Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1/The Conqueror
CHAPTER III
THE CONQUEROR
THE entire fleet sailed for the island of Cozumel on February 10, 1519, and the first vessel to land was the one commanded by Pedro de Alvarado. Alvarado began his career by an act of disobedience to orders, characteristic of his headstrong and cruel temperament, which procured him a severe reprimand from the commander, who arrived two days later and found that the Indians had all been frightened away by the Spaniards' violence in plundering their town and taking some of them prisoners. Cortes's policy in dealing with the natives was forcibly declared at the very outset, for the pilot Camacho, who had brought the vessel to land before the others, he clapped into irons, for disobeying his orders, and he rebuked Alvarado, explaining to him that his measures were fatal to the success of the expedition. The Indian prisoners were not only released, but each received gifts, and all were assured through the interpreters, Melchor and Julian, that they should suffer no further harm, and that they should therefore go and call back the others who had fled. Everything that had been stolen from the town was restored, and the fowls and other provisions which had been eaten were all paid for liberally. Discipline was enforced also among the Spaniards, and seven sailors, who were found guilty of stealing some bacon from a soldier, were sentenced to be publicly whipped.
The opinion that Cortes's followers formed a lawless band of marauders, which rioted unchecked through Mexico, pillaging, torturing, and outraging the natives, has been lightly formed, and too generally accepted. These facts, however, point to a different state of things.
We read in the first letter the concise and simple account of the change in the character of the expedition, and of the founding of a Spanish settlement at Vera Cruz, and that this decision originated spontaneously, and all but unanimously, among the members of it. Their high motives—the conversion of barbarians to the true faith, and the subjection of vast and fabulously rich kingdoms to the Spanish crown—impelled them in these superlative interests to set aside the trivial projects of Diego Velasquez, and to impose upon Cortes the office of His Majesty's lieutenant. They required his acceptance of this duty by formal act of a notary public, and under menace of reporting his disloyalty to the emperor should he refuse to comply with the will of the community. Thus, from the simple commander of a few trading vessels commissioned by the Governor of Cuba to take soundings and exchange Spanish beads for Mexican gold, in the interest of his employer, Cortes appears, transformed into the Spanish sovereign's lawful representative, holding power conferred by a legally established Spanish municipal corporation, recognising no superior in the new world, and exercising his functions in the royal name; and the band of adventurers becomes a regularly organised colony, with its administration and its municipal officers bearing the same titles, and empowered to perform the same functions, as though the scrambling settlement of Vera Cruz were stately Seville or historic Toledo. All these creations are described as existing subject to an expression of the sovereign's will, and the royal sanction for all that had been done in the interest of the crown is humbly petitioned. In dealing with the Indians the same strict observance of legal form was never once relaxed. They were first invited to renounce idolatry and embrace Christianity; and they were "required"—just as solemnly as Cortes was by the Vera Cruz magistrates—to acknowledge the supremacy of the Spanish crown. A notary public performed this function of his office as gravely as a sheriff in our own day reads the riot act, and calls on a mob to disperse before resorting to force. That the "requirement" was unintelligible to the Indians did not invalidate the act of promulgation. The strength, also, of Cortes's position invariably lay in the identity of his ambitions with the interests of the crown; he was always right. By no other conceivable policy could he have accomplished what he did. The men whom Velasquez, in his helpless rage, sent to supersede or overthrow him, were mere playthings for his far-seeing statecraft and his overpowering will. The story of these events appears in all its wonderful simplicity and astounding significance, told in Cortes's own words in these letters, which have been compared with the Commentaries of Cæsar on his campaigns in Gaul, without suffering by the comparison.
Gaul, when overrun and conquered by Julius Cæsar, possessed no such political organisation as did the Aztec Empire when it was subdued by Cortes. There were neither cities comparable with Tlascala and Cholula, nor was there any central military organisation corresponding to the triple alliance of Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan, with their vast dependencies, from which countless hordes of warriors were drawn. On the other hand while Cæsar led the flower of the Roman legions, Cortes captained a mixed band of a few hundred men, ill-trained, undisciplined, indifferent to schemes of conquest, and bent only on their own individual aggrandisement; of whom many were also disaffected towards the commanders, and required alternate cajoling and threats to hold them in hand. The very men who were sent under Narvaez to take him alive or dead, and bring him back to the vengeance of Diego Velasquez, were won over to his standard, and fought under his leadership until Mexico fell, while their rightful commander lay a prisoner at Vera Cruz. Tapia was stripped of his goods and bundled ignominiously back to Cuba with their price in his pockets, and Cortes's delusive arguments in his ears, and, when Francisco de Garay's mission arrived by a fortuitous coincidence, simultaneously with the long delayed royal commission which recognised Cortes as Captain-General of the New Spain, his men also enthusiastically deserted in a body to Cortes, leaving Garay to humble himself before the man he had come to supplant, and to remain as his guest until death suddenly brought his career to an end.
