History UsefulNotes / SpanishConquestOfTheAztecEmpire

Back in Cuba, and despite his own orders, Velázquez sent captain Pánfilo de Narváez, at the head of 1,300 soldiers, with orders to bring Cortés back dead or alive. When Narváez arrived and took over violently the Totonac state, Moctezuma played his own double game and contacted him secretly to see whether he could free him from Cortés, but the latter found about it, which didn't help things between the two. In any case, after arguing back and forth with Narváez by messengers, Cortés marched against them with a part of his army and the help of spywork, bribes, and some indigenous allies from Chinanta. Despite his numerical superiority, the incompetent Narváez was captured with his entire army in Cempoala, losing an eye, and when his soldiers learned about Cortés' exploits, they abandoned him anyway and joined Cortés. [[HumiliationConga Talk about a bad day.]]

The takeover of the Aztec Empire set the base for the Hispanicization of Mesoamerica. As the war had been grievously costly, Cortés sent out new expeditions through the continent, seeking to keep his underlings busy, separate and hopefully enriched in order to avoid unpleasant situations. The alliances with the natives remained, with the Mexicas now forcefully added to the list, although it was naturally Tlaxcala which received most of the privileges, being granted judicial power, exemption from some tributes, and their own coat of arms, among other things; their continued loyalty became the mainstay of Spain's future endeavors, to the point it would be Tlaxcalllan soldiers who executed the [[UsefulNotes/SpanishConquestOfThePhilippines Conquest of the Philippines]]. However, Moctezuma's lineage was preserved, with his daughter Tecuichpo being baptized as Isabel, having children (leaving bloodlines that continued until today) and transitioning successfully into both the biggest landowning family in their former empire and as one of the most prestigious noble houses in the modern day Spain itself, as the Ducal House of Moctezuma de Tuitengo..

The UsefulNotes/{{Spa|in}}nish conquest of the Aztec Empire in UsefulNotes/{{Mexico}} in the 16th century was one of the primary events on the establishment of the [[UsefulNotes/{{Spain}} Spanish Empire]], the first true global power in history and for several centuries the biggest on the world before it met its equally magnificent decline. It took the shape of a series of regional conflicts kickstarted by the arrival of ambitious Spanish conquistador UsefulNotes/HernanCortez, who managed to gradually draw native states under his flag until achieving the takeover of the Mexica Empire, popularly and wrongly known in modern popular culture as the Aztec Empire, the resident power that previously held most of those tribes as its vassals. In the process, in a long and quite epic expedition that saw men and women of all colors pouring their blood on the jungles of Mesoamerica, it can be truly said that a new world was born.

The historical complexity of the conquest might surprise, and hopefully fascinate, those that only know the [[TheThemeParkVersion Theme Park Version]] pictured by pop culture, which often prefers to paint a grossly distorted tale where waves of ironclad Spaniards exterminate defenseless natives out of sheer racial fury, maybe with some [[UsefulNotes/TheSpanishInquisition Spanish Inquisition]] thrown it for good measure (because [[Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus nobody expects it]]). In modern times, several historians have seen fitter to call the conquest actually a tribal conflict, mostly contested between the Mexica Empire and its many enemies and subjects, in which Spaniards became fortuitously involved, giving as a result a complicated game of factionalism and self-interest. Epidemics that were unknowingly brought from the Old World, such as smallpox, also played a ''huge'' role as well regarding the death tolls among the natives, rather than invaders conducting genocides they actually had neither reasons nor means to. The truth, in any case, is out there.

Since the 15th century, the [[UsefulNotes/PreColumbianCivilizations Mexica or Aztec Empire]] had gradually established control over it neighbors until becoming the greatest power in Mesoamerica, allying itself with the nearby states of Texcoco and Tlacopan to form the Triple Alliance. Their only rivals in the land were the Purépecha Empire of Michoacan, faraway and relatively detached of major conflict, and the Republic of Tlaxcala, a confederation of four states (Tepeticpac, Tizatlan, Ocotelulco and Quiahuiztlan) that had managed to repeal their attempts of domination. However, the conquest of virtually everywhere else nearby had left the Tlaxcaltecs effectively surrounded in a patch of map, around which the Mexica exerted a commercial embargo on them in the hope to win by attrition.[[note]]The Mexica also liked to claim they were [[ILetYouWin deliberately leaving the republic survive]] in order to provide them with war captives to sacrifice, but this does sound a bit like a SuspiciouslySpecificDenial to explain why the tough Tlaxcaltecs were still resisting. After all, the Mexica Empire sacrificed his own vassals happily.[[/note]]

The first of those expeditions, led by in 1517 by Francisco Hernández de Córdoba, reached the Yucatán peninsula and entered contact with Mayan populations. Although things were initially peaceful, the expedition came under attack multiple times by natives who mistrusted the presence of foreigners, forcing the Spaniards to return home. Despite this apparent failure, the expedition brought valuable translators and info about what to expect in those lands, and the following year, Velázquez sent another commanded by his own nephew Juan de Grijalva. This expedition cut its way to the territories of the Totonac tribe, subjects of the mighty Mexica Empire.

In midst of their works, the Spaniards were secretly contacted by the Totonacs, vassals of the Mexica Empire ruled by a BigFun chieftain named Xicomecoatl, who were probing for a possible alliance with the powerful foreigners. Cortés made this a reality by promising them intercession against the empire, as well as implicating them into direct action so they could not back out, and at the same time he played a double game and started his own negotiations with the Mexicas. When Cortés and his new friends came back to Veracruz, a mutiny exploded, so Cortés quelled it and famously ordered [[BurningTheShips the ships to be dismantled]] so there could not be any more defections in the future.

Cortés and company continued through Mexica territory, where the Totonacs advised them to ally with the greatest enemy of the Mexicas, the Republic of Tlaxcala. Unfortunately, the Tlaxcaltecs [[PoorCommunicationKills mistook the foreigners for Aztec allies]], so they tried to fight them off. The subsequent three battles were bloody, threatening the Spaniards with a heavy attrition, but Cortés managed to rout the Tlaxcaltecs every time and never stopped sending envoys of peace, so the Tlaxcaltecs eventually realized and called the war off. The four great lords of the republic, Xicotencatl I, Maxixcatzin, Tlahuexolotzin and Citlapopocaitzin, understood that, supernatural or not, the foreigners could become invaluable allies against the Mexica Empire, so an alliance was forged, with the first two lords [[AltarDiplomacy marrying off]] five of their princesses to Spanish lieutenants.[[note]]If you are interested, UsefulNotes/PedroDeAlvarado married Tecuelhuetzin (baptized as Luisa), Juan Velázquez married Zicuetzin (Elvira), Gonzalo de Sandoval married Tolquequetzaltzin (Isabel), Cristóbal de Olid married Zacuancozcatl (unknown) and Alonso de Ávila married Huitznahuacihuatzin (unknown). They were indigenous marriages, no Christian ones, and some of the Spaniards did a LoopholeAbuse to marry other women by the Christian rite, but the Tlaxcaltecs cared little because polygyny was one of their own customs and the political ties were intact.[[/note]]

Cortés did the same as Cuauhtémoc, calling reinforcements from Veracruz and sending men to buy equipment from the Spanish Empire, and started a methodical campaign to deprive the Mexica Empire from its vassals, convincing them to go over to his side and punishing into submission those who refused. He did this methodically, even allowing his native warriors to cannibalize war prisoners as per their customs (he had forbidden it, but eventually had to give up when they wouldn't stop), and succeeded to the point of attracting even one of the powerful states of the Triple Alliance, Texcoco, led by the ambitious and very anti-Mexica prince Ixtlilxóchitl. He also assimilated nearby expeditions and ships unrelated to his own, and started a highly elaborate plan to besiege Tenochtitlan by sea and land that could be unironically compared to the [[UsefulNotes/PunicWars Fall of Carthage]].

The takeover of the Mexica Empire set the base for the Hispanicization of Mesoamerica. As the war had been grievously costly, Cortés sent out new expeditions through the continent, seeking to keep his underlings busy, separate and hopefully enriched in order to avoid unpleasant situations. The alliances with the natives remained, with the Mexicas now forcefully added to the list, although it was naturally Tlaxcala which received most of the privileges, being granted judicial power, exemption from some tributes, and their own coat of arms, among other things; their continued loyalty became the mainstay of Spain's future endeavors, to the point it would be Tlaxcalllan soldiers who executed the [[UsefulNotes/SpanishConquestOfThePhilippines Conquest of the Philippines]]. However, Moctezuma's lineage was preserved, with his daughter Tecuichpo being baptized as Isabel, having children (leaving bloodlines that continued until today) and transitioning successfully into both the biggest landowning family in their former empire and as one of the most prestigious noble houses in the modern day Spain itself, as the Ducal House of Moctezuma de Tuitengo..

* ''VideoGame/AgeOfEmpiresII'' features the conquest of the Mexica Empire in its aptly named ''The Conquerors'' expansion pack.

The takeover of the Mexica Empire set the base for the Hispanicization of Mesoamerica. As the war had been grievously costly, Cortés sent out new expeditions through the continent, seeking to keep his underlings busy, separate and hopefully enriched in order to avoid unpleasant situations. The alliances with the natives remained, with the Mexicas now forcefully added to the list, although it was naturally Tlaxcala which received most of the privileges, being granted judicial power, exemption from some tributes, and their own coat of arms, among other things; their continued loyalty became the mainstay of Spain's future endeavors, to the point it would be Tlaxcalllan soldiers who executed the [[UsefulNotes/SpanishConquestOfThePhilippines Conquest of the Philippines]]. However, Moctezuma's lineage was preserved, with his daughter Tecuichpo baptizing as Isabel, having children (leaving bloodlines that continued until today) and transitioning successfully into both the biggest landowning family in their former empire and as one of the most prestigious noble houses in the modern day Spain itself, as the Ducal House of Moctezuma de Tuitengo..

