Chapter 20
Skywalker_T-65
Writer with too many ideas.
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Chapter 20
The Venice of Arcadia
Tenochtitlan, the City in the Lake, was a city of great beauty and majesty. Rising from the waters of Lake Texcoco, the city stood as a grand testament to her builders. The crown jewel of the Aztec throne and, perhaps, the greatest city in Arcadia, rivaled only by Constantinople herself. Where the City of the Romans was beautiful marble, capped by the glittering dome of Hagia Sophia, the City of the Aztec was color. Every color known to man, spread out over buildings and through winding canals that put Venice to shame. Brilliant red and blue topping the great pyramid at its center, rising above all else. The Venice of Arcadia
This city surpassed all her challengers in the region. As a sign of the Aztec power, it was unmatched. A city full of riches and vibrant with life, even as the stench of death clung to its center.
Beautiful as it may have been, it was a fool who believed it defenseless as a result. Lacking grand walls such as Constantinople possessed, Tenochtitlan relied on the very land upon which it sat. The lake was the ultimate defense, as only manmade causeways connected the city to the surrounding land. The bridges of these causeways could be retracted, cutting off all access to the city. Furthermore, the Aztec were excellent warriors upon their lake, and quite capable of repulsing assaults from the water. Tenochtitlan was, if not impregnable, a very difficult city to besiege. The beauty of the city hid much of its strength.
-- 'On the Aztec Empire', Lesson at Munich University, 1974
Until, of course, the Triple Alliance was founded. Instability in Azcapotzalco- generally attributed to poor leadership and a succession crisis -gave rise to a rebellion by their subjects. Tenochtitlan, the leader, of the Mexica. The Acolhua of Tetzcoco and the Tepanec of Tlacopan.[2] These three cities, and their own subjects, would overthrow Azcapotzalco's dominance and establish what would become known as the Aztec Empire. The Triple Alliance, while theoretically an alliance of equals, would quickly become an Empire seated in Tenochtitlan, with the other two cities subordinated to the Mexica.
It was this state of affairs that lead to the explosive growth of the city. Not unlike Constantinople, transformed from sleepy Byzantium into the glorious Second Rome.
For the huts and wooden temples of Tenochtitlan gave way to grand buildings of stone. The city subsumed her neighbors upon the island in Texoco, integrating them or turning them into little more than subordinate boroughs. The wealth of the growing Empire, the desire to live at the beating heart of such a powerful state, caused explosive growth. It is easy to forget, perhaps, with as much time has passed since the events being covered. The growth of Tenochtitlan from a small tributary to a city that rivaled the greatest in Europe- rivaled even Constantinople -took less than a century. The Triple Alliance overthrew Azcapotzalco in 1428, less than a century before the arrival of the Spanish in Mesoarcadia. In that time, Tenochtitlan became the city that would be besieged by the Spanish and Tlaxcala.
This growth would, along with the subordination of the other Alliance members, be what created the dominion of Tenochtitlan. With the city becoming a massive center of military, religion, and trade, it created a self-feeding system. More and more resources were poured into making the city grander. This drew more people who required more resources. It is no surprise that one of the most notable features of Tenochtitlan was the grand bazaar at the heart of the city. Men and women from every corner of the Aztec domain could be found, trading goods from as far as the faded cities of the Maya in the south, to coastal settlements far to the north. Tenochtitlan had become a cosmopolitan center that would, honestly, be very familiar to any merchant from Europe. Were it not for the darkness lingering around the temples, the bloodstained edifices rising high above everything else, it is possible that the city would have become known as a rival to those European meccas. As it was, the sacrifices stained the city in the eyes of those who saw it, regardless of the beauty of the rest of the city.
This is a sad state of affairs, as there was many aspects of Tenochtitlan that had nothing to do with the religion of the rulers.
Where these canals differed from Venice was in the maintenance of them. The Aztec maintained a system of levees and other constructions, designed to keep the brackish water of the Lake out and to keep the waters of the canals clean. Anyone who visited Venice could instantly tell an outsider that, for all the beauty of the city, the canals were waters that few would want to risk swimming in. Whereas the canals of Tenochtitlan lacked the smell of sewage and were, generally, clean and fresh. This ingenious system, painstakingly built up and maintained over the decades of the city's growth, was arguably a wonder of the world. A city that should have rested upon dirty waters was, instead, fresh and sparkling in the sun.
