_How Cortes and the officers of the crown forward to Spain the
wardrobe of Motecusuma, and the emperor's share of the booty; and
what further happened._
After this campaign in the province of Panuco, Cortes was busily
occupied with the rebuilding of the city of Mexico.
Alonso de Avila, who had been despatched to the island of St. Domingo to
communicate there in Cortes' name with the royal court of audience and
the Hieronymite brotherhood, had by this time returned to Mexico, and
had obtained for Cortes the necessary powers from the above courts to
subdue the whole of New Spain, turn the inhabitants into slaves, mark
them with a red-hot iron, and distribute the Indians into commendaries
in the same manner as was customary at Hispaniola, Cuba, and Jamaica.
This power granted to Cortes was to remain in force until the emperor's
pleasure was known on this head. The Hieronymite brotherhood duly
apprized his majesty of all this, and despatched a vessel for that
purpose to Spain; and though the young emperor was at that time still in
Flanders, their despatches arrived safely in his hands. As the
Hieronymite brotherhood were well aware of the bad feeling which the
bishop of Burgos always had evinced towards us, they purposely omitted
to acquaint him with the nature of these despatches; and, upon the
whole, they never communicated with him excepting on matters of trifling
import.
Alonso de Avila, as I have before remarked, was a man who feared no one,
and had formerly held some office immediately under the bishop of
Burgos, so that it was fortunate he happened to be absent upon the
mission just mentioned, in St. Domingo, when Christobal de Tapia arrived
at Vera Cruz with the appointment of governor of New Spain, as the
latter had brought letters from the bishop to him, and on such an
occasion the determined character of Avila might have greatly injured
our general's cause.
Cortes, who was thoroughly acquainted with this man's disposition,
always strove to keep him at a distance from his person; and now again,
upon the advice of father Olmedo, he presented him with the lucrative
township of Quauhtitlan, which would give him constant occupation; and
Cortes added to this a considerable sum of money, by which he gained him
so completely over to his side, that he soon after intrusted him with a
most important mission, by despatching him and Quinones, the captain of
the guards, to Spain, as his own procuradores, and those of New Spain in
general; and provided them with two vessels which were to carry over to
the emperor 88,000 pesos, in gold bars, and the wardrobe of Motecusuma,
which had hitherto been in the possession of Quauhtemoctzin. The latter
was a valuable present, and well worthy of our great emperor's
acceptance, as it contained jewels of the most precious kind, pearls of
the size of hazel nuts, and various other precious stones, which I
should not like to enumerate singly, even if my memory would allow me.
At the same time were sent the bones of the giants which we found in the
temple of Cojohuacan, similar to those bones which were previously given
to us by the Tlascallans, and which we had sent to Spain on a former
occasion.
Three tigers, and several other curiosities, which I have now forgotten
by name, were likewise shipped on board these two vessels.
