Noche Triste

Noche Triste, the "sad night" of 30 June 1520, an episode marking the end of the first phase of the Spanish Conquest, when the Aztec confederation slaughtered a large Spanish force and its native allies, the Tlaxcalteca, as they fled from the imperial city of Tenochitlán-Tlatelolco. Less than a year earlier, the Spanish expedition led by Hernán Cortés made landfall in Veracruz and with the help of coastal and Tlaxclan allies marched inland and seized control of the Aztec capital. For months, the Spaniards reigned through Moctezuma, the Aztec ruler. Not long after, Cortés left the city to defeat and incorporate a larger Spanish force charged with arresting him. In his absence, the Spaniards under Pedro de Alvarado massacred unarmed warriors dancing in the temple festival of Toxcatl, triggering a massive revolt.

Cortés returned to find Spanish control of the city lost. Besieged in the heart of Tenochtitlán by tens of thousands of Aztec warriors, Cortés and his approximately 1,100 men had to flee to avoid complete destruction. To prevent their escape, the Aztecs had destroyed many of the bridges throughout the canal-crossed island city. The Spanish decided to try to sneak out during the night but Aztec sentinels soon spread the alarm. Attacked as they proceeded along the Tacuba causeway, the Spanish and Tlaxcalans found it hard to resist the onslaught by their opponents in canoes. Perhaps half of the Spanish force was killed, or captured and later sacrificed, along with more than 1,000 Tlaxcalans. The Spanish rout could be attributed to cunning Mexican military, but it also resulted from their greed—overloaded with booty, their progress was slow and cumbersome and their escape all the more difficult. The survivors successfully retreated to Tlaxcala to regroup. In May 1521, Cortes returned to lay siege on Tenochtitlán.

See alsoAztecs; Cortés, Hernán; Tenochtitlán; Tlaxcala.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hugh Thomas, Conquest of Mexico (1993).

Additional Bibliography

Cortés, Hernán. Letters from Mexico. Translated by Anthony Pagden. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986.

Díaz del Castillo, Bernal. The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, 1517–1521. Translated by A. P. Maudslay. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Cudahy, 1956.

León Portilla, Miguel, ed. The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico. Translated by Lysander Kemp. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992.

Lockhart, James, ed. We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

Schwartz, Stuart B., ed. Victors and Vanquished: Spanish and Nahua Views of the Conquest of Mexico. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2000.

                                        John E. Kicza