CHAPTER 4 MESOAMERICA AND SPAIN: THE CONQUEST 171Figure 4.6 The noche
triste.The Spaniards,
with their Tlaxcalan
allies, begin their flight
from the city. A man
standing atop a temple
and a woman drawing
water from a canal raise
the alarm. Florentine
Codex,Book 12, 42v.take place. Alvarado ordered his men to attack the defenseless participants, and hun-
dreds of Mexica were massacred. This act prompted retaliation against the Spaniards:
There were attempts to burn the palace where they were housed, and several
Spaniards were killed. At this moment, Cortés and his entourage, which included
several thousand Tlaxcalan warriors, returned to Tenochtitlan. The Mexica allowed
them to join Alvarado, but attacks on the Spanish compound continued.
In the midst of growing tension, members of the Mexica ruling elite, who had
long opposed Motecuhzoma’s cooperation with the Spaniards, decided to depose
Motecuhzoma and elect his brother Cuitlahuac to succeed him. In late June, Mo-
tecuhzoma was killed. Spanish accounts claim that he was stoned by his former sub-
jects; native accounts claim that he was murdered by the Spaniards. The situation for
the Spaniards was grim, and Cortés decided to retreat (Figure 4.6).
The night of the Spaniards’ retreat, usually identified as June 30, 1520, has come
to be called the noche triste(the night of sorrows) because of the high casualty figures
on both sides of the conflict. As the Spaniards and their Tlaxcalan allies attempted
to flee the island of Tenochtitlan on the causeways, they were attacked by Aztec war-
riors. Many were killed, and many others drowned in the lake, some of them weighed
Florence, The Biblioteca
Medicea Laurenziana,
Sahagun, 1979.
Reproduced with
permission of MiBACT.
Further reproduction by
any means is prohibited.