Nothing more disastrous for Spain or for Mexico could be imagined than the success of any one of these ignorant and incompetent men. The mission of Cristobal de Tapia and its inglorious failure illustrate the deplorable conflict of authorities which rendered the Spanish colonial administration of that time almost farcical. The confusion and uncertainty prevailing in the direction of colonial affairs left many loopholes of escape for all who wished to disregard unpalatable orders. The President of the Royal Council for the Indies, who was in reality the highest authority, might order one thing, but the Jeronymite Fathers, who were supported by the audiencia in Hispaniola, and who exercised vague but supreme power in the Islands, would oppose or suspend the execution of his commands. There was also the Viceroy with his immense pretensions to be considered, and the Governors of Cuba and Jamaica, who were jealous of any trespass on their prerogatives, while over all there was the Sovereign, from whom cedulas or decrees could be obtained granting jurisdiction which contradicted the exercise of authority already established, or annulled all other orders. As Cristobal de Tapia brought no letters from the Emperor, but only from the President of the Council, the lieutenant at Vera Cruz, while receiving him with respect, and protesting every intention to observe his commands, declared that his credentials must first be submitted to the Municipal Council. That rather vagrant body was composed chiefly of captains, who were either in Mexico with Cortes, or off executing his orders in various places, and it was not an easy thing to unite them promptly. Cortes claimed to hold his authority from that Council, which he had himself created, and which in its turn recognised no superior short of the Emperor. Treating with Tapia through Fray Pedro Melgarejo de Urea, and members of the Council, it was quickly discovered that he was accessible to golden arguments, so he was loaded with gifts, and, after selling his negro slaves, horses, arms, etc., at a good price, he consented to return to Hispaniola. Here he was sharply censured by the audiencia and the Jeronymites, who had originally forbidden him to land in Mexico, or interfere in any way with the conquests of Cortes.
The foundations of a liberal and independent colonial administration already existed in Mexico, on which a stable system of government might have been built up, but unfortunately these principles, which were better known to Spaniards in that century than to any other continental people, were in their decadence. Under Charles V., began the disintegration of the people's liberties, which affected likewise the government of all the dependencies, and the system of rule by Viceroys and a horde of rapacious bureaucrats was initiated, which lasted in Latin-America until the last Spanish colony disappeared with the proclamation of Cuba's independence.
Cortes was daring but never rash. His plans were carefully formed, and his decisions were the result of cautious calculations which seemed to take cognisance of every emergency, to forestall every risk. In the execution of his designs, he was as relentless as he was daring. Both his resolution and his perseverance were implacable, and those who did not choose to bend to his will were made to break; but if his hand was iron, soft was the velvet of his glove. Sois mon frère ou je te tue, describes his dealings with all about him. Equanimity and resolution were the chief characteristics of his conduct. His self-possession was never disturbed by misfortune, and as he sustained success without undue elation, so did he support reverses with fortitude, recognising defeat as a momentary check, but never accepting it as final.
Besides being compared with Julius Caesar as a general, he has been ranked with Augustus and Charles V. as a statesman, and he unquestionably possessed many of the qualities essential to greatness in common with them. He ruled his motley band with a happy mixture of genial comradeship and inflexible discipline, and hence succeeded, where an excess of either the one or the other would have brought failure. He knew whom and when to trust, giving his friendship he avoided favouritism, with the consequence that his men were united by the bond of a common trust in their commander. He shared their hardships, sympathised with their sufferings, and joined in their pleasures, but he hanged a soldier who robbed an Indian, he cut off the feet of another who plotted desertion, while, in the supreme moment when the conspiracy to kill him was discovered in Texcoco, he hanged the leader before his own door, but wisely ignored the trembling accomplices, though he had the list of their names in his pocket at the time.
From the moment Cortes learned from the Indian chief of Cempoal that the Aztec rule was heavy on the subject tribes, and that disloyalty seethed throughout the Empire only waiting the propitious moment to throw off the supremacy of fear, his plan to unite all the discontented elements in the land under his standard, and to overthrow Montezuma by the very instrument his own cruelties and extortions had created, took shape. His first move was to persuade the Cacique of Cempoal to refuse the tribute of twenty men for sacrifice, and to imprison the collectors sent by Montezuma; by this act of open rebellion the Totonac tribes exposed themselves to the summary vengeance of the Aztecs, and were left with the sole hope of alliance with the Spaniards to save themselves from the consequences of their insubordination This much accomplished, the next step was to win the gratitude of the tax collectors, and put Montezuma under obligations. This was done by opposing the Cempoalans' wish to sacrifice the collectors forthwith, and by later arranging for the escape by night of two of them, and sending them to Montezuma with his expressions of regret at the indignities they had suffered, and his assurance to the Emperor that he would also effect the escape of the remaining three. These he held as hostages, for when the escape of the two became known the next day, Cortes feigned great wrath at the negligence of the guards and, in order to secure the remaining prisoners, he put them in irons and sent them on board one of his own caravels. The news of these events spread quickly, and the Totanacs, convinced that the hour of successful revolt against Aztec oppression was at hand, rose as one man against Montezuma, and committed their lives and fortunes to the Spaniards. This result was a diplomatic victory of no mean value.