The chief magistrates of Mexico, on this occasion, wrote a letter to the
emperor, and we, the conquistadores, with father Olmedo and the royal
treasurer, drew up an humble address to our monarch, in which we first
of all mentioned with praise the many important and faithful services
which Cortes and all of us had rendered to his imperial majesty; we gave
him a full account of the siege of the city of Mexico and the discovery
of the southern ocean, and added we were convinced these countries would
prove a source of great wealth to Spain. We then requested his majesty
to send to New Spain a bishop and monks of different religious orders,
but all to be pious and well-informed men, that they might assist us in
extending the holy catholic faith in these countries. We likewise humbly
petitioned his majesty to appoint Cortes viceroy of New Spain, as he had
proved himself so meritorious and faithful an officer to the Spanish
crown. In the same way we begged the favour for ourselves, that all
appointments made by the crown in this country might exclusively be
given to us the conquistadores or to our sons. Further, we requested his
majesty not to send any lawyers into the country, as those persons, with
all their learning, would merely breed lawsuits, discord, and confusion
throughout the whole country. We then mentioned how Christobal de Tapia
had been sent as viceroy to New Spain by the appointment of the bishop
of Burgos, assuring his majesty that Tapia was not fit to fill such an
important situation, and that if he had been allowed to enter upon the
viceroyalty of New Spain, that country would undoubtedly have been lost
again to the Spanish crown. We were compelled to clear up all these
circumstances to his majesty, as we feared the bishop of Burgos had not
only omitted to lay before his majesty our previous despatches, but had
also misrepresented things to him, in order to favour his friends
Velasquez and Tapia, to the latter of whom he had promised the hand of
his niece Dona Petronella de Fonseca. Tapia had certainly produced
papers relative to his appointment, of the genuineness of which there
could really be no doubt, and we had indeed perused them with deep
veneration, and we would immediately have obeyed the instructions they
contained if we had considered Tapia a proper person to fill the
important office of governor; but as he was neither a soldier nor a man
of sufficient mind and determination of character, nor possessed of
talents requisite for a viceroy, we found ourselves necessitated to
inform his majesty of the whole state of affairs, which was the real
object of this present humble address of his majesty's faithful and
obedient servants. We then prayed his majesty to decide in these
matters, and particularly requested that he would not allow the bishop
of Burgos in any way to interfere in matters which concerned Cortes and
ourselves, as otherwise all further conquests we contemplated in New
Spain would be interrupted; nor should we even be able to maintain peace
in the provinces that were subdued. As a proof of the bishop's enmity
towards us, we mentioned that he had forbidden the two harbour masters
of Seville, Pedro de Isasaga and Juan Lopez de Recalte, to allow any
arms or soldiers which were destined for Cortes or our army in general,
to leave that place. We then gave his majesty an account of the recent
campaign of Panuco, how the inhabitants had been obliged to sue for
peace, and had declared themselves vassals of his majesty; what terrible
battles they had fought with Cortes, and how they had killed all the
officers and soldiers which Garay had sent thither from time to time.
This campaign, we went on to say, cost Cortes above 60,000 pesos, which
he had paid out of his own private purse, the reimbursement of which he
had in vain solicited from the royal treasurers; that Garay was fitting
out a new armament in Jamaica destined for the province of Panuco, but
it was advisable that his majesty should issue orders for him to
postpone that expedition until we should have completely subdued the
country, that he might not again sacrifice the lives of his men to no
purpose, and create an insurrection in the country, which would be sure
to ensue if he arrived there beforehand, as the Indians, and
particularly the Mexicans, would immediately conclude that there was no
unanimity in the operations of the Spanish generals; conspiracies would
be formed, and the whole country would rise up into open rebellion.
These and many other things we wrote to his majesty, nor was Cortes' pen
idle on this occasion, for he also sent the emperor an account of every
circumstance in a private despatch, which contained twenty pages, and I
know their contents pretty well, as I read them all through with great
attention. Among other things, he solicited his majesty's permission to
proceed to Cuba in order to take the viceroy Diego Velasquez prisoner,
and send him to Spain, there to stand his trial for having sent persons
to murder him, Cortes, and for having upon the whole endeavoured to
confuse the affairs of New Spain.
With these despatches, the money, and other valuable matters, Quinones
and Avila set sail from Vera Cruz on the 20th of December, 1522, and
safely passed through the straits of Bahama. On their voyage two of the
three tigers broke lose and made their escape, after wounding several
of the crew; it was then determined that the third should be killed,
which was in fact the most ferocious of the three. Without any further
accident they arrived off the island of Tercera, where they dropped
anchor. During their stay on this island, Quinones, who had a vast idea
of his courage and was of a very amorous disposition, got into a quarrel
about some female, and received such a terrible blow on the head that he
died a few days after of the consequences, so that Avila had to transact
all our business himself.
The two vessels then continued their voyage, but had not advanced far
beyond the island of Tercera when they fell in with the redoubted French
corsair Jean Florin, who attacked and took both vessels, carrying Avila
with the crews to France.
About this same time Jean Florin captured another vessel, bound from St.
