History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0195/01958.txt

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$Title{History Of The Conquest Of Mexico
Chapter VIII. Discontent Of The Troops, Part II.}
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$Author{Prescott, William H.}
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Title:       History Of The Conquest Of Mexico
Book:        Book IV. Residence In Mexico.
Author:      Prescott, William H.

Chapter VIII. Discontent Of The Troops, Part II.

     On reflection, it seems scarcely possible that so foul a deed, and one
involving so much hazard to the Spaniards themselves, should have been
perpetrated from the mere desire of getting possession of the baubles worn on
the persons of the natives.  It is more likely this was an after-thought,
suggested to the rapacious soldiery by the display of the spoil before them.
It is not improbable that Alvarado may have gathered rumours of a conspiracy
among the nobles, - rumours, perhaps, derived through the Tlascalans, their
inveterate foes, and for that reason very little deserving of credit. ^3  He
proposed to defeat it by imitating the example of his commander at Cholula.
But he omitted to imitate his leader in taking precautions against the
subsequent rising of the populace.  And he grievously miscalculated when he
confounded the bold and warlike Aztec with the effeminate Cholulan. ^4

[Footnote 3: Such, indeed, is the statement of Ixtlilxochitl, derived, as he
says, from the native Tezcucan annalists.  According to them, the Tlascalans,
urged by their hatred of the Aztecs and their thirst for plunder, persuaded
Alvarado, nothing loth, that the nobles meditated a rising on the occasion of
these festivities.  The testimony is important, and I give it in the author's
words: "Fue que ciertos Tlascaltecas (segun las Historias de Tescuco que son
las que Io sigo y la carta que otras veces he referido) por embidia lo uno
acordandose que en semejante fiesta los Mexicanos solian sacrificar gran suma
de cautivos de los de la Nacion Tlascalteca, y lo otro que era la mejor
ocasion que ellos podian tener para poder hinchir las manos de despojos y
hartar su codicia, y vengarse de sus Enemigos (porque hasta entonces no
habian tenido lugar, ni Cortes se les diera, ni admitiera sus dichos, porque
siempre hacia las cosas con mucho acuerdo) fueron con esta invencion al
capitan Pedro de Albarado, que estaba en lugar de Cortes, el qual no fue
menester mucho para darles credito porque tan buenos filos, y pensamientos
tenia como ellos, y mas viendo que alli en aquella fiesta habian acudido
todos los Senores y Cabezas del Imperio y que muertos no tenian mucho trabajo
en sojuzgarles."  Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 88.]

[Footnote 4: Alvarado intimates, in the defence of his conduct which forms
part of the process, one source of the rumours respecting the rising of the
Aztecs, by saying that the existence of such a scheme was matter of public
notoriety among the Tlascalans.  He adds that he obtained more precise
intelligence from two or three Indians, one a Tezcucan, another a slave whom
he had rescued from the sacrifice to which he had been doomed by the Aztecs;
that these latter, under cover of the festivities, had planned an insurrection
against the Spaniards, in which he and his countrymen were all to be
exterminated.  At the same time they determined to tear down the image of the
Virgin which had been raised in the temple, and in its place to substitute
that of their war-god, Huitzilopochtli.  Montezuma was accused of being privy
to this conspiracy.  Thus instructed, Alvarado, as he asserts, got his men in
readiness to resist the enemy, who, after a short encounter, was repulsed with
slaughter, while one Spaniard was slain, and he himself, with several others,
severely wounded (Proceso, pp. 66, 67).  But although a long array of
witnesses, most of them probably his ancient friends and comrades, are
introduced to endorse his statement, one who reflects on the submissive spirit
hitherto shown, not only by Montezuma, but his subjects, in their dealings
with the Spaniards, and contrasts it with the fierce and unscrupulous temper
displayed by Alvarado, will have little doubt on whose head the guilt of the
massacre must rest; and as little seems to have been felt by most of the
writers of the time who have spoken of the affair.]

