Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire

The Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire was a pivotal event in the history of the Americas, marked by the collision of the Aztec Triple Alliance and the Spanish Empire, ultimately reshaping the course of human history. Taking place between 1519 and 1521, this event saw the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés, and his small army of soldiers and indigenous allies, overthrow the Aztec ruler Moctezuma II and capture his capital city, Tenochtitlán.

Quotes

• [W]e had more trouble in preventing our allies from killing with such cruelty than we had in fighting the enemy. For no race, however savage, has ever practiced such fierce and unnatural cruelty as the natives of these parts. Our allies also took many spoils that day, which we were unable to prevent, as they numbered more than 150,000 and we Spaniards were only some nine hundred. Neither our precautions nor our warnings could stop their looting, though we did all we could ... I had posted Spaniards in every street, so that when the people began to come out [to surrender] they might prevent our allies from killing those wretched people, whose number was uncountable. I also told the captains of our allies that on no account should any of those people be slain; but there were so many that we could not prevent more than fifteen thousand being killed and sacrificed [by the Tlaxcalans] that day.
  • Hernán Cortés, in letter to Charles V, describing the bloody part played by Spain's Tlaxcalan allies in the Fall of Tenochtitlan; as quoted by Charles Robinson, The Spanish Invasion of Mexico 1519–1521 (London: Osprey, 2004), p. 60

In fiction

• Fair Mexico, that, trembling in her chains,
  Saw ruthless strangers waste her peaceful plains,
  Where are the stately domes she reared of old,
  Her terraced shrines that blazed with gems and gold?
  Where her white-feathered chiefs that lined each steep,
  Like foamy waves which crest the breezy deep?
  Alas! her tale is traced in tears and flame;
  Let History blush to write a Cortes' name;
  Lo! where the fires ascend from yonder vale!
  Ye hear the stake-bound victims' dying wail.
  Doth not a groan each turf-clad barrow yield,
  From those who fell on red Otumba's field?
  While on each murmuring wind that wanders by,
  Floats royal Montezuma's fruitless sigh.
  • Nicholas Michell, Ruins of Many Lands, 2nd ed. (1850), Book I, Part 3