When did Hernán Cortés take Tenochtitlan?
The fall of Tenochtitlan
La caída de Tenochtitlan
13 August 1521. In 1519 Hernán Cortés sailed from Cuba to Mexico with a few hundred men, defying the governor who had sent him.
Where: Mexico, Mexico City
What happened
In 1519 Hernán Cortés sailed from Cuba to Mexico with a few hundred men, defying the governor who had sent him. With tens of thousands of Indigenous allies, above all the Tlaxcalans, enemies of the Mexica, and the interpreter Malintzin, he reached the Mexica capital, Tenochtitlan. A smallpox epidemic in 1520 killed a large part of its people. After a siege of about eighty days the city fell on 13 August 1521. On its ruins the Spanish built Mexico City, and Charles I, grandson of Isabel and Fernando and since 1519 also Holy Roman Emperor as Charles V, now ruled an empire on both sides of the Atlantic.
Say it
La Ciudad de México se construyó sobre las ruinas de Tenochtitlan.
Mexico City was built on the ruins of Tenochtitlan.
Why it matters
Mexico City, built on the ruins, became the capital of New Spain and is today the largest Spanish-speaking city in the world; Nahuatl words (tomate, chocolate, aguacate) passed into Spanish from this encounter.
Read about it
- Hernán Cortés y la Conquista — Hernán Cortés and the Conquest
- Bernal Díaz y la Conquista — Bernal Díaz and the Conquest
- Las palabras del náhuatl — Words from Nahuatl
Culture
Connected
- The demographic collapse of the Americas (1492–1650)
- Words from the languages of the Americas (1492–)
- Spanish in the United States (1513–)
- Cortés meets Moctezuma (8 November 1519)
- Cortés meets Moctezuma (8 November 1519)
- The revolt of the Comuneros (1520–23 April 1521)
- The Virgin of Guadalupe tradition (December 1531)
- The Viceroyalty of New Spain is created (1535)
- The Viceroyalty of New Spain is created (1535)
- Friars write the first grammars of American languages (1555–1571)
- Bernal Díaz writes his True History (c. 1568)
- Bernal Díaz writes his True History (c. 1568)
- Before: Cortés meets Moctezuma
- After: The Virgin of Guadalupe tradition
Sources
- Hernán Cortés — World History Encyclopedia
- Montezuma — World History Encyclopedia
- El virreinato de la Nueva España (ficha de clase) — Secretaría de Educación Pública (México), Nueva Escuela Mexicana
- La Malinche — World History Encyclopedia