* ''Literature/ElHijoDelQuincallero'' ends with the main character meeting with the fresh-off-the-boat troops of Hernán Cortés, and working for the Conquistador as interpreter and later scribe.

The takeover of the Mexica Empire set the base for the Hispanicization of Mesoamerica. As the war had been grievously costly, Cortés sent out new expeditions through the continent, seeking to keep his underlings busy, separate and hopefully enriched in order to avoid unpleasant situations. The alliances with the natives remained, with the Mexicas now forcefully added to the list, although it was naturally Tlaxcala which received most of the privileges, being granted judicial power, exemption from some tributes, and their own coat of arms, among other things; their continued loyalty became the mainstay of Spain's future endeavors, to the point it would be Tlaxcalllan soldiers who executed the [[UsefulNotes/SpanishConquestOfThePhilippines Conquest of the Philippines]]. However, Moctezuma's lineage was preserved, with his daughter Tecuichpo baptizing as Isabel, having children (leaving bloodlines that continued until today) and transitioning successfully into the biggest landowning family in their former empire.

Since the 15th century, the [[UsefulNotes/PreColumbianCivilizations Mexica or Aztec Empire]] had gradually established control over it neighbors until becoming the greatest power in Mesoamerica, allying itself with the nearby states of Texcoco and Tlacopan to form the Triple Alliance. Their only rivals in the land were the Purépecha Empire of Michoacan, faraway and relatively detached of major conflict, and the Republic of Tlaxcala, a confederation of four states (Tepeticpac, Tizatlan, Ocotelulco and Quiahuiztlan) that had managed to repel their attempts of domination. However, the conquest of virtually everywhere else nearby had left the Tlaxcaltecs effectively surrounded in a patch of map, around which the Mexica exerted a commercial embargo on them in the hope to win by attrition.[[note]]The Mexica also liked to claim they were [[ILetYouWin deliberately leaving the republic survive]] in order to provide them with war captives to sacrifice, but this does sound a bit like a SuspiciouslySpecificDenial to explain why the tough Tlaxcaltecs were still resisting. After all, the Mexica Empire sacrificed his own vassals happily.[[/note]]

The Spaniards and their allies finally reached Mexica territory in April. When Mexica emperor Moctezuma heard about white foreigners riding weird creatures and wielding shining weapons, he was understandably wary, so he told them kindly by messengers that they should just leave his lands. However, by this point Cortés and company had confirmed they were facing an immensely rich empire with many disgruntled subjects who could be easily turned into allies to pressure their lords - in other words, a potential new province, to King Charles V's glory and the conquistadores' enrichment. Therefore, getting ready for some big operations, he founded the city of Veracruz (back then, the Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz) and used it to [[LoopholeAbuse invoke a legality]] that freed him from Velázquez's control.[[note]]Popular belief has that it was complete nonsense and he would have been tried as a traitor had not returned with a conquered empire, but this is pure fantasy. Although historians have debated for centuries whether Cortés was bending the rules at least a bit or not, he soon got the king's approval by letter and the thing was cleared out quickly.[[/note]]

Cortés and company continued through Mexica territory, where the Totonacs advised them to ally with the greatest enemy of the Mexicas, the Republic of Tlaxcala. Unfortunately, the Tlaxcaltecs [[PoorCommunicationKills mistook the foreigners for Aztec allies]], so they tried to fight them off. The subsequent three battles were bloody, threatening the Spaniards with a heavy attrition, but Cortés managed to rout the Tlaxcaltecs every time and never stopped sending envoys of peace, so the Tlaxcaltecs eventually realized and called the war off. The four great lords of the republic, Xicotencatl I, Maxixcatzin, Tlahuexolotzin and Citlapopocaitzin, understood that, supernatural or not, the foreigners could become invaluable allies against the Mexica Empire, so an alliance was forged, with the first two lords [[AltarDiplomacy marrying off]] five of their princesses to Spanish lieutenants.[[note]]If you are interested, Pedro de Alvarado married Tecuelhuetzin (baptized as Luisa), Juan Velázquez married Zicuetzin (Elvira), Gonzalo de Sandoval married Tolquequetzaltzin (Isabel), Cristóbal de Olid married Zacuancozcatl (unknown) and Alonso de Ávila married Huitznahuacihuatzin (unknown). They were indigenous marriages, no Christian ones, and some of the Spaniards did a LoopholeAbuse to marry other women by the Christian rite, but the Tlaxcaltecs cared little because polygyny was one of their own customs and the political ties were intact.[[/note]]

Sending word to Moctezuma that he would necessarily visit him, Cortés decided to take the route of Cholula, subjects to the Mexicas and bitter enemies of Tlaxcala, to test the waters. It's not clear what happened then: according to the Spaniards, Marina and the native allies discovered that Moctezuma had secretly ordered the Cholultecs to ambush and kill them all, while mestizo sources purport the Tlaxcaltecs actually engineered the whole thing to get revenge on their enemies, and some modern historians suspect Cortés and the Tlaxcaltecs had both their own reasons to make an example out of Cholula, nothing of which is mutually exclusive. In any case, the Cortesian army [[OutGambitted delivered a preemptive strike]] that became a massacre (after which they took the city's gold, of course, while the Totonacs and Tlaxcaltecs grabbed all the cotton, slaves and salt, much more precious to them). As typical of him, Cortés then offered the shaken Cholultecs to join his side, a chance they quickly grabbed.

When Cortés returned to the city, informed that things were completely out of hand, he tried to put down the riots with his new reinforcements, and upon failing, he put Moctezuma out to order the citizens to calm down, but the king was stoned in the balcony and died shortly after, possibly by suicide. After several days of urban warfare, and seeing [[ThisIsGonnaSuck the writing on the wall]], the Cortesians gathered all the treasure they could and tried to quietly move out of the lake-city by night, but their column was spotted, and suddenly a massive army of angry Mexicas attacked them. Not less than 800 Spaniards and several hundreds of Tlaxcaltecs (and some Aztec hostages caught in the crossfire) died right there, and a lot of their horses, weapons and treasure were lost as well. It was called the ''Noche Triste'' ("Sad Night"), and Cortés himself cried in his course for the scope of the tragedy and for having led so many of his men to such a pointless death.

Cortés did the same as Cuauhtémoc, calling reinforcements from Veracruz and sending men to buy equipment from the Spanish Empire, and started a methodical campaign to deprive the Mexica Empire from its vassals, convincing them to go over to his side and punishing into submission those who refused. He did this methodically, even allowing his native warriors to cannibalize war prisoners as per their customs (he had forbidden it, but eventually had to give up when they wouldn't stop), and succeeded to the point of attracting even one of the powerful states of the Triple Alliance, Texcoco, led by the ambitious and very anti-Mexica prince Ixtlilxóchitl. He also assimilated nearby expeditions and ships unrelated to his own, and started a highly elaborate plan to besiege Tenochtitlan by sea and land that can be unironically compared to the [[UsefulNotes/PunicWars Fall of Carthage]].

When Cortés and his allied states, which also included Chalco, Cholula, Huejotzingo, Mixquic, and several others, were in control of all the populations that surrounded the lake Tenochtitlan, they closed off all bridges, cut the water supply and deployed brigantines in the lake to counter the enemy war canoes. Fights and skirmishes happened by day and night during months while the city slowly became hungry and desperate, and even Cortés himself, who [[FrontlineGeneral fought in the front lines]], was twice seized by the Mexicas and almost sacrificed. The Cortesian allies ran away at one point, and there was also a coup attempt in Tlaxcala, as Xicohtencatl II, the chieftain's rebellious son, tried to overthrow his superiors and ally himself to the Mexicas before being captured and executed.

Finally, after three long months of blood, sweat and strategies, the coalition managed to overpower Tenochtitlan's defenses and conquer the city district by district. Fighting in the streets reached new heights of bloodshed, as Cortés' native allies massacred and pillaged the Mexica population to get revenge for their old enmities, to the point Cortés himself tried to stop it and found himself powerless due to the thing's sheer scale. Ultimately, however, they captured Cuauhtémoc, who was trying to exit the city with his harem and some treasure, and Tenochtitlan was declared taken.

The Purépechas, led by Tangáxuan II, also became voluntary vassals of the Spaniards in exchange for autonomy,[[note]]At least until a rival to Cortés, the infamous Nuño de Guzmán, decided to stage a coup with the help of local nobleman Cuinierángari, causing a full-blown revolution. Eventually Spain deposed Guzmán for his crimes and sent in the charismatic missionary Vasco de Quiroga to negotiate peace again.[[/note]] while other, more belligerent peoples like Chichimecs, Mazatecs, and Zacatecs, were conquered by force over the years, and a number of other tribes, like many of the Zapotecs, allied themselves with the Spaniards against ancestral enemies. Pedro de Alvarado would also spearhead the UsefulNotes/SpanishConquestOfTheMaya, although another of Cortés' lieutenants, Cristóbal de Olid, betrayed him in favor of the governor Diego Velázquez and had to be put down. Cuauhtémoc, who had been tortured by overzealous officials in the search of gold, would be also executed by Cortés under suspicions of a rebellion, possibly fueled by another Aztec nobleman, Tlacotzin, who wanted to replace Cuahtémoc.

The Purépechas, led by Tangáxuan II, also became VoluntaryVassals of the Spaniards in exchange for autonomy,[[note]]At least until a rival to Cortés, the infamous Nuño de Guzmán, decided to stage a coup with the help of local nobleman Cuinierángari, causing a full-blown revolution. Eventually Spain deposed Guzmán for his crimes and sent in the charismatic missionary Vasco de Quiroga to negotiate peace again.[[note]] while other, more belligerent peoples like Chichimecs, Mazatecs, and Zacatecs, were conquered by force over the years, and a number of other tribes, like many of the Zapotecs, allied themselves with the Spaniards against ancestral enemies. Pedro de Alvarado would also spearhead the UsefulNotes/SpanishConquestOfTheMaya, although another of Cortés' lieutenants, Cristóbal de Olid, betrayed him in favor of the governor Diego Velázquez and had to be put down. Cuauhtémoc, who had been tortured by overzealous officials in the search of gold, would be also executed by Cortés under suspicions of a rebellion, possibly fueled by another Aztec nobleman, Tlacotzin, who wanted to replace Cuahtémoc.

