This is the second part of a well-made series about the Aztec world in the “Fall of Civilizations” documentaries.  This episode focuses on the situation of Hernan Cortez and his Conquistadors initially making contact with the Aztecs, and the catastrophe that ensued.

Following are points from this episode:

— Hernan Cortez arrived in the New World when the Aztec culture was at the peak of prosperity.

— The early life of Cortez in Spain is explained.

— It briefly describes the activities of Christopher Columbus brutally enslaving the native population on the island of Hispaniola.  [NOTE: I have previously heard that it was other people associated with Columbus who were more hostile towards the native people, but apparently he was very cruel towards them as well.]

— Cortez initially migrated to the island of Hispaniola when young and he worked as a notary in a small town for six years.

— Cortez went as the treasurer as a part of a campaign to subjugate the native people living in Cuba, where he earned the trust of the people who ran the expedition.  He was subsequently appointed as the Magistrate of Santiago, Cuba, being gifted a large gold mine, an estate, and enslaved people to work for him.

— In 1517, Cortez learned of Aztec cities being discovered in Central America by expeditions that ended with their soldiers being killed by Native Americans, and later expeditions never returned, prompting the governor of Cuba Diego Velázquez to organize a search and rescue party that he appointed Cortez to lead.  Cortez was 33 years old at the time.

— Cortez organized the expedition consisting of 300 men and six ships— however, before they left, the man they were setting out to find sailed back into the port bringing incredible stories of cities built from tall pyramids and cities paved with stone, and he spoke about meeting a delegation from a powerful king who lived there.  Cortez knew that he would not be allowed to go on the expedition now that the man they were looking for has returned, so he quickly embarked anyway, which enraged Velázquez.

— Cortez wrote about his journey in detail, two of his men wrote recollections decades later, and the accounts of a few surviving Aztecs were recorded by Fray Diego Duran decades later as well in the Florentine Codex.

— Cortez initially made contact with Aztecs on the beach of Mexico, and the watchmen on the beach reported what they saw to their king Montezuma.

— Later in the year 1519 Cortez came back with more ships, and they found a Spanish man who was shipwrecked eight years previously that was captured and enslaved by the Mayans along with another person.  He explained to Cortez that his companion enjoyed his life with the Mayans and had children with one, with the Mayan King also taking him on as a war chief.  Cortez realized the man’s usefulness and took him on as a translator.

— When Cortez was restocking the water supply of the ship, they had their first clash with Mayans in a bloody battle.  The Mayans became panicked by the cannons and guns and fled, with 400 of them being killed and with the Mayan chief surrendering, after which he gave them gold and 20 enslaved women.

— One of the enslaved women that was gifted to them was named Malintzin.  She knew all of the languages of the region due to being traded among different factions as a slave, which was useful to Cortez.

— Cortez scuttled ten of his ships to ensure that a mutiny didn’t happen, and he sent a ship to the King of Spain with a message and a chest of gold in order to receive permission to continue his exploits.

— Cortez founded the town of Veracruz on the sandbanks of Mexico, naming himself as governor and acting as if he had authority from the king of Spain to do so.

— The Mayans came to Cortez and announced themselves as ambassadors of Montezuma, bringing gifts of gold, incense, and food.

— Montezuma was pragmatic with his decisions in needing more information, and he employed many people to attempt to find out what the situation was with the mysterious newcomers.

— The Spanish were at a distinct advantage for many reasons, which made them almost impossible for Montezuma to effectively deal with. 

— The letters of Cortez were printed and distributed throughout European cities once the ship he sent arrived there, and artifacts from Aztec temples that he sent were exhibited in town halls in Europe over the next year.

— Cortex had a lot of important information that he was able to use against Montezuma, such as the fact that he had enemies.

— The Aztec city of Tenochtitlan was 400 KM inland from the sea, and Cortez and his troops fought some battles on their journey there, easily winning them.

— Cortez attempted to first contact a tribe that were adversaries of Montezuma, but they mistook Cortez as an invader and they attacked him, with a large battle ensuing. 

— After a few days Cortez was able to convince the tribe that they actually came to enlist their help against Montezuma, and Montezuma sent a message to Cortez congratulating them on their great victory in the battle even though he tried to dissuade them from traveling the rest of the way to Tenochtitlan.

— Cortez went to the city of the tribe they fought and stayed there as guests for a few weeks, where they convinced Cortez to attack a neighboring city of Cholula, which they did do.

— The people of Cholula attempted to greet Cortez peacefully, but Cortez immediately attacked them, killing many for two days in a massacre, along with burning the entire city and destroying a temple.

— Montezuma was being informed about the destruction of Cholula when his spies reported back to him, and he became very stressed about the situation.

— Montezuma heard that Cortez was heading towards his city of Tenochtitlan with thousands of hostile native allies, so he sent a messenger to meet them bearing gifts of gold, with the messenger trying to trick them into thinking that he was Montezuma, but Cortez was tipped off about the deception and continued toward his destination, causing the people in Tenochtitlan to panic.

