On May 26, the troops under Alvarado and Olid approached the aqueduct that carried water from the springs of Chapultepec to the city. The Aztecs had expected this attack on their water supply and were prepared to meet it. But after a very brief skirmish, they were routed, and the invaders smashed the aqueduct.

The siege had begun. The captains marched to the positions around the capital from which they were to launch their assaults. For the next several days, the Aztecs attacked the Spanish emplacements gingerly and probingly - as though feeling out the strength and battle plans of the conquistadors. Later, they attacked violently and knowingly, and were repulsed only with great effort.

On May 31, Cortés led his fleet out onto the lake. He had long been convinced that the fleet was the key to victory; now he was out to prove that all of the effort had been worthwhile. As the fleet sailed past the small fortress atop the promontory on the southern shore of the lake, a signal was sent out warning the city that the Spanish ships were coming. Furious that his approach had been revealed, Cortés and some companions leaped ashore, scaled the rocky heights, and took the fortress. While he was fighting on the promontory, Cortés received word that the Aztec fleet of war canoes had been sighted. Looking down, he could see as many as 1,500 large canoes advancing toward him on the lake.

Hurrying back to his ship, he waited for the Aztecs to come within the range of his harquebuses and cannons. For a brief moment, the Aztec warriors hesitated, unsure of the best way to attack these strange foreign vessels. At the same moment, a slow breeze began to blow off the land toward the Spanish fleet. Cortés signaled for his captains to set their sails and prepare for battle while the Indians were still off guard. Under full canvas, the small armada headed directly into the mass of Aztec canoes, crushing some, overturning others, and scattering the rest. In a few minutes, the waters churned with swimming or drowning natives trying desperately to climb aboard the few battered canoes that remained afloat or to swim after those racing toward the security of the city.

With the wind in their sails, the Spanish ships surged down the lake, creating havoc in all directions with the heavy shot of their cannons and the furious fire of their harquebuses. The few canoes that escaped eventually found safety in the city’s network of inlets and small canals where the larger Spanish ships could not pursue them. Cortés was satisfied that he had destroyed the greater part of the Aztec fleet, and he knew that he now held undisputed sway over Mexico’s inland sea.

It was almost evening when he began to withdraw his fleet from the fringes of the city. However, his day’s work was not yet complete. As he approached the juncture of the great southern causeway, he decided that he must capture the fortress that guarded its landward approaches. Landing with thirty men, he made his assault, and though the enemy resisted, he took his objective. Cortés decided that the newly-won position was an ideal place for his general headquarters, and he set up camp in the fortress.

Cortés believed the city to be completely surrounded. However, he soon learned that the Tepeyac causeway in the north of the city was still open and that the Aztecs were using it as their main route of supply and escape. The captain general ordered Sandoval to move his troops to Tepeyac to block the causeway. The following day, the maneuver was completed, and 300,000 warriors were bottled up in Tenochtitlán.

For the first three weeks in June, the conquistadors and their Indian allies fought skirmishes on the outskirts of the city. The daily pattern of attack did not vary. One day the forces of Olid might penetrate farther than those of Pedro de Alvarado; the next day, the men under Sandoval might penetrate farther.

The Aztecs fought from behind barricades, from rooftops, and from canoes in the narrow canals that crisscrossed the city. The Spaniards would take a square, then lose it and fall back. Many of the houses on the outskirts of the city were burned, “and not a canoe dared to venture there.” Every day, the ships captured more canoes and more prisoners. Yet despite the gradual destruction of their forces, the Aztecs showed no signs of surrendering.

Realizing that the enemy was determined to fight to the bitter end, Cortés remarked, “. . . We would recover little if any of the treasure that had been taken from us, and they would force us to destroy them totally. This last caused me the greater sorrow,” he said, “because it weighed on my soul.”

In preparing for a major assault on the Tenochtitlán, Cortés first ordered his men to burn the residences near the center of the city where they had lived the year before. The attack was swift and successful and took the Aztecs completely by surprise. They had believed that the Spaniards could never penetrate so far into the city.

Two days later, after numerous forays, Cortés entered the city at dawn. He hoped to arrive before the Aztecs had had a chance to repair the canals that the Spaniards had filled with debris the day before. However, the waterways had already been cleared, and passage through the streets was almost impossible. The two forces closed, and the battle was fought hand-to-hand until the Spaniards had used all their arrows or ammunition and were too exhausted to go on. The only way they could withdraw was to swim across the open gaps where the water flowed through the streets. Slowly, and with heavy losses, the conquistadors found a route and made their way out of the city.