The Purépechas became voluntary vassals of the Spaniards in exchange for autonomy, while other, more belligerent peoples like Chichimecs, Mazatecs, and Zacatecs, were conquered by force over the years, and a number of other tribes, like many of the Zapotecs, allied themselves with the Spaniards against ancestral enemies. Pedro de Alvarado would also spearhead the UsefulNotes/SpanishConquestOfTheMaya, although another of Cortés' lieutenants, Cristóbal de Olid, betrayed him in favor of the governor Diego Velázquez and had to be put down. Cuauhtémoc, who had been tortured by overzealous officials in the search of gold, would be also executed by Cortés under suspicions of a rebellion, possibly fueled by another Aztec nobleman, Tlacotzin, who wanted to replace Cuahtémoc.

Since the 15th century, the [[UsefulNotes/PreColumbianCivilizations Mexica or Aztec Empire]] had gradually established control over it neighbors until becoming the greatest power in Mesoamerica, allying itself with the nearby states of Texcoco and Tlacopan to form the Triple Alliance. Their only rivals in the land were the Purépecha Empire, faraway and relatively detached of major conflict, and the Republic of Tlaxcala, a confederation of four states (Tepeticpac, Tizatlan, Ocotelulco and Quiahuiztlan) that had managed to repel their attempts of domination. However, the conquest of virtually everywhere else nearby had left the Tlaxcaltecs effectively surrounded in a patch of map, around which the Mexica exerted a commercial embargo on them in the hope to win by attrition.[[note]]The Mexica also liked to claim they were [[ILetYouWin deliberately leaving the republic survive]] in order to provide them with war captives to sacrifice, but this does sound a bit like a SuspiciouslySpecificDenial to explain why the tough Tlaxcaltecs were still resisting. After all, the Mexica Empire sacrificed his own vassals happily.[[/note]]

The Spaniards and their allies finally reached Mexica territory in April. When Mexica emperor Moctezuma heard about white foreigners riding weird creatures and wielding shining weapons, he was understandably wary, so he told them kindly by messengers that they should just leave his lands. However, by this point Cortés and company had confirmed they were facing an immensely rich empire with many disgruntled subjects who could be easily turned into allies to pressure their lords - in other words, a potential new province, to King Charles V's glory and the conquistadores' enrichment. Therefore, getting ready for some big operations, he founded the city of Veracruz (back then, the Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz) and used it to [[LoopholeAbuse invoke a legality]] that freed him from Velázquez's control.[[note]]Popular belief has that this was all nonsense and he would have been tried as a traitor had not returned with a conquered empire, but this is pure fantasy. Although historians have debated for centuries whether Cortés was bending the rules at least a bit or not, he soon got Charles V's approval by letter and the thing was cleared out.[[/note]]

The Spaniards were secretly contacted by the Totonacs, vassals of the Mexica Empire ruled by a BigFun chieftain named Xicomecoatl, who were probing for a possible alliance with the powerful foreigners. Cortés made this a reality by promising them intercession against Mexicas, not any less by implicating them into direct action, and at the same time he started his own negotiations with the empire, playing a double game. When Cortés and his new friends came back to Veracruz, a mutiny exploded, so Cortés quelled it and famously ordered [[BurningTheShips the ships to be dismantled]] so there could not be any more defections in the future.

Sending word to Moctezuma that he would necessarily visit him, Cortés decided to take the route of Cholula, subjects to the Mexicas and bitter enemies of Tlaxcala themselves. It's not clear what happened then: according to the Spaniards, Marina and the native allies discovered that Moctezuma had secretly ordered the Cholultecs to ambush and kill them all, while mestizo sources purport the Tlaxcaltecs actually engineered the whole thing to get revenge on their enemies, and some modern historians suspect Cortés and the Tlaxcaltecs had both their own reasons to make an example out of Cholula. In any case, the Cortesian army delivered a preemptive strike that became a massacre (after which they took the city's gold, of course, while the Totonacs and Tlaxcaltecs grabbed all the cotton, slaves and salt, much more precious to them).

Eventually, and against Moctezuma's diplomatic insistence, Cortés crossed the empire and reached its capital, the impressive [[CityOnTheWater lake-city]] Mexico-Tenochtitlan, larger than any city in the Old World except perhaps Constantinople. Accompanied by a symbolic escort of 2,000 Tlaxcaltecs, still few compared to the city's hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, the Spaniards entered Tenochtitlan in a great parade and met the emperor Moctezuma, who was still unsure of what he was facing. Friendly talks were held among them, and after knowing about a powerful king at the other side of the world, Moctezuma privately claimed to accept to become his vassal, although the next events would twist the course of things.

The Mexicas of the coast wondered why the Totonacs had stopped paying tributes, so they attacked them, and some men of the Veracruz garrison died trying to help repel the attacks, among them their captain Juan de Escalante. Angry, and likely worried that the Mexicas in Tenochtitlan would follow up, Cortés made Moctezuma a [[PuppetKing hostage in all but name]], extracted a harsh punishment for the offense, and started bossing things around. People in the city started doubting of Moctezuma's leadership, especially after the Christian Spaniards angered the locals by doing the usual anti-pagan shenanigans, but things seemed still under Cortesian control with Moctezuma in their power. Cortés even claimed to concede to Moctezuma's petitions to leave soon.

Back in Cuba, and despite his superiors in the Spanish Empire had ultimately ordered him not to, Velázquez sent captain Pánfilo de Narváez, at the head of 1,300 soldiers, with orders to bring Cortés back dead or alive. When Narváez arrived and took over violently the Totonaca state, Moctezuma played his own double game and contacted him secretly to see whether he could free him from Cortés, but the latter found about it, which didn't help things between the two. Ultimately, after arguing back and forth with Narváez by messengers, Cortés marched against them with a part of his army and the help of spywork, bribes, and some indigenous allies from Chinanta. Despite his numerical superiority, the incompetent Narváez was captured with his entire army in Cempoala, where he lost an eye, and when his soldiers learned about Cortés' exploits, they abandoned him anyway and joined Cortés. [[HumiliationConga Talk about a bad day.]]

When Cortés returned to the city, warned that things were completely out of hand, he tried to put down the riots with his new reinforcements, and upon failing, he put Moctezuma out to order the citizens to calm down, but the king was stoned in the balcony and died shortly after, possibly by suicide. After several days of urban warfare, and seeing [[ThisIsGonnaSuck the writing on the wall]], the Cortesians gathered all the treasure they could and tried to quietly move out of the lake-city by night, but their column was spotted, and suddenly a massive army of angry Mexicas attacked them. No less than 800 Spaniards and several hundreds of Tlaxcaltecs (and some Aztec hostages) died right there, and a lot of their horses, weapons and treasure were lost as well. It was called the ''Noche Triste'' ("Sad Night"), and Cortés himself cried in his course for the scope of the tragedy and for having led so many of his men to such a pointless death.

The Mexicas were now led now by Moctezuma's brother Cuitlahuac, who ordered a giant army to ambush the Spaniards in Otumba before they escaped their lands. However, Cortés and company managed to improbably rout the ambushers by going StraightForTheCommander, after which they finally could reach the allied territory of Tlaxcala. The Mexicas sent messengers with great promises for the Tlaxcaltecs if they broke their alliance with the Spaniards, but the Tlaxcaltecs remained loyal to Cortés, who much to their delight, prepared a new plan to conquer Tenochtitlan by force.

Unknowingly to Cortés and the Tlaxcaltecs, a black slave originally brought among Narváez's men and left behind in Tenochtitlan, Francisco de Eguía, had caused a smallpox outbreak in the city. As this illness was unknown in the New World, the city was ravaged and Cuitlahuac himself died. His successor, Cuauhtemoc, worked to fix things and gather the highest number of allies possible for the oncoming war, but damage was still being done. The smallpox also jumped to Tlaxcala and killed one of its four lords, Maxixcatzin, although its effects were lesser there compared to the cramped Tenochtitlan.

Cortés did the same as Cuauhtemoc, calling reinforcements from Veracruz and sending men to buy equipment from the Spanish Empire, and started a campaign to deprive the Mexica Empire from its vassals, convincing them to go over to his side and punishing into submission those who refused. He did this methodically, even allowing his native warriors to sacrifice and cannibalize war prisoners by their customs (usually a no-no for any Christian), and succeeded to the point of attracting even one of the powerful states of the Triple Alliance, Texcoco, led by the ambitious and very anti-Mexica prince Ixtlilxochitl. He also assimilated nearby expeditions and ships unrelated to his own, and started a highly elaborate plan to besiege Tenochtitlan by sea and land that can be unironically compared to the [[UsefulNotes/PunicWars Fall of Carthage]].

When Cortés and his allied states, which also included Chalco, Cholula, Huejotzingo, Mixquic, and several others, were in control of all the populations and states that surrounded the lake Tenochtitlan, they closed off all bridges, cut the water supply and deployed brigantines in the lake to counter the enemy war canoes. Fights and skirmishes happened by day and night during months while the city slowly became hungry and desperate, and even Cortés himself, who [[FrontlineGeneral fought in the front lines]], was briefly seized at one point by the Mexicas and almost sacrificed. The Cortesian allies ran away at one point, and there was also a coup attempt in Tlaxcala, as Xicotencatl II, the chieftain's rebellious son, tried to overthrow his superiors and ally himself to the Mexicas before being captured and executed.

The siege also saw the full deployment of Cortés' AmazonBrigade, a cadre of conquistadoras led by the legendary María de Estrada who astonished their own husbands with their bravery and fighting skill. They also served as battlefield nurses, with their chief medic, Isabel Rodríguez, being one of the first officially recognized female doctors in western history.

