american-holocaust

78 AMERICAN HOLOCAUSTof the Aztec leaders-Cortes prepared to attack again. First, he had shipsconstructed that were used to intercept and cut off food supplies to theisland capital. Then he destroyed the great aqueduct that brought freshwater to the city. Finally, the Spanish and their Indian allies laid siege tothe once brilliant white metropolis and its dwindling population of diseasedand starving people."Siege," as Inga Clendinnen has observed, was for the Aztecs "the antithesisof war." Viewing it as cowardly and dishonorable, "the deliberateand systematic weakening of opposition before engagement, and the deliberateimplication of noncombatants in the contest, had no part in theirexperience." 73 But it had been the European mode of battle for many centuries,deriving its inspiration from the Greek invention of ferocious andmassively destructive infantry warfare. 74 To the Spanish, as to all Europeanswhen committed to battle, victory-by whatever means-was all thatmattered. On the other side, for reasons equally steeped in ancient tradition,the people of T enochtitlan had no other option than to resist dishonorand defeat until the very end.The ensuing battle was furious and horrifying, and continued on formonths. Tenochtitlan's warriors, though immensely weakened by the deadlybacteria that had been loosed in their midst, and at least initially hobbledby what Clendinnen calls their "inhibition against battleground killing,"were still too formidable an army for direct military confrontation. SoCortes extended his martial strategy by destroying not only the Aztecs'food and water supplies, but their very city itself. His soldiers burned magnificentpublic buildings and marketplaces, and the aviaries with theirthousands of wondrous birds; they gutted and laid waste parks and gardensand handsome boulevards. The metropolis that the Spanish had justmonths earlier described as the most beautiful city on earth, so dazzlingand beguiling in its exotic and brilliant variety, became a monotonous pileof rubble, a place of dust and flame and death.Because of the way the city was built on canals, however, burning wasnot always the most efficient means of despoliation. Often "we levelled thehouses to the ground," recalled Bernal Diaz, "for if we set fire to themthey took too long to burn, and one house would not catch fire fromanother, for each house stood in the water, and one could not pass fromone to the other without crossing bridges or going in canoes." 75 Every daythe Spanish crushed houses and other buildings in the city, and piled thedebris into the canals; and each night the Aztecs dredged the canals in adesperate effort to keep the waters running free. Some captured Indiansfinally told the Spanish just how bad things were for the city's residents.Recalled Cortes:We now learnt from two wretched creatures who had escaped from the cityand come to our camp by night that they were dying of hunger and used to