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Montezuma Edition
THE WORKS OF WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT
TWENTY-TWO VOLUMES
VOL. III
_The Montezuma Edition of William H. Prescott’s Works is limited to one
thousand copies, of which this is_
No. 345
[Illustration]
[Illustration: MONTEZUMA SWEARS ALLEGIANCE TO SPAIN
Page 4]
_Montezuma Edition_
HISTORY OF THE
Conquest of Mexico
BY
WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT
EDITED BY
WILFRED HAROLD MUNRO
PROFESSOR OF EUROPEAN HISTORY IN BROWN UNIVERSITY
AND COMPRISING THE NOTES OF THE EDITION BY
JOHN FOSTER KIRK
“Victrices aquilas alium laturus in orbem”
LUCAN, Pharsalia, lib. v., v. 238
VOL. III
PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
Copyright, 1843, by WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT
Copyright, 1871, by WILLIAM G. PRESCOTT
Copyright, 1873, by J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.
Copyright, 1904, by J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
Electrotyped and Printed by
J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, U. S. A.
CONTENTS OF VOL. III
BOOK IV
RESIDENCE IN MEXICO
(CONTINUED)
CHAPTER V
MONTEZUMA SWEARS ALLEGIANCE TO SPAIN--ROYAL TREASURES--THEIR
DIVISION--CHRISTIAN WORSHIP IN THE TEOCALLI--DISCONTENT
OF THE AZTECS
PAGE
Montezuma convenes his Nobles 3
Swears Allegiance to Spain 4
His Distress 4
Its Effect on the Spaniards 5
Imperial Treasures 7
Splendid Ornaments 7
The Royal Fifth 9
Amount of the Treasure 9
Division of Spoil 11
Murmurs of the Soldiery 11
Cortés calms the Storm 12
Progress in Conversion 14
Cortés demands the Teocalli 15
Christian Worship in the Sanctuary 17
National Attachment to Religion 18
Discontent of the Aztecs 19
Montezuma’s Warning 20
Reply of Cortés 20
Insecurity of the Castilian Quarters 22
CHAPTER VI
FATE OF CORTÉS’ EMISSARIES--PROCEEDINGS IN THE CASTILIAN
COURT--PREPARATIONS OF VELASQUEZ--NARVAEZ LANDS IN
MEXICO--POLITIC CONDUCT OF CORTÉS--HE LEAVES THE CAPITAL
Cortés’ Emissaries arrive in Spain 24
Their Fate 25
Proceedings at Court 26
The Bishop of Burgos 27
Emperor postpones his Decision 28
Velasquez meditates Revenge 29
Sends Narvaez against Cortés 30
The Audience interferes 31
Narvaez sails for Mexico 33
He anchors off San Juan de Ulua 33
Vaunts of Narvaez 34
Sandoval prepares for Defence 36
His Treatment of the Invaders 36
Cortés hears of Narvaez 37
He bribes his Emissaries 38
Sends an Envoy to his Camp 40
The Friar’s Intrigues 41
Embarrassment of Cortés 43
He prepares for Departure 43
He leaves the Capital 46
CHAPTER VII
CORTÉS DESCENDS FROM THE TABLE-LAND--NEGOTIATES WITH
NARVAEZ--PREPARES TO ASSAULT HIM--QUARTERS OF NARVAEZ--ATTACK
BY NIGHT--NARVAEZ DEFEATED
Cortés crosses the Valley 48
Reinforced at Cholula 49
Falls in with his Envoy 49
Unites with Sandoval 51
He reviews his Troops 52
Embassy from Narvaez 53
His Letter to the General 54
Cortés Tenure of Authority 54
Negotiates with Narvaez 56
Spaniards resume their March 57
Prepares for the Assault 58
Cortés harangues the Soldiers 58
Their Enthusiasm in his Cause 59
He divides his Forces 60
Quarters of Narvaez at Cempoalla 60
Cortés crosses the Rio de Canoas 62
Surprises Narvaez by Night 63
Tumult in his Camp 65
Narvaez wounded and taken 66
The Sanctuary in Flames 66
The Garrisons surrender 67
Cortés gives Audience to his Captives 69
Reflections on the Enterprise 70
CHAPTER VIII
DISCONTENT OF THE TROOPS--INSURRECTION IN THE CAPITAL--RETURN
OF CORTÉS--GENERAL SIGNS OF HOSPITALITY--MASSACRE
BY ALVARADO--RISING OF THE AZTECS
Discontent of the Troops of Narvaez 74
Policy of Cortés 75
He displeases his Veterans 76
He divides his Forces 77
News of an Insurrection in the Capital 78
Cortés prepares to return 79
Arrives at Tlascala 80
Beautiful Landscape 81
Disposition of the Natives 82
News from the Spaniards in Mexico 83
Cortés marches to the Capital 84
Signs of Alienation in the Aztecs 84
Spaniards re-enter the Capital 84
Cause of the Insurrection 85
Massacre by Alvarado 87
His Apology for the Deed 88
His probable Motives 90
Rising of the Aztecs 92
Assault the Garrison 92
Cortés reprimands his Officer 94
His Coldness to Montezuma 95
Cortés releases Montezuma’s Brother 96
He heads the Aztecs 97
The City in Arms 98
Notice of Oveido 98
His Life and Writings 100
Camargo’s History 102
BOOK V
EXPULSION FROM MEXICO
CHAPTER I
DESPERATE ASSAULT ON THE QUARTERS--FURY OF THE MEXICANS--SALLY
OF THE SPANIARDS--MONTEZUMA ADDRESSES THE PEOPLE--DANGEROUSLY
WOUNDED
Quarters of the Spaniards 107
Desperate Assault of the Aztecs 108
Cannonade of the Besieged 109
Indians fire the Outworks 111
Fury of the Mexicans 113
Appearance of their Forces 114
Sally of the Spaniards 115
Aztecs shower Missiles from the _Azoteas_ 116
Their Dwellings in Flames 117
Spaniards sound the Retreat 118
Gallantry of Cortés 118
Resolute Bearing of the Aztecs 119
Cortés requests Montezuma to interpose 121
He ascends the Turret 123
Addresses his Subjects 123
Is dangerously wounded 124
His Grief and Humiliation 125
CHAPTER II
STORMING OF THE GREAT TEMPLE--SPIRIT OF THE AZTECS--DISTRESSES
OF THE GARRISON--SHARP COMBATS IN THE CITY--DEATH OF MONTEZUMA
The Aztecs hold the Great Temple 127
It is stormed by the Spaniards 128
Spirited Resistance 129
Bloody Combat on the Area 130
Heroism of Cortés 131
Spaniards victorious 132
Conflagration of the Temple 133
Cortés invites a Parley 134
He addresses the Aztecs 135
Spirit of the Aztecs 135
The Spaniards dismayed 136
Distresses of the Garrison 137
Military Machine of Cortés 140
Impeded by the Canals 141
Sharp Combats in the City 142
Bold Bearing of Cortés 143
Apparition of St. James 145
Attempt to convert Montezuma 147
Its Failure 148
Last Hours of Montezuma 149
His Character 151
His Posterity 155
Effect of his Death on the Spaniards 156
Interment of Montezuma 157
CHAPTER III
COUNCIL OF WAR--SPANIARDS EVACUATE THE CITY--NOCHE
TRISTE, OR THE “MELANCHOLY NIGHT”--TERRIBLE SLAUGHTER--HALT
FOR THE NIGHT--AMOUNT OF LOSSES
Council of War 158
Predictions of the Astrologer 159
Their Effect on Cortés 160
He decides to abandon the Capital 160
Arranges his Order of March 162
Spaniards leave the City 163
Noche Triste, or the “Melancholy Night” 164
The Capital is roused 165
Spaniards assailed on the Causeway 166
The Bridge wedged in the Stones 166
Despair of the Spaniards 167
Fearful Carnage 167
Wreck of Bodies and Treasure 169
Spaniards arrive at the Third Breach 169
The Cavaliers return to the Rescue 170
Condition of the Rear 171
Alvarado’s Leap 172
Sad Spectacle of the Survivors 174
Feelings of Cortés 174
Spaniards defile through Tacuba 176
Storm the Temple 176
Halt for the Night 177
Reflections of the General 178
The Loss of the Spaniards 179
CHAPTER IV
RETREAT OF THE SPANIARDS--DISTRESSES OF THE ARMY--PYRAMIDS
OF TEOTIHUACAN--GREAT BATTLE OF OTUMBA
Quiet of the Mexicans 183
The Spaniards resume their Retreat 184
Distresses of the Army 186
Their heroic Fortitude 188
Pyramids of Teotihuacan 189
Account of them 189
Their probable Destination 191
The _Micoatl_, or Path of the Dead 193
The Races who reared them 193
Indian Host in the Valley of Otumba 194
Sensations of the Spaniards 195
Instructions of Cortés 196
He leads the Attack 197
Great Battle of Otumba 198
Gallantry of the Spaniards 198
Their Forces in Disorder 199
Desperate Effort of Cortés 200
The Aztec Chief is slain 201
The Barbarians put to Flight 201
Rich Spoil for the Victors 202
Reflections on the Battle 203
CHAPTER V
ARRIVAL IN TLASCALA--FRIENDLY RECEPTION--DISCONTENT OF
THE ARMY--JEALOUSY OF THE TLASCALANS--EMBASSY FROM
MEXICO
Spaniards arrive at Tlascala 206
Family Reception 207
Feelings of the Tlascalans 208
Spaniards recruit their Strength 210
Their further Misfortunes 210
Tidings from Villa Rica 211
Indomitable Spirit of Cortés 211
Discontent of the Army 212
Their Remonstrance 212
The General’s resolute Reply 214
Jealousy of the Tlascalans 216
Cortés strives to allay it 217
Events in Mexico 217
Preparations for Defence 218
Aztec Embassy to Tlascala 219
Stormy Debate in the Senate 220
Mexican Alliance rejected 222
CHAPTER VI
WAR WITH THE SURROUNDING TRIBES--SUCCESSES OF THE SPANIARDS--DEATH
OF MAXIXCA--ARRIVAL OF REINFORCEMENTS--RETURN IN TRIUMPH TO TLASCALA
War with the surrounding Tribes 223
Battle with the Tepeacans 225
They are branded as Slaves 225
Hostilities with the Aztecs renewed 227
Suspicions of the Allies 228
Cortés heads his Forces 229
Capture of Quauhquechollan 229
Mexicans routed 230
Spaniards follow up the Blow 231
Cortés’ Treatment of his Allies 232
State of his Resources 233
Building of the Brigantines 233
Death of Maxixca 234
The Smallpox in Mexico 234
The disaffected Soldiers leave the Army 236
Arrival of Reinforcements 237
Further Good Fortune of Cortés 238
His Letter to the Emperor 239
Memorial of the Army 241
The Policy of Cortés 242
Returns in Triumph to Tlascala 243
Prepares for the final Campaign 245
CHAPTER VII
GUATEMOZIN, EMPEROR OF THE AZTECS--PREPARATIONS FOR THE
MARCH--MILITARY CODE--SPANIARDS CROSS THE SIERRA--ENTER
TEZCUCO--PRINCE IXTLILXOCHITL
The Aztec Monarch dies 246
The Electors appoint another 246
Prayer of the High-priest 247
Guatemozin elected Emperor 249
Prepares for War 249
Amount of the Spanish Force 250
Cortés reviews his Troops 251
His animated Address 251
Number of the Indian Allies 252
Their brilliant Array 253
Military Code of Cortés 254
Its Purpose 255
Its salutary Provisions 255
The Troops begin their March 258
Designs of Cortés 258
He selects his Route 259
Crosses the Sierra 260
Magnificent View of the Valley 261
Energy of Cortés 263
Affairs in Tezcuco 264
Spaniards arrive there 265
Overtures of the Tezcucans 266
Spanish Quarters in Tezcuco 267
The Inhabitants leave the Town 268
Prince Ixtlilxochitl 269
His youthful Excesses 270
Disputes the Succession 272
Becomes the fast Friend of the Spaniards 272
Life and Writings of Gomara 272
Of Bernal Diaz 274
BOOK VI
SIEGE AND SURRENDER OF MEXICO
CHAPTER I
ARRANGEMENT AT TEZCUCO--SACK OF IZTAPALAPAN--ADVANTAGES
OF THE SPANIARDS--WISE POLICY OF CORTÉS--TRANSPORTATION
OF THE BRIGANTINES
Headquarters at Tezcuco 281
Cortés distrusts the Natives 282
Negotiates with the Aztecs 283
City of Iztapalapan 284
Spaniards march upon it 285
Sack the Town 286
Natives break down the Dikes 287
Spaniards struggle in the Flood 288
Regain their Quarters in Tezcuco 288
Indian Cities tender Allegiance 289
Some ask for Protection 289
Cortés detaches Sandoval to their Aid 290
Difficult Situation of Cortés 291
His sagacious Policy 293
Makes Overtures to Guatemozin 295
Spirit of the Indian Emperor 295
The Brigantines are completed 297
Sandoval detached to transport them 297
Signs of the Massacre at Zoltepec 298
Reaches Tlascala 299
Transportation of the Brigantines 299
Joy at their Arrival 301
Reflections 301
CHAPTER II
CORTÉS RECONNOITRES THE CAPITAL--OCCUPIES TACUBA--SKIRMISHES
WITH THE ENEMY--EXPEDITION OF SANDOVAL--ARRIVAL OF REINFORCEMENTS
Cortés reconnoitres the Capital 304
Action of Xaltocan 305
Spaniards ford the Lake 306
Towns deserted as they advance 307
Beautiful Environs of Mexico 308
Cortés occupies Tacuba 308
The Allies fire the Town 310
Ambuscade of the Aztecs 311
Parley with the Enemy 312
Single Combats 313
Position of the Parties 314
Spaniards return to Tezcuco 314
Embassy from Chalco 316
Sandoval is detached to defend it 317
Takes Huaxtepec 318
Storms Jacapichtla 319
Puts the Garrison to the Sword 320
Countermarch on Chalco 321
Cortés’ Coolness with Sandoval 322
His Reconciliation 322
Arrival of Reinforcements 323
The Dominican Friar 324
CHAPTER III
SECOND RECONNOITRING EXPEDITION--ENGAGEMENTS ON THE
SIERRA--CAPTURE OF CUERNAVACA--BATTLES AT XOCHIMILCO--NARROW
ESCAPE OF CORTÉS--HE ENTERS TACUBA
Second reconnoitring Expedition 325
Preparations for the March 326
Spaniards enter the Sierra 326
Engagements in the Passes 327
Rocks rolled down by the Aztecs 327
Enemy routed 328
Spaniards bivouac in the Mulberry Grove 329
Storm the Cliffs 329
March through the Mountains 331
Arrive at Cuernavaca 332
Scenery in its Environs 332
Bold Passage of the Ravine 334
Capture of the City 335
Cortés recrosses the Sierra 336
Exquisite View of the Valley 336
Marches against Xochimilco 337
Narrow Escape of Cortés 339
Chivalric Spirit of the Age 340
Cortés surveys the Country 342
Vigilance in his Quarters 342
Battles at Xochimilco 343
Spaniards Masters of the Town 344
Conflagration of Xochimilco 346
Army arrives at Cojohuacan 347
Ambuscade of the Indians 349
Spaniards enter Tacuba 350
View from its Teocalli 350
Strong Emotion of Cortés 351
Return of Tezcuco 352
CHAPTER IV
CONSPIRACY IN THE ARMY--BRIGANTINES LAUNCHED--MUSTER OF
FORCES--EXECUTION OF XICOTENCATL--MARCH OF THE ARMY--BEGINNING
OF THE SIEGE
Affairs in Spain 354
Conspiracy in the Camp 356
Its Design 357
Disclosed to Cortez 358
The Ringleader Executed 359
Policy of Cortés 360
The General’s Body-guard 362
Brigantines launched 363
Impression on the Spectators 364
Muster of Forces 364
Instructions to the Allies 366
Cortés distributes his Troops 367
His Spirited Harangue 368
Regulations read to the Army 369
Desertion of Xicotencatl 369
His Execution 371
His Character 372
March of the Army 373
Quarrels of Olid and Alvarado 373
Spaniards destroy the Aqueduct 374
Commencement of the Siege 376
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
MONTEZUMA SWEARS ALLEGIANCE TO SPAIN _Frontispiece_
From a painting especially made for this edition by L. Kowalsky.
THE STORMING OF THE GREAT TEMPLE 130
After the painting by W. de Leftwich-Dodge
THE NOCHE TRISTE 168
After the painting in the Academy of Fine Arts at Mexico.
THE GREAT BATTLE OF OTUMBA 196
After the painting by M. Ramirez.
ADRIAN OF UTRECHT (POPE ADRIAN VI.) 354
After the painting in the Galleria Uffizi at Florence.
BOOK IV
RESIDENCE IN MEXICO
(CONTINUED)
CONQUEST OF MEXICO
CHAPTER V
MONTEZUMA SWEARS ALLEGIANCE TO SPAIN--ROYAL TREASURES--THEIR
DIVISION--CHRISTIAN WORSHIP IN THE TEOCALLI--DISCONTENTS OF THE
AZTECS
1520
Cortés now felt his authority sufficiently assured to demand from
Montezuma a formal recognition of the supremacy of the Spanish emperor.
The Indian monarch had intimated his willingness to acquiesce in this,
on their very first interview. He did not object, therefore, to call
together his principal caciques for the purpose. When they were
assembled, he made them an address, briefly stating the object of the
meeting. They were all acquainted, he said, with the ancient tradition
that the great Being who had once ruled over the land had declared, on
his departure, that he should return at some future time and resume his
sway. That time had now arrived. The white men had come from the quarter
where the sun rises, beyond the ocean, to which the good deity had
withdrawn. They were sent by their master to reclaim the obedience of
his ancient subjects. For himself, he was ready to acknowledge his
authority. “You have been faithful vassals of mine,” continued
Montezuma, “during the many years that I have sat on the throne of my
fathers. I now expect that you will show me this last act of obedience
by acknowledging the great king beyond the waters to be your lord, also,
and that you will pay him tribute in the same manner as you have
hitherto done to me.”[1] As he concluded, his voice was nearly stifled
by his emotion, and the tears fell fast down his cheeks.