Finally, after three long months of blood, sweat and strategies, the coalition managed to overpower Tenochtitlan's defenses and conquer the city district by district. Fighting in the streets reached new heights of bloodshed, as Cortés' native allies massacred and pillaged the Mexica population to get revenge for their old enmities, to the point Cortés himself tried to stop it and found himself powerless due to the thing's sheer scale. Ultimately, however, they captured Cuauhtemoc, who was trying to exit the city with his harem and some treasure, and Tenochtitlan was declared taken.

The takeover of the Mexica Empire set the base for the Hispanicization of Mesoamerica. As the war had been grievously costly, Cortés sent out new expeditions through the continent, seeking to keep his underlings busy, separate and hopefully enriched in order to avoid unpleasant situations. The alliances with the natives remained, with the Mexicas now forcefully added to the list, although it was naturally Tlaxcala which received most of the privileges, being granted judicial power, exemption from some tributes, and their own coat of arms, among other things; their continued loyalty became the mainstay of Spain's future endeavors, to the point it would be Tlaxcalllan soldiers who executed the [[UsefulNotes/SpanishConquestOfThePhilippines Conquest of the Philippines]]. However, Moctezuma's lineage was preserved, with his Christian daughter Isabel having children (with both Cortés and another conquistador, leaving bloodlines that continued until today) and transitioning successfully into the biggest landowning family in their former empire.

Another powerful northern state, the Purepecha Empire of Michoacan, became voluntary vassals of the Spaniards in exchange for autonomy, while other, more belligerent peoples like Chichimecs, Mazatecs, and Zacatecs, were conquered by force over the years, and a number of other tribes, like many of the Zapotecs, allied themselves with the Spaniards against ancestral enemies. Pedro de Alvarado would also spearhead the UsefulNotes/SpanishConquestOfTheMaya, although another of Cortés' lieutenants, Cristóbal de Olid, betrayed him in favor of the governor Diego Velázquez and had to be put down. Cuauhtemoc, who had been tortured by overzealous officials in the search of gold, would be also executed by Cortés under suspicions of a rebellion, possibly fueled by another Aztec nobleman, Tlacotzin, who wanted to replace him.

The historical complexity of the conquest might surprise, and hopefully fascinate, those that only know the [[TheThemeParkVersion Theme Park Version]] pictured by pop culture, which often prefers to paint a grossly distorted tale where waves of ironclad Spaniards exterminate defenseless natives out of sheer racial fury, maybe with some [[UsefulNotes/TheSpanishInquisition Spanish Inquisition]] thrown it for good measure (because [[Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus nobody expects it]]). In modern times, several historians have seen fitter to call the conquest actually a tribal conflict, mostly contested between the Mexica Empire and its many enemies and subjects, in which Spaniards became fortuitously involved, giving as a result a complicated game of factionalism and self-interest. And epidemics that were unknowingly brought from the Old World (such as smallpox) played a ''huge'' role as well regarding the death tolls among the natives. The truth, in any case, is out there.

Since the 15th century, the [[UsefulNotes/PreColumbianCivilizations Mexica or Aztec Empire]] had gradually established control over it neighbors until becoming the greatest power in Mesoamerica, allying itself with the nearby states of Texcoco and Tlacopan to form the Triple Alliance. Their only rival in the land was the Republic of Tlaxcala, a confederation of four states (Tepeticpac, Tizatlan, Ocotelulco and Quiahuiztlan) that had managed to repel their attempts of domination. However, the conquest of virtually everywhere else had left the Tlaxcaltecs effectively surrounded in a patch of map, around which the Mexica exerted a commercial embargo on them in the hope to win by attrition.

It has been unceasingly said, even in textbooks, that Cortés and his people were [[GodGuise mistaken by prophesized gods]], which supposedly eased the conquest. In reality, this was a later interpolation influenced by zealous missionary work that left religious interpretation muddled. Spaniards were initially seen as ''teules'', meaning otherworldly beings, but any impression that they were anything but flesh and blood humans was dispelled pretty soon (Moctezuma can be quoted stating to Cortés that they are both just men). The natives did seem to believe the Spaniards might be emissaries or descendants of ancient forefathers who would return one day, but the true extent and influence of this factor are still hotly debated.

The battle became a turning point not because the victory, but because the war booty included an enslaved indigenous princess named Malinalli, named by the Spaniards [[UsefulNotes/LaMalinche Marina or La Malinche]] (the latter being actually a term meant for Cortés himself). As it was the custom for native noblewomen, who were not any less often politically involved than Spanish queens, Marina became Cortés' translator, adviser and right-hand woman, as well as his concubine and later mother of a son, Martín. It is believed, even since her own time, that without her enviable knowledge of the local language and culture, the conquest would have simply not been possible; some have even called her [[BehindEveryGreatMan the true conquistadora of America]].

The Spaniards and their allies finally reached Mexica territory in April. When Mexica emperor Moctezuma heard about white foreigners riding weird creatures and wielding shining weapons, he was understandably wary, so he told them kindly by messengers that they should just leave his lands. However, by this point Cortés and company had confirmed they were facing an immensely rich empire with many disgruntled subjects who could be easily turned into allies to pressure their lords - in other words, a potential new province, to King Charles V's glory and the conquistadores' enrichment. Therefore, getting ready for some big operations, he founded the city of Veracruz (back then, the Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz) and used it to invoke a legality that freed him from Velázquez's control.

Cortés had intended to leave Velázquez in the dark, but the latter found out anyway. Angry, Velázquez called this an act of treason and started gathering an army to seek and arrest Cortés. Back in Spain, Charles V was advised not to take action and instead wait to see what happened (mainly by Diego Columbus, Christopher's son, who opposed both Velázquez and Cortés and wanted the discovered land for himself). However, the king would get apparently pleased with the mission's course, so the whole legal friction would be ultimately set aside.

The Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire in UsefulNotes/{{Mexico}} in the 16th century was one of the primary events on the establishment of the [[UsefulNotes/{{Spain}} Spanish Empire]], the first true global power in history and for several centuries the biggest on the world before it met its equally magnificent decline. It took the shape of a series of regional conflicts kickstarted by the arrival of ambitious Spanish conquistador UsefulNotes/HernanCortez, who managed to gradually draw native states under his flag until achieving the takeover of the Mexica Empire, popularly and wrongly known in modern popular culture as the Aztec Empire, the resident power that previously held most of those tribes as its vassals. In the process, in a long and quite epic expedition that saw men and women of all colors pouring their blood on the jungles of Mesoamerica, it can be truly said that a new world was born.

The historical complexity of the conquest might surprise, and hopefully fascinate, those that only know the [[TheThemeParkVersion Theme Park Version]] pictured by pop culture, which often prefers to paint a grossly distorted tale where waves of ironclad Spaniards exterminate defenseless natives out of sheer racial fury, maybe with some [[UsefulNotes/TheSpanishInquisition Spanish Inquisition]] thrown it for good measure (because [[Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus nobody expects it]]). In modern times, several historians have seen fitter to call the conquest actually a tribal conflict, mostly contested between the Mexica Empire and its many enemies and subjects, in which Spaniards became fortuitously involved, giving as a result a complicated game of factionalism and self-interest. The truth, in any case, is out there.

The Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire in the 16th century was one of the primary events on the establishment of the [[UsefulNotes/{{Spain}} Spanish Empire]], the first true global power in history and for several centuries the biggest on the world before it met its equally magnificent decline. It took the shape of a series of regional conflicts kickstarted by the arrival of ambitious Spanish conquistador UsefulNotes/HernanCortez, who managed to gradually draw native states under his flag until achieving the takeover of the Mexica Empire, popularly and wrongly known in modern popular culture as the Aztec Empire, the resident power that previously held most of those tribes as its vassals. In the process, in a long and quite epic expedition that saw men and women of all colors pouring their blood on the jungles of Mesoamerica, it can be truly said that a new world was born.

-->--'''Bernal Díaz del Castillo''', ''Literature/TheTrueHistoryOfTheConquestOfMexico''

The chronicles of those wars have reached us through the writings of several members of the expeditions, like Bernal Díaz del Castillo (author of the famous work ''Literature/TheTrueHistoryOfTheConquestOfMexico'' quoted above) and Cortés himself, and not any less through the work of mestizo historians like Diego Muñoz Camargo or Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxóchitl, as well as the occasional native remembrance. Their recordings often contain awed attestations of the varied Mesoamerican cultures they found, both marvelous and terrifying, and the relationships they established with their inhabitants, be it on their battlefields, their palaces or their beds.

The Spaniards were secretly contacted by the Totonacs, vassals of the Mexica Empire ruled by a BigFun chieftain named Xicomecoatl, who were probing for a possible alliance with the powerful foreigners. Cortés made this a reality by promising them intercession against Mexicas, not any less by implicating them into direct action, and at the same time he started his own negotiations with the empire. When Cortés and his new friends came back to Veracruz, a mutiny exploded, so Cortés quelled it and famously ordered [[BurningTheShips the ships to be dismantled]] so there could not be any more defections in the future. Another false alarm happened when an unrelated Spanish expedition was mistaken by the army sent by Velázquez, without great consequences.

