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It forced his hand, absolutely. And it was a strategic nightmare. It nearly killed everyone, too.With the distance, we tend to think that these events happened all right after each other. They didn’t.Also note the Temple massacre didn’t happen under Cortés and it’s hard to argue it was his responsibility - and while Cortés could be cruel when it suited him like any warrior of his time and place, wanton pointless murder was certainly not his style. Cortés was much more charm, diplomacy and sure, treachery at the last minute, but with a smile.With all I’ve read about Hernán Cortés, if I had to put a modern “equivalent” to his overall behavior, it would be Hans Landa.Calm, rational, diplomatic. Calculating. Authentically charming. Oh, he’ll kill you if he needs to without a second thought, but he’ll do it with a smile, and explaining how it’s really best for you, it really is… And he’s just as ready to negotiate with the other side. Of anything. What’s in it for me? is the constant question, but he actually would let you win too if that meant you both got what you wanted… and he ended up on top and took all the credit.In fact, this behavior is precisely the reason why the crown, even as they celebrated his conquests, always kept him at arm’s length. He had a tendency to take over things, audacity and tremendous luck.But you see, Hernán Cortés had left Pedro de Alvarado in charge.Flamboyant, Charismatic, a veteran of campaigns against the Moors and well-to-do son and grandson of comendadores, and notably cruel to both Spanish and Natives, Pedro de Alvarado (“Tonatiuh”, as the natives nicknamed him because of his reddish blonde hair, which looked like a setting sun) was an Extremeño who had traveled to the New World around 1510 and was known for his extreme brutality (even for the times), for being greedy and quick to anger. By the time he joins the expedition of Cortés and travels with him, he is already a wealthy, prosperous and influential hacendado in Cuba.But Cortés, you see, had stolen the expedition from Diego Velázquez, the governor of Cuba. And Velázquez had to outfit another, three times as strong expedition, under Pánfilo de Narváez, to go arrest Cortés. This took time, which Cortés used to advance his own campaign in Veracruz and central Mexico, which at that point had netted being cordially invited in to stay at palace, where they’d essentially “taken over” Emperor Moctezuma.While they were taking over over there, the Narváez expedition arrived and took over Cortés’ settlement in Veracruz while the bulk of Cortés’ troops (and his Tlaxcalan allies) were in Mexico City. The idea was to arrest him when he returned, and continue the expedition in the name of the one that originally paid for both, Governor Velázquez.So Cortés had to go “respond” to this.Supposedly, while Cortés was gone (and fought Narváez by ambushing him at night, taking out Narváez’s right eye, and tripling the size of his expedition - “so you’re going to join me and be rich or die… what’s the answer? That’s-a-bingo!!!!”), the Tlaxcalans that were part of Cortés forces (and could speak Náhuatl) apparently made Alvarado paranoid, telling him that now that the forces at the palace were smaller, the Aztec army would take over and sacrifice the Spanish as part of the temple celebrations that were to be held. Essentially goading them into fighting, because the Tlaxcalans were tired of waiting.It worked.Either that or they were disgusted by seeing pagan rituals because they were super Catholic. Take your pick.Sure, why not, kid?Either way, rather than wait for something that may or may not happen (the killing wasn’t going to, the religious event was), the hot-headed Pedro de Alvarado (which is by the way how you nickname a person who is cruel to Mexicans to this day, a-la “Benedict Arnold”) and his men closed the doors of the Temple and proceeded to murder elder, women and children, and large swaths of the unarmed noble and priestly class who was in attendance, all of them unarmed, in extremely gory fashion.May 10, 1520.I will save the gory details (of which there are many) of the first mass-witnessing of Spanish steel and wanton cruelty by the refined noble class of Tenochtitlán, but suffice to say that, once the City Guard was alerted, the Spanish could only retreat to nearby Moctezuma’s palaces, and were now under siege.Cortés was told of this and had to return at night, and