War God: Return of the Plumed Serpent

by Graham Hancock

  ‘I see nothing but death for us,’ Meco muttered to Malinal. ‘We’ll not get through this pass alive.’

  ‘Don’t fear,’ she answered. ‘The caudillo will lead us to safety.’

  In the thick of the fighting, Cortés yelled a warning that went unheard as three of his cavaliers, Miguel de Lares, Juan Sedeno and Jerónimo Alanis, charged a great mass of the enemy across a patch of open ground, only to falter and fail as hundreds of warriors rounded on them, laying hands on their horses. Somehow, slashing wildly with their broadswords, trampling their attackers beneath the hooves of their destriers, Lares and Alanis broke free, but Sedeno was not so lucky. His mare was pulled down under him by sheer weight of numbers and hacked to pieces by the Indians. He himself, though armoured, received so many wounds he was already half dead and being dragged away for sacrifice when Bernal Díaz and Francisco Mibiercas, at the head of a flying squad of twenty infantry, hewed a murderous path through the press of Indians and snatched him from his captors.

  ‘Fucking cavalry,’ complained Mibiercas as they surrounded the fallen mare, cut its girths so as not to leave the saddle behind and fought their way back to the shelter of the squares.

  ‘Fucking cavalry,’ Díaz agreed as Sedeno died in his arms. Eight of his squad had been injured – and all for what? A saddle!

  Refusing to show the alarm he felt at the loss of another horse, and at the greater loss of the semi-supernatural status his cavalry had been accustomed to enjoy amongst the Indians, Cortés stayed mostly at the head of the column, riding repeated charges with Alvarado and Sandoval to clear space for the infantry to march through, but from time to time fighting his way back along the line of march to re-form and encourage the troops. ‘If we fail now,’ he cried, ‘the cross of Christ can never be planted in this land. Forward, comrades! When was it ever known that a Castilian turned his back on a foe?’

  Such words were simple enough but, in the din of battle, confronted by the choices of annihilation or victory, they seemed to touch the hearts and spirits of the men, and in this manner, careless of the personal risks he ran, Cortés finally shepherded the army through the canyons and ravines and out onto open ground. There the enormous numbers of Indians they faced, filling the plain ahead of them and sending up a great din, finally became clear. This was a far greater force than they had confronted at Potonchan – seventy thousand men at least, perhaps even a hundred thousand. But they were so many, and so close packed, a chaotic throng of helmets, weapons, banners, and brightly coloured plumes, that their very mass and bulk would now work against them, while the cavalry were at last on ground where they could serve their purpose, and the artillery, which the Tlascalans had not faced to date, could be deployed to devastating effect.

  Some of the cannon had been left at Villa Rica, but Cortés still had two lombards and ten falconets with the baggage train, and had kept them all fully loaded with grapeshot, and well protected by infantry, throughout the morning’s march. Now, using the cavalry to disrupt the enemy formations and open a space for manoeuvres, he formed his men into a single large defensive square, ordered the artillery forward, recalled the horsemen out of the line of fire and let loose a devastating salvo.

  The whistling grapeshot from the dozen guns was a fatal storm that tore through the massed enemy, killed hundreds at a single blow, littered the ground with bleeding and shattered bodies and opened up wide, undefended gaps in their ranks. Through these gaps Cortés sent his cavalry, lances thrusting, broadswords swinging, cutting down the dazed and disoriented Indians in an orgy of killing, while Mesa’s gun crews worked feverishly to reload. Then a signal from the trumpeter called the horsemen back and the guns roared again.

  It was not as it had been at Potonchan. There was dismay amongst the foe but no panic – not even when Vendabal let the dogs loose amongst them. But little by little the conquistadors won through and the Tlascalans began to move off the battlefield in as good order as any trained and disciplined army of Europe.

  Other than securing a few prisoners, Cortés ordered no pursuit, for a whole day had passed and his troops were so tired they could barely stand. He watched the enemy go with mixed feelings of vindication and admiration. It had been a close thing, but God and Saint Peter had given him victory again, as he had known they would.

