South American Fights and Fighters Part 13

"But the Spaniards were not raw troops; and terror however great, was not able to overcome their sense of discipline and their duty to each other as comrades. It was in vain that the Mexicans rushed upon them 'as a conquered thing'; they reached their station, served their cannon steadily--although they had to renew their artillery-men--and maintained their ground.

"The appalling stratagem adopted by the Mexicans--of {211} throwing down before one division of the Spanish army some of the heads of the prisoners they had taken from another division, and shouting that these were the heads of the princ.i.p.al commanders--was pursued with great success. They were thus enabled to discourage Sandoval, and to cause him to retreat with loss toward his quarters. They even tried with success the same stratagem upon Cortes, throwing before his camp, to which he had at last retreated, certain bleeding heads, which they said, were those of 'Tonatiuh' (Alvarado), Sandoval, and the other _teules_. Then it was that Cortes felt more dismay than ever, 'though,' says the honest chronicler, who did not like the man, no matter how much he admired the soldier, 'not in such a manner that those who were with him should perceive in it much weakness.'

"After Sandoval had made good his retreat, he set off, accompanied by a few hors.e.m.e.n, for the camp of Cortes, and had an interview with him, of which the following account is given: 'O Senor Captain! what is this?'

exclaimed Sandoval; 'are these the great counsels, and artifices of war which you have always been wont to show us? How has this disaster happened?' Cortes replied, 'O Don Sandoval! my sins have permitted this; but I am not so culpable in the business as they may make out, for it is the fault of the Treasurer, Juan de Alderete, whom I charged to fill up that difficult pa.s.s where they routed us; but he did not do so, for he is not accustomed to wars, nor to be commanded by superior officers.' At this point of the conference, the Treasurer himself, who had approached the captains in order to learn Sandoval's news, exclaimed that it was Cortes himself who was to blame; that he had encouraged his men to go {212} forward; that he had not charged them to fill up the bridges and bad pa.s.ses--if he had done so, he (the Treasurer) and his company would have done it; and, moreover, that Cortes had not cleared the causeway in time of his Indian allies. Thus they argued and disputed with one another; for hardly any one is generous, in defeat, to those with whom he has acted. Indeed, a generosity of this kind, which will not allow a man to comment severely upon the errors of his comrades in misfortune, is so rare a virtue, that it scarcely seems to belong to this planet.

"There was little time, however, for altercation, and Cortes was not the man to indulge in more of that luxury for the unfortunate than human nature demanded. He had received no tidings of what had befallen the Camp of Tlacuba, and thither he despatched Sandoval, embracing him and saying, 'Look you, since you see that I cannot go to all parts, I commend these labors to you, for, as you perceive, I am wounded and lame. I implore you, take charge of these three camps. I well know that Pedro de Alvarado and his soldiers will have behaved themselves as cavaliers, but I fear lest the great force of those dogs should have routed them.'

"The scene now changes to the ground near Alvarado's camp. Sandoval succeeded in making his way there, and arrived about the hour of Vespers. He found the men of that division in the act of repelling a most vigorous attack on the part of the Mexicans, who had hoped that night to penetrate into the camp and carry off all the Spaniards for sacrifice. The enemy were better armed than usual, some of them using the weapons which they had taken from the soldiers of Cortez. At last, after a severe conflict, {213} in which Sandoval himself was wounded, and in which the cannon shots did not suffice to break the serried ranks of the Mexicans, the Spaniards gained their quarters, and, being under shelter, had some respite from the fury of the Mexican attack.