Cortés and company continued through Mexica territory, where the Totonacs advised them to ally with the greatest enemy of the Mexicas, the Republic of Tlaxcala. Unfortunately, the latter's four great lords, Xicotencatl I, Maxixcatzin, Tlahuexolotzin and Citlapopocaitzin, [[PoorCommunicationKills mistook the foreigners for Aztec allies]], so they tried to fight them off. The subsequent three battles were bloody, threatening the Spaniards with a heavy attrition, but Cortés managed to rout the Tlaxcaltecs every time and never stopped sending envoys of peace, so the Tlaxcaltecs eventually realized and called the war off. The republic understood that, supernatural or not, the foreigners could become invaluable allies against the Mexica Empire, so an alliance was forged, with Xicotencatl I and Maxixcatzin [[AltarDiplomacy marrying off]] five of their princesses to Spanish lieutenants.[[note]]If you are interested, Pedro de Alvarado married Tecuelhuetzin (baptized as Luisa), Juan Velázquez married Zicuetzin (Elvira), Gonzalo de Sandoval married Tolquequetzaltzin (Isabel), Cristóbal de Olid married Zacuancozcatl (unknown) and Alonso de Ávila married Huitznahuacihuatzin (unknown). They were indigenous marriages, no Christian ones, and some of the Spaniards did a LoopholeAbuse to marry other women by the Christian rite, but the Tlaxcaltecs cared little because polygyny was one of their own customs and the political ties were intact.[[/note]]

Back in Cuba, and despite his superiors in the Spanish Empire had ultimately ordered him not to, Velázquez sent captain Pánfilo de Narváez, at the head of 1300 soldiers, with orders to bring Cortés back dead or alive. When Narváez arrived in the Totonaca state, Moctezuma, playing a double game, contacted him secretly to see whether he could free him from Cortés. However, Cortés found about it and, after arguing back and forth with Narváez by messengers, marched against them with a part of his army and the help of spywork and bribes. Despite his numerical superiority, the incompetent Narváez was captured with his entire army in Cempoala, where he lost an eye, and when his soldiers learned about Cortés' exploits, they abandoned him anyway and joined Cortés. [[HumiliationConga Talk about a bad day.]]

The absence of Cortés, however, ruined everything for his side, as command in Tenochtitlan was held by the much less savvy Pedro de Alvarado, who became involved with a disastrous turmoil. The citizens had asked Alvarado permission to host a religious festival, which he allowed, but while they were in midst of the party, Alvarado ordered his men to massacre everybody, apparently under warning that the festival was a plan to revolt. Again, sources disagree on this, some assuring Alvarado was right, others claiming he went full StupidEvil and only wanted to mug the participants, and others accusing again the Tlaxcaltecs of making up the whole revolt to get Alvarado to wreak havoc on their enemies. In any case, and predictably, the entire city rose against them, and the Spaniards and Tlaxcaltecs were forced to grab Moctezuma and his entourage and lock themselves in the main palace.

When Cortés returned to the city, he found things completely out of hand, so he put Moctezuma out to order the citizens to calm down, but the king was stoned in the balcony and died shortly after. After several days of urban warfare, and seeing [[ThisIsGonnaSuck the writing on the wall]], the Cortesians gathered all the treasure they could and tried to quietly move out of the lake-city by night, but their column was spotted, and suddenly a massive army of angry Mexicas attacked them. No less than 800 Spaniards and several hundreds of Tlaxcaltecs (and some Aztec hostages) died right there, and a lot of their horses, weapons and treasure were lost as well. It was called the ''Noche Triste'' ("Sad Night"), and Cortés himself cried in his course for the scope of the tragedy and for having led so many of his men to such a pointless death.

Unknowingly to Cortés and the Tlaxcaltecs, a black slave originally brought among Narváez's men and left behind in Tenochtitlan, Francisco de Eguía, had caused a smallpox outbreak in the city. As this illness was unknown in the New World, the city was ravaged and Cuitlahuac himself died. His successor, Cuauhtemoc, worked to fix things and gather the highest number of allies possible for the oncoming war, but damage was still being done. The smallpox also jumped to Tlaxcala and killed one of its four lords, Maxixcatzin, although its effects were lesser there.

When Cortés and his allied states, which also included Chalco, Cholula, Huejotzingo, Mixquic, and several others, were in control of all the populations and states that surrounded the lake Tenochtitlan, they closed off all bridges, cut the water supply and deployed brigantines in the lake to counter the enemy war canoes. Fights and skirmishes happened by day and night during months while the city slowly became hungry and desperate, and even Cortés himself, who [[FrontlineGeneral fought in the front lines]], was briefly seized at one point by the Mexicas. The Cortesian allies ran away at one point, and there was also a coup attempt in Tlaxcala, as Xicotencatl II, the chieftain's rebellious son, tried to overthrow his superiors and ally himself to the Mexicas before being captured and executed.

Finally, after three long months of blood, sweat and strategies, the coalition managed to overpower Tenochtitlan's defenses and conquer the city district by district. Fighting in the streets reached new heights of bloodshed, as Cortés' native allies massacred and pillaged the Mexica population to get revenge for their old enmities, to the point Cortés himself tried to stop it and found himself powerless due to the thing's sheer scale. Ultimately, however, they captured Cuauhtemoc, who was trying to exit the city with some treasure, and Tenochtitlan was declared taken.

The takeover of the Mexica Empire set the base for the Hispanicization of Mesoamerica. As the war had been grievously costly, Cortés sent out new expeditions through the continent, seeking to keep his underlings busy, separate and hopefully enriched in order to avoid unpleasant situations. The alliances with the natives remained, with the Mexicas now forcefully added to the list, although it was naturally Tlaxcala which received most of the privileges, being granted judicial power, exemption from some tributes, and their own coat of arms, among other things; their continued loyalty became the mainstay of Spain's future endeavors, to the point it would be Tlaxcalan soldiers who executed the [[UsefulNotes/SpanishConquestOfThePhilippines Conquest of the Philippines]] and the pacification of several warring lands. For their part, Moctezuma's lineage also continued (until today, in fact), with his Christian daughter Isabel having children with both Cortés and another conquistador.

Another powerful northern state, Michoacan, surrendered to the Spaniards in exchange for autonomy, while other, more belligerent peoples like Chichimecs, Mazatecs, and Zacatecs were conquered by force over the years, and a number of other tribes, like many of the Zapotecs, allied themselves with the Spaniards against ancestral enemies. Pedro de Alvarado would also spearhead the UsefulNotes/SpanishConquestOfTheMaya, although another of Cortés' lieutenants, Cristóbal de Olid, tried to betray him in favor of the governor Diego Velázquez and had to be put down. Cuauhtemoc, who had been tortured by overzealous officials in the search of gold, would be also executed by Cortés under suspicions of a rebellion.

Speaking of Velázquez, after years of political enmity with Cortés, the Spanish Monarchy finally settled the matter in favor of the latter. They appointed Cortés Marchis of the Valley of Oaxaca and captain general of New Spain, the name for the conquered lands (albeit they still didn't give him the charge of governor he wanted), and he passed the rest of his life exploring the Pacific coast before dying in Spain. In 1535, with the creation of the Viceroyalty of New Spain with Antonio de Mendoza as viceroy, the conquest of the main civilizations of Mesoamerica seemed concluded, although some more battles and treaties would happen, especially among the Mayans, until complete control centuries later.

* ''Literature/TheTrueHistoryOfTheConquestOfMexico'' is a chronicle written by Bernal Díaz del Castillo, one of Cortés' men, who lived through the entire affair.

Even before the second expedition returned, Velázquez had already thought of a third, larger one, and he chose his brother-in-law, a city mayor named UsefulNotes/HernanCortez, as its leader. At the last second, Velázquez repented his choice, realizing the ambitious Cortés would likely stop obeying him if he found success, but Cortés overruled his orders to stop and sailed away anyway in February 1519. He commanded around 550 conquistadores, some of them with experienced of the previous travels.[[note]]UsefulNotes/BartolomeDeLasCasas claims they also carried as many as 200 indigenous allies and black slaves, but they are mentioned in no other source, and De las Casas is not exactly a reliable one anyway.[[/note]]

The battle became a turning point not because the victory, but because the war booty included an enslaved indigenous princess named Malinalli, named by the Spaniards Marina or La Malinche (the latter being actually a term meant for Cortés himself). As it was the custom for native noblewomen, who were not any less often politically involved than Spanish queens, Marina became Cortés' translator, adviser and right-hand woman, as well as his concubine and later mother of a son, Martín. It is believed, even since her own time, that without her enviable knowledge of the local language and culture, the conquest would have simply not been possible; some have even called her [[BehindEveryGreatMan the true conquistadora of America]].

The chronicles of those wars have reached us through the writings of several members of the expeditions, like Bernal Díaz del Castillo (author of the famous work ''True History of the Conquest of Mexico'' quoted above) and Cortés himself, and not any less through the work of mestizo historians like Diego Muñoz Camargo or Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxóchitl, as well as the occasional native remembrance. Their recordings often contain awed attestations of the varied Mesoamerican cultures they found, both marvelous and terrifying, and the relationships they established with their inhabitants, be it on their battlefields, their palaces or their beds.

Since the 15th century, the [[UsefulNotes/PreColumbianCivilizations Mexica Empire]] had gradually established control over it neighbors until becoming the greatest power in Mesoamerica, allying itself with the nearby states of Texcoco and Tlacopan to form the Triple Alliance. Their only rival in the land was the Republic of Tlaxcala, a confederation of four states, Tepeticpac, Tizatlan, Ocotelulco and Quiahuiztlan, that had managed to repel their attempts of domination. However, the conquest of virtually everywhere else had left the Tlaxcaltecs effectively surrounded in a patch of map, around which the Mexica exerted a commercial embargo on them in the hope to win by attrition.

In the 16th century, twenty years after the travels of UsefulNotes/ChristopherColumbus, the rising Spanish Empire under King Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, already owned lands in the New World, mostly focused on Cuba (back then called Fernandina) and the islands of the Caribbean. Attracted by promises of richer territories and fabulous sources of gold, expeditions of exploration were sent to the nearby coast of Mexico under the orders of the governor of Cuba, Diego Velázquez. They expected to find in the west a venture at least as profitable as that their Iberian neighbors, the Portuguese, had found in their own [[UsefulNotes/ConquestOfPortugueseIndia conquest of India]] at the east, where the great Afonso de Albuquerque had just carved a filthy rich trade network.

