9780241552193

Now there was silence, a last hush before the storm. The sun blazed down. The tension hung in the air, heavier and heavier …

And then an invisible tremor ran through the Aztecs on the rooftops, a breathless gasp of excitement. On the edge of the city the drummers struck up their rhythm.

They were coming.

after a family trip to the Imperial War Museum. He now serves as the books’ chief battle consultant.

ADVENTU RES I N TI M E

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Cover art: Edward Bettison Author photograph © John Cairns

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Take another Adventure in Time: Fury of the Vikings

THE FALL OF THE AZTECS DOMINIC SANDBROOK

Dominic Sandbrook has been passionate about history ever since he read the Ladybird children’s books. As a historian, he has written eight books for adults. He has also presented several BBC television series, covering topics such as time travel, alien invasions, the James Bond films and the Harry Potter stories. His favourite book is The Lord of the Rings. His favourite football team is Wolverhampton Wanderers.

He lives in Oxfordshire with his wife and son, Arthur. It was Arthur who came up with the idea for ADVENTURES IN TIME ,

I S B N 978-0-241-55219-3

9

780241 552193

ADVENTURES IN TIME DOMINIC SANDBROOK

ALLEN LANE

THE FALL OF THE AZTECS

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With its vast cities, soaring pyramids and glittering treasure, the Aztec Empire was one of the greatest civilizations in the world, at once beautiful and terrible. At its head was the Emperor Montezuma, master of millions, who spoke with the voice of the gods and fed the sun with the blood of his prisoners.

Yet Montezuma was troubled by terrifying omens. And when Spanish explorers landed on his shore to seek their fortunes, nothing would ever be the same again …

Take a breathtaking journey to a vanished world, in an epic battle between old and new, when even the mightiest empire could come crashing down.

THE

FALL THE AZTECS OF

The books in the ADVENTURES IN TIME series bring to life some of the most exciting stories ever told. Even better, they’re all true.

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The Fall of the Aztecs

p u b l i s h ed The Second World War The Six Wives of Henry VIII The First World War Alexander the Great Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile Fury of the Vikings The Fall of the Aztecs f o rt h co m i n g Horatio Nelson, Hero of the Seas

The Fall of the Aztecs With illustrations by Edward Bettison

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PARTICULAR BOOKS UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia India | New Zealand | South Africa Particular Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

First published in Particular Books 2023 001 Text copyright © Dominic Sandbrook, 2023 The moral right of the author has been asserted Set in 12.51/16.56pt Bembo Book MT Std Typeset by Jouve (UK), Milton Keynes Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A. The authorized representative in the EEA is Penguin Random House Ireland, Morrison Chambers, 32 Nassau Street, Dublin d02 yh68 A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library isbn: 978–0–241–55219–3

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For Nicholas Bailey

Contents Prologue: The Strangers

1

part one THE LAND OF THE FIFTH SUN

9

1 2 3 4 5

11 23 37 52 67

The Feathered Serpent The Coming of the Aztecs The Children of the Eagle The Temple of Terror Montezuma

part two THE VOYAGERS

81

6 The Boy from Nowhere 7 The Island of Secrets 8 Death in Paradise 9 The Gold-Hunters 10 The Journey Begins

83 98 114 125 139

part three JOURNEY INTO FEAR

155

11 The Girl from the Sea 12 A Storm of Swords 13 The City on the Lake 14 Drums in the Dark

157 176 193 208

ix

contents

15 The Festival of Blood 16 The Night of Tears

222 238

part four THE END OF THE WORLD

255

17 War to the Death 18 The Siege of Tenochtitlan 19 The Eagles Fall 20 City of Ghosts

257 273 288 304

Epilogue: The Inheritors

321

Author’s Note

335

prologue

The Strangers

It was a warm, clear autumn day, and in the city of Tenochtitlan the drums were beating.

All morning the streets had been buzzing with excitement. Old and young, rich and poor, men, women and children: everybody had heard the news.

After weeks of tension, after all the whispers and rumours, the strangers had entered the Valley of Mexico, and had reached the far side of the lake. In just a few hours they would be on the causeway. And then, at last, the people of the city would set eyes on these extraordinary newcomers from across the sea.

Since dawn the Emperor’s servants had been busy lowering the bridges and sweeping the streets. In the central quarter, in the cool quiet of the Palace of Axayacatl, the maids were preparing the apartments for their guests, bringing in fresh bedding, food and drink.