Of course, the canals were not the only impressive work of water in Tenochtitlan.
Much as with ancient Roman settlements, Tenochtitlan possessed a system of aqueducts to transport fresh water into the city. These impressive constructions, differing from those of the Romans, were built largely of compacted clay. Terracotta. While it is true that this left them more vulnerable to erosion in comparison to those of Europe, these aqueducts still provided for all the freshwater needs of a city that could not rely on the brackish water of the lake it rested upon. This is not an insignificant achievement, as general estimates placed the peak of Tenochtitlan's population around two-hundred-thousand souls. [3] Especially as the water was relied upon for bathing, twice daily, as well as for drinking and other such uses.
This freshwater, used for drinking, cooking and bathing, was a major weakness even as it was a triumph of Aztec ingenuity. The aqueduct was necessary for the survival of the grand city, and were it to be cut off, this would cause terrible consequences. It was not an unheard of event. The original aqueduct, built of even less resilient material, was destroyed by natural causes and this left the city crippled. The newer system, double layered and redundant in the event one needed repairs, was still a vulnerability. If a besieging army were to cut off the water supply from the aqueduct, the city would quickly run low on water.
This should not diminish the accomplishment of constructing this system. Without the stonework of the Romans, the Aztec had created an aqueduct system that supplied a city that was, even in conservative estimates, many times more populated than many cities of Europe. Coupling this with the levees and other methods to keep the waters of the city itself fresh and clean, and the Aztec capital had some of the most singularly impressive works of aquatic engineering in the world. Certainly in the New World.
Another feature of the Aztec city that set it apart from many others could be found in an edict by Motecuhzoma I, in the middle of the 15th Century. While Europe was consumed in the end of the Middle Ages, and while Constantinople was first besieged and then given salvation, the Aztec leader created a system of education that was more advanced than many in the world at the time. Every neighborhood was required to possess a temple or school to educate the youth, such a system looking remarkably modern for the age it was constructed. It was not, in the end, the same as modern public education. It was a system focused, unsurprisingly, on religion and on military specialization. It was, somewhat, similar to the religious schools of Europe, only on a much grander scale.
These schools and temples, preparing the Aztec youth for religious ceremony and warfare, were part of a larger social system that was surprisingly advanced for its time. The people of Tenochtitlan were divided in manners not dissimilar from modern city planning. The largest divisions, the calpulli- 'big house' -were family groupings, generally made up commoner families. These macehaultin families were gathered together under the leadership of nobility, the pipiltin, into specific and well-divided neighborhoods. Each of which was, in turn, laid out around a central tiyanquiztli, a marketplace. Tenochtitlan was, in defiance of many cities, laid out in something resembling a proper grid fashion, using these family groupings and neighborhoods as the basis. The canals furthered this divide, creating something that would feel at least passingly familiar to modern eyes in a way that many other cities of similar age wouldn't.
For how impressive this all was, the object that defines popular understanding of the Aztec capital- then and now -is the massive central temple, the Templo Mayor, as the Spanish coined it.
As could be expected of such a massive structure, it was at the heart of Tenochtitlan, both physically and metaphorically. All of the city revolved around the religious ceremonies held at the Temple, from the human sacrifice that so defined the Aztec, to more traditional dances and games. For every man who had his heart cut out, there were dances performed by athletes and trained dancers.[4]
The temple itself was only the core of a larger, walled, ceremonial area at the heart of Tenochtitlan. This area was dedicated to the Aztec religion, possessing many smaller temples around the pyramid. As well as the residences of the Aztec Emperors, in a fashion similar to other Mesoarcadian societies. While the rest of Tenochtitlan was divided into neighborhoods for both nobility and commoners, the walled center was a ceremonial area they were only allowed to visit, not live within. For all of that, though, it was not uncommon to see many throngs of people moving throughout the center, at any given time. For both worship and other, more mundane, reasons to visit.
