The Conquest of Tenochtitlan by an unknown artist
Torture of Cuauhtémoc (late 19th Century painting by Leandro Izaguirre)
Hernán Cortés (1485 - 1547)
August 13th 1521: Fall of Tenochtitlán
On this day in 1521, the Spanish forces of Hernán Cortés took the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán after a prolonged siege. The Spanish, determined to colonise South America, first arrived in Mexico in 1519, and entered the capital later that year. The conquistadors were initially welcomed by king Montezuma, but relations rapidly deteriorated after fighting broke out between the Spanish and Aztecs, which resulted in Cortés taking Montezuma hostage. While initially driven out of the city by the Aztecs, Cortés returned with an army of Tlaxcalan soldiers and sieged the city. The attack almost completely destroyed one of the largest and most advanced cities in the world, which ultimately capitulated in August 1521. King Cuauhtémoc, who had replaced the late Montezuma in 1520, was captured by the Spanish, tortured in an attempt to discover the location of the fabled Aztec gold, and ultimately executed in February 1525. The conquest of Tenochtitlán enabled Cortés to consolidate Spanish colonial rule over Mexico, christening it ‘New Spain’, which devastated the indigenous population through warfare and disease.
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