Already the city’s flat roofs were crowded with people, desperate to catch a glimpse of the strangers. Men in their cloaks and loincloths, women in their loose blouses and 1

the fall of the aztecs

skirts, children dressed like little versions of all their parents, all packed in together, straining to see across the lake.

Horns blared, and the welcoming party filed out of the palace, making its stately progression towards the causeway.

First came the Jaguar Knights, splendid in their warriors’ finery. Then followed the noblemen in their brightly coloured capes, the priests in their headdresses.

Then came the Emperor, the Great Speaker, the High King. His closest relatives carried him in a litter decked with flowers, beneath a canopy of green feathers. He wore a richly coloured cloak and a magnificent feathered headdress, and had a turquoise ribbon around his brow.

He was the most powerful man in the world. As he passed, the spectators lowered their heads. None dared to meet his eye.

Now there was silence, a last hush before the storm. The sun blazed down. The tension hung in the air, heavier and heavier . . .

And then an invisible tremor ran through the spectators on the rooftops, a breathless gasp of excitement.

On the edge of the city the drummers struck up their rhythm.

They were coming.

2

Prologue: The Strangers

The strangers advanced down the causeway in rank after rank. They were led by their captain, pale-skinned, redbearded, riding a strange beast like a colossal deer.

By his side walked a girl, slight, barefoot and brownskinned. She didn’t look like the other foreigners, and many of the spectators frowned in bewilderment.

Behind them rode more men on their enormous alien creatures. One carried a banner, emblazoned with a red cross. Then came hundreds of strangers on foot, their metal swords hanging from their belts or slung across their backs.

More riders followed on their giant beasts. Then came men with strange mechanical bows, cradled in their arms. And then, rolling over the causeway, came the machines everybody had been talking about, the great wheeled tubes that hurled balls of iron.

The Emperor’s attendants helped him out of his litter.

He lowered his golden sandals onto the earth and stepped towards the strangers.

Their captain slipped down from his beast, too. Slowly he advanced towards the Emperor, and then, suddenly, he flung out his arms.

And at that, the spectators gasped as one.

The stranger was trying to touch the Emperor!

For a moment, it was as if the whole world were frozen in time – the Emperor standing on the causeway, the stranger with his arms outstretched, the courtiers staring in horror, the spectators with their hands to their mouths.

3

the fall of the aztecs

The date was 8 November 1519, and the history of the world hung in the balance.

The Emperor’s name was Montezuma. For seventeen years he had ruled in Tenochtitlan, master of an Aztec Empire that reached to the shores of the Pacific on one side, and the Gulf of Mexico on the other.

To his people, he seemed a man of overwhelming majesty. He was not called the Great Speaker for nothing: he spoke with the voice of the gods, and it was through him that ordinary mortals tried to appease the heavens.

And the other man, the strangers’ captain? He was a nobody. Even in his native land, not one in a hundred people had ever heard of him.

His name was Hernán Cortés, and he came from a dusty little town five thousand miles across the sea, on the western border of Spain.

The meeting of these two men, the Aztec Emperor and the Spanish adventurer, would change the course of history. It was the most thrilling episode in an epic drama that marked the end of the Middle Ages and ushered in the modern world.

Cortés’s secretary once claimed that Spain’s conquest 4

Prologue: The Strangers

of the Americas was ‘the greatest event since the creation of the earth’. Later still, the Scottish thinker Adam Smith wrote that the Spanish expeditions were ‘the greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind’.

They may well have been right. The story of Cortés’s adventures is one of the most exciting tales in history, rivalled only by the journey of Alexander the Great, the life of Cleopatra or the two world wars.

It’s also one of history’s hinge moments, a turning point between old and new. For it was the Spanish conquest that, for the first time, united the Old World of Europe, Asia and Africa with the New World of North and South America.

Above all, though, this is the story of a breathtaking lost civilization, at once sophisticated and savage, beautiful and terrible – the vanished world of the Aztecs.

With their vast cities and soaring pyramids, their feathered headdresses and human sacrifices, they have always fascinated outsiders. They seemed so proud, so powerful – and then it all came crashing down . . .

One curious thing about them, though, is that they never called themselves ‘the Aztecs’.

Their language was called Nahuatl, and they were Nahuas. Those who lived in the city of Tenochtitlan called themselves the Mexica.* In fact, the word Mexico probably just means ‘the place of the Mexica’. * Pronounced Meh-SHEE-ca.

