The Conquistadors (12 page)

They advanced with the Tlaxcalan banner of a golden crane with outstretched wings in the rear, which was its place in battle.

Bernal Díaz gives the date of this first encounter with the main Tlaxcalan force as September 2, 1519, and says that at one stage of the battle the Tlaxcalans made a determined attempt to capture one of the horses ridden by Pedro de Morán. ‘Some of them seized his lance so that he could not use it, and others slashed at his mare, cutting her head at the neck so that it only hung by the skin. And he adds that when they retired, they took the dead mare with them and ‘cut her in
pieces to show in all the towns of Tlaxcala'. Also that ‘they made an offering to their idols of her shoes, the red Flemish hat and the two letters we had sent them asking for peace'. In this, and in subsequent battles, any estimate of the number of Tlaxcalans killed would seem to be pure guesswork, since they invariably removed their dead from the field, but it was learned later that eight of their war chiefs had been killed.

Both before and after the battle Cortés released prisoners with messages of goodwill. He wanted peace, not war. The country itself was terrifying enough. They were now turning the flank of the volcano they named La Malinche. It lay to the left of their line of march, looming right over them, and behind they could still just see the peaks of Orizaba and Cofre de Perote. But what must have appalled Cortés was his first sight of the greatest obstacle of all, the twin peaks of Iztaccihuatl and Popocatépetl, fifty miles to the west. Five volcanoes in all, and the last two sprawled right across his route, only the white of their snow-capped summits as yet visible above the horizon. At whatever cost he had to subdue the Tlaxcalans and secure his line of march before he could attempt to cross that final mountain barrier.

That night the Spaniards made themselves secure in one of the temples of Teocacingo. For the next three days Cortés maintained an aggressive initiative, probing first in one direction, then in another, leaving the bulk of his army to defend the camp. These raids were made by the cavalry and about a hundred foot soldiers, supported by four hundred Zempoalans and three hundred warriors who had accompanied him from Ixtacamaxtitlan. His army had now moved into the more open country surrounding Tlaxcala, fields of maize hedged with maguey and many villages. These they burned, taking a large number of prisoners.

It was on September 5, according to Bernal Díaz, that the next major battle was fought. ‘We left the camp with our banner unfurled and four of our company guarding its bearer, and before we had gone half a mile we saw the fields crowded with warriors, with their tall plumes and badges, and heard the blare of horns and trumpets.' Cortés claims that the Tlaxcalans numbered 139,000. The battle was fought on a plain about six miles long so that both cavalry and cannon were at their most deadly. The Tlaxcalans, badly led, attacked en masse. The artillery mowed them down in swathes, and the Spanish soldiers, now battle trained, moved into the packed enemy with the tight discipline of Roman legionaries. The cavalry was a powerful armoured weapon, particularly destructive in pursuit, but there were now only a dozen horses left, and it was Spanish steel, the cutting edge of the foot soldiers' sword, that won Cortés his battles. And on this occasion there was dissension among the Tlaxcalans, two of Xicotencatl's captains refusing to join him. The result, after four hours' fighting, was a rout. But by then all the horses were injured.

‘We gave thanks to God', Bernal Díaz says. And well they might, for they had lost one man, though sixty had been wounded; but the Spaniards never seemed
concerned about wounds. The Tlaxcalans, too, were learning fast. Thereafter, they attacked in smaller groups, each company vying with the next for the honour of capturing a Spaniard alive. But by then the nearby chiefs were beginning to come into the camp to make their own peace. Two days after the battle, fifty Indians appeared in the camp, mingling with the soldiers and offering them gifts of food, mainly flat pancakes of maize flour, turkeys and cherries. Warned that they were spies, and seeing that they were over-interested in the army's defences and dispositions, Cortés had them arrested. Under interrogation they admitted that they had come to spy in preparation for a night attack. He sent them back to Tlaxcala, all fifty of them with their hands cut off, and then he set to work to prepare his camp for attack. This night attack was carried out by about ten thousand warriors, who began moving down from the neighbouring hills at sunset. Xicotencatl had been assured by his priests that the valour of the Spaniards deserted them at night. Unfortunately for him, this was not the case; Cortés moved his army out into the open maize fields and met the Indians there. By then the moon had risen and the Tlaxcalans, unaccustomed to night fighting, were quickly routed.

