Hernán Cortés and the road to Tenochtitlán
Hernán Cortés: The Man and His Mission
Hernán Cortés was born in Medellin, Extremadura, Spain, in 1485. He arrived in Hispaniola in 1504 and Cuba in 1511, where he served as a secretary to Governor Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar. By 1518 he had been authorised to lead an expedition to the Mexican mainland, following reports of a rich civilisation from earlier Spanish forays. Then, at the last moment, Diego Velázquez withdrew the authorisation, suspecting Cortés was too ambitious and would not remain under his control.
Cortés defied the order. In February 1519 he set out from Cuba with approximately eleven ships, around 500–600 soldiers, sixteen horses and a handful of artillery pieces. It was an act of insubordination that put him in legal jeopardy — he was operating without royal authority and could be arrested. His strategy was to succeed so spectacularly that the Spanish crown would confirm his authority retroactively. He wrote long, self-justifying letters (the Cartas de Relación) directly to King Charles I, bypassing Velázquez entirely.
Cortés defied Governor Velázquez’s last-minute withdrawal of authorisation and sailed from Cuba in February 1519. He wrote directly to King Charles I to justify himself, hoping military success would secure royal backing.
Landing on the Mexican Coast
Cortés landed on the Mexican coast at the site of modern Veracruz in April 1519. Here he made one of his most consequential decisions: he scuttled (or according to some accounts, beached and dismantled) his own ships to prevent his men from retreating to Cuba. With no way back, his force was committed. He also received a crucial gift at this point: a woman named La Malinche (also known as Malintzin or Doña Marina), who had been presented to him as part of a gift of enslaved women. She spoke both Nahuatl (the Aztec language) and Maya, and could communicate via a chain of interpretation that allowed Cortés to negotiate with indigenous peoples. Without her, the conquest would have been far more difficult.
La Malinche’s role has been interpreted very differently by later historians. Spanish chroniclers praised her as essential to Cortés’s success. Some later Mexican nationalists condemned her as a traitor who helped destroy Aztec civilisation. Modern historians tend to see her as a woman who had been enslaved and sold by her own people, who made strategic choices to survive. She bore Cortés a son, Martín Cortés, often described as one of the first mestizo (mixed European-indigenous) people recorded in colonial records. She is a powerful example of the contested nature of historical memory around the conquest.
Alliances with Indigenous Peoples
Cortés’s most important strategic achievement was forging alliances with peoples who resented Aztec rule. The Tlaxcalans were one of the few peoples who had successfully resisted Aztec conquest — they had been deliberately left unconquered to supply sacrificial captives through the Flower Wars. When Cortés arrived, they initially fought him in a series of fierce battles but, having tested his military strength and found it formidable, negotiated an alliance. The Tlaxcalans would supply the vast majority of the soldiers in the eventual siege of Tenochtitlán — some estimates put their contribution at tens of thousands of warriors compared to a few hundred Spaniards.
The Totonacs of the Gulf Coast also allied with Cortés, eager to escape Aztec tribute obligations. Cortés encouraged subject peoples to withhold tribute from the Aztecs, positioning himself as a liberator rather than a conqueror. This framing was partly genuine and partly cynical; the peoples who allied with him would soon find themselves under a different form of domination.
The Tlaxcalans were traditional enemies of the Aztecs who had resisted incorporation into the empire. Their alliance with Cortés provided the bulk of the military force used against Tenochtitlán; without Tlaxcalan warriors, the Spanish could not have conquered the Aztec Empire.
The Massacre at Cholula, 1519
On the march to Tenochtitlán, Cortés reached Cholula — a major religious city and one of the most sacred sites in Mexico. What happened there in October 1519 is one of the most debated events of the conquest. The Spanish and their Tlaxcalan allies carried out a large-scale massacre of Cholulan nobles and warriors gathered in the main courtyard. The death toll reported in Spanish accounts (including Cortés’s own letter) ranged from around 3,000 to 6,000; some scholars suggest the figures were exaggerated.
Cortés justified the massacre by claiming he had discovered an Aztec-backed plot to ambush his force. Indigenous accounts of the events differ significantly — some suggest the Tlaxcalans encouraged the violence to settle old scores with Cholula. Whatever the truth, the Cholula massacre sent a clear message to other cities on the road to Tenochtitlán: resistance would be met with overwhelming violence. It also revealed Cortés’s willingness to use terror as a political tool.
Moctezuma II (also spelled Montezuma) received Cortés peacefully at the entrance to Tenochtitlán on 8 November 1519. The reasons for this reception are debated. Early colonial-era sources suggest Moctezuma believed Cortés was the returning god Quetzalcoatl; most modern historians argue this account was shaped by post-conquest indigenous politics and may not reflect what Moctezuma actually thought. More likely, he was applying a diplomatic strategy — welcoming a potentially powerful ally while assessing the threat. Whatever his reasoning, the decision to allow the Spanish into the capital proved fatal to the empire.