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

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Introduction

  1 Setting Out for New Spain and the Serendipitous Gift of Language

  2 The Battle with the Tabascans and the Acquisition of La Malinche

  3 Montezuma’s Message

  4 The Gambler Stakes All: “Either Win the Land, or Die in the Attempt”

  5 Into the Mountains

  6 The Massacre of Cholula

  7 The City of Dreams

  8 City of Sacrifice

  9 Seizure of Empire

  10 Cortés and Montezuma

  11 Spaniard Versus Spaniard

  12 The Festival of Toxcatl

  13 Montezuma’s Ironic Fate

  14 La Noche Triste

  15 “Fortune Favors the Bold”

  16 “The Great Rash”

  17 Return to the Valley of Mexico

  18 The Wooden Serpent

  19 Encirclement

  20 The Siege Begins

  Photo Insert

  21 Clash of Empires

  22 The Last Stand of the Aztecs

  Epilogue: The Shadows of Smoke

  Appendix A: Significant Participants in the Conquest

  Appendix B: A Brief Chronology of the Conquest

  Appendix C: A Note on Nahuatl Language Pronunciation

  Appendix D: Major Deities of the Aztec Pantheon

  Appendix E: The Aztec Kings

  Notes

  A Note on the Text and the Sources

  Bibliography

  Photo credits

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Buddy Levy

  Copyright

  For Camie, Logan, and Hunter

  Men of God and men of war have strange affinities.

  —CORMAC MCCARTHY, BLOOD MERIDIAN

  INTRODUCTION

  IN 1519 AN AMBITIOUS AND CALCULATING CONQUISTADOR named Hernán Cortés sailed from Cuba and arrived on the shores of Mexico with empire expansion in his veins. He intended to appropriate the new-found lands in the name of the crown of Spain, to convert the inhabitants to Catholicism, and to plunder the rich lands of their precious metals, namely gold. Cortés made land at Pontonchan, a considerable native fishing settlement, with a roguish, roughshod crew containing thirty crossbowmen, twelve men with muzzle-loaded handguns called harquebuses, fourteen pieces of small artillery, and a few cannons. Carefully, methodically, Cortés and his crew used ropes and pulleys to unload sixteen Spanish horses, highly trained and skilled warhorses of which the indigenous Americans had no concept or understanding, never having seen any. He also unloaded savage and well-trained war dogs: mastiffs and wolfhounds. In addition to his band of Spanish pirates and mercenaries, Cortés brought along a few hundred West African and Cuban slaves for use as porters. It was March 1519.

  Cortés marched his small force over massive mountains and active volcanoes towering eighteen thousand feet high, straight into the Valley of Mexico and the very heart of the Aztec civilization.*1 What Cortés encountered when he arrived at Tenochtitlán, the famed “City of Dreams,” were not the barbarians that his conquistador predecessors had envisioned but a powerful and highly evolved civilization at its zenith. The Aztecs possessed elaborate and accurate calendars, efficient irrigation systems for their myriad year-round crops, zoos and botanical gardens unrivaled in Europe, immaculate city streets with waste-management methods, astounding arts and jewelry, state-run education, sport in the form of a life-or-death ballgame, a devoted and organized military apparatus, and a vast trade and tribute network stretching the entirety of their immense empire, as far south as Guatemala. Cortés and his Christian brethren would soon discover that the Aztecs also possessed a highly evolved and ritualized religion much more complex than their own, a religion that its people followed with equal, if not greater, faith and conviction. Instead of one god, they zealously worshipped a pantheon of deities in elaborate and sophisticated ceremonies.