His nobles, many of whom, coming from a distance, had not kept pace with
the changes which had been going on in the capital, were filled with
astonishment as they listened to his words and beheld the voluntary
abasement of their master, whom they had hitherto reverenced as the
omnipotent lord of Anahuac. They were the more affected, therefore, by
the sight of his distress.[2] His will, they told him, had always been
their law. It should be so now; and, if he thought the sovereign of the
strangers was the ancient lord of their country, they were willing to
acknowledge him as such still. The oaths of allegiance were then
administered with all due solemnity, attested by the Spaniards present,
and a full record of the proceedings was drawn up by the royal notary,
to be sent to Spain.[3] There was something deeply touching in the
ceremony by which an independent and absolute monarch, in obedience less
to the dictates of fear than of conscience, thus relinquished his
hereditary rights in favor of an unknown and mysterious power. It even
moved those hard men who were thus unscrupulously availing themselves of
the confiding ignorance of the natives; and, though “it was in the
regular way of their own business,” says an old chronicler, “there was
not a Spaniard who could look on the spectacle with a dry eye”![4]
The rumor of these strange proceedings was soon circulated through the
capital and the country. Men read in them the finger of Providence. The
ancient tradition of Quetzalcoatl was familiar to all; and where it had
slept scarcely noticed in the memory, it was now revived with many
exaggerated circumstances. It was said to be part of the tradition that
the royal line of the Aztecs was to end with Montezuma; and his name,
the literal signification of which is “sad” or “angry lord,” was
construed into an omen of his evil destiny.[5]
Having thus secured this great feudatory to the crown of Castile, Cortés
suggested that it would be well for the Aztec chiefs to send his
sovereign such a gratuity as would conciliate his good will by
convincing him of the loyalty of his new vassals.[6] Montezuma consented
that his collectors should visit the principal cities and provinces,
attended by a number of Spaniards, to receive the customary tributes, in
the name of the Castilian sovereign. In a few weeks most of them
returned, bringing back large quantities of gold and silver plate, rich
stuffs, and the various commodities in which the taxes were usually
paid.
To this store Montezuma added, on his own account, the treasure of
Axayacatl, previously noticed, some part of which had been already given
to the Spaniards. It was the fruit of long and careful hoarding,--of
extortion, it may be,--by a prince who little dreamed of its final
destination. When brought into the quarters, the gold alone was
sufficient to make three great heaps. It consisted partly of native
grains; part had been melted into bars; but the greatest portion was in
utensils, and various kinds of ornaments and curious toys, together with
imitations of birds, insects, or flowers, executed with uncommon truth
and delicacy. There were, also, quantities of collars, bracelets, wands,
fans, and other trinkets, in which the gold and feather-work were richly
powdered with pearls and precious stones. Many of the articles were even
more admirable for the workmanship than for the value of the
materials;[7] such, indeed,--if we may take the report of Cortés to one
who would himself have soon an opportunity to judge of its veracity, and
whom it would not be safe to trifle with,--as no monarch in Europe could
boast in his dominions![8]
Magnificent as it was, Montezuma expressed his regret that the treasure
was no larger. But he had diminished it, he said, by his former gifts to
the white men. “Take it,” he added, “Malinche, and let it be recorded in
your annals that Montezuma sent this present to your master.”[9]
The Spaniards gazed with greedy eyes on the display of riches,[10] now
their own, which far exceeded all hitherto seen in the New World, and
fell nothing short of the _El Dorado_ which their glowing imaginations
had depicted. It may be that they felt somewhat rebuked by the contrast
which their own avarice presented to the princely munificence of the
barbarian chief. At least, they seemed to testify their sense of his
superiority by the respectful homage which they rendered him, as they
poured forth the fulness of their gratitude.[11] They were not so
scrupulous, however, as to manifest any delicacy in appropriating to
themselves the donative, a small part of which was to find its way into
the royal coffers. They clamored loudly for an immediate division of the
spoil, which the general would have postponed till the tributes from the
remoter provinces had been gathered in. The goldsmiths of Azcapozalco
were sent for to take in pieces the larger and coarser ornaments,
leaving untouched those of more delicate workmanship. Three days were
consumed in this labor, when the heaps of gold were cast into ingots and
stamped with the royal arms.
Some difficulty occurred in the division of the treasure, from the want
of weights, which, strange as it appears, considering their advancement
in the arts, were, as already observed, unknown to the Aztecs. The
deficiency was soon supplied by the Spaniards, however, with scales and
weights of their own manufacture, probably not the most exact. With the
aid of these they ascertained the value of the royal fifth to be
thirty-two thousand and four hundred _pesos de oro_.[12] Diaz swells it
to nearly four times that amount.[13] But their desire of securing the
emperor’s favor makes it improbable that the Spaniards should have
defrauded the exchequer of any part of its due; while, as Cortés was
responsible for the sum admitted in his letter, he would be still less
likely to overstate it. His estimate may be received as the true one.
The whole amounted, therefore, to one hundred and sixty-two thousand
_pesos de oro_, independently of the fine ornaments and jewelry, the
value of which Cortés computes at five hundred thousand ducats more.
There were, besides, five hundred marks of silver, chiefly in plate,
drinking-cups, and other articles of luxury. The inconsiderable quantity
of the silver, as compared with the gold, forms a singular contrast to
the relative proportions of the two metals since the occupation of the
country by the Europeans.[14] The whole amount of the treasure, reduced
to our own currency, and making allowance for the change in the value of
gold since the beginning of the sixteenth century, was about six million
three hundred thousand dollars, or one million four hundred and
seventeen thousand pounds sterling; a sum large enough to show the
incorrectness of the popular notion that little or no wealth was found
in Mexico.[15] It was, indeed, small in comparison with that obtained
by the conquerors of Peru. But few European monarchs of that day could
boast a larger treasure in their coffers.[16]
The division of the spoil was a work of some difficulty. A perfectly
equal division of it among the Conquerors would have given them more
than three thousand pounds sterling apiece; a magnificent booty! But
one-fifth was to be deducted for the crown. An equal portion was
reserved for the general, pursuant to the tenor of his commission. A
large sum was then allowed to indemnify him and the governor of Cuba for
the charges of the expedition and the loss of the fleet. The garrison of
Vera Cruz was also to be provided for. Ample compensation was made to
the principal cavaliers. The cavalry, arquebusiers, and crossbowmen each
received double pay. So that when the turn of the common soldiers came
there remained not more than a hundred _pesos de oro_ for each; a sum so
insignificant, in comparison with their expectations, that several
refused to accept it.[17]
Loud murmurs now rose among the men. “Was it for this,” they said, “that
we left our homes and families, perilled our lives, submitted to
fatigue and famine, and all for so contemptible a pittance? Better to
have stayed in Cuba and contented ourselves with the gains of a safe and
easy traffic. When we gave up our share of the gold at Vera Cruz, it was
on the assurance that we should be amply requited in Mexico. We have,
indeed, found the riches we expected; but no sooner seen, than they are
snatched from us by the very men who pledged us their faith!” The
malecontents even went so far as to accuse their leaders of
appropriating to themselves several of the richest ornaments before the
partition had been made; an accusation that receives some countenance
from a dispute which arose between Mexia, the treasurer for the crown,
and Velasquez de Leon, a relation of the governor, and a favorite of
Cortés. The treasurer accused this cavalier of purloining certain pieces
of plate before they were submitted to the royal stamp. From words the
parties came to blows. They were good swordsmen; several wounds were
given on both sides, and the affair might have ended fatally, but for
the interference of Cortés, who placed both under arrest.
He then used all his authority and insinuating eloquence to calm the
passions of his men. It was a delicate crisis. He was sorry, he said, to
see them so unmindful of the duty of loyal soldiers and cavaliers of the
Cross, as to brawl like common banditti over their booty. The division,
he assured them, had been made on perfectly fair and equitable
principles. As to his own share, it was no more than was warranted by
his commission. Yet, if they thought it too much, he was willing to
forego his just claims and divide with the poorest soldier. Gold,
however welcome, was not the chief object of his ambition. If it were
theirs, they should still reflect that the present treasure was little
in comparison with what awaited them hereafter; for had they not the
whole country and its mines at their disposal? It was only necessary
that they should not give an opening to the enemy, by their discord, to
circumvent and to crush them. With these honeyed words, of which he had
good store for all fitting occasions, says an old soldier,[18] for whose
benefit, in part, they were intended, he succeeded in calming the storm
for the present; while in private he took more effectual means, by
presents judiciously administered, to mitigate the discontents of the
importunate and refractory. And, although there were a few of more
tenacious temper, who treasured this in their memories against a future
day, the troops soon returned to their usual subordination. This was one
of those critical conjunctures which taxed all the address and personal
authority of Cortés. He never shrunk from them, but on such occasions
was true to himself. At Vera Cruz he had persuaded his followers to give
up what was but the earnest of future gains. Here he persuaded them to
relinquish these gains themselves. It was snatching the prey from the
very jaws of the lion. Why did he not turn and rend him?
To many of the soldiers, indeed, it mattered little whether their share
of the booty were more or less. Gaming is a deep-rooted passion in the
Spaniard, and the sudden acquisition of riches furnished both the means
and the motive for its indulgence. Cards were easily made out of old
parchment drum-heads, and in a few days most of the prize-money,
obtained with so much toil and suffering, had changed hands, and many of
the improvident soldiers closed the campaign as poor as they had
commenced it. Others, it is true, more prudent, followed the example of
their officers, who, with the aid of the royal jewellers, converted
their gold into chains, services of plate, and other portable articles
of ornament or use.[19]
Cortés seemed now to have accomplished the great objects of the
expedition. The Indian monarch had declared himself the feudatory of the
Spanish. His authority, his revenues, were at the disposal of the
general. The conquest of Mexico seemed to be achieved, and that without
a blow. But it was far from being achieved. One important step yet
remained to be taken, towards which the Spaniards had hitherto made
little progress,--the conversion of the natives. With all the exertions
of Father Olmedo, backed by the polemic talents of the general,[20]
neither Montezuma nor his subjects showed any disposition to abjure the
faith of their fathers.[21] The bloody exercises of their religion, on
the contrary, were celebrated with all the usual circumstance and pomp
of sacrifice before the eyes of the Spaniards.
Unable further to endure these abominations, Cortés, attended by several
of his cavaliers, waited on Montezuma. He told the emperor that the
Christians could no longer consent to have the services of their
religion shut up within the narrow walls of the garrison. They wished to
spread its light far abroad, and to open to the people a full
participation in the blessings of Christianity. For this purpose, they
requested that the great _teocalli_ should be delivered up as a fit
place where their worship might be conducted in the presence of the
whole city.
Montezuma listened to the proposal with visible consternation. Amidst
all his troubles he had leaned for support on his own faith, and,
indeed, it was in obedience to it that he had shown such deference to
the Spaniards as the mysterious messengers predicted by the oracles.
“Why,” said he, “Malinche, why will you urge matters to an extremity,
that must surely bring down the vengeance of our gods, and stir up an
insurrection among my people, who will never endure this profanation of
their temples?”[22]
Cortés, seeing how greatly he was moved, made a sign to his officers to
withdraw. When left alone with the interpreters, he told the emperor
that he would use his influence to moderate the zeal of his followers,
and persuade them to be contented with one of the sanctuaries of the
_teocalli_. If that were not granted, they should be obliged to take it
by force, and to roll down the images of his false deities in the face
of the city. “We fear not for our lives,” he added, “for, though our
numbers are few, the arm of the true God is over us.” Montezuma, much
agitated, told him that he would confer with the priests.
The result of the conference was favorable to the Spaniards, who were
allowed to occupy one of the sanctuaries as a place of worship. The
tidings spread great joy throughout the camp. They might now go forth in
open day and publish their religion to the assembled capital. No time
was lost in availing themselves of the permission. The sanctuary was
cleansed of its disgusting impurities. An altar was raised, surmounted
by a crucifix and the image of the Virgin. Instead of the gold and
jewels which blazed on the neighboring pagan shrine, its walls were
decorated with fresh garlands of flowers; and an old soldier was
stationed to watch over the chapel and guard it from intrusion.
When these arrangements were completed, the whole army moved in solemn
procession up the winding ascent of the pyramid. Entering the sanctuary,
and clustering round its portals, they listened reverentially to the
service of the mass, as it was performed by the fathers Olmedo and Diaz.
And, as the beautiful _Te Deum_ rose towards heaven, Cortés and his
soldiers, kneeling on the ground, with tears streaming from their eyes,
poured forth their gratitude to the Almighty for this glorious triumph
of the Cross.[23]
It was a striking spectacle,--that of these rude warriors lifting up
their orisons on the summit of this mountain temple, in the very capital
of heathendom, on the spot especially dedicated to its unhallowed
mysteries. Side by side, the Spaniard and the Aztec knelt down in
prayer; and the Christian hymn mingled its sweet tones of love and mercy
with the wild chant raised by the Indian priest in honor of the war-god
of Anahuac! It was an unnatural union, and could not long abide.
A nation will endure any outrage sooner than that on its religion. This
is an outrage both on its principles and its prejudices; on the ideas
instilled into it from childhood, which have strengthened with its
growth, until they become a part of its nature,--which have to do with
its highest interests here, and with the dread hereafter. Any violence
to the religious sentiment touches all alike, the old and the young, the
rich and the poor, the noble and the plebeian. Above all, it touches the
priests, whose personal consideration rests on that of their religion,
and who, in a semi-civilized state of society, usually hold an unbounded
authority. Thus it was with the Brahmins of India, the Magi of Persia,
the Roman Catholic clergy in the Dark Ages, the priests of Ancient Egypt
and Mexico.
The people had borne with patience all the injuries and affronts
hitherto put on them by the Spaniards. They had seen their sovereign
dragged as a captive from his own palace, his ministers butchered before
his eyes, his treasure seized and appropriated, himself in a manner
deposed from his royal supremacy. All this they had seen, without a
struggle to prevent it. But the profanation of their temples touched a
deeper feeling, of which the priesthood were not slow to take
advantage.[24]
The first intimation of this change of feeling was gathered from
Montezuma himself. Instead of his usual cheerfulness, he appeared grave
and abstracted, and instead of seeking, as he was wont, the society of
the Spaniards, seemed rather to shun it. It was noticed, too, that
conferences were more frequent between him and the nobles, and
especially the priests. His little page, Orteguilla, who had now picked
up a tolerable acquaintance with the Aztec, contrary to Montezuma’s
usual practice, was not allowed to attend him at these meetings. These
circumstances could not fail to awaken most uncomfortable apprehensions
in the Spaniards.
Not many days elapsed, however, before Cortés received an invitation, or
rather a summons, from the emperor to attend him in his apartment. The
general went with some feelings of anxiety and distrust, taking with him
Olid, captain of the guard, and two or three other trusty cavaliers.
Montezuma received them with cold civility, and, turning to the general,
told him that all his predictions had come to pass. The gods of his
country had been offended by the violation of their temples. They had
threatened the priests that they would forsake the city if the
sacrilegious strangers were not driven from it, or rather sacrificed on
the altars in expiation of their crimes.[25] The monarch assured the
Christians it was from regard for their safety that he communicated
this; and, “if you have any regard for it yourselves,” he concluded,
“you will leave the country without delay. I have only to raise my
finger, and every Aztec in the land will rise in arms against you.”
There was no reason to doubt his sincerity. For Montezuma, whatever
evils had been brought on him by the white men, held them in reverence
as a race more highly gifted than his own, while for several, as we have
seen, he had conceived an attachment, flowing, no doubt, from their
personal attentions and deference to himself.
Cortés was too much master of his feelings to show how far he was
startled by this intelligence. He replied, with admirable coolness, that
he should regret much to leave the capital so precipitately, when he
had no vessels to take him from the country. If it were not for this,
there could be no obstacle to his leaving it at once. He should also
regret another step to which he should be driven, if he quitted it under
these circumstances,--that of taking the emperor along with him.
Montezuma was evidently troubled by this last suggestion. He inquired
how long it would take to build the vessels, and finally consented to
send a sufficient number of workmen to the coast, to act under the
orders of the Spaniards; meanwhile, he would use his authority to
restrain the impatience of the people, under the assurance that the
white men would leave the land when the means for it were provided. He
kept his word. A large body of Aztec artisans left the capital with the
most experienced Castilian shipbuilders, and, descending to Vera Cruz,
began at once to fell the timber and build a sufficient number of ships
to transport the Spaniards back to their own country. The work went
forward with apparent alacrity. But those who had the direction of it,
it is said, received private instructions from the general to interpose
as many delays as possible, in hopes of receiving in the mean time such
reinforcements from Europe as would enable him to maintain his
ground.[26]
The whole aspect of things was now changed in the Castilian quarters.
Instead of the security and repose in which the troops had of late
indulged, they felt a gloomy apprehension of danger, not the less
oppressive to the spirits that it was scarcely visible to the eye;--like
the faint speck just descried above the horizon by the voyager in the
tropics, to the common gaze seeming only a summer cloud, but which to
the experienced mariner bodes the coming of the hurricane. Every
precaution that prudence could devise was taken to meet it. The soldier,
as he threw himself on his mats for repose, kept on his armor. He ate,
drank, slept, with his weapons by his side. His horse stood ready
caparisoned, day and night, with the bridle hanging at the saddle-bow.
The guns were carefully planted so as to command the great avenues. The
sentinels were doubled, and every man, of whatever rank, took his turn
in mounting guard. The garrison was in a state of siege.[27] Such was
the uncomfortable position of the army when, in the beginning of May,
1520, six months after their arrival in the capital, tidings came from
the coast which gave greater alarm to Cortés than even the menaced
insurrection of the Aztecs.
CHAPTER VI
FATE OF CORTÉS’ EMISSARIES--PROCEEDINGS IN THE CASTILIAN
COURT--PREPARATIONS OF VELASQUEZ--NARVAEZ LANDS IN MEXICO--POLITIC
CONDUCT OF CORTÉS--HE LEAVES THE CAPITAL
1520
Before explaining the nature of the tidings alluded to in the preceding
chapter, it will be necessary to cast a glance over some of the
transactions of an earlier period. The vessel, which, as the reader may
remember, bore the envoys Puertocarrero and Montejo with the despatches
from Vera Cruz, after touching, contrary to orders, at the northern
coast of Cuba, and spreading the news of the late discoveries, held on
its way uninterrupted towards Spain, and early in October, 1519, reached
the little port of San Lucar. Great was the sensation caused by her
arrival and the tidings which she brought; a sensation scarcely inferior
to that created by the original discovery of Columbus. For now, for the
first time, all the magnificent anticipations formed of the World seemed
destined to be realized.