5

the fall of the aztecs

The word ‘Aztecs’ was invented by writers in the nineteenth century, to distinguish the old Mexica from modern Mexicans. Still, everybody knows what it means, so it would be odd not to use it.

Some of the characters’ names, too, are much debated, because the Aztecs didn’t use our alphabet.

For example, the Emperor on the causeway is sometimes called Moctezuma, Motecuhzoma, Motewksomah or Motecuhzomatzin. But in English he’s usually called Montezuma, so I’ve stuck with that.

Montezuma was a ruthless, warlike man. So was Cortés.

And in truth, the fall of the Aztecs is often a very bloody story.

For centuries people used to tell it as a clash between wicked Aztecs and gallant Spaniards. These days, it’s more common to tell it from the opposite angle, casting the Aztecs as noble underdogs and the Spanish conquerors, or conquistadores, as greedy monsters.

But I don’t see it that way. There was plenty of cruelty on both sides – and plenty of courage, too.

Was Montezuma a hero? Was Cortés a villain? Or was it the other way round? Who were more bloodthirsty, the Aztecs or the Spaniards? Or is it a bit simplistic to think of them that way?

I’ve tried to avoid taking sides. All this is for you to decide, not me. And there’s no right answer: history is a matter of opinion, which is what makes it so fascinating.

6

Prologue: The Strangers

But enough of the prologue. The story’s too exciting to delay any longer. So let’s turn back to the very first page of the Aztecs’ history.

We begin, as we will end, with the world in darkness.

part one

the land of the fifth sun

1

The Feathered Serpent

In the beginning there was darkness. Then the gods breathed life into the world, throwing themselves into the fire to create time and light.

The first god to sacrifice himself was Tezcatlipoca, Lord of the North, Master of the Night Sky. When he leaped into the flames, he became the First Sun. In his age, giants walked in the sunlight; but one day they were eaten by jaguars, and the darkness returned.

The Second Sun was his brother Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent, Lord of the Winds. In those years the first men and women walked the earth. But hurricanes and floods swept across the land, and the people who survived were turned into monkeys.

Then it was the turn of the rain god, Tlaloc. When he hurled himself into the fire, he became the Third Sun. But his wife betrayed him, and while he was grieving a terrible drought ravaged the world.

Mortal men and women cried out for help, but Tlaloc 11

the fall of the aztecs

was angry. Fire fell from the heavens, and all the world was smothered with ash.

The Fourth Sun was Tlaloc’s sister Chalchiuhtlicue, mistress of the seas and the rivers. For a time the people lived well, with enough corn for everybody to eat. But the gods quarrelled, and Chalchiuhtlicue wept tears of blood.

The waters rushed over the earth, and all the men and women were turned into fish.

So the last glimmers of light faded away, and endless night descended once more. The age of the Fourth Sun was over, and the gods knew a fifth sacrifice was needed.

In the dark and dreadful gloom, they gathered at Teotihuacan, the vast stone City of the Gods, in the Valley of Mexico. Around them in the shadows skulked those few human beings and animals who had survived the flood.

‘Who will bear this burden?’ the gods asked. ‘Who will take it upon himself to be the sun, to be the herald of dawn?’

Their gaze fell on Tecuciztecatl, son of Tlaloc, rich and proud. They gave him a splendid feathered headdress, and he began to prepare for the ritual.

‘Who else?’ asked the gods. But there was only silence.

Nobody else, it seemed, dared to take the leap.

Then they noticed Nanahuatzin, poorest and weakest of all the gods, sitting humbly at the back. ‘Yes,’ he said quietly. Yes: he would do it.

The gods kindled an enormous bonfire, and the two volunteers made their preparations. At last, all was ready.

The pyre roared with a red-hot flame. High above, on 12

The Feathered Serpent

the tall wooden platform, Tecuciztecatl and Nanahuatzin prepared for the moment of destiny.

Tecuciztecatl stepped forward. The flames crackled.

Around the pyre, the gods waited, and waited, and waited . . .

Four times Tecuciztecatl stepped forward. But on every occasion, as the flames leaped into the sky and he felt the heat on his face, his courage deserted him.

Then, seizing his chance, Nanahuatzin closed his eyes and threw himself forward, hurling himself into the heart of the bonfire. And in the moment of his agony, this smallest and weakest of all the gods rose in glory, and became the Fifth Sun. Now Tecuciztecatl found his courage. He leaped after his comrade, and rose as the Moon. Then two more creatures followed them into the flames – a jaguar and an eagle, the bravest of the animals.

