Yeah I can do that. For context though, and partly because I might as well, I'll have to talk about Mesoamerican military systems in general, and their evolution since the Pre-Classic.
in times of war, the tecuhtli was given a commission of sorts to go around the residential wards in the calpoltin under his jurisdiction to raise a host of mayahqueh, basically levy infantry, to support the "knights" on campaign (ask me to do a post about Mesoamerican military systems sometime).
... so I guess that time has come around.
Although others have contributed to the field the most important military historian of Mesoamerica was Ross Hassig, though some of his assertions are dated, relying on older data. For his book,
War and Society in Ancient Mesoamerica, he and a bunch of others over at Dumbarton Oaks first assembled a picture of the evolution of warfare in Mesoamerica since the Preclassic relying primarily on archaeological and artistic sources, aided by Spanish battlefield accounts, and our own best understanding of what would have been the best way to employ a given unit equipped in the manner depicted in ancient art. A weapon system is more than just the sum of its parts; seeing guys fighting with atlatl on a mural suggests a number of institutional and infrastructural adaptations to make atlatl viable as a weapon of war. So the idea was as depictions and archaeological evidence changes over time, you can get an idea of how war, and thus society, changed also, and why empires like Teotihuacan had the advantages they had, accounting for geography and demography.
So geography bears mentioning. Popular conception of Mesoamerica imagines a vast untamed jungle surrounding one giant "floating" city in the middle of a lake. But really southern Mexico and Central America's mountainous nature allows for a diverse landscape of many biomes and climates. There are deserts full of cacti just a few dozen kilometers apart from a high valley where it snows every winter among the pine trees. And, of course, some jungles. All this despite the fact it is situated entirely within the tropics and dominated by two seasons: wet and dry. These seasons vary by their onset, intensity, and duration depending on altitude; sometimes months apart. In general, since planting and harvesting was done during the wet season (starting as early as May or as late as June), we generally take any large movement of troops and supplies to have taken place in the dry season (starting as early as August and as late as latter half of November) because...
A) You just harvested, which means the supplies are available to sustain an army on the march.
B) It's actually physically practical to move around. It's less muddy, the rivers are less full and more easily negotiated, the roads have a discernible surface.
C) The bulk of the manpower for the army, necessary to embark on offensive operations, is no longer tied down in planting or harvesting and is free to be levied in support of the professional soldiers.
All this doesn't discount the possibility for small-scale raiding in the wet season though; aforementioned professional soldiers aren't harvesting anyway, and there are generally few enough of them that negotiating rough terrain in inclement weather is less of a problem. But if you want to like, siege stuff and actually seize territory, you need the commoners' support, and for that you need to wait for the appropriate conditions. ... So not all that different from anywhere else.
So this brings us to logistics. The first thing that comes to mind and probably the biggest difference of Mesoamerican warfare compared to anywhere in Eurasia (but not as big as you might think) is the lack of horses or camels. No llamas either - the Andes isn't "Mesoamerica". This means the soldiers themselves, and/or their auxiliaries (called
tlameme in Nahuatl) are carrying their own food and water in addition to their equipment. In the Preclassic is where we begin to see adaptations to this, in particular examining the "Olmec" civilization. Hassig characterized Olmec military needs less in terms of waging war on other Olmec city-states but more concerned with securing long-range trade routes against interdiction by the less-settled peoples along the way. Nowadays we understand the political landscape of the Olmec world a little better and would hesitate to call these people any "less-settled" than the Olmecs were, and we also know better evidence for rivalries between Olmec kingdoms, but either way guarding far-flung caravans seems to have been very important.
Apart from big stone heads and rubber vulcanization the Olmecs have three big archaeological legacies. First is the use of flat comal pans used to cook tortillas, which implies the invention of the tortilla. Today we (well, in the American Southwest and Mexico) eat tortillas all the time while sitting at a table or whatever and stuffing it with meat or whatever else. But we hypothesize that its ancient origins were as an easy to transport, compact food source, with easily-stored cooking material and utensil. A comal was easy to carry, meaning a tlameme porter working for his caravan master could stop to camp for the night, take out the comal and place it over the fire and roast a tortilla after a long day on the road. Sprinkle some imported salt on that, maybe spread an avocado from home across the top, maybe fry up some grasshoppers you find around your campsite and you got a good meal going.
