On
November 8, 1519, Hernán Cortés and his band of conquistadors entered the Aztec
capital city, Tenochtitlan, where they met Montezuma II, the leader of the
Aztecs at that time. Cortés and Montezuma were able to maintain a cordial
relationship for a while, as the Aztec ruler invited the Spaniards to his
feasts, allowed them to build a chapel, and let the conquistadors tour the
city’s markets and temples in peace. Yet, both sides were naturally suspicious
of the other, and while Cortés and Montezuma were acting amiably in public, both
were secretly plotting ways to gain an advantage over their rival.
Cortés
and the Spaniards especially feared that Montezuma would one day withdraw his
protection and order an attack, leaving the conquistadors surrounded by foes in
a hostile labyrinth of a city. Such paranoia caused the Spaniards to start
brainstorming ways to gain leverage over the Aztecs. They eventually decided
upon a bold plan to take Montezuma hostage, yet they hesitated in carrying out
their mission, presumably waiting for some affront to occur which would justify
their action.
The
spark that the Spaniards were waiting for did not occur in Tenochtitlan, but
back at the Spanish colony of Veracruz. Hernán Cortés had founded the
settlement before marching off to Tenochtitlan, and a certain Juan Escalante
was deputized as the constable of the colony during Cortés’ absence. While Cortés was doing his part in
Tenochtitlan, Escalante was seeing to Spanish interests at the colony, which
brought him into contact with a leader named Qualpopoca, who led an
Aztec-aligned city that the Spaniards called Almeria. In the so-called Second
Letter that Hernán Cortés sent back to his liege, Charles V, it was
reported that Qualpopoca deceived Escalante into thinking that Almeria wanted
to submit to Spanish rule. Four Spaniards from Veracruz were sent to Almeria to
negotiate with Qualpopoca, but upon their arrival, the Veracruz diplomats were
ambushed and two were killed. The surviving two fled back to Escalante, who
immediately gathered forces to seek revenge. According to Cortés’ Second
Letter, Escalante marched with a force of 40 or 50 conquistadors (aided by
thousands of allied natives) against Almeria.
Escalante’s
battle at Almeria is a difficult event to gauge. Hernán Cortés, in his Second
Letter, downplayed the battle to his liege, telling Charles V that the
campaign against Almeria was a straight-forward success, in which Escalante
crushed Qualpopoca’s army, forced the enemy to abandon the city, and then
burned Almeria to the ground. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, one of Cortés’
conquistadors, had a vastly different view of the battle, which he presented in
his Conquest of New Spain. In total disagreement with Cortés, Bernal
Díaz claimed that the battle at Almeria was a defeat and disaster suffered by
the Spaniards. Far from a steamrolling of Qualpopoca’s forces, the clash at
Almeria was apparently a brutal battle. According to Bernal Díaz, a great
number of Escalante’s native allies died in the attack, and around 8 of the 40-50
Spaniards who participated in the attack died from wounds sustained at
Almeria—Escalante, himself, was one of those who would succumb to his wounds. Furthermore,
the conquistadors’ poor showing at the battle reportedly boosted morale of the Aztecs
and demoralized the communities that had been working with Veracruz. To
conclude his summary of the Battle at Almeria, Bernal Díaz wrote, “It was the
first defeat we had suffered in New Spain, and misfortunes, as the reader will
see, were now descending upon us” (Conquest of New Spain, chapter 93-94).
Although
Cortés downplayed the events of Almeria in his letter to Charles V, his actions
in Tenochtitlan when he learned of the battle show that his true impression of
the attack was much more aligned with Bernal Díaz than the letter let on. News
of Almeria and Escalante’s death spurred Cortés and the conquistadors in
Tenochtitlan to launch their plot to take Montezuma hostage. They successfully
kidnapped the Aztec leader, and one of the first demands they made of their
royal captive was for Montezuma to summon to Tenochtitlan Qualpopoca and other chiefs
involved in the Almeria incident. According to Cortés’ Second Letter, 17
chieftains answered Montezuma’s summons, including Qualpopoca and one of his
sons. They apparently did not suspect that anything was amiss, for Qualpopoca
entered the city leisurely, carried on a lordly litter. Their ignorance,
however, did not last long—under pressure from his conquistador captors,
Montezuma had the 17 military leaders arrested and handed them over to Cortés.
According
to both Hernán Cortés and Bernal Díaz, the imprisoned chieftains were
interrogated (and probably tortured), and the questions of the interrogators
pried for information as to how involved Montezuma was in Qualpopoca’s hostile
actions. The chieftains started out by acknowledging that they were loyal to
the Aztec ruler, but also insisted that Montezuma was not directly involved in
the Almeria attack. As the interrogation persisted, however, the chieftains
began to change their story to implicate Montezuma more and more. Satisfied with
their answers, Hernán Cortés was ready to pronounce the punishment for the
leaders who had killed his friend, Escalante—it would be brutal.
When
it came to punishing the leaders of the Almeria incident, Hernán Cortés did not
simply want recompense or apology; instead, he wanted to take the opportunity
to display his power and to instill terror on the city of Tenochtitlan. What
Cortés did next apparently even caught Montezuma completely off guard, and he
would react worse to this decision than he had to being kidnapped by the
Spaniards. Bernal Díaz vividly described the fate of the 17 chieftains in his Conquest
of New Spain:
“Cortés sentenced the captains [of Almeria] to be
burned to death before the royal palace. This sentence was immediately carried
out and, to prevent any interference, Cortes had Montezuma put in chains while
they were being burned. The prince roared with anger at this indignity, and
became even more alarmed than before” (Conquest of New Spain, chapter
95).
Written
by C. Keith Hansley
Picture
Attribution: (The Torture of Cuahutemoc, painted in the late 19th-century by
Leandro Izaguirre, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).
Sources:
- The Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Díaz, translated by J. M. Cohen. New York: Penguin Books, 1963.
- https://archive.org/details/lettersofcorts01cortuoft/page/240
- https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32474/32474-h/32474-h.htm
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Montezuma-II
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hernan-Cortes
- https://www.ancient.eu/Montezuma/
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