In the years after the arrival of the Romans, and before the Spanish arrived, however...the ceremonial center was used far more than it once had been. First out of a desperation for intervention against the Romans and their allies, battering the Aztec armies in ways they had never faced before. Then in supplication, asking for forgiveness, as thousands upon thousands of Aztec citizens fell ill and died to the diseases the Romans had brought with them. Tenochtitlan was hit harder than most, for all the subdivisions did little to alleviate the fact that many thousands of people lived in close proximity to one another. And this was without even the primitive medical knowledge that the Romans could supply to natives they were in friendlier relations with.
It is impossible to know, for sure, how many perished. From disease or sacrifice to try and appease the clearly angry gods.
The generally accepted estimates range from anywhere in the tens of thousands, to as high as over one-hundred thousand. Or, about half of the population of Tenochtitlan pre-Roman contact. The ravages of disease tore through the beautiful city, gutting it in ways that no armed conflict ever could have done. Men, women, children. They were all killed by the unfeeling diseases, weakened and confined to beds for lack of proper medical care. Had disease ravaged the city in concert with a besieging army, it is entirely probable that Tenochtitlan would have fallen. No city could survive a siege when half of the population was sick or dying.
That was not the case. The Romans, under Demetrios, had not pushed so far. The Purépecha, as much as they hated the Aztec, had not desired to lay siege to their capital. Not at the time it was ravaged by disease, disease that was crippling to the Roman's allies as well.
By the time the Spanish and Tlaxcalan force arrived, Tenochtitlan had largely recovered. There were still many, many empty districts and crumbling houses. In many ways, it resembled Constantinople, prior to the siege by Mehmed. A once-grand city, gutted by events outside its control. Yet recover it had. Tenochtitlan may have had empty and crumbling homes, but the city endured. The population had begun to bounce back and recover, and those who had survived the ravages of disease brought by the Romans, would not fall prey to that brought by the Spanish. Not in anything resembling the great die-offs of previous decades.
Cortés would arrive to a city that, battered and bruised as it had been, was ready for him. A beautiful city that, for all the darkness in its heart, remained strong and true to itself.
1. The Aztec Triple Alliance, and the tributaries thereof, were made of many different- if related -tribal groups and peoples. The Mexica were the most powerful, and Tenochtitlan was their city. The heart of their people and the core of their powerbase. It is no mistake that the Mexica are generally regarded as the most prolific source on ancient Mesoarcadia, with many of their names carrying over even in areas they had conquered.
2. The other two cities of the Triple Alliance were ruled by 'sister cultures' of the Mexica. Tlacopan is of particular interest, as they were of the same Tepanec people as the city of Azcapotzalco that had ruled over Tenochtitlan. Tlacopan would, indeed, take the place of Azcapotzalco as the heart of Tlacopan culture, in the wake of the prior city's fall to the Triple Alliance.
3. Estimates of Tenochtitlan's population, pre-plague, are hard to verify. They range from as low as 100,000 to as high as 400,000. The truth is, as is common in these cases before reliable censuses, probably somewhere between the two extremes. By the time the Spanish arrived, it is probable that the city was at the low end of its population, though likely not as small as Constantinople's had been when Mehmed had laid siege to it.
4. Not in literal terms, though the general point remains. For all the blood-soaked nature of the Aztec religion, not even the heart of that faith was used just for heart-cutting. The temple in Tenochtitlan was used, just as often, for more mundane celebrations and rituals that would not have been out of place in Europe, save for the nature of the pagan faith.
AN: Apologies. I had planned on getting this sooner, but having to rebuild a new Discord server from the ground up (and scramble to do that) threw things out of whack. Then I got distracted by working on other stuff and...yeah.
I decided to push the siege back to the next update, mostly because in researching for that, I decided I wanted to focus on Tenochtitlan first. It really is a fascinating city that gets overlooked a lot, because our 'friend' Cortés decided he wanted to tear it all to the ground (not even all the Spanish agreed with this choice). Which is a crime and a half, in my mind. Yes, you can't get around the Aztec being blood-soaked assholes themselves, but...
Tenochtitlan was a jewel of the world. Arguably surpassing the great cities of Europe in many ways. Calling it the Venice of the Americas is, in some ways, a disservice to it. It was a surprisingly modern city that was beautiful and clean. Had it been the center of a less blood-obsessed civilization, we might be talking about how it is the heart of Mexico. But...well. We know how that went.
I felt it deserved at least this much.
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