Desperate for legitimacy, the Aztecs set about with single-minded motivation to establish it. Perhaps their most dramatic act was to import an abundant breeder with a good heritage. They brought in a Colhuacan prince who claimed descent from the noble Toltecs and arranged for him to marry no fewer than 20 Aztec women, who presumably would then bear him numerous blue-blooded children. Aristocracy was on command and it worked. Itzcoatl, one of the sons of the prince, led his men into a major battle and brought home muc

Although an uneasy balance of affairs continued during the six months after the Spaniards’ arrival, existence went on in the capital, and Cortes and his men had the opportunity to observe the Aztec way of life. In his second letter to Charles V, Cortes described the city’s setting. In the basin, there were two lakes that almost fill it. One of these two lakes was fresh water and the other was salty. From one lake to another communication was by canoe, with no need of going overland.

Oddly, the men who were to destroy Tenochtitlan appreciated its beauty and elegant engineering. It was more magnificent than many European cities at the time, including Rome and Constantinople. The largely deforested and overgrazed European landscape hosted cities on a smaller scale, which still bore the stamp of a constrained medieval sensibility. In western Europe, only London, Rome, and Venice had populations anywhere near 100,000. Seville, with an estimated population of 60,000, was closest in size of any Spanish city to Tenochtitlan, whose population was estimated at 200,000. It must have annoyed the Spaniards that pagans had constructed a city that surpassed any of theirs. Pagans were people who were not even mentioned in the Bible.

After just one week, Cortes executed a bizarre, bloodless coup. Citing a clash at Veracruz in which several of his men had been killed, Cortes told Motecuhzoma that under pain of death he would have to come with him to the Spaniards’ lodging. As the Aztec ruler was led through the streets, he told his agitated people that he was going of his own free will. From then on, Motecuhzoma was a ruler in name only while Cortes pulled his strings.

In rage the Colhua banished the Aztecs to the swamps of Lake Tetzcoco. The soggy land seemed hopeless for the Aztecs. Then on a low island surrounded by reeds they noticed an eagle resting on a prickly pear. As they watched, the eagle spread its wings and screamed in triumph, the god-given sign. Their journey had ended, and their bloodthirsty spread across the Valley of Mexico was about to begin. They would build an empire based largely on an enthusiastic dedication to war.

When all of the bribes, incantations, and pleas of Motecuhzoma’s emissaries failed to halt the Spaniards’ march on his city, he panicked. As a last resort, the angry lord attempted to flee, but the Aztec priest waylaid him and pressured him to return. Certain even before the fact that his reign had come to an end, Motecuhzoma gave a farewell speech. With abundant tears he cried out to the masses that he was terrified over the arrival of the strangers. After this public scene, the king returned to the palace and bade farewell to his wives and children with sorrow and tears, charging all his attendants to care for his family, since he considered himself a man about to die.

A group of migrants like these can scarcely be imagined. Huitzilopochtli was the Aztecs’ god. Huitzilopochtli was a ferocious god who in the course of time had evolved from an earth-god of fertility into a symbol of militarism and imperialism associated with the sun. Guided by Huitzilopochtli, they ate low quality food, stole women, and took captives for human sacrifices to placate their god. The sun would not rise, they believed, unless Huitzilopochtli was nourished with hearts cut from the bodies of living men.

Some topics in this essay:
Lake Tetzcoco, Tetzcoco Indian, Seville Cathedral’s, Cortes Diaz, Diaz None, Valley Mexico, Veracruz Cortes, Reed Aztec, Aztecs Cortes, Bible Aztecs, lake tetzcoco, valley mexico, aztec warriors, aztec ruler, reed aztec calendar, precious stones, aztecs cortes, spaniards aztec, human sacrifices, aztecs won, 1 reed aztec, aztec calendar,