He next beat the Tlascalans, not into submission but into an alliance, and this pact he cemented by every art of which he was master. The astonishment, which many have lightly expressed, that a mighty state should be so easily invaded and overthrown by a handful of adventurers is considerably lessened when the political and racial conditions in the decaying Empire are understood, and the part played by the Tlascalans in the conquest is rightly estimated. They were a warlike people who had preserved the independence of their mountain republic against the might of Montezuma, somewhat as the Montenegrins have ever defended themselves against the Ottoman power. They were from a military point of view the equals, if not the superiors, of the Aztecs in the field, fighting with the same weapons and employing like tactics; hence one hundred thousand Tlascalans, captained by Cortes, who came as the fulfiller of prophecies, almost a supernatural being with demigods in his train, commanding thunder and lightning, and mounted upon unknown and formidable beasts, were invincible. The Tlascalans had long bided the time for their vengeance, and in the alliance with Cortes they saw their opportunity. In two potential moments Tlascala held the balance of victory or defeat, and a hair would have tipped it either way. When the famished, blood-stained remnant of the Spaniards, flying from the horrors of the Noche Triste, fell exhausted at the gates of their capital, to annihilate them was within their choice, but these loyal, shortsighted Indians stood fast to their bond, took the wreck of the army in as brothers, nursed them, cured their wounds, and played the good Samaritan with suicidal success. Again, without the brigantines, the capture of Mexico was more than doubtful; the brigantines meant famine for the invested city, and even with them it took seventy-five days to reduce it. Tlascala provided the material, built the brigantines, paid for them, and sent eight thousand men to carry them across the mountain passes, escorted by twenty thousand more to protect the convoy, and finally built the canal from which they were launched on the lake of Texcoco. Throw the weight of Tlascala on the Aztec side, and the history of the conquest of Mexico would have to be re-written
But even these brave people were wanting in the true spirit of unity and discipline essential to the success of large military operations, and their leaders, despite their unquestioned bravery, invited defeat by their foolish jealousies and petty quarrels over questions of personal vanity. The Indian tribes in Mexico would indeed seem to have been destitute of patriotic sentiment; tribal feeling undoubtedly existed, but was, unfortunately for them, a source rather of disunion than a bond of strength. In his description of the engagements between the armies under Xicotencatl and the forces of Cortes, Bernal Diaz ascribes the victory to three causes, saying that next to God's help, it was owing to the cavalry (as the elephants of Pyrrhus struck terror to the Romans, so did the Spaniards' horses spread panic amongst the Indians); secondly to the inexperience of the Tlascalans, which prevented their bringing up their troops without confusion, instead of which they massed them together, thus enabling the Spanish artillery to do fearful execution amongst them; and finally because the forces of Guaxocingo, commanded by the chief Chichimecatl, did not support the action of the commander-in-chief, owing to their leader's sulkiness over some observations of Xicotencatl on his conduct during the engagement of the previous day. This chieftain was plagued with a morbid touchiness which despoiled his bravery of its virtue, and Cortes later mentions with what difficulty he was induced to take the rear-guard rather than the lead, during the famous convoy of the brigantines from Tlascala over the mountain passes to the lake of Texcoco, and how he was only finally persuaded by being assured that the rear-guard was the post of greatest honour and danger; even then he made the condition that no Spaniards should share the responsibility with him. Similar rivalries prevailed likewise in the Senate, and during the discussion on the reception to be given the Spaniards, the venerable princes actually came to blows. The story of the conquest is, on the Indian side, a humiliating recital of treachery, mutual betrayals, and tribe plotting against tribe, each foolishly thinking to use the Spaniards as an instrument of vengeance against their neighbours, whereas the fact was that the astute Cortes saw with eminent satisfaction these enervating dissensions, all of which he deftly turned to his own profit.
A perpetual coming and going of Aztec ambassadors accompanied the march from Vera Cruz. These unfortunate messengers, burdened with conflicting and impossible instructions, must have felt themselves sent upon a fool's errand, pulled hither and thither according as Montezuma's hopes or fears happened to be in the ascendant. The task of turning back the obnoxious strangers, but without offending them, lest, being gods, they might wreak vengeance on the Empire, was laid upon them. They carefully watched and quickly reported every step in advance made by the Spaniards, but their despatches were disheartening reading for their imperial master, being but chronicles of Spanish victories, and the defection of provinces. Only half convinced, yet not daring to disclose his doubts, of the semi-divine character of the invaders, Montezuma ordered every attention to be lavished upon them, while at the same time he consulted astrologers and magicians to discover some means to bane the pests, or inspired plans for their destruction, as at Cholula, where, upon the discovery of the plot, he disavowed responsibility, and left the Cholulans to suffer the consequences.
The absence or control of impulse in Cortes saved him from many a disaster which daring alone would have brought upon a leader of equal boldness but less wisdom, placed as he was. Perhaps the most supremely audacious act which history records is the seizure of Montezuma in the midst of his own court, and his conveyance to the Spanish quarters; an undertaking so stupefying in its conception and so incredible in its execution that only the multitude and unanimity of testimony serve to remove it from the sphere of fable into that of history. This, however, was not an act of mere daring, but as he explains to the Emperor in his second letter, a measure of carefully pondered policy. We are now accustomed to see "political agents," or financial and military "advisers," near the persons of nominal rulers, to whom the controlling foreign power concedes sufficient semblance of independence to mask their essential servitude, but the system of ruling a nation through the person of its enslaved sovereign originated with the seizure of Montezuma by Cortes. He was a man of unfeigned piety, of the stuff of which martyrs are made, nor did his conviction that he was leading a holy crusade to win lost souls to salvation ever waver. He says in his Ordenanzas at Tlascala, that, were the war carried on for any other motive than to overthrow idolatry and to secure the salvation of so many souls by converting the Indians to the holy faith, it would be unjust and obnoxious, nor would the Emperor be justified in rewarding those who took part in it.
