Chapter 18
Spaniards in Arcadia
The Expedition lead by Hernan Cortés was the first proper expedition to the mainland by Spain. It is tempting for modern historians to make comparisons, in this regard, between Cortés and Demetrios. The two First Expeditions to Mesoarcadia by Europeans, one from the East and one from the West. One in support of native friends, the other with dreams of riches and conquest. One that was Five Hundred well-trained, but inexperienced, career soldiers. One that was never more than a thousand men, many of whom could only charitably be called 'soldiers', though many had actual combat experience. These comparisons, among others, serve to largely drive home just how different the expeditions were in the long run. For, despite surface level similarities, the two could hardly be more different.
It is often argued that the core of the differences comes down to the personalities and motivations of the men leading the Expeditions.
Demetrios, Prince of the Romans, was an honorable man who lead his men in support of friends and allies. Who would, though some cynically point out he may have saved his own life doing so, choose to leave his birthright and home to live among the people he had fought alongside. To marry a daughter of their 'king' and settle in their city. Here was a man who, in his own way, became as cherished a friend as the natives had ever seen. His men followed his lead, many choosing to settle down as their Prince had.
Cortés, in contrast to this, was a man driven by the height of arrogance and greed. A man who had left against orders and done so quite eagerly. He would scuttle his ships to force his men to stay by his side, even as they began to face resistance from natives primed to mistrust and hate White Men. He lead a motely band of colonial soldiers, former mercenaries and press-ganged Caribbean natives into a land none of them knew, without any friends to help them. Cortés wanted the land for himself, and for the King of Spain, and had no desire nor intention to help support the natives keep their own homes.
In this regard, it should be little surprise that Cortés and the Tlaxcalans were using each other, upon their meeting. There was no love here, as there had been on the other side of the continent.
-Spain's Colonial Ambitions, Published 1992, University of Havana
In the days after the fateful meeting between Cortés and Yiorgos, the Tlaxcalans and Spanish began to train alongside one another. Cortés was eager to begin his conquest, perhaps well-aware that the Governor of Cuba would soon send men to apprehend him. However, with the support of many of the Spaniard's own officers, Yiorgos would put his foot down. If the Spanish were so eager to die, he would allow them to leave. If they truly intended to win against the Aztec, bloodied as they were against the
Purépecha and Romans, the Spanish would need to learn the lay of the land. Learn how their enemy thought, fought, and lived. Charging in blind would only see them killed piecemeal, never able to do more than fire against enemies who refused to stand and make battle.
For the Aztec had learned well and they would not make the same mistakes they had made against Demetrios, so many years before.
So, realizing the futility of forcing the issue, Cortés would allow his men to learn from the natives. Not without grumbling nor protest, but in recognition of the realities of the situation. As such, the Spanish would spend somewhere between a couple weeks and a couple months learning from their erstwhile allies. In this, the records available- often the otherwise excellent
Codex Martinez -disagree.
[1] Regardless of the exact timeframe, this was still a heavily rushed and improvised experience in comparison to the Roman cooperation with their own native allies. In part, this was due to impatience on the part of the Spanish leadership. Though, to Cortés' credit, the man would soften towards the Tlaxcalans and their methods upon realizing just how much there was to learn about operating in Mesoarcadia.
[2] He would, at the least, begin to integrate more of their tactics and ideas. Some say he even found a bride among the natives.
However, leadership aside, a larger part of the issue with the Spanish would be the attitudes of the majority of the men involved. The Roman expedition had been made up of men who lived in a society that mixed many different groups. Greeks, Italians, Turks and various native groups- primarily the
Ohlone, but including others as well -all lived in Constantinople and the other outposts of the Empire. It is said that, save Demetrios and a few others, most of the Roman expedition was of mixed descent. They were men who were used to working with others as equals. The Spanish, on the other hand, were not.
They had built their Empire in the Caribbean on the back of native slaves. They had massacred the
Taino people to almost the last man.
To these men, the concept of the natives as their equal was almost impossible to comprehend. Perhaps not in the way that later racism would take over many colonial powers, especially in Arcadia, but in a prototype of that.