     No sooner was the butchery accomplished, than the tidings spread like
wildfire through the capital.  Men could scarcely credit their senses.  All
they had hitherto suffered, the desecration of their temples, the
imprisonment of their sovereign, the insults heaped on his person, all were
forgotten in this one act. ^1  Every feeling of long-smothered hostility and
rancour now burst forth in the cry for vengeance.  Every former sentiment of
superstitious dread was merged in that of inextinguishable hatred.  It
required no effort of the priests - though this was not wanting - to fan
these passions into a blaze.  The city rose in arms to a man; and on the
following dawn, almost before the Spaniards could secure themselves in their
defences, they were assaulted with desperate fury.  Some of the assailants
attempted to scale the walls; others succeeded in partially undermining and
setting fire to the works.  Whether they would have succeeded in carrying the
place by storm is doubtful.  But, at the prayers of the garrison, Montezuma
himself interfered, and, mounting the battlements, addressed the populace,
whose fury he endeavoured to mitigate by urging considerations for his own
safety.  They respected their monarch so far as to desist from further
attempts to storm the fortress, but changed their operations into a regular
blockade.  They threw up works around the palace to prevent the egress of the
Spaniards.  They suspended the tianguez, or market, to preclude the
possibility of their enemy's obtaining supplies; and they then quietly sat
down, with feelings of sullen desperation, waiting for the hour when famine
should throw their victims into their hands.

[Footnote 1: Martyr well recapitulates these grievances, showing that they
seemed such in the eyes of the Spaniards themselves, - of those, at least,
whose judgment was not warped by a share in the transactions.  "Emori
statuerunt malle, quam diutius ferre tales hospites qui regem suum sub
tutoris vitae specie detineant, civitatem occupent, antiquos hostes
Tascaltecanos et alios praeterea in contumeliam ante illorum oculos ipsorum
impensa conseruent; . . . . qui demum simulachra deorum confregerint, et ritus
veteres ac ceremonias antiquas illis abstulerint."  De Orbe Novo, dec. 5,
cap. 5.]

     The condition of the besieged, meanwhile, was sufficiently distressing.
Their magazines of provisions, it is true, were not exhausted; but they
suffered greatly from want of water, which, within the enclosure, was
exceedingly brackish, for the soil was saturated with the salt of the
surrounding element.  In this extremity, they discovered, it is said, a
spring of fresh water in the area.  Such springs were known in some other
parts of the city; but, discovered first under these circumstances, it was
accounted as nothing less than a miracle.  Still they suffered much from
their past encounters.  Seven Spaniards, and many Tlascalans, had fallen, and
there was scarcely one of either nation who had not received several wounds.
In this situation, far from their own countrymen, without expectation of
succour from abroad, they seemed to have no alternative before them but a
lingering death by famine, or one more dreadful on the altar of sacrifice.
From this gloomy state they were relieved by the coming of their comrades. ^2

[Footnote 2: Camargo, Hist. de Tlascala, MS. - Oviedo, Hist. de las Ind.,
MS., lib. 33, cap. 13, 47. - Gomara, Cronica, cap. 105.]

     Cortes calmly listened to the explanation made by Alvarado.  But, before
it was ended, the conviction must have forced itself on his mind that he had
made a wrong selection for this important post.  Yet the mistake was natural.
Alvarado was a cavalier of high family, gallant and chivalrous, and his warm
personal friend.  He had talents for action, was possessed of firmness and
intrepidity, while his frank and dazzling manners made the Tonatiuh an
especial favourite with the Mexicans.  But underneath this showy exterior the
future conqueror of Guatemala concealed a heart rash, rapacious, and cruel.
He was altogether destitute of that moderation which, in the delicate
position he occupied, was a quality of more worth than all the rest.

     When Alvarado had concluded his answers to the several interrogatories
of Cortes, the brow of the latter darkened, as he said to his lieutenant,
"You have done badly.  You have been false to your trust.  Your conduct has
been that of a madman!"  And, turning abruptly on his heel, he left him in
undisguised displeasure.