But the ritual was not quite over. Although the sun rose in the east, it did not move any further. It remained high in the sky, fierce and fixed, scorching the ground below.

Then the other gods knew what they must do. They too must sacrifice themselves, baring their chests to the sacred knife, giving up their blood so that the sun might continue on its journey.

Such was the way of the universe. There was no reward without pain, no creation without bloodshed. Only death could pay for life.

So the sacrifice was made, and mankind entered the age of the Fifth Sun. Yet as the years passed, all men and women knew it 13

the fall of the aztecs

would not last for ever. One day the light would fade, and earthquakes would tear the world in two.

There was only one way to put off that moment. To keep the Fifth Sun moving, to pay for life on earth, the debt must be settled.

The sacrificial knife must rise and fall; the temple steps must run with blood . . .

So time began again. Every morning the sun rose from the shadows, and light blessed the face of the earth. The frost sparkled on the branches of the trees, and the lakes gleamed in the glow of dawn.

The world of myth became a world of history. And one day, some fifteen thousand years ago, a group of hunters set out on an expedition that would change the course of life on earth for ever.

Tired of scavenging for food in the tundra of Asia, they had decided to cross the ice-bridge to the east, and build new lives in the empty wilderness beyond. In this new world, some of their elders said, they could hunt mammoths and mastodons, beavers and bison, untroubled by any human rivals.

Over the centuries more people followed. Crossing the 14

The Feathered Serpent

ice-bridge from Russia to Alaska, they continued south, paddling their canoes down the coast, hunting and fishing.

About eleven thousand years ago the temperatures rose.

The Ice Age was over, and the glaciers melted. The seas rose. The waves swept over the ice-bridge, and the link between these two great continents, the Old World and the New, was lost for ever.

Sometime later, back in the heart of the Old World, people began to settle down as farmers. Men and women grew wheat and barley. They adopted dogs as pets, and herded sheep and cows for their milk and meat.

They built villages and markets. They designed the first wheels and crafted metal tools. And eventually, in the valleys of Mesopotamia and Egypt, they built cities and palaces, and started writing down their laws and legends.

But in the New World, across the sea, people didn’t start farming for thousands of years. No wheat grew in these distant lands, so the hunters’ descendants still lived as nomadic wanderers, scouring the woods and plains for food.

In around 4000 bc, people in what is now Mexico began to grow crops, such as corn, beans and chilli peppers. But they had no horses and no wheels. Even at this early stage, they were thousands of years behind their Old World cousins.

Not until 1500 bc, around the time of Egyptian pharaohs such as Hatshepsut, Akhenaten and Tutankhamun, did the first civilization emerge in North and Central America.

This was the realm of the Olmecs, who lived on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico.

Today the Olmecs seem unfathomably mysterious, 15

the fall of the aztecs

since they left few records behind. They are best known for carving gigantic stone heads, each as tall as a man, scowling with rage.

But they must have been tremendously clever, skilful people. We know they planted fields of corn and beans, and built temples and towns. They carved ornaments from wood and jade, painted ceramic plates and danced to the sound of flutes and drums.

The Olmecs were fascinated by time and numbers. They tracked the movements of the planets, devised a 365-day calendar and invented several different systems of writing, using a kind of hieroglyphics.

Many historians think they even invented the number zero. That might sound odd to us, but neither the Greeks nor the Romans had a symbol to depict the idea of zero, because they didn’t think it was a meaningful number.

Perhaps most colourfully, it was the Olmecs who came up with the idea of playing ball games in walled courts, with players using their hips – not their hands – to control a rubber ball. The rules of this game have long since been lost, but we know that some courts had carved stone rings, probably used as goals.

Most Olmec towns had a ball court in the central square, where crowds gathered to watch the best players. Women and children played too, and some games were played to the death, with the losers sacrificed to the gods.

Nobody knows why the Olmec civilization began to decay. By about 300 bc – not long after the death of Alexander the Great – their towns had fallen into deep decline. But 16

The Feathered Serpent

their calendar, the number zero and the ball game had spread among their neighbours, and would survive for centuries.

The second great New World civilization was that of the Maya, who lived in the forests of south-eastern Mexico, Guatemala and Belize. Their golden age began in about ad 300 and lasted for six hundred years, stretching from the last years of the Western Roman Empire to the heyday of the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings.

