Cortés and the Aztec Conquest Quotes

“After seventy-five days, Tenochtitlán had finally been subdued by the persistent Spaniards and abandoned by its people. The war with the Mexicans had come to an end. The Aztec empire had crumbled with the destruction of its great and beautiful city. The breaking of the siege of Tenochtitlán marked the beginning of Spanish rule on the mainland of the New World.”
― Irwin R. Blacker, Cortés and the Aztec Conquest

“On May 26, the troops under Alvarado and Olid approached the aqueduct that carried water from the springs of Chapultepec to the city. The Aztecs had expected this attack on their water supply and were prepared to meet it. But after a very brief skirmish, they were routed, and the invaders smashed the aqueduct.”
― Irwin R. Blacker, Cortés and the Aztec Conquest

“As Cortés turned to descend the steps of the high temple, a view of the great city spread out before him. He described it in a letter to his king: “This great city is built on a salt lake, and from the mainland to the city is a distance of two leagues from any side from which you enter. It has four approaches by means of artificial causeways, two cavalry lances in width. The city is as large as Seville or Córdoba. The principal streets are very broad and well-constructed. Over them ten horsemen can ride abreast. . . .”
― Irwin R. Blacker, Cortés and the Aztec Conquest

“Then one morning, a great causeway appeared in the distance. Spreading before them was the broad avenue leading toward Moctezuma’s capital. Years later, Bernal Díaz del Castillo wrote: “We saw so many cities and villages built in the water and other great towns on dry land, and that straight and level causeway going toward Mexico, we were amazed . . . and some of our soldiers even asked whether the things that we saw were not a dream. [We were] seeing things . . . that had never been heard of or seen before, not even dreamed about.”
― Irwin R. Blacker, Cortés and the Aztec Conquest

“They hungered after gold like pigs.”
― Irwin R. Blacker, Cortés and the Aztec Conquest

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― Irwin R. Blacker, Cortés and the Aztec Conquest

“He arranged a marriage for Doña Marina to Juan Jaramillo, one of his captains, and then returned for what he thought would be a brief visit to Spain. But when his visit was completed in 1547 and he was on his way to embark for Mexico at the Spanish port of Seville, his great strength began to fail. Within a few days, he died”
― Irwin R. Blacker, Cortés and the Aztec Conquest

“An order went out on October 15, 1522, naming Cortés governor, captain general, and chief justice of New Spain.”
― Irwin R. Blacker, Cortés and the Aztec Conquest

“The native allies arrived in time, and Cortés then organized his troops for battle. I divided them and assigned them to three captains, each of whom with his division was to be stationed in one of three cities around Tenochtitlán. I made Pedro de Alvarado captain of one division and assigned him thirty horsemen, eighteen crossbow-men and gunners, and one hundred and fifty foot soldiers, and more than twenty-five thousand warriors of our allies. They were to make their headquarters at Tacuba. I made Cristóbal de Olid captain of another division . . . the division to make their headquarters in Coyoacán. Gonzalo de Sandoval was captain of the third division . . . This division was to go to Ixtapalapa and destroy it, then to advance over a causeway, protected by the ships, to join the garrison at Coyoacán. After I entered the lake with the ships, Sandoval would fix his headquarters where it suited him best. For the thirteen ships I left three hundred men, almost all of them sailors and well drilled, so that each ship had twenty-five Spaniards, and each of the small vessels had a captain, a pilot, and six crossbowmen and gunners. On May 10, Alvarado and Olid left Texcoco with their commands. The siege of Tenochtitlán was about to begin. It was to become the longest siege and one of the bloodiest battles in the history of the New World. At its end, an entire civilization would be destroyed and the largest city ever found by the conquistadors laid waste.”
― Irwin R. Blacker, Cortés and the Aztec Conquest

“The spring of 1521 was passing rapidly. More than 8,000 natives from Culuacan and Texcoco had been employed daily in digging the ship channel. The channel had progressed to the point where it was more than twelve feet deep and just as wide. It had sturdy embankments and was separated from the lake by a small dike. As Cortés wrote the king in Spain: “It was certainly a very great work and worthy of admiration.” On Sunday, April 28, water was let into the channel; the fleet was launched and poled out onto the lake. Then Cortés held a review. He found “eighty-six horsemen, one hundred eighteen crossbowmen and gunners, seven hundred-odd foot soldiers with swords and shields, three heavy iron cannon, fifteen small bronze fieldpieces, and ten-hundred-weight of powder.”
― Irwin R. Blacker, Cortés and the Aztec Conquest