     Yet this was not a time to break with one so popular, and, in many
respects, so important to him, as this captain, much less to inflict on him
the punishment he merited.  The Spaniards were like mariners labouring in a
heavy tempest, whose bark nothing but the dexterity of the pilot and the
hearty co-operation of the crew can save from foundering.  Dissensions at
such a moment must be fatal.  Cortes, it is true, felt strong in his present
resources.  He now found himself at the head of a force which could scarcely
amount to less than twelve hundred and fifty Spaniards, and eight thousand
native warriors, principally Tlascalans. ^1  But, though relying on this to
overawe resistance, the very augmentation of numbers increased the difficulty
of subsistence.  Discontented with himself, disgusted with his officer, and
embarrassed by the disastrous consequences in which Alvarado's intemperance
had involved him, he became irritable, and indulged in a petulance by no
means common; for, though a man of lively passions by nature, he held them
habitually under control. ^2

[Footnote 1: He left in garrison, on his departure from Mexico, 140 Spaniards
and about 6500 Tlascalans, including a few Cempoallan warriors.  Supposing
five hundred of these - a liberal allowance - to have perished in battle and
otherwise, it would still leave a number which, with the reinforcement now
brought, would raise the amount to that stated in the text]

[Footnote 2: "Seeing how all went contrary to his expectations and that we
still received no supplies, he grew extremely sad, and showed himself in his
bearing towards the Spaniards fretful and haughty."  Bernal Diaz, Hist. de la
Conquista, cap. 126]

     On the day that Cortes arrived, Montezuma had left his own quarters to
welcome him.  But the Spanish commander, distrusting, as it would seem,
however, unreasonably, his good faith, received him so coldly that the Indian
monarch withdrew, displeased and dejected, to his apartment.  As the Mexican
populace made no show of submission, and brought no supplies to the army, the
general's ill-humour with the emperor continued.  When, therefore, Montezuma
sent some of the nobles to ask an interview with Cortes, the latter, turning
to his own officers, haughtily exclaimed, "What have I to do with this dog of
a king who suffers us to starve before his eyes?"

     His captains, among whom were Olid, De Avila, and Velasquez de Leon,
endeavoured to mitigate his anger, reminding him, in respectful terms, that
had it not been for the emperor the garrison might even now have been
overwhelmed by the enemy.  This remonstrance only chafed him the more.  "Did
not the dog," he asked, repeating the opprobrious epithet, "betray us in his
communications with Narvaez?  And does he not now suffer his markets to be
closed, and leave us to die of famine?"  Then, turning fiercely to the
Mexicans, he said, "Go tell your master and his people to open the markets,
or we will do it for them, at their cost!"  The chiefs, who had gathered the
import of his previous taunt on their sovereign, from his tone and
gesture, or perhaps from some comprehension of his language, left his
presence swelling with resentment, and in communicating his message, took
care it should lose none of its effect. ^1

[Footnote 1: The scene is reported by Diaz, who was present.  (Hist. de la
Conquista, cap. 126.)  See, also, the Chronicle of Gomara, the chaplain of
Cortes.  (Cap. 106.)  It is further confirmed by Don Thoan Cano, an
eyewitness, in his conversation with Oviedo.  See Appendix Part 2, No. 11.]

     Shortly after, Cortes, at the suggestion, it is said, of Montezuma,
released his brother Cuitlahua, lord of Iztapalapan, who, it will be
remembered, had been seized on suspicion of co-operating with the chief of
Tezcuco in his meditated revolt.  It was thought he might be of service in
allaying the present tumult and bringing the populace to a better state of
feeling.  But he returned no more to the fortress. ^2  He was a bold,
ambitious prince, and the injuries he had received from the Spaniards rankled
deep in his bosom.  He was presumptive heir to the crown, which, by the Aztec
laws of succession, descended much more frequently in a collateral than in a
direct line.  The people welcomed him as the representative of their
sovereign, and chose him to supply the place of Montezuma during his
captivity.  Cuitlahua willingly accepted the post of honour and of danger.
He was an experienced warrior, and exerted himself to reorganize the
disorderly levies and to arrange a more efficient plan of operations.  The
effect was soon visible.

[Footnote 2: Herrera, Hist. general, dec. 2, lib. 10, cap. 8.]

