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A distant vision of unbelievable beauty unsurpassed by anything they had ever seen: that was the Spanish invaders’ ¤rst impression of Tenochtitlán, the imperial capital of the Aztec Empire in the Valley of Mexico. The city, as seen by the advancing expeditionary force of Hernán Cortés on November 8, 1519, from the banks of the great lake of Tezcoco, seemed to ®oat on the water. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, who accompanied that momentous expedition , describes his reaction: During the morning we arrived at a broad causeway and continued our march toward Itztapalapa, and when we saw so many cities and villages built in the water and other great towns on dry land and that straight and level causeway going toward Mexico, we were amazed and said that it was like the enchantments described in the legend of Amadís, on account of the great towers, temples, and buildings rising from the water, and all built of masonry. And some of our soldiers asked whether the things we saw were not a dream. (Díaz del Castillo 1963) The Spanish were dumbfounded by the city’s vast extent—modern estimates of its population are put at 200,000 to 300,000, ¤ve times the size of the largest European city of the times. Like Buda and Pest or Minneapolis and St. Paul, the capital was a dual city on a single island—Tlatelolco to the north and Tenochtitlán to the south. Tlatelolco served as the main marketing and commercial center of the capital, and Tenochtitlán served as the administrative center of both the city and the empire. The palaces of the emperors were located in Tenochtitlán, and all major ceremonies, political and religious, were held there. 8 The Empire of the Méxica The Spanish marveled at the city’s careful plan, its aqueducts of roaring freshwater from the springs at Chapultepec and Coyoacán on the western edge of the lake, the vast dike across the lake built by the Emperor Nezahualcoyotl of Texcoco to separate saltwater from fresh, the city’s system of waste disposal, its immaculately clean streets and gleaming buildings. The pyramidal towers of the temples shone against the intense blue sky, and the many massive causeways leading several miles across the lake to the city were crowded with people coming and going. Description of the city once inside is even more lavish. We are told of endless networks of canals linking every section of the city, well-built houses of stone and mortar, some several stories high with interior patios planted with ®owers, roads lined with trees and ®owering bushes, the city’s metropolitan zoo—the aviary alone had ten large enclosures, around the tops of which were walkways with hanging gardens—botanical gardens, and libraries of books. The empire itself, with a population of some 11 million, was comparable to Tawantinsuyu, though its geographical spread was not as great. Permanent effective power was limited to the Valley of Mexico and the immediately adjacent regions, but political control of other Aztec as well as subject cities Figure 12. The Aztec Empire in 1519 the empire of the méxica 85 spread as far as the Gulf of Mexico to the east, the Paci¤c coast in the west, and as far south as the Paci¤c coast of San Salvador. Settling the vast Valley of Mexico in the mid-1200s as seminomadic intruders from Nayarit in northwestern Mexico, the fortunes of the Méxica, as they called themselves, improved remarkably in the early 1400s, when a series of successful wars brought the city of Tenochtitlán supremacy under the fourth Aztec ruler, the Emperor Itzcoatl. During his reign (1427–1440) and those of his successors, Motecuhzoma Ilhuicamina (1440–1468) and Axayacatl (1468–1481), the other Náhuatl-speaking cities of central Mexico came under the control of the Méxica, and so it remained until the arrival of the Spanish a century later in 1519. The successful consolidation of power under the dynasty of Tenochtitlán was largely the result of the diplomatic acumen and military expertise of one of the most extraordinary leaders native America has ever produced. His name was Tlacaelel. The nephew of the Emperor Itzcoatl, Tlacaelel became the primary advisor to the imperial throne through the reigns of his uncle Itzcoatl, his half-brother Motecuhzoma Ilhuicamina, and his nephew’s son Axayacatl. Just as the Inca Pachacuti formed and delineated the Inca State, so Tlacaelel...

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