A small Mexica shell pendant carved as a feathered serpent, made before the Spanish conquest
Feathered serpent pendant, 1325–1521 CE
Marked Veracruz

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

The fall of Tenochtitlan

A few hundred Spanish soldiers under Hernán Cortés, joined by many thousands of Indigenous allies who resented Mexica rule, and helped by a smallpox epidemic, besieged and destroyed the Mexica capital in 1521.

Date
1519 to 1521IX · Oceans crossed
Place
Veracruz · Tlaxcala · Tenochtitlan · TlatelolcoThe Americas
Laid out as
A warTwo sides, a front line, and the turns the fighting took.
Lessons
7 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

The Spanish and their Indigenous allies, above all Tlaxcala

  1. ILanding at Veracruz
  2. IIMalintzin, interpreter
  3. IIITlaxcala, the ally
  4. IVMoctezuma meets Cortés
  5. VSmallpox
  6. VIThe siege
  7. VIIWriting it down: two sides

The Mexica and their remaining allies

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Hernán Cortés
  • Moctezuma II
  • Malintzin
  • Cuauhtémoc
  • Bernardino de Sahagún

Objects

  • The Florentine Codex
  • The Lienzo de Tlaxcala

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

1519 to 1521. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?