Aztec Rage

by Gary Jennings

  I heard a noise from the downed Spaniard, who was gasping for air. I took my sword to him until he lay still.

  When I turned around, Marina was there, sword in hand. Hers was bloody, too. She struggled to hold back tears as she stared down at the fallen Aztec. She said, “Too many . . . too many have died.”

  Late that afternoon the killing finally stopped, and the padre told us to take the survivors to jail. I had the trunks that were filled with silver and gold stacked outside on the street. I smoked a cigar as I waited for a wagon to pick them up. Watching the prisoners come out, I noticed a mestizo woman exit the granary. Riano had taken a couple dozen women to fix their tortillas and no doubt ease the urgings of their male parts during what he had conceived would be a long siege.

  But this woman’s features were familiar to me. As she was trying to slip into the crowd, I came up behind her and hit her in the back of the head, sending her crashing to the ground. Then I yanked off her hair.

  “Ah, it’s my old friend the notary,” I said, grinning down at the bastardo who had tried to wring a confession from me when I had been in jail and was part of the plot to ship me off to my death.

  He gaped up at me.

  “Don’t you know, Señor Notary, it is cowardly and shameful for a man to dress as a woman?”

  I gave him a good kick.

  “Take this swine to the jail,” I told an indio working on the jail detail. “If he gives you any trouble, cut off his cojones so he won’t have to pretend to be a woman anymore.”

  NINETY-ONE

  FOR THE NEXT two days, the army of liberation ransacked the city, attacking and looting the homes and businesses of the Spanish. Allende had once again ridden into the crowds, slashing at his own troops with his sword, demanding that order be restored. Again, he failed, and this time I didn’t join him. The padre ordered the troops to pass over the homes of married Spanish, but didn’t curb the looting and celebrations. He understood the great passions that the Aztec victory had ignited. Allende and his officers, though brave and intelligent men for the most part, didn’t understand the indio. They expected them to act like trained soldiers.

  ¡Ay! If they had acted like trained soldiers, they would never have charged the granary fortress almost bare-handed. Over five hundred Spaniards had died in the attack. They took with them two thousand indios. The carnage was so great, a long trench was dug in a dry riverbed to accommodate the bodies. The indios had achieved victory not through military stratagems but through cojones and blood.

  I was not a spiritual person or even a sensitive one. As I walked through the streets of Guanajuato, I thought about how the battle had affected me. Even after I fell from grace with my Spanish ancestry and lived as a lowly peon, I disrespected the Aztec blood in my veins. I had been raised to believe that a drop of that blood polluted my system and gave me the dreaded blood taint, a social and racial disease as repugnant to “people of quality” as the pox.

  Seeing the peons as people who were innately subservient to the wearers of spurs, I had believed implicitly in the myth of their inferiority. But as I watched the way the peons had fought, bled, and died for liberty, I realized that the padre was right: that three centuries of oppression had left the lower classes morose and defeated but that a true leader could reawaken their courage and resolve. That person was the padre, of course. They loved, admired, and revered them. He believed in them. They in turn showed extreme courage under fire, charging the lethal volleys with crude weapons and bare hands. Some, like Diego, had given his life not just for the cause but for a friend.

  Did I have the courage to die for a cause? In my entire life, no cause had inspired me to risk my life. These peons didn’t give up their lives for possessions or bedroom passions. They gave up their lives for a dream of freedom.

  We’d all been baptized in blood and fire, and the images of what I witnessed haunted me.

  Engrossed in my thoughts, I strolled past several of Allende’s officers, who were standing in the street, watching the indios’ rampage. One of them called the indios “filthy animals.” It was the same man who said that a pig dressed in silk was still a pig. Without thinking, I drove my steel-toed boot into his groin. Clutching his crotch, he dropped to his knees in sobbing genuflection. His two comrades reached for their swords.

  “Touch those swords,” I told them, “and I will kill you all.”

  Marina joined me, shaking her head. “You are the animal, not the indios.” She squeezed my arm. “But I know that was for Diego.”

