Cuauhtémoc

Biography

Cuauhtémoc — 'Descending Eagle' — came to the throne of a doomed city. Elected in early 1521 after smallpox killed Cuitláhuac, he was perhaps twenty-five and inherited a capital gutted by disease, ringed by defectors, and about to face a coalition army of tens of thousands with a fleet of brigantines on the lake. He fought anyway, for ninety-three days, house by house, refusing every offer of surrender as the Spanish demolished Tenochtitlan behind their advance. He was captured on August 13, 1521, trying to cross the lake by canoe. Brought before Cortés, he is said to have asked to be killed on the spot rather than live to see what came next. Instead the conquistadors, convinced he had hidden the gold lost on La Noche Triste, burned his feet with oil to make him talk. He had nothing to tell them. Cortés kept him alive as a figurehead for four years, then hanged him in the Honduran jungle in 1525 on an unproven accusation of conspiracy. In independent Mexico he became the national hero the conquest produced — the ruler who did not submit — and the one whose statue stands on the Paseo de la Reforma, not Cortés's.

Key Battles