— When the Spanish approached the city, they marveled at what they saw.  Montezuma met them on a causeway into the city with many soldiers.

— The soldiers were welcomed into the city and given lodging in a palace that once belonged to a former king, which Cortez’s men marveled at.

— Cortez and his men spent the next few weeks at Tenochtitlan, being amazed at what they saw.

— Cortez’s men pressured Montezuma into giving them large amounts of gold, and Montezuma also offered them jade but the men weren’t interested in that.

— The Spanish created a fire and melted the ornate gold objects that were gifted to them into bricks!  The Spanish went about the city, taking whatever they wanted.

— Cortez learned that six of his men were killed in Veracruz, and he used it as an excuse to kidnap Montezuma and keep him as a hostage, which devastated Montezuma as well as the people living in Tenochtitlan. 

— Cortez also apprehended seventeen lords of the city with the excuse of them supposedly plotting an attack on his men, and he had them burned alive in the courtyard of the great temple, with Montezuma watching with chains on his feet, and with people of the city watching in complete silence.

— Cortez was allowed to go about his business to a certain degree, but he was always accompanied with Spanish guards.

— An adversary of Cortez in Cuba Velázquez (who Cortez double-crossed to go on his journey) sent 900 men to find him and arrest him, and Montezuma was able to receive word about that situation, which he must have thought was a good revelation, seeing an opportunity to rid himself of Cortez.  Montezuma was able to relay to those troops exactly how to come, and he even sent gold to them.  Montezuma then told Cortez that the troops were coming, hoping it would frighten them away, but Cortez decided to go to the coast to meet them while leaving troops to keep Montezuma apprehended. 

— Cortez was outnumbered three to one by the incoming soldiers, and he arrived at the coast with his troops more quickly than was anticipated.  He attacked the large force sent to arrest him at night when it was raining, putting out an eye of the man leading them.  The troops were only mercenaries that were hired to come after Cortez, and Cortez was then able to convince them to accompany him back to Tenochtitlan to further subjugate the native people with the promise of vast mountains of gold.

— Cortez left a man named Pedro De Alvarado in charge in Tenochtitlan with 100 men while he went to the coast, but the situation was precarious because the city had a population of over 200 thousand people, with all of the males being trained warriors.  During a festival, the Aztecs performed a human sacrifice despite promising Cortez that they would not do so, which enraged Alvarado and prompted him to send his men to stop the ceremony, telling them to kill the people doing it.  So in front of the mass of the gathered people of the city, they killed the priests performing the ceremony in a heinous manner with swords and then looted the temples of the city, which of course enraged the citizens and turned the entire city against them.  The citizens ran and grabbed their weapons and flooded the streets, forcing the Spanish to retreat to the palace.  Montezuma was ordered by the Spanish to tell the people to stop their attack, and he stood at the top of his palace and raised his hands to tell the people to stop, but they pelted him with rocks, forcing the Spanish to step in to protect him.  The men stayed locked inside the palace without any food until Cortez arrived 23 days later with a thousand Spaniards and many thousand more soldiers from the rival tribe. 

— When Cortez finally arrived back at the city, he found it to be a very different place where bodies where hanging from the gates and towers, and the markets were closed.  Cortez then ordered Montezuma to go out and speak to the people, and he first refused, but he was not given a choice.  The mob met his appearance with utter silence, and Montezuma called out to them telling them that they would be no match for the Spanish and to surrender, which allegedly prompted people in the crowd to yell out that he was a whore for the Spaniards, he had a “woman-like soul,” and he was no longer their king.  The entire crowd then threw rocks at him once more and shot arrows at him. 

— Montezuma died from his injuries the next day, and the Spanish burned his body. 

— Cortez knew they had to escape the city as soon as possible, and they attempted to escape at night while being laden with the gold they had plundered, with the hooves of their horses being wrapped with cloth so their trotting would not make any noise on the stone streets.  While they were escaping, a woman spotted them and shouted out, which caused the entire male population to burst out of their houses with their weapons and rush toward the Spaniards on the causeway, including in a massive amount of canoes.  The Spaniards were sitting ducks and the Aztecs now knew how to fight them.  Bodies piled up during the fighting, with the Spaniards losing almost all of their gold.  At least 600 Spaniards were killed that night along with thousand of their native allies.  400 Spaniards escaped, including Cortez.

— It was a huge victory for the residents of the city, but the damage to the society was enormous and the city was in disarray due Montezuma being dead.

— Cortez vowed to return to Tenochtitlan in full force.  He gathered together an army of many thousands of native allies— perhaps as many as 100 thousand of them, and he marched back to the city six months later with his allies and the remainder of his troops. 