  “For all the Aztec warriors who fell today. A piece of land, food for their children, freedom from slavery, not to die in some Spaniard’s mine or under the hooves of a gachupine’s horse or under his coach or whip—that is all they wanted. And they died for the dream.”

  She pretended to examine my skull. “Juan, a cannonball must have creased your head. This is not like you.”

  “Woman, you have always misunderstood me.” I tapped my temple. “Don Juan de Zavala is not the mindless caballero you think him to be. Soon I will be reading books and writing poetry.”

  I shook my head at the anarchy around us. People who wore rags before were parading around in silks. Indios were ransacking inns and pulquerías, looting stores, setting fires.

  “It’s not good,” I said. “We’ve won the battle, but we’re losing the peace.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The people of the city are hiding, even the common people. They’re terrified of the indios who were supposed to liberate them from the gachupines.”

  “The anger of our army will subside in a while,” she said.

  “Yes, but will the fears of the people of Guanajuato? Mark my words, Señorita Revolucionaria, we will see few volunteers from this great city. No regiments of trained soldiers, no criollos bringing muskets.”

  “Then we will win the way it was done today: with the courage of our men.”

  “They faced hundreds today. God protect us when they must face thousands of trained troops with cannons.”

  NINETY-TWO

  WE CAME TO Guanajuato on September 28 and left twelve days later for Valladolid, bequeathing Guanajuato a new and freer government. They also had a functioning mint and a factory to manufacture cannons.

  Despite our casualties, our ranks continued to swell on the road to Valladolid to even more enormous and unwieldy proportions than before. Moreover, the men’s spirits were high. We had captured a city that was second only to the capital itself in wealth and prestige.

  I knew from the indios’ speech and faces that they now believed that they were part of a larger cause: a struggle to redeem their people’s dignity and freedom. Few of them could have expressed exactly what that meant, but you could see it in their eyes.

  How much they understood about elected government was a mystery to me. I didn’t understand it myself. Except for people like the padre and Raquel, I’d met few people who appreciated what it meant. Most feared elected government would lead to anarchy or even worse, tyranny.

  More and more, I placed my faith in the humble priest who now led a mighty army with the fiery courage of biblical prophets.

  With each passing hour, my admiration and awe for Padre Hidalgo grew. He was a man of both compassion and iron determination. He was not after reward, high office, or military power . . . he laughed at rumors that he was to be crowned king in Méjico City. He had had no military training, yet he led an army as if he were a trained general and veteran of the Napoleonic wars.

  He wore a dazzling blue and scarlet uniform with gold and silver trim, one befitting a warlord and conqueror, but it was not to his liking. His coat was a lustrous indigo with red cuffs and collar, both trimmed in gold and silver galloon, and his shoulder belt was black velvet, similarly trimmed with gold and silver. From each of his shoulders hung a silver cord, and hanging from his neck was a large gold medal engraved with the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Allende’s uniform was similar to the padre’s, but he had only one si
lver shoulder cord hanging over his right shoulder.

  I felt there was an even more obvious difference between the two uniforms. The padre wore his out of a sense of duty to his officers, understanding that it impressed the multitude and gave the soldiers confidence in him as a military man. Allende wore his with a sense of pride; he was a military man and had chosen the profession long before the insurrection.

  Allende assured us the viceroy’s total forces would only come to a tenth of the seventy to eighty thousand we believed composed the horde that flowed across the Bajío like a river at full flood. No one knew exactly or could even accurately estimate our army’s size. With fighters joining and leaving at will, its composition was fluid, especially if one included women and children in its total force.

  Leaving Guanajuato, Allende tried again to improvise a command structure. Dividing our hoard into eighty different battalions of about one thousand men apiece, he placed each under the command of an officer. Lacking trained officers to fill those positions, Allende commissioned almost anyone who was willing and literate—a prerequisite for sending and receiving written orders.