  * * *

  An hour’s march brought the army to a suitable haven in which to pass the night – a low hill crowned by a small stone temple, surmounted by a tall tower that seemed almost purpose-built for a sniper’s nest. The place was named Tzompachtepetl, or ‘the hill of Tzompach’, according to the prisoners, and it appeared to have been deserted in great haste only moments before the arrival of the Spaniards. The temple had a bubbling spring in its courtyard and was surrounded by well-made outbuildings, all easily defensible. Cortés had the whole complex fortified and lookouts posted before the sun had fallen below the horizon, then sent men out to loot the neighbouring village of the same name. This was also deserted, but caged fowl and small dogs were found in sufficient numbers to give the army a modest dinner.

  Again the men slept in their armour, fearing an attack, but none came and, after taking his turn at watch, in the small hours of the morning Cortés lay down with Malinal in the single-roomed building off the courtyard he had requisitioned as his headquarters. He had remained outwardly cheerful and optimistic all day, knowing any sign of doubt or weakness on his part would rapidly infect the whole army, but he saw no need to hide his true feelings from this woman, who had done so much to help him understand the Indian mind, and asked her frankly: ‘Can we win? I came here confident we’d find allies and instead we face a determined, resourceful, disciplined enemy. They seem to have no fear of us and don’t give credence to this nonsense about us being gods that works so well with Moctezuma.’

  ‘I warned you not easy,’ Malinal replied. ‘Tlascalans are warriors, fierce and free. You must defeat them before they join you.’

  ‘I’ve defeated them twice!’

  ‘You made bleed,’ she demurred, ‘but did not defeat.’

  ‘At this rate I wonder if I ever will. Three of the horses and that fool Sedeno killed in two days. Upwards of sixty injured. We can’t go on taking such punishment for ever.’

  ‘So maybe send prisoners with a peace message for Shikotenka?’ Malinal suggested. ‘Might work! I think his biggest fear is you are secret friend of Moctezuma. You need to show him that not true.’

  Cortés’s eyes were growing heavy. ‘Very well,’ he nodded, ‘we will try.’ Sleep swarmed over him like a hostile army and then at once he stood before a giant wall, a hundred feet high, made entirely of mother of pearl, surrounding a great city of spires and towers built on the sides of a hill. Set into the wall, and reaching to its full height, loomed an immense double gateway with a wicket door, before which stood a familiar, glowing figure that was at once human and more than human.

  Cortés fell to his knees. ‘Your Holiness,’ he said.

  He felt Saint Peter’s huge, calloused, soldier’s hand rest in his hair, a burst of radiance filled his eyes and a jolt of some tremendous power, like lightning, suffused his body.

  ‘Welcome, my son,’ said the saint.

  Cortés looked up as that massive hand was lifted from his head. ‘Am I at heaven’s gate, Your Holiness?’ he asked.

  ‘Do you doubt it?’

  ‘It is just that you brought me here before, Holy Father, but the gate seemed different.’

  ‘Heaven has many gates,’ said the saint, ‘and I hold the keys to them all. The day will come when I will admit your soul to take its rest here. But you have much work to do first.’

  ‘All these months, Holiness, I have been vigilant for God. I have thrown down the idols of the heathen as you instructed … ’

  ‘You have, my son, and heaven is pleased with you. But the task I chose you for will not be complete until the tyrant Moctezuma is laid low and the cross of Christ planted firmly in the heart of Tenochtitlan.’

&
nbsp; ‘I work towards that, Holiness. Day by day I work towards it.’

  ‘And you are working towards it here, amongst the heathens of Tlascala? Amongst these devil worshippers?’

  ‘I hoped to make allies of them, Father, and bring them to Christ. I offered them words of peace but they rejected me.’

  ‘They are a stiff-necked people.’

  ‘Their resistance is fierce, Holiness. It seems I will be forced to defeat them utterly before they accept my friendship.’

  ‘Then defeat them.’

  ‘Such a defeat of so stubborn a people may not be accomplished on the battlefield alone. I will have to spread terror amongst them, lay waste their villages and homes and farms with fire and sword, before they bow their stiff necks to me.’

  ‘Do it,’ the saint urged. ‘Do it, my son! You have the blessing of the Lord.’

  ‘Women will die, Holiness. Children will die. Is this not a sin?’