Even before the second expedition returned, Velázquez had already thought of a third, larger one, and he chose his brother-in-law, a major named UsefulNotes/HernanCortez, as its leader. At the last second, Velázquez repented his choice, realizing the ambitious Cortés would likely stop obeying him if he found success, but Cortés overruled his orders to stop and sailed away anyway in February 1519. He commanded around 550 conquistadores, some of them with experienced of the previous travels.[[note]]UsefulNotes/BartolomeDeLasCasas claims they also carried as many as 200 indigenous allies and black slaves, but they are mentioned in no other source, and De las Casas is not exactly a reliable one anyway.[[/note]]

The battle became a turning point not because the victory, but because the war booty included an enslaved indigenous princess named Malinalli, named by the Spaniards Marina or La Malinche (the latter being actually a term meant for Cortés himself). As it was the custom for native noblewomen, who were not any less often politically involved than Spanish queens, Marina became Cortés' translator, adviser and right-hand woman, as well as his concubine and later mother of a son, Martín. It is believed, even since her own time, that without her enviable knowledge of the local language and culture, the conquest would have simply not been possible: some have even called her the true conquistadora of America.

The Spaniards and their allies finally reached Mexica territory in April. When Mexica emperor Moctezuma heard about white foreigners riding weird creatures and wielding shining weapons, he was understandably wary, so he told them kindly by messengers that they should leave his lands. However, by this point Cortés and company had confirmed they were facing an immensely rich empire with many disgruntled subjects who could be easily turned into allies to pressure their lords - in other words, a potential new province, to King Charles V's glory and the conquistadores' enrichment. Therefore, getting ready for some big operations, he founded the city of Veracruz (back then, the Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz) and used it to invoke a legality that freed him from Velázquez's control.

Sending word to Moctezuma that he would necessarily visit him, Cortés decided to take the route of Cholula, subjects to the Mexicas and bitter enemies of Tlaxcala themselves. It's not clear what happened then: according to the Spaniards, Marina and the native allies discovered that Moctezuma had secretly ordered the Cholultecs to ambush and kill them, while mestizo sources purport the Tlaxcaltecs actually engineered the whole thing to get revenge on their enemies, and some modern historians suspect Cortés and the Tlaxcaltecs had both their own reasons to make an example out of Cholula. In any case, the Cortesian army delivered a preemptive strike that became a massacre (after which they took the city's gold, of course, while the Totonacs and Tlaxcaltecs grabbed all the cotton, slaves and salt, much more precious to them).

Eventually, and against Moctezuma's diplomatic insistence, Cortés crossed the empire and reached its capital, the impressive [[CityOnTheWater lake-city]] Mexico-Tenochtitlan, larger than any city in the Old World except perhaps Constantinople. Accompanied by a symbolic escort of 1000 Tlaxcaltecs, still few compared to the city's hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, the Spaniards entered Tenochtitlan in a great parade and met the emperor Moctezuma, who was still unsure of what he was facing. Friendly talks were held among them, and after knowing about a powerful king at the other side of the world, Moctezuma privately claimed to accept to become his vassal, although the next events would twist the course of things.

The Mexicas of the coast wondered why the Totonacs had stopped paying tributes, so they attacked them, and some men of the Veracruz garrison died trying to help repel the attacks, among them their captain Juan de Escalante. Angry, and likely worried that the Mexicas in Tenochtitlan would follow up, Cortés made Moctezuma a [[PuppetKing hostage in all but name]], extracted a harsh punishment for the offense, and started bossing things around. People in the city started doubting of Moctezuma's leadership, especially after the Christian Spaniards angered the locals by doing the usual anti-pagan shenanigans, but things seemed still under Cortesian control with Moctezuma in their power, with Cortés even claimed to concede to Moctezuma's petitions to leave soon.

Back in Cuba, and despite his superiors in the Spanish Empire had ultimately ordered him not to, Velázquez sent captain Pánfilo de Narváez, at the head of 1300 soldiers, with orders to bring Cortés back dead or alive. When Narváez arrived in the Totonaca state, Moctezuma, playing a double game, contacted him secretly to see whether hecould free him from Cortés. However, Cortés found about it and, after arguing back and forth with Narváez by messengers, marched against them with a small army and the help of spywork and bribes. Despite his numerical superiority, the incompetent Narváez was captured with his entire army in Cempoala, where he lost an eye, and when his soldiers learned about Cortés' exploits, they abandoned him anyway and joined Cortés. [[HumiliationConga Talk about a bad day.]]

When Cortés returned to the city, he found things completely out of hand, so he put Moctezuma out to order the citizens to calm down, but the king was stoned in the balcony and died shortly after. After several days of urban warfare, and seeing [[ThisIsGonnaSuck the writing on the wall]], the Cortesians gathered all the treasure they could and tried to quietly move out of the lake-city by night, but their column was spotted, and suddenly a massive army of angry Mexicas attacked them. No less than 800 Spaniards and several hundreds of Tlaxcaltecs (and some Aztec hostages) died right there, and a lot of their horses, weapons and treasure were lost as well. It was called the ''Noche Triste'' ("Sad Night"), and Cortés himself cried in his course due to the scope of the tragedy.

The Mexicas were now led now by Moctezuma's brother Cuitlahuac, who ordered a giant army to ambush the Spaniards in Otumba before they escaped their lands. However, Cortés and company managed to improbably rout the ambushers by going StraightForTheCommander, after which they finally could reach the allied territory of Tlaxcala. The Mexicas sent messengers with great promises for the Tlaxcaltecs if they broke their alliance with the Spaniards and the Totonacs, but the Tlaxcaltecs remained loyal to Cortés, who much to their delight, prepared a new plan to conquer Tenochtitlan by force.

Cortés did the same as Cuauhtemoc, calling reinforcements from Veracruz and sending men to buy equipment from the Spanish Empire, and started a campaign to deprive the Mexica Empire from its vassals, convincing them to go over to his side and punishing into submission those who refused. He did this methodically, even allowing his native warriors to sacrifice and cannibalize war prisoners by their customs (usually a no-no for any Christian), and succeeded to the point of attracting even one of the powerful states of the Triple Alliance, Texcoco, led by Ixtlilxochitl. He also assimilated nearby expeditions and ships unrelated to his own, and started a highly elaborate plan to besiege Tenochtitlan by sea and land that can be unironically compared to the [[UsefulNotes/PunicWars Fall of Carthage]].

Finally, after three long months of blood, sweat and strategies, the coalition managed to overpower Tenochtitlan's defenses and conquer the city district by district. Fighting in the streets reached new heights of bloodshed, as Cortés' native allies started massacring and pillaging the Mexica population to get revenge for their old enmities, to the point Cortés himself tried to stop it and found himself powerless due to the thing's sheer scale. Ultimately, however, they captured Cuauhtemoc, who was trying to exit the city with some treasure, and Tenochtitlan was declared taken.

The takeover of the Mexica Empire set the base for the Hispanicization of Mesoamerica. As the war had been grievously costly, Cortés sent out new expeditions through the continent, seeking to keep his underlings busy, separate and hopefully enriched in order to avoid unpleasant situations. The alliances with the natives remained, with the Mexicas now added to the list, although it was naturally Tlaxcala which received most of the privileges, being granted judicial power, exemption from some tributes, and their own coat of arms, among other things; their continued loyalty became the mainstay of Spain's future endeavors, to the point it would be Tlaxcalan soldiers who executed the [[UsefulNotes/SpanishConquestOfThePhilippines Conquest of the Philippines]] and the pacification of several warring lands. For their part, Moctezuma's lineage also continued (until today, in fact), with his Christian daughter Isabel having children with both Cortés and another conquistador.

Another powerful northern state, Michoacan, surrendered to the Spaniards in exchange for autonomy, while other, more belligerent peoples like Chichimecs, Mazatecs, and Zacatecs were conquered by force over the years, and a number of other tribes, like the Zapotecs, allied themselves with the Spaniards against ancestral enemies. Pedro de Alvarado would also kickstart the UsefulNotes/SpanishConquestOfTheMaya, although another of Cortés' lieutenants, Cristóbal de Olid, tried to betray him in favor of the governor Diego Velázquez and was put down. Cuauhtemoc, who had been tortured by overzealous officials in the search of gold, would be also executed under suspicions of a rebellion.

Speaking of Velázquez, after years of political enmity with Cortés, the Spanish Monarchy finally settled the matter in favor of the latter. They appointed Cortés Marchis of the Valley of Oaxaca and captain general of New Spain, the name for the conquered lands (if they still didn't give him the charge of governor he wanted), and he passed the rest of his life exploring the Pacific coast before dying in Spain. In 1535, with the creation of the Viceroyalty of New Spain with Antonio de Mendoza as viceroy, the conquest of the main civilizations of Mesoamerica seemed concluded, although some more battles and treaties would happen, especially among the Mayans, until complete control centuries later.

Cortés and company continued through Mexica territory, where the Totonacs advised them to ally with the greatest enemy of the Mexicas, the Republic of Tlaxcala. Unfortunately, the latter's four great lords, Xicotencatl I, Maxixcatzin, Tlahuexolotzin and Citlapopocaitzin, mistook the foreigners for Aztec allies, so they tried to fight them off. The subsequent three battles were bloody, threatening the Spaniards with a heavy attrition, but Cortés managed to rout the Tlaxcaltecs every time and never stopped sending envoys of peace, so the Tlaxcaltecs eventually realized and called the war off. The republic understood that, supernatural or not, the foreigners could become invaluable allies against the Mexica Empire, so an alliance was forged, with Xicotencatl I and Maxixcatzin [[AltarDiplomacy marrying off]] five of their princesses to Spanish lieutenants.[[note]]If you are interested, Pedro de Alvarado married Tecuelhuetzin (baptized as Luisa), Juan Velázquez married Zicuetzin (Elvira), Gonzalo de Sandoval married Tolquequetzaltzin (Isabel), Cristóbal de Olid married Zacuancozcatl (unknown) and Alonso de Ávila married Huitznahuacihuatzin (unknown). They were indigenous marriages, no Christian ones, and some of the Spaniards did a LoopholeAbuse to marry other women by the Christian rite, but the Tlaxcaltecs cared little because polygyny was one of their own customs and the political ties were intact.[[/note]]

Sending word to Moctezuma that he would necessarily visit him, Cortés decided to take the route of Cholula, subjects to the Mexicas and bitter enemies of Tlaxcala themselves. It's not clear what happened then: according to the Spaniards, Marina and the native allies discovered that Moctezuma had secretly ordered the Cholultecs to ambush and kill them, while mestizo sources purport the Tlaxcaltecs actually engineered the whole thing to get revenge their enemies, and some modern historians suspect Cortés and the Tlaxcaltecs had both their own reasons to make an example out of Cholula. In any case, the Cortesian army delivered a preemptive strike that became a massacre (after which they took the city's gold, of course, while the Totonacs and Tlaxcaltecs grabbed the cotton and salt, much more precious to them).