  We hauled two bronze cannons and four wooden ones. So far, none had proved effective. Since neither Allende nor his professional soldiers were well trained in artillery, they had overestimated the value of cannons. The monster weapons were indeed crucial on a battlefield . . . when manned by experienced crews who knew how to maintain, load, aim, and fire them. They were almost worthless to us; we lacked the time and experience to teach even the most basic skills to our raw recruits, few of whom could load and fire a musket.

  The padre sent forward on the road to Valladolid a detachment of three thousand soldiers under Colonel Mariano Jiménez. Marina and I went ahead of the detachment, in the company of a “guerrilla” leader named Luna and a gang he had assembled. Guerrilla units were popping up all over the region. As in Spain, many of the bands were idealistic freedom fighters; others were nothing more than bands of bandidos who robbed and murdered for personal gain. Stories of raids on haciendas, robberies of silver trains, and mule trains of merchants abounded. Luna, who previously had been a foreman on a hacienda, fell somewhere in between patriot and thief.

  I discovered that Valladolid lacked an intelligent and courageous leader like Riano to organize a defense. Merino, the governor of the area, along with two high-ranking militia officers, had set out for the capital along the Acámbaro road. With Luna and his men, I rode to intercept him. We caught up with their slow-moving carriages, loaded with the town treasure, and took them and their dinero into custody.

  Marina stayed behind in Valladolid to keep an eye on the situation as I took the prisoners to the padre. “When news of their capture came to Valladolid,” Marina said later, “talk of resistance collapsed.”

  We marched into Valladolid as conquerors. We gained not just the city, but several hundred men from a regiment of dragoons and recently mobilized raw infantry recruits. But the recruits were little better trained or armed than our mob of indios.

  The next day, all hell exploded. It began again with indios breaking into pulque bars, inns, and private homes. Allende led a unit of his dragoons up and down the streets, shouting warnings. When the warnings proved of no value, and the indios began to pillage, Allende ordered his men to open fire on looters. Several were killed, and many more were wounded. The fusillade was unfortunate, but it quelled the looting.

  More trouble followed on the heels of the shooting. Dozens of indios became ill, and three died. A rumor raged that the townspeople had poisoned brandy the indios had stolen. Allende believed they had brought the sickness down on themselves by consuming foods that they had looted: Indios who had spent most of their lives on a diet of maize, beans, and peppers washed down with water or an occasional cup of pulque were suddenly gorging themselves on rich foods and potent spirits their systems were unused to.

  Once again, Allende went into action to quell the disturbance, this time in an even more unusual manner than musket fire. On his prancing horse before the angry indios, he told them the brandy was muy bueno and that they had just drunk too much. To drive home his point, he drank a cupful and made his officers join him.

  We left Valladolid on October 20. At Acámbaro, a great review of the vast army was held, the entire force marching before the leaders. Padre Hidalgo was proclaimed generalíssimo—or commander-in-chief—and Allende was promoted to captain-general. Aldama, Ballerga, Jiménez and Joaquín Arias were brevetted lieutenant-generals.

  I still had my head on my shoulders and Marina on my heels to keep me aware of my faults.

  NINETY-THREE

  THE ARMY CRAWLED toward Méjico City like a slow, endless, writhing beast. From Valladolid and Acámbaro, the padre directed the army on a route that would include Maravatio, Tepetongo, and Ixtlahuaca.

  Marina and I spread out separately to check the route to the capital, she with her army of female spies, me with my gachupine stallion. Upon my return, Father Hidalgo called Allende, Aldama, and other senior commanders to hear my report on the large force blocking the way to the capital.

  “The viceroy has sent an army commanded by Colonel Trujillo to stop us before we reach the capital,” I told them. Trujillo occupied Toluca—the last significant town before the capital—with as many as three thousand soldiers.

  “Colonel Trujillo has sent an advance detachment to defend the Don Bernabé Bridge over the Río Lerma. I wasn’t able to get close enough for an accurate count, but I’d say it was several hundred strong.”