Then there's the tumpline, which in Nahuatl is a mecapalli. This is basically a strap you attach to a bundle of stuff and then wrap around your head, it distributes the weight of whatever you're carrying across your entire spine; more efficient than a backback where all the weight rests on the shoulders. Now your porters can carry lots of stuff overland relatively efficiently... though you'd probably still prefer a canoe or river barge whenever you can make use of them. Hassig spent a great deal of time studying the logistics of Mesoamerican transport systems, such as his paper
Trade, Tribute, and Transportation and then Robert Drennan's later work
Long-distance transport costs in Pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica. David Carballo and Thomas Puckhan expanded on this with their paper focused on the Tlaxcala region's strategic implications for transportation,
Transportation corridors and political evolution in highland Mesoamerica. Some older Mesoamericanists used to ramble on about how water-based transportation was so much more efficient in Mesoamerica because of the lack of horses, ignoring that this is also the case in the rest of the world.
It should be understood that, despite what even my boi Charles Mann might speculate about, a Mesoamerican army was probably not inherently slower, day-to-day, than an old world army. All else being equal, on both sides of the ocean, pain will come to you "at the speed of foot". Few countries anywhere could afford to put everyone on a horse, let alone the extra horses you would inevitably need. Nonetheless horses and pack llamas are better than human porters for a few reasons. Hassig, supposing that most preindustrial armies averaged 8-32 kilometers a day on the march and based on modern figures of 4 km/h on roads in daylight, 2.4 km/h cross-country in daylight, and 3.2 / 1.6 km/h respectively at night, takes 2.4-3.2 kilometers per hour as the average marching speed of a Mesoamerican army, and perhaps 8 hours of marching a day.
Supply usage of a mesoamerican army can be determined with some 16th century data, with daily rates shown to be roughly 1 kg of food and half a gallon of water per soldier. With a standard load of 23-25 kg for day-to-day transport (math explaining the reasoning for this in his other paper) this gave 24 "man-days" of food. But of course, soldiers are also carrying around other things: their weapon(s), armour, and other miscellaneous equipment. Every kilogram a soldier carries reduces his food supplies by one day. Based on this data about supply usage, marching speed, and seasonal climate, Hassig proposed a Mesoamerican army could travel up to 8 days before needing resupply, with a combat radius of 3 days assuming one day of fighting and the following to rest. Aside from increased range, assuming favorable relations then local resupply was often possible, and of course foraging and "foraging" were also commonplace.
One of the most important changes the Olmecs brought was the sling. Like the comal, the technology doesn't exactly originate with the Olmecs, but they are responsible for spreading it. The slings themselves were made from maguey fiber and of course don't survive archaeologically very well, but the projectiles used to. Numerous Olmec and Olmec-influenced sites throughout the La Venta period, including Tehuacan, Chalcatzingo, Zacatenco, Ticoman, Gualupita, El Arbolillo, and Chalchuapa, have warehouses used to store quantities of mass-produced clay sling bullets. Slings are rare in artwork of the period however and it's generally thought they were a weapon of militia and levies, in part due to their more utilitarian applications. What does show up in Olmec artwork however are the noble warriors, such as in the Late Formative (~400 BC) Stela D at Tres Zapotes. It depicts a political scene inside the gaping mouth of an animal, in which two figures stand, one with a spear, and a third kneels. Stela A shows a similar scene where one figure has a knife and another has a trophy skull. But Monument C (thank you archaeologists) is the most helpful here: a number of men are shown wearing helmets, some in the form of animal heads, and carrying large rectangular shields. They all wield spears or maces, and one has been stabbed through the knee.
Hassig proposed that the relatively sparse population density of the Formative period favored smaller armies and small-scale raiding, which in turn encouraged a core of warriors specialized in fighting in melee, as projectiles are best in large numbers. At this time period, bows have yet to be re-introduced to the Americas* while atlatl (and blowguns) remain chiefly a hunter's weapon. Slingers, then, were left as the primary wartime projectile weapon. Because clay sling bullets were quite heavy and this limited slingers' utility in far-flung campaigns, they mostly (but not exclusively) had a defensive role, taking up positions at the walls and bombarding incoming enemy troops as they tried to scale the wall with ladders and storm the city. To shield against slings, the nobles took to wearing carved wooden helmets and carrying large shields. Given the source for these are a bunch of millennia-old and highly stylized drawings, the construction of these shields remains uncertain. But to quote Hassig, who considers shield design a very telling aspect of the nature of combat in a given time:
[...] the shields were probably made of leather, woven materials of various weights, or solid wood, as were later examples, although wood and woven reeds are particularly suited to rectangular forms. These shields appear very sturdy and, if made of solid wood, could directly block weapon thrusts. Lighter materials, such as leather or woven reeds, could not absorb the force of a blow that might break the shieldman's arm (the notorious parry fracture) but they could deflect them, block projectiles, and defend against the cutting effect of blades. The protection these large shields afforded the trunk and limbs was, however, achieved at the price of mobility, suggesting a more set-piece style of combat. In fact, the heavy shield may have been rested on the ground where it could still provide considerable protection from projectiles and, in conjunction with thrusting spears, would have been a formidable deterrent to an enemy charge.