sneak into the palace.Oh, to have been a fly in the wall when Cortés confronted the man he left in charge with the instructions “do nothing, just stay here and keep cool” - you did what?This ruined all chances Cortés had of achieving the ambition he constantly wrote about in his Cartas de Relación, which was to deliver Tenochtitlán - and the entire Aztec empire - to the Spanish empire in diplomatic moves, “intact, like a beautiful and delicate flower”, by making captive then converting Emperor Moctezuma to Christianity, and convincing him to give up his empire in a bout of Stockholm Syndrome.Ironically, by all accounts, Cortés and Moctezuma became friends during the captivity, although Moctezuma suffered, as one would, from what today we’d recognize as clinical depression.The siege of the palace lasted over a month. A tense impasse, because they couldn’t assault the palace without the emperor dying. In Moctezuma’s absence and after the affront of the murders at the High Temple, Cuitlahuac - a warrior - was named Emperor.Monument to Cuitlahuac and Cuahutemoc, Ave Insurgentes y Reforma, Mexico CityCortés attempted to get Moctezuma to appeal to his people, but whether a knife at his side once he wasn’t useful (the Aztec account) or being pelted by stones by his own people who rejected him (the Spanish account), he died in the attempt. It was June 29, 1520.The artist of the left illustration drew him Apache. I don’t know why, because Aztecs didn’t dress like that. And the artist on the right also made the palaces… European. Oh boy. Well, you get the idea.Cortés and his people tried to sneak away on the night of the 30th of June to save their lives and, importantly, extract the enormous treasure of amazing jewelry gifted to them, which they had over the days painstakingly melted into gold bars. They had been told natives didn’t fight at night.They were wrong.They were found out, reportedly by a woman who was washing her clothes, who yelled “the murderers are leaving in the night, like cowards!” and warned the neighbors, and the guard. The battle of the Sad Night (Noche Triste) ensued.It was an unmitigated disaster for the Spanish, and this is all, I think, directly attributable to the actions of Pedro de Alvarado at the temple.An undoubtedly self-serving legend of Don Pedro de Alvarado “jumping the canal” to save himself - some say with his horse, others say by pole-vaulting, occurred on this night.Seville has a street named after this, called “Salto de Alvarado”, and Mexico City has another, “Puente de Alvarado” which is said to have been the actual Canal he jumped, though nobody knows the exact spot (or if he actually did this, or why it is supposed to be heroic if he was fleeing and he only saved himself, for that matter). Or did this happen later, during the invasion? Who knows, I forget.Most of the Spanish “de a pié” (on foot), however, weren’t that lucky (as our Spanish cousins would say, “qué buen vasallo… si tuviese buen señor”).Many Spanish died. Some killed by arrows, but many others drowned. Many horses and a lot of equipment were also lost. When they heard the Spanish were escaping, the Aztecs had taken out the small movable bridges that let people cross the canals, and the Spanish, being chased, confused, and in the dark, fell and drowned, the extreme weight of armor and the gold they were carrying (and sometimes even their own horses) sending them straight to the bottom of the pitch-black lake. A way to go as horrible as being gutted in your own holy temple in the daytime.The trauma that this caused to both populations means we know a lot - and search for more - about this night. It was the night the conquest almost didn’t happen (because if Cortés hadn’t escaped, who’s to say the Aztecs wouldn’t have taken over and reinforced Tlaxcala and resisted another expedition, fighting tooth and nail?).And yet we only know about it because they survived to tell the tale.Almost 500 years later, while building the Mexico City downtown subway, we still find little thin bars of gold, and pieces of armor, as well as pieces of bone, because the skeletons are long gone. And we are still finding other items and artifacts that are traced to that very night. In 2017 and 2018, they found the area where they are sure Cortés and Alvarado’s forces lived until that night, based on archeological evidence.Gold bars which are still occasionally found under the Mexico City downtown square, along with the type of jewelry