Among other ordinances governing the moral and religious welfare of the people in Mexico after the conquest, was one which prescribed attendance at the instructions in Christian doctrine, given on Sundays and feast days under pain of stripes. The Jesuit historian Cavo (Los Tres Siglos de Mexico, tom. i., p. 151) says that on one occasion when Cortes had himself been absent, he was reprimanded from the pulpit on the following Sunday, and, to the stupefaction of the Indians, submitted to the prescribed flogging in public. Cortes resembled the publican who struck his breast and invoked mercy for his sins, rather than the Pharisee who found his chief cause for thankfulness in the contemplation his own superior virtues. Prescott was uncertain whether this submission to a public whipping should be attributed to "bigotry" or to "policy." It seems to have been first of all an act of simple consistency by which the commander sanctioned the law he had himself established. Precept is ever plentiful but example is the better teacher, and a more striking and unforgetable example of the equality of all under the law, it would indeed be difficult to find in history. The policy of demonstrating that no one's faults were exempt from the punishment provided by the law was unquestionably present, and deserving only of applause, but for bigotry there seems to be no place whatever, unless indeed the provision of compulsory instruction for both the natives and the Spaniards in Christian doctrine be so described.
His religious zeal was sometimes intemperate, nor was it always guided by prudence, but he usually showed wisdom in submitting to the restraining influence of some handy friar whose saner and more persuasive methods promised surer results than his own strenuous system of conversion would have secured. Nowhere is the vindication of the religious orders in dealing with native races more convincingly established than in the history of their early relations with the Mexicans. The restraints the commander placed on the license of his soldiers might well have been prompted by his policy of winning the friendly confidence of the Indians, but his measures for repressing profanity of every sort, gambling and other camp vices, and his insistence upon daily mass and prayer before and thanksgivings after battle, are traceable to no such motive, and it is more than once recorded that the Indians were profoundly impressed by the decorous solemnity of the religious ceremonies and the devotion shown by the Spaniards.
Shortcomings in the practice of the moral precepts of religion, either in that century or in this, are not fined to men who find themselves cut adrift from the usual restraints of civilised society, isolated and paramount amidst barbarians, whose inferior moral standard provides constant and easy temptations to lapse, and, while it were as difficult as it is unnecessary to attempt a defence of the excesses which the Spaniards undoubtedly committed in Mexico, it is equally impossible to condemn them as exceptional. Commenting upon the strange contradiction between professed piety, and practised vice and cruelty, Prescott writes: "When we see the hand, red with the blood of the wretched native, raised to invoke the blessing of heaven, we experience something like a sensation of disgust, and a doubt of its sincerity." The distinguished historian here voices a facile assumption all too common amongst many who, lacking his luminous comprehension of the spirit of that age, commit the injustice of measuring the acts of its men by the more humane standards of our own times. He himself acquits Cortes of the imputation of insincerity, and declares that no one who reads his correspondence, or studies the events of his career, can doubt that he would have been the first to lay down his life for the Faith. Too many barriers, however, interposed between the Anglo-Saxon protestant historian of the nineteenth century and the Spanish Catholicism of the sixteenth to allow even one of his superior historical acumen to accurately appreciate the operation of religious influences on the character of such a man as Fernando Cortes, whose military conquest was prompted in a large measure by genuinely religious motives, but whose fervent practice of the Church's teachings unfortunately alternated with lapses into grievous sensuality.
Whatever else may be doubted, the religious sincerity, and martial courage of Fernando Cortes are above impeachment. He was a stranger to hypocrisy which is a smug vice of cowards and if his reasons for acts of policy, which cost many lives, may be deplored by the humane, their honesty may be reasonably impugned by none. Had the influence of his faith on his morals been proportionate to its strength, he would have merited canonisation.
