The March of Folly_ From Troy to Vietnam - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [8]
In 1519 a party of Spanish conquistadors coming from Cuba under the command of Hernán Cortés landed on the Mexican Gulf coast at Vera Cruz. In the twenty-five years since Columbus had discovered the Caribbean islands, Spanish invaders had established a rule that rapidly devastated the native people. If their bodies could not survive Spanish labor, their souls, in Christian terms, were saved. In their mail and helmets, the Spaniards were not settlers with patience to clear forests and plant crops, but restless ruthless adventurers greedy for slaves and gold, and Cortés was their epitome. More or less at odds with the Governor of Cuba, he set forth on an expedition with 600 men, seventeen horses and ten artillery pieces, ostensibly for exploration and trade but more truly, as his conduct was to make plain, for glory and an independent domain under the Crown. His first act on landing was to burn his ships so that there could be no retreat.
Informed by the local inhabitants, who hated the Aztec overlords, of the riches and power of the capital, Cortés with the larger part of his force boldly set out to conquer the great city of the interior. Though reckless and daring, he was not foolhardy and made alliances along the way with tribes hostile to the Aztecs, especially with Tlaxcala, their chief rival. He sent word ahead representing himself as the ambassador of a foreign prince but made no effort to pose as a reincarnated Quetzalcoatl, which for the Spaniards would have been out of the question. They marched with their own priests in very visible presence carrying crucifixes and banners of the Virgin and with the proclaimed goal of winning souls for Christ.
On report of the advance, Montezuma summoned his council, some of whom strongly urged resisting the strangers by force or fraud, while others argued that if they were indeed ambassadors of a foreign prince, a friendly welcome would be advisable, and if they were supernatural beings, as their wondrous attributes suggested, resistance would be useless. Their “gray” faces, their “stone” garments, their arrival at the coast in waterborne houses with white wings, their magic fire that burst from tubes to kill at a distance, their strange beasts that carried the leaders on their backs, suggested the supernatural to a people for whom the gods were everywhere. The idea that their leader might be Quetzalcoatl seems, however, to have been Montezuma’s own peculiar dread.
Uncertain and apprehensive, he did the worst thing he could have done in the circumstances: he sent splendid gifts that displayed his wealth, and letters urging the visitors to turn back that indicated his weakness. Borne by a hundred slaves, the gifts of jewels, textiles, gorgeous featherwork and two huge plates of gold and silver “as large as cart wheels” excited the Spaniards’ greed, while the letters forbidding further approach to his capital and almost pleading with them to return to their homeland and couched in soft language designed to provoke neither gods nor ambassadors were not very formidable. The Spaniards marched on.
Montezuma made no move to stop them or bar their way when they reached the city. Instead, they were greeted with ceremonial welcome and escorted to quarters in the palace and elsewhere. The Aztec army waiting in the hills for the signal to attack was never called, although it could have annihilated the invaders, cut off escape over the causeways or isolated and starved them into surrender. Just such plans had in fact been prepared, but were betrayed to Cortés by his interpreter. Alerted, he put Montezuma under house arrest in his own palace as a hostage against attack. The sovereign of a warlike people outnumbering their captors by a thousand to one, submitted.