* = projectile points have been found alongside clay bullets in some cases, and despite our best efforts it is rather hard to tell the difference between points meant for arrows and those for atlatl darts. But generally the consensus is that bows do not become widespread in the hemisphere again until ~500 AD, spread by trade with and migration from the Arctic and Subarctic cultural regions. They don't show up in art and while lucky slings occasionally have left some remnant (like part of one found from around 500 BC) in ideal conditions there are no bows from this period and area that I'm aware of.
The Late Formative coincides with another period of state formation across Mesoamerica, which intensified competition and by extension warfare, which was gradually taking on a more conquest-based nature with larger and more organized armies. As such settlements sought defensible positions and walled up to protect themselves. Hassig sought to frame fortifications as an offensive as much as defensive asset, allowing a smaller center to project power over a larger region by making itself more resistant to attack. He also suggested ways that walls can tell us things about power relationships between different ancient settlements, such as how especially large urban centers may forgo walls to accommodate their rapid growth, relying on their sheer size as defense, while smaller power centers rarely go without walls except when perhaps obligated to do so by a larger power. Mesoamerican walls varied in construction, from wooden palisades, to adobe bricks, to masonry. Typically, a medium-sized city would have a concentric ring of adobe or stone walls, 2.5 to 5 meters in height, topped with wooden battlements and surrounded by a ditch. An attacking army would have to fill in the ditch - investing time - and then move across their filling into a bottleneck, carrying ladders and the like. Meanwhile the defenders have known exactly what direction you're gonna come from for several days now, and can put their slingers on the walls there to bombard you as you approach.
Despite that it's the subsequent Classic period that's generally seen as heralding a military revolution. That there is some large-scale warfare in the Formative is of course well-attested to - people do not build walls and manufacture thousands of sling bullets if they do not believe these things are important investments, and Dani Baan built what might be Mesoamerica's first empire, in Oaxaca. I wrote
a whole post about their rise to power. But apart from the sling militia, it seems to have primarily been centered around the "warrior aristocracy" and their prowess in melee combat, having much more time and motivation to train in martial arts than the common man. They went in with maces, daggers, short spears, and square or round shields. Atlatl seem to have been relegated to hunting - not because people didn't realize atlatl could kill people too, but because, in Hassig's analysis, the demographic and societal situation wasn't optimal for the atlatl.
A situation that changes in the Classic period. Population density was great enough that not only was there substantial manpower to draw upon for larger armies, but these armies could be effectively deployed over a longer range, because more people meant more reliable resupply in regions under your control (the cycle of more people = intensified exploitation = more food production, ergo more surplus = more people). Now it made sense for projectiles to have an important role in field battles: levies become more important as anyone can throw an atlatl and get a kill, and 50 people throwing atlatl is better than 5 and can fight while taking up less combat width than 50 melee fighters, some of which might well be standing around doing nothing in a battle. Slings had much longer range than atlatl (and somewhat more absolute range than bows, until later), will fuck up most things they hit, and commoners had enough experience with them already, but as discussed already they weren't very good as a means of power projection due to the weight of their ammunition. So in Central Mexico we see, for example in Teotihuacan's army, the deployment of atlatlists on a large-scale in warfare for the first time. Atlatl in Mesoamerica were used to hurl 'darts' (or
lanzas in Spanish sources) but just to be clear, these were more like especially long arrows, fletching included, than anything you might imagine hearing 'darts' or 'lances'.
This coincided with other advancements. We see evidence of heterogeneous formations - that is, different military units with different tactical roles and different equipment, which basically by argument from necessity confirms that means of signalling and designations for these units had also evolved, as well as distinct training regimens. Longer spears and bigger shields also take the place of maces and the like mentioned previously, no doubt convergent evolution with the rest of the world as formations of spear+shield guys working together proves so optimal. Teotihuacan seemed to rely on these spearmen, with large rectangular wooden shields and daggers as a side-arm, backed by separate units of atlatlists, who carried perhaps more than a dozen darts which they threw just before a melee, and carried daggers as well as smaller round shields. Hassig proposes that the bigger shields the infantry used, by their design, did not permit effective use of an atlatl, which necessitated splitting these units apart. Then a third unit of atlatlists with maces etc. would be stationed at the flanks and as skirmishers for the campaigning army. Based on later battles with the Spanish, units like this evidently served a similar role to cavalry, in that they're trying to get at your flanks so they can toss atlatl darts into the center that's already engaged, while keeping the enemy from doing the same, and then supporting in the melee if possible.