Each day, the battle seemed more difficult and victory further away. Each day, the invaders had to bridge open streams before they could enter the city. And each night, the Indians demolished their work. As Cortés wrote to King Charles in Spain: “Every day the Spaniards gathered new courage and determined to cross, for they saw my own resolve and, sink or swim, the thing had to be done. As for placing guards at the bridges by night, we were so weary after fighting all day that it was impossible to do this.”

Every effort that Cortés made to break the Aztec hold on the city failed; the Mexicans were determined to remain. Day after day, Cortés expected to hear of their surrender, or that the Aztecs had fallen prey to the ambushes he had set for them. But they held firm. Nothing that Cortés could devise seemed to break the Aztecs’ spirit.

With care, he prepared still another assault. This time he planned to bring all of the forces at his command to bear at a single moment. The cities along the lake were ordered to supply what men and canoes they could, the allies were alerted, and all of the Spaniards who could still fight were readied for the assault. Approaching the city from all directions at once, Cortés spread his men over the greater part of it, destroying and burning as he went, and completely outmaneuvering the enemy. But as the sun began to set, he withdrew his men. He did not yet feel secure enough to camp inside the city, for he knew that the Aztecs would attack all through the night. As his men fell back, Cortés felt that this time, nearly three-fourths of the capital was his.

During the continuous forays up and down the causeways, a competitive spirit had developed among Cortés’s captains. Each one wanted to penetrate farther into the beleaguered city than his companions. Although Cortés had warned them never to “gain a palm of ground without having the exit and entrance of the horsemen absolutely assured,” one day, the impetuous Alvarado pressed too far. He allowed his division to enter the city over a partially-filled gap in the causeway. When there were only forty or fifty men on the far side of the gap that was not sufficiently filled to bear the weight of the horses, the Aztec captains ordered their counterattack. Alvarado’s men were driven into the water and three or four of them were taken alive for sacrifice. Though this defeat caused Cortés “the greatest sorrow in the world,” he was to have still greater cause for sorrow.

On June 13, the anniversary of the noche triste, he entered the city once more. Many of his troops had gone before him earlier in the day, and as he rode down a street, he saw that his men had crossed over “a ditch in the street that was ten paces broad, with water flowing through it twenty feet deep, and that in passing they had thrown wood and maize and reed grass into it.” They had passed a few at a time and with care, and they thought that they had protected their escape route.

Yet no sooner had Cortés reached this “accursed bridge” than he saw his men running in full retreat toward him. He realized immediately that this could mean disaster, and he tried to hold his men back, but the water was already filled with Spaniards and Indians, as though “not one straw had been put into it.” The Aztecs in their fury followed the conquistadors into the water, fighting so viciously that Cortés was convinced that he would die at this point: “But the most I and my men could do was lend a hand to some unlucky Spaniards who were drowning. Some came out wounded, and others half drowned and without weapons. I sent them back to the rear. The enemy were so numerous that they soon surrounded me and some ten or fifteen who had remained with me. I was so occupied helping those who were drowning that I had not thought about my own danger until some Indians grabbed me and were on the point of carrying me off.”

One Spanish captain and several of his men fought through to help Cortés, and he slowly began to retreat, fighting with his sword and buckler. “At this point a servant rode up on horseback and cleared a little space, but immediately a lance thrown from a low roof struck him in the throat and overthrew him.” A second servant succeeded in bringing him a horse, but it was of little use on the muddy causeway. Carefully securing their passage, Cortés and his men withdrew down the causeway under heavy attack by the frantic Aztecs.

When Cortés finally reached safety, he counted his losses. Thirty-five or forty Spaniards and over 1,000 allies had been killed. Cortés himself was among the wounded. But the horror of the anniversary of the noche triste was not yet over. The Aztecs had captured a number of Spaniards in their battle with Cortés and had taken these prisoners to the far side of the city where Alvarado and his men were camped. Here, the Aztecs raised their prisoners “to the top of some lofty towers, stripped them and opened their breasts, and taking out the hearts, offered them to their idols.”

Watching from but a short distance away, Alvarado’s men recognized their companions. They were stunned and horrified. But the Aztecs, jubilant over their prizes of victory, spent the night in celebration.