     Cortes meanwhile had so little doubt of his ability to overawe the
insurgents, that he wrote to that effect to the garrison of Villa Rica by the
same despatches in which he informed them of his safe arrival in the capital.
But scarcely had his messenger been gone half an hour, when he returned
breathless with terror and covered with wounds.  "The city," he said, "was
all in arms!  The drawbridges were raised, and the enemy would soon be upon
them!"  He spoke truth.  It was not long before a hoarse, sullen sound became
audible, like that of the roaring of distant waters.  It grew louder and
louder; till, from the parapet surrounding the enclosure, the great avenues
which led to it might be seen dark with the masses of warriors, who came
rolling on in a confused tide towards the fortress.  At the same time, the
terraces and azoteas or flat roofs, in the neighbourhood, were thronged with
combatants brandishing their missiles, who seemed to have risen up as if by
magic! ^3  It was a spectacle to appal the stoutest.  But the dark storm to
which it was the prelude, and which gathered deeper and deeper round the
Spaniards during the remainder of their residence in the capital, must form
the subject of a separate Book.

[Footnote 3: "El qual Mensajero bolvio dende a media hora todo descalabrado, y
herido, dando voces, que todos los Indios de la Ciudad venian de Guerra y que
tenian todas las Puentes alzadas; e junto tras el da sobre nosotros tanta
multitud de Gente por todas partes que ni las calles ni Azoteas se parecian
con Gente; la qual venia con los mayores alaridos, y grita mas espantable, que
en el Mundo se puede pensar." Rel. Seg. de Cortes, ap. Lorenzana, p. 134. -
Oviedo Hist. de las Ind., MS., lib. 33, cap. 13.]

     Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes was born in 1478.  He belonged to
an ancient family of the Asturias.  Every family, indeed, claims to be
ancient in this last retreat of the intrepid Goths.  He was early introduced
at court, and was appointed page to Prince Juan, the only son of Ferdinand
and Isabella, on whom their hopes, and those of the nation, deservedly
rested.  Oviedo accompanied the camp in the latter campaigns of the Moorish
war, and was present at the memorable siege of Granada.  On the untimely
death of his royal master, in 1496, he passed over to Italy and entered the
service of King Frederick of Naples.  At the death of that prince he returned
to his own country, and in the beginning of the sixteenth century we find him
again established in Castile, where he occupied the place of keeper of the
crown jewels.  In 1513 he was named by Ferdinand the Catholic veedor, or
inspector, of the gold founderies in the American colonies.  Oviedo,
accordingly, transported himself to the New World, where he soon took a
commission under Pedrarias, governor of Darien, and shared in the disastrous
fortunes of that colony.  He obtained some valuable privileges from the
Crown, built a fortress on Tierra Firme, and entered into traffic with the
natives.  In this we may presume he was prosperous, since we find him at
length established with a wife and family at Hispaniola, or Fernandina, as it
was then called.  Although he continued to make his principal residence in
the New World, he made occasional visits to Spain, and in 1526 published at
Madrid his Sumario.  It is dedicated to the Emperor Charles the Fifth, and
contains an account of the West Indies, their geography, climate, the races
who inhabited them, together with their animals and vegetable productions.
The subject was of great interest to the inquisitive minds of Europe, and one
of which they had previously gleaned but scanty information.  In 1535, in a
subsequent visit to Spain, Oviedo gave to the world the first volume of his
great work, which he had been many years in compiling, - the Historia de las
Indias occidentales.  In the same year he was appointed by Charles the Fifth
alcayde of the fortress of Hispaniola.  He continued in the island the ten
following years, actively engaged in the prosecution of his historical
researches, and then returned for the last time to his native land.  The
veteran scholar was well received at court, and obtained the honourable
appointment of Chronicler of the Indies.  He occupied this post until the
period of his death, which took place at Valladolid in 1557, in the
seventy-ninth year of his age, at the very time when he was employed in
preparing the residue of his history for the press.

