Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 2/Appendix of the Third letter
APPENDIX
THE FALL OF MEXICO
In the last desperate days, a final appeal was made by Quauhtemotzin to the national gods. Choosing one of the most valiant soldiers, a youth called Tlapaltecatlopuchtzin, from the quarter of Coatlan, he caused him to be vested in the armour of his dead father, the Emperor Ahuitzotl, giving him also the helmet and bow and arrows which adorned the statue of Huitzilopochtli, the god of war, and which were regarded as the most sacred emblems preserved in the temple. Thus accoutred, the young warrior went forth, accompanied by a Chief named Cihuacoatlucotzin, who acted as his herald, and who called upon all the people in the name of the god, from whom they now, in their extremity, demanded a sign. The effort was vain, and the god was silent: this was on the tenth of August. On the night of the eleventh, there burst over the city a terrific storm, in the midst of which the affrighted Mexicans beheld a whirlwind of blood-red fire, throwing out sparks and flashes of light, which seemed to start from the direction of Tepeyaca and, passing over the small quarter of Tenochtitlan still left to them, bury itself in the black waters of the lake. This ominous apparition, which was probably a meteor, was accepted as a portent symbolising the downfall of the empire, and the extinction of their power. Cortes's description of the final assault, the fall of the last entrenchment, and the capture of Quauhtemotzin, is not embellished by rhetoric, but his terse language gave Charles V* a faithful picture of that dreadful massacre. Neither does Bernal Diaz enlarge upon details, and indeed no language could do justice to the horror of the fall of the Aztec city, amidst the crash of battle, the smoke and flame of burning houses, the wails of the vanquished, and the shouts of the victors. The living and the dead choked the canals, the wounded and dying were trampled together with putrefying corpses in the sea of bloody mire into which the streets had been converted; the stifling August air reeked with the mingled smell of fresh carnage and decaying bodies, while, amidst these human shambles, the emaciated forms of women and children, destitute of any refuge, tottered pitifully under the merciless weapons of the savage allies, who gave no quarter, but hunted all alike through this hell of despair, like demons set upon the ghosts of the eternally damned.
The courage of the defenders never flagged; under the leadership of their young sovereign, who kept his serenity throughout and exercised his best generalship. These naked barbarians, weakened by famine and confronted by inevitable defeat, fought against a steel-clad foe, armed with guns both on land and on their ships, which mowed down a very harvest of death at every discharge. Never did they so much as name surrender thus verifying literally the words with which Quauhtemotzin answered the Spanish overtures for peace, that they would all perish to the last man in the city and he would die fighting.
Cortes daily renewed his offers of honourable terms for the Emperor and his people if the city would surrender. Day after day, with infinite patience, he made appointments which Quauhtemotzin never kept; time after time, he wasted hours in waiting for better counsels to prevail; but nothing he could say or do sufficed to allay the distrust of Quauhtemotzin, or bring the Mexicans to terms. Their choice was made; they had had enough of the Spaniards, whose semi-divine character was an exploded myth, and whose presence in the land was felt to be incompatible with the Aztec sovereignty. Cortes protests throughout the greatest reluctance to destroy the city, and declares repeatedly that the necessity of doing so filled him with inexpressible grief. The fate known to be in store for every Spaniard taken alive, and the sight of the hideous rites of sacrifice, performed under the very eyes of the soldiers, helpless to intervene, followed by the cannibal feasts, in which the mangled members of their comrades furnished the banquet, were certainly sufficient to arouse the Spaniards to a very frenzy against such inhuman foes, and yet there is no where found any hint that the spirit of vengeance prompted reprisals on the prisoners who fell into their hands. Such remains of the Spanish victims as could be found were afterwards collected and reverently buried: a chapel dedicated to the Martyrs was erected over the spot, which was afterwards replaced by the Church of San Hipolito (Orozco y Berra, lib. iii., cap. viii.).
Riotous celebrations of the city's fall naturally followed, the opportune arrival of some casks of wine and pork from Cuba furnishing the substance for a banquet, which was followed by dancing. Bernal Diaz remarks that the "plant of Noah was the cause of many fooleries and worse," and that he refrains from mentioning the names of those who disgraced themselves by over-indulgence and unseemly antics. Fray Bartolomé Olmedo was much scandalised at this profane celebration, and quickly asserted his spiritual authority over the men. The next morning a solemn mass of thanksgiving was said, and the good friar delivered a sermon on the moral and religious duties of the conquerors. Cortes and others received the sacraments, and these becoming rites ended decorously with a procession in which the crucifix and an image of the Blessed Virgin, accompanied by the military standards, were carried to the sound of drums, alternating with chanted litanies. These vinous and pious festivities over, the first great disappointment of the conquest had to be faced. The fabulous treasure was nowhere to be found, nor did tortures succeed in producing it. The place of its alleged burial in the lake, indicated by Quauhtemotzin, was searched by divers, who, after many efforts, recovered only about ninety crowns worth of gold (Bernal Diaz, cap. clvii). The same authority states his opinion that, though it was rumoured that vast treasures had been thrown into the lake four days before the end of the siege, the amount had doubtless already been greatly diminished before it came into Quauhtemotzin's hands, and moreover that, from the first, the value of it had seemed double what it really was found to be when it came to be accurately estimated. The discontent amongst the soldiery was great, and expressed itself in several ways, one of which, more original than the others, was the writing of pasquinades on the white walls of Cortes's quarter at Coyohuacan, some of which were witty, some insolent, and others not fit for print. Cortes even deigned to reply to some of them in the same vein, and on the same wall, for he rather prided himself on his ready wit and skill at verse-making, but Fray Bartolome perceiving that the limits of propriety were being overstepped, advised Cortes to stop the practice, which he did by publishing severe punishments for any further writing on the walls.