[3] The native auxiliaries in the Spanish force were not considered to be combat troops. More than a few of them were slaves. That didn't, in its own right, cause friction with the Tlaxcala. Even if they had not industrialized slavery as Europeans would, the natives did understand the concept and had no care for what happened to men from Cuba. What did cause friction, however, was that the Spanish soldiers often viewed their supposed allies with the same disdain as their press-ganged auxiliaries. It was not universal, of course. There are always exceptions. Yet it happened often enough to cause issues between arrogant Spaniards and frustrated Tlaxcalans. Cortés, ironically enough, was one of the few exceptions to the rule.
He was as arrogant as the rest, yet he quickly became fast friends with enough of the native leadership to negate that. To some extent, at any rate. Condescension from the Spanish would remain an issue. If the men fought well together, it was more often due to the chaos of battle than any real comradery in the ranks.
In all of this, Yiorgos the Roman saw equal parts frustration and opportunity. Frustration at how difficult it was to forge a working joint force, in comparison to his own- perhaps rose-tinted -view of his time among the
Purépecha. Opportunity in that, if the Spanish insisted on fighting anyway, he could use them to bleed the Aztec and perhaps gain more quality weapons and armor for his own people. And, frankly, that was what the Tlaxcala were. His people. Yiorgos had no love nor familial care for the Spanish just because they happened to be from Europe. He was a man who, in spite of his own heritage, had never seen Europe. If the Spanish wanted to die...well, he wouldn't shed too many tears. He knew that Cortés would be using his men just as much as he was using the Spanish.
In that, if nothing else, the two sides were in firm agreement. An alliance of convenience and nothing more. One that had many potential breaking points.
One of the major remaining sticking points between the two groups was the religion question. Cortés was quite insistent on the benefits of Christianity and that the Tlaxcalan leadership should convert to Catholicism. Perhaps he may have had better luck, were Yiorgos not there. The Tlaxcalans had, in part thanks to the Roman, at least something of a basic understanding of Christianity. Adding the Christian God to their own pantheon to satisfy the Spanish was one thing. Taking baptisms of their leadership or providing daughters to the Spanish was another. In both cases, it was debatable at the time- and even more so in the future -if the Tlaxcalans had any intention of following through with it. Most of their people had little real interest in conversion.
It helped that Yiorgos was far from a crusader for Christ, and had generally accepted that one man could not save the souls of every man he met. A handful of Tlaxcalans had followed his Orthodox faith...to some extent. Even these few Christians were so thoroughly syncretic with their native faith that they made the Spanish more twitchy than the outright pagans did. It is little surprise that religion would continue to be a contentious issue between the Spanish and Arcadian natives for a long time, in this regard.
Eventually, however, the army would have to set out. With both Yiorgos and Cortés at least satisfied
enough that their men could fight alongside one another, delaying further became pointless. Perhaps Cortés let slip that the Governor of Cuba would send more men to bring him back in chains. Perhaps Yiorgos was concerned that he would waste a good campaign season pointlessly trying to get the Spanish and his own men to cooperate properly. Regardless of the reason, a joint force would set out towards Tenochtitlan, on prompting by the Spanish. Cortés, in particular, was quite intent on marching directly on the Aztec capital. There is some debate on his exact reasoning in this decision. Some indicate that Cortés intended on directly striking at the heart of the 'devil worshippers' and ending them in one fell swoop. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the records arguing this are often those with a dim view of the man to begin with. The Tlaxcalans who followed the Orthodox faith or the Aztec, neither of whom had much reason to like the man.
Records more forgiving of Cortés would say that he, in some level of mistrust for Yiorgos, intended to parlay with the Aztec leadership in person. Perhaps to sway them to his side or to allow Christianization. He marched on Tenochtitlan with the intention of talking with the Aztec, not with the intention of burning the grand city to the ground or any such things. The army was intended as a defensive measure, not an offensive one.
The most likely answer is a mix of the two. It is almost certain that Cortés
did, indeed, intend on talking with the Aztec leadership. For his own reasons that are lost to time. It is also almost certain that Cortés fully intended on fighting his way to the Aztec capital no matter what the natives felt about it. Rarely, especially in the stories of the Spanish adventures in Arcadia, is 'black' or 'white' the correct answer.
Regardless of the real reason, the joint army marched on the Aztec capital, moving through lands torn apart by decades of low-intensity war.