“It was now May of 1520; Cortés had been in Tenochtitlán since November, and he had only succeeded in trapping himself.”
― Irwin R. Blacker, Cortés and the Aztec Conquest

“Cortés in his own way helped keep the countryside stirred up by demanding that all of the available gold in the area be brought to Tenochtitlán as tribute. With this tribute, and with other treasure that had belonged to Moctezuma’s father, the Spaniards were kept busy for days just assessing the value of their loot. The small pieces removed from Aztec jewelry alone were valued at 600,000 pesos. Goldsmiths were brought in from a nearby town, and they smelted the gold into slabs. The Spaniards were unable to weigh the treasure accurately, and Cortés suggested that no one take his share until it could be divided more equitably. But the captains and the soldiers had come too far and fought too hard to be put off. They demanded a division of the spoils, and Cortés had to consent.”
― Irwin R. Blacker, Cortés and the Aztec Conquest

“Moctezuma was, indeed, a complex man, intelligent and impressive in appearance. Bernal Díaz del Castillo wrote: “The Great Moctezuma was about forty years old, of good height and well proportioned, slender and spare of flesh . . . He did not wear his hair long, but so as to cover his ears; his scanty beard was well shaped and thin. His face was somewhat long, but cheerful, and he had good eyes and showed in his appearance and manner both tenderness and, when necessary, gravity. He was very neat and clean . . .”
― Irwin R. Blacker, Cortés and the Aztec Conquest

“In their quest for gold, and for the ruler who controlled its steady flow into the Aztec treasuries, the conquistadors had indeed marched far - some 275 miles over mountainous country to the great Valley of Mexico.”
― Irwin R. Blacker, Cortés and the Aztec Conquest

“Cortés remained in Cholula for several weeks, parleying with the emissaries of Moctezuma and preparing to march to the city on the lake.”
― Irwin R. Blacker, Cortés and the Aztec Conquest

“Cortés began his journey westward, first stopping at the capital of Tlaxcala on September 23, twenty-four days and three battles after they had entered the land.”
― Irwin R. Blacker, Cortés and the Aztec Conquest

“On August 31, the small Spanish column crossed the frontier of Tlaxcala, a state constantly at war with those parts of Mexico directly controlled by Moctezuma.”
― Irwin R. Blacker, Cortés and the Aztec Conquest

“found a suitable site for their first permanent community in a vicinity where the natives were relatively friendly. With great care, they laid out a town that they called Villa Rica de Vera Cruz - Rich Town of the True Cross - so named because the land was rich and because they had landed on the Holy Friday of the Cross.”
― Irwin R. Blacker, Cortés and the Aztec Conquest

“The wind was fair, and the small fleet hugged the shore, sailing past the Alvarado and the Banderas rivers, where Grijalva had traded beads for gold, past the Island of Sacrifices, where Grijalva’s men had seen the bloody altars, and finally anchored off the island of San Juan de Ulúa, in the harbor of present-day Veracruz, on Holy Thursday, 1519. On Good Friday, Cortés and his expedition disembarked, built a small camp, and made contact with the local Indians, members of a powerful nation called the Aztecs.”
― Irwin R. Blacker, Cortés and the Aztec Conquest

“The scene that Cortés described so vividly - the arrival of the Spanish invaders in the Mexican capital - took place on November 8, 1519.”
― Irwin R. Blacker, Cortés and the Aztec Conquest

“Realizing that the enemy was determined to fight to the bitter end, Cortés remarked, “. . . We would recover little if any of the treasure that had been taken from us, and they would force us to destroy them totally. This last caused me the greater sorrow,” he said, “because it weighed on my soul.”
― Irwin R. Blacker, Cortés and the Aztec Conquest

“For the first three weeks in June, the conquistadors and their Indian allies fought skirmishes on the outskirts of the city.”
― Irwin R. Blacker, Cortés and the Aztec Conquest

“On December 28, 1520, three days after the Feast of the Nativity, Cortés left Tlaxcala at the head of an army of 550 Spaniards, about 10,000 Indian allies, and forty horses. The next day, the army was in Mexican territory.”
― Irwin R. Blacker, Cortés and the Aztec Conquest

