The Mastering of Mexico/Chapter 16
CHAPTER XVI
How rebellion against Alvarado broke out, and we marched back and re-entered the great city; how Cortes felt and what he said, and how the Mexicans warred fiercely against us several days; and how the mighty Montezuma died.
How quickly the wheel of fortune turns and trouble and sorrow follow joy! Such a moment now came to us. First two Tlaxcalans bearing a letter from Alvarado, and then two other messengers, told that Mexico had risen in arms, that the people were besieging the Spaniards we had left behind to guard Montezuma, that they had set fire to the new fortifications and killed seven of our men and wounded many others. God knows how greatly this news shocked us. We determined, leaving Narvaez and Salvatierra in custody at Vera Cruz, to hasten to Mexico by forced marches.
Just as we were starting four chieftains came up, sent by Montezuma to bear his complaint. They, with tears in their eyes, told that Alvarado and his soldiers had sallied from their quarters and had fallen on their caciques who were dancing and feasting in honor of their gods Huitzilopochtli and Tezcatlipoca (Alvarado himself having given them leave to celebrate the festival) and had killed and wounded many, while the Mexicans, forced to a defence, had slain some of our Spaniards. Cortes heard this with a dark frown settling on his brow. He answered that he would go to Mexico and put things to rights. At the same time he wrote Alvarado that while we were coming by forced marches, he should see that Montezuma did not escape.
News that Mexico was In rebellion led us to abandon our plans for forming settlements In the provinces of Panuco and Coatzacoalcos, and Cortes begging the followers of Narvaez to forget the old enmity and join us In the campaign and service to God and our king, promised that those who had come to the country for a livelihood he would lead to wealth and honors. He said so many fine things that one and all agreed to go.
With all expedition we reached Tlaxcala, where we learned that the Mexicans had not ceased their attacks upon our garrison till they heard of our victory over Narvaez; and that they still failed to supply our men with food and water. Cortes now reviewed our troops and found over thirteen hundred men, eighty crossbowmen, a like number of musketeers, and ninety-six horses. In addition the caciques of Tlaxcala furnished us two thousand warriors. The same brisk steps with which we had marched to Tlaxcala we continued to the great city Texcoco. Here we began to discover the ill feeling the people had against us, for they showed us not the smallest honor and not a single cacique appeared.
On midsummer day, St John's day, In the month of June, 1520, we for the second time entered the city of Mexico. None of our Mexican friends met us on the streets, and all the houses were empty. Not until we reached our quarters did Montezuma come to welcome Cortes and congratulate him on his victory over Narvaez. Our captain, however, flushed with newly acquired power, refused to listen to the monarch, who returned sad and depressed to his apartments.
We soldiers again took our lodgings in the old quarters, and Narvaez' men found similar comforts. We then saw and talked with Alvarado and the soldiers who had stayed with him, and heard many conflicting reports of the revolt. Some of the soldiers said that Montezuma had quieted the people and put down the insurrection, and if he had had secret understanding with his people, our men would have been killed. Alvarado, for his part, told Cortes that the Mexicans had risen In arms because their god, Huitzilopochtli, commanded It In revenge for our having set up a cross and the image of Our Lady in his temple. Further, they had risen because of the message Narvaez sent Montezuma, that he was coming to release the monarch from prison and lead us away In chains; and because Montezuma found that although we now had ships, we were not leaving the country and he believed what we said about embarking empty words; and since more teules were arriving we never Intended to leave. Therefore the Mexicans had determined, before we should come back to Mexico with the soldiers we had conquered, to put all who were there to the sword and liberate their monarch. Cortes became very angry when Alvarado gave these and other reports about the uprising, and he told Alvarado his work had been ill done and hurtful to the Spanish cause and he wished to hear no more of it.
When Cortes on our return march saw how the people of Texcoco had not stirred a foot to give him a reception and had only afforded him food, and bad food at that, and with ill will, and when he met the same, or stronger, expression of ill feeling in entering Mexico, and, although he returned with additional forces, the people no longer brought him supplies, the pride he had showed to the officers on the march to Mexico, glorifying himself and telling of the power he enjoyed and how the Indians would come from all parts and receive him with splendor and give him gold—this expectation of his meeting the very opposite of what It had pleased him to believe would happen, his pride turned to moroseness and anger. So it came about that when Montezuma sent two caciques to say he wished to see and talk with our captain, Cortes said, "Go to, for a hound, who will not keep an open market nor permit food to be given us!" When Leon and other chief officers heard this, they cried, "Moderate your anger, captain, recall the kindness and honor this monarch has shown us. But for him, the Mexicans would long ago have feasted on our bodies." At this seeming reproof, Cortes became still more angry and burst out with, "Why should I stand on further ceremony with this hound who secretly united with Narvaez and now refuses us food?" "To our minds," answered the officers, "he acts prudently and does nothing but what the situation prompts."
