very very dark story an obvious question could the mexica have maintained their independence this whole story has been a succession of moments where cortez is dodging a bullet, where the whole expedition could have been absolutely destroyed. Do you think there's

any possibility that the Spanish wouldn't have come back even if Cortés' expedition had failed? It's the million-dollar question, really, isn't it? Could there still be a Mexica state with whom the Spanish have diplomatic relations or whatever? It's a really good question. We know from the New World more generally that every single corner of it was infiltrated by Europeans, wasn't it? And not just the Americas, Australia, New Zealand. Moctezuma is very able. We know that he plans, he's careful, he's very good at organization. He defeats Cortes. He finds Spaniards who are subornable enough that they can train his warriors. Does that change anything? I don't know. I'm slightly playing devil's advocate here because I think it was always going to happen. Yeah, no, I think it's a good question. I think,

first of all, the fact that Mesoamerica is so divided means it's easy for the Spaniards and for any European power. Yeah, divide and rule. However it worked out, there would have been some constellation of forces that involved, you know, there would have been jockeying, there would have been geopolitical rivalry and stuff within Mesoamerica that would mean that it would be very hard for the big target, which is the empire of the Aztecs, to survive. That said, I suppose a good what-if would be, what if straight away, or at some point, Montezuma had done a deal with the Spaniards?

What if he had surrendered to Charles V? Maybe not with Cortes, somebody as rapacious as Cortes, but what if, for example, he'd managed to do a deal with Diego Velasquez? He said, listen, let's not fight each other. I suppose then you're still faced with the same- You're being sucked into it, isn't it? You're being kind of ground into the churning machine that is the combination of legalism and militarism, which is so devastating. And Spanish sort of armed entrepreneurs, to use

the phrase we've used before, Matthew Restall's phrase, they're still going to arrive, aren't they? I suppose you're then in the position of Native Americans in North America. And how important is it to world history that it's Christian Europeans who turn up? Well, I know your answer to that, Tom, but who else Christian Europeans who turn up? Well, I know your answer to that, Tom. But who else is going to turn up? Because the geographical proximity means that it's got to be people from the Atlantic seaboard. Your other plausible possibilities are what, the Chinese? The Chinese aren't going to do it, because we know that they turn against the idea of...

Muslim fleets? Muslim fleets, I suppose. Going from Morocco or... The Ottomans. Maybe the Ottomans would have sufficient... I mean, unlikely. But again, very unlikely. They're in the wrong geographical position.

It's hard to imagine. All right, reframe it. How important is it to the ability of Europeans to expand across the globe that they conquer Mexico? Does it establish a template? Oh, it definitely establishes a template. Yes, it absolutely does. It establishes a template for the Spanish to conquer the rest of the continent.

It also obviously inspires everybody else to get in on the act. France, England. And the Protestants. Protestants, exactly. Of England and the Netherlands. Yes, exactly. I mean, actually, they do it quite late, don't they? I mean, it's remarkable how long it takes the English, for example. It just shows what a backwater England was in relative terms, that England takes so long to get up and firing. The interesting question is why the French are so slow. Well, they don't need to. That's the thing. They've got France. That's the thing. Why would you leave France? Which is also the reason the Ottomans don't do it and the Chinese.

Yeah. It's backward, poverty-stricken, Atlantic-facing, marginal states that have an interest in making this terrifying crossing over the Atlantic. Actually, funnily enough, it's why the Portuguese don't invest in Columbus. Yeah, because they've already got there. They've got their own sea routes going east. Why do they need to bother with this? And in a way, you could argue only the Spanish could have done this. It obviously transforms Spain's place in the world economy,

turns Spain into a superpower, the flow of gold, although the flow of gold ends up being very destabilizing because of the massive European inflation. Whether there's any scenario, to go back to your earlier thing, whether there is any scenario that involves the new world holding out against old world colonization, I find that utterly implausible. Yeah, I do. Because I think once they've developed the technology, the ships with the famous triangular sails, Tom, and other such things, once they've developed the technology to get across, the sheer competitiveness of European states plus the entrepreneurship and the acquisitiveness,