  At Tenochtitlán—at the time among the most populated and vital cities on earth, much larger than Paris or Peking—Cortés finally confronted Montezuma, the charismatic and enigmatic Aztec ruler. Their first meeting could be considered the birth of modern history. The conflict that followed was a religious one ultimately, pitting the monotheistic Catholicism of the Spaniards against the polytheistic mysticism of the Aztecs, and though in many respects the two empires were vastly different, they were actually parallel in a number of striking ways. Both were barbaric in their unique traditions. The Spaniards, fired and forged by the Crusades, would pillage and rape and kill in the name of God and country, subsuming in digenous cultures with little respect for their centuries of existence; the Aztecs used military force and violence to subjugate independent neighboring tribes and performed rites of human sacrifice and cannibalism. Neither could comprehend the other, and neither was willing to acquiesce. Both were uncompromisingly devoted to expanding their already considerable empires, and each was under the guidance and tutelage of a great leader.

  The most significant of all the conquistadors, Hernán Cortés was a late bloomer, arriving in the New World in 1504. He lived in relative anonymity for over a decade before asserting himself in the political scene of the West Indies colonies, by which time he was in his early thirties. Born in 1485 in Medellín, Spain, site of castles and strongholds used in the last efforts of the Reconquista (the expulsion of the Moors after seven hundred years of occupation), Hernán was the son of Martín Cortés, a low-level hidalgo not overly distinguished or well bred, and Doña Catalina Pizarro Altimirano. A frail and sickly child, Cortés began university at age fourteen in Salamanca but returned home, bored and distracted, after only two years. His mind must have been quick and perceptive, however, because his erudition in diplomacy and politics would surface later, serving him well. He studied government, law, and Latin and would later be described by his secretary Francisco López de Gómara as “restless, haughty, mischievous, and given to quarrelling.”1

  Wanderlust filled his heart early on, and in 1503 he was set to join an expedition to the West Indies with Don Nicolás de Ovando. On the eve of his departure, the young rake Cortés was injured leaping to his escape when caught in the house of a married woman; his injury cost him a chance on that ship, and he spent the next year carousing in Spain’s rough southern port villages. In 1504 the impetuous young man had earned entry onto one of five merchant ships setting sail for Santo Domingo, the bustling capital of Hispaniola and first settlement of the New World. Cortés had for a few years now heard rumors of untold wealth to be garnered in unknown lands, where gold flowed like water from the mysterious mountains. Just nineteen and with an adventurer’s spirit, having learned to ride as a youth while herding swine and gleaned the rudiments of cavalry tactics in school and from his father, as well as from the widely popular romances, Hernán Cortés was entirely anonymous and average as he booked passage to the West Indies. He had no way of knowing that in less than two decades he would command a Spanish force in one of the greatest assaults in military history and become among the most revered and reviled of men in all the world.2

  CORTÉS’S rival had led the Aztec people for nearly two decades. The ruler of the Aztec empire, Montezuma*2 was born in 1480, just five years before Hernán Cortés. Sometimes also referred to as Montezuma II, he was trained as a priest and rose to become the military, spiritual, and civic leader of the Aztecs in 1503, just as Cortés was on the verge of arriving in the West Indies. At that time the Aztecs controlled most of what is now Mexico and Central Ame
rica, their capital being the great city of Tenochtitlán (present-day Mexico City). Montezuma was enthroned as the tlatoani (great speaker) at the great temple built by his own brothers, and his coronation involved an elaborate ritual of bloodletting, self-piercing with bone slivers, the decapitation of two quails, and the spraying of their blood on an altar flame.

  Moody, petulant, even tyrannical, Montezuma was zealously driven by his spiritual beliefs. He was the semidivine ruler of a devout people whose supreme being was the sun and whose highly stylized and symbolic religion was driven by seasonal festivals, feasts, and celebrations observed by all members of society. The Aztec religion was an amalgamation of ancient Mesoamerican rites and traditions centered on paying tribute and making offerings to the many gods who orchestrated human destiny. The Aztecs believed these offerings—incense, birds, flowers, and in the highest of all forms, human hearts and blood—appeased the gods and ensured rain for their crops, healthy harvests, victory in battle, and even the daily rising of the sun.3