Cortes, however, relied on the strength of his troops, and he spoke angrily again to the chieftains, telling them to say to their master that he must at once order the market reopened. The caciques had understood the speech reviling their master, and also our officers' reproof. They went back and told the monarch what they had heard. Scarcely a quarter of an hour later one of our men came in badly wounded. He had been to Tacuba, a town close by Mexico, to fetch some Indian women belonging to Cortes' household, and he told how he found the city and the roads filled with warriors, and, if he had not let his charges go, they would have seized him, thrown him into a canoe and carried him off for sacrifice. Our captain and those of us soldiers used to Indian fighting were very depressed when we heard this, for we well knew with what vast crowds they always enter battle, and that we should have to run greatest risk of losing life in hunger, or in fighting in a strongly fortified city.
Cortes promptly ordered Ordas with four hundred soldiers, mostly crossbowmen and musketeers with a few horsemen, to see what truth there was in the soldier's tale, and if they could settle the trouble without fighting, to do so. Ordas had hardly reached the middle of the street when squadrons of Mexicans on the level, and many more on housetops, attacked his little troop so furiously that they killed eight of his men at first onset and wounded many.
If the body of warriors falling on Ordas was vast, the many at the same time attacking our quarters and assailing us with lances, arrows and slings was greater, and they at once wounded more than forty of our men. True, our cannon, muskets, crossbows and lances made havoc in their ranks, yet they fought with the more fury and closed their lines the more firmly, nor could we push them back one inch. It was only after a good deal of fighting that Ordas and his men were able step by step to force a passage to our quarters, his company less by fourteen soldiers than when he left, and all the rest badly wounded.
The damage the Mexicans now did, however, was nothing to what we afterwards suffered. Their audacity went so far that they entered our quarters and set them on fire, one body attacking us in front and another in the rear, and we should have been suffocated with smoke if we had not put out the fire by throwing earth over it. They hurled at random lances, stones and arrows so that the ground in all our courts was literally covered. Combat under these conditions lasted all day and until late at night, when at last we could dress our wounds, mend breaches in the wall and get ready for the next day.
At the beginning of dawn our captain decided to sally out with all of us and the troops of Narvaez, and beat the enemy, or at least make them feel our strength. The Mexicans had determined on the same action. They came in overwhelming numbers, fresh men every minute to the attack. Neither cannon nor musketry were to the purpose, nor killing from forty to fifty of their troop at a time. They fought on in close ranks, their courage seeming to increase with every loss. At times they would retreat, but that was merely a ruse to draw us from our quarters to where they could surround us, desperately assault us with stones and lances cast from housetops, and assail our ears with drums, trumpets and yells that we were scoundrels and cowards. I do not know how I so coolly tell what passed. Three or four of us who had served in Italy swore over and over again that neither against the artillery of the French, nor against the Turk himself, had they ever seen such furious fighting.
On that day they killed ten or twelve more of our men and none of us escaped without a wound. During the night we resolved that in two days' time as many of us as should be able should sally out with moving towers. These engines, of wood strongly put together, we so built that five and twenty men could move along under each of them. They had loopholes through which heavy guns could be fired, and with them, too, were musketeers and crossbowmen, and horsemen who were to charge at full gallop.
Our enemies, however, not only attacked our quarters in ten and twelve, but In twenty different points at once, so that what with building our towers, repairing breaches in the wall and beating off assailants who fixed ladders to our walls, we had enough to do. No one of us should survive that day, they shouted, but all of us should be sacrificed—our hearts torn from our bodies, our blood drawn from our veins and offered to their gods, our arms and legs eaten at their feasts, and the rest of our bodies thrown to the caged tigers, lions and snakes which they had not lately fed that they might the more greedily devour us. As for our comrade Tlaxcalans, they said they would put them in cages to fatten and use them day by day in sacrifice. But "Deliver up Montezuma!" they yelled, while their whistles and missiles assailed us the whole night.
As soon as day had fairly broken, commending ourselves to God we sallied forth with our towers. If our enemy had fought desperately on the two previous days, they stood even more firm this time. Nevertheless we determined, although at the cost of all our lives, we must push to the great temple of Huitzilopochtli. I will not detail the terrible struggle we had, how they hurled darts, stones and arrows, how, if hotly pursued, they jumped into the canals, how they wounded our horses, which lost their foothold on the smooth pavement of the courtyard. Their numbers was so vast we could not beat them back, though our cannon mowed down ten or fifteen at a time. At last we had worked our way to the foot of the temple, when, all of a sudden above four thousand Mexicans rushed up the steps for its defense. Other troops armed with long lances, stones and darts were already on the top.
