The Conquistadors (18 page)

At Iztapalapa they were met by more nobles, lodged in palaces built of stone and cedar wood and other sweet smelling trees, the stucco walls shining in the sun and the rooms and courts shaded by cotton awnings. There were gardens, too, full of roses and fruit trees, and the canoes came right into the gardens from the lake.

Next day, November 8, 1519, was the day of their entry into Mexico. The causeway ran due west at first, and then, after almost four miles, turned north,
running eight yards wide and straight as a die to Tenochtitlan, the southern part of the city they could now see mirrored white in the still, sunlit surface of the huge Texcoco Lake. They marched, as always, in battle formation, alert and ready against any eventuality. But, with an escort of some of the greatest nobles in the land, the nervous tension had already been dispelled. The guns and steel were still there, reflected in the waters of the lake, glistening in the sunshine, but the whole Spanish force was infected by the holiday atmosphere, for the crowds of Indian sightseers were so thick on the causeway that the troops had difficulty in forcing a passage. The lake swarmed with canoes, and at every drawbridge the defence towers were jammed with spectators. All Mexico was en fête to see the
teules
, and particularly the men on horseback, about whom they had heard such strange and fabulous stories.

The entry into Mexico is described in great detail by Cortés himself. The causeway, along which they were advancing, was more than five miles long and about two lances wide, so that eight horsemen could ride abreast. In those five miles they passed three cities of between three thousand and six thousand houses, all the people there being involved in the lake salt trade. At Xoloc, where the causeway turns north and is joined by another from the mainland, he was met by about a thousand of the chief citizens of Mexico, all dressed in the liveries of the different military orders. Xoloc was a strongpoint with two small towers or shrines built out over the water, walls twelve feet high and only two gateways. Cortés was held up here for about an hour whilst each of the caciques put his hand to the ground and kissed it and bade him welcome in the name of Moctezuma. It was the final embassy, and they marched on till they came to the outskirts of Tenochtitlan. Here there was a wooden bridge, ten paces broad, the beams of which could be removed. They crossed it, and from that moment they were inside the trap. But the extraordinary thing is that there was no trap.

Moctezuma himself, with two hundred of his chiefs, all barefoot and dressed in rich liveries, now came to meet him. The chiefs approached in two processions, hugging the walls of the street, which was ‘very broad, and straight, and beautiful and very uniform from one end to the other'. Moctezuma came down the middle of the street, supported below his arms by his brother, Cuitlahuac, who was king of Iztapalapa, on one side, and Cacama, king of Texcoco, on the other, with a canopy over him made entirely of green feathers and bordered by gold and silver, pearls and
chalchihuites.
Moctezuma was the only one who wore sandals. The soles were of gold, the uppers decorated with precious stones, and as he advanced, some of his chiefs swept the street in front of him and others laid rich cloaks for him to walk on. All kept their eyes averted from his face.

‘I descended from my horse', Cortés writes, ‘and was about to embrace him, but the two lords in attendance prevented me, with their hands, that I might not touch him, and they, and he also, made the ceremony of kissing the ground.' He was at last face-to-face with the Mexican king.

Moctezuma made him a speech of welcome and Cortés took off a necklace of pearls and glass diamonds he was wearing and put it round Moctezuma's neck. Cuitlahuac now took him by the arm and, thus supported. Cortés followed Moctezuma into the city. This mark of esteem was a public demonstration before all the people of Mexico that the Spaniards were the honoured guests of their king. After walking through several streets, one of Moctezuma's servants arrived with ‘two collars, wrapped in a cloth, which were made of coloured shells … and from each of the collars hung eight golden shrimps executed with great perfection and about a span long'. The collars were placed round Cortés' neck by Moctezuma himself. The gesture was a revealing one, for these were the insignia of Quetzalcoatl himself.

Aztec sources give this account of that first meeting: After the necklaces had been given. Cortés asked the giver if he were really Moctezuma.