[4] Ever since the loss against Demetrios and the
Purépecha, the Aztec had been fighting against old enemies and former tributaries alike. This long conflict had lead to desolate towns and villages scattered between the Tlaxcala, their allies, and the Aztec and
their allies. The Tlaxcala were used to it. The Spanish found it an enlightening experience. Perhaps warfare in this foreign and strange land was, at least, familiar to their European sensibilities.
They could not be further from the truth, as they would discover to their dismay.
Yiorgos lead the joint army through these borderlands, curious gazes from the hardy survivors following every movement. These lands, far from the
Purépecha, had not seen white men in gleaming armor. Men, women and children alike were warily curious about the strange men walking with the more familiar Tlaxcalan warriors. A few braver souls even approached the Spanish, wondering if they had come to fight the Aztec. Cortés, never one to miss a beat, would proudly declare he had come to 'end the war'. He kept studiously silent on exactly how he intended to do so.
Of course, upon entering Aztec territory, the curious civilians were replaced with hostile faces. The Tlaxcala and their allies were not well loved in lands of the Triple Alliance, any more than Jaguar Warriors would have been in Tlaxcalan territory.
More times than could be counted, raids on the roving army would occur. Both by proper warriors and angry men who wished to see nothing more than the army
gone from their homes. It is estimated that the joint Spanish/Tlaxcalan force would fight a dozen or more skirmishes before their first major battle, outside the walls of a city called Cholula and its great pyramid. Here, at the gate of a city that had left the Tlaxcala for the Aztec, the alliance would be tested for the first time.
Cholula, an important religious center of Mesoarcadia, was a sacred city to almost all native peoples in the area. Its many temples, the Great Pyramid once chief among them, gave it great moral power amongst the lands surrounding it. It was this moral power that had made its defection from the Tlaxcala to the Aztec such a matter of contention with the leadership of both alliances. The Aztec would, naturally, declare it as a sign the gods favored them. The priests of Cholula would not dispute this point, recognizing that their
temporal power rested entirely on whatever state they supported. They had made the choice to join the more powerful Aztec Triple Alliance for a very good reason. There was also, perhaps, some level of bitterness over the previous conquest of the city by the Tlaxcala.
A conquest that, in the minds of many Tlaxcalans, had Cholula as
their city. None had forgiven, nor forgotten, the city choosing to leave during the long war with the Aztec and switch sides. This defection, and the moral authority it vested in Tenochtitlan, had largely salvaged the loss of face that the Triple Alliance had faced for their loss against Demetrios and his forces.
It is important to keep this in mind, when one questions why Cortés force marched on Cholula at all. It was not necessary in regards to the path to Tenochtitlan. It was a detour that, by all rights, should have happened. While there are some who deny it, this was almost certainly a choice made by the Tlaxcala themselves. They had not marched on Cholula on their own, not once, during the war with the Aztec. Why do so now? The answer is almost certainly a simple one. As Yiorgos thought of using the Spanish for his own ends, as Cortés thought of using the Tlaxcala for his own desires, the Tlaxcala also had their own reasons and motivations for what they did.
The agency of the natives should not be forgotten. Over any protests by Yiorgos who, while well-respected and a lord in his own right, was still a
foreigner...the main force of the Tlaxcala forced the issue. Yiorgos and Cortés both had to follow the greater part of their army as it moved to the sacred city. There was no room for debate nor for complaint. The Spanish were promised wealth for their trouble, and the Roman Lord was silenced by his own friends.
"I know why they did it. They wanted revenge for the slight and to take advantage of our new
friends and their ignorance of the history of the area. I couldn't have stopped it even if I had tried." So Yiorgos would write down in his own
Codex, when he finally gave up warfare.
As for the city that the army marched on, Cholula was not a city prepared for warfare. It was a city of temples and priests, not a city of nobles and warriors. It survived on the spiritual authority of its rulers more than on force of arms. What army it had was small, albeit elite, and ill-prepared for any form of battle. This was not a city that could win a pitched battle against a besieging force, without support.
So it did not even try.