Unfortunately, there was a person in Seville at this time, named Benito
Martin, chaplain of Velasquez, the governor of Cuba. No sooner did this
man learn the arrival of the envoys, and the particulars of their story,
than he lodged a complaint with the _Casa de Contratacion_,--the Royal
India House,--charging those on board the vessel with mutiny and
rebellion against the authorities of Cuba, as well as with treason to
the crown.[28] In consequence of his representations, the ship was taken
possession of by the public officers, and those on board were prohibited
from removing their own effects, or anything else, from her. The envoys
were not even allowed the funds necessary for the expenses of the
voyage, nor a considerable sum remitted by Cortés to his father, Don
Martin. In this embarrassment they had no alternative but to present
themselves, as speedily as possible, before the emperor, deliver the
letters with which they had been charged by the colony, and seek redress
for their own grievances. They first sought out Martin Cortés, residing
at Medellin, and with him made the best of their way to court.
Charles the Fifth was then on his first visit to Spain after his
accession. It was not a long one; long enough, however, to disgust his
subjects, and, in a great degree, to alienate their affections. He had
lately received intelligence of his election to the imperial crown of
Germany. From that hour his eyes were turned to that quarter. His stay
in the Peninsula was prolonged only that he might raise supplies for
appearing with splendor on the great theatre of Europe. Every act showed
too plainly that the diadem of his ancestors was held lightly in
comparison with the imperial bauble in which neither his countrymen nor
his own posterity could have the slightest interest. The interest was
wholly personal.
Contrary to established usage, he had summoned the Castilian córtes to
meet at Compostella, a remote town in the north, which presented no
other advantage than that of being near his place of embarkation.[29] On
his way thither he stopped some time at Tordesillas, the residence of
his unhappy mother, Joanna “the Mad.” It was here that the envoys from
Vera Cruz presented themselves before him, in March, 1520. At nearly the
same time, the treasures brought over by them reached the court, where
they excited unbounded admiration.[30] Hitherto, the returns from the
New World had been chiefly in vegetable products, which, if the surest,
are also the slowest sources of wealth. Of gold they had as yet seen but
little, and that in its natural state or wrought into the rudest
trinkets. The courtiers gazed with astonishment on the large masses of
the precious metal, and the delicate manufacture of the various
articles, especially of the richly tinted feather-work. And, as they
listened to the accounts, written and oral, of the great Aztec empire,
they felt assured that the Castilian ships had at length reached the
golden Indies, which hitherto had seemed to recede before them.
In this favorable mood there is little doubt the monarch would have
granted the petition of the envoys, and confirmed the irregular
proceedings of the Conquerors, but for the opposition of a person who
held the highest office in the Indian department. This was Juan
Rodriguez de Fonseca, formerly dean of Seville, now bishop of Burgos. He
was a man of noble family, and had been intrusted with the direction of
the colonial concerns on the discovery of the New World. On the
establishment of the Royal Council of the Indies by Ferdinand the
Catholic, he had been made its president, and had occupied that post
ever since. His long continuance in a position of great importance and
difficulty is evidence of capacity for business. It was no uncommon
thing in that age to find ecclesiastics in high civil, and even
military, employments. Fonseca appears to have been an active, efficient
person, better suited to a secular than to a religious vocation. He had,
indeed, little that was religious in his temper; quick to take offence
and slow to forgive. His resentments seem to have been nourished and
perpetuated like a part of his own nature. Unfortunately, his peculiar
position enabled him to display them towards some of the most
illustrious men of his time. From pique at some real or fancied slight
from Columbus, he had constantly thwarted the plans of the great
navigator. He had shown the same unfriendly feeling towards the
Admiral’s son, Diego, the heir of his honors; and he now, and from this
time forward, showed a similar spirit towards the Conqueror of Mexico.
The immediate cause of this was his own personal relations with
Velasquez, to whom a near relative was betrothed.[31]
Through this prelate’s representations, Charles, instead of a favorable
answer to the envoys, postponed his decision till he should arrive at
Coruña, the place of embarkation.[32] But here he was much pressed by
the troubles which his impolitic conduct had raised, as well as by
preparations for his voyage. The transaction of the colonial business,
which, long postponed, had greatly accumulated on his hands, was
reserved for the last week in Spain. But the affairs of the “young
admiral” consumed so large a portion of this, that he had no time to
give to those of Cortés, except, indeed, to instruct the board at
Seville to remit to the envoys so much of their funds as was required to
defray the charges of the voyage. On the 16th of May, 1520, the
impatient monarch bade adieu to his distracted kingdom, without one
attempt to settle the dispute between his belligerent vassals in the New
World, and without an effort to promote the magnificent enterprise
which was to secure to him the possession of an empire. What a contrast
to the policy of his illustrious predecessors, Ferdinand and
Isabella![33]
The governor of Cuba, meanwhile, without waiting for support from home,
took measures for redress into his own hands. We have seen in a
preceding chapter how deeply he was moved by the reports of the
proceedings of Cortés, and of the treasures which his vessel was bearing
to Spain. Rage, mortification, disappointed avarice, distracted his
mind. He could not forgive himself for trusting the affair to such
hands. On the very week in which Cortés had parted from him to take
charge of the fleet, a _capitulation_ had been signed by Charles the
Fifth, conferring on Velasquez the title of _adelantado_, with great
augmentation of his original powers.[34] The governor resolved, without
loss of time, to send such a force to the Mexican coast as should enable
him to assert his new authority to its full extent and to take vengeance
on his rebellious officer. He began his preparations as early as
October.[35] At first he proposed to assume the command in person. But
his unwieldy size, which disqualified him for the fatigues incident to
such an expedition, or, according to his own account, tenderness for his
Indian subjects, then wasted by an epidemic, induced him to devolve the
command on another.[36]
The person whom he selected was a Castilian hidalgo, named Pánfilo de
Narvaez. He had assisted Velasquez in the reduction of Cuba, where his
conduct cannot be wholly vindicated from the charge of inhumanity which
too often attaches to the early Spanish adventurers. From that time he
continued to hold important posts under the government, and was a
decided favorite with Velasquez. He was a man of some military capacity,
though negligent and lax in his discipline. He possessed undoubted
courage, but it was mingled with an arrogance, or rather overweening
confidence in his own powers, which made him deaf to the suggestions of
others more sagacious than himself. He was altogether deficient in that
prudence and calculating foresight demanded in a leader who was to cope
with an antagonist like Cortés.[37]
The governor and his lieutenant were unwearied in their efforts to
assemble an army. They visited every considerable town in the island,
fitting out vessels, laying in stores and ammunition, and encouraging
volunteers to enlist by liberal promises. But the most effectual bounty
was the assurance of the rich treasures that awaited them in the golden
regions of Mexico. So confident were they in this expectation, that all
classes and ages vied with one another in eagerness to embark in the
expedition, until it seemed as if the whole white population would
desert the island and leave it to its primitive occupants.[38]
The report of these proceedings soon spread through the Islands, and
drew the attention of the Royal Audience of St. Domingo. This body was
intrusted, at that time, not only with the highest judicial authority in
the colonies, but with a civil jurisdiction, which, as “the Admiral”
complained, encroached on his own rights. The tribunal saw with alarm
the proposed expedition of Velasquez, which, whatever might be its issue
in regard to the parties, could not fail to compromise the interests of
the crown. They chose accordingly one of their number, the licentiate
Ayllon, a man of prudence and resolution, and despatched him to Cuba,
with instructions to interpose his authority, and stay, if possible, the
proceedings of Velasquez.[39]
On his arrival, he found the governor in the western part of the island,
busily occupied in getting the fleet ready for sea. The licentiate
explained to him the purport of his mission, and the views entertained
of the proposed enterprise by the Royal Audience. The conquest of a
powerful country like Mexico required the whole force of the Spaniards,
and, if one half were employed against the other, nothing but ruin could
come of it. It was the governor’s duty, as a good subject, to forego all
private animosities, and to sustain those now engaged in the great work
by sending them the necessary supplies. He might, indeed, proclaim his
own powers and demand obedience to them. But, if this were refused, he
should leave the determination of his dispute to the authorized
tribunals, and employ his resources in prosecuting discovery in another
direction, instead of hazarding all by hostilities with his rival.
This admonition, however sensible and salutary, was not at all to the
taste of the governor. He professed, indeed, to have no intention of
coming to hostilities with Cortés. He designed only to assert his lawful
jurisdiction over territories discovered under his own auspices. At the
same time, he denied the right of Ayllon or of the Royal Audience to
interfere in the matter. Narvaez was still more refractory, and, as the
fleet was now ready, proclaimed his intention to sail in a few hours. In
this state of things, the licentiate, baffled in his first purpose of
staying the expedition, determined to accompany it in person, that he
might prevent, if possible, by his presence, an open rupture between the
parties.[40]
The squadron consisted of eighteen vessels, large and small. It carried
nine hundred men, eighty of whom were cavalry, eighty more
arquebusiers, one hundred and fifty crossbowmen, with a number of heavy
guns, and a large supply of ammunition and military stores. There were,
besides, a thousand Indians, natives of the island, who went, probably,
in a menial capacity.[41] So gallant an armada--with one
exception,[42]--never before rode in the Indian seas. None to compare
with it had ever been fitted out in the Western World.
Leaving Cuba early in March, 1520, Narvaez held nearly the same course
as Cortés, and running down what was then called the “island of
Yucatan,”[43] after a heavy tempest, in which some of his smaller
vessels foundered, anchored, April 23, off San Juan de Ulua. It was the
place where Cortés, also, had first landed; the sandy waste covered by
the present city of Vera Cruz.
Here the commander met with a Spaniard, one of those sent by the general
from Mexico to ascertain the resources of the country, especially its
mineral products. This man came on board the fleet, and from him the
Spaniards gathered the particulars of all that had occurred since the
departure of the envoys from Vera Cruz,--the march into the interior,
the bloody battles with the Tlascalans, the occupation of Mexico, the
rich treasures found in it, and the seizure of the monarch, by means of
which, concluded the soldier, “Cortés rules over the land like its own
sovereign, so that a Spaniard may travel unarmed from one end of the
country to the other, without insult or injury.”[44] His audience
listened to this marvellous report in speechless amazement, and the
loyal indignation of Narvaez waxed stronger and stronger, as he learned
the value of the prize which had been snatched from his employer.
He now openly proclaimed his intention to march against Cortés and
punish him for his rebellion. He made this vaunt so loudly, that the
natives, who had flocked in numbers to the camp, which was soon formed
on shore, clearly comprehended that the new-comers were not friends, but
enemies, of the preceding. Narvaez determined, also,--though in
opposition to the counsel of the Spaniard, who quoted the example of
Cortés,--to establish a settlement on this unpromising spot; and he made
the necessary arrangements to organize a municipality. He was informed
by the soldier of the existence of the neighboring colony at Villa Rica,
commanded by Sandoval, and consisting of a few invalids, who, he was
assured, would surrender on the first summons. Instead of marching
against the place, however, he determined to send a peaceful embassy to
display his powers and demand the submission of the garrison.[45]
These successive steps gave serious displeasure to Ayllon, who saw they
must lead to inevitable collision with Cortés. But it was in vain he
remonstrated and threatened to lay the proceedings of Narvaez before the
government. The latter, chafed by his continued opposition and sour
rebuke, determined to rid himself of a companion who acted as a spy on
his movements. He caused him to be seized and sent back to Cuba. The
licentiate had the address to persuade the captain of the vessel to
change her destination for St. Domingo; and, when he arrived there, a
formal report of his proceedings, exhibiting in strong colors the
disloyal conduct of the governor and his lieutenant, was prepared, and
despatched by the Royal Audience to Spain.[46]
Sandoval meanwhile had not been inattentive to the movements of Narvaez.
From the time of his first appearance on the coast, that vigilant
officer, distrusting the object of the armament, had kept his eye on
him. No sooner was he apprised of the landing of the Spaniards, than the
commander of Villa Rica sent off his few disabled soldiers to a place
of safety in the neighborhood. He then put his works in the best posture
of defence that he could, and prepared to maintain the place to the last
extremity. His men promised to stand by him, and, the more effectually
to fortify the resolution of any who might falter, he ordered a gallows
to be set up in a conspicuous part of the town! The constancy of his men
was not put to the trial.
The only invaders of the place were a priest, a notary, and four other
Spaniards, selected for the mission, already noticed, by Narvaez. The
ecclesiastic’s name was Guevara. On coming before Sandoval, he made him
a formal address, in which he pompously enumerated the services and
claims of Velasquez, taxed Cortés and his adherents with rebellion, and
demanded of Sandoval to tender his submission, as a loyal subject, to
the newly constituted authority of Narvaez.
The commander of La Villa Rica was so much incensed at this
unceremonious mention of his companions in arms that he assured the
reverend envoy that nothing but respect for his cloth saved him from the
chastisement he merited. Guevara now waxed wroth in his turn, and called
on the notary to read the proclamation. But Sandoval interposed,
promising that functionary that if he attempted to do so, without first
producing a warrant of his authority from the crown, he should be
soundly flogged. Guevara lost all command of himself at this, and,
stamping on the ground, repeated his orders in a more peremptory tone
than before. Sandoval was not a man of many words. He simply remarked
that the instrument should be read to the general himself in Mexico. At
the same time, he ordered his men to procure a number of sturdy
_tamanes_, or Indian porters, on whose backs the unfortunate priest and
his companions were bound like so many bales of goods. They were then
placed under a guard of twenty Spaniards, and the whole caravan took its
march for the capital. Day and night they travelled, stopping only to
obtain fresh relays of carriers; and as they passed through populous
towns, forests, and cultivated fields, vanishing as soon as seen, the
Spaniards, bewildered by the strangeness of the scene, as well as of
their novel mode of conveyance, hardly knew whether they were awake or
in a dream. In this way, at the end of the fourth day, they reached the
Tezcucan lake in view of the Aztec capital.[47]
Its inhabitants had already been made acquainted with the fresh arrival
of white men on the coast. Indeed, directly on their landing,
intelligence had been communicated to Montezuma, who is said (it does
not seem probable) to have concealed it some days from Cortés.[48] At
length, inviting him to an interview, he told him there was no longer
any obstacle to his leaving the country, as a fleet was ready for him.
To the inquiries of the astonished general, Montezuma replied by
pointing to a hieroglyphical map sent him from the coast, on which the
ships, the Spaniards themselves, and their whole equipment were minutely
delineated. Cortés, suppressing all emotions but those of pleasure,
exclaimed, “Blessed be the Redeemer for his mercies!” On returning to
his quarters, the tidings were received by the troops with loud shouts,
the firing of cannon, and other demonstrations of joy. They hailed the
new-comers as a reinforcement from Spain. Not so their commander. From
the first, he suspected them to be sent by his enemy, the governor of
Cuba. He communicated his suspicions to his officers, through whom they
gradually found their way among the men. The tide of joy was instantly
checked. Alarming apprehensions succeeded, as they dwelt on the
probability of this suggestion and on the strength of the invaders. Yet
their constancy did not desert them; and they pledged themselves to
remain true to their cause, and, come what might, to stand by their
leader. It was one of those occasions that proved the entire influence
which Cortés held over these wild adventurers. All doubts were soon
dispelled by the arrival of the prisoners from Villa Rica.
One of the convoy, leaving the party in the suburbs, entered the city,
and delivered a letter to the general from Sandoval, acquainting him
with all the particulars. Cortés instantly sent to the prisoners,
ordered them to be released, and furnished them with horses to make
their entrance into the capital,--a more creditable conveyance than the
backs of tamanes. On their arrival, he received them with marked
courtesy, apologized for the rude conduct of his officers, and seemed
desirous by the most assiduous attentions to soothe the irritation of
their minds. He showed his good will still further by lavishing presents
on Guevara and his associates, until he gradually wrought such a change
in their dispositions that from enemies he converted them into friends,
and drew forth many important particulars respecting not merely the
designs of their leader, but the feelings of his army. The soldiers, in
general, they said, far from desiring a rupture with those of Cortés,
would willingly co-operate with them, were it not for their commander.
They had no feelings of resentment to gratify. Their object was gold.
The personal influence of Narvaez was not great, and his arrogance and
penurious temper had already gone far to alienate from him the
affections of his followers. These hints were not lost on the general.
He addressed a letter to his rival in the most conciliatory terms. He
besought him not to proclaim their animosity to the world, and, by
kindling a spirit of insubordination in the natives, unsettle all that
had been so far secured. A violent collision must be prejudicial even to
the victor, and might be fatal to both. It was only in union that they
could look for success. He was ready to greet Narvaez as a brother in
arms, to share with him the fruits of conquest, and, if he could produce
a royal commission, to submit to his authority. Cortés well knew he had
no such commission to show.[49]
Soon after the departure of Guevara and his comrades,[50] the general
determined to send a special envoy of his own. The person selected for
this delicate office was Father Olmedo, who, through the campaign, had
shown a practical good sense, and a talent for affairs, not always to be
found in a person of his spiritual calling. He was intrusted with
another epistle to Narvaez, of similar import with the preceding. Cortés
wrote, also, to the licentiate Ayllon, with whose departure he was not
acquainted, and to Andres de Duero, former secretary of Velasquez, and
his own friend, who had come over in the present fleet. Olmedo was
instructed to converse with these persons in private, as well as with
the principal officers and soldiers, and, as far as possible, to infuse
into them a spirit of accommodation. To give greater weight to his
arguments, he was furnished with a liberal supply of gold.
During this time, Narvaez had abandoned his original design of planting
a colony on the sea-coast, and had crossed the country to Cempoalla,
where he had taken up his quarters. He was here when Guevara returned
and presented the letter of Cortés.
Narvaez glanced over it with a look of contempt, which was changed into
one of stern displeasure as his envoy enlarged on the resources and
formidable character of his rival, counselling him by all means to
accept his proffers of amity. A different effect was produced on the
troops, who listened with greedy ears to the accounts given of Cortés,
his frank and liberal manners, which they involuntarily contrasted with
those of their own commander, the wealth in his camp, where the humblest
private could stake his ingot and chain of gold at play, where all
revelled in plenty, and the life of the soldier seemed to be one long
holiday. Guevara had been admitted only to the sunny side of the
picture.
