Cuitlahuac

Cuitlahuac won and then died of a disease he had no way to fight. He came to the throne with the Spanish inside his city and drove them out of it — a real defeat, with Spanish losses heavy enough that they remembered the night by name — and then smallpox, which had arrived in the same ships, went through Tenochtitlan and killed him inside four months. It is the single clearest instance of the pattern that decided the conquest: the Mexica could beat the Spanish in the field and could not beat what came with them.

Parentage

• Axayacatl

Domains

• sovereignty

Relations

• sibling: Moctezuma II

Sources

• Reference treatment of Cuitláhuac, his expulsion of the Spanish and his death from smallpox.