Sixteenth century Spain produced a race of Christian warriors whose piety, born of an intense realisation of, and love for a militant Christ, was of a martial complexion. beholding in the symbol of salvation — the Cross-the standard of Christendom, around which the faithful must rally, and for whose protection and exaltation swords must be drawn and blood spilled if need be. They were the children of the generation which had expelled the last Moor from Spain, and had brought centuries of religious and patriotic warfare to a triumphant close, in which their country was finally united under the crown of Castile. From such forebears the generation of Cortes received their heritage of Christian chivalry. The discovery of a new world, peopled by barbarians, opened a new field to Spanish missionary zeal, in which the kingdom of God upon earth was to be extended, and countless souls rescued from the obscene idolatries and debasing cannibalism which enslaved them. This was the "white man's burden" which that century laid on the Spaniard's shoulders. To the scoffing philosopher of the eighteenth century, these crusading buccaneers in whose characters the mystic and the sensualist fought for the mastery seemed but knaves clumsily masquerading as fools. The fierce piety, which furnished entertainment to the age of Voltaire, somewhat puzzles our own. Expeditions now set forth into dark continents unburdened with professions of concern for the spiritual or moral welfare of the natives. Indeed, nothing is deemed more foolish than attempts to interfere with the religious beliefs and practices of barbarians, and the commander in our times, who would overturn an idol merely to set up a wooden cross, thereby exposing his followers to the risk of being massacred, would be court-martialled and degraded, if indeed he ever ventured to return to civilisation. If such work is to be done at all, there are richly endowed missionary societies to attend to it. But even the equipment of the missionaries who undertake to carry evangelical doctrine amongst savage peoples presents some striking contrasts to the barefooted Spanish friars who first preached Christianity to the Mexicans. If the heathen are no longer brought by compulsion into the light, we make them pay a heavy indemnity for their privilege of sitting in darkness, and, whenever their opposition to the dissemination of Christian teaching amongst them emerges from quiesence into activity, a warship is ready to bombard their coasts while troops are at hand to annex a province.
In the eighth of Lord Lyttleton's Dialogues of the Dead the shades of Fernando Cortes and William Penn are made to discourse with one another upon the merits of their respective undertakings in North America, each ghost defending its own system. Friend Penn in one passage says to Cortes:
I know very well that thou wast as fierce as a lion and as subtle as a serpent. The Devil, perhaps, may place thee as high in his black list of heroes as Alexander or Caesar. It is not my business to interfere with him in settling thy rank. But hark thee, Friend Cortes, — What right hadst thou or had the King of Spain himself to the Mexican Empire? Answer me that, if thou canst.
Cortes. The Pope gave it to my Master.
Penn. The Devil offered to give our Lord all the kingdoms of the earth, and I suppose the Pope as His Vicar gave thy Master this; in return for which he fell down and worshipped him like an idolater as he was, etc.
The ghost of Penn defends his possession of Pennsylvania, alleging the honest right of fair purchase; to which Cortes replies:
I am afraid there was a little fraud in the purchase — thy followers, William Penn, are said to think cheating in a quiet, sober way no mortal sin.
The verbal skirmish continues in this vein, and concludes thus:
Penn. Ask thy heart whether ambition was not thy real motive, and zeal the pretence?
Cortes. Ask thine whether thy zeal had no worldly views, and whether thou didst believe all the nonsense of the sect at the head of which thou wast pleased to become a legislator. Adieu, self-examination requires retirement.
The author does not allow for any clearing of the human perceptions in the spirit world, and it is probable that had Fernando Cortes and William Penn been contemporaries and able to discuss their respective systems of dealing with Indians, and founding settlements, they would have found more points of agreement than their loquacious ghosts were able to discover. The flaccid defence advanced by Cortes's shade betrays some deterioration of mental power, for in his lifetime the conqueror was hardly less formidable in polemics than he was on the battle-field, but, in the feeble discourse put in the mouth of this pale spirit, we find nothing of the fierceness of the lion or the subtlety of the serpent which Friend Penn attributed to Cortes in the flesh.
Penn's ghost professes to find Cortes's religious motives suspect, yet there are not more proofs of his presence in Mexico than there are of his absolute belief in himself as a divinely chosen instrument for the conversion of souls. Purging the human soul from the taint of idolatry or heresy by means of physical torments is a familiar blot on the pages of the history of religions.
More than a century after the conquest of Mexico the New England Puritans were torturing and killing by process of law, — not savage enemies who threatened their security, but one another, and all within their power, who dissented from their own gloomy and peculiar theological delusions. They may have believed in the mercy of God, but they grimly preferred to see themselves as ministers of His wrath.
Nothing, more than the exercise of great power by a conscientious man, imbued with faith in himself as a chosen instrument for executing divine justice on his fellow men, is surer to produce a very Frankenstein of fanaticism, and all peoples and creeds have furnished the spectacle of men of professing godliness, who slew to save, and whose claim to a great mission was written in the blood of those who were described as God's enemies. There is even Scripture warranty for it. If invasion of an unoffending nation for the purpose of conquest be justifiable, either by moral or utilitarian arguments, then the sufferings which inevitable resistance must bring are covered by the same justifications.
The accusation of wanton cruelty, too lightly brought against Cortes has been diligently propagated by the interested, and complacently accepted by the indiscriminating, until dissent from it awakens incredulous surprise. Nevertheless, all that can be learned of his character proves that Cortes was not by nature cruel, nor did he take wanton pleasure in the sufferings of others. Conciliation and coercion were both amongst his weapons, his natural preference being for the former, as is seen by his never once failing in his dealings with the Indians to exhaust peaceful methods before resorting to force. The secret of carrying on a war of conquest mercifully has not yet been discovered, and recent reports from Africa and the Philippines do not show much advance on the policy of the Spaniards in Mexico four hundred years ago, though it cannot be pretended that our modern expeditions are attended by the perils, known, — and most of all the unknown, — which awaited the ignorant adventurers in the New World at every turn.