“Cortés had allies in Tlaxcala who were prepared to stand by him in need. For twenty-two days, the captain general and his men rested and recovered from their wounds. During this period, Moctezuma’s successor died of smallpox, and Cuauhtémoc, a young man of about twenty-five and Moctezuma’s nephew, ascended the Aztec throne.”
― Irwin R. Blacker, Cortés and the Aztec Conquest

“The Battle of Otumba was fought on July 7, 1520. The victorious Spaniards would never forget it; nor would the Aztecs forget the humiliation of their loss. In the days that followed, the Aztecs watched Cortés withdraw to Tlaxcala. They knew he was not defeated.”
― Irwin R. Blacker, Cortés and the Aztec Conquest

“there was yet another reason for Moctezuma’s apparent confusion. It was because of the legend of the Aztecs’ great god Quetzalcoatl, who was supposed to return one day to revisit his people. Quetzalcoatl, according to legend, was a hero who had been the human leader of the ancient Toltecs as well as an immortal deity. He was fair and bearded, and he taught his obedient people many things - how to plant, how to work metal, and how to construct beautiful buildings. But Quetzalcoatl was driven out by a rival, a king and deity named Tezcatlipoca. And after a long period of wandering, Quetzalcoatl disappeared across the eastern sea, promising to return in the year ce acatl (one reed) - which in the Aztec calendar is the name of a certain year that recurs every fifty-two years.”
― Irwin R. Blacker, Cortés and the Aztec Conquest

“The Aztecs, impressed by the wealth and culture of some of the tribes they conquered, labored to perfect their own state. By the time of Cortés’s arrival, their achievements had equaled and in some cases surpassed all other Indian civilizations of the New World. In the realm of government, the Aztecs developed their own system of tribunals to administer justice. They had their own viceroys to rule their provinces that spread across the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific - and to communicate between their states they set up a messenger service as efficient as any in Europe. In science, they had knowledge of medicine and had begun to experiment with herbs, classifying them along with the diseases they cured. In art, their architecture was impressive, and their sculpture brilliant. And of all their accomplishments, the art of war was the one the Aztecs had developed most highly. Their aptitude for military matters and their emphasis on training and discipline impressed the Spanish conquistadors and was even respected by them.”
― Irwin R. Blacker, Cortés and the Aztec Conquest

“After many years as barbaric wanderers, the Aztecs were given a heavenly sign, as they had expected. For it had been foretold that at some time during their wanderings an eagle with a snake in its mouth would be seen perched on a cactus. Following the legend, the Aztecs founded a city where an eagle appeared, naming the spot Tenochtitlán.”
― Irwin R. Blacker, Cortés and the Aztec Conquest

“The archaeological record of the Aztecs’ ancestors goes back to nomadic hunters who some 8,000 years ago stalked the mammoth and other prehistoric creatures that roamed through the shallow lakes of Central America. Much later, about 2000 B.C., these nomads began to settle down and establish villages in what is now Mexico.”
― Irwin R. Blacker, Cortés and the Aztec Conquest

“Then, as they crossed over one of the largest bridges, Emperor Moctezuma appeared with his personal retinue. Cortés described the meeting in a letter to King Charles: We were received by Moctezuma with about two hundred chiefs, all barefooted and dressed in a kind of very rich livery. They approached in two processions along the walls of the street, which is very broad and straight and very beautiful. Montezuma came in the middle of the street with two lords, one on each side of him. . . . All were dressed in the same manner except that Montezuma was shod and the other lords were barefooted. As we approached each other I descended from my horse and was about to embrace him, but the two lords in attendance intervened so that I should not touch him, and then they, and he also, made the ceremony of kissing the ground. Having done this, he ordered his brother to take me by the arm, and the other attendant walked a little ahead of us. After he spoke to me, all the other lords who formed the two processions saluted me one after the other and then returned to the procession. As I approached to speak to Montezuma, I took off a collar of pearls and glass diamonds that I wore and put it on his neck. After we had gone through some of the streets, one of his servants came with two collars which were made of colored shells. From each of the collars hung eight golden shrimps executed with great perfection and a span long. He took the collars from the servant and put them on my neck, and we continued on through the streets until we came to a large and handsome house, which he had prepared for our reception.”
― Irwin R. Blacker, Cortés and the Aztec Conquest