And the king said: ‘Yes, I am Motecuhzoma.' Then he stood up to welcome Cortés; he came forward, bowed his head low and addressed him in these words: ‘Our lord, you are weary. The journey has tired you, but now you have arrived on the earth. You have come to your city, Mexico. You have come here to sit on your throne, to sit under its canopy.

‘The kings who have gone before, your representatives, guarded it and preserved it for your coming. The kings Itzcoatl, Motecuhzoma the Elder, Axayacatl, Tizoc and Ahuitzol ruled for you in the City of Mexico. The people were protected by their swords and sheltered by their shields.

‘Do the kings know the destiny of those they left behind, their posterity? If only they are watching. If only they can see what I see !

‘No, it is not a dream. I am not walking in my sleep. I am not seeing you in my dreams … I have seen you at last! I have met you face to face! I was in agony for five days, for ten days, with my eyes fixed on the Region of the Mystery. And now you have come out of the clouds and mists to sit on your throne again.

‘This was foretold by the kings who governed your city, and now it has taken place. You have come back to us; you have come down from the sky. Rest now, and take possession of your royal houses. Welcome to your land, my lords!'

The palace of Axayacatl, Moctezuma's father, had been allocated as the Spaniards' quarters. It backed on to the great teocalli and was only separated from Moctezuma's own palace by the aviary and the temple of Tezcatlipoca. It was a huge, rambling place, part treasury, part temple, that had been used as a convent for priestesses, with many halls, one of which was big enough to house a hundred and fifty men. In fact, there were rooms enough to accommodate the whole army, and in every room there were braziers burning and beds of matting had been prepared, each with an awning of its own. Here Moctezuma took Cortes by the hand, led him to a room that looked out over the main courtyard and sat him on a dais, on a rich throne-like seat decorated with gold and precious stones. After
leaving him there for a while, he returned and presented him with gifts of gold and silver and six thousand pieces of ‘rich cotton stuffs, woven and embroidered in divers ways'. Moctezuma then sat himself on another dais and Cortés records this extraordinary speech:

We have known for a long time, from the chronicles of our forefathers, that neither I, nor those who inhabit this country, are descendants from the aborigines of it, but from strangers who came to it from very distant parts; and we also hold, that our race was brought to these parts by a lord, whose vassals they all were, and who returned to his native country. After a long time he came back, but it was so long, that those who remained here were married to native women of the country, and had many descendants, and had built towns where they were living; when, therefore, he wished to take them away with him, they would not go, nor still less received him as their ruler, so he departed. And we have always held that those who descended from him would come to subjugate this country and us, as his vassals; and according to the direction from which you say you come, which is where the sun rises, and from what you tell us of your great lord, or king, who has sent you here, we believe, and hold for certain, that he is our rightful sovereign, especially as you tell us that since many days he has had news of us. Hence you may be sure that we shall obey you, and hold you as the representative of this great lord of whom you speak, and that in this there will be no lack or deception, and throughout the whole country you may command at your will, because you will be obeyed, and recognized, and all we possess is at your disposal.

Moctezuma's two speeches of welcome are of great significance. Both are similar, except that in the Indian version Moctezuma invests Cortés himself with the mantle of Quetzalcoatl. It does not really matter whether it is Cortés or the Emperor Charles; the point is that, publicly at any rate, Moctezuma was prepared to attribute the Spanish invasion to divine intervention. This makes his attitude one of deliberate policy.

To accuse Moctezuma of pusillanimity, even of personal cowardice, is to fail in an understanding of the appalling calamity with which the Mexican king was faced. As an intelligent ruler, he saw further than his advisers. He knew that this was not an isolated force, that his people were threatened by a power they could not in the end repulse. He had thought at first that he could buy them off. They wanted gold, which his own people did not prize, except when it was transformed into the intricate beauty of jewelry. When that failed, he had tried to frighten them; as a last resort, and probably against his own judgment, he had agreed to the attempted ambush at Cholula. He had even offered to become a vassal of their emperor. He had, in fact, tried every diplomatic trick to keep them out of Mexico. When nothing had stopped them, he had fallen back on the myth of Quetzalcoatl, thus resigning himself to the inevitable.

