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

by Buddy Levy

  Hernán Cortés found a quiet place and formulated his response, a written speech that was as rousing as it was definitive, its tenor in many ways similar to a pre-battle speech (which, in effect, it turned out to be). The glory that he and his men were in the process of winning was theirs as much as his, he said, adding that “the outcome of a war depends much upon fame, and how can you win greater fame than by remaining here in Tlaxcala in defiance of your enemies, declaring war against them?”16 Yes, they had been routed and driven from Tenochtitlán, but he used the defeat as a rallying cry rather than a setback, his grandiose tone revealing something of his intentions: “What nation of those who have ruled the world, has not once been defeated? What famous captain, I say, ever went home because he had lost a battle or been driven out of some town? Not one, certainly, for if he had not persevered he would not have conquered or triumphed.”17 Yes, they were few in number, but even now, despite their losses, they had more men than they had when they originally landed. He punctuated this fact with an appeal to their pride and vainglory: “Victories are not won by the many but by the valiant.”18 It was an eloquent appeal to their dignity and honor, perfectly timed and paced, the stirring and patriotic oratory of a man born to lead men.

  Hernán Cortés answered his men: under no circumstances would he quit this enterprise. They would not steal down the mountains to Vera Cruz and slink away defeated. “Never before in these Indies of the New World,” he reminded Duero and the men, “have Spaniards been seen to turn back through fear.”19 Their course and duty remained constant, as clear to Cortés as the day he arrived on the mainland, their future bright and attainable and gleaming like Mexican gold. He closed with a flourish, reminding himself, his men, and his king that “fortune always favors the bold.”20 He then offered a slight concession. To assuage their concerns about the loyalty of the Tlaxcalans (concerns Cortés did not share), he developed a plan to test it once more. The Spaniards, with the Tlaxcalans in support as warriors and servants, would march on nearby Tepeaca, an Aztec stronghold and site of the recent killing of twelve Spaniards. “If the sortie turns out badly,” offered Cortés, “I shall do as you request. If it turns out well, you will do what I beg of you.”21

  On the first of August 1520 Cortés and his reunited army of Spaniards and Tlaxcalans marched toward the province of Tepeaca.

  THE Tepeaca campaign served a number of purposes; it was at once a reknitting of the fraying fabric of the men’s morale as well as a punitive strike, an act of overt aggression meant to instill terror among Aztec satellites and tributaries. Geographically, Tepeaca was positioned along the best, most efficient route from Tenochtitlán to Vera Cruz, and Cortés needed the route open and secure. Cortés also well understood that the perception of power among the native population was often as important as actual power, and to that end he wanted to illustrate the fearlessness of the Spaniards, despite the debacle of La Noche Triste. He also hoped to send a stern message to Cuitláhuac, who he knew would be following his every move, that the proud Spaniards might bend but they would not break. Obsessed by his drive to recapture the great prize that was Mexico, he aimed to mow a wide swath around the region, carving the way for reentry into its capital, whenever that might be. “I resolved,” he wrote to his king, “to fall on our enemies wherever I could and oppose them in every possible way.”22

  Unknown to Cortés, his military situation was being aided by a temporary political paralysis among the remaining Aztec nobility. Cuitláhuac’s failure at the Battle of Otumba had been poorly received in the capital and throughout the dependant vassal states, and while he remained the de facto ruler of Tenochtitlán (he would not be officially inaugurated as the tenth Aztec king until September 15, 1520), the loss cast some doubt on his ability to lead. The Aztecs’ regional dominance and power was now dubious, and word of Cortés’s renegotiated coalition with the mighty Tlaxcalans further heightened this uncertainty.23 The Aztec empire’s greatness relied in good part on the presence of an identifiable and highly visible ruler; for the last two decades Montezuma had been this man-god. Now, as Cuitláhuac tried to prove his worth as a war leader, the Aztec empire hung in a tenuous balance.