In the days that followed, news of the Aztec victory spread through Mexico. Cortés’s allies began deserting to their homes. Even those who had stood by him the year before were leaving. Yet despite the loss of many allies, Cortés remained firm. As long as he had enough men to continue the blockade of the city, Cortés knew that time was on his side. The besieged Aztecs would eventually consume everything edible and have to plead for peace. This, at least, was a small comfort to Cortés as he watched the thousands of friendly Indians take the long road back to their towns. Some of them, however, promised to return when he was ready to fight again.

More than fifty-five days had passed since the siege had begun, and still the enemy remained unbeaten. Most of the Spanish ammunition and arrows had been used. Some new supplies were received when a ship put in at Villa Rica de Vera Cruz with the remnants of Ponce de León’s expedition that had been routed on the Florida coast.

Finally, Cortés and his men had recovered sufficiently to begin attacking once more. This time, he was determined that he would never again be trapped as he had been on the causeway. He would leave no roofs for the Aztecs to fight from, no houses for them to hide within, no gaps in the causeways and streets to trap his men. Everything would be razed as the Spaniards moved forward. If need be, the entire city would be leveled, building by building. No stone would remain on another. This was a battle to the end, and Cortés was determined to win it regardless of the cost. Messengers were sent to his allies telling them he was ready to fight again, and many of them rejoined him.

Each day, the invaders marched down the causeways, entered the town, and continued their destruction. As the Indian allies tore the buildings apart, Spanish soldiers hid nearby and Spanish horsemen lurked behind the column of soldiers. Invariably, the Aztecs took the bait and attacked the invading Indians. Invariably, too, the Spaniards trapped the Aztecs between the hidden soldiers and the cavalry. “With these ambushes,” Cortés wrote, “we killed some of them every afternoon.”

The Spaniards began to notice signs that the Aztecs were feeling the effects of the siege. At the beginning of the long battle, they had buried their dead with all their accustomed funeral rites. Soon they no longer had time to bury the corpses and merely hid them inside the houses. As the campaign dragged on week after week, they no longer even bothered with their dead. Cut off from the countryside that fed them, the Aztecs were slowly starving. Gnawed roots and the chewed bark of trees were seen in the streets. But still they fought on. The youthful emperor had no intention of surrendering.

Time after time, Cortés sent messengers to Cuauhtémoc asking him to abandon the fight, but he always received the same answer, “If there were only one man left, he would die fighting.”

The siege went on and on - a clash in one part of the city, a skirmish in another, ambush and retreat, and forever the death of Spaniards, allies, and Aztecs. Finally, the representatives of the Aztec emperor agreed that Cuauhtémoc would meet with Cortés. The appointed hour came. Cortés was there, but the emperor never appeared - he had apparently realized that the struggle could end in nothing less than his total victory or total defeat. But Cortés took no pride in the slaughter that then ensued; he called the last phase of the siege a “mockery.” The Aztecs no longer had the weapons nor the strength to wield them. They were dying of starvation and thirst.

Finally, Cortés made what he thought was his last assault. The way through the city was open. No one came out to oppose the invaders. And the Indian allies of the Spaniards avenged themselves. “That day they slaughtered and took prisoner more than forty thousand men. The shrieks and the weeping of the women and children was heartbreaking.” The Spaniards were too few to control their allies, and they had to countenance sickening cruelty and barbarism.

That night, nearly all of the ruined city was in Cortés’s hands. The stench of the dead, left lying in the summer heat for days, permeated the island. Men who had fought most of their adult lives were revolted by it and withdrew.

It was already August 12; although there were lulls, the fighting continued, and it appeared that the brutality of constant battle would last through the rest of the summer. On this day, Cortés expected to meet with the emperor to receive a petition for surrender; but once more, the Aztecs failed to appear as they had promised. The fighting began again and lasted through most of the day. Hoping to avoid another battle, Cortés went to the top of one of the few remaining buildings and pleaded with the caciques to end the slaughter.

The caciques met together and agreed to seek an end to the conflict. For more than five hours, the enemies talked. There was so little ground left to the Aztecs that they had to walk on the bodies of their dead. Some of them had withdrawn to the lake where they swam to the far shore or drowned. Cortés noted, “Their plight was such it was impossible to conceive how they could endure it.”

