Brief History of the Conquest

The terror experienced by Montezuma is also not a sign of cowardice provided ignorance--the description given him by his men is about opposed animals and other marvels, and neither he nor they have any thought what these things mean or whether they are natural or supernatural. spate living so close to nature are gravel by anything that does not fit their experience. Montezuma indeed believes that these strange slew are gods, and his answer to this is to make a sacrifice to the gods. The idolatry convey by Montezuma at this time has to be judged by the fact that he believed the Spaniards to be gods. When he hears that they want to take in him face to face, for instance, he thinks of fleeing and hiding in a cave. His advisers manifest him to go to the Temple of Cintli, that in the end, he cannot do it:

He could not run away, could not go into hiding. He had lost his strength and his spirit, and could do nothing. The magicians' words had overwhelmed his message; they had vanquished his heart and thrown him into confusion, so that now he was weak and downhearted and too uncertain to make a decision (36).

gallantry on both sides was judged by valor in battle, informant with the willingness to trash and extending through the stock-stillts that might take place in an actual battle. Cortes and his men show bravery in exclusively being in such a distant land, and in addition, they are at all times a

small minority facing the entire existence of the Aztec people. Yet, again and again they prevail:

When the battles begin, those on both sides showed courage and the ability to change tactics and shift perspective to fulfil the enemy. The weapons of the Spaniards were fearsome, but the Aztecs learned how to cope with the greater firepower of their enemy:

 at that place are many divergent battles detailed in the pages of these accounts, but the primary battle at Tenochtitlan is told several times from different points of view.

In all of the accounts, both sides took to battle with courage even in the face of their fears. The Aztecs feared these gods and their new weapons and yet were able to fight them just the same. The Spaniards were outnumbered and yet undertook their conquest without holding back. The descriptions of the battles show again and again how both sides showed courage on the battlefield and how they move to fight even in the face of superior poetry of firepower, as in the following description:

The Tlatelolcas, however, refused to give up. They raced into Tenochtitlan to bide the fight and the Spaniards soon learned how brave they were (100).

The descriptions of both sides by the Mexican observers in these pages show both sides to have been brave. The fears expressed by Montezuma in some accounts cannot be counted as cowardice but as an attempt to face a worthless reality, and in any case Montezuma did not flee the Spaniards and instead went to meet them in his role as leader.

Leon-Portilla, Miguel. The Broken Spears. capital of Massachusetts: Beacon Press, 1962.

Both the Spaniards and the Aztecs were
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