The Conquistadors (7 page)

However, the choice of Cortés, or any other man for that matter, was bound to
cause jealousy and split such a small, isolated community into factions. There were at least three of Velázquez' own family who thought they had a claim to the post. Many of those who had served in the last expedition wanted Grijalva as their leader, and Vasco Porcallo also had considerable support. The governor was said to be ‘afraid that Porcallo might raise the fleet against him, for he was a daring man'. So, too, was Cortés, a fact which Velázquez was to remember too late.

The agreement between Cortés and Velázquez was signed on October 23, 1518, before Grijalva, or even Olid, had returned from Yucatán. Despite Velázquez' interest in conquest and the establishment of a new colony, no instructions to this effect are specifically given in the document. Exploration and discovery, the conversion of the natives to the Christian faith and their acceptance of Spanish sovereignty – these are the stated objects of the voyage. No carnal intercourse was to be permitted between Spanish soldiers and any woman outside of the Catholic faith. The utmost solemnity was to be observed in taking possession of those parts of the ‘island' they discovered. And there was a useful little escape clause that gave Cortés power to take any decision that was in the best interests of God and the king. The Spaniards, particularly the Spanish colonists, were adept at serving their king whilst at the same time looking after their own interests, and because of their strange history it was accepted that, when a man's decisions ran counter to the crown's instructions, he could still claim with the utmost sincerity that it was all done according to the king's will and in his name. As Bernal Díaz puts it, ‘the document was drawn in the very best ink'.

That Cortés himself regarded the document as licence to promote his own designs is evident from his subsequent actions. He had two standards and banners ‘worked in gold with the royal coat of arms and a cross on each side and a legend that read: “Brothers and Comrades, let us follow the sign of the Holy Cross in true faith, for under this sign we shall conquer.”' His proclamation, trumpeted throughout Cuba in the name of the Emperor Charles, and also of Velázquez and himself, announced that those who accompanied him to the newly-discovered land ‘to conquer and settle' would receive a share of all the gold and silver and other plunder, and also an
encomienda
of Indians once the country was pacified. The glittering stories Alvarado had told brought men flocking to the dangle of this lure. Rich settlers sold their farms to buy arms and horses. The whole of Cuba was in a ferment.

Cortés had purchased a brigantine and two caravels, one of which was the vessel in which Alvarado had returned. Velázquez had provided another brigantine and supplies to the value of 1,000 gold pesos borrowed from the estate of Pánfilo de Narváez, who was absent in Spain. It was Cortés, therefore, not the governor, who was seen to be spending boldly on arms and ammunition, provisions and articles for barter. Having watched so many expeditions sail in high hopes, only to return battered and exhausted, he was determined that this time nothing should be overlooked, least of all the governor. He was constantly in attendance
on him, knowing that the Velázquez faction were doing everything possible to undermine his position. They even employed the governor's fool, who interrupted the Sunday church parade to cry, ‘Take care, Diego, or he may run off with your fleet.'

In the end this was exactly what Cortés did, for Velázquez, always jealous of his own power and position, began to be alarmed at the thoroughness of his captain-general's preparations and the way all in the island flocked to his standard. Accounts differ, but it seems fairly certain that the rift between them occurred shortly after the signing of the agreement. Cortés, who had a well-developed sense of the dramatic, took pains to dress the part he had been called upon to play, ‘wearing a plume of feathers with a medallion and a chain of gold and a velvet cloak trimmed with gold', and going about all the time with a large armed following. In less than a month he had six ships in Santiago harbour, and a complement of some three hundred men. Since Velázquez had ventured little of his own money and only one ship, the anti-Cortés faction had no difficulty in playing upon the governor's fears, particularly as he had alienated Grijalva, who had retired with his own four vessels to Trinidad, a port on the south coast of Cuba.

Cortés, well aware from long experience of the way the Governor's mind worked, rushed his final preparations. Abrupt departure was the only course if he were not to have his appointment revoked before he sailed. On the night of November 17, 1518, he ordered his force to embark, and the following morning he weighed anchor, having stripped the town's slaughter house of all its meat and said goodbye to Velázquez from an armed boat full of his most trusted men.

