Cortes Reveals Strategy With Tlaxcala: Second Letter

Cortes does describe one other specific encounter with Mexica messengers 'in the camp' that at least paralells the story told by Bernal Diaz. But this one, in the second letter of Cortes came after a description of the city of Tlaxcala and their way of doling justice, thus an anachronism in chronology. This story is used as preparation to outline his eventual strategy. Here then, it is lain out as both foresight and direct action by himself, for the greater glory of His Majesty King Charles of Spain.

The justification for this, Anthony Pagden posits is that in this second letter, Cortes was asserting not only what he had done, but what his intentions were - at large, so to speak - and how he felt that both of these needed to be justified to the king. Efforts that Cortes felt would most maximally profit both of them. Pagden says this point is made in what he calls a 'throw-away line', where on this occasion that the Mexica messengers came to Cortes and offered  to be made vassals of the King of Spain and the ally of Cortes, and for Cortes to essentially name his price for yearly offerings in gold and jewels. Pagden says it is the "... key to understanding Cortes political objectives and how he viewed both what he always thought of as his conquest and the larger political domain of Charles V which he had, as he insisted time and again, enormously increased...". Pagden makes the claim in an extended introductory essay in the revised edition of his translation to Cortes' letters, published in 1986. Cortes wrote to the King:

"Most Catholic Lord, while I was in the camp which I had in the country during the war with this province [Tlaxcala], six... vassals of Mutezuma, came ... with ... two hundred men in attendance. They told me that they had come on behalf of Mutezuma to inform me how he wished to be your Your Highness's vassal and my ally, and that I should say what I wished him to pay as an annual tribute to Your Highness in gold and silver and jewels as well as slaves, cotton, clothing and other things which he possessed; all of which he would give, provided that I did not go to his land, the reason being that it was very barren and lacking in provisions and it would grieve him if I and those who came with me should be in want. With them he sent me almost a thousand pesos de oro and as many cotton garments, such as they wear."

Placing this throw-away line back in it's original context, provides both the occasion of the meeting and a clear, although brief, exposition of Cortes' strategy. But it is important to remember this second letter was written after Montezuma was 'captured' and the 'conquest' all but complete. In other words, his strategy he is explaining to the king as before the fact, was written after that 'strategy' was already successful. Very little hint of this strategy is in Bernal Diaz' account until later.

Farther in this description of this encounter, Cortes explained that the Mexica warned him against the deceptive Tlaxcala and also, the Tlaxcalan warnings against the Mexica. In the very next paragraph after the one quoted above, the Mexica complain about the Tlaxcala,

"... saying that they were not speaking the truth nor was the friendship they offered me sincere, but that all this was done so that they might dispel my suspicions and thus betray me with impunity. The people of Tlaxcala, on the other hand, warned me many times not to trust Mutezuma's vassals, for they were traitors and everything they did was done with treachery and cunning; and that in this manner they had subjugated the whole land."

With this revelation of the enmity between the two groups, Cortes admits he 'was not a little pleased',

"... for it seemed to further my purpose considerably; consequently I might have the opportunity of subduing them more quickly, for, as the saying goes, "divided they fall." . . . And I remember that one of the Gospels says, "Omne regnum in seipsum divisum desolabitur." So I maneuvered one against the other and thanked each side for their warnings and told each that I held his friendship to be of more value than the other's."

The Gospel here quoted is from Matthew 12:25 where Jesus then goes on to explain to the Pharisees after curing a blind/mute man, that Satan cannot drive Satan out. So it's not a stretch to see that Cortes is likening his abilities to those of Jesus.
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quotes from pp 69-70 in the Second Letter, of Hernán  Cortés: Letters From Mexico, translated, edited and with a new intro by Anthony Pagden, as a Yale Nota Bene book, Yale University Press, USA 2001