According to Bernal Díaz del Castillo's eye-witness account, the , written several decades after the event, after Hernán Cortés's expedition was forced to make their initial retreat from Tenochtitlan, the Aztecs erected a makeshift to display the severed heads of men and horses they had captured from the invaders. This is depicted in the twelfth book of the "Florentine Codex". This taunting is also depicted in an Aztec codex which relates the story, and the subsequent battles which led to the eventual capture of the city by the Spanish forces and their allies.