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Spanish Conquests – The Fall of Tenochtitlan – Stefan Rinke
193 Plays1 year ago
Ep 029 – Nonfiction. 500 years ago, a Spanish flotilla reached the Yucatán under the command of Hérnan Cortés, leading to the fall of Tenochtitlan. Stefan Rinke joins me to discuss his new book, "Conquistadors and Aztecs: A History of the Fall of Tenochtitlan."
Buy Stefan’s book here: https://www.amazon.com/Conquistadors-Aztecs-History-Fall-Tenochtitlan/dp/0197552463
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Transcript
Impact of European Arrival on Indigenous Populations
00:00:00
Speaker
And I have heard often the fact that, and correct me if I'm wrong, but something like 90% of the indigenous population of North America died from disease when Europeans came over. And that just blows my mind. I mean, just imagine 90% of your town perishing. I mean, that's apocalyptic and that really...
00:00:21
Speaker
not not all of them perished from from disease, but many also perished from the very fact, you know, that the whole productive system was disrupted, there was no, no peasants anymore to, to work in the fields and so on. So there was a hunger, epidemic, going hand in hand with the with with the illnesses and so on. And so that all
00:00:48
Speaker
really had devastating effects. And if we compare it to the pandemics of our own days, of course, we might see the difference. This is really the huge demographic catastrophe of human history. That is what happened in the Americas in that period.
Introduction of Stefan Rinke and His Work
00:01:19
Speaker
Hi everyone, this is AJ Woodhams, host of the War Books Podcast, where I interview today's best authors writing about war-related topics.
00:01:29
Speaker
Today, I am super excited to have on the show Stefan Rincke, who wrote the new book, Conquistadors and Aztecs, A History of the Fall of Tenochtitlan. Stefan is professor and chair of the Department of History at the Institute of Latin American Studies and member of the Friedrich Meinecke Institute at Frei Universität Berlin.
00:01:53
Speaker
From 2014 to 2017, he was president of the European Association of Historians of Latin America. Rinke is the recipient of the Jose Antonio Alzati Award from the Mexican Academy of Sciences and is the author of 14 books, most of which have been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, and English. Stefan, how are you doing today?
00:02:15
Speaker
I'm fine. Great. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for joining me today. And forewarning for this interview, I'm going to butcher so many pronunciations. Before we get started is tenochtitlan. That's how we pronounce that, correct?
00:02:31
Speaker
Well, actually, nobody knows exactly how it was pronounced. So don't worry about it. And of course, Tenochtitlan is quite good. Okay, great. All right. Well, since it's such an important topic, I wanted to at least get your expertise on how to pronounce that. And this is this is another interview that I think is going to be fantastic because this is one of those topics that your book is about the
00:03:01
Speaker
the fall of Tenochtitlán and the Spanish conquests in the Americas in the 1500s. We haven't had anybody talk about this yet on my show. We get a lot of World War II, a lot of World War I, and some of these more well-known conflicts. But this is one of those topics that I knew nothing about.
00:03:21
Speaker
Well, not nothing. I knew what I learned from school and in the basics, but it was such a fascinating topic, I thought, and I'm so glad that you're here today talking about it. Well, first, if you mind just saying in your own words, what is your book about?
Significance of Spanish Conquest of the Aztecs
00:03:41
Speaker
My book is about a global historical event of great significance, which until the day of today is remembered by almost everyone in the Western world, because it's considered to be a constitutive moment in our history. It's about the fall.
00:04:02
Speaker
of the great empire of the Aztecs or the Mexica people who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica in that period and who had built up for centuries a strong and mighty empire. And this is so significant because the Europeans would come to the new world a couple of decades earlier as we all know with Columbus in 1492
00:04:32
Speaker
until that point, not yet discovered really well organized empires, but rather smaller groups on the Caribbean islands, which they quickly dominated and also unhappily exterminated. And in Mesoamerica, what they met was completely different. It went beyond their imaginations and it was,
00:05:01
Speaker
a full blown empire which was of course very different from what they knew from Europe but from their own impressions it also looked
00:05:12
Speaker
impressive, it looked powerful, it had all the ingredients of a mighty civilization of its own and so these Europeans were amazed and shocked and by bringing down that empire they really built the fundamentals for creating the first phase of European colonialism which unto
00:05:37
Speaker
our very day is important and influencing our own history and present. Well, let's talk about some of the history of the time in between. So the fall of Tenochtitlán happens in 1521, and obviously Columbus came in 1492, so you've got about 30 years, a 30-year time period,
00:06:03
Speaker
What's going on in that 30-year time period from the time that Columbus sets foot in the Americas to the fall of Tenochtitlán?
Challenges in Caribbean Settlements Post-Columbus
00:06:10
Speaker
Yeah, it's a period of trial and error of Spanish settlement in the Caribbean. The Spaniards are continuing to look for the breakthrough to the Pacific. They look for the breakthrough to India, which has from the very beginning been their objective to reach there and not to discover a new continent, which was, of course, coincidental.
