LA NOCHE TRISTE
The Night Of Sorrows
Overview
In 1520 a Spanish Conquistador, Hernán Cortés led an army into the Mexican capital of Tenochtitlan where they took Moctezuma II (King of Hueyi Tlatoani of the Mexica) hostage. When the Aztecs attacked and Cortés learnt he was wanted by the Governor of Cuba for insubordination, he and his men made a plan to escape in the night to the coast taking as much gold and jewels with them as they could carry.
They were spotted by Eagle warriors and an onslaught ensued which became known as La Noche Triste or “The Night of Sorrows”. Due to the weight of the treasures, many of the soldiers drowned in the causeways. These treasures are said to now lay in the dried creeks and lakes that were once Lake Texcoco around Mexico city.
The Sad Night, a painting by an unknonwn artist from second half of the 17th Century.
La Noche Triste (“The Night of Sorrows”, literally “The Sad Night”) was an important event during the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, wherein Hernán Cortés, his army of Spanish conquistadors, and their native allies were driven out of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan.
Sourced from: Wikipedia
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The Legend
Hernán Cortés, a Spanish conquistador during the Spanish colonization of the Americas during the 1500’s had arrived in the interior of Mexico from Cuba against the orders of Velázquez, the Governor of Cuba whom he had a long history of disagreements and personal affairs. By doing this was a direct act of mutiny. Along his way to Tenochtitlán he fought and conquered many of the native settlements, converting them to Christianity. Amongst these natives was Mariana also known as La Malinche, who acting as Cortés’ translator (and future mistress) would contribute to the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire.
Having entered this expedition without authority of Governor Velázquez of Cuba and with an act of mutiny an army of Spanish soldiers were descending on Cortés to apprehend him for his crimes. Catching word of this Cortés marched across the terrain towards the coast where he not only defeated the larger force of Spanish soldiers but successfully recruited a large number of them after telling them of the riches of Tenochititlan.
Hernán Cortés a portrait painting from the 18th century.
Image attributed to Miguel Gonzalez of Hernan Cortes scuttling his fleet off the Veracruz coast.
Cortés’ victory came at a price. During his absence from the Spanish compound the Aztecs had been sieged by other Spanish forces during the celebration of Toxcatl, an annual feast that occurred in May. This became known as The Massacre in the Great Temple which saw the slaughter of Aztec elites, nobles and priests, turning the Aztecs against the Spanish including Cortés.
In an attempt to settle the unrest Cortés ordered Moctezuma, the Aztec Tlatoan (King) who they had taken hostage previously to address his people and persuade them to stop the fighting. It is disputed what took place next, if it was the Aztecs who pelted Moctezuma with stones to death when he tried to address his people or if Moctezuma was executed by the Spanish.
The Tokugawa Shogunate saw many leaders or Shoguns throughout its 200 year reign over Japan which started with Tokugawa Leyasu in 1603…
| # | Name (Born – Died) | Shogun From | Shogun To |
| 1 | Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543–1616) |
1603 | 1605 |
| 2 | Tokugawa Hidetada (1579–1632) |
1605 | 1623 |
| 3 | Tokugawa Iemitsu (1604–1651) |
1623 | 1651 |
| 4 | Tokugawa Ietsuna (1641–1680) |
1651 | 1680 |
| 5 | Tokugawa Tsunayoshi (1646–1709) |
1680 | 1709 |
| 6 | Tokugawa Ienobu (1662–1712) |
1709 | 1712 |
| 7 | Tokugawa Ietsugu (1709–1716) |
1713 | 1716 |
| 8 | Tokugawa Yoshimune (1684–1751) |
1716 | 1745 |
| 9 | Tokugawa Ieshige (1712–1761) |
1745 | 1760 |
| 10 | Tokugawa Ieharu (1737–1786) |
1760 | 1786 |
| 11 | Tokugawa Ienari (1773–1841) |
1787 | 1837 |
| 12 | Tokugawa Ieyoshi (1793–1853) |
1837 | 1853 |
| 13 | Tokugawa Iesada (1824–1858) |
1853 | 1858 |
| 14 | Tokugawa Iemochi (1846–1866) |
1858 | 1866 |
| 15 | Tokugawa Yoshinobu (1837–1913) |
1866 | 1867 |
The Conquest of Tenochtitlán. Painting from the second half of the 17th century Representing the 1521 Fall of Tenochtitlan.
