Night of Tears

The Night of Tears was an Elven raid on the first human settlers in Tamriel. The elves lived in peace with the humans until the late Merethic Era when they saw that the humans were going to overpopulate them, given the human's faster reproductive period. Thus, the elves attacked the humans in an attempt to lower the population. Humans that lived called it the Night of Tears. The human survivor Ysgramor would later return with an Atmoran army known as the Five Hundred Companions to lead a genocidal campaign against the Elvish population of Skyrim.

While the main idea was to depopulate the humans, it appears later that the Elves were after a power underneath Saardar, w hich the Nords had tried to bury and hide away.