Spain's Road to Empire

by Henry Kamen

  Montezuma gave a traditional greeting of welcome, which Cortés reported to his emperor as a speech of homage. Montezuma's speech was indeed fulsome enough to permit such an interpretation. ‘This is your house and these are your palaces,’ he said to Cortés, ‘take them and rest in them with all your captains and companions.’ In the subsequent six months that they were in the city, the Spaniards effectively controlled Montezuma but were themselves wholly vulnerable. The Mexica leaders, resigned but sullen and indignant, became outraged when Cortés began ordering the destructions of their statues. At this stage Montezuma informed Cortés of the arrival of more Spaniards at Veracruz, eighteen vessels from Cuba under the command of Pánfilo de Narváez, who had been sent by governor Velázquez to arrest Cortés and take charge. Cortés at once decided to leave Tenochtitlan for the coast, taking most of his men with him in order to confront the superior forces of Narváez, and leaving behind Pedro de Alvarado with enough men to protect Montezuma. It was not an easy decision, for Montezuma had warned him that the Mexica leaders were plotting to kill all the Spaniards. Bernal Diaz describes the state of permanent alarm faced by the men. They got used to sleeping fully clothed and fully armed, or even not sleeping at all. Diaz never reverted to sleeping normally again. ‘I always lie down fully dressed,’ he wrote many years afterwards, ‘what is more, I can only sleep for a short time at night, I have to get up and look at the sky and stars and walk around for a bit in the dew.’

  Cortés left Tenochtitlan in May 1520 and went out to meet Narváez, whose forces he defeated in a quick action that he had preceded by secret overtures to the incoming Spaniards. Narváez was wounded and lost an eye; five men were killed on his side and four on that of Cortés. Most of the Spaniards agreed to join Cortés, who at this moment received a message brought from Tenochtitlan by two Tlaxcalans, saying that Alvarado and his men were in serious trouble as a result of an attack they had made on the Mexica chiefs during a festival. Cortés hurried back to the capital. ‘There were over one thousand three hundred soldiers,’ writes Diaz, ‘counting Narváez's people and our own, also some ninety-six horses, eighty bowmen and as many musketeers. In addition the Tlaxcalan chiefs gave us two thousand warriors. We arrived at Mexico on 24 June 1520.’ However, they found the city openly in revolt against the Spaniards, and after bitter fighting in the streets were forced to consider withdrawing. The situation became untenable when the Mexica chiefs elected a new emperor, and Montezuma himself was killed during an attack with stones. Assailed by thousands of Mexicas, the Spaniards fled in total disorder. On that fatal night, or ‘Noche Triste’ as it came to be called, of 10 July,9 the Spaniards lost around eight hundred men, five Spanish women, and over a thousand Tlaxcalan allies. After the retreat the Indian allies complained to Marina that if the Spaniards withdrew the Mexicas would finish them off. But Cortés told them, ‘Don't worry, if I leave I shall be back soon, and I shall destroy the Mexicas.’ This greatly solaced the Tlaxcalans. ‘When the Spaniards had gone to sleep, far into the night wind instruments were being played, wooden flutes and wooden fifes, and there was drumming, war drumming.’10 The Spaniards had to take a rest in Tlaxcala, for ‘they were too few to go to battle again with the Mexicas’.

  The preparations for an attack on Tenochtitlan took some eight months.11 From his base at Tlaxcala, Cortés gave first priority to replenishing his meagre forces, which he achieved thanks to men and supplies that arrived on the coast in subsequent weeks from Cuba, Jamaica and Spain. ‘To Tlaxcala came Spanish soldiers with many horses as well as arms and munitions, and this encouraged the Captain to get ready again to go back and conquer Mexico.’ The Tlaxcalans also began a programme of building boats with which to ferry men across the lake of Tenochtitlan. Cortés, with the support of the Tlaxcalans, carried out raids on neighbouring towns. By the end of 1520 a large part of the plain of Anahuac, including the cities of Tlaxcala, Cholula and Huejotzingo, had with Spanish help established an alliance against the Mexica, whose empire was now in a state of collapse. The next step in the campaign was to break up the union between the cities of Tenochtitlan and Texcoco, the basis of power of the Mexica state. Just after Christmas 15 20, ten thousand Tlaxcalan warriors escorted Cortés and his men on a march towards Texcoco. The ruler of the city, Ixtlilxochitl, seeing how the tide of power in Anahuac was turning against the Mexica, greeted Cortés warmly and promised his support. All was now set for the attack on Tenochtitlan. In March and April several successful sorties were made against towns adjacent to the capital that were friendly to the Mexica. By the end of April the city of Tenochtitlan stood alone against its enemies. The brigantines built for the Spaniards were, from their base at Texcoco, in command of the northwest shore of the lake. A formal siege was begun in the second week of May 15 21.

