All this took place within ten days of the arrival of the Spaniards in Mexico; and for three or four months Montezuma continued a prisoner in the Spanish quarters. Here he was attended with the most profound respect, Cortez himself never approaching him without taking off his cap, and punishing severely every attempt on the part of any of his soldiers to insult the royal captive. Such instances, however, were very rare; for the kindly demeanor of Montezuma, his gentleness under his misfortunes, and, above all, his liberality to those about him, won the hearts of the Spaniards, and made him a general favorite. Nor did Montezuma make any attempt to regain his liberty. Attended by his officers as usual, he received deputations, and transacted business; amused himself by various Mexican games, and appeared to delight in the society of some of the Spaniards, for whom he had contracted a particular partiality.
The Spanish general was now absolute in Anahuac; Montezuma acted under his instructions; and officers were sent out in different directions to survey the country, and ascertain the situation and extent of the gold and silver mines, as if all belonged to the king of Spain. Nor was the formal cession of the kingdom by Montezuma long delayed. Assembling all his nobles at the instigation of Cortez, the Indian monarch addressed them, desiring them to concur with him in surrendering their empire to the Spaniards, who were to come from the rising sun. ‘“For eighteen years,” he said, “that I have reigned, I have been a kind monarch to you, and you have been faithful subjects to me; indulge me, then, with this last act of obedience.” The princes, with many sighs and tears, promised Montezuma, who was still more affected, that they would do whatever he desired. He then sent a message to Cortez, telling him that, on the ensuing day, he and his princes would tender their allegiance to his majesty, our emperor. This they accordingly did at the time appointed, in the presence of all our officers and many of our soldiers, not one of whom could refrain from weeping on beholding the agitation and distress of the great and generous Montezuma.’
Montezuma accompanied the surrender of his kingdon with the gift of an immense treasure, which he had concealed in an apartment within their quarters, desiring it to be sent to Spain, as tribute-money to King Charles from his vassal Montezuma. The sight of this treasure roused the avaricious passions of the Spanish soldiers, and they clamored for a division of the wealth which had been collected since their entrance into Mexico, Cortez was obliged to yield to their demand. The whole wealth amassed during their residence in Mexico amounted, according to Mr. Prescott’s calculation, to about seven millions of dollars of our money, including not only the gold cast into ingots, but also the various articles of jewelry, which were of too fine workmanship to be melted down. The mode of division was this:—First, his majesty’s fifth was set aside; next, a fifth of the remainder was set aside for Cortez; after that, all the debts of the expedition were to be discharged, excluding the amount vested in the expedition by Velasquez, the payment of agents in Spain, etc.; then the losses incurred in the expedition were to be made good, including the expense of the ships sunk off Villa Rica, the price of the horses killed, etc.; and lastly, certain individuals in the army, as the clergyman and the captains, were to receive larger allowances than the rest. ‘By the time all these drafts were made,’ says Bernal Diaz, ‘what remained for each soldier was hardly worth stooping for;’ in other words, instead of amounting to two or three thousand pounds, as they had expected, each soldier’s share came only to about three hundred pounds. Many refused to take their shares, complaining of injustice in the division, and it required all the skill and management of Cortez to soothe the spirits of the discontented. Not a few, it appeared in the end, were no richer for all the prize money they had obtained than when they left Cuba; for, as Bernal Diaz tells us, ‘deep gaming went on day and night with cards made out of the heads of drums.’
Only one source of discomfort now remained to Cortez. This was the continuance of the idolatrous worship of the Mexicans. This subject occupied his thoughts incessantly; and he could not persuade himself that his efforts would be meritorious in the eyes of God, or even that he could hope for permanent success, until the false gods of the Mexicans had been shattered in pieces, and their temples converted into Christian sanctuaries. Not only as a devout Catholic did he abominate the existence of a false worship in a country over which he had control, but, as a man, as a native of a civilized country, he shrunk in abhorrence from the bloody and sickening rites which formed part of the religion of the Mexicans—their human sacrifices—accompanied strangely enough, among a people so polished and so advanced in ingenious arts, by the practice of cannibalism. At length Cortez announced to Montezuma that he must allow at least a part of the great temple to be converted into a Christian place of worship. Montezuma had been a priest, and the proposal was perhaps the most shocking that could have been made to him. He gave his consent, however, and one of the sanctuaries on the top of the temple was purified, and an altar and a crucifix erected in it.
This last act filled up the measure of Mexican endurance. To see their monarch a prisoner, to surrender their kingdom and its treasures—these they could submit to; but could they sit tamely under an insult offered to their gods? Hither and thither though the city ran the priests, with haggard faces, and hair clotted with blood, stirring up the zeal of the inhabitants, and denouncing woes unless the Spaniards were expelled. The crisis was imminent, and every possible precaution was used to prevent a sudden surprise by the excited Mexicans.
It was now the month of May, 1520, and the Spaniards had been six months in the Mexican capital. Suddenly the little army was thrown into consternation by intelligence of an unexpected kind received by Cortez.
