When Pyrrhus, one of the most brilliant generals of his age, landed on the Italian mainland, he brought with him a weapon that was to have dire strategic and psychological effects on his opponents. According to Plutarch, when the relatively unsophisticated Roman troops first encountered Pyrrhus' Asian elephants in battle, they were utterly overwhelmed. Although the simple yeoman farmers that composed the Roman army could not conceive of any animal so large and menacing, their terror eventually subsided, and before long they had found a way to deal with these unheard-of behemoths. In subsequent battles, the Romans flung javelins into the midst of the elephant corps, causing panic amongst the beasts, which then went trampling about Pyrrhus' mercenaries. In the face of a terrible threat, the Romans proved to be adaptive. Hernan Cortes, another brilliant commander living more than a millennia after Pyrrhus, entered Mexico with weapons that would also give him a brief strategic and psychological edge over the native stone-age inhabitants. Accounts of Cortes' arrival by indigenous inhabitants of Mexico give an unambivalent view of their dismay at his ships, horses, dogs, and artillery, all of which were radically foreign to them. But, like the Romans, when their existence was threatened, these inhabitants quickly came to terms with the reconfigured martial rules that the Spanish introduced into central Mexico. The societies that inhabited central Mexico are all too often--even in contemporary historiography--portrayed as victim to inferior technology or their inability to adjust to the Spanish ideology of warfare. But, as this essay will demonstrate, when it became necessary for them to do so, inhabitants of the valley of Mexico were willing and able to play the game on Spanish terms, abandoning their traditional notions of warfare, and showing extraordinary adaptability in response to Spanish tactics. In fact, the failure of the Mexica to overcome the Spanish resulted from many factors, but cultural otherness or military inferiority surely played only a small role, if any. Examining Mesoamerican patterns of war and the ways the Mexica resisted the Spanish, from Cortes' second entrance into Tenochtitlan until their submission, illustrates that the Mexica responded rationally and adaptively to rapidly changing circumstances.

Scholarly views of Mesoamerican attitudes toward war occupy a spectrum which, at one extreme, integrates martial enterprise deeply into the indigenous metaphysical scheme and, at the other, attributes pragmatic motives to war and its attendant technology. The former view is unapologetically championed by Inga Clendinnen.[1] Relying heavily on indigenous accounts, Clendinnen traces connections between the pervasive militarization of Aztec society and the performance of public ritual, practiced on the bodies of captured warriors. As with all observers of Aztec society, Clendinnen has been struck by the large role accorded to capture in Aztec warfare, as opposed to battlefield killing. She finds significance in the role of captives in rituals. In her examination of rituals such as the "Feast of the Flaying of Men," she shows clear associations between militarism and the agricultural cycle, replete with offerings to the sun god of blood and beating human hearts; with stout warriors donning the flayed skin of their sacrificed captives to represent the husks on ears of maize. The Aztec ritual calendar, she claims "was geared to the most precisely observed and minutely differentiated stages of vegetable growth." These stages were observed from that unique Aztec achievement: chinampas agriculture. Chinampas--lakeside beds whose composition of silt yielded three harvests yearly--made Tenochtitlan "experientially an agricultural city." Furthermore, according to Clendinnen, they provided the "model for men's part in the natural order, and for their role in the aiding the growth of essential foods." Aztec warfare, then, served a ritualistic function, providing captives for "a deliberate sequence of bloody acts" grounded in the assumption that "human flesh and maize . . . were the same matter in different transformations, that the transformations were cyclic, and the cycles constantly in jeopardy; and that men's actions played a part . . . in maintaining the sequence of those transformations."[2] In her view, waging war was chiefly a metaphysical activity.[3]

