In Mexico, he captured Tenochtitlán, a city said to have been grander than Paris or Rome, and destroyed it without pity or mercy. His men burned the Aztec libraries, their books of songs, their histories written down, a desolation described in a handful of surviving icnocuicatl, songs of their sorrow. One begins, Broken spears lie in the roads; we have torn our hair in our grief. The houses are roofless now, and their walls are red with blood.43