Whether Moctezuma actually believed in the myth, or whether he was using it as a means of saving his own face and at the same time leading his people in the direction in which he felt they must go, is not clear. By instinct and religious training he was a fatalist. By accepting Cortes as the emissary of Quetzalcoatl he absolved himself from the need to resist; and this self-deception was supported by the logic of his mind, which warned him that there was no future for his people in resistance. Cortés, like a volcanic eruption, and all the other portents that bedevilled the Mexican world and provided the foundation for their religious beliefs, must have appeared to him as a part of the rhythm of the universe. Fatalism dictated that he should believe the Spaniards to be a natural continuation of the mythological story of his people.

There is another factor that may, just possibly, have carried even more weight. Quetzalcoatl was worshipped as the god of learning. Moctezuma was the high priest of a debased religion. Was he, like all deeply religious men, in search of the ultimate god? Did he recognize in the meek action of these hard-bitten soldiers, kneeling humbly before their cross and their images of the Virgin and Child, a higher form of religion than the worship of a whole host of idols feeding on the heart's blood of innumerable victims? The mind of Moctezuma is an enigma that will always fascinate, the motives of his actions concealed by Indian impassivity and the lonely isolation of his position as an absolute ruler. Only one thing is certain, that he recognized in Cortés the qualities of a great leader, and thought, therefore, that he could treat with him as an equal, that by agreeing little by little
to all his demands he could buy a secure future for his people. His is the pathetic optimism of so many leaders whose countries have been overtaken by events

‘I know very well', Moctezuma continued, ‘that the people of Zempoala, and Tlaxcala, have told you many evil things respecting me. Do not believe more than you see with your own eyes …' And he emphasized that they had lied when they told Cortés that his houses had walls of gold and that he made himself out to be a god. ‘The houses you have seen are of lime and stone and earth.' And then. Cortés states: ‘He held up his robes, showing me his body, and said, “Look at me, and see that I am flesh and bone, the same as you, and everybody, and that I am mortal, and tangible.” And touching his arms and body with his hands, “Look how they have lied to you! It is true indeed that I have some things of gold, which have been left me by my forefathers. All that I possess, you may have whenever you wish!”'

This surely is the speech of a man accepting Cortés as the representative of a more powerful ruler, a declaration of good faith and an appeal for restraint and understanding. And then, finally, there is this assurance of peaceful intent: ‘You will be provided here with everything necessary for you and your people, and you shall suffer no annoyance, for you are in your own house and country.'

Even if Cortés did know about Quetzalcoatl and understood the confusion in Moctezuma's mind, he could not accept such complete and absolute submission
at its face value. The phrase ‘your own house' is still the welcome in Spain of any good host offering hospitality. It was so then, and Cortés must at this stage have been very wary and in a mood of extreme nervous tension. He was now at last in the seat of Mexican power and the only certainty he had of holding the city was the force of his army. As soon as Moctezuma left him, he set about positioning his artillery, organizing the defence of the army's quarters, warning his troops to remember Cholula and be watchful, alert, and always ready for battle.

In his second letter to the Emperor, Cortés gives no indication of his feelings, hopes or plans. He simply says: ‘Thus I passed six days well provided with everything necessary, and visited by many of the lords.' And both Gómara and Bernal Díaz are no more communicative. Yet the diplomatic exchanges during that week must have set the pattern for future events. Cortés was meeting Moctezuma daily and the ascendancy that he had achieved over the Mexican king at a distance seems to have been reinforced by his personality and bearing. There was much, too, that he and his men had to see and try to understand, a whole new way of life.

Camped as they were in a palace that backed on to the great teocalli of Huitzilopochtli, the whole ebb and flow of Mexican life surging round them, the Spanish soldiers were in the position of privileged spectators. Nevertheless, they went armed at all times, and it says much for the discipline instilled into them by their leader that there is no record of any serious incident between them and the inhabitants of this city of more than sixty thousand houses. The proximity of the great temple and that of Tezcatlipoca acted as a constant and sanguinary warning. The description of the idols themselves, best given by Tapia, is startling enough: