Historical sources on Aztec warfare

Extract A

"But the great aim of the Aztec institutions, to which private discipline and public honors were alike directed, was the profession of arms. In Mexico, as in Egypt, the soldier shared with the priest the highest consideration. The king, as we have seen, must be an experienced warrior. The tutelary deity of the Aztecs was the god of war. A great object of their military expeditions was to gather hecatombs of captives for his altars. The soldier who fell in battle was transported at once to the region of ineffable bliss in the bright mansions of the Sun. Every war, therefore, became a crusade; and the warrior, animated by a religious enthusiasm like that of the early Saracen or the Christian crusader, was not only raised to a contempt of danger, but courted it, for the imperishable crown of martyrdom." 

Extract B

"The question of war was discussed in a council of the king and his chief nobles. Ambassadors were sent, previously to its declaration, to require the hostile state to receive the Mexican gods, and to pay the customary tribute. The persons of ambassadors were held sacred throughout Anahuac. They were lodged and entertained in the great towns at the public charge, and were everywhere received with courtesy, so long as they did not deviate from the high-roads on their route. When they did, they forfeited their privileges. If the embassy proved unsuccessful, a defiance, or open declaration of war, was sent; quotas were drawn from the conquered provinces, which were always subjected to military service, as well as the payment of taxes; and the royal army, usually with the monarch at its head, began its march." 

Extract C

"The great object of war was as much to gather victims as to extend empire. An enemy was never slain in battle if he could be taken alive; and to this circumstance the Spaniards repeatedly owed their preservation. Montezuma said that the republic of Tlascala was maintained in her independence, 'that she might furnish victims for his gods!'" 

Extract D

"Garrisons were established in the larger cities — probably those at a distance and recently conquered — to keep down revolt, and to enforce the payment of the tribute. Tax-gatherers were also distributed throughout the kingdom, who were recognized by their official badges, and dreaded from the merciless rigor of their exactions. By a stern law, every defaulter was liable to be taken and sold as a slave. In the capital were spacious granaries and warehouses for the reception of the tributes. A receiver-general was quartered in the palace, who rendered in an exact account of the various contributions, and watched over the conduct of the inferior agents, in whom the least malversation was summarily punished." 

Extract E

"But the occupation peculiarly respected was that of the merchant. It formed so important and singular a feature of their social economy, as to merit a much more particular notice than it has received from historians. The Aztec merchant was a sort of itinerant trader, who made his journeys to the remotest borders of Anahuac, and to the countries beyond, carrying with him merchandise of rich stuffs, jewelry, slaves, and other valuable commodities. He performed his journeys with a number of companions of his own ilk, and a large body of inferior attendants who were employed to transport the goods. Fifty or sixty pounds were the usual load for a man. The whole caravan went armed, and so well provided against sudden hostilities, that they could make good their defence, if necessary, till reinforced from home. In one instance, a body of these militant traders stood a siege of four years in the town of Ayotlan, which they finally took from the enemy. Their own government, however, was always prompt to embark in a war on this ground, finding it a very convenient pretext for extending the Mexican empire." 

Contextual information:

William H. Prescott (1796–1859) was an American historian who spent over a decade researching his History of the Conquest of Mexico, drawing on an extensive private collection of Spanish manuscripts and colonial-era chronicles. Despite being almost completely blind for most of his adult life, Prescott produced a work that became the standard English-language reference on Aztec civilisation and the Spanish conquest for well over a century. The first edition was published in New York by Harper and Brothers in 1843. 

Bibliographical reference:

Prescott, W. H. (1843). History of the conquest of Mexico (Vol. 1). Harper & Brothers. Book I, Chapters II, III, V. Available at: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/59755 

Copyright: Public domain. 

"War, at first defensive, afterwards offensive, became the life of the tribe. Religion demanded it for its bloody rites; revenge, so deeply rooted in Indian nature, called for it at every moment. But especially was it required for the subsistence of the tribe, whose increasing numbers could not live from agriculture on the scanty soil allotted to them, and who, therefore, were compelled to depend upon the spoils gathered from inroads upon their neighbours. If there was no war in progress, the Mexicans deemed themselves 'idle.'" 

