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could wear only the simplest type of mantle, and no cotton clothing. Thus, the importance of the nobility was further emphasized, both as a group and as individuals, and the maintenance of their position was increasingly tied to military success and continued imperial expansion. |
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The Aztecs next turned to the Gulf coast area, beginning a lengthy campaign with a major thrust and continuing at an intermittent low level between and during campaigns elsewhere.
42 Aztec ambassadors had been sent to Ahuilizapan (present-day Orizaba) and Cuetlachtlan (Cotaxtla) to ask for shells for their goda standard gambit seeking an admission of vassalage (see map 7). The emissaries were killed, however, and the news was brought to Tenochtitlan by merchants from Ixtlapalapan. |
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Such occurrences were common in the history of Aztec expansion. If a city felt it was sufficiently strong to resist encroachment, it would reject Aztec blandishments, often with fatal results for the Aztec messengers. In the case of Cuetlachtlan the assessment of relative strength was not made in isolation or in ignorance of wider events in Mesoamerica. The Aztecs had just vanquished the Coaixtlahuacas but had suffered large casualties. This was learned by spies from Tlaxcallan and Huexotzinco in Tenochtitlan, and with Aztec military capability impaired these enemies seized the opportunity to thwart the Aztecs in the east. Thus they urged Ahuilizapan and Cuetlachtlan to revolt and promised to support them. |
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Individual city-states in central Mexico were vulnerable to conquest by stronger polities, so they attempted to form alliances as a matter of self-defense, usually with a regional power. But the Aztecs eventually dominated all the nearby and accessible cities and left no viable alternative alliance partners in the basin of Mexico. Given the Aztecs' considerable resources, no regional power was able to compete for allies close to the imperial heartland. But more distant regional powers could compete for towns adjacent to themselves or even farther from Tenochtitlan. Thus the alliance that, at one time or another, was made up of various configurations of Tlaxcallan, Huexotzinco, Atlixco, Cholollan, and Tliliuhqui-Tepec offered an alternative in its immediate vicinity and to the east. Groups seeking refuge from the Aztecs allied with other local powers and defended their borders.43 These alliances offered significant advantages to the cities of the present-day Puebla/Tlaxcala valley. First, they would strengthen them by creating additional allies or alliance partners. |
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