EPISODE 23 - The Conquest Of Mexico (Part 4): Tenochtitlan Or Bust

“After getting this information, he had the arms, feet, and heads of our unfortunate companions cut off, and sent them round to various towns of our allies and those who had made peace with us, with the message that he did not think one of us would be left alive to return to Texcoco. Then he offered their hearts and blood to his idols.” — Bernal Diaz

“Eat the flesh of your brothers, for we are full. You can stuff yourselves with our leftovers.” —Mexica warriors addressing the Spaniards 

“It is better that we should all die fighting in the city than see ourselves in the power of those who would enslave us and torture us for gold.” — From a speech attributed to a Mexica captain 

“The people of the city had to walk upon their dead while others swam or drowned in the waters of that wide lake… so great was their suffering that it was beyond our understanding how they could endure it.” — Hernan Cortes

In the 1500s, two highly militaristic peoples fueled by religious ideologies requiring bloodshed clashed with one another. This is the tale of what happened when a band of Spaniards run into the Mexica (Aztec) empire. By the time the dust will settle, out of the 25 million indigenous inhabitants of Mexico, little over a million will be left standing. 

In this fourth episode:

• Cortes’ charge at the battle of Otumba 
• The Tlaxcalan fateful choice
• Branding POWs in the face with the letter G for Guerra
• Smallpox was better than any army for the Spaniards
• Cortes holds a rape auction 
• The master carpenter Martin Lopez, and his ships sealed with boiling human fat taken from dead Mexica warriors
• A plot against Cortes ends with a hanging
• Cortes on top of the pyramid at Xochimilco sees 2,000 canoes coming to kill him 
• Xicotenga and Led Zeppelin’s Gallows Pole 
• The siege of Tenochtitlan 
• Cortes flirting with death 
• The human sacrifice that gave Bernal Diaz permanent PTSD
• Eating the plaster off your walls and still fighting on 
• The city of the dead
• The Mexica emperor being introduced to the expression “holding the feet to the fire”
• Ramsay Bolton would have loved both Mexica and Spaniards
• The aftermath of the Conquest