There were three ends which according to Cortes's ethics justified any measures for their accomplishment, ist, the spread of the faith, 2nd, the subjugation of the Indians to Spanish rule, and 3rd, the possession of their treasures; and as his narrative of the conquest unfolds itself, it will be seen that his resolution stopped at nothing for the achievement of these ends. But there is no instance of tortures and suffering being treated by him as a sport. Whether he might not have accomplished all he did with less bloodshed, is a purely speculative question. Fr. Acosta (Storia de las Indias, lib. vii., cap. XXV.) states that so entirely were the Mexicans imbued with the belief that the Spaniards came in fulfilment of the prophecy of their most beneficent deity, Quetzalcoatl, that Montezuma would have abdicated, and the whole empire have passed into their hands without a struggle, had Cortes but comprehended the force of the prevailing superstition, and met the popular expectation by rising consistently to his rôle of demigod. There are facts which tend to lend weight to this argument, and had Cortes but realised the possibilities, he might have been equal to the part, though his followers fell so lamentably short, that it is doubtful if the illusion could have been long sustained. As it was, the awful tragedy of the Sorrowful Night, and the downfall, amidst bloodshed and suffering unspeakable of Mexico, was precipitated by the brutal folly of Alvarado, — not of Cortes.
In his relations with women, Cortes shows his primitive polygamous temperament. Even at the age of sixteen in his native Medellin, we find him falling from a wall and all but losing his life in an amorous adventure with an anonymous fair one, and throughout his life these intrigues succeeded one another unbrokenly; but his loves were so entirely things "of his life apart," that their influence upon his motives or his actions is never discernible. In Cuba his rôle of Don Juan brought him into a conflict with the Governor, which was the origin of their life-long duel for supremacy in the colonies. But Catalina Xuarez, about whom the trouble first began, is quickly lost sight of; she passes like a pale shade across that epoch of her husband's life, and is never heard of again, until her uninvited presence in Mexico, followed quickly by her unlamented death, is briefly mentioned. The most important woman in his life was his Indian interpreter, Marina, and some writers have sought to weave a romance into the story of their relations, for which there seems, upon examination, to be little enough substantial material. During the period when she was indispensable to the business in hand, she was never separated from Cortes, but we know that he was not faithful to her even then, while, as soon as she ceased to be necessary, she was got rid of as easily as she had been acquired.
Montezuma gave him his daughter, who first received Christian baptism to render her worthy of the commander's companionship, and was known as Doña Ana. She lived openly with Cortes in his quarters, and had with her, her two sisters, Inez and Elvira, and a sister of the King of Texcoco who was called Dona Francisca. Doña Ana was killed during the retreat on the Sorrowful Night, and was pregnant at the time. A third daughter of the Emperor, Doña Isabel, married Alonso de Grado, who shortly afterwards died, when she also passed into the household of the conqueror, to whom she bore a daughter. (Bernal Diaz, cap. cvii.; Bernaldino Vasquez de Tapia, tom. ii., pp. 244, 305-306; Gonzalo Mejia, tom. ii., pp. 240-241). According to Juan Tirado two of Montezuma's daughters bore sons to Cortes, and one bore a daughter. (Orozco y Berra, Conquista de Mexico, ih. ii.,cap. vi., note.) In his last will, Cortes mentions another natural daughter, whose mother was Leonor Pizarro, who afterwards married Juan de Salcedo.
It is thus positively known that besides Marina, there were four other ladies who shared in his affections during this period of the conquest, and meanwhile his first wife Catalina Suarez la Marcaida was alive in Cuba. These undisguised philanderings must have somewhat blighted Marina's romance.
His marriage with Doña Juana de Zuñiga took place when he was at the zenith of his fame. The advantages such an alliance with a noble and powerful family of Castile seemed to promise, though many, were perhaps not as tangible as the ambitious conqueror had hoped. The marriage was negotiated before he and the lady had met, but it does not appear to have been less happy for this conformity to a custom which at that time was universal in noble families. Doña Juana could have seen but little of her restless husband, who was perpetually engaged elsewhere, but she was a good wife, and loved him, just as did Catalina Xuarez and all his mistresses while his uxorious instincts made it easy for him to be equally happy with all of them. He was affectionate and tender, devoted to all of his children, distinguishing but little between his legitimate and his natural offspring in a truly patiarchal fashion. For the latter he secured Bulls of legitimacy from the Pope, and provided generously in his will. Not less strong was his filial piety, and among the first treasure sent to Spain, there went gifts to his father and mother in Medellin, and, after his father's death, he brought his mother to Mexico, where she died, and was buried in the vault at Texcoco, where his own body was afterwards laid.