"There, Sandoval, Pedro de Alvarado, and the other princ.i.p.al captains, were standing together and relating what had occurred to each of them, when, suddenly, the sound of the sacrificial drum was heard again, accompanied by other musical instruments of a similar dolorous character. From the Camp of Tlacuba the great Temple was perfectly visible, and the Spaniards looked up at it for the interpretation of these melancholy tones; they saw their companions driven by blows and buffetings up to the place of sacrifice. The white-skinned Christians were easily to be distinguished amidst the dusky groups that surrounded them. When the unhappy men about to be sacrificed had reached the lofty level s.p.a.ce on which these abominations were wont to be committed, it was discerned by their friends and late companions that plumes of feathers were put upon the heads of many of them, and that men, whose movements in the distance appeared like those of winnowers, made the captive dance before the image of Huitzilopochtli. When the dance was concluded, the victims were placed upon the sacrificial stones; their hearts were taken out and offered to the idols; and their bodies hurled down the steps of the temple. At the bottom of the steps stood 'other butchers' who cut off the arms and legs of the victims, intending to eat these portions of their enemy. The skin of the face with the beard was preserved. The rest of the body was thrown to the lions, tigers, and serpents. 'Let the curious {214} reader consider,'

says the chronicler, 'what pity we must have had for these, our companions, and how we said to one another, 'Oh, thanks be to G.o.d, that they did not carry me off to-day to sacrifice me.' And certainly no army ever looked on a more deplorable sight.

"There was no time, however, for such contemplation: for, at that instant, numerous bands of warriors attacked the Spaniards on all sides, and fully occupied their attention in the preservation of their own lives.

"Modern warfare has lost one great element of the picturesque in narrative, namely, in there being no interchange, now, of verbal threats and menaces between the contending parties; but in those days it was otherwise, and the Mexicans were able to indulge in the most fierce and malignant language. 'Look,' they said, 'that is the way in which all of you have to die, for our G.o.ds have promised this to us many times.' To the Tlascalans their language was more insulting and much more minutely descriptive. Throwing to them the roasted flesh of their companions and of the Spanish soldiers, they shouted, 'Eat of the flesh of these _teules_, and of your brethren, for we are quite satiated with it; and, look you, for the houses you have pulled down, we shall have to make you build in their place much better ones with stone and plates of metal, likewise with hewn stone and lime; and the houses will be painted. Wherefore continue to a.s.sist these _teules_ all of whom you will see sacrificed.'

"The Mexicans, however, did not succeed in carrying off any more Spaniards for sacrifice that night. The Spanish camp had some few hours of repose, and some time to reckon up their losses, which were very {215} considerable. They lost upward of sixty of their own men, six horses, two cannon, and a great number of their Indian allies.

Moreover the brigantines had not fared much better on this disastrous day than the land forces. But the indirect consequences of this defeat were still more injurious than the actual losses. The allies from the neighboring cities on the lake deserted the Spaniards, nearly to a man.

The Mexicans regained and strengthened most of their positions; and the greatest part of the work of the besiegers seemed as if it would have to be done over again. Even the Tlascalans, hitherto so faithful, despaired of the fortunes of their allies, and could not but believe, with renewed terror, in the potency of the Mexican deities, kindred to, if not identical with, their own."

XIV. The Last Mexican

The courage of the Aztecs was beyond all question. Their heroism awakens a thrill of admiration, although we are fully aware of their fearful and ferocious and degrading religious rites. Again and again the heart-sick Spaniards saw lifted up before the hideous G.o.ds on the temple pyramids, the white, naked bodies of their unfortunate comrades who had been captured for that awful sacrifice. Both parties were wrought up to a pitch of furious rage.

No valor, no heroism, no courage, no devotion could prevail against thirst, hunger, smallpox, pestilence, the fever of besieged towns, with the streets filled with unburied dead. On August 13, 1521, the city fell. There was no formal surrender, the last defender had been killed. The old, weak and feeble were left. Only a small portion of the city, the {216} cheapest and poorest part, was left standing. Into this ghastly street rode the Spaniards.

Where was Guatemoc? A wretched, haggard, worn, starved figure, having done all that humanity could do, and apparently more, in the defence of his land, he had striven to escape in a canoe on the lake. One of the brigantines overhauled him. The commander was about to make way with the little party when some one informed him that the princ.i.p.al captive was no less than Guatemotzin. The unfortunate young emperor, after vainly trying to persuade Garcia Holguin to kill him then and there, demanded to be led to Cortes. He found that great captain on one of the house-tops, watching the slaughter of the men and women and children by the furious Tlascalans who were at last feeding fat their revenge by indiscriminate ma.s.sacre.

