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Because the Flower Wars are mentioned in both the late Aztec and early Spanish sources, there is no doubt among modern scholars that they did exist, only the nature of the battles is in dispute. Most of the sources refer to the Flower Wars between the Aztec Triple Alliance and the cities of Huexotizinco, Tlaxcala, Choulula, and other towns in the Puebla Valley, which took place during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, but the earliest reference to a Flower War was in 1376. In the years after the first known Flower War, the number of belligerents grew from only a few dozen to thousands. <ref> Townsend, pgs. 208-210</ref> The definition of the Flower Wars held by most scholars, at least until recently, is that they were ritual battles staged through a mutual agreement, with the goal being for Aztec warriors to increase their status by taking more captives during a period when there was less war. <ref> Townsned, pgs. 210</ref> Since the 1970s, many scholars of Pre-Columbian history have challenged this theory based on reexaminations of the available primary sources.
One interesting theory posits that the Flower Wars were employed in Machiavellian means by Aztec kings in the fifteenth century to dispose of their political rivals. In particular, Montezuma I is known to have had many of his rivals assassinated and one of the methods he used was by having them captured in Flower Wars. <ref> Offner, p. 70</ref> Although this cynical theory holds that the reason for many of the later Flower Wars, although certainly not all of them, was more political in nature, the process and results were still the same – battles were fought and the losers were sacrificed atop pyramids.
Another theory holds that the Flower Wars are actually a misinterpretation of the data by modern scholars. Barry Isaac argues that although the early Flower Wars may have been conducted purely as staged events to produce sacrifice victims, the later ones against Tlaxcala and its allies were actual full-scale wars. Since Tlaxcala and its allies in the Puebla Valley were never conquered by the mighty Triple Alliance, modern scholars have argued that it was only because the Aztecs left them as such so that they could conduct repeated Flower Wars. Isaac points out that this theory ignores the Tlaxcalan viewpoint and that both Mexica and Spanish sources indicate that the people of the Puebla Valley were not willing participants as they are commonly portrayed. <ref> Isaac, Barry L. “The Aztec ‘Flowery War’: A Geopolitical Explanation.” <i>Journal of Anthropological Research</i> 39 (1993) p. 418</ref> Isaac points out that the Aztecs were defeated in a major battle by the city of Huexotzinco around the year 1503 and that battlefield deaths in the thousands were recorded, which would certainly not seem to suggest either a small-scale campaign merely for sacrifice victims nor an arranged battle of any type. <ref> Isaac, pgs. 420-1</ref> Issac ultimately argues that the Flower Wars of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries between the Aztecs and the Puebla Valley were only reported as such by the Aztecs to avoid being seen as weak and unable to conquer an enemy in their own backyard. <ref> Isaac, p. 428</ref>