Smallpox reaches Tenochtitlan
A smallpox epidemic swept the Mexica capital in the last months of 1520, in the interval between the expulsion of Cortés's force from the city and the siege that took it the following August. Among the dead was the ruler Cuitláhuac. The Nahua testimony gathered a generation later for Book XII of the Florentine Codex describes the disease from within the city: sores covering the body, immobility so complete that the sick could not turn over, and death by starvation for those with no one left able to bring them food. The military conquest of 1521 was conducted against a population already broken by an epidemic that had arrived ahead of the army.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- Tenochtitlan · city · Mexico
- The post-contact population collapse of the Americas · phenomenon · The Americas · not located
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent. This is the standing of the weakest source, not an average.
Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España (Florentine Codex), Book XII
Contemporary Nahua testimony describing the 1520 smallpox epidemic in Tenochtitlan from within the city. V55 verification basis: NOT consulted in this session — neither the manuscript nor a published edition was accessible. The description of the epidemic passage is given from the author's knowledge of the Anderson and Dibble translation. Note also that the Codex is a compilation made a generation after the events by informants recalling them, which is a limitation of the source itself and not only of this session.
Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence · compiled c. 1545–1590 · Partly verified
Bernardino de Sahagún and his Nahua collaborators, Florentine Codex, Book XII (the conquest of Mexico), held at the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence; standard English edition by Anderson and Dibble
The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492
Establishes the biological framing of post-1492 contact — crops, livestock and pathogens moving between hemispheres — used throughout this pack. V55 verification basis: this session had no outbound network access (WebFetch blocked by egress policy, WebSearch budget exhausted), so the book was not consulted; the citation is given from the author's knowledge and the work is a standard, widely held title that a curator can verify in any research library catalogue.
Greenwood Press · 1972 · Partly verified
Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1972)
Recorded on Tenochtitlan
- Smallpox reaches Tenochtitlan
- Atmospheric CO₂ reaches a minimum recorded in Antarctic ice
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.