  The situation had changed dramatically since Cortés's first landing on the coast with four hundred men and the power of the entire Nahua people ranged against him. His band of Spaniards was now not much bigger, just over nine hundred men thanks to recent arrivals. But he had on his side the majority of the cities that had been vassals and allies of the Mexica. The Indian historian of Texcoco, Alva Ixtlilxochitl, reported that just before the siege the ruler of Texcoco reviewed his men, and ‘on the same day the Tlaxcalans, Huejotzingoans and Cholulans also reviewed their troops, each lord with his vassals, and in all there were more than three hundred thousand men’.12 The total Indian forces supporting the Spaniards were a vast army that could be supplemented from the rear whenever necessary, whereas the Mexica in their island city were cut off from outside help. The city, now ruled by Montezuma's nephew Cuauhtemoc, had also been suffering an epidemic of smallpox, apparently brought to the region by one of Narváez's soldiers. As the siege progressed, lakeside towns that had initially supplied the capital came forward to Cortés and offered him their support. Despite their situation, the Mexica resisted their attackers for three and a half months, in a desperate struggle that cost tens of thousands of lives and impelled the attackers to destroy the city systematically as they entered, as the only way of reducing the defenders. Finally, Cuauhtemoc was captured as he attempted to flee. Tenochtitlan perished with thousands of corpses within it, and it took three days for the survivors to be evacuated.

  ‘When the news spread through the provinces that Mexico was destroyed’, Bernal Díaz recalled, ‘the lords could not believe it, they sent chieftains to congratulate Cortés and yield themselves as subjects to His Majesty and to see if the city, which they had so dreaded, was really razed to the ground.’ A Nahua song lamented that

  Nothing but flowers and songs of sorrow

  Are left in Mexico and Tlatelolco

  Where once we saw warriors and wise men.

  Cortés and his men achieved immortal fame. They became folk heroes within their own lifetime, not only in Spain but in every European nation. Who were these men? They were for the most part young: Cortés was aged thirty-four at the time, Bernal Díaz only twenty-four. An examination of nearly two-thirds13 of the Europeans who took part in the conquest of Tenochtitlan shows that ninety-four per cent were Spaniards and six per cent from other nations, mostly Portuguese and Genoese, with a sprinkling of Greeks and Netherlanders. At least two were black. Of just over five hundred Spaniards whose places of origin are known, one third came from Andalusia, the rest principally from Extremadura, Old Castile and León. A long historical tradition has tended to present the early Spaniards in America as the scum of the earth, but it cannot be credited. By the same token there is no foundation to the legend, common in much Spanish historical writing, that they were hidalgos. The men who made it to the New World, survived the Atlantic crossing, and lived through the travails of hostile tribes and a savage climate, were robust, intelligent and (if they were lucky) survivors. Out of five hundred of the Spaniards who were at Tenochtitlan nearly eighty-five per cent could sign their names, a piece of evidence that often indicates literacy. Much less is known of their professional status. The callings of only thirteen per ce
nt of the five hundred can be identified: they were principally artisans, sailors, soldiers and scribes.14

  The fame of having helped to overthrow Mexico was the only profit gained by many of the Spaniards. After the fall of the great city, reported Bernal Díaz, ‘we were all disappointed when we saw how little gold there was and how poor our shares would be’. They quarrelled among themselves, and most went off to seek treasure elsewhere. ‘When we realized’, Diaz wrote, ‘that there were no gold mines or cotton in the towns around Mexico, we thought of it as a poor land, and went off to colonize other provinces.’ The majority of those who took part in the fall of Tenochtitlan ended their days in poverty.15 Nor were they fortunate enough, like Bernal Díaz, to live long. Up to eight hundred Spaniards died in the Noche Triste, and over half of all the known conquistadors who took part in the campaigns died during wars against the Mexicas.16 Overthrowing the American empires was an extremely costly undertaking, and did not always bring rewards to those who took part in the enterprise.