As the hours passed, Cortés realized that he would have to order a final assault. He fired a shot, the signal to advance, and watched the death agonies of Tenochtitlán: “More than 50,000 of them perished from salt water they drank, or from starvation and pestilence. . . . As the people of the city came toward us, I ordered Spaniards to be stationed in all the streets to prevent our allies from killing those unhappy people. I also ordered the captains of the allies to restrain their men in every way possible. But our allies were so many we could not prevent a massacre, and that day more than 15,000 were killed.”

In the late afternoon, the captain of one of the ships stopped an escaping canoe. The men aboard the Spanish craft leveled their guns and prepared to fire when those in the canoe cried out that the emperor was among them.

As soon as Cortés heard that the young Aztec had been taken prisoner, he sent for him. The captain general had his men carpet a terrace with crimson cloth and matting, and he waited for his prisoner to appear. Doña Marina was at his side. As Cuauhtémoc mounted the terrace where Cortés sat, the Spanish leader rose to his feet and stepped forward. For a time, both men were silent. Then Cuauhtémoc told Cortés that he had done all that he could to defend himself and his people. Now reduced to his present wretched state, he asked Cortés to deal with him as the conquering Spaniard wished.

Cortés, filled with admiration for the bravery and determination of the young Aztec, told him that he respected valor even in an enemy. He called for Cuauhtémoc’s wife to join her husband, and in peace at long last, they sat down together.

After seventy-five days, Tenochtitlán had finally been subdued by the persistent Spaniards and abandoned by its people. The war with the Mexicans had come to an end. The Aztec empire had crumbled with the destruction of its great and beautiful city. The breaking of the siege of Tenochtitlán marked the beginning of Spanish rule on the mainland of the New World. Yet the shift from conquerors to colonial administrators did not come easily for most of the officers who had sailed with Cortés. They were not by nature bureaucrats. They had started out as adventurers hoping to find riches and converts for their religion and way of life. But once the adventure was over and the conquest complete, they wanted their share of the spoils of victory.

The Spaniards had fought long and hard; they had almost all been wounded one or more times; they had seen their companions killed on the battlefield or on the altars of the enemy. Now they wanted to be paid, and to the surprise of everyone, including Cortés, there was very little treasure to be found.

No one really knows just what happened to the great treasure amassed before the noche triste and abandoned during that fateful night. When Cortés and his men set out to recover it upon their return to the city, only a small part of it could be found. Some of the conquistadors claimed that the Aztecs had taken it out of the city before the siege began. Some claimed that Cortés and his captains actually found it and confiscated it for their own use. Still others believed the story told by some of the Aztec leaders that the treasure had been thrown into the lake to thwart the conquerors. Whatever the answer, only a few golden reminders of the original treasure remained.

The Aztecs nominally continued to rule for a time, with the conquistadors and caciques ruling together under the direction of the Spanish court and the Church. But soon, the temptation to use the Indians as slaves became too great to be resisted. Christianity was forgotten as the Indians were herded together, branded, and forced to toil in the gold and silver mines and on the great plantations that were parceled out to the conquerors of New Spain.

While Mexico City was being rebuilt and the country explored and exploited, Cortés waited for word from Spain concerning the legality of his own position. He had notified King Charles of his victory and of the establishment of the new empire, but both Velásquez and the Bishop of Burgos were determined to destroy Cortés.

Finally, the wrangling for power reached such proportions that both the king and the pope entered into the argument. Special committees were established to study the various claims, and the results completely vindicated Cortés. An order went out on October 15, 1522, naming Cortés governor, captain general, and chief justice of New Spain. At last, after hazarding his life and fortune, he was recognized by his king. With a strong hand, but with love for his adopted land, Cortés ruled until 1534 when Charles made Antonio de Mendoza the viceroy of New Spain, with authority to act with royal power. Cortés retained his titles and rank, but never again was he to wield the power he held at the moment the conquest ended.

He arranged a marriage for Doña Marina to Juan Jaramillo, one of his captains, and then returned for what he thought would be a brief visit to Spain. But when his visit was completed in 1547 and he was on his way to embark for Mexico at the Spanish port of Seville, his great strength began to fail. Within a few days, he died - not on a charging horse or in combat on the causeway, but peacefully in bed. His family, knowing that that would have been his wish, moved his body to Mexico.

Today, there are no statues of Cortés in the land he conquered; he and his fellow conquistadors have been rejected by more recent generations. But the great civilization that he overcame with steel and courage is remembered everywhere in modern Mexico. Pride in the Aztec past and delight in rediscovery of Aztec culture are strong. The Aztecs who conquered and then were conquered are winning, through history, the final victory.