Teotihuacan was further capable of fielding a very large army for the time and region - Hassig calculated (based on Sanders' work on the basin's ecology and demography through time, and using Andean gender and age-group ratios) the heartland alone could have supported 16,000 troops on campaign, and could project this power further than anyone else. This number wouldn't include auxiliaries recruited from local people in Teotihuacan's many far-flung territories. As later research continues to support the idea of council-rule or even some kind of republic present at Teotihuacan, some have suggested that the large army size may have coincided with some concessions to the lower classes that might have incentivized military service and ensure adequate manpower for its many military commitments abroad.
While the Teotihua and Zapotecs are operating their big empires, off to the east are the Classic Maya city-states, of which there were dozens competing for hegemony. The two superpowers were Yax Mutal and Kaan, better known as Tikal and Calakmul respectively. This was a volatile region where alliances were temporary, backstabbing was just another Tuesday, where proxy wars and foreign-backed coups are frequent. Teotihuacan seems to have meddled in this region a lot and backs one side or the other in some war. This is especially true of Yax Mutal, with the relatively recent discovery of a Teotihua embassy there, a shrine to Teotihua gods and Teotihua writing included. This goes to show just how complex Mesoamerica was even in this early stage, that an empire was able to keep tabs on affairs in the central Peten region from all the way in the basin of Anahuac. Like... Teotihuacan was actively
aware and interested in all the political drama of the Classic Maya world.
In 378 AD was the Teotihua 'entrada', a name evocative of colonial Spanish punitive expeditions, where there are multiple competing hypotheses for what exactly happened, and the more evidence we find the more questions we end up with. But point is there seems to be a coup of some kind that replaced the ruling dynasty in Yax Mutal with another that was either directly sent from Teotihuacan, had the tacit support and backing of Teotihuacan, or had no relation and just kissed Teotihuacan's ass to bolster their legitimacy and find a consistent ally to avoid being completely diplomatically isolated. Somewhat muddying the waters is that following the entrada, Maya inhabitants back in the capital seem to have been victims of a crackdown. Teotihua troops entered the district, disposed of some dissenters, vandalized their murals and confiscated their property. It also seems to have happened after a series of military setbacks in Yax Mutal. So if we take it to be a direct intervention or just supported coup, then it's possible Teotihuacan was motivated by their dissatisfaction with their ally and moved to support someone else perceived more capable of accommodating Teotihuacan's interest in the region.
Anyway the point here is that whichever theory you believe there's a new ruler in Yax Mutal now and he's recorded by the name Spearthrower Owl. No doubt in part because he's the one who introduces the Central Mexican style of atlatl-based warfare to the Maya world, and using these innovations is able to reverse Yax Mutal's setbacks ... for a time. Over time the atlatl grew to have an ancient and hallowed martial tradition. Even the gods themselves use spearthrowers as signature weapons that throw lightning and fire, etc. like Huitzilopochtli's "firespitter" he borrows from Xiuhtecuhtli, and Mixcoatl's atlatl with lightning darts. The atlatl becomes a big symbol of status, authority, prestige, and were ornately decorated - see Donald Slater's
Power Materialized: The Dart-thrower as a Pan-Mesoamerican Status Marker. Towards the latter quarter of the Classic, following the collapse of Teotihuacan and Dani Baan's hegemony we also see the beginnings of the famous
macuahuitl obsidian broadsword (this is what Hassig insists it should be called) in the form of those daggers mentioned before being elongated and taking on the familiar shape, albeit shorter and as a sidearm.
Which brings us to the Post-Classic, the 500 years or so immediately prior to the Spanish Conquest. Incidentally this is the best-understood time period not just for military developments but in general, and apart from his Toltec truthism also the point where Hassig becomes the most outdated, with his assertions about Aztec battlefield tactics being... kinda nonsensical to be honest, like insisting that both sides would charge at each other and meet in the middle like some Hollywood movie. He should have been a bit more critical of Spanish sources. While themselves imperfect John Pohl and Ian Heath have good work surrounding Post-Classic military systems. But in any case, there's another military revolution in the Post-Classic, and though it follows along the same lines as the Classic period changes it also diversifies so that the Late Post-classic situation is one where there are multiple different doctrines in use. This time the big game-changer is the re-introduction of the bow, which had made inroads into Mesoamerica (again) about the time of Teotihuacan's waning. Before you get any ideas I don't think there's anything to say bows (or some other military threat) caused Teotihuacan's decline or whatever. The evidence right now suggests some kind of massive popular uprising in the capital around 550 AD, perhaps caused by a botched response to a famine or other disaster.