     Considering the intimate footing on which Oviedo lived with the eminent
persons of his time, it is singular that so little is preserved of his
personal history and his character.  Nic. Antonio speaks of him as a "man of
large experience, courteous in his manners, and of great probity."  His long
and active life is a sufficient voucher for his experience, and one will
hardly doubt his good breeding when we know the high society in which he
moved.  He left a large mass of manuscripts, embracing a vast range both of
civil and natural history.  By far the most important is his Historia general
de las Indias.  It is divided into three parts, containing fifty books.  The
first part, consisting of nineteen books, is the one already noticed as
having been published during his lifetime.  It gives in a more extended form
the details of geographical and natural history embodied in his Sumario, with
a narrative, moreover, of the discoveries and conquests of the Islands.  A
translation of this portion of the work was made by the learned Ramusio, with
whom Oviedo was in correspondence, and is published in the third volume of
his inestimable collection.  The two remaining parts relate to the conquests
of Mexico, of Peru, and other countries of South America.  It is that portion
of the work consulted for these pages.  The manuscript was deposited, at his
death, in the Casa de la Contratacion, at Seville.  It afterwards came into
the possession of the Dominican monastery of Monserrat.  In process of time,
mutilated copies found their way into several private collections; when, in
1775, Don Francisco Cerda y Rico, an officer in the Indian department,
ascertained the place in which the original was preserved, and, prompted by
his literary zeal, obtained an order from the government for its publication.
Under his supervision the work was put in order for the press, and Oviedo's
biographer, Alvarez y Baena, assures us that a complete edition of it,
prepared with the greatest care, would soon be given to the world.  (Hijos de
Madrid (Madrid, 1790), tom. ii. pp. 354-361.)  It still remains in
manuscript.

     No country has been more fruitful in the field of historical composition
than Spain.  Her ballads are chronicles done into verse.  The chronicles
themselves date from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.  Every city, every
small town, every great family, and many a petty one, has its chronicler.
These were often mere monkish chroniclers, who in the seclusion of the
convent found leisure for literary occupation.  Or, not unfrequently, they
were men who had taken part in the affairs they described, more expert with
the sword than with the pen.  The compositions of this latter class have a
general character of that indifference to fine writing which shows a mind
intent on the facts with which it is occupied, much more than on forms of
expression.  The monkish chroniclers, on the other hand, often make a
pedantic display of obsolete erudition, which contrasts rather whimsically
with the homely texture of the narrative.  The chronicles of both the one and
the other class of writers may frequently claim the merit of picturesque and
animated detail, showing that the subject was one of living interest, and
that the writer's heart was in his subject.

     Many of the characteristic blemishes of which I have been speaking may
be charged on Oviedo.  His style is cast in no classic mould.  His thoughts
find themselves a vent in tedious, interminable sentences, that may fill the
reader with despair; and the thread of the narrative is broken by impertinent
episodes that lead to nothing.  His scholarship was said to be somewhat
scanty.  One will hardly be led to doubt it, from the tawdry display of Latin
quotations with which he garnishes his pages, like a poor gallant who would
make the most of his little store of finery.  He affected to take the elder
Pliny as his model, as appears from the preface to his Sumario.  But his own
work fell far short of the model of erudition and eloquence which that great
writer of natural history has bequeathed to us.

     Yet, with his obvious defects, Oviedo showed an enlightened curiosity,
and a shrewd spirit of observation, which place him far above the ordinary
range of chroniclers.  He may even be said to display a philosophic tone in
his reflections, though his philosophy must be regarded as cold and
unscrupulous wherever the rights of the aborigines are in question.  He was
indefatigable in amassing materials for his narratives, and for this purpose
maintained a correspondence with the most eminent men of his time who had
taken part in the transactions which he commemorates.  He even condescended
to collect information from more humble sources, from popular tradition and
the reports of the common soldiers.  Hence his work often presents a medley
of inconsistent and contradictory details, which perplex the judgment, making
it exceedingly difficult, at this distance of time, to disentangle the truth.
It was perhaps for this reason that Las Casas complimented the author by
declaring that "his works were a wholesale fabrication, as full of lies as of
pages!"  Yet another explanation of this severe judgment may be found in the
different characters of the two men.  Oviedo shared in the worldly feelings
common to the Spanish Conquerors, and, while he was ever ready to magnify the
exploits of his countrymen, held lightly the claims and the sufferings of the
unfortunate aborigines.  He was incapable of appreciating the generous
philanthropy of Las Casas, or of rising to his lofty views, which he
doubtless derided as those of a benevolent, it might be, but visionary,
fanatic.  Las Casas, on the other hand, whose voice had been constantly
uplifted against the abuses of the Conquerors, was filled with abhorrence at
the sentiments avowed by Oviedo, and it was natural that his aversion to the
principles should be extended to the person who professed them.  Probably no
two men could have been found less competent to form a right estimate of each
other.

