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

by Buddy Levy

  Cortés would later claim that he came to Tacuba to initiate discussions with Cuauhtémoc, if he could, but he certainly also had designs on establishing a base of operations there, given its proximity to the capital. His greeting was less than convivial. When he and his men arrived on the west shore of the lake at Tacuba, they saw that the Tacubans and their Aztec brothers were waiting expectantly for them. “When we came close,” said Cortés, “we found that there also the enemy had dug a great number of ditches and were well prepared for our arrival.”20 Aztec forces attacked immediately, the air filled with conch sirens, drums, screams, and war whoops. Cortés and his cavalry met the advancing Aztec lines at a gallop, supported by harquebusiers and crossbowmen (and many thousands of Tlaxcalans*45 ), and after a considerable effort the horses managed to disband the Aztec ranks and break through their ragged lines. Cortés entered the city, the Aztecs and Tacubans seeking safe positions in the periphery and suburbs. Cortés took lodging in the abandoned city center.

  Dawn broke to widespread looting and burning by the Tlaxcalans, whose numbers were so great, and whose ancient enmity toward the Aztecs was so deeply rooted, that they could hardly be controlled. Cortés and his forces spent the next week in Tacuba fighting fierce engagements every day. He seemed content to let the Tlaxcalans do the bulk of the fighting, keeping his own men safe and enthralled by the traditional modes of warfare engaged in by these ancient enemies. “The captains of the [Tlaxcalans] many times challenged those of [Tenochtitlán],” Cortés recalled with wonder, “and fought most beautifully with them; they argued at length, shouting insults and threats to each other, all of which was truly a remarkable sight.”21 Verbal taunting was common and expected, and the Spaniards received their share of it. Luring Cortés out onto the causeway (which had been reconstructed), the Aztecs would part their defenses slightly, feigning a move to let him through, then tease him and his men with banter like “‘Come in, come in and enjoy yourselves.’”22 They even referred to their fallen emperor, their tone suggesting disapproval of his methods and steadfast defiance of their new ruler: “‘Do you think there is now another [Montezuma] to do whatever you wish?’”23

  Cortés was careful on the causeway, but one day he ventured too far. At a bridge near the center, the Aztecs attacked from everywhere, in canoes from all sides of the water, and afoot from the rear, pinching him in. Cortés charged his horsemen in a disorderly retreat, and a number of the animals were wounded and a few soldiers killed. A Spanish standard-bearer was knocked from the bridge into the enemy-filled water. Aztecs dragged him into a canoe, but he managed to fight his way ashore and escape with the banner.24

  After hours of close hand-to-hand fighting, Cortés and his men made the Tacuba mainland, thankful to have come away with their lives. One of the men, exhibiting false bravado given their narrow escape but apparently drawn into the taunting game, called back to the Aztecs, saying that they would all die of hunger, for the Spaniards vowed to encircle them and not let them leave to gather food. The haughty response came quickly. The Aztecs assured the Spaniards that they had no shortage of food and as a parting gift tossed some maize loaves at them, adding indignantly, “‘Take these if you are hungry, for we are not.’”25

  Cortés failed to arrange a meeting to speak with Cuauhtémoc, so after six days he beat a retreat back to Texcoco via the towns of Guautitlán and Acolman, fighting all the way. The attacks were not significant, for the Aztecs seemed reluctant to engage Cortés’s troops away from the water and the causeways (they were learning and adapting). Cortés made it back to Texcoco harried but more educated for his efforts, having seen once more that he would need to modify his tactics to deal with battle on the causeways. The Aztecs retained the advantage there, the canoes able to hit both flanks simultaneously and the cavalry ineffective.

  He had been gone nearly two weeks during this campaign, and his men at Texcoco were happy to see him return safely. They had much to report, including good news from the eastern coast. A number of native confederacies on the Gulf shore had pledged fealty to Spain, securing Cortés’s influence to the north of Villa Rica. Even more encouraging, news arrived by messenger that in the last few days (late February 1521) yet another expedition had arrived from Hispaniola, three ships carrying two hundred men, sixty or seventy horses, and loads of gunpowder, swords, crossbows, and harquebuses. Already the Spanish soldiers were making their way over the mountains from Vera Cruz, led and supported by Totonac porters.