The Maya world was a mosaic of kingdoms and citystates, linked by countless roads and rivers. High above the trees, in cities like Tikal and Palenque, soared their gigantic stone pyramids, which you can still visit today.

At their peak, the Maya warlords ruled about a million people, worshipping more than a hundred different gods. Like the Olmecs, they had no wheels – which meant no carts, no carriages and no watermills.* But they were even more sophisticated than their predecessors, with beautifully decorated books and an astonishing solar calendar, more accurate than anything in medieval Europe.

Yet, at the beginning of the tenth century, something quite extraordinary happened. For some unknown reason, people began to abandon the greatest Maya cities.

Towns, villages and marketplaces emptied, as if their inhabitants had simply vanished into the forests. Even their stone inscriptions decayed into gibberish, as though the Maya no longer understood their own systems. * They did have wheels on children’s toys, but it never occurred to them to make more use of them, probably because they didn’t have any horses.

17

the fall of the aztecs

History was going backwards. Time itself seemed to have gone into reverse.

What happened? Were the Maya defeated by invaders, or cut down by a terrible epidemic? Or did they destroy their own environment by cutting down trees and overfarming the land, leading to shortages and famine?

Nobody has ever solved the mystery of the Maya collapse. We will probably never know the answer.

But to this day, it remains a chilling warning, reminding us that no matter how rich and advanced we might seem, we too could be dancing on the brink of disaster . . .

Despite the fate of the Maya cities, their world had not been entirely destroyed. Their ideas and customs had spread far and wide, enduring long after their pyramids had been swallowed by the jungle.

Many centuries later, when the first Europeans ventured into the rainforests of Mexico and Guatemala, they found people playing the same ball games, worshipping the same gods and using the same calendar and writing system that would have been familiar in the Maya golden age.

In any case, the Maya had not been alone in building a civilization to match anything in the Old World.

18

The Feathered Serpent

Hundreds of miles to the north, on the spot where Nanahuatzin had sacrificed himself to become the Fifth Sun, stood a capital of truly astounding splendour – the city of Teotihuacan.

Teotihuacan was the greatest settlement in the Valley of Mexico: a vast basin, stretching a hundred miles from north to south and fifty miles across. Guarded by soaring snow-capped peaks, the valley was like a walled garden at the very centre of the earth. And at its heart sparkled the waters of Lake Texcoco – so clean, so clear that there was said to be nothing like it anywhere on earth.

Of all the valley’s towns and cities, Teotihuacan was by far the most spectacular. Once again, much of its past is shrouded in mystery – though it’s easy to see why people thought it had been a citadel of the gods.

We don’t know who built it, what they called themselves, what language they spoke or even what they called their city. The name Teotihuacan, roughly meaning ‘City of the Gods’, comes from the Aztecs, who only arrived in the valley centuries later.

In its heyday, around the year ad 500, Teotihuacan ruled an empire stretching for hundreds of miles. It was so vast, so monumental, that its landmarks still dominate the countryside today, from the long sweep of the Avenue of the Dead to the colossal stepped Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon, as tall as anything in Egypt.

Here lived some two hundred thousand people, surrounded by schools and temples, markets and ball courts.

Here they sacrificed pumas and jaguars to their most beloved 19

the fall of the aztecs

and feared god, Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent, Bringer of the Wind and the Rain, Guardian of Knowledge and Lord of the Dawn.

For all the power and splendour of Teotihuacan, there was no escape from the cycle of life and death. As its priests had always known, even the brightest sun must fade one day.

Sometime in the mid-sixth century, the City of the Gods was shaken by a terrible crisis. The cause remains another mystery. Climate change? A dreadful drought? Nobody knows.

We do know, though, that many of the city’s most magnificent buildings were burned to the ground, while others were left untouched. Perhaps the common people of Teotihuacan overthrew their masters and torched their palaces, in an explosion of rage against the rich and powerful.

Either way, the crisis marked the end of Teotihuacan.

For when, centuries later, newcomers visited the Valley of Mexico, they found it utterly deserted.

The pyramids towered over the plain. The Avenue of the Dead stretched into the distance. The painted serpents slithered down the walls of the buildings.

But there was no sign of life, as if its people had been wiped from the face of the earth.

The City of the Gods had become a city of ghosts. And where there had once been bustle and clamour, there was now just an endless, eerie, terrifying silence.