they melted down. Loaded with these, many people drowned due to their own greed.As night became day and they were finally allowed a breather, by his own account, Cortés’ men were almost all wounded, some seriously.And after taking a bit of time to regroup and cry (and imagine bare-breasted ladies in Romanesque outfits rooting for you, apparently), those who barely escaped with their lives after the night they fled Tenochtitlán, and made it through the subsequent bloody battle at Otompán (which is now called Otumba, because Cortés, in poetic flare, called “O tumba de mis soldados” (oh the Tomb of my soldiers), left for the safety of their allies, Tlaxcala.It would take another almost full year (from the events at the Noche Triste on Jun 30, 1520) for Cortés to heal, train, get more reinforcements from both Spain and Tlaxcala, and to build - with Tlaxcalan labor - the small ships that could carry cannon and return for a massive amphibious assault, on May 26, 1521, which destroyed the city block by block.So much for delivering it intact.In the interim, a smallpox epidemic ravaged Tenochtitlán, and even took warrior emperor Cuitlahuac, who was replaced with Cuahutémoc, the last Azec Emperor.Cortés took token forces to “negotiate” with all the neighboring cities, alternatively threatening and promising everything and anything, in order to deny the capital of supplies. The siege of Tenochtitlán was one of the most massive in history.The rest is history.Cortés lived until 1544, in debt towards the end of his life and angry with the crown for not giving him a pension. He died of pleurisy in Seville, and to (partly) comply with his wishes, he was eventually moved to a nondescript, seldom used Chapel in Mexico City, and during Mexican independence, he was moved away (telling people he’d sent them to Italy) and was then re-placed in a different spot of the same church years later in secret (which was kept for 123 years and was “rediscovered” in the 1940s), where he rests today, a small red plaque and coat of arms the only thing adorning a covered and painted hole in a wall which contains his urn, and which you’ll definitely miss if you don’t come looking specifically for it.The last resting place of Conquistador Hernán Cortés, still in the city he loved yet destroyed (and then rebuilt). He’s at peace, but nobody wants a bigger reminder.Pedro de Alvarado conquered other places in the same bloody fashion, and died in 1541 (only three years before Cortés), in a bout of poetic justice, crushed by an inexperienced soldiers’ horse, while they were fleeing from a counterattack by Chichimeca natives near Guadalajara, today in the state of Jalisco, in the Mixtón war, prompted by his mistake of ordering an attack on an unknown number of natives (which is today estimated at 15,000) instead of awaiting for reinforcements. He got his clock cleaned.I guess he couldn’t jump out of that one.But “Que buen vasallo, que accidentalmente mató al señor”.Top left, Pedro de Alvarado, pictured dead. Next to his head, the symbol that made him known - the sun - “Tonatiuh”.Reportedly, his innards thoroughly destroyed, it took him a few days of agony to die.Be nice to others, kids; Karma is tough.It didn’t do any good either. On and off, the Chichimeca nation resisted Spanish incursions and conquests for another 50 years, until 1590.Reportedly, his bones do not rest in peace - El conquistador “sangriento” no descansa en paz.Pedro de Alvarado was buried first in Michoacán, then was moved by his daughter to a Cathedral in Antigua, Guatemala (city which he founded) and was eventually removed and sat next to a judges’ desk in a wooden box, because nobody wanted them. After a couple more “hops” and some frustration because nobody would take his bones and the proposal of making a monument to him was unpalatable to most Guatemalans, he was moved back, quietly, to the same Cathedral.So no, Pedro de Alvarado’s mass-murder was, at best, a tremendous tactical and strategic mistake which nearly ruined the whole project and would have without Cortés fixing it; at worst, an example of a pattern of behavior of a man that only saw and only understood violence, tended to bite more than he could chew and seemed to have a knack for making things worse and causing unnecessary death on both sides in order to self-aggrandize, pattern which eventually caught up to him in what’s essentially the opposite of a heroic death (by your own horses, while fleeing).