"Deal with me as you please," said the broken-hearted Mexican, as he touched the dagger which hung by Cortes's side. "Kill me at once," he implored.

He had no wish to survive the downfall of his empire, the devastation of his city, and the annihilation of his people. Cortes spared his life and at first treated him generously. He afterward marred his reputation by yielding him and the Cacique of Tlacuba to torture at the urgent and insistent demand of the soldiery. There was no treasure found in the city. It had been spirited away or else buried forever beneath the ruins of the town.[13] The soldiers, their greed for treasure excited, insisted upon the torture of the n.o.ble Guatemoc and his comrade. The Cacique of Tlacuba, unable through weakness to sustain the torture, which consisted of burning the soles of their feet with boiling {217} oil, broke into lamenting reproaches, some of them addressed to the emperor.

"And am I taking pleasure in my bath, do you think?" proudly replied the young chief, while the soles of his feet were being immersed in the same dreadful cauldron.

He was lame and more or less helpless for the rest of his life. I have no doubt that he often wished that he had been cut down in the final moment of his defeat. He dragged on a miserable existence until Cortes put him to death by hanging several years after the conquest while in Honduras on an expedition. The charge against him, so Cortes writes to Charles V., was conspiracy. The evidence was flimsy enough, yet it is probable that Cortes believed it. The expedition was far from Mexico, surrounded by hostile nations, and Cortes, as usual, was in great danger. Helps thus describes the bitter end of the n.o.ble young emperor:

"When led to execution, the King of Mexico exclaimed, 'O Malinche, I have long known the falseness of your words, and have foreseen that you would give me that death which, alas! I did not give myself, when I surrendered to you in my city of Mexico. Wherefore do you slay me without justice? May G.o.d demand it of you!'

"The King of the Tlacuba said that he looked upon his death as welcome, since he was able to die with his Lord, the King of Mexico. After confession and absolution, the two kings were hanged upon a ceyba tree in Izzancanac, in the province of Acalan, on one of the carnival days before Shrovetide, in the year 1525. Thus ended the great Mexican dynasty--itself a thing compacted by so much blood and toil and {218} suffering of countless human beings. The days of deposed monarchs--victims alike to the zeal of their friends and the suspicions of their captors--are mostly very brief; and perhaps it is surprising that the King of Mexico should have survived as long as four years the conquest of his capital, and have been treated during the greater part of that time with favor and honor.

"Some writers have supposed that Cortes was weary of his captives, and wished to destroy them, and that the charge of conspiracy was fict.i.tious. Such a.s.sertions betray a total ignorance of the character of this great Spaniard. Astute men seldom condescend to lying. Now, Cortes was not only very astute, but, according to his notions, highly honorable. A genuine hidalgo, and a thoroughly loyal man, he would as soon have thought of committing a small theft as of uttering a falsehood in a despatch addressed to his sovereign."

XV. The End of Cortes

Cortes received a full reward for his conquest, at least for a time.

He was received in high favor by Charles V., whom he visited in Spain, and who made him Marques of the Valley of Mexico.

"There is on record a single sentence of the Emperor's that must have been addressed to Cortes in some private interview, which shows the gracious esteem in which he was held by his sovereign. Borrowing a metaphor from the archery-ground, and gracefully, as it seems, alluding to a former misappreciation of the services of Cortes, the Emperor said that he wished to deal with him as those who contend with the crossbow, whose first shots go wide of the mark, and then {219} they improve and improve, until they hit the centre of the white. So, continued His Majesty, he wished to go on until he had shot into the white of what should be done to reward the Marquis' deserts; and meanwhile nothing was to be taken from him which he then held.

"It was very pleasing to find that Cortes did not forget his old friends the Tlascalans, but dwelt on their services, and procured from the Emperor an order that they should not be given _encomienda_ to His Majesty, or to any other person."