  Montezuma lived in an immense palace surrounded by his two wives, countless concubines, and more than five hundred attendants, noblemen, and emissaries. The palace complex was vast, the architecture and grounds were as sophisticated as any in medieval Europe, and the temples where the Aztec people worshipped were as impressive as the Egyptian pyramids. Montezuma’s personal rooms, scented with floral perfumes, were on the upper floors overlooking his sprawling domain. He loved games and music, especially drumming, gongs, and the melodies of hand-honed flutes, sometimes accompanied by poems and singing. Majestic in carriage, with deep, piercing eyes, Montezuma wore gilded sandals and traveled by procession elevated in a litter. Ordinary Aztec citizens dared not gaze directly upon him, under punishment of death. His pride, a hubris of Greek-tragedy proportions, was such that he demanded to be treated as a god.4

  By the time Cortés met the great ruler, Montezuma was the head of an immensely powerful triumvirate called the Triple Alliance, a confederation of the city-states Tenochtitlán, Texcoco, and Tacuba.5 These three great populaces carved a wide and powerful swath across Mexico, and as in Europe, all subjugated peoples, no matter how far flung, were forced to pay tithes or taxes to their ruler, a circumstance that created tension and resentment among distant tribes seeking independence. At the height of Montezuma’s rule, he was the supreme warlord of the most powerful military machine in the Americas, with effective dominion over some five million people.

  At the time of Cortés’s arrival, the Aztecs and other peoples on the North American continent had been evolving, completely isolated from the rest of the world. The discovery of the Aztecs, whom the Spaniards had previously not known to exist, has been called “the most astonishing encounter in our history.”6 The Aztecs must have had a similar response at their discovery of these alien visitors.

  The clash of empires that followed culminated in the bloody siege of Tenochtitlán, to this day considered the longest and costliest continuous single battle in history, with estimated casualties of 200,000 human lives.7 Cortés’s odyssey from the West Indies into the interior of the Aztec nation remains among the most astounding military campaigns ever waged, rivaled only by the epic expeditions of Alexander the Great. In just over two years, using horses and cavalry techniques developed over thousands of years on the Iberian Peninsula, employing nautical warfare and remarkable military engineering, and driven by political genius and an immeasurable will to succeed, Cortés vanquished the Aztecs and their ruler, which at fifteen million people was the largest empire in Mesoamerican history.8 For the Aztecs, the onslaught was so sudden as to be incomprehensible. No other great ancient civilization suffered such complete devastation and ruin in so short a time.

  The clash of these two empires is a tragic tale of conquest and defeat, of colonization and resistance, and of the remarkable and violent confluence of two empires previously unknown to each other. This confluence of cultures in 1519 is the unbelievable story of one of the greatest conquerors that history has ever known, the complex leader of the magnificent civilization he would destroy, and the cataclysmic battle that would be the end of one world and the making of a new one.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Setting Out for New Spain and the Serendipitous Gift of Language

  HERNÁN CORTÉS STRODE TO THE BOW of his flagship Santa María de la Concepción, a one-hundred-ton vessel and the largest of his armada, and scanned the horizon for land. He had much to ponder. His navigator and chief pilot, Antonio de Alaminos, an experienced veteran who had been pilot for Columbus on his final voyage, had been in these waters before—on the Ponce de León expedition in search of the fabled Fountain of Youth—and he suggested that if they encountered foul weather, the entire fleet should make land and convene on the island of Cozumel, just east of the Yucatán Peninsula’s northernmost tip. Since their hurried departure from Cuba, the fleet had been buffeted by foul weather, scattering the boats. Cortés brought up the rear, simultaneously scouring for land and for brigantines and caravels blown astray. A few, perhaps as many as five, had been lost during the night, an inauspicious beginning to such an ambitious voyage.

