The Conquistadors (22 page)

Then disaster struck. The first indication was a change in Moctezuma's manner when Cortés made his usual daily call. The king's health, which had been deteriorating under the strain, was suddenly much improved. He seemed almost light-hearted. He did not attempt to hide the reason, but told Cortés, with unconcealed pleasure, that a fleet of ships had arrived off the coast. He showed him the pictograph his messengers had brought him. There were nineteen vessels painted on the cloth, and the pictures also showed a large number of men and horses disembarking in the neighbourhood of Vera Cruz. ‘Now you will not need to build ships', Moctezuma said. What he did not say was that he was already in touch with the commander of this expedition, had sent him gifts, and knew that he had come to destroy Cortés.

When Cortés returned to his quarters, he found the news had already leaked to his men. The excitement was intense, horsemen galloping around, shots being fired. They assumed that the arrival of the fleet constituted the reinforcements they so urgently needed. Cortés at once called a conference of his captains and disillusioned them. A fleet of that size would not have been sent from Spain. It could only have come from Jamaica or Cuba, and that meant that they were to be robbed by their own people of all they had worked and fought for during the course of the past year. He did not waste time bewailing the injustice of it. Nor did he try to colour his judgment with wishful thinking. He knew too much about Spanish power politics.

His reaction, as usual, was positive. He paraded his men, took them into his confidence, and bluntly told them the worst. They had one great advantage; they were seasoned troops, who knew the country and the Indians. The new arrivals were raw and untrained men. Moreover, here in this fleet were the arms and horses they needed. As always, his speech was effective. They were with him to a man.

The fleet was, in fact, an expedition fitted out from Cuba by Diego Velázquez. What had happened was that, contrary to instructions, the ship that had been dispatched from Vera Cruz with emissaries to Spain almost a year ago had put into a port in Cuba. As a result, somebody, probably Montejo, had sent the governor of Cuba full details of what Cortés had done – the founding of Vera Cruz, his
election as the settlement's captain-general, his direct approach to the Emperor and his intention to march on Mexico and conquer the entire country. Velázquez had immediately dispatched two caravels to intercept the vessel, but instead of going on to Havana, as had been suggested, the ship had headed direct for the Bahamas strait. The caravels never even sighted their quarry. Velázquez had then sent letters of complaint to the Vice-regal Court at Santo Domingo. This court, however, was composed of the three Jeronomite priests who had given Cortés his commission, and when he got no satisfaction from them, Velázquez had poured out all his carefully hoarded wealth in the fitting out of a fleet. The size of that fleet makes it clear that he was now fully conscious of the great prize that was slipping from his grasp. The man he put in charge of it was Pánfilo de Narváez; Velázquez was under some obligation to him for having borrowed money from his estate whilst he was absent in Spain, and no doubt he felt that the resulting community of interest was a guarantee of Narváez's reliability.

Narváez was greeted off the Gulf coast by a singular stroke of luck. One of the expeditions Cortés had sent out from Mexico to report on the gold mines in the provinces had been commanded by a relative of his, a twenty-five-year-old captain called Pizarro. He had been sent north into the country of the Chinantecs with an escort of five soldiers. He had returned with only one. The others he had left to organize cocoa, maize and cotton plantations, the land being very fertile. Cortés had reprimanded him for wasting men he could ill afford on such a task and had sent orders for them to return. They had not done so, and now three of them joined up with the newly arrived fleet. Narváez thus had first-hand information about the political situation in Mexico and the position of Cortés and his men.

Why Narváez did not attack Vera Cruz at once is incomprehensible. All he did was to send three envoys to demand its surrender. This gave Sandoval, who had been appointed constable after the death of Escalante, time to dig in. Young, tough and reliable, he not only prepared for a siege, but arrested the three envoys and sent them under escort to Mexico. It was a most rewarding move. From them, Cortés learned the strength of the fleet. Narváez had eighty horsemen and the same number of arquebusiers, a hundred and thirty crossbowmen and six hundred foot, a total of more than eight hundred men. It was a formidable force, almost double his own. He did not hold on to the envoys, however, but sent them back loaded with presents and dazzled by the splendours and opportunities of Mexico. The result was as he had hoped. Deserters began to straggle into Vera Cruz, and Narváez, becoming alarmed, moved inland to Zempoala. There was an exchange of letters, which did not help Narváez's cause, since he called Cortés' men traitors and bandits, and threatened them with death and the confiscation of the treasure they had won; all of which Cortés read out to them.