the greed, basically, of individuals means that they are always going to come in greater and greater numbers. And the biological balance favours them because they're smallpox. So one final question to go back to your book. Yes. The Fall of the Aztecs. Brilliant note on which to end, Tom. I get a sense reading some of the best scholars on this theme that it's not just that they are hostile to European colonialism, but they're hostile to the very drama and excitement of the narratives. So Matthew Restle, who is, I think think by far the most brilliant of these scholars in his book he writes about cortez yeah and he says of course there's this tradition in which he is you know cast as a saintly figure he's a hero the center of this great drama and then he talks of

course there's this other tradition that he is cast as a villain a kind of satanic figure and he rejects both of them and says that they situate him at the center of a great drama and they burnish his renown. And therefore he says, firstly, Cortez is a mediocrity. He's the plaything of forces and factions that he's just kind of tossed about willy-nilly. And secondly, he deconstructs the narrative so completely that he's essentially saying we have no possibility of knowing what the narrative is. Yeah. And that seems to me just as important, that if you can deconstruct this narrative that we've actually been telling, then you leech it off the sense of excitement. That even if you

are horrified by what's happening, I mean, you can't help but feel that this is a gripping narrative. And there's a sense in which now the very idea of this being a narrative is something that should be opposed. I think you're absolutely right. I mean, you've engaged with his writings quite heavily in your own writing, but you were basically doing the absolute opposite of what he's doing because you are presenting a narrative that can be understood by children. So in a sense, you have to cut out nuance doubt yes all the kind of the haze of uncertainty that surrounds these narratives you're absolutely right tom and it opens up loads of different questions so one of them is about the difference in writing for children and for adults

you've written for children yourself of course your wolf girl i have a book about the greeks the gods and so on and as you know, when you are writing for children, the demands are very different. Children are not stupid, so you're not dumbing down for them necessarily. But a child reader who is reading a book voluntarily for pleasure, when they could be reading Harry Potter or playing a video game or whatever, they will tire very quickly of you saying, now some historians think that. Yeah, but not to dwell on that, rather to dwell on the fact that this is one of the stories that you've chosen to tell. So you've done the world wars, you've done Alexander, you've done Cleopatra. These are the great classic stories.

So a distrust of telling this story. This, I would say, is the single most astonishing narrative that we've done in all the episodes, all the topics that we've covered in The Rest is History, the risks that Cortez takes, but also for the drama of this kind of unique meeting of two great powers from different worlds, kind of almost different time zones. I mean, are scholars who are, for entirely understandable reasons, very, very ideologically opposed to everything that, say, Cortes represents. Are they justified in being nervous of the sheer drama of this story? I think they are justified in being nervous. I understand why they're doing it, because they're

being nervous for ideological reasons, as you say. So Matthew Restore, for example, is explicit in his book in saying, I want to take out the glamour from this story and the melodrama. I want to show it as a horrible... He loathes Cortes. He hates the Spanish project, if you like. He thinks it represents rape, torture, slavery, exploitation, all of these things. I don't think I'm putting words in his mouth. And he would say to tell it in a kind of roaring swashbuckling style is to give them what they want is to miss what he sees as the horrible realism of the story so is that what we've done in the series i think when the rest is history and actually not just on the rest is history i think lots of historical work more generally has its cake and eats it doesn't it and i think we're

both probably being guilty of that in our own writings. So when I think about, I mean, on a totally different note, you know, you often tease me about my books on the 60s saying, you know, most people were listening to the sound of music and eating chicken Kiev or whatever, and not actually having fun at all. Hanging out on Carnaby Street. But I have my cake and eat it in those books. I have long descriptions of Carnaby Street and the Beatles and all of that stuff. While also saying, actually, most people have very humdrum lives. Just like you, when you write about the Romans, and you tell the most fantastic stories about the emperors, and you also then say, ah, but we know this probably, you know, these are from sources that were party pre or whatever.