Other scholars have ascribed more pragmatic motives to Aztec military activities. As anthropologist John Ingham has noted, "Aztec militarism was vital to the economic welfare of Tenochtitlan."[4] Ross Hassig promotes this thesis in three immensely insightful works: War and Society in Ancient Mesoamerica[5] Aztec Warfare, Imperial Expansion, and Political Control and Trade[6] and Tribute and Transportation: The Sixteenth-Century Political Economy of the Valley of Mexico.[7] According to Hassig, the military needs of the Mexica at the time of the Spanish incursion were dictated by the requirements of maintaining a sizable tributary empire.[8] Unlike the Incas, the Mexica did not administer their empire, but rather exercised hegemonic control.[9] The Aztec stronghold, Tenochtitlan, assumed the leading role in a triple alliance with two other powerful central-Mexican altapetls, Texcoco and Tacuba. Given its huge population, its island location on Lake Texcoco, and the density of populations around the lake, Tenochtitlan was not agriculturally self sufficient; rather its existence was underpinned by tribute collected from its empire.[10] Additionally, increasing social stratification and concentration of wealth into the hands of the Aztec nobility had created a considerable demand for luxury goods, which, in turn had created a vast trading network, stretching beyond the Valley of Mexico into the Yucatan and beyond.[11] Aztec dominance, however did not result from widespread allegiance beyond the boundaries of its altepetl, or city-state, but rather rested on the cooperation of allied and subject cities, enforced by considerable military muscle. Although the highest Aztec nobility endeavored to forge ties with other cities through marriage alliances, Aztec dominance of a particular city or region normally did not co-opt local political arrangements or allegiance to local political elites. Thus the tributary empire controlled by the Mexica remained inherently unstable, tenable only through unrelenting displays of martial dominance, and predicated on the continued success of the Aztecs in subduing hitherto recalcitrant tribes and city-states.[12]

In satisfying these conditions for dominance, the Aztecs had, in the one hundred years before the arrival of the Iberians, met with striking success. While scholars have contested the Aztec motives for waging war, the mechanics of warfare are generally clear. Although the large population of Tenochtitlan allowed for raising a large offensive army--with perhaps as many as forty-three thousand soldiers--the successful prosecution of a campaign was largely contingent on active cooperation of Mexican allies. One aspect of allied support was the supply of auxiliary troops.[13] The size of an Aztec army on any particular campaign was determined by the perception of the threat, and, if necessary, allied cities in the Valley of Mexico could contribute armies counting in the hundreds of thousands.[14] But a much more significant form of allied support was logistical. Communications networds outside the major urban centers were poor, and roads were barely negotiable during the rainy season of May to September. Since, even under the best conditions, Aztec armies could only be moved slowly, they depended on regional allies for provisioning. Consequently, an Aztec campaign required extensive planning, coordination, and advance warning to the allies resident along its proposed march, so that they could prepare food for troops who would be passing through or billeting. The further an Aztec army penetrated toward the periphery of the empire, the more vulnerable it might be to failure of logistical support; as a result, Aztec commanders did not deem it prudent to follow enemy troops too far beyond the security of allied city-states. In a similar way, the areas allied to the Mexica formed a buffer zone around the more-or-less unfortified capital.[15]

In waging war, the Aztecs drew on a well-trained male citizenry and employed a time-honored arsenal with some recent Mesoamerican innovations. Training for men was rigorous and began in boyhood, with a different and even more rigorous training for nobles. Boys were conditioned from the earliest age to accept the warrior vocation, and a further incentive to do well in war came from the considerable improvement in status and economic benefits that could accrue to a successful warrior and his relatives. In fact, social mobility among the Mexica was mostly the result of this kind of achievement.[16] A primary--but not exclusive--military objective was to take captives, and Aztec military organization and weaponry reflected this goal. Weapons fell generally into two categories: those that would provide a hail of projectiles before two opposing lines engaged, and those that could be used in hand-to-hand combat, with the aim of injuring an opponent and taking him captive, rather than killing him.[17] Bows and arrows, slings, and spear throwers were used in the initial stages. In the hand-to-hand phase, the broadsword--a fairly recent innovation--had come to dominate warfare in central Mexico.[18] It consisted of a wooden, paddle-shaped sword with embedded obsidian blades which, again, was meant to injure the opponent--although, when wielded against Spanish mounts, it proved capable of hewing off the head of a horse at a single stroke.[19] Since capture of the opponent, preferably following a one-on-one engagement, was the ideal outcome of a struggle, armies comprised an accumulation of small units of up to four hundred, usually under the command of a prestigious eagle or jaguar knight.[20] The standard size of an army might be eight thousand men, but, as mentioned above, the Mexica could draw upon allied strength to field very large armies.[21]