The time for action had now arrived. Cortés set out for the coast with two hundred and fifty picked men, leaving Pedro de Alvarado in command of the remainder, with instructions to be on his guard and keep a close watch on
Moctezuma. He went by way of Cholula and Tlaxcala, but there is no evidence that he enlisted Indian auxiliaries. He had no desire to see Spaniards slaughtered; he was in too great a need of reinforcements. Somewhere between Tlaxcala and Zempoala he was met by Duero, a friend of Cuban days who had lent him money when he was fitting out his fleet. Duero tried to persuade him to accept the authority of Narváez and surrender his forces. If he did not, he would be regarded as a rebel. A notary, who was with him, tried to serve Cortés with a writ. The upshot of it was that Cortés said he would fight unless Narváez could show that his instructions came direct from the Emperor. Since he knew very well they did not, he sent Duero back, accompanied by Fray Bartolomé and Juan Velázquez de León and other envoys, with a further letter to Narváez, requesting him not to stir up unnecessary trouble in a country that was not fully pacified. The real object, of course, was to confirm his opponent's strength, to discover his dispositions, and above all to suborn his men.

Narváez appears to have made some sort of an effort to wrest the initiative from Cortés, but after marching several leagues along the Tlaxcala road without encountering him, he retired again to Zempoala. As Gómara says: ‘The one was as tepid and careless in his actions as the other was careful and cunning.' Narváez had no real chance against a leader of Cortés' experience and ability.

Dazzled by all the talk of Mexican gold, many of Narváez' men fought halfheartedly when the attack was delivered, suddenly, in the night. It was damp; the touch-holes of the guns (they had between thirteen and nineteen) were filled with wax to keep out the rain; and fireflies flickered, adding to the confusion by looking like the matches of arquebusiers. The teocalli, where they were lodged and which might have been successfully defended, were quickly surrounded, and Narváez himself was wounded by a pike thrust in the eye. It was all over inside of an hour with very little loss of life.

Narváez was sent in irons to Vera Cruz, where he was held prisoner for several years. His men, ‘with greater or lesser willingness', went over to Cortés. He knew most of them anyway, and the fabulous accounts of the prospects in Mexico, with which they had been so sedulously fed, would have made them eager to serve under such a successful commander. Nevertheless, the incorporation into his force of such a large number of raw troops presented Cortés with a problem. Some he allocated to the garrison at Vera Cruz, others were included in a detachment of two hundred to be sent to the Pánuco river under Juan Velazquez de Leon to found the settlement that Cualpopoca had blocked. The rest were to go with him on the return march to Mexico.

News of the victory had been sent at once to Alvarado in Mexico, but it arrived too late. Just before the battle, Narváez had sent another embassy to Moctezuma. Alvarado was aware of this: aware, too, that the Mexican war chiefs had been mustering their men – one account gives a figure of a hundred thousand warriors waiting ready to attack. Hot-headed, impatient, a man who believed in steel rather than words, Alvarado had indulged in an unprovoked blood-bath. As a result he had precipitated the crisis that Cortés had been at such pains to avoid. Twelve days after the defeat of Narváez two Tlaxcalans arrived in Cortés' camp with a message from Alvarado urgently requesting aid. He had already lost seven men killed and many wounded, the palace of Axayacatl had been set on fire in two places, and the Mexicans were besieging it.

Cortés proceeded at once by forced marches, leaving only the wounded in Vera Cruz, and abandoning once again his attempt to found a settlement on the Pánuco river. Moctezuma had already been informed of Cortés' victory over Narváez, and four of his chiefs now arrived with the Mexican version of what had happened in the city. Some of their people had obtained Alvarado's permission to perform the
macehualixtli
dance, which is a sort of harvest festival, in the great temple. Alvarado and his soldiers had then set upon them. Many Mexicans, including some caciques, had lost their lives, and in defending themselves, they had killed six Spaniards.