  Cortés marched toward Tepeaca, which lay some forty miles southwest of Tlaxcala, with a force of about 450 Spaniards, seventeen horses, six crossbowmen, and nearly two thousand Tlaxcalans. He had mustered every able-bodied soldier, leaving behind only the most seriously debilitated, plus two captains to school the Tlaxcalan military in Spanish battle tactics. Tepeaca was at the time a well-fortified and flourishing city and religious center situated on an elevated rise in the tablelands that poured out from the rumbling Popocatépetl all the way to the foothills of giant Orizaba.24

  Riding by day and camping at night, Cortés and his men reached the town of Acatzinco on the fourth day. There he stopped, sending an envoy of Tlaxcalans ahead to Tepeaca with an unyielding message: they must resubmit to Spanish rule (they had acquiesced on Cortés’s first pass through, after his subjugation of the Tlaxcalans, but had reneged while he was entrapped in Tenochtitlán) or suffer severe punishment; they would be held in contempt as traitors to the throne and treated accordingly. The Tepeacans, perhaps confident of receiving Aztec military support, sent a haughty and defiant retort, saying that they were low on sacrifice victims and required more. The Spaniards would do just fine, they said, and if they came, they would sacrifice and eat them.

  That was all Cortés needed to hear. As he later reported to his emperor, Charles V, “I will say only that after we had made our demands for peace on Your Majesty’s behalf and they had not complied, we made war on them.”25 Cortés, to maintain an appearance of legal propriety, had his notary prepare written documents stating that all Aztecs and their allies were in breach of their previous submission to the crown, and that any whom the Spanish captured would be committed into “slavery.”*39 26 Two days later Cortés and his company marched in full battle armor to a plain of cultivated maize and maguey just outside the hilltop town, where they engaged the rebellious Tepeacans. The fully recovered horses proved devastating, chasing the overmatched Tepeacans from the maize fields and riding them down mercilessly on the flat and open plains, slaughtering nearly four hundred in the first day’s skirmish without losing a single Spaniard. With morale burgeoning from that success, Cortés went forth and routed the enemy again the next day, and by afternoon the Tepeacans had capitulated, unable to resist the onslaught of the Spanish cavalry. They retreated to their city, or back to work in their maize and maguey fields, and the supporting Aztec divisions fled back to Tenochtitlán. “I have driven from these provinces,” Cortés would confidently write, “many of the [Aztecs] who had come to help the natives of Tepeaca make war on us.”27 Leaving in his wake toppled idols, smoldering pyramids, and a terrified populace, Cortés marched into the city as the victor and established control.

  Still seething from his bitter defeat in Tenochtitlán, and his narrow escape, he decided to take aggressive symbolic measures now. The measures he chose were public enslavement and terror. He would teach a lesson that burned across the region. He ordered his men to round up all prisoners of war from the two recent battles and conduct raids on all nearby towns where Spaniards were known to have been killed. They then herded these prisoners, including the women and children of the slain and captive, into the central square of Tepeaca to await their fate. Cortés had one of his blacksmiths fashion a brand shaped in the letter g for the term guerra or “war.” The brand was fired on hot coals and seared deeply into the faces of all the slaves taken, the skin of their cheeks blistering and bubbling as they were held down, bellowing out in anguish.28

  For the next three weeks, fueled perhaps by a desire for vengeance for La Noche Triste, and certainly wishing to make a show of unyielding power, Cortés terrorized the region, ravaging villages and cities with brutal impunity. He turned his ferocious armored war-hounds loose on any Aztecs or their allies who refused to submit; the snarling, blood-crazed animals tore them
to shreds.29 Hacking and burning a wide and deadly course, Cortés took prisoner-slaves and exacted fealty from leaders until, as the thick smoke of sacked towns choked the horizon, he had subjugated the entire province of Tepeaca. Cortés would say of this bloody carnage, “Although…this province is very large, within twenty days we had subdued and pacified many towns and villages, and the lords and chieftains…offered themselves as your majesty’s vassals.”30 Cortés would later justify his brutality and the taking of slaves by arguing that it was in response to widespread regional cannibalism, which both he and the crown despised, but this claim rang false, sounding like an excuse.31

  The campaign reached, even for Cortés, shocking levels of atrocity and barbarity. In one city he is said to have lined up and killed two thousand civilian men, while four thousand women and children watched—and the latter were then branded and enslaved.32 It was terribly effective, however, and on September 4, 1520, Cortés ensconced himself inextricably on the promontory of Tepeaca, where he founded a new town called Segura de la Frontera (Security of the Frontier). He appointed, as in Villa Rica, a city council, complete with magistrates, alcaldes, and all necessary officials of a functioning and “legal” Spanish city. Looking down from the hilltop fortress (on which he erected civic buildings and installed a garrison), Cortés could survey his new domain with satisfaction, even optimism. He now controlled nearly half of Mexico, and, more important, he had won a strategic position that guaranteed secure and open passage from the high plains clear to the eastern shore, allowing unimpeded transfer of men, equipment, and goods. And by extension he had severed the Aztecs from this same crucial lifeline.