We now began to make our way up the stairs. Oh! what a perilous fight it was!—we streaming with blood and covered with wounds, our men falling dead at our feet! Cortes showed astonishing valor. although that was never wanting in him. At last it pleased providence to help us to the place where we had set the image of Our Lady. It was not there. Montezuma through devotion, or fear, as we came to know, had put it in safety. But some of us set fire to the Mexican idols and their chapel, while others were fighting, for here stood together the papas and many of the caciques.
We had undergone greatest peril. Our towers were broken in pieces. All of us were covered with wounds, and forty-six of our men slain. We started to return. Our retreat was no less difficult. Oh! how they fell upon us and rushed us down the steps of the temple! And we came back to quarters just in time, for the enemy had made breaches in our walls and forced their way to our rooms. Such work we were able to stop, but never their hurling of lances, stones and arrows with most frightful yells.
When we had mended our walls, aided our wounded and buried our dead, every plan offered in our council of war had no sufficient remedy. Our troubles increased through the ill disposition of the soldiers of Narvaez who, seeming crazy and deaf to every thing said to them, cursed Cortes and even Diego Velasquez for sending them from the peace and security of their farms in Cuba to the horrors of death in this country. Finally we agreed to sue for peace so that we might leave Mexico. But dawn had barely come when fresh squadrons of Mexicans attacked our quarters again with stubborn and excessive fury. Our cannon and firearms availed nothing.
At this moment of danger Cortes determined that the great Montezuma should speak to the mob from the roof and tell them they must stay their attacks and that we wished to leave the city. When they gave him this message the monarch is said from deep grief to have cried out, "What more does Malinche want of me!—of me, tired of life, to such misery has he brought me! I will neither see nor hear more of this man. I put no faith in his lies." And he refused to do as Cortes wished. Then the Padre de Olmedo and Olid spoke in reverence and affection and persuaded him to change his mind. "Alas!" answered the monarch, "it is now too late. I believe I can gain nothing towards ending the war, for they have raised up another cacique and are determined you shall die. I think that all of you will meet death here."
In the end, however, Montezuma under guard of our soldiers went to a battlement of the roof. Many of the chieftains recognized him and ordered their men to be silent and hurl no missiles. Montezuma then began addressing the people, and in most affectionate manner told them to cease warring. Four of the chiefs advanced to a spot where they could talk with him, and with tears in their eyes they said, "Alas! great cacique, your own misfortune, and that of your children, afflict us sorely. We must tell you we have raised one of your kinsmen to be our ruler, and we are forced to carry on the war because we have vowed to our gods not to stop till every teul is killed. To Huitzilopochtli and Tezcatlipoca we pray daily to deliver you safe from our enemy's power, when we shall hold you in greater veneration than before; and we beg you to forgive us now."
They had hardly done this speech when a shower of arrows and darts fell near the monarch. Our men who had stood by to cover him with shields had, while he was speaking, withdrawn their cover. Three stones struck the great Montezuma, one on the head, another on the arm and another on the leg. We carried the unhappy monarch to his apartment, and begged him to have the wounds bandaged, and to take food to strengthen him. But he refused everything. In a little time they came to say he was dead. Cortes wept for him, and no man among us who had come to know him in close relations who did not bemoan him as though he were a father, he was so good.
Cortes now ordered a papa and a cacique among our prisoners to go to the monarch the Mexicans had chosen and say that the great Montezuma was dead, and to tell how he came to die by wounds his own people had given, and how grieved we Spaniards were. They were to tell, moreover, that they should bury him for the great king he was, and should in his royal seat set his cousin who was staying with us, or one of his sons, and then make treaty of peace with us so that we might quit Mexico. If they did not do this, we, who had held ourselves from destroying the city in our respect and love for Montezuma, would make a war that would burn their houses and do no end of damage.
Upon this we gave the body of Montezuma to six caciques and the papas whom we held prisoners, and they bore it on their shoulders and delivered it to the chieftains, telling how they had seen the great monarch die. When the Mexicans saw him dead they broke into floods of tears and shrieked and moaned bitterly. But they never let up the fierce assault they made on us, rather they came at us with renewed fury, shouting, "We will make you pay for the death of our monarch and your insults to our gods! You beg peace? Come out here and we will show you how we will make it." They said much else that I can not remember and so do not report, but it was to the effect that they would elect [1] a monarch not so good-natured as Montezuma. "Don't trouble yourselves about the burial. Think of your own, for in a couple of days there will not be one of you alive."
- ↑ This goes to show the institutions of the Mexicans were in foundation democratic—"the chiefs and leaders," wrote the distinguished archaeologist, Adolph F. A. Bandelier, "filled elective and in no case hereditary positions."