By Gregg Thompson

As the Spanish conquistadors marched into the Aztec island capital of Tenochtítlan, (teh-noch-TEE-tlahn) they knew they were entering a wondrous and special place.

”.and when we saw so many cities and villages built in the water.we were amazed,” wrote Bernal Diaz de Castillo, who was present that day. “.And some of our soldiers even asked whether the things that we saw were not a dream.. I do not know how to describe it, seeing things as we did that had never been heard of, or seen before; not even dreamed about.”

Bernal Diaz was one of 400 Spanish adventurers making history that November day in 1519, the day on which leaders of the greatest powers of the Old World and the New World met for the first time.

Led by the indomitable commander Hernán Cortés, and aided by the vacillating and superstitious Aztec chief Moctezuma, who thought the visitors might be returning gods, the Spanish had been allowed to enter Tenochtítlan in peace.

They would not leave it that way.

But on that first day of wonder the visitors were clearly astounded by the architecture, engineering and natural surroundings of the greatest capital of Mesoamerica. Located on an island amidst a series of lakes and connected to the mainland by three causeways, the 5-square-mile city was dominated by gleaming white temples and pyramids, some of which rose to heights of 150 feet. The longest of the causeways stretched for almost five miles; the geometrical precision of the work amazed the Old World visitors. Utterly straight, and well constructed of cemented boulders, the causeways were “two lances wide” and accommodated eight horsemen riding abreast. Drawbridges were found at certain intervals, and fortified towers served to block access to the city center, or, as the Spanish noted, to block escape.

Bernal Diaz wrote of the excitement occasioned by the march of the Spanish column along the causeway, which was “so crowded with people that there was hardly room for them all.It was not to be wondered at, for they had never seen horses or men such as we are.”

The three causeways became broad avenues on the island and led to the main plaza, at 100,000 m2 one of the largest in the world (then, as now.) Gardens and groves were in great evidence, and the rooftops of the fine stone houses surrounding the central plaza had parapets bursting with flowers.

The celebrated gardens at nearby Iztapalapan, writes William H. Prescott in his classic “Conquest of Mexico,” (1843) “were laid out in regular squares, and the paths intersecting them were bordered with trellises, supporting creepers and aromatic shrubs, that loaded the air with their perfumes. The gardens were stocked with fruit trees, imported from distant places; ...aqueducts and canals .carried water to all parts of the grounds.”

”At (this) period,” continues Prescott, “similar horticultural establishments were unknown in Europe.”

The island city had been built, like Venice, around walkways and an extensive canal system, traversed by thousands of canoes carrying goods and services and people to all parts of the city.

”The great Tenochtítlan has many wide and handsome streets,” one witness observed, “.half of hard earth.and the other half of water, .so that (as) the inhabitants go abroad, some by water.. and others by land, .they can talk to one another as they go.”

Cortés , writing to his King, remarked appreciatively on the construction of the many public buildings (there were 78) he had seen. They were, he said, equal to the best in Spain, being built “of stone, and the spacious apartments had roofs of odorous cedar wood, while the walls were tapestried with fine cottons stained with brilliant colors.”

The lake system, composed of five separate bodies of water and surrounded by mountains, covered an area of about 450 square miles. Some lakes were saline; others freshwater. To separate them and control water levels during the rainy season, the Aztecs had constructed a stone and clay dyke, complete with sluice gates, which ran in a north-south direction for a distance of nine miles.

The fresh water lakes allowed for the use of chinampas, which were floating gardens built on a thatched base, or raft. Mud hauled up from the shallow lake-bottom was heaped up on the rafts to support vegetation - edible plants and flowers — the roots of which eventually reached the few feet to anchor themselves on the lake bottom. (Chinampas can still be found in the Xochimilco district of Mexico City, and vestiges of one lake remain on the northern edge of the city, visible from the air.)

All early accounts of the city mention the great numbers and industrious activity of the populace. Prescott states that the population of Tenochtítan in 1519 was likely 300,000, bigger than any European city of that age and significantly larger than any city the conquistadors had known in Spain.

