Conquistador: Hernan Cortes, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs

by Buddy Levy

  The Tabascan response to this slick Spanish diplomacy was a rain of arrows, spears, and stones, and the first battle of Cortés’s conquest was joined. Though he was a leader of men, until this moment in his career Cortés had never commanded men in battle.

  Cortés was forced to think quickly. The Tabascans followed their onslaught with a full charge into the river, rushing to attack the boats and pouring forth in their own dugout canoes. Some Spanish soldiers disembarked and they fought hand to hand with the Tabascans in waist-deep water, war clubs and spears meeting for the first time the fire-hardened Toledo steel of Spanish swords. With great difficulty and severely outnumbered, Cortés and his men managed to slash their way to land, but the riverbanks were so mucky that Cortés lost a boot as he clambered ashore, one foot bare. The boot was retrieved. He then commanded from the densely foliaged bank. All the while men fought, and the Tabascan warriors cried out in their language to immediately “kill or capture the Captain.”5

  Surrounded, the Spaniards fell into tight ranks and fought as they had been trained, in well-organized and highly regimented squads, while their enemies came at them en masse in a series of surging and retreating waves. Their organization paid off, and soon the Spaniards were tearing down and breaking through the newly constructed timber barricades and pushing the Tabascans back, the harquebusiers firing deadly balls at close range. Just then, having heard the battle joined, Alonso de Ávila and his men, whom Cortés had ordered hidden the night before, made it through the palm woods and marshes in time to support, and now the Tabascans felt two-front pressure, as well as the deafening and utterly foreign explosions of cannons and falconets. They fled, retreating beyond the town to dense mangrove swamps and jungle, even still firing arrows and hand-thrown darts. The Spaniards’ surprise tactic had worked perfectly, and as the last of the Tabascan warriors disappeared into the shadows, Cortés and his men convened in the village square, swords still brandished.6

  With his royal notary Godoy at his side, Cortés strode to a great ceiba tree that stood in the central square. Raising his sword, he slashed the massive trunk symbolically three times, exclaiming before his men that he now conquered and took possession of this land “in His Majesty’s name!” (This act would have had a profound effect on the native population, for the ceiba tree was sacred, believed to be the pillar holding up the heavens themselves.) Bernal Díaz, nursing an arrow wound in his thigh, recalled that he and a group of soldiers deeply loyal to Cortés replied with vigorous shouts of “Hear, hear,” supporting Cortés’s taking possession in the name of “His Majesty the King.” Díaz added that he would “aid against any challengers.”7 But a small group of soldiers, followers of Diego Velázquez who were still loyal to him, grumbled that Cortés had conveniently forgotten to mention Velázquez, under whose sponsorship they were supposedly operating. In a brazen move that did not go unnoticed by the Velázquez camp, Cortés disregarded them, for the first time publicly ignoring his patron. His actions had placed him directly under the auspices of the king, and no one else. It was his first formal move to distance himself from Velázquez.8

  Cortés ordered his men to rest and made an assay of his forces, determining that though a few were wounded, no Spaniard had been lost. They slept that night in the temple square, numerous sentinels posted on the perimeter, and awoke the next morning to some ominous news: during yesterday’s battle old Melchior had fled, stripping himself naked during the melee and joining the Tabascans. He left as a parting gift his Spanish clothes hanging in a tree. Cortés feared that Melchior might inform the Tabascans of the Spaniards’ numbers and details of their weaponry, but he could do nothing but scowl in disgust at the interpreter’s treason.9

  Cortés wished to maintain his ships’ food stores but knew that his men needed provisions, so he sent two captains, Pedro de Alvarado and Francisco de Lugo, each with about a hundred men (including specialists—musketeers and crossbowmen), to scout the nearby countryside. They advanced in different directions into the interior. After only three miles Lugo discovered a promising sign: many well-tended fields of maize, apparently irrigated and drained by means of ditches. Lugo had little time to marvel at the Tabascans’ agricultural ingenuity, however, for just then, according to Bernal Díaz, “they met great companies of archers, and others with lances and shields, drums and standards, who immediately attacked them, surrounding them on all sides.”10 The attack was so quick that all Lugo and his men could do was hold their shields above them to fend off a hailstorm of fire-hardened darts, stone-tipped spears, and thrown stones. The situation grim, Lugo dispatched a brave Cuban runner, who had been brought along for just such a purpose, to appeal to Cortés for reinforcement. In the meantime Lugo organized his small force in tight ranks and had his crossbowmen, falconets, and harquebusiers fire volleys at the swarming Tabascans.