00:06:37
Speaker
And so they are looking, they are continuing their voyages of exploration. Columbus does so many, he does many, many different trips, but there are also very soon other explorers coming to the region and looking for
00:06:57
Speaker
for this channel, for this breakthrough to really get where they really wanted to go and that was not the new world but it was Asia, it was the riches of India and the spices of the spice islands and China of course. And so that's what they do and but they also start settling in the Caribbean and these settlements turn out to be of course highly
00:07:27
Speaker
thought about because there are people living there. These are not empty islands, but there are Taino people, there are Carib people and others who have been living on these islands for quite a while. And while some of them were at the first moment quite welcoming to the foreigners, it soon turned out that convivians would be hard to get and that
00:07:57
Speaker
the Spaniards were quite oppressive in their relations with the inhabitants, with the autochthonous peoples. And so it came to the first warfare there and in these small wars, the Europeans were able to hold their ground and
00:08:20
Speaker
They were then enslaving the indigenous population, they were exploiting them and they were looking, actually they were looking for gold, everywhere they went they would be looking for gold and there wasn't that much gold on the Caribbean islands.
00:08:36
Speaker
They were soon also pretty frustrated and the settlements, the colonization did not bring the desired riches that Europeans were out for. They didn't want to settle permanently in the new world, but they went there in order to get rich and to get back to Spain and have a nice life there. But it turned out that these hopes were kind of frustrated.
00:09:04
Speaker
there was this motivation to go on to continue looking for where the riches really are. And then, of course, by exploring the Caribbean Sea, they would also come across the mainland and they first did so actually in the regions which are now Panama, Costa Rica and so on, and also the northern part of Venezuela and Colombia.
Colonial Interactions and Settlement Challenges
00:09:29
Speaker
And only later did they manage to get to the peninsula of Yucatan. And there, of course, they already experienced quite different kind of peoples, the Maya people who had a highly developed standard of city states and so on. And that is what interested them. And then, you know, after having
00:10:00
Speaker
consecutively conquered the islands, also the island of Cuba, which turned out to be a springboard to the mainland. That is then when they in 1519 made this step across the straits of Cuba to the mainland.
00:10:20
Speaker
So militarily, what kind of force are the Spaniards? First of all, before that, is it just the Spanish in this 30-year time period that are in this region? Yes. It's all under the rule of the Spanish crown. But the people who go there, of course, Columbus himself was not an original Spaniard. And the sailors he had on board came
00:10:47
Speaker
from all different regions of Spain, but there was also some African slaves among them. We know that there were some Jewish people among them whom they took as translators
00:10:59
Speaker
And so it was kind of a mixed group, but mainly they considered themselves to be subjects to the King of Spain. Well, militarily, what was Spain bringing with them to the Americas? What kind of fighting force, what kind of weapons did they use, their armor, their tactics, the leadership? Talk about militarily the situation. Yeah.
00:11:24
Speaker
go away from this idea that this was a regular military force. You know, this is the image that the Spaniards Cortez, the leader of the Spaniards themselves tried to bring across in their histories after the fall of the Nacitlán. What it really was, was a, you know, we would call them a gang of mercenaries, band of
00:11:47
Speaker
of people who put their luck and their fate on this military adventure, and they would gather around a strong commander
00:12:02
Speaker
who they would have to be loyal to. They were actually, once they joined the group, they were not allowed to move away and go back. That was to be punishable by death. So, but what they did was they
00:12:23
Speaker
in a way sold their power, you know, they sold their bodies to this leader, but they also
00:12:33
Speaker
had the right to expect a share of the booty. So what it was was a community looking out for booty, a group of bounty seekers, so to say. And they were out, of course, in the main for gold and also for some slaves if they could get them.
00:12:53
Speaker
So that was their main motivation. And when they got from Cuba to the mainland, it was of course also those people who had not had the luck to get a big share of what was there to get in Cuba. So those were rather the frustrated people, those who had already some experience in fighting indigenous people in the Caribbean islands, but they had not made
00:13:18
Speaker
or they had not been very lucky in that they didn't have big riches in order to build a life on, so they were still waiting for their next opportunity and this move to the mainland was their main opportunity. In terms of weapons,
00:13:38
Speaker
They did have swords. They had iron weapons, which of course steel weapons, which of course was a big advantage later on in the fight against indigenous people because they did not have that. And they also had some firearms. They had muskets and small cannons. They also had
00:13:59
Speaker
animals which were not known in the New World and those were, for example, horses and dogs, you know, bloodhounds, very important in warfare in the Caribbean and also on the mainland in these early years of European colonization. And so and they also had, of course, armors, armory, you know, the
00:14:26
Speaker
breast armors and helmets and so on. So that was all what they basically, you know, the kind of equipment that people in Europe would also have. And of course, this equipment was being bought by themselves. So it was their own property. They had to bring it to the battlefields. They were not equipped by some state or by some central agency, but that was their own
00:14:55
Speaker
usually it was their own equipment of course then also the commander of the of the of the band would also try to equip his soldiers to a different degree and then they would have to to pay that back by not getting as much of the bounty as the others would who had brought their swords and so on so it was all a give and take you know it was a really
00:15:24
Speaker
quite a group,
Diverse Participants in Spanish Expeditions
00:15:25
Speaker
heterogeneous group who would get there together. And in doing that, they also followed traditions which they had exercised in the Iberian Peninsula before fighting the Moorish people. So that was not absolutely new to warfare in the new world, but they had already done so before in their fight against the Arabs on the Iberian Peninsula.
