The Conquistadors (11 page)

By the end of the second day, marching finally through rain and mud, they reached Jalapa, a fairly large town sprawled on the slope of a hill. They were into the
tierra templada
at last, at a height of over 4,500 feet, the air relatively cool. But ahead of them now lay the first of the great mountain ranges, and they were at the furthest limit of friendly Totonac territory. Neither Cortés nor Bernal Díaz makes any reference at this stage to the support of Indian auxiliaries, but the chiefs who accompanied them certainly would not have done so alone, and, since Cortés' policy on the coast had been one of consolidation, it may be presumed that the little army was augmented by local forces. How many of these Indian warriors advanced beyond Jalapa to brave the heights, and the dangers of potentially hostile territory, we do not know.

It was on the fourth day that they began their march into the mountains, climbing steeply to a fortified town which Bernal Díaz calls Socochima and Gómara refers to as Xicochimalco. This place was approached by two paths cut like
staircases in the rock and could easily have been defended. However, the cacique had orders from Moctezuma to let them pass. At this high altitude the fields of golden maize were smaller, the corn short-stalked, and in the gardens the passion fruit was grown on trellises. Far below them valleys glimmered green, hazy vistas of grass and tropical vegetation dotted with farms and villages; above them was nothing but the sombre dark of pine and cedar.

They were now climbing the slopes of Cofre de Perote itself, with the whole
massif
of the Sierra Madre running away to the south to end in the snow peak of Orizaba. Details of the march at this stage are somewhat conflicting, both as regards the names of Indian towns and the distances between them, even the order of events. Cortés in his Second Letter, dated October 30, 1520, and therefore written within a year of the events, says they bivouacked the night in a pass ‘so rocky and at such an altitude that there is not one in Spain more difficult to pass'. They were then at about 10,000 feet in grim country where the soil is the lava spill of old eruptions from the now extinct volcano. Descending from the pass, which they called Puerto de Nombre de Dios, they came upon a number of farms scattered round a fortified hill town, the name of which, according to Gómara, was Ixhuacan. The dwellings in this sad land have probably changed little down the centuries; grey, dismal hovels – grey adobe, grey wood palings, roofs of grey cedar shingles, all merging with the soil to give a sense of extreme bleakness. Thereafter, for three days they marched ‘through a desert land uninhabitable on account of its barrenness, lack of water and great cold'. Gómara says it was desert country ‘uninhabited and saline', the water salt. To the west of Cofre de Perote there is a forty-mile stretch of desert, at the southern end of which are salt marshes and brackish lakes. For an army already short of food and water this would have presented a serious obstacle. Even today it is uninhabited, a flat sand area with patches of short-stalked maize and a hill like a pyramid sticking up out of the middle of it. There would have been no maize when they saw it, the sandy top surface of the clay soil baked as dry and powdery as it is today and the wind raising sand devils. They had a choice then, either to cross it or to turn north, back into the hills, to the very edge of the escarpment with its deep gorges that lead to distant glimpses of the coastal plain. Gómara not only refers to the salinity of the water, but also to sandstorms. The inference is that Cortés took the desert route, a not unreasonable decision since to go north to
Teziutlán meant a wide detour in hilly country, whereas ahead of him it was flat, easy going, and he would have just been able to see the line of tree-clad hills on the far side. Even here, in this desert, they were at an altitude of around 8,000, and the nights were cold. The contrast after the heat of the coast was very violent.

Coming down from the pass they had been caught by one of those violent storms caused by the build-up of the torrid, humid atmosphere of the coast against the cool barrier of the mountains. Cortés describes it as a ‘whirlwind of hailstones and rain'. The Spaniards lay shivering through the night with no protection against the bitter cold but their cotton armour. ‘I thought many were like to die', Cortés continues, ‘and certain Indians from Cuba who were scantily clothed did indeed thus perish.'

