The Sad Night

http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/book/jul1.html 1520 La Noche Triste (The Sad Night), and the Vergin de los remedios.

[Sources vary as to date; Your almanackist has seen dates from June 30 to July 10. Errors might be due to the later change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. I have chosen to settle on July 1 until evidence indicates otherwise. – PW]

Conquistadors such as Hernán Fernando Cortés and the Catholic missionaries who followed, appear to have innately believed that the indigenous people of America were to be subdued, converted and plundered.

As discussed in our article Greed, gold and God Part 1: The Aztecs and Cortés, in the Scriptorium, the small army of the Spaniard Cortés devastated the Aztec Empire in an incredibly short time. After they had seized and killed the local nobles of Cholula, Mexico, they set fire to the city, and killed an estimated 15,000 to 30,000 of the inhabitants, before eventually destroying almost the entire city of Tenochtitlán and killing some 120,000 to 240,000 Aztecs there.

Cortés and his men pillaged the great 40-acre Aztec temple to the great feathered serpent god, Quetzalcoatl, and placed a doll-sized wooden statuette of the Virgin Mary, the Vergin de los remedios, on the altar. Naturally enraged, on the night of June 20 (possibly), 1520 the Aztecs erupted in rebellion, stoning emperor, Moctezuma II (Montezuma II; the Aztec Hueyi Tlatoani), as he tried to placate them. He died four days later, either from the stoning or killed by the Spanish ...



Categories: aztec, history, spain, colonialism