The best person to have asked might have been Bernal Díaz del Castillo, one of the Conquistadors, whose epic account of the Spanish Conquest, ‘The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico’ has been called ‘The most complete and trustworthy of the chronicles of the Conquest’. Certainly his book is one of the main sources for the conqust story, even though he didn’t even begin to write it till some 35 years after the Conquest was over, when he was 60 years old!
Moctezuma’s stoning, illustration by Keith Henderson in ‘Montezuma, Lord of the Aztecs’ by Cottie Burland
Moctezuma’s stoning, illustration by Keith Henderson in ‘Montezuma, Lord of the Aztecs’ by Cottie Burland (Click on image to enlarge)
By all accounts, including that of Díaz del Castillo, the situation of the Spanish encamped in one of Tenochtitlan’s palaces at the time of Moctezuma’s death (June 1520) was fast approaching critical, with the Aztecs laying siege to the encampment, seeking revenge for the massacre during the Toxcatl festival the previous month, when Cortés had left the city and his trigger-happy captain Alvarado in command. When Cortés returned, with reinforcements, on June 24th., he found the position of the Spanish to be desperate. Even with Tlaxcalteca supporters, the Spanish force was in danger of being overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of Aztec soldiers, out for their blood. By this time almost every Spanish soldier had been wounded in some way, and the Aztec court had decided to elect a new emperor, Cuitláhuac, in favour of the disgraced Moctezuma.