Tenochtítlan featured a number of municipal services, and the admiring visitors might well have remarked how life in Spain could have been improved by their imitation. Many noticed how clean and well-maintained the streets were. Moctezuma, wrote one reporter, had a staff of 1000 street sweepers, while a second scribe claimed the main plaza could be crossed barefoot “without detriment,” so polished and well-placed were the flagstones laid there. Human waste was recycled; it was used to fertilize the floating chinampas, while fresh drinking water reached the island city by aqueduct from a mainland spring three-miles distant.

The Aztecs were also keen on street lighting - pitch-pine torches illuminated the main boulevards, principal buildings and other public areas of the city. (After the Aztec regime disappeared, public street lighting disappeared too; it took succeeding Spanish viceroys 250 years to replace it.)

The natural backdrop to this picturesque urban setting were two snow-capped volcanic peaks - Popocatépetl and Iztaccihuatl. The mountains, only 25 miles distant from the capital and remarkably visible in the thin air, soared 10,000 feet above the lake, itself at an altitude of 7300 feet. This combination of elevation, latitude (18 degrees N.), water and sun placed the Aztec capital in one of the premier climatic zones on earth.

The Aztecs, also called Mexica (meh-SHEE-ca), had called this setting home for 200 years. In about 1325 the Aztecs - then a small, bottom-rank tribe - established themselves with a few mud huts on the island that, as the Spanish discovered on their arrival in 1519, controlled the greatest empire of the Americas.

On the fourth day of their stay Moctezuma offered Cortés and several of his men a tour of the great market at Tlaltelolco. This was the grandest market place in the Western hemisphere, and Bernal Diaz describes the European reaction to it:

”When we arrived. we were astounded at the number of people and the quantity of merchandise that it contained, and at the good order and control that was maintained, .some of the soldiers among us who had been in many parts of the world, in Constantinople, and all over Italy, and in Rome, said that so large a market place, and so well arranged, they had never beheld before.”

The Spaniards recognized that the silverwork found at Tlatelolco market was superior to that produced in Spain.

”They can cast a parrot that moves its The market drew 60,000 people per day and the quantity and variety of goods sold there reflected not only the wealth of Tenochtítlan, but also the vast reach of the Aztec empire, enriched by annual tributes paid by far-flung subject tribes.

The aviary market at Tlaltelolco featured the sale of live birds, plumage and finished featherwork, worn by many in the city as everyday ornamentation. The featherwork caught and held the astonished eye of all who first saw it.

”They will make a butterfly, an animal, a tree, a rose, flowers.all done with feathers, and with such fidelity that they seem alive or natural. So absorbed are they in placing, moving and adjusting the feathers, scrutinizing them from one side or the other, in the sun, in the shade, or in the half-light, that sometimes they will not eat all day long.”

Author Hammond Innes, in his study of the Conquest says of the Aztecs:

”In manners, dress, design and architecture they rivaled medieval Europe; the largest of their temples were almost as their plastered and lime-washed palaces were as fine as Moorish Spain.”

Cortés´ expedition to Mexico can in part be explained as loyal service to King and country, and to furthering the glory of a Christian God. But the interests of Church and State were only minimally served by the Spanish Conquest of Mexico. From the beginning the conquistadors came as buccaneers, in a buccaneering age, and their greed for gold, land, title and fame demanded the Aztec world be vanquished. And it was. The two sides went to war and despite a desperate Aztec resistance, a 90-day Spanish siege forced a starving Tenochtítlan to surrender. In the process the Aztec capital, the grand achievement of one of the last ancient civilizations on earth, was leveled — stone by stone.

Bernal Diaz lamented “Of all these wonders that I then beheld, today all is overthrown and lost, nothing left standing.”

Prescott dolefully wrote that “. a generation had scarcely passed after the conquest before a sad change came over these scenes so beautiful. The town itself was deserted, and the shore of the lake was strewed with the wreck of buildings which once were its ornament and its glory. The gardens shared the fate of the city. The retreating waters withdrew the means of nourishment, converting the flourishing plains into a foul and unsightly morass, the haunt of loathsome reptiles; and the water foul built her nest in what had once been the palaces of princes!”

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