00:15:51
Speaker
Now, were most of these mercenaries or these gangs, were they, obviously it was the Spanish crown they were fighting under, but were they themselves Spanish or did they come from other parts? Well, you know, Spanish is a big word in that period. There was not yet a unified Spanish state. It was in the making and by the end of the 15th century, there were many
00:16:17
Speaker
different measures, trying to introduce, you know, Spanish grammar, for example, what for the first time invented in 1492, of course, it was also the end of the, of the reconquests of the Spanish peninsula from the Arab peoples.
00:16:36
Speaker
And it was also the time of the expulsion of the Jewish and Arab people. So there were many different steps in trying to turn these very heterogeneous single kingdoms into what we would consider a more modern kind of unified state. But basically, the main
00:17:04
Speaker
percentage of people came from the south they came from andalusia they were experienced seamen and uh... but as i said before there were also people from other regions of spain from but we don't know exactly each and every one of them but they are there were african slaves some african slaves and and there were also some jews were officially not uh... permitted to join but they were taken on board because where they were considered to be
00:17:33
Speaker
linguistic geniuses and probably able to talk to the King of China, you know, the Khan, the big Khan, which they were actually heading for. So that was a very heterogeneous group under Cologne. And then later on from the Caribbean, of course, also officially speaking, only Spaniards of pure blood were allowed to go to the colonies.
00:18:02
Speaker
who were by that time not yet considered colonies but rather settlements and only those of pure blood that is of Christian ancestry who did not have Jewish or Arab ancestors were officially allowed to go to the new world and
00:18:25
Speaker
We know that that was not always kept this rule, but we also know that the great majority of people who would go there in this early phase would come from the Iberian Peninsula.
Aztec Empire's Cultural and Historical Context
00:18:40
Speaker
Well, let's shift our focus then to the Aztecs. And just for everyone in the audience who needs a refresher from high school, could you maybe just like give a brief overview of the Aztecs and how big their empire was, what its leadership was, where on a map specifically Tenochtitlan is, just talk a little bit about the Aztecs.
00:19:08
Speaker
Yeah, the Essex were one of those originally one of those many nomad peoples who in the Mesoamerican region and Mesoamerica for those who are not familiar with this concept includes what is today Mexico and also parts of the southwest of the United States and
00:19:33
Speaker
the northern part of Central America. This has been called Mesoamerica because it is considered to be a cultural region of unity. And the Aztecs had originally migrated from the north towards the south. Of course, this is all not very well historically documented, but there are these Aztec myths
00:20:00
Speaker
from which we learned that and they had finally, after many challenges and fights and so on, they had settled at the place where an eagle was sitting on a cactus and eating a snake. And that was
00:20:23
Speaker
This is a symbol which is still in the Mexican flag until today. And this was a small island in the lake of Texcoco and this is a place which they called then later on Tenochtitlan and they were not from the beginning
00:20:46
Speaker
powerful people, but they were rather people which had to pay tribute to their neighbors and they were dependent on them. But they were also from the very beginning, at least as that is what their own legends tell us, a very warlike people, they were good warriors and so on. And in the course of many centuries, they managed to come out ever more powerful in this
00:21:17
Speaker
landscape where so many different people would compete and live more or less closely together and in doing so their own city state would become more powerful and more powerful and then it would start to expand and also subdue
00:21:41
Speaker
its neighbors and become the seed of an of an empire. That was a process that really started to get very dynamic about 100 years before the Spaniards came. So it was not a very long. It's pretty young. Would you say it's a pretty young empire then? It's a pretty young empire. Exactly. They had
00:22:08
Speaker
and they were still expanding when the Spaniards came and of course their empire was very much characterized by being
00:22:19
Speaker
an empire which was not only built on their weapons, but also on their beliefs, on their religious beliefs, because the headstacks and many other people in the region believed that in order to keep the circle of the exchange of night and day,
00:22:39
Speaker
important to sacrifice humans and to feed the gods with human blood and human hearts. And so this was a major part of Mesoamerican civilization. And I said not only the Aztecs practiced that, but other peoples, including the Maya and smaller groups too. And so that was a major aspect
00:23:10
Speaker
So when they, when they expanded, when they led their wars against their neighbors and so on, they would make
00:23:17
Speaker
captives who were then sacrificed in ritualistic sacrifices on the big pyramids of Tenochtitlán, which by then had been built. Tenochtitlán had turned into one of the biggest cities in the world, actually in the world. It was not only and by far the biggest city in the Americas at that point in the Western Hemisphere,
00:23:41
Speaker
but it was one of the biggest cities in the world. How big was, by 1500 by the time the Spanish are there, how many people are living under the Aztecs? There are different calculations, but we can talk about 200,000, which is pretty enormous. Just in Tenochtitlan or in? Just in Tenochtitlan, yeah. Of course, we're talking about a city on an island in a lake. Of course, the expansion of that city was
00:24:11
Speaker
kind of restricted, but they still made it. They gained land from the lake by drying the lake at some points and by also using parts of the lakes with their famous cultivation systems for producing agricultural goods and so on. So they were very, very ingenious in their inventions. They had
00:24:37
Speaker
Of course, this was a saltwater lake, so they needed fresh water, they built channels for that, and it was really an amazing construction, something that Europeans would never have expected to exist outside the Christian world, because of course, they considered themselves to be
00:24:57
Speaker
you know, the top of creation. And when they found out, oh, no, there are other people who can do many things even better than we do, that was really shattering their beliefs at that point.