The impression made by these accounts was confirmed by the presence of
Olmedo. The ecclesiastic delivered his missives, in like manner, to
Narvaez, who ran through their contents with feelings of anger which
found vent in the most opprobrious invectives against his rival; while
one of his captains, named Salvatierra, openly avowed his intention to
cut off the rebel’s ears and broil them for his breakfast![51] Such
impotent sallies did not alarm the stout-hearted friar, who soon entered
into communication with many of the officers and soldiers, whom he found
better inclined to an accommodation. His insinuating eloquence, backed
by his liberal largesses, gradually opened a way into their hearts, and
a party was formed under the very eye of their chief, better affected to
his rival’s interests than to his own. The intrigue could not be
conducted so secretly as wholly to elude the suspicions of Narvaez, who
would have arrested Olmedo and placed him under confinement, but for the
interposition of Duero. He put a stop to his further machinations by
sending him back again to his master. But the poison was left to do its
work.
Narvaez made the same vaunt as at his landing, of his design to march
against Cortés and apprehend him as a traitor. The Cempoallans learned
with astonishment that their new guests, though the countrymen, were
enemies of their former. Narvaez, also, proclaimed his intention to
release Montezuma from captivity and restore him to his throne. It is
said he received a rich present from the Aztec emperor, who entered into
a correspondence with him.[52] That Montezuma should have treated him
with his usual munificence, supposing him to be the friend of Cortés, is
very probable. But that he should have entered into a secret
communication, hostile to the general’s interests, is too repugnant to
the whole tenor of his conduct to be lightly admitted.
These proceedings did not escape the watchful eye of Sandoval. He
gathered the particulars partly from deserters who fled to Villa Rica,
and partly from his own agents, who in the disguise of natives mingled
in the enemy’s camp. He sent a full account of them to Cortés,
acquainted him with the growing defection of the Indians, and urged him
to take speedy measures for the defence of Villa Rica if he would not
see it fall into the enemy’s hands. The general felt that it was time to
act.
Yet the selection of the course to be pursued was embarrassing in the
extreme. If he remained in Mexico and awaited there the attack of his
rival, it would give the latter time to gather round him the whole
forces of the empire, including those of the capital itself, all
willing, no doubt, to serve under the banners of a chief who proposed
the liberation of their master. The odds were too great to be hazarded.
If he marched against Narvaez, he must either abandon the city and the
emperor, the fruit of all his toils and triumphs, or, by leaving a
garrison to hold them in awe, must cripple his strength, already far too
weak to cope with that of his adversary. Yet on this latter course he
decided. He trusted less, perhaps, to an open encounter of arms than to
the influence of his personal address and previous intrigues, to bring
about an amicable arrangement. But he prepared himself for either
result.
In a preceding chapter it was mentioned that Velasquez de Leon was sent
with a hundred and fifty men to plant a colony on one of the great
rivers emptying into the Mexican Gulf. Cortés, on learning the arrival
of Narvaez, had despatched a messenger to his officer, to acquaint him
with the fact and to arrest his further progress. But Velasquez had
already received notice of it from Narvaez himself, who, in a letter
written soon after his landing, had adjured him in the name of his
kinsman, the governor of Cuba, to quit the banners of Cortés and come
over to him. That officer, however, had long since buried the feelings
of resentment which he had once nourished against his general, to whom
he was now devotedly attached, and who had honored him throughout the
campaign with particular regard. Cortés had early seen the importance of
securing this cavalier to his interests. Without waiting for orders,
Velasquez abandoned his expedition, and commenced a countermarch on the
capital, when he received the general’s commands to await him in
Cholula.
Cortés had also sent to the distant province of Chinantla, situated far
to the southeast of Cholula, for a reinforcement of two thousand
natives. They were a bold race, hostile to the Mexicans, and had offered
their services to him since his residence in the metropolis. They used a
long spear in battle, longer, indeed, than that borne by the Spanish or
German infantry. Cortés ordered three hundred of their double-headed
lances to be made for him, and to be tipped with copper instead of
_itztli_. With this formidable weapon he proposed to foil the cavalry of
his enemy.
The command of the garrison in his absence he intrusted to Pedro de
Alvarado,--the _Tonatiuh_ of the Mexicans,--a man possessed of many
commanding qualities, of an intrepid though somewhat arrogant spirit,
and his warm personal friend. He inculcated on him moderation and
forbearance. He was to keep a close watch on Montezuma, for on the
possession of the royal person rested all their authority in the land.
He was to show him the deference alike due to his high station and
demanded by policy. He was to pay uniform respect to the usages and the
prejudices of the people; remembering that though his small force would
be large enough to overawe them in times of quiet, yet should they be
once roused it would be swept away like chaff before the whirlwind.
From Montezuma he exacted a promise to maintain the same friendly
relations with his lieutenant which he had preserved towards himself.
This, said Cortés, would be most grateful to his own master, the Spanish
sovereign. Should the Aztec prince do otherwise, and lend himself to any
hostile movement, he must be convinced that he would fall the first
victim of it.
The emperor assured him of his continued good will. He was much
perplexed, however, by the recent events. Were the Spaniards at his
court, or those just landed, the true representatives of their
sovereign? Cortés, who had hitherto maintained a reserve on the subject,
now told him that the latter were indeed his countrymen, but traitors to
his master. As such, it was his painful duty to march against them, and,
when he had chastised their rebellion, he should return, before his
departure from the land, in triumph to the capital. Montezuma offered to
support him with five thousand Aztec warriors; but the general declined
it, not choosing to encumber himself with a body of doubtful, perhaps
disaffected, auxiliaries.
He left in garrison, under Alvarado, one hundred and forty men,
two-thirds of his whole force.[53] With these remained all the
artillery, the greater part of the little body of horse, and most of the
arquebusiers. He took with him only seventy soldiers, but they were men
of the most mettle in the army and his stanch adherents. They were
lightly armed, and encumbered with as little baggage as possible.
Everything depended on celerity of movement.
Montezuma, in his royal litter borne on the shoulders of his nobles, and
escorted by the whole Spanish infantry, accompanied the general to the
causeway. There, embracing him in the most cordial manner, they parted,
with all the external marks of mutual regard. It was about the middle of
May, 1520, more than six months since the entrance of the Spaniards into
Mexico. During this time they had lorded it over the land with absolute
sway. They were now leaving the city in hostile array, not against an
Indian foe, but their own countrymen. It was the beginning of a long
career of calamity,--checkered, indeed, by occasional triumphs,--which
was yet to be run before the Conquest could be completed.[54]
CHAPTER VII
CORTÉS DESCENDS FROM THE TABLE-LAND--NEGOTIATES WITH
NARVAEZ--PREPARES TO ASSAULT HIM--QUARTERS OF NARVAEZ--ATTACK BY
NIGHT--NARVAEZ DEFEATED
1520
Traversing the southern causeway, by which they had entered the capital,
the little party were soon on their march across the beautiful Valley.
They climbed the mountain screen which Nature had so ineffectually drawn
around it, passed between the huge volcanoes that, like faithless
watch-dogs on their posts, have long since been buried in slumber,
threaded the intricate defiles where they had before experienced such
bleak and tempestuous weather, and, emerging on the other side,
descended the western slope which opens on the wide expanse of the
fruitful plateau of Cholula.
They heeded little of what they saw on their rapid march, nor whether it
was cold or hot. The anxiety of their minds made them indifferent to
outward annoyances; and they had fortunately none to encounter from the
natives, for the name of Spaniard was in itself a charm,--a better guard
than helm or buckler to the bearer.
In Cholula, Cortés had the inexpressible satisfaction of meeting
Velasquez de Leon, with the hundred and fifty soldiers intrusted to his
command for the formation of a colony. That faithful officer had been
some time at Cholula, waiting for the general’s approach. Had he failed,
the enterprise of Cortés must have failed also.[55] The idea of
resistance, with his own handful of followers, would have been
chimerical. As it was, his little band was now trebled, and acquired a
confidence in proportion.
Cordially embracing their companions in arms, now knit together more
closely than ever by the sense of a great and common danger, the
combined troops traversed with quick steps the streets of the sacred
city, where many a dark pile of ruins told of their disastrous visit on
the preceding autumn. They kept the high-road to Tlascala, and, at not
many leagues’ distance from that capital, fell in with Father Olmedo and
his companions on their return from the camp of Narvaez, to which, it
will be remembered, they had been sent as envoys. The ecclesiastic bore
a letter from that commander, in which he summoned Cortés and his
followers to submit to his authority as captain-general of the country,
menacing them with condign punishment in case of refusal or delay.
Olmedo gave many curious particulars of the state of the enemy’s camp.
Narvaez he described as puffed up by authority, and negligent of
precautions against a foe whom he held in contempt. He was surrounded by
a number of pompous, conceited officers, who ministered to his vanity,
and whose braggart tones the good father, who had an eye for the
ridiculous, imitated, to the no small diversion of Cortés and the
soldiers. Many of the troops, he said, showed no great partiality for
their commander, and were strongly disinclined to a rupture with their
countrymen; a state of feeling much promoted by the accounts they had
received of Cortés, by his own arguments and promises, and by the
liberal distribution of the gold with which he had been provided. In
addition to these matters, Cortés gathered much important intelligence
respecting the position of the enemy’s force and his general plan of
operations.
At Tlascala the Spaniards were received with a frank and friendly
hospitality.{*} It is not said whether any of the Tlascalan allies had
accompanied them from Mexico. If they did, they went no farther than
their native city. Cortés requested a reinforcement of six hundred fresh
troops to attend him on his present expedition. It was readily granted;
but, before the army had proceeded many miles on its route, the Indian
auxiliaries fell off, one after another, and returned to their city.
They had no personal feeling of animosity to gratify in the present
instance, as in a war against Mexico. It may be, too, that, although
intrepid in a contest with the bravest of the Indian races, they had had
too fatal experience of the prowess of the white men to care to measure
swords with them again. At any rate, they deserted in such numbers that
Cortés dismissed the remainder at once, saying, good-humoredly, “He had
rather part with them then than in the hour of trial.”
{*} [Most of the accounts state that Cortés did not himself visit
Tlascala, but hastened to the coast by a more southerly route. He sent
one of his officers to that city to ask for several _thousand_ warriors.
Bernal Diaz, Hist. Verd. 91, says, “Embio Cortés a Tlascala a rogar ...
quatro mil hombres.”--M.]
The troops soon entered on that wild district in the neighborhood of
Perote, strewed with the wreck of volcanic matter, which forms so
singular a contrast to the general character of beauty with which the
scenery is stamped. It was not long before their eyes were gladdened by
the approach of Sandoval and about sixty soldiers from the garrison of
Vera Cruz, including several deserters from the enemy. It was a most
important reinforcement, not more on account of the numbers of the men
than of the character of the commander, in every respect one of the
ablest captains in the service. He had been compelled to fetch a circuit
in order to avoid falling in with the enemy, and had forced his way
through thick forests and wild mountain-passes, till he had fortunately,
without accident, reached the appointed place of rendezvous and
stationed himself once more under the banner of his chieftain.[56]
At the same place, also, Cortés was met by Tobillos, a Spaniard whom he
had sent to procure the lances from Chinantla. They were perfectly well
made, after the pattern which had been given,--double-headed spears,
tipped with copper, and of great length. Tobillos drilled the men in the
exercise of this weapon, the formidable uses of which, especially
against horse, had been fully demonstrated, towards the close of the
last century, by the Swiss battalions, in their encounters with the
Burgundian chivalry, the best in Europe.[57]
Cortés now took a review of his army,--if so paltry a force may be
called an army,--and found their numbers were two hundred and sixty-six,
only five of whom were mounted. A few muskets and cross-bows were
sprinkled among them. In defensive armor they were sadly deficient. They
were for the most part cased in the quilted doublet of the country,
thickly stuffed with cotton, the _escaupil_, recommended by its superior
lightness, but which, though competent to turn the arrow of the Indian,
was ineffectual against a musket-ball. Most of this cotton mail was
exceedingly out of repair, giving evidence, in its unsightly gaps, of
much rude service and hard blows. Few, in this emergency, but would have
given almost any price--the best of the gold chains which they wore in
tawdry display over their poor habiliments--for a steel morion or
cuirass, to take the place of their own hacked and battered armor.[58]
Under this coarse covering, however, they bore hearts stout and
courageous as ever beat in human bosoms. For they were the heroes, still
invincible, of many a hard-fought field, where the odds had been
incalculably against them. They had large experience of the country and
of the natives, and knew well the character of their own commander,
under whose eye they had been trained till every movement was in
obedience to him. The whole body seemed to constitute but a single
individual, in respect of unity of design and of action. Thus its real
effective force was incredibly augmented; and, what was no less
important, the humblest soldier felt it to be so.
The troops now resumed their march across the table-land, until,
reaching the eastern slope, their labors were lightened, as they
descended towards the broad plains of the _tierra caliente_, spread out
like a boundless ocean of verdure below them. At some fifteen leagues’
distance from Cempoalla, where Narvaez, as has been noticed, had
established his quarters, they were met by another embassy from that
commander. It consisted of the priest, Guevara, Andres de Duero, and two
or three others. Duero, the fast friend of Cortés, had been the person
most instrumental, originally, in obtaining him his commission from
Velasquez. They now greeted each other with a warm embrace, and it was
not till after much preliminary conversation on private matters that the
secretary disclosed the object of his visit.
He bore a letter from Narvaez, couched in terms somewhat different from
the preceding. That officer required, indeed, the acknowledgment of his
paramount authority in the land, but offered his vessels to transport
all, who desired it, from the country, together with their treasures and
effects, without molestation or inquiry. The more liberal tenor of these
terms was, doubtless, to be ascribed to the influence of Duero. The
secretary strongly urged Cortés to comply with them, as the most
favorable that could be obtained, and as the only alternative affording
him a chance of safety in his desperate condition. “For, however valiant
your men may be, how can they expect,” he asked, “to face a force so
much superior in numbers and equipment as that of their antagonist?” But
Cortés had set his fortunes on the cast, and he was not the man to
shrink from it. “If Narvaez bears a royal commission,” he returned, “I
will readily submit to him. But he has produced none. He is a deputy of
my rival, Velasquez. For myself, I am a servant of the king; I have
conquered the country for him; and for him I and my brave followers will
defend it, be assured, to the last drop of our blood. If we fall, it
will be glory enough to have perished in the discharge of our
duty.”[59]
His friend might have been somewhat puzzled to comprehend how the
authority of Cortés rested on a different ground from that of Narvaez;
and if they both held of the same superior, the governor of Cuba, why
that dignitary should not be empowered to supersede his own officer, in
case of dissatisfaction, and appoint a substitute.[60] But Cortés here
reaped the full benefit of that legal fiction, if it may be so termed,
by which his commission, resigned to the self-constituted municipality
of Vera Cruz, was again derived through that body from the crown. The
device, indeed, was too palpable to impose on any but those who chose to
be blinded. Most of the army were of this number. To them it seemed to
give additional confidence, in the same manner as a strip of painted
canvas, when substituted, as it has sometimes been, for a real parapet
of stone, has been found not merely to impose on the enemy, but to give
a sort of artificial courage to the defenders concealed behind it.[61]
Duero had arranged with his friend in Cuba, when he took command of the
expedition, that he himself was to have a liberal share of the profits.
It is said that Cortés confirmed this arrangement at the present
juncture, and made it clearly for the other’s interest that he should
prevail in the struggle with Narvaez. This was an important point,
considering the position of the secretary.[62] From this authentic
source the general derived much information respecting the designs of
Narvaez, which had escaped the knowledge of Olmedo. On the departure of
the envoys, Cortés intrusted them with a letter for his rival, a
counterpart of that which he had received from him. This show of
negotiation intimated a desire on his part to postpone, if not avoid,
hostilities, which might the better put Narvaez off his guard. In the
letter he summoned that commander and his followers to present
themselves before him without delay, and to acknowledge his authority as
the representative of his sovereign. He should otherwise be compelled to
proceed against them as rebels to the crown![63] With this missive, the
vaunting tone of which was intended quite as much for his own troops as
the enemy, Cortés dismissed the envoys. They returned to disseminate
among their comrades their admiration of the general, and of his
unbounded liberality, of which he took care they should experience full
measure, and they dilated on the riches of his adherents, who, over
their wretched attire, displayed, with ostentatious profusion, jewels,
ornaments of gold, collars, and massive chains winding several times
round their necks and bodies, the rich spoil of the treasury of
Montezuma.
The army now took its way across the level plains of the _tierra
caliente_, on which Nature has exhausted all the wonders of creation; it
was covered more thickly then than at the present day with noble
forests, where the towering cottonwood-tree, the growth of ages, stood
side by side with the light bamboo or banana, the product of a season,
each in its way attesting the marvellous fecundity of the soil, while
innumerable creeping flowers, muffling up the giant branches of the
trees, waved in bright festoons above their heads, loading the air with
odors. But the senses of the Spaniards were not open to the delicious
influences of nature. Their minds were occupied by one idea.
Coming upon an open reach of meadow, of some extent, they were at length
stopped by a river, or rather stream, called _Rio de Canoas_, “the River
of Canoes,” of no great volume ordinarily, but swollen at this time by
excessive rains. It had rained hard that day, although at intervals the
sun had broken forth with intolerable fervor, affording a good specimen
of those alternations of heat and moisture which give such activity to
vegetation in the tropics, where the process of forcing seems to be
always going on.
The river was about a league distant from the camp of Narvaez. Before
seeking out a practical ford by which to cross it, Cortés allowed his
men to recruit their exhausted strength by stretching themselves on the
ground. The shades of evening had gathered round; and the rising moon,
wading through dark masses of cloud, shone with a doubtful and
interrupted light. It was evident that the storm had not yet spent its
fury.[64] Cortés did not regret this. He had made up his mind to an
assault that very night, and in the darkness and uproar of the tempest
his movements would be most effectually concealed.
Before disclosing his design, he addressed his men in one of those
stirring, soldierly harangues to which he had recourse in emergencies of
great moment, as if to sound the depths of their hearts, and, where any
faltered, to reanimate them with his own heroic spirit. He briefly
recapitulated the great events of the campaign, the dangers they had
surmounted, the victories they had achieved over the most appalling
odds, the glorious spoil they had won. But of this they were now to be
defrauded; not by men holding a legal warrant from the crown, but by
adventurers, with no better title than that of superior force. They had
established a claim on the gratitude of their country and their
sovereign. This claim was now to be dishonored, their very services
were converted into crimes, and their names branded with infamy as those
of traitors. But the time had at last come for vengeance. God would not
desert the soldier of the cross. Those whom he had carried victorious
through greater dangers would not be left to fail now. And, if they
should fail, better to die like brave men on the field of battle, than,
with fame and fortune cast away, to perish ignominiously like slaves on
the gibbet. This last point he urged home upon his hearers; well knowing
there was not one among them so dull as not to be touched by it.
