Cortés now sends emissaries to Moctezuma with…
October 1519 CE
Cortés now sends emissaries to Moctezuma with the message that the people of Cholula had treated him with trickery and had therefore been punished.
In one of his responses to Cortés, Moctezuma blames the commanders of the local Aztec garrison for the resistance in Cholula, and recognizing that his long-standing attempts to dissuade Cortés from coming to Tenochtitlan with gifts of gold and silver had failed, Moctezuma finally invites the Spaniards to visit his capital city, according to Spanish sources.
Tenochtitlán-Tlatelolco, home to more than one hundred and fifty thousand by 1519, the year the Spanish arrive, is laid out on a grid plan and covers more than 4.6 square miles (twelve square kilometers), much of this consisting of reclaimed swampland that forms a zone of fertile garden plots around the edge of the city.
At the center of Tenochtitlan is a large walled precinct, the focus of religious activity, containing the main temples (dedicated to Huitzilopochtli, Tlaloc the Rain God, and Quetzalcoatl); also found here are schools and priests' quarters, a court for the ritual ballgame, a wooden rack holding the skulls of sacrificial victims, and many commemorative sculptures.
Just outside the precinct walls lie the palaces of Montezuma II and earlier rulers.
A ten-mile (sixteen-kilometer) dike seals off part of the lake and controls flooding, so that Tenochtitlán, stands, Venice-like, on an island in an artificial lagoon.
Causeways link the island to the lake shore, and canals reach to all parts of the city.