Aztec tactics, and the exigencies of provisioning large numbers of troops, favored them in wars of attrition.[22] Since the Mexica generally confronted opponents who employed the same military technology and tactics that they did, their numerical superiority gave them a decisive advantage in battle, allowing them to rotate their front lines with fresh waves of warriors until they had exhausted their numerically inferior opponents. At the same time, battles could be indecisive, and victorious Mexica might not be able to press their advantage into the enemy hinterland for fear of logistical failure. This combination of peculiar advantages and constraints explains the "flower wars," often seen as a kind of ritual warfare prosecuted to facilitate the supply of captives and victims for the bloodthirsty Aztec gods. But aside from its possible use for Aztec religion, the "flower war" was good strategy, allowing the Mexica to wear down opponents whom they were not able to take in a concentrated assault. This kind of war, usually arranged at the frontier of hostile territory, also allowed for a gradual chinking away at enemy territory and the possibility of encirclement and eventual economic strangulation.[23] This was the probable situation with the Tlaxcaltecas, with whom the Aztecs had long maintained hostility, and who joined Cortes in alliance against the forces of Tenochtitlan.[24]

It must surely be taken as a sign of the confidence of the Tenocha, rather than of their insecurity, that Cortes was allowed to enter Tenochtitlan freely.[25] Although they remain somewhat opaque, indigenous accounts of this still peaceful period--gathered more than thirty years later from natives of the city who lived through the events--capture some of the awe with which Cortes, his mercenaries, and their strange clothes and animals were perceived.[26] However, the indigenous accounts which depict the Mexica cowering in their homes do not correspond with the image of a bustling, lively city conveyed by the Conquistadors themselves.[27] Similarly, it seems prudent to question indigenous stories of omens presaging disaster that supposedly preceded the arrival of the Spanish as a type of Mexican mythical convention and a post-fact attempt to render comprehensible the horrible subsequent events.[28] Likewise, the depiction of Montezuma as terrified and effete in the Florentine Codex and other indigenous accounts seems exaggerated and designed to discredit a man whom the Mexica subsequently sought to blame for their defeat.[29] Although the thoughts of Montezuma will remain forever inscrutable and his actions may be impossible to interpret correctly, it seems reasonable to conclude that he could not have known what Cortes intended when he entered the city.[30]

On the other hand, as the indigenous sources make clear, and as the Spanish learned to their dismay, following the massacre led by Pedro Alvarado during the festival of Huitzilopochtli, the Mexica turned against the Spanish with implacable hatred and never ceased to regard them as a threat and a serious rival.[31] While it is unnecessary here to recount the events leading to the noche triste and the days following, a few observations should be made. The events in Tenochtitlan, from the arrival of Cortes in July until the escape of the Spanish in the fall, corresponded with the Mexican agricultural cycle when armies were not traditionally mobilized.[32] Also, the perception among its allies of Aztec weakness--not the least of which included a severe leadership crisis as Montezuma had been taken hostage--must surely have contributed to a climate of extreme political instability in the Valley of Mexico. As we have seen, there was a strong psychological component to cooperation with Aztec overlords, built on the premise of continued Aztec success. To make matters worse, any wavering of support must have been known to the Aztecs, increasing their own insecurity during a difficult time.[33] This being the case, the Mexica were still prepared to do everything within their power to destroy their enemy.

In fact, it appears that in spite of considerable obstacles, the Mexica did do their best to eliminate the Spanish threat at this early stage. Virtually all of the fighting at this time took place under unusual circumstances and without benefit of the comprehensive planning that characterized Aztec military movements. The Mexica attacked the Spanish on the causeway at night, a time traditionally associated with terror for the Aztecs.[34] Also, the strike had the character of a spontaneous mobilization, rather than a planned attack: an innovation, and surely a reflection of the extent to which the Mexica felt threatened by the Iberians.[35] Although many historians have attributed the unwillingness of the Mexica to kill their opponents in battle as stemming from a desire to take captives, in fact the weapons used by the Tenocha were designed not for mortal effect, but to wound, which they did with remarkable success on this occasion.[36] It is also difficult to credit the view that the Aztecs thought they were done with the Spanish once the latter had left Tenochtitlan.[37] Rather, it seems they did everything they could to eliminate the Spanish. Cortes' mercenaries, wounded almost to the man, were constantly harassed during their retreat.[38] When the Mexica finally engaged the Spanish at Otumba, it is doubtful that they were able to deploy. As Bernal Diaz perceived it, "the flower of Mexico and Texcoco, and of all the towns around the lake and in the region, as well as those of Otumba and Tepetezcuco and Saltocan . . . all believed that this time neither hide nor hair would be left of us." Although on this occasion Cortes demonstrated brilliant generalship and personal courage, it would have been impossible for the exhausted and wounded Spanish and their Tlaxcalan allies to fight off a native force too much larger than their own. Considering the distance of Otumba from Tenochtitlan, the political disruption at home, the extremely short notice, and the probable wavering of allied support, it is unlikely that the Mexica had the ability to mount a large expedition against the Spanish at this stage. Given these negative circumstances, what is striking is not their passivity, but rather the Aztec determination to defeat the Iberians.