They responded with hearty acclamations, and Velasquez de Leon, and de
Lugo, in the name of the rest, assured their commander, if they failed,
it should be his fault, not theirs. They would follow wherever he led.
The general was fully satisfied with the temper of his soldiers, as he
felt that his difficulty lay not in awakening their enthusiasm, but in
giving it a right direction. One thing is remarkable. He made no
allusion to the defection which he knew existed in the enemy’s camp. He
would have his soldiers, in this last pinch, rely on nothing but
themselves.
He announced his purpose to attack the enemy that very night, when he
should be buried in slumber, and the friendly darkness might throw a
veil over their own movements and conceal the poverty of their numbers.
To this the troops, jaded though they were by incessant marching, and
half famished, joyfully assented. In their situation, suspense was the
worst of evils. He next distributed the commands among his captains. To
Gonzalo de Sandoval he assigned the important office of taking Narvaez.
He was commanded, as _alguacil mayor_, to seize the person of that
officer as a rebel to his sovereign, and, if he made resistance, to kill
him on the spot.[65] He was provided with sixty picked men to aid him in
this difficult task, supported by several of the ablest captains, among
whom were two of the Alvarados, de Avila, and Ordaz. The largest
division of the force was placed under Cristóval de Olid, or, according
to some authorities, of Pizarro, one of that family so renowned in the
subsequent conquest of Peru. He was to get possession of the artillery,
and to cover the assault of Sandoval by keeping those of the enemy at
bay who would interfere with it. Cortés reserved only a body of twenty
men for himself, to act on any point that occasion might require. The
watch-word was _Espíritu Santo_, it being the evening of Whitsunday.
Having made these arrangements, he prepared to cross the river.[66]
During the interval thus occupied by Cortés, Narvaez had remained at
Cempoalla, passing his days in idle and frivolous amusement. From this
he was at length roused, after the return of Duero, by the remonstrances
of the old cacique of the city. “Why are you so heedless?” exclaimed the
latter; “do you think Malinche is so? Depend on it, he knows your
situation exactly, and, when you least dream of it, he will be upon
you.”[67]
Alarmed at these suggestions and those of his friends, Narvaez at length
put himself at the head of his troops, and, on the very day on which
Cortés arrived at the River of Canoes, sallied out to meet him. But,
when he had reached this barrier, Narvaez saw no sign of an enemy. The
rain, which fell in torrents, soon drenched the soldiers to the skin.
Made somewhat effeminate by their long and luxurious residence at
Cempoalla, they murmured at their uncomfortable situation. “Of what use
was it to remain there fighting with the elements? There was no sign of
an enemy, and little reason to apprehend his approach in such
tempestuous weather. It would be wiser to return to Cempoalla, and in
the morning they should be all fresh for action, should Cortés make his
appearance.”
Narvaez took counsel of these advisers, or rather of his own
inclinations. Before retracing his steps, he provided against surprise
by stationing a couple of sentinels at no great distance from the river,
to give notice of the approach of Cortés. He also detached a body of
forty horse in another direction, by which he thought it not improbable
the enemy might advance on Cempoalla. Having taken these precautions,
he fell back again before night on his own quarters.
He there occupied the principal _teocalli_. It consisted of a stone
building on the usual pyramidal basis; and the ascent was by a flight of
steep steps on one of the faces of the pyramid. In the edifice or
sanctuary above he stationed himself with a strong party of arquebusiers
and crossbowmen. Two other _teocallis_ in the same area were garrisoned
by large detachments of infantry. His artillery, consisting of seventeen
or eighteen small guns, he posted in the area below, and protected it by
the remainder of his cavalry. When he had thus distributed his forces,
he returned to his own quarters, and soon after to repose, with as much
indifference as if his rival had been on the other side of the Atlantic,
instead of a neighboring stream.
That stream was now converted by the deluge of waters into a furious
torrent. It was with difficulty that a practicable ford could be found.
The slippery stones, rolling beneath the feet, gave way at every step.
The difficulty of the passage was much increased by the darkness and
driving tempest. Still, with their long pikes, the Spaniards contrived
to make good their footing,--at least, all but two, who were swept down
by the fury of the current. When they had reached the opposite side,
they had new impediments to encounter, in traversing a road, never good,
now made doubly difficult by the deep mire, and the tangled brushwood
with which it was overrun.
Here they met with a cross, which had been raised by them on their
former march into the interior. They hailed it as a good omen; and
Cortés, kneeling before the blessed sign, confessed his sins, and
declared his great object to be the triumph of the holy Catholic faith.
The army followed his example, and, having made a general confession,
received absolution from Father Olmedo, who invoked the blessing of
Heaven on the warriors who had consecrated their swords to the glory of
the Cross. Then rising up and embracing one another, as companions in
the good cause, they found themselves wonderfully invigorated and
refreshed. The incident is curious, and well illustrates the character
of the time,--in which war, religion, and rapine were so intimately
blended together. Adjoining the road was a little coppice; and Cortés,
and the few who had horses, dismounting, fastened the animals to the
trees, where they might find some shelter from the storm. They deposited
there, too, their baggage, and such superfluous articles as would
encumber their movements. The general then gave them a few last words of
advice. “Everything,” said he, “depends on obedience. Let no man, from
desire of distinguishing himself, break his ranks. On silence, despatch,
and, above all, obedience to your officers, the success of our
enterprise depends.”
Silently and stealthily they held on their way, without beat of drum or
sound of trumpet, when they suddenly came on the two sentinels who had
been stationed by Narvaez to give notice of their approach. This had
been so noiseless that the vedettes were both of them surprised on
their post, and one only, with difficulty, effected his escape. The
other was brought before Cortés. Every effort was made to draw from him
some account of the present position of Narvaez. But the man remained
obstinately silent; and, though threatened with the gibbet, and having a
noose actually drawn round his neck, his Spartan heroism was not to be
vanquished. Fortunately, no change had taken place in the arrangements
of Narvaez since the intelligence previously derived from Duero.
The other sentinel, who had escaped, carried the news of the enemy’s
approach to the camp. But his report was not credited by the lazy
soldiers whose slumbers he had disturbed. “He had been deceived by his
fears,” they said, “and mistaken the noise of the storm and the waving
of the bushes for the enemy. Cortés and his men were far enough on the
other side of the river, which they would be slow to cross in such a
night.” Narvaez himself shared in the same blind infatuation, and the
discredited sentinel slunk abashed to his own quarters, vainly menacing
them with the consequences of their incredulity.[68]
Cortés, not doubting that the sentinel’s report must alarm the enemy’s
camp, quickened his pace. As he drew near, he discerned a light in one
of the lofty towers of the city. “It is the quarters of Narvaez,” he
exclaimed to Sandoval, “and that light must be your beacon.” On entering
the suburbs, the Spaniards were surprised to find no one stirring, and
no symptom of alarm. Not a sound was to be heard, except the measured
tread of their own footsteps, half drowned in the howling of the
tempest. Still they could not move so stealthily as altogether to elude
notice, as they defiled through the streets of this populous city. The
tidings were quickly conveyed to the enemy’s quarters, where in an
instant all was bustle and confusion. The trumpets sounded to arms. The
dragoons sprang to their steeds, the artillery-men to their guns.
Narvaez hastily buckled on his armor, called his men around him, and
summoned those in the neighboring _teocallis_ to join him in the area.
He gave his orders with coolness; for, however wanting in prudence, he
was not deficient in presence of mind, or courage.
All this was the work of a few minutes. But in those minutes the
Spaniards had reached the avenue leading to the camp. Cortés ordered his
men to keep close to the walls of the buildings, that the cannon-shot
might pass between the two files.[69] No sooner had they presented
themselves before the enclosure, than the artillery of Narvaez opened a
general fire. Fortunately, the pieces were pointed so high that most of
the balls passed over their heads, and three men only were struck down.
They did not give the enemy time to reload. Cortés shouting the
watch-word of the night, “_Espíritu Santo! Espíritu Santo!_ Upon them!”
in a moment Olid and his division rushed on the artillery-men, whom they
pierced or knocked down with their pikes, and got possession of their
guns. Another division engaged the cavalry, and made a diversion in
favor of Sandoval, who with his gallant little band sprang up the great
stairway of the temple. They were received with a shower of
missiles,--arrows and musket-balls, which, in the hurried aim, and the
darkness of the night, did little mischief. The next minute the
assailants were on the platform, engaged hand to hand with their foes.
Narvaez fought bravely in the midst, encouraging his followers. His
standard-bearer fell by his side, run through the body. He himself
received several wounds; for his short sword was no match for the long
pikes of the assailants. At length he received a blow from a spear,
which struck out his left eye. “_Santa María!_” exclaimed the unhappy
man, “I am slain!” The cry was instantly taken up by the followers of
Cortés, who shouted “Victory!”
Disabled, and half mad with agony from his wound, Narvaez was withdrawn
by his men into the sanctuary. The assailants endeavored to force an
entrance, but it was stoutly defended. At length a soldier, getting
possession of a torch or firebrand, flung it on the thatched roof, and
in a few moments the combustible materials of which it was composed were
in a blaze. Those within were driven out by the suffocating heat and
smoke. A soldier named Farfan grappled with the wounded commander, and
easily brought him to the ground; when he was speedily dragged down the
steps, and secured with fetters. His followers, seeing the fate of their
chief, made no further resistance.[70]
During this time, Cortés and the troops of Olid had been engaged with
the cavalry, and had discomfited them, after some ineffectual attempts
on the part of the latter to break through the dense array of pikes, by
which several of their number were unhorsed and some of them slain. The
general then prepared to assault the other _teocallis_, first summoning
the garrisons to surrender. As they refused, he brought up the heavy
guns to bear on them, thus turning the artillery against its own
masters. He accompanied this menacing movement with offers of the most
liberal import; an amnesty for the past, and a full participation in all
the advantages of the Conquest. One of the garrisons was under the
command of Salvatierra, the same officer who talked of cutting off the
ears of Cortés. From the moment he had learned the fate of his own
general, the hero was seized with a violent fit of illness which
disabled him from further action. The garrison waited only for one
discharge of the ordnance, when they accepted the terms of capitulation.
Cortés, it is said, received, on this occasion, support from an
unexpected auxiliary. The air was filled with the _cocuyos_,--a species
of large beetle which emits an intense phosphoric light from its body,
strong enough to enable one to read by it. These wandering fires, seen
in the darkness of the night, were converted, by the excited
imaginations of the besieged, into an army with matchlocks! Such is the
report of an eye-witness.[71] But the facility with which the enemy
surrendered may quite as probably be referred to the cowardice of the
commander, and the disaffection of the soldiers, not unwilling to come
under the banners of Cortés.
The body of cavalry, posted, it will be remembered, by Narvaez on one of
the roads to Cempoalla, to intercept his rival, having learned what had
been passing, were not long in tendering their submission. Each of the
soldiers in the conquered army was required, in token of his obedience,
to deposit his arms in the hands of the alguacils, and to take the oaths
to Cortés as Chief Justice and Captain-General of the colony.
The number of the slain is variously reported. It seems probable that
not more than twelve perished on the side of the vanquished, and of the
victors half that number. The small amount may be explained by the short
duration of the action, and the random aim of the missiles in the
darkness. The number of the wounded was much more considerable.[72]
The field was now completely won. A few brief hours had sufficed to
change the condition of Cortés from that of a wandering outlaw at the
head of a handful of needy adventurers, a rebel with a price upon his
head, to that of an independent chief, with a force at his disposal
strong enough not only to secure his present conquests, but to open a
career for still loftier ambition. While the air rung with the
acclamations of the soldiery, the victorious general, assuming a
deportment corresponding with his change of fortune, took his seat in a
chair of state, and, with a rich, embroidered mantle thrown over his
shoulders, received, one by one, the officers and soldiers, as they came
to tender their congratulations. The privates were graciously permitted
to kiss his hand. The officers he noticed with words of compliment or
courtesy; and when Duero, Bermudez, the treasurer, and some others of
the vanquished party, his old friends, presented themselves, he
cordially embraced them.[73]
Narvaez, Salvatierra, and two or three of the other hostile leaders were
led before him in chains. It was a moment of deep humiliation for the
former commander, in which the anguish of the body, however keen, must
have been forgotten in that of the spirit. “You have great reason, Señor
Cortés,” said the discomfited warrior, “to thank Fortune for having
given you the day so easily, and put me in your power.” “I have much to
be thankful for,” replied the general; “but for my victory over you, I
esteem it as one of the least of my achievements since my coming into
the country!”[74] He then ordered the wounds of the prisoners to be
cared for, and sent them under a strong guard to Vera Cruz.
Notwithstanding the proud humility of his reply, Cortés could scarcely
have failed to regard his victory over Narvaez as one of the most
brilliant achievements in his career. With a few scores of followers,
badly clothed, worse fed, wasted by forced marches, under every personal
disadvantage, deficient in weapons and military stores, he had attacked
in their own quarters, routed, and captured the entire force of the
enemy, thrice his superior in numbers, well provided with cavalry and
artillery, admirably equipped, and complete in all the munitions of war!
The amount of troops engaged on either side was, indeed, inconsiderable.
But the proportions are not affected by this; and the relative strength
of the parties made a result so decisive one of the most remarkable
events in the annals of war.
It is true there were some contingencies on which the fortunes of the
day depended, that could not be said to be entirely within his control.
Something was the work of chance. If Velasquez de Leon, for example, had
proved false, the expedition must have failed.[75] If the weather, on
the night of the attack, had been fair, the enemy would have had certain
notice of his approach, and been prepared for it. But these are the
chances that enter more or less into every enterprise. He is the skilful
general who knows how to turn them to account; to win the smiles of
Fortune, and make even the elements fight on his side.
If Velasquez de Leon was, as it proved, the very officer whom the
general should have trusted with the command, it was his sagacity which
originally discerned this and selected him for it. It was his address
that converted this dangerous foe into a friend, and one so fast that in
the hour of need he chose rather to attach himself to his desperate
fortunes than to those of the governor of Cuba, powerful as the latter
was, and his near kinsman. It was the same address which gained Cortés
such an ascendency over his soldiers and knit them to him so closely
that in the darkest moment not a man offered to desert him.[76] If the
success of the assault may be ascribed mainly to the dark and stormy
weather which covered it, it was owing to him that he was in a condition
to avail himself of this. The shortest possible time intervened between
the conception of his plan and its execution. In a very few days he
descended by extraordinary marches from the capital to the sea-coast. He
came like a torrent from the mountains, pouring on the enemy’s camp, and
sweeping everything away, before a barrier could be raised to arrest it.
This celerity of movement, the result of a clear head and determined
will, has entered into the strategy of the greatest captains, and forms
a prominent feature in their most brilliant military exploits. It was
undoubtedly in the present instance a great cause of success.
But it would be taking a limited view of the subject to consider the
battle which decided the fate of Narvaez as wholly fought at Cempoalla.
It was begun in Mexico. With that singular power which he exercised
over all who came near him, Cortés converted the very emissaries of
Narvaez into his own friends and agents. The reports of Guevara and his
companions, the intrigues of Father Olmedo, and the general’s gold, were
all busily at work to shake the loyalty of the soldiers, and the battle
was half won before a blow had been struck. It was fought quite as much
with gold as with steel. Cortés understood this so well that he made it
his great object to seize the person of Narvaez. In such an event, he
had full confidence that indifference to their own cause and partiality
to himself would speedily bring the rest of the army under his banner.
He was not deceived. Narvaez said truly enough, therefore, some years
after this event, that “he had been beaten by his own troops, not by
those of his rival; that his followers had been bribed to betray
him.”[77] This affords the only explanation of their brief and
ineffectual resistance.
CHAPTER VIII
DISCONTENT OF THE TROOPS--INSURRECTION IN THE CAPITAL--RETURN OF
CORTÉS--GENERAL SIGNS OF HOSTILITY--MASSACRE BY ALVARADO--RISING OF
THE AZTECS
1520
The tempest, that had raged so wildly during the night, passed away with
the morning, which rose bright and unclouded on the field of battle. As
the light advanced, it revealed more strikingly the disparity of the two
forces so lately opposed to each other. Those of Narvaez could not
conceal their chagrin; and murmurs of displeasure became audible, as
they contrasted their own superior numbers and perfect appointments with
the way-worn visages and rude attire of their handful of enemies! It was
with some satisfaction, therefore, that the general beheld his dusky
allies from Chinantla, two thousand in number, arrive upon the field.
They were a fine, athletic set of men; and, as they advanced in a sort
of promiscuous order, so to speak, with their gay banners of
feather-work, and their long lances tipped with _itztli_ and copper
glistening in the morning sun, they had something of an air of military
discipline. They came too late for the action, indeed, but Cortés was
not sorry to exhibit to his new followers the extent of his resources in
the country. As he had now no occasion for his Indian allies, after a
courteous reception and a liberal recompense he dismissed them to their
homes.[78]
He then used his utmost endeavors to allay the discontent of the troops.
He addressed them in his most soft and insinuating tones, and was by no
means frugal of his promises.[79] He suited the action to the word.
There were few of them but had lost their accoutrements or their
baggage, or horses taken and appropriated by the victors. This last
article was in great request among the latter, and many a soldier, weary
with the long marches hitherto made on foot, had provided himself, as he
imagined, with a much more comfortable as well as creditable conveyance
for the rest of the campaign. The general now commanded everything to be
restored.[80] “They were embarked in the same cause,” he said, “and
should share with one another equally.” He went still further, and
distributed among the soldiers of Narvaez a quantity of gold and other
precious commodities gathered from the neighboring tribes or found in
his rival’s quarters.[81]
These proceedings, however politic in reference to his new followers,
gave great disgust to his old. “Our commander,” they cried, “has
forsaken his friends for his foes. We stood by him in his hour of
distress, and are rewarded with blows and wounds, while the spoil goes
to our enemies!” The indignant soldiery commissioned the priest Olmedo
and Alonso de Avila to lay their complaints before Cortés. The
ambassadors stated them without reserve, comparing their commander’s
conduct to the ungrateful proceeding of Alexander, who, when he gained a
victory, usually gave away more to his enemies than to the troops who
enabled him to beat them. Cortés was greatly perplexed. Victorious or
defeated, his path seemed equally beset with difficulties.