PROLOGUE
Cortés’ expedition arrived at Tenochtitlan on November 8, 1519, taking up residence in a specially designated compound in the city. Soon thereafter, suspecting treachery on the part of their hosts, the Spaniards took Moctezuma II, the Aztec king or Tlatoani, hostage. Though Moctezuma followed Cortés’ instructions in continually assuring his subjects that he had been ordered by the gods to move in with the Spaniards and that he had done so willingly, the Aztecs suspected otherwise. During the following 98 days, Cortés and his native allies, the Tlaxcaltecas, were increasingly unwelcome guests in the capital.
CORTES HEADS OFF SPANISH PUNITIVE EXPEDITION
In June 1520, news from the Gulf coast reached Cortés that a much larger party of Spaniards had been sent by Governor Velázquez of Cuba to arrest Cortés for insubordination. Leaving Tenochtitlan in the care of his trusted lieutenant, Pedro de Alvarado, Cortés marched to the coast, where he defeated the Cuban expedition led by Pánfilo de Narváez sent to capture him. When Cortés told the defeated soldiers about the riches of Tenochtitlan, they agreed to join him. Reinforced by Narvaez’s men, Cortés headed back to Tenochtitlan.
LOSS OF CONTROL IN TENOCHTITLAN
During Cortés’s absence, Pedro de Alvarado ordered a preemptive slaughter of Aztec nobles and priests celebrating a festival in the city’s main temple. In retaliation, the Aztecs laid siege to the Spanish compound, in which Moctezuma was still being held captive. By the time Cortés returned to Tenochtitlan in late June, the Aztecs had elected a new Tlatoani named Cuitláhuac.
Cortés ordered Moctezuma to address his people from a terrace in order to persuade them to stop fighting and to allow the Spaniards to leave the city in peace. The Aztecs, however, jeered at Moctezuma, and pelted him with stones and darts. By Spanish accounts, he was killed in this assault by the Aztecs, though the Aztecs claim he had been killed instead by the Spanish.[1]: 294 [2]: 90
With Moctezuma dead, Cortés and Alvarado knew they were in a precarious position. Under constant attack, with gunpowder, food, and water in short supply, Cortés decided to break out of the city by night. In order to put the Aztecs off their guard, he sent messengers asking for a one-week ceasefire, at the end of which the Spaniards would return any treasure of which they were in possession and would be permitted to leave the city peacefully.[1]: 296
Sourced from: Wikipedia
FOOTNOTES
- Diaz, B., 1963, The Conquest of New Spain, London: Penguin Books, ISBN 0140441239
- ^ Jump up to:a b c d León-Portilla, M. 1992, ‘The Broken Spears: The Aztec Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico. Boston: Beacon Press, ISBN 978-0807055014
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The Treasure
With Moctezuma dead there was no way to settle the conflict, outnumbered and with dwindling supplies Cortés knew it was only a matter of time before they met their fate at the hands of the Aztec warriors. A plan was hatched in which messengers would be sent to meet with the Aztecs to request a ceasefire for one week to allow the Spaniards enough time to return any treasure and in exchange the Aztecs would let them leave the city peacefully. This of course was a misdirect as their real plan was to sneak out of the city at night carrying as much gold and other treasures as they could feasibly pack.
The only ways out of the city and over the causeways was by any of the 8 bridges. However, with 4 of the bridges damaged and those that weren’t heavily guarded by Aztec soldiers the Spaniards crafted a portable bridge to cross any span any sections of the water.
La Malinche and Hernán Cortés in the city of Xaltelolco, in a drawing from the late 16th-century codex History of Tlaxcala.
Tenochtitlan and islands in the Texcoco Lake by Hanns Prem.
The plan was enacted on the night of July 1st 1520, a night that would forever be known as The Night of Sorrows – La Noche Triste. Heading west out of the city while the habitants slept and under the cover of rainfall set out to reach the section of the causeway where they were led to believe would be unguarded. Along their journey to the causeway an unexpected patrol of Aztec Eagle Warriors spotted the Spaniards and raised the alarm alerting the other Aztec forces in the areas. Before they knew it their stealthy escape plan had failed and had now turned into a ferocious battle with no easy way out.
The Spaniards and allied natives fighting their way across the causeway whilst surrounded by hundreds of canoes would soon find that their greed would prove to be their unmaking as the sheer weight of it would prove too much in these conditions overburdening the soldiers and causing them to lose their footing and succumb to the treacherous waters below, taking their treasures with them.
Cortés and a few other soldiers who were on horseback managed to reach the other side of the causeway leaving those trailing behind to fend for themselves. Seeking refuge in the nearby village of Tacuba from where Cortés watched the badly wounded stragglers make their way in behind him.
Feeling his guilt from his cowardice he headed back with his horsemen to the causeway where he found Pedro de Alvardo, badly wounded. They gathered the survivors and heading north where they faced the battle of Otumba before proceeding to Tlaxcala where the siege of Tenochlhtlan initiated the end of the Aztec empire.