Contextual information:

Adolph Francis Alphonse Bandelier (1840–1914) was a Swiss-American archaeologist and ethnologist who conducted extensive fieldwork in Mexico and the American Southwest and was regarded as one of the leading authorities on pre-Columbian civilisation in the late nineteenth century. This monograph, published in the Tenth Annual Report of the Peabody Museum at Harvard University in 1877, drew on a thorough examination of Spanish colonial records and remains one of the earliest systematic academic analyses of Aztec military organisation. Bandelier undertook years of archaeological survey work in Mexico. 

Bibliographical reference:

Bandelier, A. F. (1877). On the art of war and mode of warfare of the ancient Mexicans. Tenth Annual Report of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, 2(1), pp. 95–161. Harvard University. Available at: https://archive.org/details/onartwarandmode00bandgoog 

Copyright: Public domain.

"Children, as a preparation for military service, were entered in one of the schools called Telpochcalli, which were under the protection of Tezcatlipoca, and there underwent a rigorous training, in part religious, which was not, however, so severe as that of the Calmecac. On first entering they were charged with the duty of sweeping the building and attending to the fires, later of fetching wood and engaging in various constructional works. During this period they took their meals in their own houses, but returned to the Telpochcalli to sleep; their amusements consisted in attending the dances, in the building called Cuicacalco, which took place between sunset and midnight. The sons of the higher officials who intended to embrace the military profession received the superior education of the Calmecac, and accompanied experienced warriors to battle in the capacity of shield-bearers. As soon as the young man was of an age to go to war, the whole of his hopes centred upon the taking of a prisoner, so that the lock of hair which he wore at the back of his neck as a sign of his noviciate might be removed. If he performed the feat with the aid of several of his companions, all were permitted to wear a side-lock instead, but if single-handed he received at the hands of the king the privilege of wearing certain body-paint and embroidered mantles of particular designs. The capture of two, three, four or more prisoners was also rewarded with special insignia with promotion in rank, and the gift of privileges including the right to wear a lip-plug of a particular pattern and to sit on a particular seat." 

Contextual information:

Thomas Athol Joyce (1878–1942) was a British archaeologist and anthropologist who served as an assistant in the Department of British and Mediaeval Antiquities at the British Museum, where he had access to one of the foremost collections of Mesoamerican artefacts in Europe. Mexican Archæology was published in 1914 as part of a broader series of archaeological introductions produced under the auspices of the British Museum, drawing on both physical collections and a thorough review of Spanish colonial chronicles. 

Bibliographical reference:

Joyce, T. A. (1914). Mexican archæology: An introduction to the archaeology of the Mexican and Mayan civilizations of pre-Spanish America. Philip Lee Warner. p. 122–123. Available at: https://gutenberg.org/files/74836/74836-h/74836-h.htm 

Copyright: Public domain.

"The Mexicans, and other nations of Anahuac, were never at a total peace with all their neighbours; as they always left some province or other unsubdued, for the purpose of exercising their troops, and of having a constant supply of captives for sacrifice to their gods. This species of war, which they called Xochiyaoyotl, or the War of Flowers, was never intended to be a war of conquest, nor did they ever attempt to make themselves masters of the enemy's country; the chief object of these battles was to exercise their troops, and to obtain captives for sacrifice to their gods." 

Contextual information:

Francesco Saverio Clavigero (1731–1787) was an Italian Jesuit priest who was born and raised in New Spain and spent decades in Mexico studying indigenous languages, manuscripts, and oral traditions before being expelled with the rest of the Jesuit order in 1767. He wrote his Storia Antica del Messico in Italian while living in exile in Bologna, publishing it in 1780–1781, and it was subsequently translated into English by Charles Cullen and published in London in 1787. Clavigero's direct experience of Mexican culture and his access to indigenous sources and colonial manuscripts made his work one of the most detailed and sympathetic accounts of Aztec civilisation produced in the eighteenth century. 

Bibliographical reference:

Clavigero, F. S. (1787). The history of Mexico: Collected from Spanish and Mexican historians, from manuscripts, and ancient paintings of the Indians (C. Cullen, Trans.). G. G. J. and J. Robinson. Available at: https://archive.org/details/the-history-of-mexico 

Copyright: Public domain.