Rethinking European Colonial History
00:25:12
Speaker
And yeah, so, you know, there are many different aspects which I could talk about, actually, but perhaps that those are the main ones to remember. And of course, it's also interesting that you mentioned high school, because
00:25:26
Speaker
As I said before, I think for us living in the Western world, it's still part of our heritage. It's still something we learn in school, although of course for European and also for North American like you, it happened quite far away, but still it's considered to be part and parcel of our global history.
00:25:46
Speaker
Yeah, and well, I mean, here in North America, I mean, all over the world, this is the case right now with colonialism. And one of the things that's very interesting about your book, too, is there's a real reconsideration of how we have historically how we have taught these events in our history, in Western history. Because going through school, of course, like we hear the story of the conquerors of the Spanish or the Europeans who came over and
00:26:15
Speaker
and Columbus is this very exalted figure. And we don't really talk too much about the different empires that were there. I think it's probably well known that nobody really thinks that the conquistadors were the good guys, but you still don't, it kind of stops at that. I'm curious in Europe, how was Columbus taught in Europe?
00:26:46
Speaker
Well, you know, that has also underwent some change. Originally, of course, there was this story or this narrative of the big European hero who would go out there and then find the new world and open it up to Christianity and civilization, European style and so on.
00:27:09
Speaker
But then let's say from about the 60s, 70s onwards, this critical view of Columbus took hold slowly, but surely it took a while. It took some decades to really get into the school textbooks too. It was more of an academic or
00:27:28
Speaker
university scholar scholarly change of opinion first and it took a while but then when it finally entered textbooks you know it turned the whole view of Columbus and the Spaniards around so now the Spaniards were considered to be the
00:27:47
Speaker
bad guys, the monsters who wiped out indigenous civilizations which had been wonderful civilizations, peaceful and what do I know, you know. And of course that is also a myth which doesn't hold true. And we have to consider that what the Spaniards entered into when they came there in 1519
00:28:12
Speaker
Was a very war-torn region where people were out to subdue each other and they were just looking to take advantage of weaknesses the others would show and
00:28:25
Speaker
when they were out to make captives and to sacrifice them and to also you know a major instrument in that region was to have them pay tribute and that tribute included every kinds of
00:28:45
Speaker
you know, produce, what have you, but also captives, young women, young men who were supposed to be either slaves or also to be sacrificed. But of course, you know, it was better to sacrifice people whom who had been taking captives during a war that was considered to be more, it had more honor, you know, if you made a captive and offered that guy, then
00:29:13
Speaker
to buy a slave and offer them that was not considered to be equal. But, you know, so this is a very war-torn region where there's almost a permanent kind of warfare. And there's always, you know, the smaller dependent states who look for their opportunity in order to get out of that situation of dependency and oppression. And now when the Spaniards come,
00:29:41
Speaker
They can, of course, take advantage of that, and they can play one side against the other, and that's what they do. Well, I want to come back to this when we start talking about one of the things that you do learn in school, or I remember learning in school, is 400 Spanish. They took on this whole empire, and they conquered the city, and it was because of their technology.
00:30:05
Speaker
But you write about how that's a myth, and I want to come back to that, but before we talk about that, can you just talk about how the Aztecs waged war, similar to how we were talking about the Spanish, the types of weapons they used, their equipment, their armor, how was war waged by the Aztecs at this time?