  ‘When you do the work of God there is no sin in it. You must punish the wicked ways of the Tlascalans and lay my vengeance upon them. Only then will they hear your words of peace. Only then will they accept your mercy. But when that is accomplished, my son, remember what I told you once before. Move on with your army to the city called Cholula where I have prepared a great and terrible victory for you.’

  The big hand was back on Cortés’s head and, as he looked up into the saint’s eyes, black as midnight, he saw reflected in them the fires of burning villages.

  He awoke in the dark, calm, resolved, determined, and lay still for a few moments, listening to Malinal’s soft breathing beside him.

  He needed her for now. She was a good woman. She had been baptised.

  But she was and always would be an Indian.

  He stood and strapped on his sword.

  * * *

  While his forces had been occupying the hill of Tzompach the evening before, Cortés had climbed the temple tower and looked west into the setting sun at the countryside that lay beyond. Unlike the wild moorland and broken ravines they’d passed through to get here, it seemed rich and well populated, with numerous farms, abundant plantations of maize and maguey, and many villages – small and large – perched on high points above wooded slopes and green valleys.

  Now, before dawn on the morning of Wednesday 1 September, he announced his intention to mount a reconnaissance in force and quickly assembled two hundred infantry, ten musketeers, ten crossbowmen, and five hundred Totonac auxiliaries, all armed to the teeth. So rapid was the muster, they were already marching down from the hill of Tzompach when the sun rose.

  ‘What’s the plan?’ Alvarado asked him, riding at his side.

  ‘You’ll like it, Pedro,’ Cortés replied. ‘We’re going to do some harm.’

  An hour later, climbing silently up a forested slope, they reached a cleared hilltop occupied by a large village of perhaps five hundred wattle-and-daub huts. The few men in sight were old or infirm, the young and able-bodied having no doubt been conscripted into Shikotenka’s army, but there were a great many women and children crouched around the cooking fires preparing breakfast.

  Cortés levelled his lance. ‘Kill them all,’ he roared, as he spurred Molinero to a gallop.

  * * *

  They sacked and burned four villages that morning. Sandoval witnessed all the atrocities – feet and hands amputated, women raped and murdered, old men castrated, the noses and ears of children cut off – and although he did not participate himself, never once drawing his sword or bloodying his lance, there was nothing he could do to prevent the carnage.

  By noon, knowing that Shikotenka must have been alerted by the plumes of smoke, Cortés led a forced march back to the camp at the hill of Tzompach. ‘This morning’s work too strong for your stomach?’ he asked Sandoval.

  ‘I didn’t join your expedition to kill women and children, sir,’ Sandoval replied formally, unable to bring himself to use the first-name terms they’d fallen into months ago. ‘God will not forgive us for this.’

  ‘Nonsense, man!’ Cortés snapped. ‘We’ve served God this morning and we’ll be rewarded for it at the gates of heaven. We’ve caused some suffering – yes, I admit that. But by so doing we’ll shorten this war and save thousands of lives.’

  ‘So you’re saying, with Señor Machiavelli of Florence, that the end justifies the means?’

  Cortés smiled. ‘“Every prince should desire to be accounted merciful”,’ he quoted, ‘“not cruel; but a new prince cannot escape a name for cruelty, for he who quells disorder by a few signal examples will, in the end, be more merciful.”’

  ‘I’ve read The Prince, sir, as you obviously have,’ Sandoval replied, ‘but I can’t agree with that philosophy. Only bad things come from bad things, and what we did today, sir, with all due respect, was a bad thing.’

  ‘And is it not a bad thing when we load the lombards and the falconets with grapeshot and mow down five hundred men with a salvo? Is it not a bad thing when we slip the leashes of the war dogs and encourage them to feast on our enemies? Correct me if I’m wrong, but were not you, yourself, the first of us to use the dogs in your battle with the Maya when you went to find Aguilar? I don’t think you hesitated then, when it came to saving your own life and the lives of your men, and I don’t see why I should hesitate now.’

  ‘But it’s different, sir—’

  ‘Look, stop calling me “sir”, will you? We’ve been Hernán and Gonzalo long enough and I’d like it to stay that way, even if we disagree over policy.’