He endeavored to soothe their irritation by pleading the necessity of
the case. “Our new comrades,” he said, “are formidable from their
numbers, so much so that we are even now much more in their power than
they are in ours. Our only security is to make them not merely
confederates, but friends. On any cause of disgust, we shall have the
whole battle to fight over again, and, if they are united, under a much
greater disadvantage than before. I have considered your interests,” he
added, “as much as my own. All that I have is yours. But why should
there be any ground for discontent, when the whole country, with its
riches, is before us? And our augmented strength must henceforth secure
the undisturbed control of it.”
But Cortés did not rely wholly on argument for the restoration of
tranquillity. He knew this to be incompatible with inaction, and he made
arrangements to divide his forces at once and to employ them on distant
services. He selected a detachment of two hundred men, under Diego de
Ordaz, whom he ordered to form the settlement before meditated on the
Coatzacualco. A like number was sent with Velasquez de Leon, to secure
the province of Panuco, some three degrees to the north, on the Mexican
Gulf. Twenty in each detachment were drafted from his own veterans.
Two hundred men he despatched to Vera Cruz, with orders to have the
rigging, iron, and everything portable on board of the fleet of Narvaez,
brought on shore, and the vessels completely dismantled. He appointed a
person named Cavallero superintendent of the marine, with instructions
that if any ships hereafter should enter the port they should be
dismantled in like manner, and their officers imprisoned on shore.[82]
But, while he was thus occupied with new schemes of discovery and
conquest, he received such astounding intelligence from Mexico as
compelled him to concentrate all his faculties and his forces on that
one point. The city was in a state of insurrection. No sooner had the
struggle with his rival been decided, than Cortés despatched a courier
with the tidings to the capital. In less than a fortnight the messenger
returned with a letter from Alvarado, conveying the alarming information
that the Mexicans were in arms and had vigorously assaulted the
Spaniards in their own quarters. The enemy, he added, had burned the
brigantines, by which Cortés had secured the means of retreat in case of
the destruction of the bridges. They had attempted to force the
defences, and had succeeded in partially undermining them, and they had
overwhelmed the garrison with a tempest of missiles, which had killed
several and wounded a great number. The letter concluded with beseeching
the commander to hasten to the relief of his men, if he would save them
or keep his hold on the capital.
These tidings were a heavy blow to the general,--the heavier, it seemed,
coming as they did in the hour of triumph, when he had thought to have
all his enemies at his feet. There was no room for hesitation. To lose
his footing in the capital, the noblest city in the Western World, would
be to lose the country itself, which looked up to it as its head.[83] He
opened the matter fully to his soldiers, calling on all who would save
their countrymen to follow him. All declared their readiness to go;
showing an alacrity, says Diaz, which some would have been slow to
manifest had they foreseen the future.
Cortés now made preparations for instant departure. He countermanded the
orders previously given to Velasquez and Ordaz, and directed them to
join him with their forces at Tlascala. He called the troops from Vera
Cruz, leaving only a hundred men in garrison there, under command of one
Rodrigo Rangre; for he could not spare the services of Sandoval at this
crisis. He left his sick and wounded at Cempoalla, under charge of a
small detachment, directing that they should follow as soon as they were
in marching order. Having completed these arrangements, he set out from
Cempoalla, well supplied with provisions by its hospitable cacique, who
attended him some leagues on his way. The Totonac chief seems to have
had an amiable facility of accommodating himself to the powers that were
in the ascendant.
Nothing worthy of notice occurred during the first part of the march.
The troops everywhere met with a friendly reception from the peasantry,
who readily supplied their wants. For some time before reaching
Tlascala, the route lay through a country thinly settled; and the army
experienced considerable suffering from want of food, and still more
from that of water. Their distress increased to an alarming degree, as,
in the hurry of their forced march, they travelled with the meridian
sun beating fiercely on their heads. Several faltered by the way, and,
throwing themselves down by the roadside, seemed incapable of further
effort, and almost indifferent to life.
In this extremity, Cortés sent forward a small detachment of horse to
procure provisions in Tlascala, and speedily followed in person. On
arriving, he found abundant supplies already prepared by the hospitable
natives. They were sent back to the troops; the strugglers were
collected one by one; refreshments were administered; and the army,
restored in strength and spirits, entered the republican capital.
Here they gathered little additional news respecting the events in
Mexico, which a popular rumor attributed to the secret encouragement and
machinations of Montezuma. Cortés was commodiously lodged in the
quarters of Maxixca, one of the four chiefs of the republic. They
readily furnished him with two thousand troops. There was no want of
heartiness, when the war was with their ancient enemy the Aztec.[84]
The Spanish commander, on reviewing his forces after the junction with
his two captains, found that they amounted to about a thousand foot, and
one hundred horse, besides the Tlascalan levies.[85] In the infantry
were nearly a hundred arquebusiers, with as many crossbowmen; and the
part of the army brought over by Narvaez was admirably equipped. It was
inferior, however, to his own veterans in what is better than any
outward appointments,--military training, and familiarity with the
peculiar service in which they were engaged.
Leaving these friendly quarters, the Spaniards took a more northerly
route, as more direct than that by which they had before penetrated into
the Valley. It was the road to Tezcuco. It still compelled them to climb
the same bold range of the Cordilleras, which attains its greatest
elevation in the two mighty _volcans_ at whose base they had before
travelled. The sides of the sierra were clothed with dark forests of
pine, cypress, and cedar,[86] through which glimpses now and then opened
into fathomless dells and valleys, whose depths, far down in the sultry
climate of the tropics, were lost in a glowing wilderness of vegetation.
From the crest of the mountain range the eye travelled over the broad
expanse of country, which they had lately crossed, far away to the green
plains of Cholula. Towards the west they looked down on the Mexican
Valley, from a point of view wholly different from that which they had
before occupied, but still offering the same beautiful spectacle, with
its lakes trembling in the light, its gay cities and villas floating on
their bosom, its burnished _teocallis_ touched with fire, its cultivated
slopes and dark hills of porphyry stretching away in dim perspective to
the verge of the horizon. At their feet lay the city of Tezcuco, which,
modestly retiring behind her deep groves of cypress, formed a contrast
to her more ambitious rival on the other side of the lake, who seemed to
glory in the unveiled splendors of her charms, as Mistress of the
Valley.
As they descended into the populous plains, their reception by the
natives was very different from that which they had experienced on the
preceding visit. There were no groups of curious peasantry to be seen
gazing at them as they passed, and offering their simple hospitality.
The supplies they asked were not refused, but granted with an ungracious
air, that showed the blessing of the giver did not accompany them. This
air of reserve became still more marked as the army entered the suburbs
of the ancient capital of the Acolhuans. No one came forth to greet
them, and the population seemed to have dwindled away,--so many of them
were withdrawn to the neighboring scene of hostilities at Mexico.[87]
Their cold reception was a sensible mortification to the veterans of
Cortés, who, judging from the past, had boasted to their new comrades of
the sensation their presence would excite among the natives. The cacique
of the place, who, as it may be remembered, had been created through the
influence of Cortés, was himself absent. The general drew an ill omen
from all these circumstances, which even raised an uncomfortable
apprehension in his mind respecting the fate of the garrison in
Mexico.[88]
But his doubts were soon dispelled by the arrival of a messenger in a
canoe from that city, whence he had escaped through the remissness of
the enemy, or, perhaps, with their connivance. He brought despatches
from Alvarado, informing his commander that the Mexicans had for the
last fortnight desisted from active hostilities and converted their
operations into a blockade. The garrison had suffered greatly, but
Alvarado expressed his conviction that the siege would be raised, and
tranquillity restored, on the approach of his countrymen. Montezuma sent
a messenger, also, to the same effect. At the same time, he exculpated
himself from any part in the late hostilities, which he said had been
conducted not only without his privity, but contrary to his inclination
and efforts.
The Spanish general, having halted long enough to refresh his wearied
troops, took up his march along the southern margin of the lake, which
led him over the same causeway by which he had before entered the
capital. It was the day consecrated to St. John the Baptist, the 24th of
June, 1520. But how different was the scene from that presented on his
former entrance![89] No crowds now lined the roads, no boats swarmed on
the lake, filled with admiring spectators. A single pirogue might now
and then be seen in the distance, like a spy stealthily watching their
movements, and darting away the moment it had attracted notice. A
deathlike stillness brooded over the scene,--a stillness that spoke
louder to the heart than the acclamations of multitudes.
Cortés rode on moodily at the head of his battalions, finding abundant
food for meditation, doubtless, in this change of circumstances. As if
to dispel these gloomy reflections, he ordered his trumpets to sound,
and their clear, shrill notes, borne across the waters, told the
inhabitants of the beleaguered fortress that their friends were at hand.
They were answered by a joyous peal of artillery, which seemed to give a
momentary exhilaration to the troops, as they quickened their pace,
traversed the great drawbridges, and once more found themselves within
the walls of the imperial city.
The appearance of things here was not such as to allay their
apprehensions. In some places they beheld the smaller bridges removed,
intimating too plainly, now that their brigantines were destroyed, how
easy it would be to cut off their retreat.[90] The town seemed even more
deserted than Tezcuco. Its once busy and crowded population had
mysteriously vanished. And, as the Spaniards defiled through the empty
streets, the tramp of their horses’ feet upon the pavement was answered
by dull and melancholy echoes that fell heavily on their hearts. With
saddened feelings they reached the great gates of the palace of
Axayacatl. The gates were thrown open, and Cortés and his veterans,
rushing in, were cordially embraced by their companions in arms, while
both parties soon forgot the present in the interesting recapitulation
of the past.[91]
The first inquiries of the general were respecting the origin of the
tumult. The accounts were various. Some imputed it to the desire of the
Mexicans to release their sovereign from confinement; others to the
design of cutting off the garrison while crippled by the absence of
Cortés and their countrymen. All agreed, however, in tracing the
immediate cause to the violence of Alvarado. It was common for the
Aztecs to celebrate an annual festival in May, in honor of their patron
war-god. It was called the “incensing of Huitzilopochtli,” and was
commemorated by sacrifice, religious songs, and dances, in which most of
the nobles engaged, for it was one of the great festivals which
displayed the pomp of the Aztec ritual. As it was held in the court of
the _teocalli_, in the immediate neighborhood of the Spanish quarters,
and as a part of the temple itself was reserved for a Christian chapel,
the caciques asked permission of Alvarado to perform their rites there.
They requested also, it is said, to be allowed the presence of
Montezuma. This latter petition Alvarado declined, in obedience to the
injunctions of Cortés; but acquiesced in the former, on condition that
the Aztecs should celebrate no human sacrifices and should come without
weapons.
They assembled accordingly on the day appointed, to the number of six
hundred, at the smallest computation.[92] They were dressed in their
most magnificent gala costumes, with their graceful mantles of
feather-work sprinkled with precious stones, and their necks, arms, and
legs ornamented with collars and bracelets of gold. They had that love
of gaudy splendor which belongs to semi-civilized nations, and on these
occasions displayed all the pomp and profusion of their barbaric
wardrobes.
Alvarado and his soldiers attended as spectators, some of them taking
their station at the gates as if by chance, and others mingling in the
crowd. They were all armed,--a circumstance which, as it was usual,
excited no attention. The Aztecs were soon engrossed by the exciting
movement of the dance, accompanied by their religious chant and wild,
discordant minstrelsy. While thus occupied, Alvarado and his men, at a
concerted signal, rushed with drawn swords on their victims. Unprotected
by armor or weapons of any kind, they were hewn down without resistance
by their assailants, who in their bloody work, says a contemporary,
showed no touch of pity or compunction.[93] Some fled to the gates, but
were caught on the long pikes of the soldiers. Others, who attempted to
scale the _coatepantli_, or Wall of Serpents, as it was called, which
surrounded the area, shared the like fate, or were cut to pieces, or
shot by the ruthless soldiery. The pavement, says a writer of the age,
ran with streams of blood, like water in a heavy shower.[94] Not an
Aztec, of all that gay company, was left alive! It was repeating the
dreadful scene of Cholula, with the disgraceful addition that the
Spaniards, not content with slaughtering their victims, rifled them of
the precious ornaments on their persons! On this sad day fell the
flower of the Aztec nobility. Not a family of note but had mourning and
desolation brought within its walls.[95] And many a doleful ballad,
rehearsing the tragic incidents of the story, and adapted to the
plaintive national airs, continued to be chanted by the natives long
after the subjugation of the country.[96]
Various explanations have been given of this atrocious deed. But few
historians have been content to admit that of Alvarado himself.
According to this, intelligence had been obtained through his
spies--some of them Mexicans--of an intended rising of the Indians. The
celebration of this festival was fixed on as the period for its
execution, when the caciques would be met together and would easily
rouse the people to support them. Alvarado, advised of all this, had
forbidden them to wear arms at their meeting. While affecting to comply,
they had secreted their weapons in the neighboring arsenals, whence they
could readily withdraw them. But his own blow, by anticipating theirs,
defeated the design, and, as he confidently hoped, would deter the
Aztecs from a similar attempt in future.[97]
Such is the account of the matter given by Alvarado. But, if true, why
did he not verify his assertion by exposing the arms thus secreted? Why
did he not vindicate his conduct in the eyes of the Mexicans generally,
by publicly avowing the treason of the nobles, as was done by Cortés at
Cholula? The whole looks much like an apology devised after the
commission of the deed, to cover up its atrocity.
Some contemporaries assign a very different motive for the massacre,
which, according to them, originated in the cupidity of the Conquerors,
as shown by their plundering the bodies of their victims.[98] Bernal
Diaz, who, though not present, had conversed familiarly with those who
were, vindicates them from the charge of this unworthy motive. According
to him, Alvarado struck the blow in order to intimidate the Aztecs from
any insurrectionary movement.[99] But whether he had reason to apprehend
such, or even affected to do so before the massacre, the old chronicler
does not inform us.
On reflection, it seems scarcely possible that so foul a deed, and one
involving so much hazard to the Spaniards themselves, should have been
perpetrated from the mere desire of getting possession of the baubles
worn on the persons of the natives. It is more likely this was an
after-thought, suggested to the rapacious soldiery by the display of the
spoil before them. It is not improbable that Alvarado may have gathered
rumors of a conspiracy among the nobles,--rumors, perhaps, derived
through the Tlascalans, their inveterate foes, and for that reason very
little deserving of credit.[100] He proposed to defeat it by imitating
the example of his commander at Cholula. But he omitted to imitate his
leader in taking precautions against the subsequent rising of the
populace. And he grievously miscalculated when he confounded the bold
and warlike Aztec with the effeminate Cholulan.[101]
No sooner was the butchery accomplished, than the tidings spread like
wildfire through the capital. Men could scarcely credit their senses.
All they had hitherto suffered, the desecration of their temples, the
imprisonment of their sovereign, the insults heaped on his person, all
were forgotten in this one act.[102] Every feeling of long-smothered
hostility and rancor now burst forth in the cry for vengeance. Every
former sentiment of superstitious dread was merged in that of
inextinguishable hatred. It required no effort of the priests--though
this was not wanting--to fan these passions into a blaze. The city rose
in arms to a man; and on the following dawn, almost before the Spaniards
could secure themselves in their defences, they were assaulted with
desperate fury. Some of the assailants attempted to scale the walls;
others succeeded in partially undermining and setting fire to the works.
Whether they would have succeeded in carrying the place by storm is
doubtful. But, at the prayers of the garrison, Montezuma himself
interfered, and, mounting the battlements, addressed the populace, whose
fury he endeavored to mitigate by urging considerations for his own
safety. They respected their monarch so far as to desist from further
attempts to storm the fortress, but changed their operations into a
regular blockade. They threw up works around the palace to prevent the
egress of the Spaniards. They suspended the _tianguez_, or market, to
preclude the possibility of their enemy’s obtaining supplies; and they
then quietly sat down, with feelings of sullen desperation, waiting for
the hour when famine should throw their victims into their hands.
The condition of the besieged, meanwhile, was sufficiently distressing.
Their magazines of provisions, it is true, were not exhausted; but they
suffered greatly from want of water, which, within the enclosure, was
exceedingly brackish, for the soil was saturated with the salt of the
surrounding element. In this extremity, they discovered, it is said, a
spring of fresh water in the area. Such springs were known in some other
parts of the city; but, discovered first under these circumstances, it
was accounted as nothing less than a miracle. Still they suffered much
from their past encounters. Seven Spaniards, and many Tlascalans, had
fallen, and there was scarcely one of either nation who had not received
several wounds. In this situation, far from their own countrymen,
without expectation of succor from abroad, they seemed to have no
alternative before them but a lingering death by famine, or one more
dreadful on the altar of sacrifice. From this gloomy state they were
relieved by the coming of their comrades.[103]
Cortés calmly listened to the explanation made by Alvarado. But, before
it was ended, the conviction must have forced itself on his mind that he
had made a wrong selection for this important post. Yet the mistake was
natural. Alvarado was a cavalier of high family, gallant and chivalrous,
and his warm personal friend. He had talents for action, was possessed
of firmness and intrepidity, while his frank and dazzling manners made
the _Tonatiuh_ an especial favorite with the Mexicans. But underneath
this showy exterior the future conqueror of Guatemala concealed a heart
rash, rapacious, and cruel. He was altogether destitute of that
moderation which, in the delicate position he occupied, was a quality of
more worth than all the rest.
When Alvarado had concluded his answers to the several interrogatories
of Cortés, the brow of the latter darkened, as he said to his
lieutenant, “You have done badly. You have been false to your trust.
Your conduct has been that of a madman!” And, turning abruptly on his
heel, he left him in undisguised displeasure.
Yet this was not a time to break with one so popular, and, in many
respects, so important to him, as this captain, much less to inflict on
him the punishment he merited. The Spaniards were like mariners laboring
in a heavy tempest, whose bark nothing but the dexterity of the pilot
and the hearty co-operation of the crew can save from foundering.
Dissensions at such a moment must be fatal. Cortés, it is true, felt
strong in his present resources. He now found himself at the head of a
force which could scarcely amount to less than twelve hundred and fifty
Spaniards, and eight thousand native warriors, principally
Tlascalans.[104] But, though relying on this to overawe resistance, the
very augmentation of numbers increased the difficulty of subsistence.