  “He’s secured the bridge in advance,” Allende said, “because he intends to cross it with his entire force and engage us near Ixtlahuaca. We must take the bridge before he can reinforce it.”

  As we advanced on the bridge of the Lerma River, Trujillo’s defenders fled rather than take a suicidal stand. Marina had returned with more information as our lumbering force finished crossing the bridge. She updated the padre, Allende, and the other generals.

  “When the unit Trujillo sent to defend the bridge came running back, announcing that an army dozens of times larger than the viceroy’s entire force was advancing, the colonel immediately wheeled his army around and retreated. He’s planning to defend at the town of Lerma.”

  “There’s a bridge there, too,” I offered.

  Allende nodded. “Yes, he’ll defend the Lerma Bridge, hoping to keep us from crossing and gaining the pass known as Monte de las Cruces. After the pass, the road to the capital would be open to us.”

  A decision was made to split the forces. The padre would command the force heading east from Toluca toward Lerma, where they would engage Trujillo’s forces. By forced march, Allende would take the rest of the contingent south from Toluca. He would cross the river on the bridge at Atengo, then proceed northeast to outflank Trujillo at Lerma.

  “We will cut his retreat over the pass to the capital and squeeze him between our forces,” he told the padre.

  “This crony of the viceroy may be smart enough to defend the bridge at Atengo also,” Aldama said.

  “He’s more likely to destroy it,” the padre said. “He doesn’t have enough troops to make a serious defense of both the Lerma and Atengo bridges. We’ll have to get there before they destroy either bridge.”

  I operated between the two commands, watching for potential troop movements and surprises. On October 29, Allende’s unit drove Colonel Trujillo’s troops from the Atengo Bridge. Meanwhile, Padre Hidalgo marched on the Lerma Bridge.

  Setting out alone, I went ahead of Allende’s forces on the road toward Lerma, easily getting by Trujillo’s rear guard by pretending to be a Spanish merchant fleeing a rabble army of murderers and thieves. It was easy for me: I had the arrogance and horseflesh of a gachupine.

  When I arrived at Lerma, I learned that Hidalgo was approaching faster than Allende’s forces. Though Allende’s unit was smaller than the padre’s, outflanking the viceroy’s army via the Atengo Bridge swung him in a wide loop through the region. He had
much more ground to cover.

  No sooner had I arrived at Lerma than I witnessed Trujillo retreating with the bulk of his troops. The troops babbled endlessly about what happened. The viceroy’s colonel had learned that the padre’s forces were advancing east on Lerma from the Toluca road, while Allende’s were moving to outflank him from the south.

  Trujillo retreated back to the pass called Monte de las Cruces—Mountain of the Crosses. A popular site for bandido ambushes, its name came from the two types of wood crosses placed there: crosses in memory of the bandidos’ victims and crosses posses used to crucify bandidos.

  When Allende and the padre’s forces joined up on the road to the las Cruces pass, I accompanied a patrol sent by Allende to reconnoiter what he estimated to be the strongest defensive position in the pass. By the time we reached the coveted ground, Trujillo’s forces already occupied it.

  By early the next morning, the thirtieth day of October, our advanced units were fighting Trujillo’s troops. I swung wide around the potential battlefields, negotiated the heights on the north side of the Toluca road, and discovered that Trujillo was getting reinforcements. The royal forces were hauling up two cannon and close to four hundred men, most of whom looked to be mounted lancers who were, of late, vaqueros from the haciendas of Yermo and Manzano. By my estimate, Trujillo’s royal forces were close to my original estimate of three thousand, more than two-thirds of which were trained troops.

  Not a sufficient number compared to our force, but no one knew how our vast Aztec horde would fare against regular army units. I remembered the lessons that the Spanish—and French—learned on the Iberian Peninsula: a small number of trained French troops could put out murderous volleys of musket and cannon shot. By the same token, the Spanish usually achieved victory not with great lumbering masses like the padre’s army but with small, tenacious bands employing mobility, ambush, and surprise.