Though he had left Santiago, Cortés did not yet regard the expedition as complete. He sailed first to Trinidad, where he lodged with Grijalva, and by liberal promises and ten days' frantic efforts, enlisted about two hundred of the soldiers who had so recently returned from Yucatán. He also gathered to his standard some of his greatest captains – Montejo, Sandoval, four of the Alvarado brothers, including the dashing Pedro, Juan Velázquez de León, and Alonso Hernández Puertocarrero, who was to become his closest confidant. He even persuaded Grijalva to let him have his own four ships, and Ordaz ‘captured' another one for him loaded with provisions and belonging to a rich merchant, Juan Núñez Sedeño, who was prevailed upon to join the expedition.

Meanwhile Velázquez, now thoroughly alarmed, had sent two messengers to Ordaz, who was one of his own following, with orders for Verdugo, the alcalde of Trinidad, to arrest Cortés. Ordaz himself seems to have persuaded Verdugo to ignore the order, and Cortés even enlisted one of the messengers into his service, while sending the other back with the customary assurance that all would be done according to the king's wishes. The stranding of Cortés' own ship gave Velázquez one more opportunity to stop him. His captain-general marched overland to San Cristóbal de la Havana in search of provisions, but all the governor's lieutenant in that town could do was report that he ‘dared not arrest Cortés because he was very strong with soldiers'. Attempts to foster disaffection in the fleet and have
Ordaz take command also failed, Cortés resorting to the simple expedient of dispatching Ordaz on a foraging expedition. The result of all this was a deep rift between the governor and his captain-general, a rift that inevitably had repercussions later.

When Cortés finally sailed on February 10, 1519, he had eleven ships of seventy to a hundred tons, five hundred and eight soldiers and about a hundred sailors, also two hundred Cubans, several negroes, some Indian women and, most important of all, sixteen horses and mares. He took no chances, ordering all the ships to rendezvous off Cape San Antón and proceed in company to the island of Cozumel. Why he should have chosen to sail to Cozumel, which meant he would later have to round Cape Catoche in the teeth of the prevailing northerlies, is nowhere stated, but this was the route Grijalva had followed, and no doubt he wanted to test the mood of the mainland Indians at the point where he had an island base to fall back on. In any case, to sail direct to San Juan de Ulúa would have meant taking his still undisciplined force on a much longer voyage, one which would give him the mangrove swamps of Yucatán as a dangerous lee shore.

From the outset Cortés' behaviour was quite different from that of any other expedition leader. Almost his first action on arriving at Cozumel was to clap Camacho, the pilot of Pedro de Alvarado's vessel, in irons for disobeying orders and going on ahead without waiting for the rest of the fleet. And he ordered Alvarado's men, who had plundered an Indian village, to hand back their loot. The villagers were given a present of beads and instructed to request the cacique of the neighbouring town to visit the camp. An inspection was held, guns, muskets, and crossbows overhauled, the men given target practice, the horses exercised.

The fleet did not sail again until March 4. By then Cortés had welded his men into the beginnings of a disciplined force. He had traded and talked with the natives, and since Cozumel was a place of pilgrimage and caciques came from many of the towns of Yucatán to worship its idols, by the time he sailed he had learned a great deal at first hand about the country. The fact that he had overthrown the idols and set up a cross in their place would, he knew, be reported and commented on. His was a cold-war policy, designed to soften up the opposition, and he allowed plenty of time for it to work upon the minds of the natives.

Whilst at Cozumel, he recruited a Spaniard named Aguilar, who had been wrecked with fifteen others eight years before on a voyage from Darién to Santo Domingo. Aguilar was a useful acquisition for he had been a slave to the Indians and spoke the Tabascan tongue, and it was to Aguilar that Cortés was supposed to have made a particularly revealing comment: the ex-slave had offered to lead him to a place where there was some gold, but Cortés said he was not after such small gain – he was there to serve God and the king. By which, of course, he meant that he was only interested in conquest.