Domingo, having on board above 20,000 pesos, besides a quantity of
pearls, sugar, and a great number of cow hides. With these valuable
prizes the corsair returned to France a wealthy man, and made the king
and the lord high admiral of France splendid presents out of the things
he had captured; and the whole of France was amazed at the treasures we
thus forwarded to our emperor. This very circumstance even created a
great desire in the mind of the French king to take possession of part
of the Caribbee islands; and it was upon this occasion he exclaimed that
our emperor could carry on the war with him solely with the riches he
drew from the West Indies! And yet at that time the Spaniards had not
subdued or even discovered Peru. The king of France on this occasion
also sent word to our great emperor, that as he and the king of Portugal
had divided the world between themselves, without offering him any part
of it, he should like them to show him our father Adam's will, that he
might convince himself whether he had really constituted them the sole
heirs to these countries. As long as they refused to comply with this,
he would consider himself justified to possess himself of everything he
could on the high seas: and indeed it was not long before he again sent
out Jean Florin with a small fleet, who took considerable prizes at sea,
between Spain and the Canaries; but as he was returning home with them
to France he fell in with three or four Biscay men of war, who attacked
him with such determination, that after a severe engagement he was
obliged to surrender, with the whole of his vessels, and he, with his
captains, was brought in a prisoner to Seville. These prisoners were
then immediately sent to the emperor, who, however, on the first
intelligence of their capture, ordered them to be tried, when they were
found guilty, and the whole of them were hung in the harbour of Pico.
Such was the miserable end of Jean Florin, who carried off to France all
the gold we had intended for our emperor! As for Avila, he was detained
a close prisoner in one of the French fortresses, as the king of France
expected a large ransom for a man who had been commissioned to convey so
vast a treasure from the new world to Spain; but Avila by some means or
other succeeded in bribing the commandant of the fortress, and secretly
sent intelligence to Spain of the object of his mission; he even managed
to forward Cortes' despatches, with all his papers and our letters,
either into the hands of the licentiate Nunez, who was a cousin of
Cortes, and reporter of the royal council of Madrid, or into those of
Cortes' father or of Diego de Ordas. These papers were instantly
despatched to his majesty in Flanders, without their being at all
noticed to the bishop of Burgos, who had not been able to hide his
pleasure when he heard that all the gold, with our despatches, had
fallen into the hands of the French corsair.
From this moment we had nothing further to fear from the bishop, for his
majesty now received full particulars of all the circumstances; and
though he felt grieved at the loss of so much gold, yet he was in one
sense pleased it had fallen into the hands of the French king, for it
would convince that monarch we should never let our emperor want for
money to wage war with him. He also sent peremptory orders to the bishop
of Burgos to aid Cortes in every way with regard to the affairs of New
Spain; adding, that he was shortly coming to Spain himself, in order to
investigate the dispute between Cortes and the governor of Cuba. When
news of the capture of Avila, with the loss of the whole treasure we
sent by him, reached New Spain, we all felt exceedingly grieved; but
Cortes immediately collected all the gold and silver he could, which had
recently been brought in from the province of Mechoacan, and of this he
ordered a cannon to be cast, which he intended as a present to the
emperor, and gave to it the name of phoenix.
The government of the township of Quauhtitlan was also carried on in the
name of Avila until the arrival, three years after, of his brother Gil
Gonsalez in New Spain, who was deputed by Avila to take the sole
government of his Indian property, as he himself was determined never
again to cross the sea, though he had obtained the appointment of
treasurer of Yucatan.
But all this is rather foreign to my narrative, and I will rather relate
what happened to Sandoval and the other officers whom Cortes sent out to
form settlements in the provinces. But so many circumstances happened in
the meantime, that I was obliged to break the thread of my history, and
they were certainly too important to withhold from the curious reader.
There was the arrival of Christobal de Tapia in Vera Cruz, which obliged
Cortes to recall Sandoval and Alvarado from their expeditions into the
provinces, in order that they might assist him with their excellent
support and counsel in a matter of so much importance. Then there was
the insurrection in the province of Panuco, and the mission to our
emperor; and so it happened that my narrative became rather confused.