     Oviedo showed the same activity in gathering materials for natural
history as he had done for the illustration of civil.  He collected the
different plants of the Islands in his garden, and domesticated many of the
animals, or kept them in confinement under his eye, where he could study
their peculiar habits.  By this course, if he did not himself rival Pliny and
Hernandez in science, he was, at least, enabled to furnish the man of science
with facts of the highest interest and importance.

     Besides these historical writings, Oviedo left a work in six volumes,
called by the whimsical title of Quincuagenas.  It consists of imaginary
dialogues between the most eminent Spaniards of the time, in respect to their
personal history, their families, and genealogy.  It is a work of inestimable
value to the historian of the times of Ferdinand and Isabella, and of Charles
the Fifth.  But it has attracted little attention in Spain, where it still
remains in manuscript.  A complete copy of Oviedo's History of the Indies is
in the archives of the Royal Academy of History in Madrid, and it is
understood that this body has now an edition prepared for the press.  Such
parts as are literally transcribed from preceding narratives, like the
Letters of Cortes, which Oviedo transferred without scruple entire and
unmutilated into his own pages, though enlivened, it is true, by occasional
criticism of his own, might as well be omitted.  But the remainder of the
great work affords a mass of multifarious information which would make an
important contribution to the colonial history of Spain.

     An authority of frequent reference in these pages is Diego Munoz
Camargo.  He was a noble Tlascalan mestee, and lived in the latter half of
the sixteenth century.  He was educated in the Christian faith, and early
instructed in Castilian, in which tongue he composed his Historia de
Tlascala.  In this work he introduces the reader to the different members of
the great Nahuatlac family who came successively up the Mexican plateau.
Born and bred among the aborigines of the country, when the practices of the
pagan age had not wholly become obsolete.  Camargo was in a position
perfectly to comprehend the condition of the ancient inhabitants; and his
work supplies much curious and authentic information respecting the social
and religious institutions of the land at the time of the Conquest.  His
patriotism warms as he recounts the old hostilities of his countrymen with
the Aztecs; and it is singular to observe how the detestation of the rival
nations survived their common subjection under the Castilian yoke.

     Camargo embraces in his narrative an account of this great event, and of
the subsequent settlement of the country.  As one of the Indian family, we
might expect to see his chronicle reflect the prejudices, or, at least,
partialities, of the Indian.  But the Christian convert yielded up his
sympathies as freely to the Conquerors as to his own countrymen.  The desire
to magnify the exploits of the latter, and at the same time to do full
justice to the prowess of the white men, produces occasionally a most
whimsical contrast in his pages, giving the story a strong air of
inconsistency.  In point of literary execution the work has little merit; as
great, however, as could be expected from a native Indian, indebted for his
knowledge of the tongue to such imperfect instruction as he could obtain from
the missionaries.  Yet in style of composition it may compare not
unfavourably with the writings of some of the missionaries themselves.

     The original manuscript was long preserved in the convent of San Felipe
Neri in Mexico, where Torquemada, as appears from occasional references, had
access to it.  It has escaped the attention of other historians, but was
embraced by Munoz in his magnificent collection, and deposited in the
archives of the Royal Academy of History at Madrid; from which source the
copy in my possession was obtained.  It bears the title of Pedazo de Historia
verdadera, and is without the author's name, and without division into books
or chapters.