Five hundred years ago, Spanish explorer Hernando Cortez and his native allies helped put an end to a gruesome regime with one of the greatest underdog victories ever recorded.

Let’s take a brief recess from the 1619 Project to explore another project. Call it the “1519 Project.” A full century before The New York Times’ proposed re-dating of the American founding and 2,200 miles southwest of Jamestown, European contact sparked a native uprising against a gruesome cult of cannibalism and mass murder.

Graphically described in the 1855 book, “Makers of History: Hernando Cortez,” John S.C. Abbott paints a picture of desperation for a tiny band of Spanish soldiers and their native allies. Next year marks the 500th anniversary of the Battle of the Dismal Night, where an initially successful Cortez was nearly crushed by superior Aztec forces. //

The Aztecs brutal system depended on a steady supply of prisoners of war and human children collected from the empire’s subjects as “taxes.” The scale of the murder one could find in just a single outlying Aztec city was astounding. Abbot relays, “they witnessed the most appalling indications of the horrid atrocities of pagan idolatry. They found, piled in order, as they judged, one hundred thousand skulls of human victims who had been offered in sacrifice to their gods.” //

Cornered, and out of options, Cortez decided to lead his men into a final, suicidal charge against the overwhelming odds. Cortez led his rag-tag forces in a frontal assault, mustering all the speed he could out of his wounded, exhausted, and starving forces.

Before the Aztecs could drown them with superior numbers, Cortez’s forces reached the Aztec’s blood-red banner and he seized it. Cortez had fought enough battles with the Aztecs to recognize the banner was a sacred symbol of Aztec authority. With their banner gone, the Aztecs lost morale and panicked, breaking into disorganized chaos. With the chain of command destroyed, Cortez seized one of the most audacious military victories in human history.

Cortez later recaptured the capital city. While Abbott acknowledges that human rights among the Spaniards of the 16th century “were but feebly discerned,” in contrast to the Aztecs, Cortez “treated all the prisoners he took very kindly, and liberated them with presents.” Cortez ended the grotesque practice of human sacrifice and, according to Abbott, “treated the vanquished natives with great courtesy and kindness.”

Cortez was no saint. //

Cortez will never satisfy a 21st century standard of human rights, and many not even be an exemplary leader. Nor did he set out to liberate anyone. Yet, regardless of his motives in Mexico, the outcome must be conceded: Cortez toppled a mass-murdering cult with the assistance of the oppressed.