The Mexicas of the coast wondered why the Totonacs had stopped paying tributes, so they attacked them, and some men of the Veracruz garrison died trying to help repel the attacks, among them their captain Juan de Escalante. Angry and likely worried that the Mexicas in Tenochtitlan would follow up, Cortés made Moctezuma a [[PuppetKing hostage in all but name]], extracted a harsh punishment for the offense, and started bossing things around. People in the city started doubting of Moctezuma's leadership, especially after the Christian Spaniards angered the natives by doing the usual anti-pagan shenanigans, but things seemed still under control with Moctezuma in their power and the Spaniards even claimed to concede to his petitions to leave soon.

Back in Cuba, and despite his superiors in the Spanish Empire had ultimately ordered him not to, Velázquez sent captain Pánfilo de Narváez, at the head of 1300 soldiers, with orders to bring Cortés back dead or alive. When he arrived to the Totonaca state, Moctezuma, playing a double game, contacted him secretly to see whether Narváez could free him from Cortés. However, Cortés found about it and, after arguing back and forth with Narváez by messengers, marched against them with the help of spywork and bribes. Despite his numerical superiority, the incompetent Narváez was captured with his entire army in Cempoala, where he lost an eye, and when his soldiers learned about Cortés' exploits, they abandoned him anyway and joined Cortés. [[HumiliationConga Talk about a bad day.]]

When Cortés returned to the city, he found things completely out of hand, so he put Moctezuma out to order the citizens to calm down, but the king was stoned in the balcony and died shortly after. After several days of urban warfare, and seeing [[ThisIsGonnaSuck the writing on the wall]], the Cortesians gathered all the treasure they could and tried to quietly move out of the lake-city by night, but their column was spotted, and suddenly a massive army of angry Mexicas attacked them. No less than 800 Spaniards and several hundreds of Tlaxcaltecs died right there, and a lot of their horses, weapons and treasure were lost as well. It was called the ''Noche Triste'' ("Sad Night"), and Cortés himself cried in his course due to the scope of the tragedy.

The Mexicas were now led now by Moctezuma's brother Cuitlahuac, who ordered a giant army to ambush the Spaniards in Otumba before they escaped their lands. However, Cortés and company managed to improbably rout the pursuers by going StraightForTheCommander, after which they finally could reach the allied territory of Tlaxcala. The Mexicas sent messengers with great promises for the Tlaxcaltecs if they broke their alliance with the Spaniards and the Totonacs, but the Tlaxcaltecs remained loyal to Cortés, who much to their delight, prepared a new plan to conquer Tenochtitlan by force.

When Cortés and his allied states, which now included Cholula, Xochimilco, Mixquic, Iztapalapa and several others, were in control of all the populations and states that surrounded the lake Tenochtitlan, they closed off all bridges, cut the water supply and deployed brigantines in the lake to counter the enemy war canoes. Fights and skirmishes happened by day and night during months while the city slowly became hungry and desperate, and even Cortés himself, who [[FrontlineGeneral fought in the front lines]], was briefly seized at one point by the Mexicas. The Cortesians allies ran away at one point, and there was also a coup attempt in Tlaxcala, as Xicotencatl II, the chieftain's rebellious son, tried to overthrow his superiors and ally himself to the Mexicas before being captured and executed.

The takeover of the Mexica Empire set the base for the Hispanicization of Mesoamerica. As the war had been grievously costly, however, Cortés sent out new expeditions through the continent in order to gather more benefits. The alliances with the natives remained, with the Mexicas now added to the list, although it was naturally Tlaxcala which received most of the privileges, being granted judicial power, exemption from some tributes, and their own coat of arms, among other things; their continued loyalty became the mainstay of Spain's future endeavors, to the point it would be Tlaxcalan soldiers who executed the [[SpanishConquestOfThePhilippines Conquest of the Philippines]] and the pacification of several warring lands. For their part, Moctezuma's lineage also continued (until today, in fact), with his Christian daughter Isabel having children with both Cortés and another conquistador.

Another powerful northern state, Michoacan, surrendered to the Spaniards in exchange for autonomy, while other, more belligerent peoples like Chichimecs, Mazatecs, and Zacatecs were conquered by force over the years, and a number of other tribes, like the Zapotecs, allied themselves with the Spaniards against ancestral enemies. Pedro de Alvarado would also kickstart the UsefulNotes/SpanishConquestOfTheMaya, although another of Cortés' lieutenants, Cristóbal de Olid, tried to betray him in favor of the governor Diego Velázquez and was put down. Cuauhtemoc would be also executed under suspicions of a rebellion.

The Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire in the 16th century was one of the primary events on the establishment of the [[UsefulNotes/{{Spain}} Spanish Empire]], the first true global power in history and for several centuries the biggest on the world before its equally magnificent decline. It took the shape of a series of regional conflicts kickstarted by the arrival of ambitious Spanish conquistadores headed by UsefulNotes/HernanCortez, who managed to draw many native states under his flag until achieving the takeover of the Mexica Empire, popularly and wrongly known in modern popular culture as the Aztec Empire, the resident power that held most of those tribes as vassals. In the process, in a long and quite epic expedition that saw men and women of all colors pouring their blood on the jungles of Mesoamerica, it can be truly said that a new world was born.

The chronicles of those wars have reached us through the writings of several members of the expeditions, like Bernal Díaz del Castillo (author of the famous work ''True History of the Conquest of Mexico'' quoted above) and Cortés himself, not any less the work of mestizo historians like Diego Muñoz Camargo or Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxóchitl, as well as the occasional native remembrance. Their recordings often contain awed attestations of the varied Mesoamerican cultures they found, both marvelous and terrifying, and the relationships they established with their inhabitants, be it on their battlefields, their palaces and their beds.

The historical complexity of the conquest might surprise, and hopefully fascinate, those that only know the [[TheThemeParkVersion Theme Park Version]] pictured by pop culture, which often prefers to paint a grossly distorted tale where waves of ironclad Spaniards wiped out defenseless natives out of sheer racial fury, maybe with some [[UsefulNotes/TheSpanishInquisition Spanish Inquisition]] thrown it for good measure (because [[Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus nobody expects it]]). In modern times, several historians have seen fitter to call the conquest actually a tribal conflict, mostly contested between the Mexica Empire and its many enemies and subjects, in which Spaniards became fortuitously involved and thrown into a complicate game of factionalism and self-interest. The truth, in any case, is out there.

It has been unceasingly said, even in textbooks, that Cortés and his people were [[GodGuise mistaken by prophesized gods]], which supposedly eased the conquest. In reality, this was a later interpolation influenced by a zealous missionary work that left religious interpretation muddled. Spaniards were initially seen as ''teules'', meaning otherworldly beings, but any impression that they were anything but flesh and blood humans was dispelled pretty soon (Moctezuma can be quoted stating Cortés and him are just men). The natives did seem to believe the Spaniards might be emissaries or descendants of ancient forefathers who would one day return, but the true extent and influence of this factor are still hotly debated.

The first of those expeditions, led by in 1517 by Francisco Hernández de Córdoba, reached the Yucatán peninsula and entered contact with Mayan populations. Although things were initially peaceful, the expedition came under attack multiple times by natives who mistrusted the presence of foreigners, forcing the Spaniards to return home. Despite this apparent failure, the expedition brought valuable translators and info about what to expect in those lands, and the following year, Velázquez sent another commanded by his own nephew Juan de Grijalva. This expedition cut its way to the territories of the Totonac tribe, back then subjects of the mighty Mexica Empire.

Even before the second expedition returned, Velázquez had already thought of a third, larger one, and he chose his brother-in-law, a major named UsefulNotes/HernanCortez, as its leader. At the last second, Velázquez repented his choice, realizing the ambitious Cortés would likely stop obeying him if he found success, but Cortés overruled his orders to stop and sailed away anyway in February 1519. He commanded around 550 conquistadores, some of them with experienced of the previous travels.[[note]]Bartolomé de las Casas claims they also carried as many as 200 indigenous allies and black slaves, but they are mentioned in no other source, and De las Casas in not exactly a reliable one anyway.[[/note]]

The battle became a turning point not because the victory, but because the war booty included an enslaved indigenous princess named Malinalli, named by the Spaniards Marina or La Malinche (the latter being actually a term meant for Cortés himself). As it was the custom for native noblewomen, who were not any less often politically involved than Spanish queens, Malinche became Cortés' translator, adviser and right-hand woman, as well as his concubine and later mother of a son, Martín. It is believed, even since her own time, that without her enviable knowledge of the local language and culture, the conquest would have not been possible: some have even called her the true conquistadora of America.

The Spaniards and their allies finally reached Mexica territory in April. When Mexica emperor Moctezuma heard about white foreigners arrived riding weird creatures and wielding shining weapons, he was understandably wary, so he told them kindly by messengers that they should leave his lands. However, by this point Cortés and company had confirmed they were facing an immensely powerful empire with many subjects who could be easily turned into allies to pressure their lords - in other words, a potential new province, to King Charles V's glory and the conquistadores' enrichment. Therefore, getting ready for some big operations, he founded the city of Veracruz (back then, the Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz) and used it to invoke a legality that freed him from Velázquez's control.