The leadership of Cholula would send envoys to meet with the Spanish and their allies. Plying them with gifts of food and drink, even as the small force of warriors prepared the city for a siege it could not hope to survive. It was a two-faced measure, perhaps, but one that the leadership had almost been forced into. These preparations, intended for defense, would be the thing that almost certainly doomed the city. The Tlaxcalans, likely looking for some form of excuse, were given one on the proverbial silver platter.
[5] The Spanish, not fooled by the gifts, noticed the preparations for war and siege. Cortés, who in his mind had made no motions of anger nor intentions of harm to the city, was livid at the apparent betrayal. Why ply the Spanish with gifts while preparing to fight?
A rumor that the nobles and priests intended to murder the Spanish in their sleep, while quite possibly false, only served to push the issue over the edge. In spite of the best intentions of either the leadership of Cholula or the Spanish or Yiorgos, the city would be sacked and put to the torch. Frustrated Spanish troops, long denied a release outlet for their dislike of the natives, would run rampant through the sacred city. The Tlaxcalans, still angry and bitter over the betrayal of the Cholulan nobility and priesthood, joined in the rape and destruction. By the time it was over and the army would move on, fattened by the pillage?
The sacred city of Cholula was a burning ruin, the temples sacked and ruined. The Great Pyramid, already overgrown, ruined yet further. No matter what the intentions of the Tlaxcala had been in bringing the Spanish to this city, it was done. Cholula was ruined, its choice to join the Aztec destroying it as certainly as the Aztec might have done had it remained with Tlaxcala.
Warfare was not so different in Mesoarcadia, as some might have believed. It would be just the first of many such events, in the history of Spanish conquest.
1. Written by a priest accompanying Cortés, the Codex Martinez is one of the definitive sources on the early colonial period in Arcadia. Drawing on Aztec, Tlaxcalan and Roman sources, it paints a picture of what life was like when the Spanish began to arrive in force. The art, shaped by both native and Roman styles, has made it a precious piece of art in addition to its historical value. There are few sources given such care and precedence in regards to Mesoarcadian history.
2. Cortés remained an arrogant and selfish man, however he did appear to form genuine friendships with Tlaxcalan notables. This strange friendship would allow him to at least accept that, perhaps, his erstwhile allies knew more than he did about warfare in this new land. It was a unique friendship that, sadly, did not extend entirely to the Spanish as a whole.
3. European racism would become a stain upon many countries in later years. However, the Spanish opinion of the natives had less to do with the color of their skin and more to do with their primitive culture and pagan beliefs. It would be many years before the more traditional views of race took hold, views that even applied to the- very mixed race -Romans, upon true contact with Europe itself.
4. The war between the Aztec and their allies against the Tlaxcala and their allies was never a pitched war in the sense of the great wars of Europe. There were massive battles, yes, but many more were simple skirmishes. The land on the borders between the groups was ruined more through these skirmishes than through any intentional actions. Towns and villages were often targets of raids for sacrifices and slaves, and these alone did more to devastate the land than any intentional ruin could have done.
5. While the truth of what occurred in Cholula is a confused mess, it is likely that the Tlaxcalans took legitimate defensive preparations and blew them out of proportion. The Spanish, who did not truly understand the politics of the matter, were all too eager to accept the excuses. For both loot to pillage and for religious reasons, the 'sacred' city an affront to their own religion.
AN: Apologies, I've been worked hard the last couple months. This week, in particular, wore me out like you wouldn't believe. I had intended to have this done a few days back, and had it halfway done for most of that time. I just couldn't muster the energy or motivation to buckle down and finish it.
That is probably reflected in the quality of this update, but it's been long enough since I posted anything that I don't think waiting any longer is good. So hopefully it still works well enough, even with that.
One of the things I really wanted to show with this is that the war here is not 'black and white'. Yes, the Aztec are a bunch of heart-ripping murderers...but that doesn't necessarily mean that the Tlaxcalans are in the right all the time, either. Cholula is a black mark historically, and I wanted it to remain such here, to demonstrate that fact. It's just as confused a mess historically- I drew a lot of this on what little we do know -of course. But I, in what I've read on it, do tend to fall on the assumption that the Tlaxcalans used the Spanish to get petty revenge on the city for switching sides after being conquered by them in the first place.
Again, though, it's a mess that we probably won't ever have any concrete answers for.