In any case the Post-Classic opens with no major powers. Teotihuacan's gone, the "Toltecs" were a triad of cities at most, and after almost 1500 years the empire of Dani Baan has collapsed to civil war and dynastic conflict. The Classic Maya collapse has done away with the age of sacred kings there. So all the rules are rewritten, lots of upstart dynasties and peoples don't necessarily care about all this prestige surrounding the atlatl. So they're open-minded to what bows can do. Even those who haven't taken a liking to bows are going to gravitate to a new set of weapons. During the time of Teotihuacan is basically when obsidian craftsmanship reaches the maximum of mastery, and the scale of Post-Classic market systems ensured a steady supply of obsidian for basically everybody. While you might make points out of flint or chert occasionally before, now there was little reason to. Although textile armour was in use during previous periods it is in the Post-Classic that it becomes manufactured on a large scale to a higher standard.
It's the turmoil in the aftermath of Dani Baan's collapse that gives rise to a new empire and sort of the 'standard' template of what Post-Classic warfare was like before some serious changes start to happen. This is 8 Deer Jaguar Claw's empire of Yucu Dzaa, who in the 1080s* emerged as lord of Yucu Dzaa, then a minor subject of a highland city called Ñuu Tnoo, before overthrowing his master and embarking on a grand conquest where he subjugated 95 kingdoms and systematically exterminated every dynasty that wasn't his until he was the sole claimant to heir of Dani Baan's legacy. So significant were his feats that he was invited to the court of lord 4 Jaguar of Cholollan, an ancient Late Preclassic city which had become sort of a cultural and religious center of Mesoamerica. He took a pilgrimage there and was given a jade nose piercing and turquoise earrings, symbolic recognition of his power. Then, one of his generals, who had been a small boy when 8 Deer swept into his town and took him in after killing his parents, betrayed and captured him in 1115*, when he was offered as a sacrifice to the gods and Yucu Dzaa's new empire, though it would remain a strong regional power for the next 400 years (unconquered by the Aztec empire), gradually lost territories at the frontier and had to give concessions to minor lords and merchants in the heartland.
* = various different dates can be interpreted for either of these events, depending on corroboration and if we need to add/subtract 52 years.
The Mixtecs as most Mesoamerican peoples relate stories about 8 Deer and his rivals' wars with a heavy degree of myth and supernatural occurrences. When these lords went to war they summoned shapeshifters and controlled the weather. But even at this early time, bows were slowly starting to integrate with Mesoamerican doctrines, as although uncommon they were known during 8 Deer's time. Bows made taking and defending towns easier, the latter assuming you build your walls a little different. The early Postclassic saw some adaptations in the siege warfare department, particularly at Chichen Itza there is a mural that depicts what has been identified as a "siege tower", though not the type you might be thinking of. Rather than something they'd push up against the wall, it was more a wooden tower they built a distance outside the wall to allow atlatlists a vantage point to attack and suppress the defenders, giving the advancing columns some cover to approach with ladders or rams. Bows, with a longer range, greater ammunition capacity than atlatl, and fire arrows, would be even better for this. But given their sparse distribution in Oaxaca at this time it's uncertain how much they contributed to 8 Deer's success. It will be relevant later, though, to note that the Mixtecs did take up an archery tradition.
Hassig proposed that the macuahuitl and its predecessor shorter swords evolved concurrently and in response to bows, together with a consistent though not universal shift in shield design. Big rectangular shields were out, small round shields (like the
chimalli) were in, with a feather fringe that offered some protection against a glancing hit or deflected arrow for little increase in weight. This was motivated by a desire for melee troops to close distance as quickly as possible, in a world where bows could start dealing damage at greater range. Swordsmen then were mobile shock troops, the macuahuitl requiring great skill and precision to use effectively and thus favoring its use among the elite. Despite its decisive role and use by the "knights" of Mesoamerican society, no pre-Columbian art features the macuahuitl at all (perhaps just an aesthetic preference in the same way modern generals might be shown on horseback rather than in a tank). Another advantage of these adapted shield designs, however, and maybe just as important, was that melee troops could now also carry an atlatl and some darts. Rather than two separate formations, one unit could act in both roles, casting darts before engaging in close combat. This also freed up space and manpower for archers, either as skirmishers or a main firing line, though atlatlists / light infantry still had an important skirmishing "cavalry" role.
Ok so we're at the meat of the actual question now. That's the foundation of Triple Alliance (or "Aztec Empire") military doctrine. In a battle in the open field the
cuahchiqueh are armed with swords and small round shields, close with the enemy, cast 2-3 darts to cover their advance and then focus their efforts on breaking through the enemy's center. Soon, they're backed up by the
mayahqueh, or levies, armed with spears, carrying tall shields, they'd support the cuahchiqueh from the second rank and hold any ground they take, while allied auxiliaries recruited in frontier provinces fill the skirmishing and flanking role. The Aztec army did occasionally use bows, but not really integrated into the doctrine, partly because they were seen with a kind of contempt. Lots of the warrior aristocracy in Mesoamerica saw them as more like tools used by migrants and semi-nomads (like they had been for centuries by this point) rather than formidable battlefield weapons. Those who appreciated what the bow could do innovated on the basic self-bow design the Aztecs were basing their opinon on. Sinew-backed bows, a technology originating far to the north in Oasisamerica, eventually made its way south and came into use in Mexico. Stephen LeBlanc suggests something like a 50% increase in energy over self-bows, translating into range and stopping power. Additionally arrows became tipped with obsidian and made with straight timber rather than fire-hardened cane shafts.
