30 May 2025 / 10 House
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Find out moreDid the massacre of Toxcatl affect the Mexica army?
Scenes from the Toxcatl massacre of Mexica celebrants, Florentine Codex Book 12
ORIGINAL QUESTION received from - and thanks to - Daniel Avila: Did the massacre of toxcatl affect the Mexica army in any way? If I remember correctly apart from priests, noble warriors, captains and generals also died in this slaughter, right? If so... would the Mexica have had a better chance of winning the battle of Otumba? (Answered by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)
Great question. Yes, we’re sure it did - for the simple reason, as you yourself mentioned, that the Spaniards under Pedro de Alvarado went for unarmed Mexica warriors and leaders as well as priests and other innocent festival celebrants. The ‘top brass’ of the Aztec army was eliminated at a stroke.
However, the extent to which this loss affected the Mexica force at the battle of Otumba, as the invading Spaniards retreated, badly battered, towards the safety of Tlaxcalla, is a much more open question.
According to military historians John Pohl and Charles Robinson (Aztecs & Conquistadores pp. 140-141), ‘The Mexicans decided to destroy [the Spanish force] completely and finish the war. The place picked for the final blow was the plain of Otumba... where, it was presumed, their massed infantry, led by Tenochtitlan’s high priest, would overwhelm the remnants of Cortés’s army. In choosing this ground they committed a fatal error. Their first hand experience with the great Andalusian war horses was within the city and on the bridges, where the horses’ iron-shod hooves slipped on the pavement, and their mobility was restricted. They had completely underestimated them, and now presented Cortés with the perfect situation for cavalry...
‘Finally, Cortés spotted the group of warlords directing the battle and, lining up his lancers, led a mounted charge through the massed warriors, the horses breaking through the mass of warriors to the warlords. The senior chief was impaled on a lance and the Mexicans, on the verge of victory, lost their morale and began to retreat.’
One can only speculate whether the Mexica military leaders murdered in the Toxcatl festival might have chosen different tactics - and crucially, a different location for their final assault on the Spaniards - that could have delivered them a historic victory...
Source/quote:-
• Aztecs & Conquistadores: The Spanish Invasion & the collapse of the Aztec Empire by John Pohl and Charles M Robinson III, Osprey Publishing Ltd., Oxford, 2005.
Pictures source:-
• Images from the Florentine Codex (original in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence) scanned from our own copy of the Club Internacional del Libro 3-volume facsimile edition, Madrid, 1994.
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Scenes from the Toxcatl massacre of Mexica celebrants, Florentine Codex Book 12
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