Conquistador: Hernan Cortes, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs

by Buddy Levy

  Although Gonzalo de Sandoval had been impaled through his foot by a javelin in recent fighting, Cortés trusted him to march north via Tacuba and secure the causeway. The movement of food into the city could not be tolerated, so Cortés from here on also ratcheted up brigantine patrols of the lake, targeting all canoes that looked to be conveying goods into the city. Once Sandoval reached and took the Tepeyac causeway (with the help of a couple of the brigantines, plus twenty-three cavalry, twenty crossbowmen, and about one hundred foot soldiers, as well as innumerable allies), Cortés had successfully inflicted a tight blockade on the city. He figured that as the Aztecs’ supplies of food and water dwindled, so would their will to fight, and he reckoned that it was only a matter of time before Cuauhtémoc would realize that his cause was lost, and surrender. But Cortés had underestimated the last emperor of the Aztecs.

  With his noose around the city, Cortés was determined to enter it and take it. Daily the brigantines made their way through the deeper channels and, at Cortés’s direction, burned whatever flammable houses they could. “In this manner,” he recalled, without betraying any emotion at the initial destruction of the city he had come to covet and admire, “six days were spent, and on each day we fought them; the brigantines burnt all the houses they could around the city, having discovered a canal whereby they might penetrate the outskirts and suburbs.”4 Perhaps a part of Cortés still believed it might be possible to take the city intact, and that setting buildings ablaze might just illustrate to Cuauhtémoc that his situation was hopeless, but in any event, a course of destruction was now under way. Only Cuauhtémoc and the military situation could dictate whether this course could be averted.

  On June 10 Cortés determined that a concerted assault into the center of the city was worth a try. He took Olid and his two hundred infantry (plus many thousands of Chalcan and Texcocan allies) and marched due north from Xoloc, flanked by brigantines on either side of the causeway. He had sent messages ahead both to Sandoval at Tepeyac and to Alvarado at Tacuba to fight their way to the main temple, near the Palace of Axayacatl, which they would remember well.5 It took much of the day, but by afternoon, having filled breaches and gaps where bridges had been removed, and destroyed barricades and battlements, Cortés and his soldiers arrived at the end of the main causeway. There they stood gazing up at the Gate of the Eagle, the doorway to the great city. It was a tall and impressive stone structure, with a large eagle in the center and a fierce jaguar standing on one side, a ferocious wolf on the other.6 Here an extremely large bridge had been removed, but having learned from experience, Cortés positioned two of his boats and used them as a pontoon bridge, and in this way he and his men were able to cross into the city.7

  As they pushed deeper inside the city, the Spaniards discovered that many of the bridges crossing canals had been left intact. Cuauhtémoc and his Aztec military advisers had not envisioned that Cortés and his forces would be able to infiltrate so far into the city so quickly. Seeing the Spanish divisions and allies moving forward all at once, the Aztecs took shelter behind stone pillars and columns and positioned themselves on the rooftops of the houses lining the streets. Cortés, following closely behind his vanguard, progressed to the edge of the plaza and set up a large cannon on the round gladiatorial sacrifice stone. Seeing great numbers of Aztec warriors overflowing the plaza, he began firing into the mass, causing much damage and a general panic and stampede as cannon smoke blackened the horizon.8 Many Aztecs scattered to the temple precinct, and the drums atop the Great Temple boomed a warning call across the religious center. According to Aztec accounts, “the deep throbbing of the drums resounded over the city, calling the warriors to defend the shrine of their god. But two of the Spanish soldiers climbed the stairway to the temple platform, cut the priests down with their swords and pitched them headlong over the brink.”9

  The call to arms had nonetheless been heard, and Aztec warriors rallied to defend their city, many arriving in canoes. The Aztecs surged forth, swinging their obsidian-bladed swords viciously. Cortés tightened and ordered his divisions to attack, then called on his artillery and crossbowmen to fire at will. The plaza became riotous and confusing, a crisscross of arrows and darts and artillery fire, and in the melee, Cortés saw that the sheer numbers of Aztecs were too great. He ordered the Lombard cannon at the sacrificial stone abandoned, and the Spaniards commenced a defensive retreat back down the causeway, their progress aided by the gaps the allies had been filling in all day long. As the Spaniards departed the city, Aztec warriors seized the abandoned cannon, dragged it to the lakeshore, and heaved it into the water, where it sank at a place they called the Stone Toad.10

