Flower war

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A flower war or "Flowery war" (from Nahuatl xōchiyāōyōtl) is the name given to the battles fought between the Aztec Triple Alliance and some of their enemies: most notably the citystates of Tlaxcala, Huexotzinco, Atlixco and Cholula. The exact nature of the Flower Wars is not well determined but a number of different interpretations of the concept exist. The widely accepted idea of the Flower Wars is that it was a special institutionalized kind of warfare where two enemy states would plan battles through mutual arrangement in order to satisfy the religious need of both parts for war captives for religious sacrifice, but possibly also to train young warriors, and enable social mobility which for the lower classes was primarily possible through military service. This view is based on a number of quotes from early chroniclers and also from the letters of Cortés. However in recent years this interpretation has been doubted by scholars such as Nigel Davies ^[1] and Ross Hassig ^[2] who argues that "the mutual arrangement" of the flower war institution is dubious, and suggest that Flowery War was in fact a low intensity sustained conflict with the Aztec side trying to fatigue the Tlaxcalteca in order to later conquer them entirely.

[edit] Sources

In his Diego Durán states that the Flower wars were instigated by the Aztec Cihuacoatl^[3], Tlacaelel because of a great famine during the reign of Moctezuma I, and it was proclaimed that human sacrifices were necessary, so a treaty was signed between Tenochtitlan (the Aztec capital), Texcoco, Tlaxcala and Huexotzingo to engage in ritual battles to provide fresh victims. However another source that of Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin mentions an earlier Flower War between Mexica and the Chalca.

The sixteenth century chronicle a History of Tlaxcala, by Tlaxcallan Diego Muñoz Camargo contains a legend of a powerful Tlaxcalteca warrior called Tlahuiçole, who was captured, but because of his fame as warrior, he was freed and then fought with the Aztec against the Tarascans in Michoacan. He received honors, but instead of returning to Tlaxcala he chose to die in sacrifice. There were eight days of celebrations in his honor, and then he killed the first eight warriors. Still insisting on being sacrificed, he fought and wounded 20 more warriors before being defeated and sacrificed .

[edit] Discussion

Aztec warriors are said to have been trained to prefer capturing their enemies in battle, rather than killing. This behaviour has been cited as another reason for the defeat of their civilization by the Europeans; ^{[cite this quote]} to the Aztecs' amazement, the Spanish conquistadors and their allies actually tried to kill their enemies in battle. But this idea has largely been dismissed by Matthew Restall ^[4] who makes it clear that the indigenous warriors quickly adapted their strategies to this kind of warfare, and provided the Spanish forces with excellent resistance.

[edit] Notes

1. ^ he advances this interpretation in the book Los Señorios Independientes del Imperio Azteca UNAM, 1968
2. ^ Hassig, Ross; Aztec Warfare: Imperial Expansion and Political Control; Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988.
3. ^ first advisor to the Tlatoani
4. ^ *Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest by Matthew Restall, Oxford University Press (2003) ISBN 0-19-516077-0