As the Spanish nursed their wounds at Tlaxcala, two processes began which were to fatally weaken the Mexica: the outbreak of smallpox and the collapse of the Mexican tributary empire. Subsequent conflict, and Spanish success in the Valley of Mexico, can be seen in the context of the power vacuum created by Mexican political dislocation and loss of confidence in Aztec leadership. The calamitous effects of European disease in the Valley of Mexico are well known and should not be underestimated, as they led to huge economic, political, and social dislocation.[39] In Tenochtitlan, following on the heels of an imperial succession--an unstable time in any monarchical political system--the effects were especially dire, as the Mexica lost yet another chief executive in short order to smallpox.[40] This political turbulence--not to mention the devastation wrought by disease--must surely have inhibited any concerted effort to engage the Spanish at this time. But an even more ominous development for the Aztecs was the loss of confidence of their allies in Aztec political leadership. During this period, many cities began to throw in their lot with the Spanish, assuming that Cortes would take the role of the next hegemon and tribute taker in the Valley of Mexico.[41] In a sense, the Mexica were as good as defeated when they lost the respect of their rivals and the ability to intimidate their neighbors into submission.

Although the privileged vantage point of the future may lead to the conclusion that Aztec defeat was inevitable, the Aztecs at the time were not so convinced. The period preceding the siege of Tenochtitlan witnessed a variety of inventive offensive and defensive tactics employed by the Mexica to ward off their Iberian nemesis. As the Spanish and Tlaxcaltecas re-entered the Valley of Mexico, the Mexica continued to harass their opponents through skirmishes and sabotage, tactics very different from those employed in their traditional forms of head-on confrontation. As the Spanish reconnoitered the Lake of Texcoco, the Tenocha began to adapt their canoes to maritime confrontation, launching daring raids at the Spanish. At one point, the Aztecs nearly succeeded in drowning most of the Spaniards--including Cortes--by breaking a dike and flooding a lakeside town that the Spanish had occupied. At the same time, the Aztecs launched a desperate diplomatic offensive, eager to regain the support of their former allies, who appeared to be defecting to Cortes in droves.[42]

As the Aztecs finally hunkered down in Tenochtitlan to withstand a Spanish siege--isolated and stripped of their numerical advantage--several attitudes and beliefs must have fed their continued determination to resist. Surely, their military indoctrination and cultural fatalism played a role.[43] But even more importantly, they must have believed that they had no advantage in surrender. Although the defeat of the Aztecs often plays as a Spanish victory over indigenous peoples, in fact, the Spanish formed only a fraction of the forces besieging Tenochtitlan. Furthermore, as Bernal Diaz and Cortes both make clear, the Spanish were only marginally in control of their allies. As mentioned above, for many years Tlaxcala had been held in a tight Aztec stranglehold. The Spanish/Tlaxcalan offensive into the Valley of Mexico gave the Tlaxcaltecas a chance to settle old scores. As they advanced, one altepetl after another suffered vicious reprisals at the hands of the Tlaxcaltecas, who could not be restrained by Cortes.[44] The Aztecs were most surely aware of these massacres and could not have expected any different treatment should they be defeated. It seems reasonable to conjecture that it was this knowledge, combined with an Aztec military ethos that extolled a virtuous death on the battlefield or sacrificial stone, that fed Aztec determination to fight even when the odds seemed against them.