  Inflamed by the Spanish retreat, the Aztecs pursued Cortés from the main plaza all the way down the street and onto the causeway until it was nearly dark. Still, though attacked from the flanks and from the rooftops above, Cortés was planning his immediate return and taking necessary precautions. “We set fire to most of the better houses in that street,” he said, “so that when we next entered they might not attack us from the rooftops.”11

  By nightfall Cortés and his troops were back at their camp at Xoloc, and through messengers he learned that both Sandoval and Alvarado had battled all day from their positions as well, but fierce resistance had kept them from reaching the center of the city. Bernal Díaz, who was with Alvarado attacking from Tacuba, reported that the causeway was much riddled with staked pits and that as the Spaniards approached the city, they were attacked from both land and water, peppered with darts and stones that were “more numerous than hailstones.”12 Compounding the problem, the Spaniards learned once again that the cavalry was ineffectual on the causeways. As cavalrymen came into contact with Aztec warriors and tried to ride them down, the Aztecs would leap into the lake and swim to safety, clinging to canoes or to the banks, their swimming skill and comfort with the water a serious advantage. The horses were too exposed on the causeways, and too valuable to risk, so the infantry did the bulk of the work, and many were wounded. Alvarado’s and Sandoval’s forces retreated to their camps at night as well, where they cauterized their wounds with searing oil and prayed to their god for the strength they would require during the next day’s fighting, and the next.13

  This initial incursion into the city had a few immediate and significant results. Cortés had had a firsthand look at how the entry, and subsequent fighting there, was likely to play out. He also clearly understood that the burning of buildings would be necessary to eradicate (or at least reduce) the elevated bombardment, and that this torching of the interior (coupled with the burning already being done by brigantine amphibious raids on the outskirts) had set the destruction of the city into motion. But the most important result of the foray all the way into the religious precinct was its effect on the vassal states that had, until now, been reluctant to send warriors in support of the Spanish cause. Word quickly spread beyond the lakeshores and across the valley, and within a day or two, Cortés received pledges of support from formerly hostile Otomis, as well as from the people of Chalco and Xochimilco, all groups with whom the Spaniards had previously skirmished.

  The support from these peoples came in numerous forms, including manpower, war canoes, food, and shelter. The Spaniards had grown weary of the constant diet of maize cakes, and when sustenance arrived in the form of fish, fowl, and local cherries (and even prickly pear, which was coming into season), their morale strengthened.14 The allied laborers would be sent ahead to fill in removed bridges and breaches in the canals and causeways, a full-time job, and they also began to build temporary shelters (houses or huts that the Spaniards called ranchos) along the causeways for the Spaniards, allowing them protection from night raids as well as summer squalls. When the Texcocans sent some fifty thousand reinforcements, Cortés decided on June 15 that he was ready for another offensive drive into the city’s heart.15

  The second sortie replicated the first. During the interim the Aztecs had been busy breaching the causeway once more and constr
ucting more stalwart and impressive bulwarks. After hearing mass, Cortés left his encampment with twenty or so cavalry, three hundred Spanish soldiers, and all his Indian allies, whom he described as “an infinite number.”16 The allied divisions went first, filling in the gaps and destroying the ramparts, followed by the Spanish infantry, artillerymen, and cavalry when the causeway was partly cleared, flanked as always by brigantine support, which made the entire incursion possible. Crossbowmen and artillery slung their arms over the boat gunwales, picking off Aztec canoe warriors and forcing Aztec infantry to flee their positions, so that once again Cortés found himself beneath the Gate of the Eagle and ready to infiltrate the city. The fighting was again brutal and bloody, and the Aztecs defended their religious precinct with even greater vigor than they had on the first occasion.