Most of the Aztec adversaries who had consistent success resisting them were among those who adopted the bow, including the Tlaxcaltecs, though specifically the immigrants that came to Tlaxcallan. As the Triple Alliance expanded all around them, the Tlaxcaltecah turned to a peculiar strategy to defend their borders. Seeking asylum from Aztec power? Did the Aztecs kick you out of your homeland? Come to Tlaxcallan, we have land to spare, settle your village at our borders and defend our lands and you'll be a citizen just like any of us who've been here for generations. It so happened that most of the migrants were Otomi (or
Hñahñu) who had already cultivated an archery tradition.
The Nahua-speaking Tlaxcaltecs assembled in a main battle-line, bristling with spear-points - somewhat longer than those of their enemies - and retained the more "old-fashioned" tall rectangular shields. You might call it something like a phalanx, I suppose. They're less concerned with mobility as they outrange the Aztecs' skirmishers anyway and most of their battles had them assume a defensive posture. The Hñahñu meanwhile would be in the back and flanks with bows, showering arrows on the advancing enemy, keeping up the barrage even when the enemy was close. The Aztec shock infantry would press the center and try to break through it, pour out the other side, thus dividing the enemy army in two and putting friendlies in the rear. But the Tlaxcaltec response was simply to yield ground,
allowing the Aztec line to advance but not to break through, and the whole time arrows are coming at them, archers kiting the advance. Eventually the Aztecs get frustrated, try to advance too much, and so overextend themselves, by which point the counterattack would commence. This is the kind of shit Diego Camargo relates happening in Aztec-Tlaxcaltec wars, with battles that raged for 20 days continuously... supposedly. Even if you take that as an exaggeration it gets the point across that these were fierce, costly, long fights.
Part of the reason this strategy worked so well was Tlaxcallan's terrain. This area of highland Mexico is punctuated by numerous
barrancas, or broken ground, where steep elevation changes take place over relatively short distances. The Tlaxcaltec doctrine leveraged that perfectly. However, much of their success was also in the political and diplomatic sphere. Although Tlaxcallan was surrounded by the empire it assured a buffer zone around itself, backing every dissident in neighboring territories, promising material and logistical support to rebellions, installing friendly rulers on places like Huexotzinco and Cholollan, favoring certain claimants etc. basically just made sure that Aztec control there was always going to be somewhat tenuous. They went to extreme lengths to contest everything they could. Hence this region of the empire was so volatile and willing to erupt in massive revolt when Cortez landed. Cortez did very little of that - that was decades of Tlaxcaltec political engineering in the making, these places rebelled several times without his help.
Getting back to the Flower Wars thing, though, the Tlaxcaltecs must have realized that they couldn't keep this shit up forever and the rate of attrition would turn against them. This war of attrition is basically the strategy the empire took against them. Apart from mustering large-scale campaigns at the head of tens of thousands of combatants to invade Tlaxcaltec territory, there were raids coordinated every season, and the Triple Alliance set tribute requirements from its subjects in the area based on how much pressure they're perceived to put on Tlaxcallan. Tepeacac is the most notable example of this - it is actually the
only Aztec province that was required to send war captives to Tenochtitlan, and the whole idea of this is that it would force them to attack Tlaxcallan to get them. Other polities in the area like Cuauhchinanco and Acazacatlan, although subjects of the Triple Alliance, tried to play the warring powers against each other to get bargaining power for political privileges, the latter city for example portraying itself as semi-independent in colonial questionnaires (See
Aztec Imperial Strategies, Berdan et al). As the Tlaxcaltecs tried to interfere with the empire and create a buffer zone the Aztecs tried to exert pressure from forts, garrisons, and local allies to squeeze Tlaxcallan until it might finally give in. It didn't, at least not in time for the Spanish landing.
It is also worth noting though that Tlaxcallan was hardly the Aztecs' only enemy to focus on, one of their rivals was basically in their same weight class, the Irechecua Tsintsuntsani. The two shared a border with fascinating politics by itself that someone could get a whole PhD in. The stalwart kingdoms of Yopitzinco and Metztitlan also held out and a Zapotec-Mixtec coalition managed to set aside their differences and even reconquer land back from Aztec control, though this success was still pretty limited. So the pressure on Tlaxcallan wasn't always uniformly severe.