Keeping a fleet of eleven ships together on a low coast littered with uncharted shallows, where the north wind could suddenly blow gale force, must have been
a nightmare. Even rounding Catoche, Cortés twice had to put back with his whole fleet to pick up a stray. And all the time he probed the inlets, checking on Grijalva's discoveries, breaking new ground of his own. Boca de Términos seemed a possible port for a settlement, and Escobar, the captain of a fast, shallow draft vessel, was sent ahead to explore. He found the country fertile and full of game. He also found a greyhound bitch left by Grijalva's men, or possibly Córdoba's. She was sleek and fat and came down to the shore wagging her tail at the sight of the ship. But when Cortés and the rest of the fleet arrived off the entrance there was no sign of Escobar. A strong southerly wind had carried his vessel far out to sea, and by the time they had caught up with him, they had been blown back up the coast to a point almost opposite Champotón, where both Córdoba and Grijalva had suffered such heavy casualties.

Bernal Díaz is probably right in saying that Cortés wanted to put in here and teach these warlike Indians a lesson. Such an action would have been good policy, but navigationally the place was dangerous; the river was too shallow for the ships to enter, and they would have to lie anything up to six miles off-shore on account of the Champotón Banks where the prevailing wind builds up a very big tide. In any case, the wind was fair now for continuing along the coast, and the safer anchorage off the Grijalva river was only three days' sailing away.

They reached it on March 12, the larger ships anchoring off at sea as before, the smaller vessels, filled with soldiers, moving into the shelter of what is now called Isla Ballitzia. Here, in calmer water, they transferred to the boats and rowed up-river to land on the same headland covered with palm trees where Grijalva's expedition had gone ashore. They were then about a mile from the Indian town of Potonchán, later called Tabasco after the cacique of that region. But the Tabascans, who had been friendly to Grijalva and had given him gold, were now hostile. The river bank and the mangrove swamps were crowded with armed warriors, many in their canoes, and there were some twelve thousand more assembled in the town of Tabasco itself. Cortés sent Aguilar in to try and persuade the Indians to let his men land for water and to trade for food, but they had been so taunted by the people of Champotón for their failure to fight off Grijalva's men that they were determined to prevent a landing.

So we come to the first of the many battles Cortés' small force was to fight. On the morning of March 13 mass was said and the men embarked in the boats. Ávila was sent with a hundred men to attack the town, whilst Cortés and the rest forced the estuary. The canoes came out to meet them, and again Cortés stopped to parley, appealing through Aguilar to be allowed to trade peacefully, speaking of God and the king he served, and making certain that Diego de Godoy, the Royal Notary, recorded his peaceful overtures. But it was no good, and when they tried to land, they were met by showers of fire-hardened arrows. The battle cry of Santiago was answered by Indian war cries of
Al calachioni,
which was an incitement to kill Cortés himself. But the fire power and sword play of the Spaniards
gradually prevailed, and with the town finally taken, Cortés halted his men in a great courtyard where there were large halls and three idol-houses. Here, with his soldiers and the Royal Notary to witness the act, he took formal possession of the land in the king's name.

Fourteen Spanish soldiers had been wounded in this little skirmish, but throughout the campaign that was now just beginning the conquistadors seem to have regarded wounds as little more than a temporary inconvenience. Only the dead were casualties. The rest marched and fought, and if they didn't die their wounds healed.

It was here at Tabasco that Melchior, an Indian interpreter, defected. Encouraged by him, the Indians launched a large-scale attack on the Spanish beach-head. But by now Cortés had got his horses ashore. They were stiff and almost scared to move after being confined on board ship for so long. Nevertheless, they were fitted with their steel breastplates all jangling with bells, and the knights put on their steel armour and equipped themselves with lances. This small cavalry force was the most potent weapon Cortés possessed, the sixteenth-century equivalent of an armoured squadron, since the trained horse was unknown to the Indians. The Spaniards were outnumbered three hundred to one, arrows and sling-stones fell like hail, and when Mesa, the artillery man, fired his guns, the Indians threw dirt and straw into the air to hide the havoc they wreaked. ‘In this battle there were so many Indians to every one of us that the dust they made would have blinded us, had not God of his unfailing mercy come to our aid.' There is nothing sententious about this. The Spaniards were still fighting a crusade, believing implicitly that they were soldiers of Christ and that God was on their side.