During the siege, the Aztecs employed traditional military tactics, giving seasoned warriors pride of place, seeking captives, and using terror to cow their enemies. In particular, the indigenous accounts of the siege often describe the heroic efforts of individual warriors. In fact, the decision to surrender was preceded by the ritual deployment of an "owl warrior," whose defeat confirmed the already beaten-down Aztecs in their belief that any further resistance was futile.[45] Additionally, the Aztecs still sought captives, although it should be pointed out that taking a captive did not substitute for killing an enemy, but rather provided an opportunity to kill him atop a pyramid in view of the enemy and thereby inflict psychological damage as well.[46] These tactics were not ineffective. When the Mexica--in an ingenious feint--managed to capture some dozens of Spanish and a few horses, they engaged in a showy execution that was presumably witnessed by all of the Spanish and--more importantly--their allies. By pressing home this temporary psychological advantage, and exhibiting to former allies the grisly trophies of flayed skin of the supposedly invincible Iberians, the Aztecs managed to temporarily turn the tide of support for the Spanish.[47]

But aside from these conventional ways of making war, the Mexica also showed remarkable adaptability in mobilizing, in responding to new weapons, and in adopting new offensive tactics. Rather than be cowed by Spanish artillery, the Mexica quickly learned to hit the ground when a gun went off and to run in a zigzag pattern in order to avoid fire. Horses, which frightened the Mexica initially, lost their ability to terrify and became targets of attack. Cortes' brigantines were also attacked by swarms of canoes.[48] Captured weapons were even adapted by the defenders, who attached steel swords to spears in order to form more effective weapons. Similarly, when some Spanish crossbowmen were taken, the Aztecs made efforts to incorporate the weapons, and their handlers, into their arsenal.[49] The Mexica defended their city with vigor and ingenuity. The Spanish, who wanted to maneuver heavy artillery into firing range, had their allies build up earthworks on the causeways and repair breaches in them. At night, the Aztecs--despite their aversion to nighttime activity--inevitably broke them down.[50] This kind of resistance indicates a total mobilization of the urban population, including women, whose place in Aztec society had been located firmly outside the battlefield. Much can be gleaned about the fierceness of Aztec resistance by the comment in the Annals of Tlatelolco, that at the point of defeat the "women all let loose, fighting, striking people, taking captives."[51]

Tenochtitlan did not fall because of inferior military technology or a na¥ve dependence on preconceived notions of how to fight a war.[52] The fall of the Aztecs resulted from the tumbling of their tributary edifice, an inherently unstable structure. When a new and savvy political player appeared on the scene in the person of Cortes, it was not improbable that the alliance system that supported the hegemony of the Aztecs in the Valley of Mexico would be reconfigured.[53] This process was aided by brilliant tactical moves on the part of the Spanish, by political dislocation caused by disease, by the existence of large groups who were disaffected with Aztec leadership, and by the real physical limitations which prevented the Aztecs from destroying their enemies when they had a chance. Nevertheless, the battle was close. The Mexica defended their interests as best they could and came close to destroying their enemies. Although the rapid defection of their allies probably preordained their ultimate loss, they responded intelligently and rationally to changing fortunes.

It remains tempting to view the indigenous people of central Mexico as at a psychological disadvantage to their conquerors. Likewise, some scholars have portrayed them as rigid in their cultural preconceptions. While the strangeness, technology, and abhorrent military practices of the Spanish may initially have shocked the residents of Mexico, these factors did not incapacitate them or prevent them from acting in their own interests to the extent of their ability. If the Mexica were appalled at the way the Spanish waged war, they nevertheless remained willing to meet them tit for tat. The response and resistance of the indigenous people of the Valley of Mexico to the Spanish invasion serves then as a kind of test case to evaluate scholarly views about the Aztecs' martial attitudes. In fact, the extraordinary flexibility of their responses indicates that their own approach to war may have been more pragmatic and strategic-results-oriented than has sometimes been suggested. As with the Romans and Pyrrhus' elephants, the Aztecs may have been susceptible to the terror of the new, but not for long. In the face of the most serious threat they had ever encountered, they were soon hurling javelins of their own.

. . . . .