The only reward the Tlascalans got from the Emperor was that, when the other Mexicans were made slaves, they were left at least nominally free, but their republic soon fell into decay and the city in which they had so proudly maintained themselves in their independence, became a desolate ruin. A dirty and squalid village to-day marks the place.

Marina, who had served the Spaniards for the love of the great captain with such fidelity and such success, was cast off by Cortes and compelled to marry one of his officers, whom she scarcely knew. This crushed her spirit. She abandoned her husband and sank into wretched and miserable obscurity, and died at an early age of a broken heart.

Cortes conducted other expeditions, most of them without any great success, as that to Honduras, where he hanged the last of the Aztec Kings. Jealousy arose in the great state which he had founded, and he fell out of favor with the Emperor, who refused to see him, and he was received with cold and bitter reproaches by his wife, whom he married after the death of his former wife, and who had never proved a comfort to him. An admirable marriage which {220} he had arranged for his daughter with one of the highest n.o.bility of Spain failed, his last days were sad and miserable, and he died old, lonely and broken-hearted. I again quote Helps concerning these closing scenes:

"The poets say, 'Care sits behind a man and follows him wherever he goes.' So does ill-success; and henceforward the life of Cortes was almost invariably unsuccessful. There is an anecdote told of him (resting upon no higher authority than that of Voltaire) which, although evidently untrue, tells in a mythical way the reception which Cortes met at the Spanish Court; and his feelings as regards that reception.

"One day he broke through the crowd which surrounded the carriage of the Emperor and jumped on the step.

"'Who are you?' asked the Emperor in astonishment.

"'I am the man,' replied Cortes fiercely, 'who has given you more provinces than your ancestors have left you cities.'

"Quitting fiction, however, and returning to fact, there is a letter extant addressed by Cortes to the Emperor, Charles V., which conveys more forcibly than even a large extent of narrative could do, the troubles, vexations, and disappointments which Cortes had to endure at this latter period of his life, and his feelings with regard to them.

It is one of the most touching letters ever written by a subject to a sovereign. I will here translate some of it, greatly condensing those parts of the letter which relate to the business in hand, and which would be as wearisome to the reader to read, as they were to the writer to write; for doubtless, it was not the first time, by many times, {221} that Cortes had set down the same grievance in writing. The letter bears date, Valladolid, the 3rd. of February, 1544. It begins thus:--

"'Sacred Cesarian Catholic Majesty:--I thought that having labored in my youth, it would so profit me that in my old age I might have ease and rest; and now it is forty years that I have been occupied in not sleeping, in eating ill, and sometimes eating neither well nor ill, in bearing armor, in placing my person in danger, in spending my estates and my life, all in the service of G.o.d, bringing sheep into his sheep-fold--which were very remote from our hemisphere, unknown, and whose names are not written in our writings--also increasing and making broad the name and patrimony of my King--gaining for him, and bringing under his yoke and Royal sceptre, many and very great kingdoms and many barbarous nations, all won by my own person, and at my own expense; without being a.s.sisted in anything, on the contrary, being much hindered by many jealous and evil and envious persons who, like leeches, have been filled to bursting with my blood.'

"He then proceeds to say that for the part which G.o.d has had in his labors and watchings he is sufficiently paid, because it was His work; and it was not without a reason that Providence was pleased that so great a work should be accomplished by so weak a medium, in order that it might be seen that to G.o.d alone the good work must be attributed.

"Cortes then says that for what he has done for the King, he has always been satisfied with the remuneration he has received. The King has been grateful to him, has honored him, and has rewarded him, and he adds that His Majesty knows that the rewards {222} and honors which the Emperor offered were, in the opinion of Cortes, so far greater than his merits, that he refused to receive them.