The Fifth Letter reports the events of his long journey of exploration through Yucatan. In setting forth on this expedition which was to cover a distance of five hundred leagues through savage wilds, Cortes affected the pomp of an Oriental satrap, taking with him besides the necessary soldiers, guides, Indian allies, and camp followers, a complete household of stewards, valets, pages, grooms, and other attendants, all under the command of a major-domo of the household. Gold and silver plate for his table was provided, also musicians, jugglers, and acrobats to amuse the company. Spanish muleteers and equerries were taken to have charge of the carriages and horses, and, in addition to the usual provender, to ensure a supply of meat, an immense drove of pigs was driven along, which could not have accelerated the march. He had a map painted on cloth by native artists, which showed after their fashion the rivers and mountain chains to be crossed. This and his compass were all Cortes could rely upon to guide him during his perilous undertaking. Doña Marina went as chief interpreter, but Geronimo de Aguilar did not accompany this expedition, though he was not dead, as Bernal Diaz states, for in 1525 he applied for a piece of land on which to build a house in the street now called Balvanera (Alaman, Dissertazioni IV.). The record of these events, however noteworthy, may seem tame reading after the exciting chronicle of the siege and fall of Mexico — a war drama of the most intense kind, but, in forming a correct estimate of Cortes's character we must not restrict ourselves to a study of the qualities displayed in the course of the conquest, and which prove him a most resourceful military genius. At five and thirty years of age he had successfully completed as daring and momentous an undertaking as history records, and it is as conqueror of Mexico that he takes his place among the world's great heroes. M. Desiré Charnay, in the preface to his French translation of the Five Letters, says: La conquête de Cortes. . . coûta au Mexique plus de dix millions d'êtres humains emportés par la guerre, les maladies et les mauvais traitements: de sorte que cet' homme de génie peut entrer sans conteste dans la redoutable phalange des fléaux de l'humanite."
His subsequent undertakings called for the exercise of qualities hardly less remarkable, though of a different order, and it was absence of productive success which has caused them to be overlooked in a world where results count for more than effort.
It was never the policy of the Spanish crown to entrust the government of dependencies to their discoverers or conquerors, and when powerful friends at Court sought in 1529 to prevail upon Charles the Fifth to grant Cortes supreme power under the crown in Mexico, His Majesty was not to be persuaded; and in refusing he pointed out that his royal precedessors had never done this, even in the case of Columbus, or of Gonsalvo de Cordoba, the conqueror of Naples. Had it been possible, however, or the Emperor to free himself from the suspicions which the persistent intrigues of Cortes's enemies fomented, especially from the jealous fear of a possible aspiration to independent sovereignty, it cannot be doubted that the wisest thing, both for Mexico and for the royal interests, would have been the installation of Cortes in as independent a vice-royalty as was compatible with the maintenance of the royal supremacy. While Cortes, in common with all his kind, loved gold, he was not a mere vulgar plunderer, seeking to hastily enrich himself, at no matter what cost to the country, in order to retire to a life of luxury in Spain. Moreover even granting that he had started with no larger purpose, it is plain that he was himself at the outset unconscious, both of his own powers and of the strange drama about to unfold, in which destiny reserved him the first part. By the time the conquest was completed, his knowledge of the possibilities of Mexico had expanded, so that his views on all questions connected with the occupation, the government and the future welfare of the country, hap developed from the schemes of a mere adventurer into the policy of a statesman. The constantly revived accusation of aspiring to independent sovereignty was a myth, for the Emperor had no more faithful subject than Cortes, in whom the dual mainsprings of action were religion and loyalty.
His better judgment condemned the system of encomiendas, and only admitted slavery as a form of punishment for the crime of rebellion, even then to be mitigated by every possible safeguard. Far from driving the natives from their homes, or wishing to deport them to the islands, he used every inducement to encourage them to remain in their towns, to rebuild their cities, and resume their industries, realising full well that the true strength of government, as well as the surest source of revenue, lay in a pacific and busy population. To this end he adopted the system of restoring or maintaining the native chiefs in their jurisdiction and dignity, imposing upon them the obligation of ruling their tribes, — and persuading those who had been frightened away to the mountains to return to their villages. The exceptions to this policy were in the cases of certain rebellious princes, whom he considered powerful enough to be dangerous.
That Cortes understood the Indians and had a kindly feeling for them, is proven many times over, while the proofs of their affection for him are even more numerous. Malintzin was a name to conjure with amongst them, and while familiar relations with most of the other Spaniards speedily bred contempt, their attachment to Cortes increased as time went on. The iron policy which used massacres, torture, and slavery for its instruments of conquest, did not revolt the Indians, since it presented no contrast to the usage common among themselves in time of war; væ victis comprised the ethics of native kings, who in addition to wars for aggrandisement of territory and increase of glory also waged them solely to obtain victims for the sacrificial altars of their gods. This ghastly levy ceased with the introduction of Malintzin's religion, and he brought no hitherto unfamiliar horror as a substitute for it.
Some writers have even essayed to parallel the cruelties incident to the procedure of the Inquisition, and the executions after sentence by that tribunal, with the human sacrifices of the Aztecs. Without here embarking upon an investigation of the methods of the Inquisition, it may, in strict justice, be pointed out that, as far as Mexico was concerned, the researches of the learned archaeologist, Garcia Icazbalceta, have shown that during the two hundred and seventy years of its existence in that country, the number of persons delivered to the secular arm for execution was forty-seven (Bibliografia Mexicana del Siglo, XVI., page 382). Moreover the Indians were exempt from molestation for they were expressly defined as being outside the jurisdiction of the Holy Office.
