Hernán Cortés Conquers the Aztec Empire — Fall of Tenochtitlan
Tenochtitlan fell to Hernán Cortés on 13 August 1521 after a siege of seventy-five days, ending the Aztec empire. Cortés had landed in 1519 with about 500 men and scuttled his ships, and had reached the city that November as a guest of Moctezuma II — a capital of perhaps 200,000 people built on an island in a lake, with causeways, aqueducts and a market the Spaniards compared to Constantinople. He took Moctezuma hostage within a week. The conquest was not achieved by 500 Spaniards. Tlaxcala, an independent state the Aztecs had fought for generations and used as a source of sacrificial captives, allied with Cortés and supplied tens of thousands of warriors, and other tributary cities followed once the empire looked breakable. The Spanish were driven out of the city on the Noche Triste in June 1520, losing most of their men and their gold, after a massacre in the temple precinct ordered by Pedro de Alvarado. Smallpox arrived that autumn with a member of a Spanish relief expedition, and killed a very large part of the population, including the new emperor Cuitláhuac, in the months before the siege began. Cortés returned with thirteen brigantines built in sections and carried overland to the lake, cut the aqueduct, and fought street by street. Cuauhtémoc surrendered and was tortured for gold and later hanged. The city was levelled and Mexico City built on it. The Tlaxcalans who had made the conquest possible were granted privileges and then absorbed. Epidemic disease reduced the population of central Mexico by something close to ninety per cent within a century, which did more than any campaign.
- Year: 1519 CE
- Category: Military