After three days of sporadic fighting, Cortés made a night attack on two towns, which he did not burn for fear of arousing the whole neighbourhood. At dawn he attacked a larger town ‘so suddenly that all rushed unarmed, the women and children naked, into the streets'. Xicotencatl came the following day with fifty other chiefs to sue for peace. The Tlaxcalan war chief is described as being about thirty-five, a tall, broad-shouldered man with a long pock-marked face, who carried himself with great dignity. This was the end of the Tlaxcalan campaign, for he not only made protestations of lasting friendship, urgently inviting the Spaniards to enter his city, but he also complained bitterly of Moctezuma's constant demands.

Nothing could have suited Cortés better, for he already had in his camp a further embassy from Moctezuma – six chiefs with a retinue of two hundred, who had come bearing presents of gold for Cortés, congratulations on his victory and, what was more important, the news that Moctezuma was not only prepared to become a vassal of the Spanish emperor, but also to pay a yearly tribute – so long as the Spaniards did not enter Mexico. It was both a bribe and an offer of Danegeld. Thus Cortés was able to embark on an elaborate game of political poker. He did
not yet trust the Tlaxcalans and he admits that he ‘continued to treat with both one and the other, thanking each in secret for the advice he gave me, and professing to regard each with greater friendship than the other'.

Warily he waited six or seven days in his camp, a pause that gave his men a chance to rest and enabled him to send dispatches back to Vera Cruz and to receive news that all was well with the settlement. It also allowed the details of his victories to percolate through the surrounding country, and doubtless grow in the telling. He was only six leagues from Tlaxcala and, in the end, the threat of what he might do to the city brought all the chiefs once more to his camp, touching the ground with their hands, kissing the earth and, whilst the priests burned copal, pleading with him to enter the city as a sign of friendship. The next day, September 23, he broke camp, and as the army, all in proper formation, neared the city, it was met by a great procession of chiefs, with all the priests straight from sacrifice, ‘the blood clotted in their long hair and oozing from their ears'.

In entering Tlaxcala Cortés was not only gaining a city of about thirty thousand inhabitants, according to his estimate, but a whole state measuring ‘some ninety leagues in circumference', for this was the capital of what politically might be termed a republic. The city itself, which Cortés says was ‘larger than Granada and much better fortified', lay in a hollow amongst the hills with some of its temples on the high ground surrounding it. It was packed with people from all the country round come to see the
teules
. Their leaders offered hostages as security for friendship. They also offered five virgins, each the daughter of a chief, to cement it. But they would not throw down their idols or abandon their sacrifices.

During his stay in Tlaxcala Cortés gathered a great deal of information about the Mexican capital, and about the Mexicans themselves. The Tlaxcalans could tell him the number of drawbridges on the causeways and even the depth of the water in the lake. Moreover, they put the strength of Moctezuma's Mexican armies alone at a hundred and fifty thousand men, and they had reason to know, for they had been at war with the Culhúan confederacy for over á hundred years. The normal assembly point for these attacks was the neighbouring city of Cholula, and when they heard that Moctezuma's chiefs were advising Cortés to move there, they warned him that the people were treacherous, that Moctezuma had a large force of his warriors camped about two leagues from the city, that the royal
road leading into it had been blocked and a new one constructed with pits and sharpened stakes to trap the horses, and that the streets themselves were barricaded, the flat roofs of the houses piled with stones ready for use as missiles. In the circumstances it is hardly surprising that Cortés stayed nearly three weeks in Tlaxcala,

During that time he consolidated his position. Once the Tlaxcalans were convinced that the Spaniards represented their only hope of finally breaking the power of Mexico, he had the support of the whole republic, a really powerful ally who for years had maintained a remarkable independence. Behind him, as far back as his base on the coast, all the territory was friendly.

His men were well aware of this. But they, too, had been listening to the tales of Moctezuma's might. They had seen the cages and the blood-soaked priests; they knew their fate if they were surprised and captured, and now that they had fought with the Indians, they were under no illusions as to what would happen if the Tlaxcalans proved treacherous or they were deserted by their other allies. Every account of the battles so far attributes victory to God and the power of Spanish arms. This is natural; but it is clear from the attitude of the men who had fought and bluffed their way up from the coast that they would have been destroyed without the support of their Zempoalan allies. Many of the Spaniards had had enough and wanted only to return to Vera Cruz, where a ship could be built and sent to Cuba for reinforcements. They argued, very reasonably, that they were too few for the task of facing the full force of Moctezuma's armies.