Positive data, on which to base a computation of the numbers engaged during the siege and the lives lost, are wanting. Cortes estimates that 67,000 Mexicans fell in the last three assaults on the city, and that fifty thousand died of starvation and diseases, without taking any account of all those who perished during the earlier days of the siege. Bernal Diaz gives no figures, but both he and the historian Oviedo state their conviction that not more lives were lost at the siege of Jerusalem than in Mexico. The Jewish historian Josephus computes the losses of his people at 1,100,000 souls! The comparison with these appalling figures is so obviously exaggerated that these two authorities may safely be disregarded. Writing from the Mexican standpoint, Ixtlilxochitl puts the number of the dead, from all causes, at 240,000 persons, which greatly exceeds the estimate of Cortes. The same discrepancy appears in the counting of the forces which laid down their arms when Quauhtemotzin was captured. Oviedo leads again, with 70,000. Ixtlilxochitl follows, with 60,000, and Herrera, who agrees with Torquemada, puts the number at 30,000 fighting men. (Herrera, Hist. Gen., lib. ii., cap. vii.; Torquemada, Monarchia Ind., lib. iv., cap. ci.; Ixtlilxochitl, Venida de los Españoles, p. 49. Oviedo lib. xxxiii.).
Whatever the exact number may have been, the Mexican Empire was destroyed, its capital annihilated, and a vast number of people butchered, amidst scenes of unexcelled ferocity and horror. The annals of no great siege record deeds of greater bravery, and, had the justice of their cause equalled the heroism of their defence, the downfall of the Aztecs would be forever sung in song and story wherever brave deeds are remembered.
As has been elsewhere explained, the laurels of the conquest are not exclusively for Spanish brows. The superlative generalship and personal qualities of Cortes, their superior arms and knowledge of military tactics, and their indomitable courage, were the Spaniards contributions to the successful issue of the long campaign. In the ready hatred of its neighbours, and the quick desertion of its dependencies and allies, is read the proof of the inherent weakness of the Aztec Empire. All that these peoples possessed — their knowledge of the country, their labour, their treasure, their fighting men, and their thirst for vengeance — were placed at the disposition of Cortes, and thus the conquest was accomplished. Even admitting the most and the worst that has been said of the Spaniards' methods in carrying on this war of invasion, the result commands our applause in the name of humanity.
The Mexican civilisation, even granting that it had reached the high perfection claimed for it by some writers, was chaotic, stationary, and barren; it rested upon despotic power, and its many crimes were expiated in the blood of their perpetrators.
Whatever culture and refinement of living there were, centred in the capital and its immediate neighbourhood, the outlying provinces being peopled by aboriginal, not to say savage tribes, which justified their existence by the tribute of men and money they paid, without being sharers in the learning and luxury their labours sustained. "Humanum paucis vivit genus."
The arrival of the Spaniards in the midst of this chaos of tyranny and disloyalty shattered the loosely joined organisation, whose inferior character foredoomed it to destruction when brought into contact with a higher and more progressive type of civilisation.
The substitution of the Christian religion for the horrors of human sacrifices and the revolting cannibal feasts is, of itself, a sufficient justification for the overthrow of the Aztec Empire, whose bloody and degrading rites were of the very essence of its religious system. Upon the ruins of the old order, a new civilisation has been founded, from which a nation still in the process of formation has developed, in which Spanish and Indian blood are mingled, and which is advancing on the road of human progress to what destiny we know not, but in which the humblest Indian has his place living in a securer present, and moving towards a higher future, than any his own race could have shaped for him. Many of the best men in modern Mexico trace with pride their descent from Aztec kings and nobles. A uniform and rich language with its system of phonetic writing, the introduction of horses and beasts of burden, the use of iron and leather, improved systems of mining and agriculture which have brought under civilisation vast tracts of land, and increased the variety and quality of crops — these and countless other resources, unknown and unknowable to the Mexicans, have revolutionised the conditions of their existence beyond anything their ancestors could have dreamed.
Even at the price it cost, the conquest must be approved, though it obliterated an interesting and wonderful civilisation so entirely that the few relics left serve but to stimulate enquiries to which few answers are forthcoming.
With the destruction of the archives of Texcoco, and of the Golden Key to the hieroglyphs, the sponge was passed over the tablets of Aztec history: unwise laws destroyed native arts and crafts, whose products had astonished the foremost artisans of Europe, while the secrets of the lapidaries, of the gold-and silver-smiths, of the deft workers in feathers, and of other unique crafts, perished for ever leaving the civilisation of Anahuac a mystery for all time.