  Brimming with confidence from his elevated base of operations, his physical health revived, Cortés held a secret meeting with his shipbuilder Martín López. The failed first attempts at taking Tenochtitlán had taught Cortés that the layout of the causeways made a straightforward ground assault impossible. But the innovative and engineering-minded Cortés had a new plan, one of unprecedented scope and magnitude, one that he may have conceived the moment he had arrived safely on the west bank of the Tacuba causeway on the fateful morning following La Noche Triste. Speaking in confidence, Cortés gave the shipbuilder strict and intriguing orders. Martín López was to take three skilled craftsmen as assistants, plus as many Tlaxcalan laborers as he needed, and head immediately for the western slopes of the mountain known as Matlalcueitl. (It would later be referred to as La Malinche, after Cortés’s interpreter and mistress.) They were to strike into the dense forests of the foothills and cut great quantities of timber—pine and oak and evergreen oak—which could then be “fashioned into the pieces necessary to build thirteen brigantines.”33

  In a stroke of military brilliance, Hernán Cortés determined that if he could not take Tenochtitlán by land, then he would take the lake-bound Aztec stronghold by water.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “The Great Rash”

  IF FORTUNE TRULY FAVORS THE BOLD, then in the next month, ironically, Hernán Cortés was the beneficiary of fortunes he could never have predicted or planned, arriving in forms both visible and invisible.

  The first sign of good fortune turned up at the port of Vera Cruz in the shape of a small Spanish ship captained by Pedro Barba, an old “friend” of Cortés. Back in 1519, it was Pedro Barba whom Diego Velázquez had sent to attempt to thwart Cortés’s departure from Cuba at the beginning of the expedition, but Cortés had won Barba over, who saw that he hadn’t the power to arrest an armada and five hundred soldiers. Now here he was again, one of Velázquez’s seemingly endless supply of henchmen. Velázquez had commissioned and dispatched the craft from Cuba to support the Pánfilo de Narváez expedition; the governor was currently aware of that expedition’s ignominious fate and Narváez’s imprisonment.1

  As the ship anchored offshore, the clever captain Alonso Caballero, who was in charge at Villa Rica, lured some of the crew (including Barba) ashore in small boats, then held them at swordpoint and ordered them to surrender in the name of Captain-General Hernán Cortés. Barba’s ship carried a light crew, just thirteen soldiers, a stallion, and a mare, but he did possess a great load of cassava bread and, most interesting, a letter from Velázquez to Narváez intimating that he believed New Spain was now his, telling Narváez that “if he had not already killed Cortés that he should at once send him as a prisoner to Cuba.”2 This goal would be difficult for Narváez to achieve from the tight confines of his own prison cell.

  Alonso Caballero sent Barba, the soldiers, and the horses under guard to Segura de la Frontera. Cortés received his old crony with a friendly abrazo, slapping him on the back and welcoming him, clearly enjoying this fortuitous turn of events. Barba could see that Cortés was firmly in command of the situation (and of Narváez and his men), so he humbly accepted a new position as captain of Cortés’s crossbowmen, and he was from that moment on loyal to Cortés.3

  Then amazingly (for Cortés could certainly use reinforcement), a series of five more ships landed at or around Villa Rica. The first was another smallish ship sent by Velázquez, and Caballero similarly commandeered both its crew and contents; Caballero must have begun to enjoy the ruse of inveigling them ashore and then surprising them with the reality of the command situation. He conveyed under guard the captain of this ship, eight soldiers, and six crossbowmen over the mountains to Segura de la Frontera, along with numerous bales of much-needed cordage for fabricating crossbow strings, and yet another mare.4 The newcomers consented without altercation or disagreement.