  Cortés had staked everything he owned on this venture—in fact more than that, for he had incurred significant debt building the ships and stocking them with provisions. His hope to get off to a good start had been slightly compromised when his patron, the fat hidalgo Diego Velázquez, now governor of Cuba, attempted to thwart his departure, even after he had signed a contract officially confirming Cortés as captain-general. Velázquez’s behavior was no surprise, given the contentious nature of their relationship. On his arrival in Hispaniola (the modern-day Dominican Republic) in 1504, Cortés had sought out the established countryman and worked under him, initially on a raid to suppress an Indian uprising on the island’s interior, and later on an expedition captained by Pánfilo de Narváez to conquer Cuba, which they accomplished easily enough. After this successful venture Velázquez, feeling magnanimous, gifted Cortés a large plot of land with many Indians and a number of viable, working mines on it, effectively making Cortés rich. But the two men were both obstinate, and their relationship was soon fraught with tensions that would ultimately threaten prison, and even death, for Cortés.

  Both men shared a passion for women, and a disagreement over one Catalina Suárez resulted in the governor’s having Cortés arrested and placed in the stocks. Cortés escaped by bribing the jailor, and Velázquez had him arrested again, even bringing a suit upon him and threatening to hang him for his refusal to marry Suárez, a snubbing that had sullied her reputation. Eventually Velázquez calmed, and the two men smoothed over their differences, but their relationship remained volatile. At present, in mid-February 1519, Velázquez held the political upper hand, for Cortés sailed under his aegis, as his emissary on a mission to trade, to find gold, and to obtain more Indians to work the mines of Cuba. But the wily Cortés had other intentions as he spotted land and had his pilot make anchor at Cozumel.

  Cortés’s ship was the last to arrive, and on setting foot on the island he found that the local inhabitants had fled at the arrival of the first ships, dispersing into the hills and jungle. Cortés noted their fear, filing it away as useful information. Then he was met with vexing news, and a reason for the local Indians’ behavior: one of his most trusted captains, Pedro de Alvarado, had arrived early, immediately raided the first village he encountered—brusquely entering temples and thieving some small gold ornaments left there as prayer offerings—and then seized a flock of about forty turkeys that were milling around the Indians’ thatch-roofed houses, even taking a few of the frightened Indians, two men and a woman, prisoner. Cortés, incensed, contemplated how to handle the situation. He needed to trust Alvarado, and he respected the fiery redheaded countryman who also hailed from his homeland, Estremadura. Alvarado, already battle-hardened and having commanded the previous Grijalva expedition to the Yucatán, was cocksure and felt justified in making his own independent decisions. Cortés needed him and
required a symbiotic relationship with his captains, but he also insisted that they obey his command, and he would tolerate no insubordination.1 Such behavior, he impressed upon his men, “was no way to pacify a country.”2

  Cortés rebuked Alvarado by commanding his men to turn over the pilfered offerings and return them to their Indian owners. He also had Alvarado’s pilot Camacho, who had failed to obey orders to wait for Cortés at sea, chained in irons. The turkeys had been slaughtered, and some of them already eaten, so Cortés ordered that the fowl be paid for with green glass beads and small bells, which he gave to the prisoners as he released them, along with a Spanish shirt for each. Then Cortés asked for a man named Melchior, a Mayan who had been taken prisoner during an earlier expedition and converted into something of an interpreter, having been taught some Spanish by his captors. Through Melchior, Cortés spoke to the Indians as he released them and sent them back to their families, instructing them that the Spaniards came in peace and wished to do them no harm, and that Cortés as their leader would like to meet personally with their chiefs or caciques.*3

  The initial diplomacy worked. The next day men, women, children, and eventually the chiefs of the villages poured forth from their hiding places in the lowland scrub and repopulated their village, which soon was bustling again. Conquistador Bernal Díaz, a soldier under Alvarado’s command who had been on both the Córdoba and Grijalva expeditions, remarked that “men, women, and children went about with us as if they had been friends with us all their lives.” Cortés sternly reiterated that the natives must not be harmed in any way. Díaz was impressed by Cortés’s leadership and style, noting that “here in this island our Captain began to command most energetically, and Our Lord so favored him that whatever he touched succeeded.”3