The Conquest of Tenochtitlán. Painting from the second half of the 17th century Representing the 1521 Fall of Tenochtitlan.
THE SPANISH HEAD FOR THE CAUSEWAY OUT
Since the Aztecs had damaged bridges on four of the eight causeways into the island city, the Spaniards devised a portable bridge they could use in order to cross any unspanned sections of water. Cortés ordered that as much of the accumulated gold and other booty as was feasible be packed and carried away, and invited the Spanish soldiers to take and carry away as much as they wished of the remainder. This invitation would lead to the demise of many soldiers who, overburdened with treasure, found it impossible to navigate the causeways and other obstacles encountered on the way out of the city.[1]: 297, 306
On the night of July 1, 1520,[3] Cortez’s large army left their compound and headed west, toward the Tlacopan causeway. The causeway was apparently unguarded, and the Spaniards made their way out of their complex unnoticed, winding their way through the sleeping city under the cover of a rainstorm. Before reaching the causeway, they were noticed by Aztec warriors known as the Eagle Warriors, who sounded the alarm.[1]: 298, 305 First by a woman drawing water, and then by the priest of Huītzilōpōchtli from atop Templo Mayor.[2][4]: 85
The fighting was ferocious. As the Spaniards and their native allies reached the causeway, hundreds of canoes appeared in the waters alongside to harry them. The Spaniards fought their way across the causeway in the rain. Weighed down by gold and equipment, some of the soldiers lost their footing, fell into the lake, and drowned. Amid a vanguard of horsemen, Cortés pressed ahead and reached dry land at Tacuba, leaving the rest of the expedition to fend for itself in the treacherous crossing.[1]: 299–300
Seeing the wounded survivors straggle into the village, Cortés and his horsemen turned back to the causeway, where they encountered Pedro de Alvarado, unhorsed and badly wounded, in the company of a handful of Spaniards and Tlaxcaltecas.[4] According to Bernal Díaz del Castillo, it was at this point that tears came to Cortés’ eyes, as he realized the extent of the debacle.[1]: 300
Cortés, Alvarado and the strongest and most skilled of the men had managed to fight their way out of Tenochtitlan, although they were all bloodied and exhausted. Cortés himself had been injured in the fighting. All of the artillery had been lost, as had most of the horses.[1]: 302
The sources are not in agreement as to the total number of casualties suffered by the expedition. Cortés himself claimed that 154 Spaniards were lost along with over 2,000 native allies. Thoan Cano, another eyewitness to the event, said that 1170 Spaniards died, but this number probably exceeds the total number of Spaniards who took part in the expedition.[5] Francisco López de Gómara, who was not himself an eyewitness, estimated that 450 Spaniards and 4,000 allies died.[6]
Montezuma’s son, Chimalpopoca was killed; Tepanec prince Tlaltecatzin,[3]: 87 King Cacamatzin, his three sisters and two brothers were also killed.[2]: 90
Diaz states the Spaniards suffered 860 soldiers killed, which included those from the later Battle of Otumba. The Tlaxcaltecas lost a thousand. The noncombatants attached to the expedition suffered terribly, 72 casualties, including five Spanish women. The few women who survived included La Malinche the interpreter, Doña Luisa, and María Estrada.[1]: 302, 305–306 The event was named La Noche Triste (“The Night of Sorrows”) on account of the sorrow that Cortés and his surviving followers felt and expressed at the loss of life and treasure incurred in the escape from Tenochtitlan.
Sourced from: Wikipedia
FOOTNOTES
- Diaz, B., 1963, The Conquest of New Spain, London: Penguin Books, ISBN 0140441239
- ^ Jump up to:a b c d León-Portilla, M. 1992, ‘The Broken Spears: The Aztec Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico. Boston: Beacon Press, ISBN978-0807055014
- Various sources give dates ranging from June 30 to July 4, a problem further confounded by the use of the Julian calendar in Europe at this time, which had diverged from the true (solar) date by almost 12 days.
- ^ Jump up to:a b Hanson, Victor Davis (2007-12-18). Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise to Western Power. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-307-42518-8.
- ^ Prescott, Appendix.
- ^ Prescott, Book 5, Chapter 3.
REFERENCES
Primary Sources
- Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España (“True History of the Conquest of New Spain”) by Bernal Díaz del Castillo. Bernal Díaz del Castillo served as a rodelero, or soldier armed with sword and buckler, in Cortés’ expedition, and personally participated in the nocturnal battle known as “La noche triste.” His Chapter CXXVIII (“How we agreed to flee from Mexico, and what we did about it”) is an account of the event.
