Conquest Cortes, Montezuma, and the Fall of Old Mexico [Paperback]

Drawing on newly discovered sources and writing with brilliance, drama, and profound historical insight, Hugh Thomas presents an engrossing narrative of one of the most significant events of Western history.

Ringing with the fury of two great empires locked in an epic battle,Conquestcaptures in extraordinary detail the Mexican and Spanish civilizations and offers unprecedented in-depth portraits of the legendary opponents, Montezuma and Cortés. Conquest is an essential work of history from one of our most gifted historians.Chapter I

Harmony and order

The fashion of living [in Mexico] is almost the same as in Spain with just as much harmony and order...

Hernán Cortés to Charles V, 1521

The beautiful position of the Mexican capital, Tenochtitlan, could scarcely have been improved upon. The city stood over seven thousand feet up, on an island near the shore of a great lake. It was two hundred miles from the sea to the west, a hundred and fifty to the east. The lake lay in the centre of a broad valley surrounded by magnificent mountains, two of which were volcanoes. One of these was always covered by snow: O Mexico, that such mountains should encircle and crown thee, a Spanish Franciscan would exult a few years later. The sun shone brilliantly most days, the air was clear, the sky was as blue as the water of the lake, the colours were intense, the nights cold.

Like Venice, with which it would be insistently compared, Tenochtitlan had been built over several generations. The tiny natural island at the centre of it had been extended to cover 2,500 acres by driving in stakes, and throwing mud and rocks into the gaps. Tenochtitlan boasted about thirty fine high palaces made of a reddish, porous volcanic stone. The smaller, single-storey houses, in which most of the 250,000 or so inhabitants lived, were of adobe and usually painted white. Many of these had been secured against floods by lC$