And how their republic worked, I'm very interested in systems of pre-modern republican governance like that.
As for Tlaxcallan's republic, it is worth noting that most Nahua-speaking city-states functioned at some level on the spectrum of council-rule. Most altepemeh in Late Post-classic Mesoamerica were elective monarchies with multiple high-ranking positions at the highest level of government which divided state power. This is partly why we insist on the literal translation of
tlatoani as speaker, rather than king, since the word king carries a more powerful authority kind of connotation. I point this out because sometimes we can get this idea of Tlaxcaltec exceptionalism, that they were the only ones to have this kind of ideology without any antecedents. In reality it's more that they were just further down the spectrum than most city-states, mostly for pragmatic reasons, with probably higher commoner - and even recent immigrant - participation. But part of the reason we're able to reconstruct Tlaxcallan's prehispanic government system at all is in part because of the precedent established by the kind of society and political economy prevalent among Nahua-speakers. Even the Triple Alliance had a good degree of social mobility, though a low-born person could only advance so far. In Tlaxcallan meanwhile there was little to stop a recent immigrant becoming supreme commander of the army - actually that literally happened.
So Tlaxcallan in more traditional historiography is regarded as a confederation of four city-states: Tizatlan, Ocotelulco, Quiahuiztlan, and Tepeticpac. Each had their own speaker who might become leader of the confederation, a position rotated among the four kingdoms every so often. This is indeed how Tlaxcallan operated in the colonial period, and these four places were likely prominent also in pre-Hispanic times (except Tizatlan) but there is no evidence for this political organization prior to 1545 when Tlaxcala was organized as a cabildo under the viceroyalty by Gomez de Santillan. In fact a 1541 census makes no mention of four lords or four towns and only alludes to "the governors and principals of Tlaxcala" while a 1548 census still mentions two lords from a city called Atlihuitzia and mentions that six individuals held status as Speaker. So clearly something else is going on here.
The evidence for republic, as described in Fargher & Blanton's papers
Tlaxcallan: The archaeology of an ancient republic in the New World and
Egalitarian Ideology and Political Power in Prehispanic Central Mexico: the case of Tlaxcallan is multi-faceted and pretty convincingly makes its case, particularly since there's an absence of evidence for any other type of political organization prior to the colonial period, when native landholders sued for hereditary rights they claimed to have. To break it down as succinctly as I can...
Archaeologically, we found no palaces in Tlaxcallan. Mesoamerican palatial complexes are very distinct and broadly quite similar to each other in ways a trained eye can pick out. Tlaxcallan has none of that, and it's unlikely they would be so divergent in the aspect of palace design when they borrowed from others as much as anybody else. At most, there is a low (1-2 meter) platform that could have supported a house no bigger than 1000 sq m, but may well have just been a plaza square. Excavations in candidate mounds found only small temples and the like. There were also no substantial pyramids built during Late-Postclassic Tlaxcallan. The capital of the "confederation" was an aggregate of 20+
tlaca neighborhoods, thus joining together the places called Ocotelulco, Quiahuiztlan, and Tepeticpac, among other districts with a total population estimated between 22,000-48,000. The only monumental site of any kind yet discovered was at Tizatlan, a small complex about a kilometer out across rough terrain from Tlaxcallan which is on the scale of Nezahualcoyotl's palace in Texcoco, but appears to fulfill a much different function. There is no evidence of any residential occupation - the plaza and mounds at Tizatlan appear to have just been traveled out to and used occasionally. Archaeologists believe Tizatlan was the meeting place of the Senate.
A Senate, you say? Where's the evidence for that? Partly from Spanish eyewitness accounts and native chroniclers. In his letters to Spain, Cortez said of the Tlaxcaltecs that they had "never had an over-all ruler" and, although he tried to lean on Maxixcatzin of Ocotelulco for advice during the Conquest, often found himself dealing with councils of two, four, seven, nine, and up to 50 "lords" of Tlaxcallan at once, all strange numbers if there are meant to be four confederated cities. It was 50 "men of rank" that visited Cortez' camp one day, interviewing the Spanish and taking notes, evidently in anticipation of a greater debate to take place, presumably in Tizatlan, about how to respond to the Spanish. Some, like Cook and Merrino Carrion, think that this 50 represents the entire council of Tlaxcallan, dominated by 10 "Speakers" and "four times that" in lesser "lords". The
Lienzo de Tlaxcala mentions 143 lords, while the
Padron de Nobles de Ocotelulco, the
Padrones de Tlaxcala, and the
Lienzo de Tepeticpac all mention 122 lords, apparently excluding Quiahuiztlan. All this suggests that the body may have been much larger, and the 50 men of rank the Spanish reported were a sort of committee assembled for the specific task of learning about their potential new and very peculiar allies.