Beyond the desert they reached the line of low hills towards which they had been marching all day. Here, in a pass, they found a small idol-tower ‘like a roadside chapel' piled round with cord-wood, all neatly stacked – ‘a thousand cartloads' Cortés says and called it Puerto de la Leña. Some two leagues beyond the pass ‘the land again became poor and sterile'. Cortés describes the people, too, as very poor. But they were approaching the Apulco river and shortly afterwards they reached a large town where the houses, stone-built and lime-washed, gleamed so white in the sunlight that it reminded them of southern Spain. Bernal Díaz says that they called it Castilblanco and that its Indian name was Xocotlán. It is now called Zautla, and Fray Bartolomé, who had done his best to spread the faith in the towns and villages of the Totonac Indians, would not even allow a cross to be erected, discouraged by the evidence of sacrifices on a large scale. There were thirteen teocalli, each with its attendant pile of skulls, and Bernal Díaz estimated their number at more than one hundred thousand.

When Cortés spoke of the emperor he served, Olintetl, the chief cacique, expressed astonishment: ‘Is there anyone who is not a slave or vassal of Moctezuma?' He was talkative, and from him Cortés learnt a great deal about Mexico-Tenochtitlan: the Aztec capital was built on the waters of a great lake, its houses constructed so that they could be converted into fortresses, all roads into the city were guarded by drawbridges, and Moctezuma, lord of the world, sacrificed twenty thousand men a year and had thirty vassal chieftains each capable of putting a hundred thousand warriors into the field. Even allowing for exaggeration,
it was a terrifying prospect. The only encouraging news was that there was a great store of gold and silver in the capital.

What Cortés needed now was allies, and since the Zempoalans assured him that the Tlaxcalans, whose territory lay ahead, were friends of theirs and enemies of Moctezuma, he sent four of them in advance as envoys. At this point Bernal Díaz appears to confuse Jalacingo, a town twenty miles back in the hills to the east, with Ixtacamaxtitlan. The only explanation would seem to be that Cortés was safeguarding himself against treachery, and at the same time providing his men with better quarters, by billeting some of them in the neighbouring towns – Olintetl alone is reported to have had twenty thousand vassals, which suggests that the population in this district was considerable. Cortés himself stayed four or five days at Xocotlán and then moved upstream to Ixtacamaxtitlan. The cacique here had been one of two who had already visited him with gifts – ‘a few golden collars of little weight or value and seven or eight slaves'. He discreetly refrains from telling his Emperor that the slaves were, in fact, girls.

The main fortress area of Ixtacamaxtitlan was ‘perched on a lofty ridge' with houses for five thousand people surrounded by ‘a wall, barbican and ditch'. There were also a large number of dependent settlements strung out for three or four leagues along the valley; so close, in fact, that it was a sort of riverside ribbon development. Here he paused another three days, waiting for the return of his envoys from Tlaxcala. The question he had to decide now was which route to take. There were two. The easiest route followed the edge of the desert country they had already crossed, past the swamps and lakes they had seen from the hills behind them, making a long southward curve that led to the religious city of Cholula. The cacique, acting presumably on orders from Moctezuma, offered to guide the Spaniards by it. The Zempoalans, however, insisted that it was a trap and that it would lead inevitably to the Spaniards, and themselves, being killed and eaten, for Cholula was at least twenty miles south of Tlaxcala, and they would be marching all the time through Culhúan territory.

It was a difficult choice. Cortés was a long way from his base. He did not trust the Indians, and he certainly did not trust Moctezuma. He had still received no word from Tlaxcala, but since they were in a perpetual state of war with Culhúa it seemed the lesser of two evils; so he ignored the easier route and marched up the
valley into the hills. At the exit to the valley was a wall marking the Tlaxcalan border. Cortés describes it as being ‘of rough stone about one and a half times the height of a man, crossing the whole valley from one ridge to the other, about twenty foot broad and with a parapet about a foot and a half broad running its entire length, from which one could fight. The entrance, moreover, was ten paces wide and ran for about thirty yards in the form of a double arc like a ravelin, in such a fashion that the entrance turned on itself instead of proceeding straightforwardly.' Once again his hosts and his Zempoalan allies began arguing about the advantages and disadvantages of their advancing into the territory of Moctezuma's enemies. The matter was finally settled by the army passing through the wall and marching to the top of the defile. Four leagues beyond this point the two horsemen acting as scouts ran into a party of fifteen warriors, wearing badges and feathered head-dresses. These Indians were lookouts and immediately retreated.