Discontented with himself, disgusted with his officer, and embarrassed
by the disastrous consequences in which Alvarado’s intemperance had
involved him, he became irritable, and indulged in a petulance by no
means common; for, though a man of lively passions by nature, he held
them habitually under control.[105]
On the day that Cortés arrived, Montezuma had left his own quarters to
welcome him. But the Spanish commander, distrusting, as it would seem,
however unreasonably, his good faith, received him so coldly that the
Indian monarch withdrew, displeased and dejected, to his apartment. As
the Mexican populace made no show of submission, and brought no supplies
to the army, the general’s ill humor with the emperor continued. When,
therefore, Montezuma sent some of the nobles to ask an interview with
Cortés, the latter, turning to his own officers, haughtily exclaimed,
“What have I to do with this dog of a king who suffers us to starve
before his eyes?”
His captains, among whom were Olid, De Avila, and Velasquez de Leon,
endeavored to mitigate his anger, reminding him, in respectful terms,
that had it not been for the emperor the garrison might even now have
been overwhelmed by the enemy. This remonstrance only chafed him the
more. “Did not the dog,” he asked, repeating the opprobrious epithet,
“betray us in his communications with Narvaez? And does he not now
suffer his markets to be closed, and leave us to die of famine?” Then,
turning fiercely to the Mexicans, he said, “Go tell your master and his
people to open the markets, or we will do it for them, at their cost!”
The chiefs, who had gathered the import of his previous taunt on their
sovereign, from his tone and gesture, or perhaps from some comprehension
of his language, left his presence swelling with resentment, and, in
communicating his message, took care it should lose none of its
effect.[106]
Shortly after, Cortés, at the suggestion, it is said, of Montezuma,
released his brother Cuitlahua, lord of Iztapalapan, who, it will be
remembered, had been seized on suspicion of co-operating with the chief
of Tezcuco in his meditated revolt.{*} It was thought he might be of
service in allaying the present tumult and bringing the populace to a
better state of feeling. But he returned no more to the fortress.[107]
He was a bold, ambitious prince, and the injuries he had received from
the Spaniards rankled deep in his bosom. He was presumptive heir to the
crown, which, by the Aztec laws of succession, descended much more
frequently in a collateral than in a direct line. The people welcomed
him as the representative of their sovereign, and chose him to supply
the place of Montezuma during his captivity. Cuitlahua willingly
accepted the post of honor and of danger. He was an experienced warrior,
and exerted himself to reorganize the disorderly levies and to arrange a
more efficient plan of operations. The effect was soon visible.
{*} [This was the enormous blunder committed by Cortés, because of his
ignorance of Aztec tribal customs, which was mentioned in the note on p.
346, vol. ii. In releasing Cuitlahua from captivity Cortés put away the
last guaranty of safety his forces possessed. Cuitlahua was next in the
line of succession of the eligibles from whom the priest commander was
chosen. The Tlatocan, or tribal council, was the power which controlled
all the affairs of the tribe. This council, which elected a ruler, could
also in extraordinary circumstances depose him and set another man in
his place. As soon as he was released Cuitlahua convened the Tlatocan.
That body at once deposed Montezuma and made Cuitlahua priest commander.
It was not a captive _sovereign_ the Spaniards guarded, but only a
deposed _priest commander_ whose person was no longer sacred. When, a
little later, Montezuma was put forward to address the mob that raged
about the walls of the tecpan, another man wore the golden beak of the
war-god. It was not against their hereditary ruler, but only against the
discredited agent who had once directed the affairs of the tribe that
the Aztec warriors hurled their missiles. Montezuma deposed was no more
to them than was any member of the tribal council. The spell that had
protected the invaders was broken when his office was taken from
him.--M.]
Cortés meanwhile had so little doubt of his ability to overawe the
insurgents, that he wrote to that effect to the garrison of Villa Rica
by the same despatches in which he informed them of his safe arrival in
the capital. But scarcely had his messenger been gone half an hour, when
he returned breathless with terror and covered with wounds. “The city,”
he said, “was all in arms! The draw-bridges were raised, and the enemy
would soon be upon them!” He spoke truth. It was not long before a
hoarse, sullen sound became audible, like that of the roaring of distant
waters. It grew louder and louder; till, from the parapet surrounding
the enclosure, the great avenues which led to it might be seen dark with
the masses of warriors, who came rolling on in a confused tide towards
the fortress. At the same time, the terraces and _azoteas_ or flat
roofs, in the neighborhood, were thronged with combatants brandishing
their missiles, who seemed to have risen up as if by magic![108] It was
a spectacle to appall the stoutest. But the dark storm to which it was
the prelude, and which gathered deeper and deeper round the Spaniards
during the remainder of their residence in the capital, must form the
subject of a separate Book.
Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés was born in 1478. He belonged
to an ancient family of the Asturias. Every family, indeed, claims
to be ancient in this last retreat of the intrepid Goths. He was
early introduced at court, and was appointed page to Prince Juan,
the only son of Ferdinand and Isabella, on whom their hopes, and
those of the nation, deservedly rested. Oviedo accompanied the camp
in the latter campaigns of the Moorish war, and was present at the
memorable siege of Granada. On the untimely death of his royal
master, in 1496, he passed over to Italy and entered the service of
King Frederick of Naples. At the death of that prince he returned
to his own country, and in the beginning of the sixteenth century
we find him again established in Castile, where he occupied the
place of keeper of the crown jewels. In 1513 he was named by
Ferdinand the Catholic _veedor_, or inspector, of the gold
founderies in the American colonies. Oviedo, accordingly,
transported himself to the New World, where he soon took a
commission under Pedrarias, governor of Darien, and shared in the
disastrous fortunes of that colony. He obtained some valuable
privileges from the crown, built a fortress on Tierra Firme and
entered into traffic with the natives. In this we may presume he
was prosperous, since we find him at length established with a wife
and family at Hispaniola, or Fernandina, as it was then called.
Although he continued to make his principal residence in the New
World, he made occasional visits to Spain, and in 1526 published at
Madrid his _Sumario_. It is dedicated to the Emperor Charles the
Fifth, and contains an account of the West Indies, their geography,
climate, the races who inhabited them, together with their animals
and vegetable productions. The subject was of great interest to the
inquisitive minds of Europe, and one of which they had previously
gleaned but scanty information. In 1535, in a subsequent visit to
Spain, Oviedo gave to the world the first volume of his great work,
which he had been many years in compiling,--the _Historia de las
Indias occidentales_. In the same year he was appointed by Charles
the Fifth alcayde of the fortress of Hispaniola. He continued in
the island the ten following years, actively engaged in the
prosecution of his historical researches, and then returned for the
last time to his native land. The veteran scholar was well received
at court, and obtained the honorable appointment of Chronicler of
the Indies. He occupied this post until the period of his death,
which took place at Valladolid in 1557, in the seventy-ninth year
of his age, at the very time when he was employed in preparing the
residue of his history for the press.
Considering the intimate footing on which Oviedo lived with the
eminent persons of his time, it is singular that so little is
preserved of his personal history and his character. Nic. Antonio
speaks of him as a “man of large experience, courteous in his
manners, and of great probity.” His long and active life is a
sufficient voucher for his experience, and one will hardly doubt
his good breeding when we know the high society in which he moved.
He left a large mass of manuscripts, embracing a vast range both of
civil and natural history. By far the most important is his
_Historia general de las Indias_. It is divided into three parts,
containing fifty books. The first part, consisting of nineteen
books, is the one already noticed as having been published during
his lifetime. It gives in a more extended form the details of
geographical and natural history embodied in his _Sumario_, with a
narrative, moreover, of the discoveries and conquests of the
Islands. A translation of this portion of the work was made by the
learned Ramusio, with whom Oviedo was in correspondence, and is
published in the third volume of his inestimable collection. The
two remaining parts relate to the conquests of Mexico, of Peru, and
other countries of South America. It is that portion of the work
consulted for these pages. The manuscript was deposited, at his
death, in the _Casa de la Contratacion_, at Seville. It afterwards
came into the possession of the Dominican monastery of Monserrat.
In process of time, mutilated copies found their way into several
private collections; when, in 1775, Don Francisco Cerda y Rico, an
officer in the Indian department, ascertained the place in which
the original was preserved, and, prompted by his literary zeal,
obtained an order from the government for its publication. Under
his supervision the work was put in order for the press, and
Oviedo’s biographer, Alvarez y Baena, assures us that a complete
edition of it, prepared with the greatest care, would soon be given
to the world. (Hijos de Madrid (Madrid, 1790), tom. ii. pp.
354-361.) It still remains in manuscript.{*}
{*} [The _Historia General y Natural de las Indias, Islas y
Tierrafirme del Mar Océano, por El Capitan Gonzalo Fernandez de
Oviedo y Valdéz, Primer Cronista del Nuevo Mundo_, was published in
four volumes at Madrid, 1851-55, by the Real Academia de la
Historia.--M.]
No country has been more fruitful in the field of historical
composition than Spain. Her ballads are chronicles done into verse.
The chronicles themselves date from the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries. Every city, every small town, every great family, and
many a petty one, has its chronicler. These were often mere monkish
chroniclers, who in the seclusion of the convent found leisure for
literary occupation. Or, not unfrequently, they were men who had
taken part in the affairs they described, more expert with the
sword than with the pen. The compositions of this latter class have
a general character of that indifference to fine writing which
shows a mind intent on the facts with which it is occupied, much
more than on forms of expression. The monkish chroniclers, on the
other hand, often make a pedantic display of obsolete erudition,
which contrasts rather whimsically with the homely texture of the
narrative. The chronicles of both the one and the other class of
writers may frequently claim the merit of picturesque and animated
detail, showing that the subject was one of living interest, and
that the writer’s heart was in his subject.
Many of the characteristic blemishes of which I have been speaking
may be charged on Oviedo. His style is cast in no classic mould.
His thoughts find themselves a vent in tedious, interminable
sentences, that may fill the reader with despair; and the thread
of the narrative is broken by impertinent episodes that lead to
nothing. His scholarship was said to be somewhat scanty. One will
hardly be led to doubt it, from the tawdry display of Latin
quotations with which he garnishes his pages, like a poor gallant
who would make the most of his little store of finery. He affected
to take the elder Pliny as his model, as appears from the preface
to his _Sumario_. But his own work fell far short of the model of
erudition and eloquence which that great writer of natural history
has bequeathed to us.
Yet, with his obvious defects, Oviedo showed an enlightened
curiosity, and a shrewd spirit of observation, which place him far
above the ordinary range of chroniclers. He may even be said to
display a philosophic tone in his reflections, though his
philosophy must be regarded as cold and unscrupulous wherever the
rights of the aborigines are in question. He was indefatigable in
amassing materials for his narratives, and for this purpose
maintained a correspondence with the most eminent men of his time
who had taken part in the transactions which he commemorates. He
even condescended to collect information from more humble sources,
from popular tradition and the reports of the common soldiers.
Hence his work often presents a medley of inconsistent and
contradictory details, which perplex the judgment, making it
exceedingly difficult, at this distance of time, to disentangle the
truth. It was perhaps for this reason that Las Casas complimented
the author by declaring that “his works were a wholesale
fabrication, as full of lies as of pages!” Yet another explanation
of this severe judgment may be found in the different characters of
the two men. Oviedo shared in the worldly feelings common to the
Spanish Conquerors, and, while he was ever ready to magnify the
exploits of his countrymen, held lightly the claims and the
sufferings of the unfortunate aborigines. He was incapable of
appreciating the generous philanthropy of Las Casas, or of rising
to his lofty views, which he doubtless derided as those of a
benevolent, it might be, but visionary fanatic. Las Casas, on the
other hand, whose voice had been constantly uplifted against the
abuses of the Conquerors, was filled with abhorrence at the
sentiments avowed by Oviedo, and it was natural that his aversion
to the principles should be extended to the person who professed
them. Probably no two men could have been found less competent to
form a right estimate of each other.
Oviedo showed the same activity in gathering materials for natural
history as he had done for the illustration of civil. He collected
the different plants of the Islands in his garden, and domesticated
many of the animals, or kept them in confinement under his eye,
where he could study their peculiar habits. By this course, if he
did not himself rival Pliny and Hernandez in science, he was, at
least, enabled to furnish the man of science with facts of the
highest interest and importance.
Besides these historical writings, Oviedo left a work in six
volumes, called by the whimsical title of _Quincuagenas_. It
consists of imaginary dialogues between the most eminent Spaniards
of the time, in respect to their personal history, their families,
and genealogy. It is a work of inestimable value to the historian
of the times of Ferdinand and Isabella, and of Charles the Fifth.
But it has attracted little attention in Spain, where it still
remains in manuscript. A complete copy of Oviedo’s History of the
Indies is in the archives of the Royal Academy of History in
Madrid, and it is understood that this body has now an edition
prepared for the press. Such parts as are literally transcribed
from preceding narratives, like the Letters of Cortés, which Oviedo
transferred without scruple entire and unmutilated into his own
pages, though enlivened, it is true, by occasional criticism of his
own, might as well be omitted. But the remainder of the great work
affords a mass of multifarious information which would make an
important contribution to the colonial history of Spain.
An authority of frequent reference in these pages is Diego Muñoz
Camargo. He was a noble Tlascalan _mestee_, and lived in the latter
half of the sixteenth century. He was educated in the Christian
faith, and early instructed in Castilian, in which tongue he
composed his _Historia de Tlascala_. In this work he introduces the
reader to the different members of the great Nahuatlac family who
came successively up the Mexican plateau. Born and bred among the
aborigines of the country, when the practices of the pagan age had
not wholly become obsolete, Camargo was in a position perfectly to
comprehend the condition of the ancient inhabitants; and his work
supplies much curious and authentic information respecting the
social and religious institutions of the land at the time of the
Conquest. His patriotism warms as he recounts the old hostilities
of his countrymen with the Aztecs; and it is singular to observe
how the detestation of the rival nations survived their common
subjection under the Castilian yoke.
Camargo embraces in his narrative an account of this great event,
and of the subsequent settlement of the country. As one of the
Indian family, we might expect to see his chronicle reflect the
prejudices, or, at least, partialities, of the Indian. But the
Christian convert yielded up his sympathies as freely to the
Conquerors as to his own countrymen. The desire to magnify the
exploits of the latter, and at the same time to do full justice to
the prowess of the white men, produces occasionally a most
whimsical contrast in his pages, giving the story a strong air of
inconsistency. In point of literary execution the work has little
merit; as great, however, as could be expected from a native
Indian, indebted for his knowledge of the tongue to such imperfect
instruction as he could obtain from the missionaries. Yet in style
of composition it may compare not unfavorably with the writings of
some of the missionaries themselves.
The original manuscript was long preserved in the convent of _San
Felipe Neri_ in Mexico, where Torquemada, as appears from
occasional references, had access to it. It has escaped the
attention of other historians, but was embraced by Muñoz in his
magnificent collection, and deposited in the archives of the Royal
Academy of History at Madrid; from which source the copy in my
possession was obtained. It bears the title of _Pedazo de Historia
verdadera_, and is without the author’s name, and without division
into books or chapters.
BOOK V
EXPULSION FROM MEXICO
CHAPTER I
DESPERATE ASSAULT ON THE QUARTERS--FURY OF THE MEXICANS--SALLY OF
THE SPANIARDS--MONTEZUMA ADDRESSES THE PEOPLE--DANGEROUSLY WOUNDED
1520
The palace of Axayacatl, in which the Spaniards were quartered, was, as
the reader may remember, a vast, irregular pile of stone buildings,
having but one floor, except in the centre, where another story was
added, consisting of a suite of apartments which rose like turrets on
the main building of the edifice. A vast area stretched around,
encompassed by a stone wall of no great height. This was supported by
towers or bulwarks at certain intervals, which gave it some degree of
strength, not, indeed, as compared with European fortifications, but
sufficient to resist the rude battering enginery of the Indians. The
parapet had been pierced here and there with embrasures for the
artillery, which consisted of thirteen guns; and smaller apertures were
made in other parts for the convenience of the arquebusiers. The
Spanish forces found accommodations within the great building; but the
numerous body of Tlascalan auxiliaries could have had no other shelter
than what was afforded by barracks or sheds hastily constructed for the
purpose, in the spacious court-yard. Most of them, probably, bivouacked
under the open sky, in a climate milder than that to which they were
accustomed among the rude hills of their native land. Thus crowded into
a small and compact compass, the whole army could be assembled at a
moment’s notice; and, as the Spanish commander was careful to enforce
the strictest discipline and vigilance, it was scarcely possible that he
could be taken by surprise. No sooner, therefore, did the trumpet call
to arms, as the approach of the enemy was announced, than every soldier
was at his post, the cavalry mounted, the artillery-men at their guns,
and the archers and arquebusiers stationed so as to give the assailants
a warm reception.
On they came, with the companies, or irregular masses, into which the
multitude was divided, rushing forward each in its own dense column,
with many a gay banner displayed, and many a bright gleam of light
reflected from helmet, arrow, and spear-head, as they were tossed about
in their disorderly array. As they drew near the enclosure, the Aztecs
set up a hideous yell, or rather that shrill whistle used in fight by
the nations of Anahuac, which rose far above the sound of shell and
atabal and their other rude instruments of warlike melody. They followed
this by a tempest of missiles,--stones, darts, and arrows,--which fell
thick as rain on the besieged, while volleys of the same kind descended
from the crowded terraces in the neighborhood.[109]
The Spaniards waited until the foremost column had arrived within the
best distance for giving effect to their fire, when a general discharge
of artillery and arquebuses swept the ranks of the assailants and mowed
them down by hundreds.[110] The Mexicans were familiar with the report
of these formidable engines as they had been harmlessly discharged on
some holiday festival; but never till now had they witnessed their
murderous power. They stood aghast for a moment, as with bewildered
looks they staggered under the fury of the fire;[111] but, soon
rallying, the bold barbarians uttered a piercing cry, and rushed forward
over the prostrate bodies of their comrades. A second and a third
volley checked their career, and threw them into disorder, but still
they pressed on, letting off clouds of arrows; while their comrades on
the roofs of the houses took more deliberate aim at the combatants in
the court-yard. The Mexicans were particularly expert in the use of the
sling;[112] and the stones which they hurled from their elevated
positions on the heads of their enemies did even greater execution than
the arrows. They glanced, indeed, from the mail-covered bodies of the
cavaliers, and from those who were sheltered under the cotton panoply,
or _escaupil_. But some of the soldiers, especially the veterans of
Cortés, and many of their Indian allies, had but slight defences, and
suffered greatly under this stony tempest.