- La Historia general de las Indias (“General History of the Indies”) by Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés. See Parsons (below), Volume III, p. 296-292. Oviedo, not himself a witness to La Noche Triste, claimed to have interviewed Thoan Cano, a member of Pánfilo Narváez’ expedition who joined Cortés in his return to Mexico and who survived the escape from the city.
Secondary Sources
- Conquest: Cortés, and the Fall of Old Mexico by Hugh Thomas (1993) ISBN 0-671-51104-1.
- Cortés and the Downfall of the Aztec Empire by Jon Manchip White (1971) ISBN 0-7867-0271-0.
- History of the Conquest of Mexico. by William H. Prescott ISBN 0-375-75803-8.
- The Rain God cries over Mexico by László Passuth.
- Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest by Matthew Restall, Oxford University Press (2003) ISBN 0-19-516077-0.
- The Conquest of America by Tzvetan Todorov (1996) ISBN 0-06-132095-1.
- The Conquistadors by Michael Wood (2002) PBS.
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The Clues
The emperor Moctezuma 1892. Irving, Washington; Robertson, W. M.; Davenport, Benjamin Rush
So, what happened to all that treasure? The number of casualties suffered is unclear with different sources claiming vastly different numbers. Cortés claimed that 154 Spaniards did during the expedition but Francisco López de Gómera claimed that that 450 soldiers and 4,000 allies were lost. Then, the Spanish Conquistador, Bernal Diaz del Castillo who participated in the Conquest of Mexico under Cortés claimed that as many as 860 soldiers had been killed during the expedition.
While the amount or value of the treasure lost to the causeway is unknown and highly disputed, taking the smallest number of losses claimed by Cortés and if each soldier and ally had been loaded with as much gold as they could carry and enough that they were unable to navigate the causeway then It’s easy to imagine that the sheer volume of treasure that could have been washed away or sunken into the bed of the causeway could be immense. But, is the legend real?
Over the years treasure hunters have focused on an alternative claim to what happened to the treasure, one that says the Spanish soldiers hid the gold in Texcoco Lake while fleeing the city with intentions of returning to it later. Many have pursued this version of the legend without success. Intermittently between 1912 and 1950 the lake was drained by the Mexican Government in search of the treasure but nothing was found.
Other treasure hunters have searched along the routes of the fleeing Spanish forces believing that the treasure would have been buried by the side of the route they took but again, nothing was found. With so many failed attempts to find the treasure many believe that the treasure is either somewhere else or it was found and returned by the Aztecs.
If the treasure had been hidden by the Spaniards during or after their escape then it is safe to say that when Cortés later returned to the area he would have reclaimed it, which he did not.
This is a map of the Valley of Mexico on the eve of the Spanish conquest of Mexico. It shows the major towns within the Valley, in particular, the island capital of the Aztecs, Tenochtitlan. The map also shows the five lakes that once existed within the Valley, highlighted to differentiate the brackish from the fresh waters. It was compiled from several sources, most prominently those listed below.
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Conclusion
Massive Gold Bar Unearthed in Mexico Was Aztec Treasure Looted By Cortes.
In 1981 a massive gold bar weighing 4.25lbs was discovered by a construction worker who’d been digging the foundations for the construction of a central bank in Mexico City. Analysis on the bar revealed that it was likely from Tenochtitlán due to its composition being the same as other pieces recovered by the Templo Mayor Project. Due to this analysis the bar can be dated between 1519 & 1520 when Cortés would have been making his escape during La Noche Triste. It is therefore believed that this is just one piece of a massive amount of treasure that was looted when the Spaniards fled the city.
Because of this discovery at least a part of the route that Cortés took out of the city can be confirmed narrowing the search for the rest of the treasure. However as the waters surrounding Mexico City have long since dried up, finding the treasure may need some serious digging power and permissions from the city. So whether you’re living in Mexico or just visiting there, who knows, there could be a fortune under your very feet.
Reconstruction by Alfonso Caso (Los barrios antíguos de Tenochtitlán y Tlatelolco, Memorias de la Academia Mexicana de la Historia, 15, 1956) based on map by José de Alzate, 1789. The grey area in the center is the Colonial “traza”, i. e. area inhabited by the Spanish.
The discovery of the gold bar would lead many to believe that the treasure is there and just waiting to be found.
What do you think?
MASSIVE GOLD BAR UNEARTHED IN MEXICO WAS LOOTED AZTEC TREASURE
Sinceby Yasemin Saplakoglu January 14, 2020
Sourced from: LiveScience
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