— When the Spaniards reached the lake, they built small ships and loaded them with cannons and musketeers, blockading the city in a siege that lasted for four months.  In the meantime, smallpox was spreading in the city, killing many of the residents. 

— Eventually Cortez gave the order to advance into the city on the causeways, and the fighting was bitter and relentless, going street-to-street with heavy casualties on both sides.  When the Aztecs managed to capture Spanish soldiers, they brought them to the top of the temple and sacrificed them in front of the battle that was happening below, which terrified the Spanish troops. 

— During the battle Cortez found himself needing to resort to extreme tactics, ordering that every district they passed through be demolished entirely, with the rubble thrown into the lake to block the boats of the Aztecs. 

— The people in the city were starving due to the siege, and they only had salty water to drink, which caused many people to die.  People were resorting to eating leather and ground-up bricks, and many people died of hunger.

— When the Spanish reached the center of the city, they destroyed the well that the people had been drinking from, making all of them now drink salt water from the lake.

— Cortez was re-supplied from the coast every time his men were about to run out of supplies, allowing them to continue their siege for as long as was necessary.

— The Aztecs were preparing to make their last stand in the marketplace of the city, and people recount that at the time a comet tumbled through the sky, leaving a trail of coals and sparks, even being reported to land in the lake, which demoralized the residents, causing them to surrender.

— The new Aztec Emperor surrendered to the Spanish, and they tortured him until he told them where they hid the remaining gold in the city, however not a lot of gold remained since much of it was at the bottom of the lake due to when the soldiers attempted to escape the first time, which enraged the soldiers.

— Over the next years, Cortez remained in the area to ensure that everything that was remaining in the city was gradually demolished.  He had its houses pulled down and its canals filled in, and he declared that anyone attempting to move back to the city would be executed. 

— In the following years, Cortez enslaved many of the surviving people from the city, branding them with hot irons to show their status, and he put them to work destroying their own city and building European-style building on their ruins, working thousands of them to death in dangerous conditions.  He forced them to tear down the pyramids and build Catholic churches in their place.  He also tore down Montezuma’s palace and built mansions in its place, and he renamed the city “Mexico” because it was easier for the Spanish to pronounce.

— Four years later, a Franciscan Friar witnessed the slaves being forced to tear down their pyramids, and he declared that what he saw was a plague on all mankind.

— The city was prone to destructive floods in its early years due to its dykes being torn down, and in the 1600’s the lake was drained and Mexico City grew to fill the land where they lake previously was.  Today it is the largest city by population in North America, with over 20 million people living in its metropolitan area.

— The Spanish continually did all that they could to eradicate the Aztec culture, with religious orders such as the Jesuits, the Franciscans, and the Dominicans flooding into Mexico, building large monasteries and converting their native allies to Christians.  Any Aztec books that were found were burned, which has left only a few copies remaining today.

— Diseases such as smallpox killed up to 95% of indigenous Mexicans, and the will of the people to resist was severely reduced.

— Today the Aztec language is still spoken by two million people, mostly in the rural areas of Mexico.  Many Aztec words live on in the English language, such as Avocado, Chile, Tomato, Coyote, and Chocolate.

— Diego Velázquez, the Governor of Cuba and the nemesis of Cortez, was dismissed from his post due to reports of him abusing of indigenous labor, but he was restored to the office two years later in 1523, and he died one year after that at the age of 59, being called “the richest Spaniard in the Americas” at the time of his death. 

— Pánfilo de Narváez, the captain that was previously sent to arrest Cortez who lost one of his eyes in the conflict, was released from captivity after two years and he was sent back to Spain.  He then returned to the Americas several years later and led an expedition to Florida which met with hurricanes, shipwrecks, and disease, during which he drowned off of the Coast of Florida along with almost all of his large expedition of 300 men dying due to storms or being killed after being captured by natives.

— La Malinche, the slave girl that accompanied Cortez on his conquest who acted as his translator, later gave birth to Cortez’s son, and she later married one of his soldiers, who she followed to Spain where she was warmly received by the Spanish court.  She became a Spanish lady of high society, but she never spoke about the early years of her life.

— Cortez continued to embark on various journeys of conquest during his life, extending the territory of Spain and ending native rebellions, and he became wealthy doing so, and he also ran silver mines in Mexico, but nothing he did gave him a sense of satisfaction.  He returned to Spain as a Celebrated Conquistador, but the Spanish Nobility did not trust him and thus they shunned him, despite the fact that his efforts added vast amounts of land to Spain’s territory.  He never achieved the glory and recognition for his conquests that he was hoping for, and he virtually bankrupted himself with his insatiable appetite for expeditions and adventures.

— Cortez died in Seville, Spain in 1547 at the age of 62 after a painful illness.  His gravesite was moved eight times, and in the 1800’s a rising swell of Mexican nationalism and strengthening indigenous identify led to him being a figure of hatred, and he was vilified in Mexico as a monster.