  Not until ten years later did a further group of Spaniards, based in the isthmus of Panama, begin to pool their resources and send expeditions down the Pacific coast of South America. The newly founded town of Panama became a typical frontier melting pot where all types of adventurer concentrated in search of a quick profit. Three of them decided to pool their limited resources in order to fund an expedition. They were Francisco Pizarro, the illegitimate and illiterate son of a former soldier from Trujillo in Extremadura; Diego de Almagro; and the priest Hernando de Luque, who could count on a local contact of the Castilian financier Espinosa in Seville as back-up for the required capital. A first expedition southwards along the South American coast in 1524 was a failure, but by contrast a second in 1526–7 made contact with unmistakable signs of wealth. In order to get the highest possible backing for a further journey, Pizarro in 1528 returned to Spain and obtained in the summer of 1529 at Toledo (where he also met and talked to Cortés) the desired grant conceding him rights as governor and adelantado of an immense stretch of territory along the Pacific coast. He also brought back with him his four brothers and a cousin, when he sailed from Sanlucar early in 1530.17

  In January 1531 an expedition of 3 ships carrying around 180 men and with 30 horses on board left Panama under Francisco's command. They were joined further along the coast by two vessels under Sebastián Benalcázar. Later on Hernando de Soto arrived with two ships, about a hundred men and twenty-five horses. Together they were by no means a force to sneer at, but the Spaniards had to counter bitter resistance from coastal Indians. They spent several months around the bay of Guayaquil, in the vicinity of Tumbez, and began to learn about the territory that they were entering.

  The empire of the Incas was one of the most remarkable in human annals, dating from the twelfth century, when the Quechua peoples began to extend their control over a vast area that by the fifteenth century stretched over five thousand kilometres from the south of modern Colombia down to central Chile, and stretching inland across the Andes to the Amazon forest. The ruling tribe were the Incas, who formed an élite that was superimposed on the local élites of the Andean valleys. For a territory that was technologically primitive, without knowledge of the wheel or of writing or of the arch in construction, the empire achieved heights of efficiency and sophistication that have continued to amaze posterity. At the time of the Spaniards’ arrival, the land of the four quarters – known as Tawantinsuyu – was divided by a civil conflict between two respective claimants to the title of supreme Inca. The last unquestioned Inca ruler, Huayna Capac, died leaving sons, Atahualpa and Huascar, who bitterly contested the succession, while other sons were too young to participate in the struggle. Huascar dominated in the south, in the royal capital of Cusco, while Atahualpa became based in the north, in the city of Cajamarca. Atahualpa was obviously interested in making contact with the strangers, who in the autumn of 1532 prepared to strike inland and cross the Andes, a small band of sixty horsemen and one hundred on foot.

  Atahualpa envisaged no threat from the small number of strangers, and sent envoys to greet them as they made their descent into the fertile valley of Cajamarca. He was in a position of strength, for his general Quisquis had just succeeded in defeating the forces of Huascar and capturing the rival Inca. Atahualpa hoped to lure the Spaniards into his territory and deal with them there.18 The latter were almost paralysed by fear, more so when they learned that the emperor was camped with a huge army outside the capital Pizarro had to speak to his men to encourage them. In the afternoon of 15 November 15 3 2 the Spaniards entered a half-deserted Cajamarca. The emperor had been kept fully informed of the men's movements. Pizarro sent a delegation under Soto to Atahualpa inviting him to meet the Spaniards on his scheduled return the following day. As the hour for the emperor's return late in the afternoon of Saturday 16 November approached, Pizarro carefully disposed his own trap. Atahualpa entered the ceremonial square of Cajamarca, carried aloft on his palanquin by eighty nobles and accompanied by a redoubtable host of several thousands of his people. Seated in majesty in the centre of the huge square, he contemplated the small handful of men who had managed to penetrate his domains. The Indian interpreter Felipillo began to translate for the Inca's benefit the words of the requerimiento, read by Pizarro's chaplain, Valverde. Then the friar began to exhort the Inca to accept the true God. Atahualpa rejected the breviary offered by him and threw it on the ground. Valverde was outraged and ran back to Pizarro, who ‘raised a cloth as a signal to act against the Indians’.19 A single cannon, strategically placed, was now exposed and fired directly into the crowd of Indians, causing indescribable terror. The soldiers and horsemen, till now hidden in the buildings on the sides of the square, charged out to cries of ‘Santiago!’ and directed their arquebuses on the massed ranks of people with the deliberate aim of killing as many as possible. At the same time Pizarro and his aides flung themselves on the Inca and made him prisoner. The panic-stricken and wholly defenceless people20 trampled each other to death and demolished an entire wall with the force of their bodies as they attempted to escape from the square. ‘They howled out loud in terror, asking themselves if these things were really happening or if it was a dream; possibly more than two thousand of them perished.’21 Not a single Spaniard died (‘apart from a black man on our side’, states a soldier who took part in the massacre). Night had now fallen, and the many thousands of Andeans who had been waiting outside, unable to enter the city, were in their turn seized by the panic of those fleeing desperately from the terror in the square. The whole valley of Cajamarca, as far as the eye could see in the failing light, was filled with fleeing Indians.22