At Tlaxcala there was more news. Alvarado's men were short of food and water and near the point of exhaustion. The Mexicans, however, had ceased their attacks. Cortés pushed on fast to Texcoco. Nobody came out to welcome him, not even the youth he had made king. The place was deserted, the houses empty. But at Mexico he was greeted by Moctezuma, who congratulated him on his victory. Cortés was barely civil. He went straight on to his own quarters, where he was met by Alvarado.

Why Cortés had chosen Alvarado to command in his absence is nowhere clearly stated. He knew the man was impetuous. But it has to be remembered that Cortés' position at the time was desperate – Narváez and his fleet at Vera Cruz and anything up to a hundred thousand Mexicans ready to attack. Alvarado was one of the bravest of his captains, a born leader, whom the men trusted. With him in command, they would fight to the bitter end. That he might provoke an attack was something Cortés had been forced to risk.

In justification of his action Alvarado said he had positive information that, when the
macehualixtli
dance was over and the Mexicans had sacrificed to their gods, then the attack would begin. It was night, and the uproar they were making –
drums thumping, conches blaring, trumpets and bone pipes sounding – convinced him that this was the frenzied prelude to the attack. When he had arrived at the temple, with some fifty of his men, he had found as many as a thousand Indians dancing naked, except that their bodies were covered with jewels and pearls and precious stones, plumes of brilliant feathers nodding from their heads. He had blocked the entrances and slaughtered nearly all of them. Indian chroniclers give this picture of the massacre:

They ran in among the dancers, forcing their way to the place where the drums were played. They attacked the man who was drumming and cut off his arms. Then they cut off his head, and it rolled across the floor. They attacked all the celebrants, stabbing them, spearing them, striking them with their swords. They attacked some of them from behind, and these fell instantly to the ground with their entrails hanging out. Others they beheaded; they cut off their heads, or split their heads to pieces. They struck others in the shoulders, and their arms were torn from their bodies. They wounded some in the thigh and some in the calf. They slashed others in the abdomen, and their entrails all spilled to the ground. Some attempted to run away, but their intestines dragged as they ran; they seemed to tangle their feet in their own entrails. No matter how they tried to save themselves, they could find no escape.

Was this reckless act really justified as an attempt to cow the Mexicans by a cruel show of force? Did Alvarado panic, faced with that macabre scene and under pressure from the nervousness of his men? Or was it greed at the sight of all that wealth of jewels glinting on the naked bodies in the smoking light of the pitch-pine torches?

Cortés, though he upbraided Alvarado angrily for his stupid provocation, accepted the excuse that he had done it in an attempt to forestall an attack. He had no alternative, for he needed Alvarado now, needed all his seasoned troops. The situation in Mexico was as bad as it had been at Texcoco. No caciques had come to meet him, no markets were being held. The city was dead, its silence oppressive, menacing. The smell of revolt was in the air. He had come up from the coast with the better part of eleven hundred men. More than eight hundred of these were new arrivals, soured now with disappointment after all the inducements, the wonderful rewards, they had been promised. He did not trust them.

For the first time Cortés' normal sang-froid seems to have deserted him. The arrival of two chiefs, requesting him to visit Moctezuma, sent him into a towering rage. ‘Visit him?' he is quoted as saying. ‘The dog doesn't even keep open market for us … Why should I be civil to a dog who was holding secret negotiations with Narváez, and now doesn't even give us any food?'

This outburst, which is not mentioned in his dispatches to the Emperor, is so unlike his normal diplomatic behaviour that it is probably correctly reported. Cortés had gone through a period of great strain. For more than six months he had supported himself and his men in Mexico by his wits, only to have his authority and position threatened by a fleet from Cuba. He had marched nearly 250 miles along the blistering tracks and back over the bitter cold of the Sierra Madre Occidental, defeated a force four times his own in number, and had then had to hurry back, again by forced marches. All this he had done inside a month. And now that he was back in Mexico he found the work of a whole year in ruins. Both physically and mentally he must have been near breaking point.