Flower war

A flower war or flowery war (Nahuatl: xōchiyāōyōtl, Spanish: guerra florida) was a ritual war fought intermittently between the Aztec Triple Alliance and its enemies from the "mid-1450s to the arrival of the Spaniards in 1519." Enemies included the city-states of Tlaxcala, Huejotzingo, and Cholula in the Tlaxcala-Pueblan Valley in central Mexico. In these wars, participants would fight according to a set of conventions.

Origins

Texcocan nobleman Ixtlilxochitl gives the "fullest early statement concerning the origin as well as the initial rationale" of the flower war. From 1450 to 1454, the Aztecs had suffered from crop failure and severe drought; this led to famine and many deaths in the central Mexican highlands. Ixtlilxochitl reports that the flower war began "as a response" to the famine: "the priests . . . of Mexico [Tenochtitlan] said that the gods were angry at the empire, and that to placate them it was necessary to sacrifice many men, and that this had to be done regularly." Thus, Tenochtitlan (the Aztec capital), Texcoco, Tlaxcala, Cholula, and Huejotzingo agreed to engage in flower war for the purpose of obtaining human sacrifices for the gods. However, scholars such as Hicks disagree with using Ixlilxochitl's writings as the origin story of the flower war, due to Ixtlilxochitl not specifically mentioning "flower war" and being the only known source to record these events.