It will be remembered that, before advancing into the interior of the country, Cortez had dispatched a vessel to Spain with letters to the emperor, Charles V, and a quantity of treasures. Contrary to the instructions of Cortez, the vessel touched at Cuba on its voyage; and a sailor escaping, conveyed to Velasquez an account of all that had taken place in the expedition, down to the foundation of Villa Rica. The rage of Velasquez exceeded all bounds. He wrote letters to the home government, and also to the court of colonial affairs established in Hispaniola; and not content with this, he instantly began to fit out a second expedition, which was to proceed to Mexico, depose or decapitate Cortez, and seize the country for the Spanish sovereign in the name of the governor of Cuba. The fleet was larger, with one exception, than any yet fitted out for the navigation of the seas of the new world. It consisted of nineteen vessels, carrying upwards of a thousand foot soldiers, twenty cannons, eighty horsemen, a hundred and sixty musketeers and cross-bowmen, besides a thousand Indian servants—a force sufficient, as it seemed, to render all resistance on the part of Cortez hopeless. Velasquez at first intended to command the expedition in person; but, as he was too old and too unwieldy for such a laborious task, he intrusted it to Don Pamfilo de Narvaez, described as a man, about forty-two years of age, of tall stature, and large limbs, full face, red beard, and agreeable presence; very sonorous and lofty in his speech, as if the sound came out of a vault; a good horseman, and said to be valiant.’
The fleet anchored off the coast of Mexico, at St. Juan de Ulua, on the 23d of April, 1520. Here Narvaez received information which astonished him—that Cortez was master of the Mexican capital; that the Mexican emperor was his prisoner; that the country and its treasures had been surrendered to the Spanish sovereign; and that at present his rival was as absolute in it as if he were its monarch. This information only increased his anxiety to come to a collision with Cortez; and, with singular imprudence, he went about among the Indians, declaring, in a blustering manner, that Cortez was a rebel against his sovereign, and that he had come to chastise him, and to set Montezuma free.
Narvaez’s first step was to send three messengers, one of them a priest, to the garrison of Villa Rica, to summon them to surrender. The commandant of the garrison, appointed shortly after the death of Juan de Escalante, was Gonsalvo de Sandoval, a young officer, a native of the same town as Cortez, and who had already won the esteem of his general and of the whole army by his valor and services. When the messengers of Narvaez, arriving at Villa Rica, presented a copy of Narvaez’s commission, and summoned the garrison to surrender, Sandoval, without any ceremony, caused them to be seized, strapped to the backs of Indian porters, and instantly sent across the country to Mexico in charge of one or two soldiers, who carried a note to Cortez, informing him of what had happened. Cortez, after thoroughly gaining them over by kind words and presents, sent them back to sow the seeds of dissension in Narvaez’s army. At the same time he entered into a correspondence with Narvaez, which led to no definite result. As there was great danger that Narvaez would succeed in alienating the Cempoallans from Cortez, if he were permitted to remain in his present position, Cortez resolved to leave Mexico with a part of his men, march to the sea-coast, and, if necessary, give battle to Narvaez. This was a perilous step; but, in the circumstances, it was absolutely necessary.
Leaving a garrison of a hundred and forty men in Mexico, under the command of Pedro de Alvarado, who appeared by far the fittest person for so responsible a post, Cortez set out with the rest of his force, amounting to less than two hundred soldiers, only five of whom were cavalry, and by rapid marches reached the Totonac territories, where he was reinforced by Sandoval and his small body of men. Altogether, Cortez’s army did not amount to more than a fifth part of that of Narvaez. They were veterans in service, however, and, under such a leader as Cortez, were prepared to attempt impossibilities. Narvaez, in the meantime, was in close quarters at Cempoalla, aware that his rival was on his march, but little suspecting that he was so near. On the night of the 26th of May, 1520, Cortez and his brave little band, crossing with difficulty a swollen river which lay between them and their countrymen, advanced stealthily towards Narvaez’s quarters, surprised the sentinels, and shouting the watchword, ‘Espiritu Santo!’ dashed in among the half-awakened, half-armed foe. The struggle did not last long; for Sandoval, with a small body of picked men, springing up the stairs of the house where Narvaez was lodged, succeeded, after a hand to hand fight with the general and his followers, in making him prisoner, after he had lost an eye, and been otherwise severely wounded. On learning the fall of their leader, the rest yielded; and when daylight came, Cortez, ‘seated in an arm-chair, with a mantle of an orange color thrown over his shoulders, and surrounded by his officers and soldiers,’ received the salutations and the oaths of allegiance of all the followers of Narvaez. In his treatment of these new friends his usual policy was conspicuous: he plied them with flatteries, and loaded them with gifts, till his own veterans began to be envious. Thus, by a single bold stroke, which cost him but a few men, Cortez had crushed a formidable enemy, and increased his own force sixfold. Fortune favors the brave! His army now amounted to thirteen hundred men, exclusive of the garrison he had left in Mexico; and of these thirteen hundred nearly a hundred were cavalry. With such a force, he might now prosecute his designs in Mexico with every prospect of success, and bid defiance to all the efforts of the Mexicans to regain their independence.