  Fortunately for Lugo and his men, Alvarado’s drive inland had been thwarted by an impassable river crossing, and his division had arrived near the plain of Cintla. Hearing Lugo’s musket fire, and the enemy’s war-whoops and the beating of drums, Alvarado and his company sped to the battlefield. Alvarado arrived just in time to support Lugo, and together the two divisions defended themselves and repelled the onslaught as they backed into camp. They detained three prisoners, from whom Cortés was able to extract, through rough force, some shocking news: all the able-bodied Tabascan warriors from the vicinity would converge at the town of Cintla the next morning to make war on the intruding Spaniards. Most disconcerting of all (if the prisoner was to be believed), he claimed that these warriors numbered over 25,000, about fifty times Cortés’s fighting force. They intended to surround the Spaniards and kill every last one of them.11

  Cortés proceeded as if the main prisoner, who seemed important—a leader of some kind—was telling the truth. Then, in a move that would become one of his diplomatic trademarks, Cortés offered the prisoners gifts of green beads and released them, telling them to return to their chiefs with the message that he wished only to trade and that he came in peace. Once they were gone, he immediately prepared for war.

  Cortés ordered his most seriously wounded men back to the ships to recuperate; the best of his special forces—the crossbowmen, harquebusiers, lancers, swordsmen, and light gunners—prepared for action. He called for more artillery, dry powder, and six of the heavy cannons to be removed from the ships and transported ashore. Then, sensing that the time was right, Cortés called upon his secret weapon: the entire cavalry of sixteen Spanish horses. The animals, stiff and sore from their long journey, were lowered by pulleys and led ashore. They were the first horses to set their hooves on the Mexican mainland since before the Ice Age, when the native animals became extinct in the northern hemisphere.12

  As the sun went down, the horses were exercised and fed. The cavalrymen prepared for battle, donning heavy steel body armor—breast- and back plates—plus metal tassets for their thighs and rerebraces and vambraces for their arms. These they would sleep in, sweating through the humid night. The horses were fitted with breastplates of their own, and small bells that jingled as they went, serving to further frighten the enemy and to alert the Spaniards to the cavalry’s location.

  At daybreak Cortés heard Fray Bartolomé de Olmedo, the expedition’s chaplain, say mass, then slung himself into the saddle of his dark chestnut stallion. He led his force of five hundred men out of the village and onto the plain of Cintla. From the woods beyond some ten thousand Tabascan warriors poured into the open maize fields; an equal number were strung behind in support. The well-organized warriors came in their traditional military garb and formation, some decorated in ornate feather crests, pounding drums and blowing trumpets to instill fear as they ran. Their screaming faces were streaked with white and black paints signifying rank, and they carried long bows and arrows, shields and spears, and even two-handed swords like the Spaniards’. The conquistadors noted that they wore quilted armor, made of heavy cotton, on their chests.13 The Spanish infantry—foot soldiers and muske
teers and crossbowmen—took the initial onslaught, and many were wounded in close hand-to-hand combat. An arrow pierced one soldier through the head, and nearly seventy others were badly wounded.

  Cortés and the cavalry had been separated from the infantry by swamps and marshes and deep irrigation ditches that the horses could not cross, and so they were slow to arrive in support of the infantry. Meanwhile the infantry battled wave after wave of brave warriors, using skillful sword work to repel continuous and numerically superior assaults. They fired their matchlocks, falconets, and cannons, and the whistling balls and percussive explosions drove great numbers of Tabascans out onto the open plain, where they bent to the ground and threw up dirt and grasses to conceal themselves from the Spaniards. As the smoke and dust cleared, Cortés arrived from the rear with his cavalry to find thousands of the warriors regrouping on the open plain.