00:30:25
Speaker
First of all, there was a special season for war and that was after the after the harvest period when people would be free and would have the time so that's
00:30:37
Speaker
very important. They would not wage war all of the year, and they would only do that during daytime, not at night, because it was considered not to be convenient for the gods if you would fight by night. So you would do that only during the daytime. And then there were different kinds of wars. There were
00:31:01
Speaker
of course the wars of expansion, which a new king, a new tlatoani, which is, you know, if you translate the word, it means speaker, the speaker, the one who's allowed to speak, who's the first, who is the tongue of the people, so to say, which a new tlatoani had to carry out in order to prove that he was really
00:31:26
Speaker
Capable of being the leader of the Aztecs so his his own capacities was measured by his successes in war so that's the one thing he had to do these kind of wars to prove himself after he had been
00:31:45
Speaker
installed as the new ruler. Then there are other kinds of wars which were called the so-called flower wars and these wars were not out for or were not led for destroying the opponents but rather to make captives for the sacrifices. These flower wars were especially fought against
00:32:10
Speaker
One group of indigenous peoples, the Tlaxcaltecas, which lived in the city of Tlaxcala, their own city state in Tlaxcala, which is close to the modern city of Puebla. Now it's still there. Tlaxcala still exists. Go to Mexico. You should visit it. It's a great city and with a lot of history with some wonderful museums.
00:32:41
Speaker
and the Tlaxcaltecas were considered to be enemies by the Aztecs and they were a small city state, but they were not, and they were surrounded by the Aztec Empire, but they were not yet, they had not yet been conquered because they were considered to be the opponents in these flower wars. So they would fight these wars without trying to
00:33:09
Speaker
extinguish their opponents, but rather it was like a training ground for young warriors and also for the elderly warriors, for the more mature warriors, in order to, you know, to keep in training and to make captives. And also the Tlaxcaltikas, although they were few and they were a small state, were considered to be very, very brave and warlike people.
00:33:39
Speaker
Yeah, that was a very special phase, but then of course the third type of warfare was
Aztec Military and Ritual Practices
00:33:45
Speaker
the warfare of conquest, of conquering other city-states in the vicinity of Tenochtitlán, and of course, the more the empire expanded, the farther they got to the north and also to the south of Mexico, where they would conquer the city-states, they would burn down the temple, usually, but before they do, they would also take all the statues, the gods,
00:34:14
Speaker
and incorporate them into their own pantheon. And what they would do was they would kill the top echelon, the elite of this conquered city, but they would not wipe out all the people there, but would rather install a new dependent kind of rulership
00:34:36
Speaker
who had to pay tribute then. So what they did was they established a sort of dependency and then had these new newly conquered city pay in kind, you know, pay what the region would produce, whether it were feathers or the
00:34:59
Speaker
skins of leopards and other materials which were not so abundant in the region of Tenochtitlan which were considered to be luxury goods. Kakao would also be considered to be a luxury good and so on. So that had to be delivered on a yearly basis and it was quite honourous. So the dependent people's
00:35:26
Speaker
had to go a long way to produce this tribute, so they would be held in dependence. If you were just your average soldier fighting in the Aztec Empire, do you have a sword? Do you have a spear? What's your typical profile of a soldier in the Aztec Empire? Yeah, the army itself was a very hierarchical body.
00:35:51
Speaker
And the top soldiers were really stars, they were really considered to be almost god-like creatures and instilled by god-like powers. But the regular army, so to say, the commoners would be equipped with swords and spares, also with the so-called
00:36:16
Speaker
Atlatl, which is a kind of throwing mechanism to throw spares, you know, with more power. And they would also have some kind of body wear, you know, in order to protect themselves, which was made of cotton, big cotton. And actually, the Spaniards later adopted that because it was so much
00:36:40
Speaker
lighter to wear than their iron armors in the heat of Mexico, of course. And so they would wear that, but what they did not have was metal weapons. Their weapon was made of stone that was sharpened and so on, so it was
00:36:59
Speaker
a deadly weapon, but a weapon that would break quite easily in fights. So that was of course a disadvantage when fighting against the Spaniards. So there was some kind of technological advantage obviously on the side of the Spaniards, but that would never have been sufficient to win these wars if it hadn't been for other factors.
Cortes' Ambitions and Defiance
00:37:25
Speaker
Yeah, well, let's then fast forward a little bit to Cortez when he arrives and his march towards Tenochtitlán happens. Talk a little bit about this campaign.