  The capture of Atahualpa was a unique event in the history of the Spanish empire. For the first and last time, a small band made up almost exclusively of Spaniards, and without any help from native allies, managed to carry out an incredible feat against overwhelming odds, and with no guarantee of continuing success. Until the very last minute before the action in the square, they were filled with dread. ‘We thought our lives were finished’, a young Basque soldier wrote shortly afterwards to his father, ‘because there was such a horde of them, and even the women were making fun of us and saying they were sorry for us because we were going to get killed.’23 It was an accomplishment that far outdid in audacity the action of Cortés and his men at Tenochtitlan.

  The hundred and sixty men who captured Atahualpa had no immediate plans other than to make themselves rich. They were by no means professional soldiers, though like most Spaniards on the American frontier they were familiar with the use of arms. They represented a fair segment of the peninsular population, with artisans, notaries and traders preponderant; three-quarters were of plebeian origin.24 Adventurous and young – ninety per cent of them were aged between twenty and thirty-four, and only Pizarro exceeded fifty – they accomplished an exploit that ranked (in the opinion of Europeans) among the most fabulous of all time. Atahualpa was kept as an honoured prisoner at Cajamarca, and eventual
ly agreed to pay an unprecedented ransom for his freedom: he would fill the dimensions of the room in which he was kept, twenty-two feet long, seventeen feet broad and nine feet high, with gold and treasure from his subjects in the Inca empire.

  The amassing of the Inca's treasure was one of the most emblematic acts in the history of all empires. It displayed to perfection the obsession of Europeans with the wealth associated with precious metals. Above all, it displayed their complete indifference to the destruction of the cultures with which they came into contact. As the ornaments were rounded up by the Inca's messengers from the four corners of his part of the empire – plates, cups, jewellery, tiles from temples, artefacts – they were systematically melted down under Spanish supervision, and reduced to ingots. Over those four months from March to June 1533, bit by bit the artistic heritage not simply of the Incas but of a great part of Andean civilization disappeared into the flames. For two thousand years the craftsmen of the Andes had applied their techniques to working and decorating with gold. This became no more than a memory. At Cajamarca alone the Spaniards managed to reduce the ornaments to 13,420 pounds of gold and 26,000 pounds of silver. In subsequent weeks, they came across equally fabulous treasures, which were likewise consigned to the furnaces.

  Francisco Pizarro's promise to liberate the emperor was not kept. On the excuse that he was fomenting plots, and had usurped the throne and murdered his half-brother Huascar,25 Atahualpa was condemned to death at the insistence of Almagro and other Spaniards and strangled and then burnt as a criminal (he was ‘mercifully’ garrotted because he agreed to accept baptism and die as a Christian) in the square at Cajamarca on 28 June 1533.26 Pizarro defended himself afterwards by claiming that he was unable to intervene. ‘I saw the marquis in tears’, reported a witness, ‘because he was unable to save his life.’ Other Spaniards, including Soto, openly condemned the murder and the fabricated evidence used to justify it. Subsequent Spanish commentators never ceased to view the killing as a crime. José de Acosta judged that ‘our people sinned gravely when they killed the ruler’. In the memory of the people of the Andes the strangling of their emperor as though he were a common criminal became transformed into something much nobler, a decapitation, a royal death that would lead at some distant time in the future to his resurrection.