Except the independent Tlascalans, all the other peoples of Anahuac were held in stem subjection by the Aztec emperor; heavy taxes were collected from them, human life was without value, torture was in common use; their sons were seized for sacrifice, their daughters replenished the harems of the confederated kings and great nobles, so that Cortes was welcomed as the liberator of subject peoples, the redresser of wrongs. He had procured them the sweets of a long nourished, but despaired of, vengeance, and, though it was but the exchange of one master for another, they tasted the satisfaction of having squared some old scores with their oppressors. The conquest completed, Cortes bent all his efforts to creating systems of government under which the different peoples might live and prosper in common security, and, with the disappearance of the need for them, the harsher methods also vanished. Few of his cherished intentions were realised, however, and the power which would have enabled him to bring his wiser plans to fruition was denied him.
The fruits of conquest are bitterness of spirit and disappointment, though Cortes fared better than his great contemporaries Columbus, Balboa, and Pizarro, who after discovering continents and oceans and subduing empires were requited with chains, the scaffold, and the traitor's dagger. True, he saw himself defrauded of his deserts, while royal promises were found to be elastic; and in his last years he was even treated as an importunate suppliant, being excluded from the presence of the sovereign to whose crown he had given an empire.
Lesser men would have been content with the worldwide fame, the great title, and vast estates to which from modest beginnings Cortes had 'risen in a few brief years, but a lesser man would never have accomplished such vast undertakings, and it was his curse that his ambitions kept pace with his achievements. From the fall of Mexico until his death, his life was a series of disappointments, unfulfilled ambitions, and petty miseries, due to the malice of rivals, and the faithlessness of friends, relieved only by some brief periods of splendid triumph, illumined by royal favour. Even financial embarrassments were not spared him. A curse was on the Aztec gold, and it was not enough that little treasure was found in the city, but Cortes must be accused, in the unreasoning fury of the general disappointment, of being in collusion with Quauhtemotzin to conceal the hoard and share it together later on. He yielded to this murmuring and consented to the torture of the captive Emperor, for whose safety he had pledged his word, thus staining his name with an indelible blot of shame. His journeys to Yucatan and Honduras, so fully related in the Fifth Letter, would have won renown for another but they added nothing to his reputation. The several expeditions to the South Sea, and his discovery of California, all cost him immense sums, plunged him into debt, and merely served to pave the way for later undertakings, so that he might with reason have exclaimed with Columbus, "I have opened the door for others to enter." During this time he was surrounded by enemies hidden and declared, who sent complaints of him to Spain by every ship; he was accused of murdering his wife Catalina Xuarez who had died within a few months after her arrival in Mexico where, though possibly unwelcome, she was received with due honours; he was accused of defrauding the royal treasury, as well as his companions in arms, and of taking an undue share of the spoils for himself; and finally he was accused of planning to throw off his allegiance to Spain, and set up an independent government with himself as king. These ceaseless intrigues against him finally decided the Emperor to send a high commissioner (juez de residencia) to investigate, not only all charges against the Captain-General, but also to report upon the general condition of affairs in New Spain. This was the means usually employed in such cases and did not necessarily constitute any indignity to Cortes, to whom the Emperor took occasion to write, notifying him of his decision, and assuring him that it was in no sense prompted by suspicions of his loyalty or honesty, but rather to furnish him with the opportunity of silencing his calumniators once for all by proving his innocence. Don Luis Ponce de Leon, a young man of high character and unusual attainments, was charged with this delicate mission, and his appointment was universally applauded as an admirable one.
He was received upon his arrival in Mexico by Cortes and all the authorities with every distinction due to him, but his untimely death of a fever within a few weeks after his arrival defeated the good results expected from his labours, and also furnished Cortes's enemies with another accusation — that of poisoning the royal commissioner. His powers devolved upon Marcos de Aguilar, who was not only too old for such an arduous post, but was ill of a disease which, it was said, obliged him to take nourishment by suckling, for which purpose wet nurses and she-goats were daily furnished him. The speedy death of this harmless old man started another story of poisoning, and was followed by the supreme disaster of Estrada's succession to the ill-starred commissionership, under whom the baiting of Cortes went on apace, while the entire population, Spanish as well as native, groaned under oppressions and vexations innumerable. The slave-trade was carried on shamelessly with nameless cruelties, chiefly by the brutal Nuñez de Guzman, a partisan of Diego Velasquez, who had been placed by the latter's influence as Governor of Panuco, for the express purpose of tormenting Cortes, and fomenting cabals against his authority. This petty tyrant committed barbarities never before heard of in Mexico.
Wearied out with persecutions and insults, and hopeless of obtaining justice from such officials as Estrada and his subordinates, Cortes decided to go to Spain and lay his own case before the Emperor. His decision created some consternation amongst his opponents, and Estrada realised that it was a grave blunder to drive the Captain-General to make a personal appeal to the Emperor. If opposition or concessions could have stopped him, Cortes would have relinquished his plan, for overtures were made through the bishop of Tlascala, and promises of satisfaction were not spared; but his preparations were well under way, and, though perhaps somewhat mollified by the changed tone of Estrada, he remained firm in his purpose. Sailing with two ships from Vera Cruz (where he learned the news of his father's death), he landed after an unusually brief and prosperous voyage at the historic port of Palos in May, 1528.