1. Inga Clendinnen develops these themes in regards to Aztec society in three works: "The Cost of Courage in Aztec Society," Past and Present 107 (1985): 44-89; "'Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty': Cortes and the Conquest of Mexico," Representations, 33 (1991): 65-100; and Aztecs: An Interpretation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

2. Clendinnen, "The Cost of Courage," 64-76, 77, 89.

3. Accordingly, she states: "War, at least war as fought among the dominant people of Mexico, and at least ideally, was a sacred contest, the outcome unknown but preordained, revealing which city, which local deity, would rightfully dominate another. Something like equal terms were therefore required, to prevail by mere numbers or by some piece of treachery would vitiate the significance of the contest." Clendinnen, "Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty," 78.

4. John M. Ingham. "Human Sacrifice at Tenochtitlan," Comparative Studies in Society and History 26 (1984): 379-400, quote on 382. Ingham, however, acknowledges the metaphysical function of sacrifice in Aztec society.

5. Ross Hassig, War and Society in Ancient Mesoamerica (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992).

6. Ross Hassig, Aztec Warfare: Imperial Expansion and Political Control (Oklahoma City: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988).

7. Ross Hassig, Trade, Tribute and Transportation: The Sixteenth-Century Political Economy of the Valley of Mexico (Oklahoma City: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985).

8. Hassig, Trade, Tribute, 87-110.

9. According to Hassig, traditional views of the Aztec empire have been unduly influenced by modern European conceptions of empire. Hassig makes comparison with the Roman empire under the Julio-Claudians, which had in common with the Aztecs: "(1) expansion of political dominance without direct territorial control, (2) a focus on the internal security of the empire by exercising influence on a limited range of activities within the client states, and (3) the achievement of such influence by generally retaining rather than replacing local officials." Like the early Roman empire, the Aztec sphere of influence was decentralized and co-opted local arrangements. Hassig, Trade, Tribute, 92-94, quote on 93. 10. Ibid., 87-90, 127-30. See also Ingham, 382. Ingham suggests the chinampas only supplied fifteen percent of the Aztec food supply. Whatever the real proportion, Clendinnen's emphasis on the chinampas as the foci of Aztec ritual practices seems overstated given their relatively minor role in supplying the urban population.

11. Hassig, Trade, Tribute, 110-26.

12. Hassig, Aztec Warfare, 17-26.

13. Hassig, War and Society, 141. Hassig's figures are based on population estimates, and should be considered highly conjectural.

14. Ibid. Hassig suggests 151,500 to 334,563 as the probable range of manpower available for an offensive action.

15. Ibid., 144-45. As in Europe at the same time, the movement of an army through the countryside must have been extraordinarily burdensome. No doubt this was a source of resentment towards the Aztecs.

16. Hassig, Aztec Warfare, 30-47. See also Clendinnen, "The Cost of Courage," 44-51.

17. Hassig, Aztec Warfare, 114-16, 75-85.

18. Ibid. See also: Hassig, War and Society, 137-38.

19. Ibid. The equine anecdote is provided in his introduction by Miguel Leon-Portilla, ed., The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico (Boston: Beacon Press, 1962), xxvi.

20. Hassig, Aztec Warfare, 97-102.

21. Hassig, War and Society, 142-43.

22. Ibid., 144.

23. Ibid. 141-42, 137-38. Also see Leon-Portilla, xxi-xxiii. 24. Hassig, War and Society, 163.

25. Debates about whether Cortes was greeted as a returning god have continued to excite the interest of scholars. See Stephen A. Colston, "'No Longer will There be a Mexico': Omens, Prophecies, and the Conquest of the Aztec Empire," American Indian Quarterly 9 (1985): 239-58. Colston believes that, at least initially, Montezuma saw Cortes as an incarnation of the god Quetzalcoatl. In a brief and bizarre study, Martin Wasserman argues that Cortes was really seen as the returning god Tezcatlipoca; Martin Wasserman, "Montezuma's Passivity: An Alternate View Without Postconquest Distortions of a Myth," The Masterkey 57 (1983): 85-93. But these writers tend to treat the indigenous sources from which they draw too much at face value. In fact, it seems doubtful that Montezuma believed the Spaniards to be anything but men. As Clendinnen points out, sources for these periods are highly suspect: Cortes--with his legalistic obsession--took great pains to indicate that Montezuma had voluntarily succeeded sovereignty to Charles V; and the Aztecs who supplied information to Sahagun would have been too young at the time to have access to the court of Montezuma. Clendinnen, "'Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty,'" 68-72. For a conjectural but highly plausible explanation for the Spaniards uncontested initial entry into Tenochtitlan, see Hassig, Aztec Warfare, 241-45. 26. Bernardino de Sahagun, Florentine Codex, Book 12, Chapters 13-16; in James Lockhart, ed. and trans., We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993); hereafter Florentine Codex.