Cortés had intended to leave Velázquez in the dark, but he found out anyway. Angry, Velázquez called this an act of treason and started gathering an army to seek and arrest Cortés. Back in Spain, Charles V was advised not to take action and instead wait to see what happened (mainly by Diego Columbus, Christopher's son, who opposed both Velázquez and Cortés and wanted the discovered land for himself). However, the king would get apparently pleased with the mission's course, so the whole legal friction would be ultimately set aside.

The Spaniards were secretly contacted by the Totonacs, vassals of the Mexica Empire ruled by a BigFun chieftain named Xicomecoatl, who were probing for a possible alliance with the powerful foreigners. Cortés made this a reality by promising them intercession against Mexicas, not any less by implicating them into direct action, and at the same time started his own negotiations with the empire. When Cortés and his new friends came back to Veracruz, a mutiny exploded, so Cortés quelled it and ordered [[BurningTheShips the ships to be dismantled]] so there could not be any more defections in the future. Another false alarm happened when an unrelated Spanish expedition was mistaken by the army sent by Velázquez, without great consequences.

Cortés and company continued through Mexica territory, where the Totonacs advised them to make the empire an EnemyMine with the Republic of Tlaxcala. Unfortunately, the latter's four great lords, Xicotencatl I, Maxixcatzin, Tlahuexolotzin and Citlapopocaitzin, mistook the foreigners for allies of the Mexica, so they tried to fight them off. The subsequent three battles were bloody, threatening the Spaniards with a heavy attrition, but Cortés managed to rout the Tlaxcaltecs every time and never stopped sending envoys of peace, so the Tlaxcaltecs eventually realized and called the war off. The republic understood that, supernatural or not, the foreigners could become invaluable allies against the Mexica Empire, so an alliance was forged, with Xicotencatl I and Maxixcatzin [[AltarDiplomacy marrying off]] five of their princesses to Spanish lieutenants.[[note]]If you are interested, Pedro de Alvarado married Tecuelhuetzin (baptized as Luisa), Juan Velázquez married Zicuetzin (Elvira), Gonzalo de Sandoval married Tolquequetzaltzin (Isabel), Cristóbal de Olid married Zacuancozcatl (unknown) and Alonso de Ávila married Huitznahuacihuatzin (unknown). They were indigenous marriages, no Christian ones, and some of the Spaniards did a LoopholeAbuse to marry other women by the Christian rite, but the Tlaxcaltecs cared little because polygyny was one of their own customs and the political ties were intact.[[/note]]

Sending word to Moctezuma that he would necessarily visit him, Cortés decided to take the route of Cholula, vassals to the Mexicas and bitter enemies of Tlaxcala. It's not clear what happened then: according to the Spaniards, Malinche and the native allies discovered that Moctezuma had secretly ordered the Cholultecs to ambush and kill them, while mestizo sources purport the Tlaxcaltecs actually engineered the whole thing to get revenge their enemies, and some modern historians suspect Cortés and the Tlaxcaltecs had both their own reasons to make an example out of Cholula. In any case, the Cortesian army delivered a preemptive strike that became a massacre (after which they took the city's gold, of course, while the Totonacs and Tlaxcaltecs grabbed the cotton and salt, much more precious to them).

The Mexicas of the coast wondered why the Totonacs had stopped paying tributes, so they attacked them, and some men of the Veracruz garrison died trying to help repel the attacks, among them their captain Juan de Escalante. Angry and likely worried that the Mexicas in Tenochtitlan would follow up, Cortés made Moctezuma a [[PuppetKing hostage in all but name]], extracted a harsh punishment for the offense, and started bossing things around. People in the city started doubting of Moctezuma's leadership, especially after the Christian Spaniards angered the natives by doing the usual anti-pagan shenanigans, but things seemed still under control with Moctezuma in their power, and eventually, they claimed to concede to his petitions to leave.

Back in Cuba, and despite his superiors in the Spanish Empire had ultimately ordered him not to, Velázquez sent captain Pánfilo de Narváez, at the head of 1300 soldiers, with orders to bring Cortés back dead or alive. He arrived to the Totonaca state, and Moctezuma, playing a double game, contacted him secretly to see whether Narváez could free him from Cortés. However, Cortés found about it and, after arguing back and forth with Narváez by messengers, marched against them with the help of spywork and bribes. Despite his numerical superiority, the incompetent Narváez was captured with his entire army in Cempoala, where he lost an eye, and when his soldiers learned about Cortés' exploits, they abandoned him anyway and joined Cortés. [[HumiliationConga Talk about a bad day.]]

The absence of Cortés, however, ruined everything for his side, as command in Tenochtitlan was held by the much less savvy Pedro de Alvarado, who became involved with a disastrous turmoil. The citizens had asked Alvarado permission to host a religious festival, which he allowed, but when they were in midst of the party, Alvarado ordered his men to massacre everybody, apparently under warning that it was all a plan to revolt. Again, sources disagree on this, some assuring Alvarado was right, others claiming he went full StupidEvil and only wanted to mug the participants, and others accusing again the Tlaxcaltecs of making up the whole revolt to get Alvarado to wreak havoc on their enemies. In any case, and predictably, the entire city rose against them, and the Spaniards and Tlaxcaltecs were forced to grab Moctezuma and his entourage and lock themselves in the main palace.

When Cortés returned to the city, he found things completely out of hand, so he put Moctezuma out to order the citizens to calm down, but the king was stoned in his balcony and died. After several days of urban warfare, and seeing [[ThisIsGonnaSuck the writing on the wall]], Cortés gathered all the treasure he could and tried to quietly move his army out of the lake-city by night, but his column was spotted, and suddenly a massive army of angry Mexicas attacked them. No less than 800 Spaniards and several hundreds of Tlaxcaltecs died right there, and a lot of their horses, weapons and treasure were lost as well. It was called the ''Noche Triste'' ("Sad Night"), and Cortés himself cried when he realized how great the casualties had been.

The Mexicas were now led now by Moctezuma's brother Cuitlahuac, who ordered a giant army to ambush the Spaniards in Otumba before they escaped their lands. However, Cortés and company managed to improbably rout the pursuers by going StraightForTheCommander, after which they finally could reach the allied territory of Tlaxcala. The Mexicas sent messengers with great promises for the Tlaxcaltecs if they broke their alliance with the Spaniards and the Totonacs, but the Tlaxcaltecs remained loyal to Cortés, who prepared a new plan to conquer Tenochtitlan by force.

Unknowingly to Cortés and the Tlaxcaltecs, Francisco de Eguía, a black slave originally brought among Narváez's men and left behind in Tenochtitlan, had caused a smallpox outbreak in the city. As this illness was unknown in the New World, the city was ravaged and Cuitlahuac himself died. His successor, Cuauhtemoc, worked to fix things and gather the highest number of allies possible for the oncoming war, but damage was still being done. The smallpox also jumped to Tlaxcala and killed one of its four lords, Maxixcatzin, although its effects were lesser there.

Cortés did the same, calling reinforcements from Veracruz and sending men to buy equipment from the Spanish Empire, and started a campaign to deprive the Mexica Empire from its vassals, convincing them to go over to his side and punishing into submission those who refused. He did this methodically, even allowing his native warriors to sacrifice and cannibalize war prisoners by their customs (usually a no-no for any Christian), and succeeded to the point of attracting even one of the powerful states of the Triple Alliance, Texcoco, led by Ixtlilxochitl. He also assimilated nearby expeditions and ships unrelated to his own, and started a highly ambitious siege plan to besiege Tenochtitlan by sea and land that can be unironically compared to the [[UsefulNotes/PunicWars Fall of Carthage]].

When Cortés and his allied states, which now included Cholula, Xochimilco, Mixquic, Iztapalapa and several others, were in control of all the populations and states that surrounded the lake Tenochtitlan, they closed off all bridges, cut the water supply and deployed brigantines in the lake to counter the enemy war canoes. Fights and skirmishes happened by day and night during months while the city slowly became hungry and desperate, and even Cortés himself, who [[FrontlineGeneral fought in the front lines]], was briefly seized at one point by the Mexicas. There was also a coup attempt in Tlaxcala, as Xicotencatl II, the chieftain's son, tried to overthrow his superiors and ally himself to the Mexicas before being captured and executed.

Finally, after three long months of blood, sweat and strategies, the coalition managed to overpower its defenses and conquer the city district by district. Fighting in the streets reached new heights of bloodshed, as Cortés' native allies started massacring and pillaging the Mexica population to get revenge for their old enmities, to the point Cortés himself tried to stop it and found himself powerless due to the thing's sheer scale. Ultimately, however, they captured Cuauhtemoc, who was trying to exit the city with some treasure, and Tenochtitlan was declared taken.

The takeover of the Mexica Empire set the base for the Hispanicization of Mesoamerica. As the war had been grievously costly, not improved by the fact that a fleet carrying royal taxes was captured by the French privateer Jean Fleury, Cortés sent out new expeditions through the continent in order to gather more benefits. The alliances with the natives remained, with the Mexicas now added to the list, although it was naturally Tlaxcala which received most privileges, being granted judicial power, freedom from tributes, and their own coat of arms. Moctezuma's lineage also continued (until today, in fact), with his Christian daughter Isabel having children with both Cortés and another conquistador.

Speaking of Velázquez, after years of political enmity with Cortés, the Spanish Crown finally settled the matter in favor of the latter. They appointed Cortés Marchis of the Valley of Oaxaca and captain general of New Spain, the name for the conquered lands (if they still didn't give him the charge of governor he wanted), and he passed the rest of his life exploring the Pacific coast before dying in Spain. In 1535, with the creation of the Viceroyalty of New Spain with Antonio de Mendoza as viceroy, the conquest of Mexico seemed concluded, although some more battles and treaties would happen until complete control in 1590.