How Cortés felt about this, what doubts he had himself, we do not know, since he was careful never to reveal his own feelings. And we only have a garbled version of the arguments by which he persuaded his men to soldier on with him into Mexico. These speeches give an impression of absolute confidence, and it is interesting to note that here, and subsequently, he always kept his men in the picture and never took a major step that might involve fighting without their willing support. This leadership by consent, which had its roots in Spanish history, and also in the voyages and frontier atmosphere of the New World, is one of his most outstanding qualities. Fortunately for him, he had the advantage of a very persuasive tongue.

Having shamed his men once again into following him, he was now faced with
a further choice of routes. Mexico lay due west. Should he take the direct route, or should he go by way of Cholula, as Moctezuma's ambassadors advised? The Tlaxcalans gloomily warned him that Cholula was a trap, that Moctezuma was not to be trusted and that his forces would be waiting there in ambush to destroy the Spaniards. Whilst Cortés was still considering the matter, he received yet another embassy from Moctezuma – four chiefs with presents of gold jewels, worth about 2,000 pesos, and warnings that the Tlaxcalans were only waiting an opportunity to kill and rob the Spaniards. It was such an obvious attempt to drive a wedge between him and his new allies that Cortés ignored it.

At this point he decided to send an embassy of his own to Moctezuma, and Pedro de Alvarado and Bernardino Vázquez de Tapia had actually set out for the capital, the four chiefs being held as hostages for their safe return, before he had second thoughts and recalled them. Messengers he had dispatched to Cholula now returned with four minor chiefs, who said their caciques could not come to swear allegiance in person, as the caciques of other towns round about had done, because they were ill. This excuse was a very transparent one and Cortés had now got himself into the same position as he had previously with the Tlaxcalans. He dared not lose face, and so he sent four of his Zempoalans with an ultimatum – if the caciques did not come within three days, he would regard the Cholulans as rebels. The reply he received was that they dared not come since the Tlaxcalans were their enemies, but that if Cortés would leave Tlaxcala and come to them, he would be well received. This excuse was not an unreasonable one, and though he marched on Cholula with the support of about a hundred thousand Tlaxcalans (this is Cortés' figure, Tapia gives forty thousand), he managed, with some difficulty, to persuade most of them to return to their city. He was then about five miles from Cholula, and as it was now late in the day, he camped the night in a dry river bed.

The country here is very flat, a somewhat arid plain, the very flatness of which emphasises the staggering abruptness of the twin volcanoes of Iztaccihuatl and Popocatépetl. Iztaccihuatl, ‘the sleeping lady', is a sprawling, feminine mountain; seen in silhouette against the setting sun it looks like the body of a woman laid out for burial, the head, the breasts, the feet, all visible in outline against the flaring sky. Popocatépetl, ‘the warrior', is entirely masculine, a sharp, pointed peak brilliantly capped with snow. The height of these twin peaks above the plain is over 9,000 feet, for the plain itself is almost 8,000 feet above sea level. From his camp Cortés could see quite plainly the pass between them – the pass that is known to this day as the Paso de Cortés, though modern Mexico has now expunged almost any other reference to the Spanish conquistadors. ‘From the higher of the two', Cortés writes, ‘both by day and night a great volume of smoke often comes forth and rises up into the clouds as straight as a staff, with such force that although a very violent wind continuously blows over the mountain range yet it cannot change the direction of the column.' Halfway between Cholula and the
volcano two small hills stand like miniature replicas of the twin peaks, the only relief in the flatness of the plain. Though arid-looking and dusty, the plain is well supplied with water from the melted snows. Wherever irrigation was practical there were settlements. The country was, therefore, thickly populated, and looking south that evening Cholula itself must have presented an extraordinary spectacle, for it was not only a large city – Cortés says that it had twenty thousand houses, and, including the outlying villages, the total population probably numbered about a hundred thousand – but it was also a great religious centre with more than three hundred and sixty temples.