  Cortés and his cavalry charged the field, the riders wielding spears in the first mounted combat in the New World. Horse and rider galloped into the fray at great speed, charging the crowd and impaling the warriors from elevated positions. Cortés and his men speared at will, then rode and wheeled and came again, skewering and trampling the confused Tabascans. Then they would retreat to the periphery, while cannon and gunfire boomed through the valley. The Indian warriors, having never before witnessed either horses or firearms, looked on in dismay as their compatriots were easily run down. They fought bravely but were no match for the killing efficiency of firearms or horses and expert riders. They fled in terror. Within a few hours smoke hung low in the Cintla Valley, and more than eight hundred Tabascans lay dead in the fields. Cortés’s first major military engagement on mainland Mexico had been a rout.14

  As the last of the Tabascans scattered into the hills, Cortés and his cavalrymen dismounted, unsaddled, and tethered their horses, treating some that were wounded. He ordered rest and medical attention for his wounded men, who amounted to nearly a fifth of his fighting force, though many of the wounds were minor. One soldier reported that “we bandaged our wounded with cloths, for this was all we had, and sealed the wounds of our horses with fat from the corpse of an Indian that we had cut up for this purpose.”15 That night more than a hundred additional Spaniards fell ill with fevers, cramps, and general malaise, likely from foul water drunk from the streams, coupled with the oppressive heat and humidity. Miraculously, only two of Cortés’s men died on the plains of Cintla, one slashed through the throat, the other succumbing to an arrow in his ear. It was March 25, 1519, and the conquest of the Americas had begun in earnest.

  Cortés and his men slept armed lest further hostilities erupt, but the night was calm and quiet. The next morning some thirty Tabascan emissaries walked into camp dressed in finery—ornately feathered cloaks and tunics elegantly embroidered. They carried with them offerings of maize cakes, fowl, fruit, and fish. Through Aguilar, they asked to see the Spanish chief, and when Cortés came forward, they requested that they be allowed to enter the savanna unharmed to burn and bury their fallen, to prevent their stench and avoid their being eaten by jaguars and pumas. Cortés consented, with the provision that the main cacique of the village of Pontonchan come personally to discuss a treaty.

  Later, a lord did arrive with attendants in tow, bringing more food and offerings, including various turquoise objects and, more important, intricate masks, sculptures, and diadems fashioned in gold. Cortés noticed that the chief and his attendants seemed terrified of the horses, and the shrewd captain devised a plan to cement his dominance and get what he wanted: acquiescence and information. Realizing that these men understood neither the horses nor the fire-bursting cannons and guns, he ordered that a cannon be fired at dangerously close range. The thunderous report reverberated, and the hiss of the ball whistled past the Indians’ heads and exploded foliage a great distance away. Then Cortés brought out a mare in season, followed by his meanest, most high-strung stallion. The stallion caught the scent of the mare and reared, kicked and neighed, then pawed and stomped the ground right at the feet of the Tabascan chief. It was a devious ploy, and it worked. The chief cowered, fearing that the cannons and stallion would attack him and his people. But Cortés calmed the horse, whispering to it and soothing it. He assured the chief that, if he cooperated, no further harm would come to them from these powerful weapons.16

  Shaken and confused, a number of chiefs held counsel, returning at length with more gifts, more gold, small figurines of dogs, ducks, and lizards, and at last twenty young slave women, who they said could be used for various tasks, including cooking and preparing food like maize cakes. Pleased, Cortés inquired about the gold. Did they have more, and if not, where might he find more? Where were the mines? The Tabascans assured Cortés that they had no more gold, but they pointed to the northwest and said, “Culua, Mexico, Mexico.”17

  Cortés accepted the gifts and distributed the women among his captains, which boosted morale for the moment. One of the slave girls, whom Cortés presented to Alonso Hernández Puertocarrero, was a calm, confident, and precocious young woman originally from the north, in the province of Coatzacualco. The girl had been sold to the Tabascans, who now gave her to Cortés. Her native tongue was the Mayan language of Nahuatl, but she spoke a number of other dialects as well. Her dark eyes sparkled with intelligence. Her name was Malinche.18