20

The Feathered Serpent

With the fall of Teotihuacan, the Valley of Mexico entered a new age. For a long time, no single city held sway.

Wave after wave of warriors streamed into the valley from the north, drawn by rumours of its rich farmlands.

They hunted deer and rabbits, quail and pumas. But no sooner had one group settled than another wave of nomads arrived, in an endless churn of competition and chaos.

Around the year 1000, one northern group, known as the Toltecs, emerged triumphant. A fearsome and warlike people, they established their capital in Tula, about fifty miles north of the ruined City of the Gods.

Later, storytellers told of the Toltecs’ priest-king Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, ‘Our Noble Lord, the Feathered Serpent’, who was eventually overthrown by his own family.

Driven into exile with a band of supporters, he apparently sailed to the old Maya heartland, far to the south-east. There he defeated the local chieftains and established a powerful new kingdom, where he ruled in dazzling splendour.

Was Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl a man, or a god? Was he just a mortal king, a figure from history? Or was he, perhaps, the Feathered Serpent himself ?

Once, surely, people had known the truth. But as the decades went by, Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl passed into legend, and it became impossible to say for sure.

At last, after two centuries, the Toltecs lost their grip.

More nomads streamed into the valley from the north. Like so many imperial capitals, Tula fell, its pomp and glory scattered to the winds. Once again, chaos returned to the heart of Mexico, as rival cities struggled for supremacy.

21

the fall of the aztecs

In the markets along the shore of Lake Texcoco, people insisted that they merely had to wait. One day soon, they whispered, Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl would return from the east, decked in jewels and flowers.

The Feathered Serpent would reclaim his kingdom and reign in glory, and the people of the valley would know nothing but peace and prosperity until the end of their days.

But the sun rose and fell, the weeks stretched into months and years . . . and Quetzalcoatl never came.

In the ruins of Teotihuacan, the ancient City of the Gods, the lizards slithered over the crumbling stones.

Sometimes people from the lakeshore visited the old city, hoping for inspiration – an omen, a sign, a message from the Feathered Serpent.

But there was no such message.

The Fifth Sun beat down. The eagles cruised overhead.

But Quetzalcoatl, it seemed, had vanished for ever.

On the Avenue of the Dead, in the shadows of the great pyramids, there was only silence.

And then, one day, the Aztecs came.

22

2

The Coming of the Aztecs

They came from the far north-west, a land of legend.

As their priests told it, their ancestors had once lived inside the Hill of the Seven Caves, surrounded by savage and deadly beasts. But one day, when the Fifth Sun was young, they emerged from the caves into the light, and found themselves in a land called Aztlan, the Place of the White Heron.

Here they lived on an island, surrounded by the sparkling waters of an enormous lake. But where this island could be found, none of their descendants could say.

By the time the strangers arrived in the Valley of Mexico, they had forgotten where Aztlan was. Perhaps it lay near the northern border of modern-day Mexico – or even further afield, in the sun-scorched deserts of Utah or Colorado. Or perhaps it never really existed at all.

For many years their ancestors lived peacefully on the island. Then, one day, their most beloved god Huitzilopochtli, the Southern Hummingbird, God of the Sun, spoke to his priests.

23

the fall of the aztecs

It was time, Huitzilopochtli said, for them to cross the lake and find a new land. To help them, he gave them gifts: a net, so they could fish; and a bow and arrow, so they could hunt.

Huitzilopochtli also divided them into clans called calpolli, based on their family groups. And he gave them a new name. From now, he said, they would be called the Mexica.

They had no horses; nobody in these lands had ever seen a horse. So once they had crossed the lake, they began to walk south. On they went, in the baking heat of the day and the silent dead of night, crossing deserts, fording rivers, scaling mountains.

This was an age-old trade route for precious minerals, snaking through the desert canyons from the American Southwest to the Valley of Mexico. But to the strangers, it was the supreme test of their character and courage. It was a sacred quest, with their god urging them ever onwards.

One day they reached a great hill, which they called Cerro Coatepec, Serpent Mountain. This, their priests said solemnly, was the mountain where Huitzilopochtli had been born.

For thirty years they settled here. They built a dam in a nearby lake, hunted for game and grew vegetables and flowers.

But then, through his priests, Huitzilopochtli spoke again. They must go on, he said. He had a greater destiny in mind for them.

Now they quarrelled among themselves. One faction, led by the warrior queen Coyolxauhqui, Painted Bells, 24