"What, however, His Majesty did mean him to receive, he has not received. That which His Majesty has given has been so completely without fruit, that it would have been better for Cortes not to have had it, but that he should have taken care of his own estate, and not spent the fruit of that in defending himself against 'the Fiscal of Your Majesty, which defence has been, and is, a more difficult undertaking than to win the land of the enemy.'

"He then implores His Majesty that he will be pleased to render clear the good will which he had shown to reward him. 'I see myself,' he exclaims, 'old, poor and indebted. Not only have I no repose in my old age, but I can foresee labor and trouble until my death.' And he adds, 'Please G.o.d that the mischief may not go beyond death; but may finish with the body, and not exist forever, since whosoever has such toil in defending his bodily estate, cannot avoid injuring his soul.'

"All that he asks is that his appeal may be heard; that members of the King's Council be added to the Council of the Indies; and that the cause may be determined, and judgment given, without further delay.

'For, otherwise, I must leave it and loose it, and must return to my home, as I am no longer of the age to go about to hostelries; and should withdraw myself to make my account clear with G.o.d, since it is a large one that I have, and little life is left to me to discharge my conscience; and it will be better for me to lose my estate than my soul.' He concludes by saying that 'he is of Your Catholic Majesty the {223} very humble servant and va.s.sal, who kisses your very royal feet and hands--the Marquis del Valle.'

"In addition to these vexations he had a domestic trouble which doubtless caused him much mortification. His daughter, Donna Maria, was engaged to one of the greatest n.o.bles in Spain; but ultimately the young man refused to fulfil the engagement. Some say that this caused the death of Cortes. But this is not so. He was broken, alike in health and in spirits, by reason of the many reverses he had met with in these his latter days.

"We live, to a great measure, upon success; and there is no knowing the agony that an unvarying course of ill-success causes to a sanguine and powerful mind which feels that, if only such and such small obstacles were removed out of its way, it could again shine forth with all its pristine force and brightness.

"To meet this rejected daughter, who was coming from New Spain, Cortes went to Seville. There he was taken ill, and, being molested by the importunity of many persons who came to see him on business, he retired to a small village, about half a league from Seville, called Castillaje de la Cuesta. He also sought retirement for the purpose, as Bernal Diaz says, of making his will and preparing his soul for death. 'And when he had settled his worldly affairs, our Lord Jesus Christ was pleased to take him from his troublesome world.' He died on the 2nd of December, 1547, being then sixty-two years of age."

His bones were interred in Mexico. During the civil wars of the last century, his bones were taken away and hidden. It is reported that only the other day the place of his sepulchre had been discovered.

Some monument to his memory should be erected to {224} match the statue of Guatemoc, which is one of the princ.i.p.al adornments of Mexico.

As is well said by William H. Johnson: "To the honor of Spain be it said, her rule in Mexico was firm and kind. The Indians became thoroughly incorporated into the national life, enjoying the opportunities of advancement as Spaniards. In the present Republic of Mexico the greatest name has been that of Benito Juarez, the president who upheld the national cause during the French-Austrian usurpation.

He was of pure Aztec blood. Porfirio Diaz, the gallant soldier who led the army of the Republic during the same trying period, and who, as its president, is a model of a strong and wise ruler, is also, in part, a descendant of the ancient race."

With the following tributes to the great captain the story of his amazing adventures is ended. Says Helps:

"He was the mighty conqueror of one of the most compact and well-ordered barbaric nations of the world--a conqueror who, with a few hundreds of his fellow-countrymen, not all of them his partisans, overcame hundreds of thousands of fanatic and resolute men fighting against him with immense resources, and with a resolution nearly equal to his own. Let us give him the benefit of his sincere belief in Christianity, and his determination to subst.i.tute that beneficent religion for the hideous and cruel superst.i.tion of the people he was resolved to conquer. And let us echo the wish of that good common soldier, Bernal Diaz, who, though having his grievances against Cortes, as all of the other _Conquistadores_ thought they had, could yet, after watching every turn in the fortunes of the great Marquis, and knowing almost every sin {225} that he had committed, write most tenderly of the great captain whose plume he had so often followed to victory.