  Cortés could certainly employ these reinforcements, but most intriguing was the arrival in Texcoco of a man named Julián de Alderete, a well-heeled Spaniard (and self-proclaimed expert crossbowman) sent by Hispaniola to oversee the royal fifth as treasurer. Cortés received Alderete kindly, taking him to the patio and offering him the grand view of Tenochtitlán across the water, as enticing as a mirage. Cortés garnered important intelligence from Alderete, learning that his efforts in New Spain were making a great deal of news in Hispaniola as well as Cuba, and that were it not for the destructive skullduggery of Velázquez, even more Spaniards would be flocking to Mexico to aid Cortés in his cause (and for mercenary reasons, to seek riches of their own).

  Most interesting of all, Alderete brought news from Spain itself: Puertocarrero and Montejo had made it to Spain with the treasure ship, and after some difficulties (the treasure was initially impounded for a time while the procuradores awaited an audience with the emperor), they had ultimately been received by the king, to whom they explained the vast richness of Mexico and the importance of Cortés’s endeavors there. This was most agreeable news indeed.*46 26

  In response to the news from the mother country, Cortés dispatched a ship for Spain. It carried the important second letter to Emperor Charles V; whatever plunder (gold and other artifacts from the Palace of Axayacatl) Cortés had managed to squirrel away from La Noche Triste; and other regional curiosities, including enormous bones that came from what the Spaniards believed to be giants who either once lived in Mexico or perhaps still existed.27 The legends of these “giants” fueled speculation and wonder, perpetrating the continued mystery and allure of these exotic new-found lands.**47

  Cortés checked on the progress of the brigantines and the canal (both were going well, perhaps only a few weeks from completion) and assessed and absorbed his new troops. About this time a soldier named Rojas asked for a private meeting, wherein he informed Cortés that there was a conspiracy in the works involving as many as three hundred soldiers still loyal to Narváez and Velázquez. The plot’s leader was Antonio de Villafaña, a veteran of the Grijalva expedition who had arrived on one of Narváez’s ships. The plan, according to Rojas, was to wait until Cortés was meeting with all of his captains (including Sandoval, Tapia, Alvarado, and Olid), then bring a forged letter to Cortés, claiming that it was from his father in Spain. Then while Cortés was raptly engaged in reading the letter, the followers of Narváez would fall on him and all his captains and stab them to death. Presumably, once Cortés was dead, Francisco Verdugo, brother-in-law of Velázquez, would replace the captain-general, and men would be dispatched to Villa Rica to release the imprisoned Narváez, who would escape by ship to Cuba.28

  Cortés called for Sandoval and other captains and, heavily armed, stormed to the quarters of this Villafaña, from whom he extracted a confession. According to Bernal Díaz, Cortés pulled from Villafaña’s shirt “the memorandum which he possessed with the signatures of all who were in the conspiracy.”29 Cortés then shrewdly pocketed the list, but so as not to alarm the other conspirators, he spread the report that Villafaña had swallowed the list before he could get it from him. In this way Cortés was able to keep close watch on those who remained hostile to him. From that moment he employed a good friend and trusted soldier named Alonso de Quiñones as a full-time bodyguard and reportedly ever after slept in a coat of mail.30 After the formal confession was taken, Villafaña was immediately sentenced and hanged from the window of his own lodgings, in full view of the rest of the plo
tters and anyone else who cared to look.

  This unsavory business concluded, Cortés went to the shipyard alongside the creek, which was now a full-fledged canal, to make another inspection of the brigantines and the waterway. The scope of the project, and its progress, amazed even Cortés. Each boat was being carefully assembled, and this time (as had not been done on the dammed Zahuapan River in Tlaxcala) the gaps between the hull planks took on heavy caulking, stuffed with hemp, cotton, and flax, and were sealed with human fat rendered from the dead Aztec victims of the recent campaigns. Though the Spanish soldiers were a little squeamish about the process, they had before used boiling human fat to sear wounds and staunch blood flow, so they did not object when the Tlaxcalans cut open the slain Aztecs and sat streamside, extracting and heating the fat.31

  Martín López oversaw even the smallest details for each ship, including proper bow placement for the mounting of cannons, exact measurements, cuttings, the fastening of sails to spars, and the raising and securing of the tall masts. The decision by Cortés and López to assemble the brigantines away from the shore of Lake Texcoco turned out to be a stroke of brilliance, and probably made completion of the project possible, because on three separate occasions during the construction phase, Aztec foot forces attacked the shipyard and had to be repelled.32 One sunset the Aztecs sent a stealth force, hoping to burn the brigantines, but these fifteen were captured. Had the shipyard been any closer to the lake or at its shore (where a lesser tactician might have placed it), the Aztecs could have sent thousands of canoes and seriously hindered, and possibly even stopped, their shipbuilding. As it was, the placement a mile off, though it required the elaborate and difficult canal construction, allowed the work to continue.