  Shortly afterward another ship limped into port at Villa Rica, this one a caravel under the charge of Diego de Camargo, who was part of an expedition sponsored by Francisco de Garay, governor of Jamaica. Garay had intended to settle the area near the mouth of the Panuco River to the north of Villa Rica. (Cortés himself had sent reconnaissance voyages to that area and had, in his mind and on paper, claims to the region.) The Garay expedition fared poorly; it was overwhelmed by the local inhabitants the moment they landed, forced back to sea, and suffered a storm that took one ship, swallowing it and all its crew members. The remaining ships sailed south and finally listed into the port at Vera Cruz, arriving in grim shape. Cortés later claimed to have effectively saved the men’s lives, since “they had arrived in great want of provisions, so much so indeed that had they not found help there they would have died of hunger and thirst.”5 At the garrison at Villa Rica Camargo and his sixty soldiers were well treated, fed, and doctored—and conscripted into the service of Cortés.6

  Just as Cortés was counting these blessings, yet more miraculously fell into his hands. A few days later another Garay ship sought refuge at Vera Cruz. This ship contained fifty men and, to Cortés’s growing enthusiasm, seven healthy horses. The captain of this wayward ship was none other than the experienced and intrepid conquistador Miguel Díaz de Aux of Aragón, whom Cortés had known well from his days in Hispaniola. Indeed, Díaz de Aux had been among the first colonists in Puerto Rico nearly a decade earlier; his sagacity and knowledge would prove beneficial to Cortés.7

  There seemed no end to this divine providence. Another ship arrived in the next few weeks, still another of Garay’s, containing forty crewmen, ten horses, and, most useful of all, numerous crossbows and string, muskets, and quilted cotton armor. The irony that all Garay’s ships and provisions ended up in Cortés’s lap was not lost on soldier and chronicler Bernal Díaz, who commented with an archery metaphor: “Thus, Francisco de Garay shot off one shaft after another to the assistance of his armada, and each one went to assist the good fortune of Cortés and all of us.”8 The last ship to arrive came all the way from Spain via the Canary Islands, dispatched at the behest of Cortés’s father and some of Cortés’s business associates who continued to support his endeavors in Mexico. The large ship was owned by a merchant named Juan de Burgos and captained by Francisco Medel; upon their arrival with tons of crucial combat merchandise (including kegs of gunpowder, more bowstrings, muskets, and three horses), Cor
tés paid with gold for the ship and contents and absorbed the crew of thirteen into his expedition.9

  In a matter of a few weeks, Cortés’s conquering force was increased by more than two hundred men (giving him now around thirteen hundred), plus supplies and tools of war necessary for reconquest. He had subdued the entire province of Tepeaca, and despite the poor condition of some of the new men, Cortés seemed confident in his military position and his plan to retake Tenochtitlán.

  AT precisely the same time, an invisible and deadly enemy unveiled itself across Mexico, one that would prove devastating to the Aztecs and that would paradoxically assist Cortés in his pursuit of conquest. While he was training his new recruits, stacking and storing powder kegs and ammunition, and cleaning freshly arrived armaments, all across Mexico the native population began to suffer from an inexplicable illness. King and peasant alike were racked with fitful coughs and burning, blistering sores. Then after months of horrific suffering, those stricken would die. The pestilence was smallpox, a virulent killer that was foreign to and unprecedented in the New World.

  The disease first reached Hispaniola in the last months of 1518, laying waste to more than one-third of the indigenous population; then it hopped from island to island, infecting both Cuba and Puerto Rico and, quickly, the Greater Antilles.10 Then came perhaps the greatest and most destructive irony in the history of the Spanish conquest; certainly Hernán Cortés would not understand until much later how crucial it had been to his cause. On one of the Narváez ships (sent to either capture or kill Cortés) was an African porter named Francisco de Eguia, who was infected with smallpox and brought the first case to New Spain.11 Unwittingly Eguia “infected the household in Cempoala where he was quartered; and it spread from one Indian to another, and they, being so numerous and eating and sleeping together, quickly infected the whole country.”12 By late October the pestilence had scoured its way to Tenochtitlán, so that just as the Aztecs were busy cleaning their temples and ridding the pyramids of all memory of the Spaniards’ presence among them, the people began to fall sick with mysterious and frightening symptoms.