Cortés, with three horsemen, galloped after them, hoping to take them prisoner, for he needed information and men to send to Tlaxcala with messages of peace. But the Indians, who considered that, if taken alive in battle, they could only expect to be sacrificed, turned and fought with such desperation that two of the horses were killed – some accounts suggest that their necks were cut clean through, reins and all, by the two-handed obsidian-edged swords! Two more horses were injured, as well as three of the horsemen; all the Indians were killed. It was a clear warning against the use of horses in a confined space for, including four more horsemen who had joined in the mêlée, eleven of the cavalry had been required to kill fifteen Indians. By now some three to five thousand warriors, who had been waiting in ambush, were advancing into the open. Cortés sent one of the horsemen back to hasten the arrival of the main body of the army, and when the Indians saw the infantry advancing, they retired, pursued by the cavalry, who, on open ground, were able to slaughter some fifty or sixty of them with impunity. This skirmish marked the start of the Tlaxcalan campaign.

That night the Spaniards slept by a dried-up river bed. Here messengers arrived from Tlaxcala, together with two of the four Zempoalans, claiming that Tlaxcala was a federation of Indian towns and that the attack had been made on the orders of the local chief. They had, in fact, been Otomí Indians from one of the towns of the federation whose responsibility it was to defend that particular section of the border. Cortés accepted both the explanation and their invitation to visit the city of Tlaxcala, ignored their offer of recompense for the dead horses, both carcases having been hurriedly buried, and sent them back to their chief, Xicotencatl, with expressions of goodwill. Meantime, his men were short of food. They were camped in open country surrounded by fields of maize, hedged with maguey cactus, but the settlements were all deserted and empty of provisions. Bernal Díaz says that they ‘supped very well on some small dogs, which the Indians breed for food'. And since they had no oil, they dressed their wounds with fat rendered down from an Indian corpse.

Guards were posted throughout the night and the army marched again at dawn. The sun rose as they reached a village and here they were met by the other two Zempoalans sent to Tlaxcala. They said they had been bound ready for sacrifice but had escaped in the turmoil produced by the Spanish invasion of Tlaxcalan territory. At this point Bernal Díaz says that ‘two armies of warriors, about six thousand strong, came to meet us with loud shouts and the noise of drums and trumpets, shooting their arrows, hurling their darts, and acting with the utmost bravery'. Cortés gives the number as a thousand. Few Indian battles seem to have begun without a period of confrontation, rather similar to the display technique of animals, and Cortés had time to make signs of peace and even to talk to them through his interpreter. But in the end they attacked, and it was Cortés himself who raised the old battle cry of ‘Santiago'. Many Indians, including three of their chiefs, were killed in this first charge. They then retired towards some woods where the Tlaxcalan war chief, Xicotencatl, was waiting in ambush with forty thousand warriors ‘all wearing the red-and-white devices that were his badge and livery'. The ground was too broken for the effective use of cavalry, but when the Spaniards had forced the Indians out into more open country, the position changed and Cortés was able to bring his half dozen cannon into action. Even so, the battle lasted until sunset, and though Cortés' claim that the Indians numbered a hundred thousand is probably an exaggeration, there can be no doubt that the Spaniards and their allies were heavily outnumbered, for Xicotencatl is reported to have had five captains under him, each commanding ten thousand warriors.

Gómara says his total force numbered a hundred and fifty thousand warriors, and he gives this description of them as they advanced into battle:

The men were splendidly armed in their fashion and their faces were painted with red bixa, which gave them the look of devils. They carried plumes and manoeuvred marvellously well. Their weapons were slings, pikes, lances, and swords; bows and arrows; helmets; arm and leg armour of wood, gilded or covered with feathers or leather. Their breastplates were of cotton; their shields and bucklers, very handsome and not at all weak, were of tough wood and leather, with brass and feather ornaments; their swords of wood with flint set into them, which cut well and made a nasty wound. Their troops were arranged in squadrons, each with many trumpets, conches, and drums, all of which was a sight to see.