00:37:41
Speaker
First, I guess we haven't talked too much about Cortez, but just briefly, what was Cortez's role once he arrived with all of his mercenaries in the Americas? What was his role? What was he seeking out to do? And then how did he come upon Tenochtitlán? Well, first of all, he did not arrive with a group of mercenaries in the New World. He was rather one of those
00:38:07
Speaker
younger sons or well he was not a younger son he was the first I was first and only son of his father but one of these people of the lower aristocracy who did not have much
00:38:21
Speaker
chances in life in Spain and in the Iberian Peninsula after the wars against the Arabs had been fought. And so he was looking for a new life, for a chance, for some opportunities. Like all the other Spaniards too, he wanted to get rich and he wanted to
00:38:43
Speaker
get fame and what you know a young aristocrat of his time would look for and so he went to the new world and he came there and he did have some relatives you know not brothers and so but rather father relatives where he would show up and say here I am can you help me in getting started and so he did have of course
00:39:12
Speaker
privileged start as compared to the commoners, but he had to go through many different jobs, so to say, until becoming the mayor of a town in Cuba and was considered to be an audacious and also quite intelligent
00:39:36
Speaker
younger leader when in 1519 the governor of Cuba finally had the idea of sending an expedition to the mainland, but Cortes of course pretty soon developed an
00:39:55
Speaker
high sense of independence and wanted to do his own thing. So he started the expedition and he did so contrary to the order of the governor who in the last moment tried to prevent him from going.
00:40:11
Speaker
So he just rounded up a big group of these mercenaries. Yeah, he just rounded up a big group of warriors to accompany him. And then with the three ships he sent, he set out to the mainland, but already, you know, against the orders of the governor. So he was already
00:40:32
Speaker
had already fallen from grace, so to say. And so for him, personally, it was not possible to go back because he knew that he would be hanged if he got back. So he was condemned to be successful. Otherwise, it would not work out well for him. His soldiers, of course, as I said before, many of them
00:40:58
Speaker
were kind of frustrated from their existence in Cuba and were looking out for a new challenge. And they put all their luck into the hands of Cortes and went with him. But when they were finally there and found out what it was, what it was, they had to fight against. Many had second thoughts and had wanted to go back. But Cortes, of course, did not have the
00:41:26
Speaker
the chance to go back. He knew that the revenge of the governor would be kind of mortal for him and so he had to stay on the ground and he made his troops follow him. And he was seeking gold, is that correct? Not necessarily. Yes, they were seeking gold but once they had found out that there was this huge empire out there, they had
00:41:52
Speaker
they were facing, Cortes' idea was also to gain that empire for his king, because he knew he wouldn't get the grace of his governor again, so what he did was he considered himself under the direct command of the king, and in order to satisfy the king's demands, he knew that in the end, the new world,
00:42:20
Speaker
would have to produce the riches that everybody had hoped for when in 1419 or 1493 the news of this big exploration had finally reached Europe. But then of course in the 30 years that followed there was not that much riches coming to Europe and Cortez
00:42:41
Speaker
Cortessa thinking was if I make it to produce riches and also to present my king, this highly developed empire as a gift,
00:42:55
Speaker
then I would, it wouldn't matter that I had betrayed the governor, but I would be fine. And that was his reasoning and that was actually the ideas that he was following when you explain his motivation.
00:43:14
Speaker
So talk about when he reaches Tenochtitlan, when Cortes and his men are at the doorstep of Tenochtitlan, what happens? How do events transpire between Cortes and the Aztecs? Yes, this is also another world historical movement. The troops finally, after a long and arduous expedition through the mainland of Mexico, or what now is Mexico, had made it to the
Arrival at Tenochtitlán and Strategic Moves
00:43:44
Speaker
to the Valley of Mexico and what they had seen from afar had already, you know, been beyond their imagination, all these powerful huge buildings, the temple, a circuit with these huge pyramid and so on. So they had seen that and they were baffled. And now that they were going down the mountain range to the island there, to the island city of Tenochtitlan,
00:44:13
Speaker
They were received actually by the Edstex on one of the of the bridges they had built. And they were received in a very ceremonious manner, in a ritualistic manner, by the very Tlatwani himself in a highly organized ceremony. And, of course,
00:44:40
Speaker
what really happened, we don't know, we just know what Cortes said and Cortes in his famous letters to the king in his Cartas de Relacion says that in this first contact, the king of the Aztecs had already submitted himself to the rule of this foreign king and that Cortes had taken him more or less
00:45:10
Speaker
in the place of the king as a new vessel of his own king. Of course, it's highly dubious that that mattered, that that happened. But what is true is that the Aztecs actually led the Spaniards and their allies, and that is most important. Well, not just a few hundred Spaniards, but their allies, including the Tlaxcal
00:45:40
Speaker
into their city. They took them in, they hosted them, they gave them the palace of Moktizuma's father to live in, and they treated them as guests of honor, so to say.
00:45:56
Speaker
And until this very day, historians do not really know what was the strategy that Moctezuma had in mind when doing that. And of course, that was a crucial moment because once these Spaniards and their allies were in the city, events would develop that the Aztecs could not completely control anymore.
00:46:26
Speaker
My own thesis is that they thought having them in the city would give them the power to control these, you know, foreigners, which they could not really, really tell what they were about, what they wanted and what they were. And so they probably thought that it would be good to have them and treat them well, but at the same time, you know, have them more or less under custody. But as it turned out, that was not what happened.
00:46:56
Speaker
Yeah, it does seem like so Tenochtitlan itself, you know, it's an island in the middle of a lake and it seems like a pretty protected place. I mean, do you think that had Maktazuma not let Cortez in that he would have been able to conquer the city at all?