  ‘Very well … Hernán. But it’s still different. To kill men in the heat of battle is one thing. But to kill innocent women and children, to mutilate them, to rape them, to burn their villages and the crops in their fields – how can that be right? What outcome can possibly justify such wickedness?’

  ‘I’ve told you. Peace! Peace soon. Peace now! An end to this brutal war with a violent and stiff-necked foe and an alliance that will make us strong enough to overthrow Moctezuma himself without further bloodshed. That’s the outcome I seek.’

  * * *

  In the early afternoon, back within the fortifications at the hill of Tzompach, Cortés asked Malinal to select two of the prisoners to be used as messengers and bring them to him under guard.

  Now they squatted before him in their Indian manner, eyes watchful, distrusting him, expecting violence. They both claimed to be minor chiefs, Malinal said, and had been confirmed as such by the others, so they would serve his purpose well.

  ‘I’m releasing you,’ he told them, ‘to be messengers of peace to the courageous and honourable Shikotenka. You’re to inform him – as our Totonac emissaries who he treated so badly have already done – that we are here in Tlascala to seek his friendship and make an alliance with him against the Mexica. He should not be misled because we have received hospitality from vassals of Moctezuma, for this means nothing. If that great fool wishes to feed and shelter us on our way to destroy him, why should we not accept? But destroy him we will, with or without the help of Tlascala, therefore it is surely better for Shikotenka to help us, and reap the spoils of our victory against his hated enemy, than hinder us and gain nothing. You have seen now what we can do; you have seen our power on the battlefield and you must know we mean what we say. So know this! We will come to the city of Tlascala as friends to make peace, or we will come as warriors to vanquish you, but in the end it will all be the same. We will march on and we will destroy Moctezuma.’

  It seemed that Shikotenka’s war camp could not be far off because, two hours after nightfall, the messengers were back with his answer and repeated it exactly as he had given it to them. ‘Shikotenka says this: “Come, white men, to the city where my father is. Come by all means! We will make peace with you there by filling ourselves with your flesh and honouring our gods with your hearts and blood”.’

  Cortés exchanged a glance with Malinal and Pepillo, who were again working together to render the translation into perfect Castilian. ‘That’s it?’ h
e asked. ‘That’s all he has to say to us?’

  ‘Not only that. Shikotenka said he plans to pay us a visit here tomorrow to give us a longer answer in person, and we will see what it is.’

  ‘High and mighty language,’ mused Cortés. ‘Sounds like a threat.’

  ‘Undoubtedly it is a threat.’

  Resisting an instinct to cut out the messengers’ tongues and return them to Shikotenka choking on their own blood, Cortés flattered them with mild words and ordered Pepillo to go to the baggage and bring them some strings of beads, which they accepted with smiles. The presents were theirs to keep, he told them, but they were to stay in the camp, for he intended to use them as messengers again.

  * * *

  The next day, Thursday 2 September, arousing a chorus of furious barks and howls from the dogs, Shikotenka came to Tzompach with a hundred thousand warriors. Their faces were painted with red bixa dye, which gave them, Sandoval thought, the look of devils.

  Cortés would have ordered the cannon fired on them as soon as they came within range, had it not been for the fact that they were preceded by a long column of tamanes bearing bundles and baskets of food. ‘Let them come forward,’ he said. ‘We’ll see what this is all about’, and the tamanes were allowed to wind their way up the hill. It soon became apparent that what they carried were hundreds of cooked turkeys together with baskets stuffed full of maize cakes. ‘You see,’ Cortés said triumphantly to Sandoval, ‘our action yesterday worked. They want peace.’

  But while the feast was being handed over, the huge warrior who had decapitated Olid’s horse three days previously began to address the Indian ranks in booming Nahuatl and, as Malinal and Pepillo gave the translation, it became clear that no peace was being offered. ‘What foolish and contemptible men these are,’ the warrior roared with a dismissive gesture at the Spaniards, ‘who threaten us without knowing us, who dare to enter our country without our permission and against our will. Let us not attack them too soon. Let them rest and eat the food we’ve sent them, for they are famished. We don’t want anyone ever to say we defeated them just because they were hungry and tired. Only when they’ve filled their bellies will we attack them, but then we will eat them and in that way they’ll repay us for our turkeys and cakes.’