But you see, I think doing it now, and just I'm thinking aloud, really, thinking how I feel about the story that we've been telling. I think actually I would come at a slightly different conclusion, which is that humans love these kinds of stories. Of course they do, Tom. Even if the stories end in tragedy and horror, we still love them. So throughout these episodes, you know, there've been echoes of Greek tragedy, biblical accounts of the fall of Jerusalem, classical history. And these are great stories as well.

And the horror is interfused with the drama and the excitement. And I think there is no escaping from the fact that the horror isn't something that can be divorced from the drama. It's kind of interfused. I totally agree with you, Tom. I totally agree. And it says something unsettling, perhaps, about human nature and about human desire for stories. what most of them will crave is action, excitement. They love the horror, by the way. I mean, I know because I go into schools to talk to groups, sometimes quite small children,

children eight or nine or something. They can't get enough of Henry VIII having an enema, or people having their heads chopped off by the guillotine, or whatever it might be. Now, we all laugh about that. We say, our kids, they're very bloodthirsty. But actually, adults are no different. If you look at the podcasts that we've done that get the most, you know, the Nazis. But I think with this, there's another reason why it's such an incredible story, which is that there is heroism on both sides. Yeah, agreed. So Cortez, whatever you think about him, I mean, he's clearly a horrible person,

but his courage and his willingness to gamble makes it almost impossible to read what's happening and not feel a sense of admiration for him. And I think also what has happened, particularly with the brilliant scholars who are writing about the Mexica, the Aztecs now, we have a much better understanding of what made their civilization tick and a sense of the wonder of it. And the tragedy when they lose. Yes. And so that's the essence, I guess, of a tragedy or a great story is that you can read about this or listen to this story and identify with the boldness of what Cortes is attempting and feel the kind of grief for the horror that is visited on this extraordinary civilization. And you can feel both at the same time. And that's part of the power, perhaps, uniquely of this story. I can't think of anything where that

tension is quite so strong. I agree completely, Tom. And actually, my publisher said to me, when you write the preface to your book, you should point this out. So I have a couple of lines. I'll just read it. The fall of the Aztecs is often a very bloody story. For centuries, people used to tell it as a clash between wicked Aztecs and gallant Spaniards. These days, it's more common to tell it from the opposite angle, casting the Aztecs as noble underdogs and the Spanish conquerors as greedy monsters. But I don't see it that way. There was plenty of cruelty on both sides, but plenty of courage too.

Was Montezuma a hero? Was Cortez a villain? Or was it the other way around? Who were more bloodthirsty, the Aztecs or the Spaniards? Or is it a bit simplistic to think of them that way? Wise words. And I think that's exactly the approach that actually we should take as historians writing about this. To see these people as actors in a world where they're very confused, they're trying to make sense of what's going on. It's an unprecedented situation. There are heroes and villains on both sides. Of course, the Spanish win. And so the Spanish behavior afterwards is immensely shocking to us.

But at the same time, the Aztecs are not, it's easy to turn them into saintly martyrs, but of course they weren't. I mean, there are lots of people in Mesoamerica who absolutely loathed, like Malinche, who loathed the Aztecs. And actually getting that complexity across is the key to the story. Well, thank you, Dominic. So your book, The Fall of the Aztecs, is out and available in Good Book Shops. Make an ideal Christmas present for any historically enthused children out there. And thank you so much for this brilliant account of this extraordinary episode in history. And

thank you very much if you have made it this far very grateful to you for accompanying us on this mighty epic thanks so much thank you very much tom has been very indulgent and very patient i have to say haven't i think it's a brilliant story well i've always been obsessed by this story as i think anyone interested in history must be all right so i'm absolutely thrilled that we've done it so on that note goodbye everybody goodbye everybody. Goodbye. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews,

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