00:47:14
Speaker
Well, that's a good question. Of course, it's hard to tell. We know that later on he did, because Cordes and his allies, they had to flee the city after the events of the Nachitriste, the sad night. And then they waged a big war of siege, which in the end would be successful.
00:47:38
Speaker
But, and as I said before, you know, for Cortez, there was not much of an alternative than to wage a successful war. So he would have probably continued, but. So how many with his allies in total, what is Cortez's full fighting force? Yeah, we don't know that exactly, because Cortez obviously is silent about that in order to make his own
00:48:04
Speaker
effort more important than it actually was but we have to think about a couple of thousand people who were fighting on his side and also numbers were changing because depending on the luck in the warfare you know some city would at one day side with Cortes and his allies and then you know when they were fought back by the Aztecs they would change sides back again so
00:48:29
Speaker
It was a very dynamic situation, but basically, the mainstay of Cortes' troops was, of course, his own Europeans, and then the Tlaxcatikens, and later on, also the people from Tescoco, and so on. And the more the power of the Edstex faded, the larger the number of Edstex troops became.
00:48:59
Speaker
So what's the time span from the time that Cortes enters Tenochtitlán to when it falls? And if you could just talk about the moment when things turn between Cortes and Moctezuma and the conflict actually starts, it becomes a conflict.
00:49:24
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, we're talking about a period of not completely two years now. And the things start to turn in 1520, when there was a big fiesta, a big ceremonial party going on in Tenochtitlan.
00:49:51
Speaker
And when Cortes actually had to leave the city in order to fight other Spanish troops who had been sent out by the governor of Cuba in order to pursue Cortes and to punish him, actually. So Cortes went out of the city of Tenochtitlan with a large group of soldiers in order to fight against his
Turning Point: The Aztec Massacre
00:50:18
Speaker
his own European people, so to say, and he managed to do so quite successfully and actually gained strength from that because he incorporated the troops that this people had been sent out by Governor Velasquez of Cuba. When he came back, he found out that things had
00:50:44
Speaker
Gunn Havoc in Tenochtitlán and why? Because his lieutenant Pedro de Alvarado had used the festivities of the adsticks in order to massacre a large part of the of the adstick elite which had assembled there in order to to celebrate peacefully their flower dances and so on and he had massacred them and of course
00:51:10
Speaker
That was the turning point. There was no way back to a peaceful coexistence. And the Europeans now found themselves besieged by the Aztecs. And in the course of the fights that were developing from there, the Tlatawani, the ruler, Moctezuma, whom they had earlier taken hostage,
00:51:37
Speaker
died. And then, you know, the situation developed to be worse and worse. And in the end, the Spanish had to flee to Najtitlan in what they called the sad night, of course, for the Aztecs. That was the victorious battle of the of the dams. And in the end, you know, this group is
00:52:04
Speaker
gang of Spaniards and their allies who survived. They lost all the gold on the flight, but they were lucky to come away with their lives and then they had to go to Laxcala and regroup and to heal their wounds and so on. But they came back stronger and then finally
00:52:29
Speaker
they actually made it. They, of course, with the big support of many different indigenous groups who by then had already taken the note that the insects were not, you know, invincible. They were prone to military defeats and that, of course, stimulated the long-held hope of getting rid of the
00:52:58
Speaker
uh, of the, of the onerous, uh, oppression by the ed sticks. So when somebody says, uh, somebody came up to you and said, Stefan, um, uh, Cortez and 400 of his men took, uh, Tenochtitlan, why would you then say, no, that's not, that's not the case? Yeah. Uh, because it's so obvious that they could never have been, uh, have succeeded in doing so without,
00:53:27
Speaker
the assistance and actually without following those very warlike indigenous groups who for many, many decades had already fought against the edstex and who were now willing to risk it and to fight against the edstex and to join the forces.
00:53:50
Speaker
And we know that and we also know how history is of course a treacherous thing. If we look at the sources and the sources from Spanish hands have for centuries dominated our vision of that war. And of course in these sources, the indigenous impact is hardly mentioned because it would have
00:54:19
Speaker
diminished the Spanish glory, so to say. And from that point of view, we now know, thanks also to the research that has been done by many leading ethno-historians who have taken a second look at indigenous documents,
Indigenous Allies' Role in Spanish Victory
00:54:39
Speaker
that this indigenous impact was actually decisive. We might even go so far as to say that it were the indigenous people who co-opted this small band of Spaniards and took them with them because, of course, they did have some sort of symbolic power with them because of their animals and of their firearms and so on.
