Particularly important to the Spanish success was a multilingual (Nahuatl, a Maya dialect, and Spanish) nahua-speaking woman enslaved by the Mayas, known to the Spanish conquistadors as Doña Marina, and later as La Malinche. Other city-states also joined, including Cempoala and Huejotzingo and polities bordering Lake Texcoco, the inland lake system of the Valley of Mexico. The fall of Tenochtitlan marks the beginning of Spanish rule in central Mexico, and they established their capital of Mexico City on the ruins of Tenochtitlan.Ĭortés made alliances with tributary city-states ( altepetl) of the Aztec Empire as well as their political rivals, particularly the Tlaxcaltecs and Tetzcocans, a former partner in the Aztec Triple Alliance. The Spanish campaign against the Aztec Empire had its final victory on 13 August 1521, when a coalition army of Spanish forces and native Tlaxcalan warriors led by Cortés and Xicotencatl the Younger captured the emperor Cuauhtémoc and Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec Empire. Two years later, in 1519, Cortés and his retinue set sail for Mexico.
For the Spanish, the expedition to Mexico was part of a project of Spanish colonization of the New World after twenty-five years of permanent Spanish settlement and further exploration in the Caribbean.įollowing an earlier expedition to Yucatán led by Juan de Grijalva in 1518, Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés led an expedition ( entrada) to Mexico.
They combined forces to defeat the Mexica of Tenochtitlan over a two-year period. It was not solely a contest between a small contingent of Spaniards defeating the Aztec Empire but rather the creation of a coalition of Spanish invaders with tributaries to the Aztecs, and most especially the Aztecs' indigenous enemies and rivals. There are multiple 16th-century narratives of the events by Spanish conquistadors, their indigenous allies, and the defeated Aztecs. The Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, also known as the Conquest of Mexico or the Spanish-Aztec War (1519–21), was one of the primary events in the Spanish colonization of the Americas. Please discuss this issue on the article's talk page. Please read the layout guide and lead section guidelines to ensure the section will still be inclusive of all essential details.
Please help by moving some material from it into the body of the article. This article's lead section may be too long for the length of the article. Banda Oriental and Rio Grande do Sul (1762–63).Iberian Peninsula and South America (1762–63).Various petty city-states and tribes ( map).Aztec Empire and other indigenous states, (modern-day Mexico)Īnnexation of the Aztec Empire, Tarascans, and others by Spanish Empire