27. See Bernal Diaz, The True Story of the Conquest of Mexico, ed. and trans. Albert Idell (New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1957), 140-43. See also: Hernan Cortes, Letters from Mexico, ed. and trans. Anthony Pagden (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 83-86.

28. See the excellent article by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, "'Aztec' Auguries and the Memories of the Conquest of Mexico," Renaissance Studies 6 (1992): 287-305.

29. Florentine Codex, 7-9.

30. Hassig, Aztec Warfare, 241-45.

31. Florentine Codex, 20-21.

32. The question of timing--an absolutely pivotal one--seems often to be ignored by scholars. As with ancient European societies, warfare was a seasonal event. Hassig addresses these issues admirably in Aztec Warfare, 53-55; 243-44.

33. Ibid. 244.

34. Ibid. 241.

35. Florentine Codex, 24.

36. Cortes, 137-39. Cortes does not dwell at length on the escape from Tenochtitlan, but mentions one hundred fifty Spaniards dead, and many wounded. Diaz, 255, states simply, "we were all wounded."

37. This remarkable point of view appears in Clendinnen, Aztecs, 270.

38. Diaz, 259. Diaz' account conveys the desperation that Cortes' men must have felt, but he clearly exaggerates the numbers of forces arrayed against them.

39. These effects are vividly conveyed in the Florentine Codex, 29.

40. Cortes, 158, 253; Diaz, 267. Hassig notes that Aztec imperial successions were usually attended by unrest among lakeside allies and followed by the need for an extended period of internal consolidation; the strains on Tenochtitlan must have been enormous. Aztec Warfare, 245-46.

41. Perhaps there is an element of self-aggrandizement in Cortes' and Diaz' accounts of the voluntary submission of so many cities; undoubtedly interurban political arrangements at this time were highly fluid and drifting among three foci of power: the Tlaxcalans, the Spanish, and the Tenochtitlan. See Cortes, 148-56; see also Diaz, 273.

42. Cortes, 168-69, 184, 174-76, 181-82.

43. Clendinnen, Aztecs, 111-40.

44. Cortes, 213, 223, 262. Nor could Cortes prevent the ritual cannibalization of the defeated.

45. Florentine Codex, 31, 32, 34, 35, 38.

46. That human sacrifices were an integral part of the Aztec metaphysical system is indisputable. But pace Clendinnen, the scale of sacrifice in Tenochtitlan is indicative of more than religious motives. Ingham posits political motives, 394-97. The Aztec use of sacrifice during the siege provides strong support to this thesis.

47. Cortes, 240-42. See also Diaz, 368-74. Diaz is less circumspect in his account, recounting the sacrifice of his countrymen in blood-curdling detail. See also Florentine Codex, 35. The indigenous account views Spanish captives as among those of many altapetls sacrificed. Clearly the sacrifices were intended to display Aztec dominance over all of the attacking forces.

48. Florentine Codex, 30, 35, 29.

49. Diaz, 352, 376.

50. Florentine Codex, 37.

51. Lockhart, Extract from the Annals of Tlatelolco, 30.

52. And yet this point of view continues to be encountered in current scholarship. Witness for example John Lynch's synthetic history Spain 1516-1598: From Nation State to World Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Basil Blackwell, Inc., 1991), 218-26. For Lynch, the outcome of this conflict is decided by the superior technology of the Spanish. Indigenous people in his view are simply psychologically and technically inferior.

53. Hassig, Aztec Warfare, 266-67.

. . . . .

Christopher Ebert has been selected the outstanding graduating senior in the SFSU history department for Spring 1997. His major is pre-1500 European history, with a minor in Latin American history. Ebert has been awarded a fellowship to the Ph.D. program at Columbia University beginning Fall 1997, where he will study colonial Latin American history.