  Cortés decided that, rather than continue his advance, he would take some ten thousand of the allied laborers and concentrate on filling the breaches everywhere as permanently as possible, using stone and wood and rubble, and compacting the fill to make it difficult or even impossible to remove. In this way the cavalry could quickly cross and be of use in the wider plazas, where Cortés hoped to employ them. While inside the city, he dispatched messengers appealing to Cuauhtémoc to sue for peace, but the only reply was a constant volley of spears, stones, and darts from all quarters. By nightfall, Cortés was safely back on the southern portion of the causeway, having illustrated that he could come and go into the city as he pleased, if with some danger and difficulty.

  During this second foray Cortés had something of a grim epiphany. All day long he had ridden with the cavalry and seen the bitter determination on the faces of the Aztec soldiers, men who would not yield but would fall to their deaths where they stood and fought. “When I saw how determined they were to die in their defense,” Cortés remembered matter-of-factly, “I deduced two things: that we would regain little, or none, of the riches which they had taken from us, and that they gave us cause, and indeed obliged us, to destroy them utterly.”*53 17

  This last realization, according to Cortés, weighed heavily on his soul, for he certainly preferred, if possible, to take the city without destroying it entirely. But that appeared unlikely. As a last-ditch effort, thinking he would hurt the Aztec leadership to their very core, he sent amphibious raiding parties via brigantine to infiltrate the city and destroy and torch the “towers of their idols and their houses,” including the Palace of Axayacatl as well as one of the former emperor Montezuma’s most prized buildings, his gorgeous and magnificent House of Birds.18 And though the tactic caused the Aztecs extreme grief, it only spurred them to fight that much harder out of anger and hatred.

  Cuauhtémoc was certainly unsettled by Cortés’s progress into the city, and as a defensive strategy he began to move his base of operations and the bulk of his troops from the sacred precinct in the center to Tlatelolco, the island city at the far northwest tip of Tenochtitlán proper. Tlatelolco was home to the famous market, where what provisions the city still possessed remained, and more important from a military standpoint, Cuauhtémoc used the temple there (among the highest and most prominent in the city) to direct his defenses. From there he could see everything, including former Aztec vassals, now allies of Cortés, arriving from all directions in numbers too great to count. Standing atop the pyramid, Cuauhtémoc took in the grim situation—he would be fighting not only the Spaniards but fellow Indians, in effect his brothers. And perhaps worst of all, he could see the dismantling, burning, and razing of his city, could hear the crashing of stone walls as they toppled, could watch the smoke from the smoldering rubble. But he had vowed to his people, and to himself, to defend the city to the death, so he ordered smoke signals lit, a sign from the emperor that the Aztecs must rally and fight.19

  For many days Cortés continued his approach in a repetitive way, each time supported by brigantines up the causeway, using allied labor to fill ditches, thrusting forth to the sacred precinct just a little bit farther each day, always nudging the Aztecs just a bit farther out of their city. Despite appeals from some of his less patient captains to set up camp within the city, Cortés always ordered the evening return to the relative safety of his causeway camp, reminding his men of the danger of being trapped inside the city. He had come this far and had planned methodically, and he had no intention of letting petulance and carelessness undermine his well-conceived battle and siege plan.

  One of the impatient captains turned out to be Pedro de Alvarado, which should have come as no great surprise to Cortés. Alvarado had shown his impetuousness on multiple occasions, most notoriously in the attack at the Festival of Toxcatl. So far during the siege Alvarado had done as instructed, and each day he made good headway along the Tacuba causeway, infiltrated the city, and then near sundown returned to camp at Tacuba, perhaps not only for safety but to share a bed with his indigenous spouse María Luisa.20 But on June 23, perhaps feeling overconfident by his daily ingress or simply overanxious, Alvarado made the decision to encamp half of his cavalry well forward on the causeway, almost within the city itself, feeling that there was limited exposure there as a result of all the houses they had destroyed.

  It was a devastating mistake. Almost immediately three squadrons of warriors attacked from three separate directions, and the Spaniards engaged them at all points, including the rear. The Aztec warriors at the vanguard retreated within the city, with the Spaniards in pursuit, crashing through barricades and then charging through the shallow water of a breach. Tossing javelins and hurling darts, the Aztecs retreated up a lesser causeway inside Tlatelolco, and Alvarado, inflamed, sent men rushing ahead. Soon the Spaniards were among houses, from which, and from the streets beyond, poured innumerable warriors, including those whose feigned retreat had drawn the Spaniards in. Bernal Díaz reported that soon the Aztecs “dealt us such treatment that we could not withstand them,”21 and the Spaniards turned to retreat, heading for the shallow gap they had just crossed.