00:55:05
Speaker
But that, in itself, would never have been sufficient to bring down the powerful city of Tenochtitlán. And then, of course, there is this other factor that I have to mention, and that is the germ warfare of the Spaniards, the germs that they brought with them, with the Europeans,
00:55:26
Speaker
sparked of a major epidemic in Mesoamerica, to which at crucial points in the war, for example, the successor of Moctezuma succumbed and died. And then many of the Essex people of their elites died. And also on the south coast, there were also the indigenous allies of the Spaniards died, but the Spaniards took advantage of that by placing
00:55:54
Speaker
new rulers on top of these indigenous allies who were dependent upon them and so in the end it all worked out so well for the Spaniards but that was mainly coincidental and it had to do with the germs and it had to do of course also with this powerful presence of the indigenous people who fought their war and in 1521 went
00:56:21
Speaker
out victorious of these wars, but it was the Spaniards who had the vision of subduing the whole region, which the single indigenous states did not have.
00:56:34
Speaker
They were all happy of having gotten rid of the Edstag burdens, but none of them had the idea of building right away or right from scratch a new empire Edstag style. Now with, for example, Sakskala as a center. They didn't have that. But the Spaniards did have that. And finally, because of the factors I just mentioned, turned out to be victorious and to build this.
00:57:03
Speaker
Yeah, and I have heard often the fact that, and correct me if I'm wrong, but
00:57:09
Speaker
Something like 90% of the indigenous population of North America died from disease. That is true. And Europeans came over. And that just blows my mind. I mean, just imagine 90% of your town perishing. That's apocalyptic. Not all of them perished from disease, but many also perished from the very fact that the whole productive system was disrupted. There was no peasants anymore.
00:57:38
Speaker
to work in the fields and so on so there was a hunger epidemic going hand in hand with the with the illnesses and so on and so that all really had devastating effects and if we compare it to the pandemics of our own days of course we might we might see the difference this is really.
00:58:03
Speaker
the huge demographic catastrophe of human history. That is what happened in the Americas in that period. Yeah. Well, lastly, my question for you is this topic, why is this?
Colonial Myths and Lessons
00:58:22
Speaker
Well, one, I'm curious if there are any other myths or anything else that you found in your research that you found to be especially noteworthy
00:58:32
Speaker
when it comes to some of the myths we have about this period of time, but also too, just the lessons that we have for today, what you would like your readers to be taking away from your book. Yeah, that's of course the myth of Quetzalcoatl. You know this idea that the indigenous, the edstax mistook the Spaniards for gods who had returned the feathered snake, Quetzalcoatl, which is
00:59:01
Speaker
a real god in the in the yet stick pantheon and we now know of course that although this belief might have played a role at the very beginning in when the when the indigenous tried to find out who these foreigners were they soon found out that there were no gods they had to face but rather human beings kind strange human beings
00:59:26
Speaker
very stinking and very funnily dressed, but they were now gods. But of course, what the ed sticks also believed was, and in that they were not so different from Europeans in the time that the
00:59:48
Speaker
world beyond that the world of ghosts and of gods and spirits and so on might have an impact on on their own lives on their real world and so that was something that they considered or they might have considered we don't know but they might have considered the Spaniards to be you know at some points having some kind of supernatural powers and so on but they
01:00:16
Speaker
definitely did not consider them gods who had returned until the very end. And what to take away from the whole story I'm telling I think is that we should be very careful when thinking about European superiority and when thinking about
01:00:42
Speaker
the basis of colonialism. We should think twice and we should really delve into the sources in order to find out which other factors might have been crucial in bringing about the outcomes that we are familiar with. In our case, of course,
01:01:02
Speaker
We now know that it was a war that was not just fought between some few Spaniards and the powerful Aztecs, but it was a war that was fought by many different indigenous groups together with the Spaniards against an Aztecs empire, which also had allies, some of whom remained, but most of whom
01:01:29
Speaker
finally changed sides. And so it is much more a gray zone than a black and white zone in what direction you might want to have it.
Conclusion and Future Projects
01:01:42
Speaker
Wonderful. Well, Stefan, thank you so much for joining me here today. What a fascinating topic. Thank you, Adrian. It was wonderful to talk to you. It was really a lot of fun. Actually, I've written another book about Latin America in the First War, which you might be interested in at some other point. What's the name of it?
01:02:05
Speaker
It's Latin America in the First World War. It was published by Cambridge University Press in 2017, so. All right. Years ago. But if you're, I don't know if you're only into the most recent books or. Well, you know, I don't, I don't discriminate. You know, whatever I think is interesting is, is what I pick up. Well, thank you for letting me know. And you've, you've written 14 other books. Anything that you're working on right now? Is it number 15 on its way?
01:02:35
Speaker
Right now, I'm doing smaller things, actually. I'm writing a couple of articles. I'm a little out of the war history kind of thing. I'm more into political history, cultural history. Yeah. Okay. Well, Stefan Rinky, conquistadors in Aztecs, a history of the fall of Tenochtitlán. Go buy a copy.
01:03:00
Speaker
Go check it out from your library. What a fascinating topic. And Stefan, again, thank you so much. Thank you, AJ. It was a pleasure.