This senate seems to have had the power to declare war, make peace, send ambassadors, propose alliances, and perhaps most importantly appoint and impeach political and military officials to/from their posts, up to and including the lords that made up the senate. Fargher and Blanton thus characterize it as a monitorial body that ensured a lord fulfilled his duties and punished (or executed) individuals who deviated from the moral code or council decisions. It reached these decisions through debate and speeches until a consensus was reached. No lord had any authority over any other lord, the only overall authority was the consensus of the senate itself. Important examples of this are seen during the conquest: after Xicotencatl the Younger lead the combined Tlaxcaltec force that initially attacked the Spanish, the council ordered him put to death (turned over to Cortez to be executed) and other lords led a force to apprehend him. He was charged with treason, opposing Tlaxcallan's decision to ally with the Spanish and embark on an offensive against Tenochtitlan. Meanwhile, even Maxixcatzin, one of the most likely candidates for a king of Tlaxcallan at that time if we had to pick one, was to be put to death for adultery. Maxixcatzin seems to have lacked the authority to act unilaterally, appealing his case in council, which then tried his brother, found him guilty, and sentenced him to death. This is easily contrasted with Nezahualcoyotl speaker of Texcoco, who at one point got into a similar situation; but as supreme judicial authority, he was able to resolve it unilaterally. Certainly some lords were more influential than others in Tlaxcallan - age, wealth, and a history of distinguished service seem to have been significant factors in political influence - but the senate itself remained the ultimate authority.
But the important part, and the distinction that leads us to call it a senate rather than just a giant oligarchy, is where the senators (just called lords in Nahuatl) came from, and who could become senator. Although the colonial period would emphasize four cities, evidence leans towards many other cities in the state of Tlaxcallan contributing lords to the senate. Such places mentioned include Tepeyanco, Tecoac (a majoritably Otomi settlement), Tecohuatzinco, Tzompantzinco, Atlihuitzia, and Hueyotlipan (also Otomi). The impression we get from the chronicles like Motolinia's and Camargo's however is that while lineal descent did influence status (Xicotencatl the Younger being a prominent example), the position of lord was not inherited but bestowed. Indeed, even if you would be in line to inherit your family's titles normally, it was ultimately up to the Senate if they wanted to grant you or someone else those possessions. Lords came from among commoners and recent immigrants, too, and some elites would fall out of favor and become commoners, a status the Tlaxcaltecs alone had a word for. Calling back to
my post on the calpolli system, once a lord was inducted to the senate through a ceremony, they were issued a teccali - public land meant to be used to enable a senator's obligations to the state. Thus, people not of noble birth were granted land when they joined the senate, and people
of noble service who failed in their duties or were ill-regarded by the senate for whatever reason were not granted inheritance.
The aforementioned ceremony is interesting - once the senate agreed to promote you as a member of their council, one had to undergo an elaborate ritual. He was initiated and socialized into this new role, receiving the septum piercing of a speaker, given an eagle's claw and a jaguar's bone to signify they had acted in the manner of Tezcatlipoca-Camixtli (Tlaxcallan's main deity - this post is too long already so I'll have to leave it at that but suffice it to say his patronage helped to legitimize the concept of common people in positions of power), and demonstrated his merit in service to the state. Then, the masses came by, tore the clothes from his body and hurled insults or pushed him, trying his patience. Assuming that he remained calm and tolerant in the face of abuse, the candidate was brought to a temple and remained there for a time of penance (primary sources say 1-2 years, but this is probably a bit exaggerating; another source says 40 to 60 days) during which time they were deprived of sleep, fasted, engaged in autosacrifice and introspection, until they emerged fully aware of their responsibility to the people and to the state, not themselves. At this point they would be dressed in rich clothes and presented with a bow to hold in their left hand (representing their new role as warrior and military leader) and a scepter to hold in the right (symbolic of their role as judge and administrator). Only after the festival that follows, which involves bestowing many gifts upon lords of the senate and commoners assembled at the party, is he finally allowed to sit as a member of the senate, speak on the floor, and vote. Note that this practice of induction ceremonies for positions of authority is hardly unique to Tlaxcallan - what is unique about them in this case however is how many commoners attended the festivities and participated in the ceremony - seemingly thousands.
If not lineal descent, what
really mattered to get the senate to promote you? Camargo relates that succession to lord status could be based on success in war, giving valuable advice or counsel, and successful commercial endeavors, while other sources assert that distinguished service in the priesthood could also earn you recognition and a senate seat. Motolinia, too, also corroborates this and indicates that the status was earned and not ascribed or inherited and that commoners could be promoted. In effect, distingiushed service to Tlaxcallan - service to the senate - was all it took to have social mobility.