  Martín López promised Cortés that in just a few weeks, barring any unforeseen setbacks, the thirteen ships would be completed and the canal would reach the waters of Lake Texcoco. What had once sounded impossible was now almost upon them—an attempt at the reconquest of Tenochtitlán. All day long, across the valley, the Aztecs could hear foreign and ominous sounds: the pounding of thousands of nails and trunnels into planks and beams, the metallic clang of blacksmiths beating metal into shape, and the raspy sawing of boards to line the great ditch. Those Aztecs who ventured forth in canoes could see the giant Wooden Serpent transform itself before their eyes into individual “water-houses,” and some would have remembered the boats that Cortés and Montezuma had sailed around Lake Texcoco, stunning floating wooden structures that belched fire and spat flames and metal balls from their mouths. As he prepared to defend his city, Cuauhtémoc would have been able to see the tall white sails flashing in the spring daylight, the canvas snapping and billowing in the valley winds, looming like mammoth war flags from some enormous Spanish battle standards poised in that chilling stillness just before the charge.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Encirclement

  AS SPRING CAME TO THE VALLEY OF MEXICO, the peoples on the southern reaches of Lake Texcoco remained unaligned. Cortés sent Sandoval toward Chalco and farther south to extricate Aztec elements in those provinces. Rumors abounded that a significant Aztec army was congregating there to prepare for an attack and to disrupt the important route to the coast that Cortés had worked so hard to establish and keep clear. Sandoval left Texcoco with two hundred Spaniards, twenty cavalry, a handful of harquebusiers, and twelve crossbowmen. In support he had about one thousand allies, primarily Tlaxcalan and Chalcan. The force rode and marched beyond the southern reaches of the Valley of Mexico, piercing a gap between the Serrania of Ajusco and the foothills of Popocatépetl, descending into the sprawling plains of Morelos and Cuernavaca.1 The country far to the south, which the Spaniards were seeing for the first time, was magnificent; the plains were scoured by numerous streams running down from the mountains and by the burned-out remains of recent lava flows and extinct volcanic craters. High, jutting barrancas formed promontories that the enemy used as natural fortifications.

  Sandoval and his army fought brief skirmishes along the way; the cavalry prevailed easily on the level chaparral. The Aztecs fled to the hills and ravines. He arrived at Oaxtepec, and secured the town, his allies ransacking houses for clothing and any other booty they deemed valuable. Sandoval remained there for two days, then marched on nearby Yecapixtla, which proved more difficult because of its strong elevated position and rough, narrow topography which was unsuitable to cavalry attack. Sandoval sent messengers urging them to peacefully submit rather than die in battle, but all he received in reply was a hailstorm of stones and darts from the cliffs above, an onslaught that injured many of the allied Indian forces.

  Sandoval, enraged by the enemy’s affront, charged forward, up through the narrow gorges, determined now “to take the heights of the city or die in the attempt.”2 With great difficulty and suffering many injuries (the Aztecs rolled boulders and heaved large rock fragments down upon them), Sandoval drove up the steep escarpment and onto the plateau, dispersing Aztec warriors from the hilltop garrison. His head bled from a contusion, but he managed to stay atop his horse and unleash his allies on the fleeing enemy. Many Aztecs were hurled headlong from the cliffs into the river below, and others tried to escape by climbing down the rock faces but fell to their deaths. So many Aztec warriors perished in the river that day that Spanish lore later claimed the water ran red with their blood for over an hour, and the men grew thirsty waiting for the river to clear.3