  It was Palm Sunday 1519. Cortés had his carpenters erect in the center of the Tabascan town a large cross and a sturdy pedestal to support the figures of Mary and Jesus. He thanked the Tabascan chiefs, loaded the gifts of food, gold, and the slave girls, and readied to set sail for the north. They would search for and find this place called “Mexico.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Montezuma’s Message

  UNDER FAIR WINDS, NAVIGATOR ALAMINOS set a course to the northwest along the coast, laying tight to shore, heading toward what is now the port city of Veracruz. Cortés anchored off the port that Juan de Grijalva, on his previous expedition,*4 had named San Juan de Ulúa (first called the Isle of Sacrifices), and from his flagship’s bow he surveyed the land from a safe distance offshore. The entire fleet arrived, and all anchored close by, protected from strong northerly gales. Cortés ordered Spanish pennants and royal flags raised on the Santa María de la Concepción, while he continued to scan the shoreline and the interior for a suitable landing site and for any activity.

  He did not have to wait long.

  Before an hour had passed, Cortés spotted two large dugout pirogues paddling directly toward them. The boats contained well-decorated priests and chieftains. They halted below Cortés’s ship and motioned that they wished to come aboard. Intrigued, Cortés invited them up.

  The conversation, however, was strained and awkward. Aguilar could not communicate with them in coastal Mayan, and Cortés grew frustrated, for he was deeply aware of the importance of communication as a tool for conquest and empire. Perturbed at the impasse, he was pondering what to do when he noticed one of the newly acquired slave girls speaking directly to the chiefs, their easy, fluid dialogue suggesting that she understood them perfectly. Cortés walked with Aguilar over to investigate and was delighted to learn that the girl spoke fluent Nahuatl, the highland Mayan tongue. She could speak to the highlanders, then translate the discourse into Mayan for Aguilar, who could relay the conversation in Spanish for Cortés. The communication proved cumbersome, but it worked, and Cortés was patient. He listened attentively, finding out what he could about these priests and chieftains. His ears perked when he discovered that they came from a place they called “Mexico.”

  Pleased, Cortés immediately elevated Malinche to interpreter and instructed her to stay always near him and Aguilar. A formal exchange of gifts ensued between the Spaniards and their visitors. The Indians offered featherwork, local cotton attire, and small trinkets in gold; the Spaniards reciprocated with food, cask wine, metal tools, and blue glass beads. It was a convivial exchange. The chiefs asked if they might have the wine to bring to their governor, a man they called Tendile, w
ho resided some twenty miles away in a place called Cuetlaxtlán. Cortés consented, assuring the men that he came with peaceful intentions, wishing only to trade, but added that he intended to land and hoped that he might meet their leader personally, if this could be arranged. The men disembarked with the wine and their other gifts, responding that soon other leaders would come to speak with him.1

  Cortés woke at dawn the next morning, rested and invigorated. It was Good Friday 1519. He orchestrated a landing, sending some two hundred soldiers (nearly half his force), the horses and war hounds, loads of artillery, and a handful of Cuban porters ashore in the brigantines and rowboats. As nothing better was available in the near vicinity, he and his troops camped on a sloped, inhospitable sand dune amid sparse tropical palms, erecting temporary shacks for shelter and shade. The place was oppressively humid, sultry, and swarming with mosquitoes. They positioned some cannons and other artillery on the higher dunes. As was becoming his custom (and in respect for Good Friday), Cortés ordered an altar installed and mass observed. Then, sweating profusely in their armor and swatting at the insect swarms, he and his men rested and kept watch.

  The next morning emissaries began to arrive at the Spaniards’ makeshift camp. The first group claimed to have been sent by their leader Cuitlalpitoc (incidentally, the same man who had been sent to parlay with Grijalva), and through Aguilar and Malinche Cortés first heard utterance of the name Montezuma.2 This man Montezuma was said to be the magnificent and powerful ruler of the Mexica, a feared Triple Alliance of the city-states Tenochtitlán, Texcoco, and Tacuba, peoples who inhabited the Valley of Mexico (and who have since come to be known as the Aztecs). Cortés listened carefully, receiving Cuitlalpitoc with kindness and hospitality, and assured him that he came with peaceful intentions.