  But the Aztecs had planned their ruse well, and the Spaniards arrived to discover that the shallow breach they had crossed was now filled with hundreds of Aztec war canoes, forcing them in another direction, toward a deeper channel. Pursued now at all points, some fifty Spaniards had no choice but to wade and swim into the deeper ford. Many Spanish soldiers now plunged into stake-lined pits, some impaled on the sharpened spears, others wedged and bogged down and unable to flee as the Aztecs surged upon them. The Aztecs bludgeoned the floundering Spaniards mercilessly, dragging a half dozen or so away for sacrifice, spearing and hacking many others to death. Bernal Díaz managed to swim to the safety of the other side, but as he crawled out of the death trap, he discovered that he bled profusely from one arm and could barely stand from the injuries and blood loss. It was fortunate, in fact, that more Spaniards were not lost, for the cavalry had been unable to assist, the pits keeping them on the other side. A lone horseman did attempt to aid the infantry, but both he and his horse were killed in a stake-lined pit.22 Nearly all of them were seriously injured.

  When Cortés learned of the rout, he was livid. He hated to lose men, and, worse, he knew that the Aztecs’ success would encourage their spirit and bolster Cuauhtémoc’s confidence. He immediately dispatched a letter to Alvarado, rebuking him for his overzealous maneuver and reminding him that under no circumstances should he ever leave a causeway breach unfilled, especially one behind his rearguard. Alvarado acquiesced, and his troops spent the next four days filling gaps that they should have filled in the first place, using the rubble—mostly stone and wood—from the houses they had torn down along the way. For assurance, all the horses were to remain saddled and bridled all night long, and their riders were to sleep at their sides.23

  Cortés decided that a personal reprimand was in order, and he boarded a brigantine and visited Alvarado at his camp within the city. But once Cortés saw the distance Alvarado had infiltrated, he could muster only praise and congratulations for his countryman. Cortés admitted, “When I reached his
camp…I was truly astonished to see how far into the city he had gone and the dangerous bridges and passes which he had won, and I no longer blamed him as much as he seemed to deserve.”24

  Instead, Cortés held a meeting with Alvarado, where they agreed that a concerted push to the Tlatelolco marketplace should be their central focus, as that appeared to be where the Aztecs were massing for a final showdown. That taken care of, Cortés returned to his own camp for the evening.

  During this time the brigantines had continued to assert their dominance of the lake, maintaining unremitting day and night cruises to disrupt food and water importation by Aztec canoes. But the Aztecs were adapting to the new military techniques and quickly deduced that the brigantines were a significant problem that they must deal with if they were to save their city. To combat the ships, the Aztec command conceived a scheme that involved elaborate decoys, feigned retreats and aggressive counterattacks.

  One morning Spanish brigantine captains sighted a flotilla of canoes moving along the open water in plain view; the canoes were camouflaged with brush and rushes as if hiding their contents—likely food, water, and other provisions desperately needed in the city. Two of the brigantines launched forth under sail and paddle, aggressively pursuing the supply canoes. Before the Spanish captains (among them Pedro Barba and Juan Portillo) realized they had been duped, the brigantines ran aground on stakes that had been buried underwater in a shallow channel, and the boats ground to a halt. While paddlers dug furiously, struggling to extricate the ships, lines of larger Aztec war canoes (as many as forty, all brimming with the finest warriors) emerged from a reed bank, where they had lain in hiding. It was a well-conceived trap, and the canoes attacked fiercely from all quarters. Soon the oarsmen had to abandon their posts and brandish swords in defense as the Aztec canoes surged forth, swarming over the brigantines.25

  Numerous Spaniards were dragged from the ships, battered with clubs and taken away alive, while others, including Captain Juan Portillo, died in the struggle. More brigantines came in support and managed to wrest the two stranded vessels from the stakes and free them, but severe damage had been inflicted. Captain Pedro Barba died a few days later from the wounds he suffered. The Aztecs had shown ingenious and creative adaptability. Now the Spaniards would need to be ever wary on the water, always cautious of potential entrapment.26