  Sandoval returned triumphant to Texcoco but was unable to bask in his glory for very long. When Cuauhtémoc learned of the defeat of his garrison at Yecapixtla (and of the allied involvement of Chalco), he sent some twenty thousand soldiers in two thousand canoes to inflict a punitive strike on Chalco. The leaders of Chalco sent frantic messages to Cortés asking for help, and Cortés, livid that Sandoval had returned without ensuring Chalco’s safety, angrily ordered his immediate return to remedy what he should have ensured at the outset. Sandoval turned around and struck southward for Chalco. He arrived to discover that the chiefs of Chalco had enlisted assistance from nearby provinces, and without any help from the Spaniards, they had bravely defended their city, driving Cuauhtémoc’s forces back to Tenochtitlán in disgrace. This was a painful loss for Cuauhtémoc to bear, and it signaled to Cortés that the Aztec forces might be weakening, losing their hold over their tributaries.

  The victory by the people of Chalco also allowed Sandoval to save face, for he returned to Cortés in Texcoco with forty Aztec prisoners. They were branded and interrogated (though, according to Bernal Díaz, many “good-looking Indian women” were hidden away by soldiers and not branded, but were said to have escaped and then were clandestinely distributed among the captains).4 From his strong-arm interviews with prisoners Cortés learned that Cuauhtémoc had no intention of surrendering or making peace but would fight to the death to defend his city. The prisoners told Cortés that appeals to peace would be futile, that he should save his words and prepare to fight.

  Though he was quite liberal in making threats, Cortés did not take kindly to hearing them. He determined to secure for himself the regions recently visited by Sandoval. Cortés wanted firsthand knowledge—both topographical and political—of the entire Valley of Mexico (and beyond, south as far as Cuernavaca), which would help him as he made final preparations for his siege of Tenochtitlán. Cortés took newcomers Julián de Alderete and the priest Father Melgarejo along, hoping to dazzle them with the wonders of the valley and illustrate his military leadership. Under captains Pedro de Alvarado, Andrés de Tapia, and Cristóbal de Olid, Cortés organized an expeditionary force of three hundred soldiers, thirty cavalry, twenty crossbowmen, and fifteen harquebusiers. On April 5, 1521, they heard mass and rode out at the head of more than twenty thousand Texcocan-Tlaxcalan allies. Sandoval remained behind to guard Texcoco and make certain that Martín López had everything he needed to complete his shipbuilding projects.

  Cortés hoped to circumnavigate the valley, including the lands to the south, eventually tracing
a northward arc on the western side of the lakes, passing Tacuba once more and returning to Texcoco by means of a full circle. “For I believed that once I had finished this task, which was most important,” Cortés remembered, “I would find the brigantines completed and ready for launching.”5 He passed through Chalco, stopping only to apprise the chiefs there (through Malinche and Aguilar) of his itinerary and intended route. He pushed south, passing Amecameca and arriving at Chimalhuacan (present-day San Vicente Chimalhuacan), where he appropriated many thousands more allies, perhaps as many as forty thousand.6 Cuauhtémoc, seeing allied support of this magnitude, would have been deeply distressed, and for good reason. Given the devastation caused by the recent smallpox plague in his city, and the many tributaries now capitulating to Spanish authority, he would have difficulty matching the numbers that Cortés was amassing.

  Cortés marched his ranks, swollen with the new recruits, toward Cuernavaca, traversing steep and precarious mountains. The plateau tops were covered with entire villages of civilians watching the Spaniards approach. Cortés surveyed the well-protected hilltop garrisons, noting that “the slopes were covered with warriors, who soon began to howl and make smoke signals, attacking us with stones, which they hurled down by hand or from slings and with spears and arrows, so that in approaching them we received much harm.”7 Below, exposed in the ravines, Cortés and his allies were vulnerable, and though he considered a retreat, he did not want the new allies to think the Spanish cowardly, so he halted to survey his options. The base of the mountain atop which the main fortress sat (the hilltop village of Tlaycapan) was huge, nearly three miles around, and well defended; Cortés later admitted that it was “madness to attempt to take it.”8 Cortés thought that it would take too long to go around, so he opted instead to scale directly up the face in three places that appeared climbable. He sent flag-bearer Cristóbal Corral and sixty foot soldiers up the steepest gorge, supported by crossbowmen and harquebusiers. He sent a handful of other captains and light troops up alternate trails leading to the plateau. He remained on the plain below with the main force, guarding against attack from the flanks and rear.