The Aztecs, meanwhile, had advanced close under the walls of the
intrenchment, their ranks broken and disordered and their limbs mangled
by the unintermitting fire of the Christians. But they still pressed on,
under the very muzzles of the guns. They endeavored to scale the
parapet, which, from its moderate height, was in itself a work of no
great difficulty. But the moment they showed their heads above the
rampart they were shot down by the unerring marksmen within, or
stretched on the ground by a blow of a Tlascalan _maquahuitl_. Nothing
daunted, others soon appeared to take the place of the fallen, and
strove by raising themselves on the writhing bodies of their dying
comrades, or by fixing their spears in the crevices of the wall, to
surmount the barrier. But the attempt proved equally vain.
Defeated here, they tried to effect a breach in the parapet by battering
it with heavy pieces of timber. The works were not constructed on those
scientific principles by which one part is made to overlook and protect
another. The besiegers, therefore, might operate at their pleasure, with
but little molestation from the garrison within, whose guns could not be
brought into a position to bear on them, and who could mount no part of
their own works for their defence without exposing their persons to the
missiles of the whole besieging army. The parapet, however, proved too
strong for the efforts of the assailants. In their despair, they
endeavored to set the Christian quarters on fire, shooting burning
arrows into them, and climbing up so as to dart their firebrands through
the embrasures. The principal edifice was of stone. But the temporary
defences of the Indian allies, and other parts of the exterior works,
were of wood. Several of these took fire, and the flame spread rapidly
among the light, combustible materials. This was a disaster for which
the besieged were wholly unprepared. They had little water, scarcely
enough for their own consumption. They endeavored to extinguish the
flames by heaping on earth. But in vain. Fortunately, the great building
was of materials which defied the destroying element. But the fire raged
in some of the outworks, connected with the parapet, with a fury which
could only be checked by throwing down a part of the wall itself, thus
laying open a formidable breach. This, by the general’s order, was
speedily protected by a battery of heavy guns, and a file of
arquebusiers, who kept up an incessant volley through the opening on the
assailants.[113]
The fight now raged with fury on both sides. The walls around the palace
belched forth an unintermitting sheet of flame and smoke. The groans of
the wounded and dying were lost in the fiercer battle-cries of the
combatants, the roar of the artillery, the sharper rattle of the
musketry, and the hissing sound of Indian missiles. It was the conflict
of the European with the American; of civilized man with the barbarian;
of the science of the one with the rude weapons and warfare of the
other. And as the ancient walls of Tenochtitlan shook under the thunders
of the artillery, it announced that the white man, the destroyer, had
set his foot within her precincts.[114]
Night at length came, and drew her friendly mantle over the contest. The
Aztec seldom fought by night. It brought little repose, however, to the
Spaniards, in hourly expectation of an assault; and they found abundant
occupation in restoring the breaches in their defences and in repairing
their battered armor. The beleaguering host lay on their arms through
the night, giving token of their presence, now and then, by sending a
stone or shaft over the battlements, or by a solitary cry of defiance
from some warrior more determined than the rest, till all other sounds
were lost in the vague, indistinct murmurs which float upon the air in
the neighborhood of a vast assembly.
The ferocity shown by the Mexican seems to have been a thing for which
Cortés was wholly unprepared. His past experience, his uninterrupted
career of victory with a much feebler force at his command, had led him
to underrate the military efficiency, as well as the valor, of the
Indians. The apparent facility with which the Mexicans had acquiesced in
the outrages on their sovereign and themselves had led him to hold their
courage, in particular, too lightly. He could not believe the present
assault to be anything more than a temporary ebullition of the populace,
which would soon waste itself by its own fury. And he proposed, on the
following day, to sally out and inflict such chastisement on his foes as
should bring them to their senses and show who was master in the
capital.
With early dawn, the Spaniards were up and under arms; but not before
their enemies had given evidence of their hostility by the random
missiles which from time to time were sent into the enclosure. As the
gray light of morning advanced, it showed the besieging army, far from
being diminished in numbers, filling up the great square and neighboring
avenues in more dense array than on the preceding evening. Instead of a
confused, disorderly rabble, it had the appearance of something like a
regular force, with its battalions distributed under their respective
banners, the devices of which showed a contribution from the principal
cities and districts in the Valley. High above the rest was conspicuous
the ancient standard of Mexico, with its well-known cognizance, an eagle
pouncing on an ocelot, emblazoned on a rich mantle of feather-work. Here
and there priests might be seen mingling in the ranks of the besiegers,
and, with frantic gestures, animating them to avenge their insulted
deities.
The greater part of the enemy had little clothing save the _maxtlatl_,
or sash round the loins. They were variously armed, with long spears
tipped with copper or flint, or sometimes merely pointed and hardened in
the fire. Some were provided with slings, and others with darts having
two or three points, with long strings attached to them, by which, when
discharged, they could be torn away again from the body of the wounded.
This was a formidable weapon, much dreaded by the Spaniards. Those of a
higher order yielded the terrible _maquahuitl_, with its sharp and
brittle blades of obsidian. Amidst the motley bands of warriors were
seen many whose showy dress and air of authority intimated persons of
high military consequence. Their breasts were protected by plates of
metal, over which was thrown the gay surcoat of feather-work. They wore
casques resembling in their form the head of some wild and ferocious
animal, crested with bristly hair, or overshadowed by tall and graceful
plumes of many a brilliant color. Some few were decorated with the red
fillet bound round the hair, having tufts of cotton attached to it,
which denoted by their number that of the victories they had won, and
their own pre-eminent rank among the warriors of the nation. The motley
assembly plainly showed that priest, warrior, and citizen had all united
to swell the tumult.
Before the sun had shot his beams into the Castilian quarters, the enemy
were in motion, evidently preparing to renew the assault of the
preceding day. The Spanish commander determined to anticipate them by a
vigorous sortie, for which he had already made the necessary
dispositions. A general discharge of ordnance and musketry sent death
far and wide into the enemy’s ranks, and, before they had time to
recover from their confusion, the gates were thrown open, and Cortés,
sallying out at the head of his cavalry, supported by a large body of
infantry and several thousand Tlascalans, rode at full gallop against
them. Taken thus by surprise, it was scarcely possible to offer much
resistance. Those who did were trampled down under the horses’ feet, cut
to pieces with the broadswords, or pierced with the lances of the
riders. The infantry followed up the blow, and the rout for the moment
was general.
But the Aztecs fled only to take refuge behind a barricade, or strong
work of timber and earth, which had been thrown across the great street
through which they were pursued. Rallying on the other side, they made a
gallant stand, and poured in turn a volley of their light weapons on
the Spaniards, who, saluted with a storm of missiles at the same time
from the terraces of the houses, were checked in their career and thrown
into some disorder.[115]
Cortés, thus impeded, ordered up a few pieces of heavy ordnance, which
soon swept away the barricades and cleared a passage for the army. But
it had lost the momentum acquired in its rapid advance. The enemy had
time to rally and to meet the Spaniards on more equal terms. They were
attacked in flank, too, as they advanced, by fresh battalions, who
swarmed in from the adjoining streets and lanes. The canals were alive
with boats filled with warriors, who with their formidable darts
searched every crevice or weak place in the armor of proof, and made
havoc on the unprotected bodies of the Tlascalans. By repeated and
vigorous charges, the Spaniards succeeded in driving the Indians before
them; though many, with a desperation which showed they loved vengeance
better than life, sought to embarrass the movements of their horses by
clinging to their legs, or, more successfully, strove to pull the riders
from their saddles. And woe to the unfortunate cavalier who was thus
dismounted,--to be despatched by the brutal _maquahuitl_, or to be
dragged on board a canoe to the bloody altar of sacrifice!
But the greatest annoyance which the Spaniards endured was from the
missiles from the _azoteas_, consisting often of large stones, hurled
with a force that would tumble the stoutest rider from his saddle.
Galled in the extreme by these discharges, against which even their
shields afforded no adequate protection, Cortés ordered fire to be set
to the buildings. This was no very difficult matter, since, although
chiefly of stone, they were filled with mats, cane-work, and other
combustible materials, which were soon in a blaze. But the buildings
stood separated from one another by canals and draw-bridges, so that the
flames did not easily communicate to the neighboring edifices. Hence the
labor of the Spaniards was incalculably increased, and their progress in
the work of destruction--fortunately for the city--was comparatively
slow.[116] They did not relax their efforts, however, till several
hundred houses had been consumed, and the miseries of a conflagration,
in which the wretched inmates perished equally with the defenders, were
added to the other horrors of the scene.
The day was now far spent. The Spaniards had been everywhere victorious.
But the enemy, though driven back on every point, still kept the field.
When broken by the furious charges of the cavalry, he soon rallied
behind the temporary defences, which, at different intervals, had been
thrown across the streets, and, facing about, renewed the fight with
undiminished courage, till the sweeping away of the barriers by the
cannon of the assailants left a free passage for the movements of their
horse. Thus the action was a succession of rallying and retreating, in
which both parties suffered much, although the loss inflicted on the
Indians was probably tenfold greater than that of the Spaniards. But the
Aztecs could better afford the loss of a hundred lives than their
antagonists that of one. And, while the Spaniards showed an array broken
and obviously thinned in numbers, the Mexican army, swelled by the
tributary levies which flowed in upon it from the neighboring streets,
exhibited, with all its losses, no sign of diminution. At length, sated
with carnage, and exhausted by toil and hunger, the Spanish commander
drew off his men, and sounded a retreat.[117]
On his way back to his quarters, he beheld his friend the secretary
Duero, in a street adjoining, unhorsed, and hotly engaged with a body of
Mexicans, against whom he was desperately defending himself with his
poniard. Cortés, roused at the sight, shouted his war-cry, and, dashing
into the midst of the enemy, scattered them like chaff by the fury of
his onset; then, recovering his friend’s horse, he enabled him to
remount, and the two cavaliers, striking their spurs into their steeds,
burst through their opponents and joined the main body of the army.[118]
Such displays of generous gallantry were not uncommon in these
engagements, which called forth more feats of personal adventure than
battles with antagonists better skilled in the science of war. The
chivalrous bearing of the general was emulated in full measure by
Sandoval, De Leon, Olid, Alvarado, Ordaz, and his other brave
companions, who won such glory under the eye of their leader as prepared
the way for the independent commands which afterwards placed provinces
and kingdoms at their disposal.
The undaunted Aztecs hung on the rear of their retreating foes, annoying
them at every step by fresh flights of stones and arrows; and, when the
Spaniards had re-entered their fortress, the Indian host encamped around
it, showing the same dogged resolution as on the preceding evening.
Though true to their ancient habits of inaction during the night, they
broke the stillness of the hour by insulting cries and menaces, which
reached the ears of the besieged. “The gods have delivered you, at last,
into our hands,” they said; “Huitzilopochtli has long cried for his
victims. The stone of sacrifice is ready. The knives are sharpened. The
wild beasts in the palace are roaring for their offal. And the cages,”
they added, taunting the Tlascalans with their leanness, “are waiting
for the false sons of Anahuac, who are to be fattened for the
festival!” These dismal menaces, which sounded fearfully in the ears of
the besieged, who understood too well their import, were mingled with
piteous lamentations for their sovereign, whom they called on the
Spaniards to deliver up to them.
Cortés suffered much from a severe wound which he had received in the
hand in the late action. But the anguish of his mind must have been
still greater as he brooded over the dark prospect before him. He had
mistaken the character of the Mexicans. Their long and patient endurance
had been a violence to their natural temper, which, as their whole
history proves, was arrogant and ferocious beyond that of most of the
races of Anahuac. The restraint which, in deference to their monarch
more than to their own fears, they had so long put on their natures,
being once removed, their passions burst forth with accumulated
violence. The Spaniards had encountered in the Tlascalan an open enemy,
who had no grievance to complain of, no wrong to redress. He fought
under the vague apprehension only of some coming evil to his country.
But the Aztec, hitherto the proud lord of the land, was goaded by insult
and injury, till he had reached that pitch of self-devotion which made
life cheap in comparison with revenge. Armed thus with the energy of
despair, the savage is almost a match for the civilized man; and a whole
nation, moved to its depths by a common feeling, which swallows up all
selfish considerations of personal interest and safety, becomes,
whatever be its resources, like the earthquake and the tornado, the most
formidable among the agencies of nature.
Considerations of this kind may have passed through the mind of Cortés,
as he reflected on his own impotence to restrain the fury of the
Mexicans, and resolved, in despite of his late supercilious treatment of
Montezuma, to employ his authority to allay the tumult,--an authority so
successfully exerted in behalf of Alvarado at an earlier stage of the
insurrection. He was the more confirmed in his purpose on the following
morning, when the assailants, redoubling their efforts, succeeded in
scaling the works in one quarter and effecting an entrance into the
enclosure. It is true, they were met with so resolute a spirit that not
a man of those who entered was left alive. But, in the impetuosity of
the assault, it seemed, for a few moments, as if the place was to be
carried by storm.[119]
Cortés now sent to the Aztec emperor to request his interposition with
his subjects in behalf of the Spaniards. But Montezuma was not in the
humor to comply. He had remained moodily in his quarters ever since the
general’s return. Disgusted with the treatment he had received, he had
still further cause for mortification in finding himself the ally of
those who were the open enemies of his nation. From his apartment he had
beheld the tragical scenes in his capital, and seen another, the
presumptive heir to his throne, taking the place which he should have
occupied at the head of his warriors and fighting the battles of his
country.[120] Distressed by his position, indignant at those who had
placed him in it, he coldly answered, “What have I to do with Malinche?
I do not wish to hear from him. I desire only to die. To what a state
has my willingness to serve him reduced me!”[121] When urged still
further to comply by Olid and Father Olmedo, he added, “It is of no use.
They will neither believe me, nor the false words and promises of
Malinche. You will never leave these walls alive.” On being assured,
however, that the Spaniards would willingly depart if a way were opened
to them by their enemies, he at length--moved, probably, more
by the desire to spare the blood of his subjects than of the
Christians--consented to expostulate with his people.[122]
In order to give the greater effect to his presence, he put on his
imperial robes. The _tilmatli_, his mantle of white and blue, flowed
over his shoulders, held together by its rich clasp of the green
_chalchivitl_. The same precious gem, with emeralds of uncommon size,
set in gold, profusely ornamented other parts of his dress. His feet
were shod with the golden sandals, and his brows covered by the
_copilli_, or Mexican diadem, resembling in form the pontifical tiara.
Thus attired, and surrounded by a guard of Spaniards and several Aztec
nobles, and preceded by the golden wand, the symbol of sovereignty, the
Indian monarch ascended the central turret of the palace. His presence
was instantly recognized by the people, and, as the royal retinue
advanced along the battlements, a change, as if by magic, came over the
scene. The clang of instruments, the fierce cries of the assailants,
were hushed, and a deathlike stillness pervaded the whole assembly, so
fiercely agitated, but a few moments before, by the wild tumult of war!
Many prostrated themselves on the ground; others bent the knee; and all
turned with eager expectation towards the monarch whom they had been
taught to reverence with slavish awe, and from whose countenance they
had been wont to turn away as from the intolerable splendors of
divinity. Montezuma saw his advantage; and, while he stood thus
confronted with his awe-struck people, he seemed to recover all his
former authority and confidence, as he felt himself to be still a king.
With a calm voice, easily heard over the silent assembly, he is said by
the Castilian writers to have thus addressed them:
“Why do I see my people here in arms against the palace of my fathers?
Is it that you think your sovereign a prisoner, and wish to release him?
If so, you have acted rightly. But you are mistaken. I am no prisoner.
The strangers are my guests. I remain with them only from choice, and
can leave them when I list. Have you come to drive them from the city?
That is unnecessary. They will depart of their own accord, if you will
open a way for them. Return to your homes, then. Lay down your arms.
Show your obedience to me who have a right to it. The white men shall go
back to their own land; and all shall be well again within the walls of
Tenochtitlan.”
As Montezuma announced himself the friend of the detested strangers, a
murmur ran through the multitude; a murmur of contempt for the
pusillanimous prince who could show himself so insensible to the insults
and injuries for which the nation was in arms. The swollen tide of their
passions swept away all the barriers of ancient reverence, and, taking a
new direction, descended on the head of the unfortunate monarch, so far
degenerated from his warlike ancestors. “Base Aztec,” they exclaimed,
“woman, coward! the white men have made you a woman,--fit only to weave
and spin!” These bitter taunts were soon followed by still more hostile
demonstrations. A chief, it is said, of high rank, bent a bow or
brandished a javelin with an air of defiance against the emperor,[123]
when, in an instant, a cloud of stones and arrows descended on the spot
where the royal train was gathered. The Spaniards appointed to protect
his person had been thrown off their guard by the respectful deportment
of the people during their lord’s address. They now hastily interposed
their bucklers. But it was too late. Montezuma was wounded by three of
the missiles, one of which, a stone, fell with such violence on his
head, near the temple, as brought him senseless to the ground. The
Mexicans, shocked at their own sacrilegious act, experienced a sudden
revulsion of feeling, and, setting up a dismal cry, dispersed,
panic-struck, in different directions. Not one of the multitudinous
array remained in the great square before the palace!
The unhappy prince, meanwhile, was borne by his attendants to his
apartments below. On recovering from the insensibility caused by the
blow, the wretchedness of his condition broke upon him. He had tasted
the last bitterness of degradation. He had been reviled, rejected, by
his people. The meanest of the rabble had raised their hands against
him. He had nothing more to live for. It was in vain that Cortés and his
officers endeavored to soothe the anguish of his spirit and fill him
with better thoughts. He spoke not a word in answer. His wound, though
dangerous, might still, with skilful treatment, not prove mortal. But
Montezuma refused all the remedies prescribed for it. He tore off the
bandages as often as they were applied, maintaining, all the while, the
most determined silence. He sat with eyes dejected, brooding over his
fallen fortunes, over the image of ancient majesty and present
humiliation. He had survived his honor. But a spark of his ancient
spirit seemed to kindle in his bosom, as it was clear he did not mean to
survive his disgrace. From this painful scene the Spanish general and
his followers were soon called away by the new dangers which menaced the
garrison.[124]