Cortes On The City of Cholula: October 1519

After spending two or three weeks in Cholula following the massacre there, Cortes and Bernal Diaz both went on to give rather fulsome praise for the place. After directing the 'punishment' as Cortes calls it, word was sent out that the people had no reason to fear the Spaniards. According to both Diaz and Cortes the people returned and commerce went back to 'how it was'. They both describe the city as becoming full in the streets after several days where there was a stillness before. Cortes spoke harshly to the Mexica ambasssadors, he tells in his letter, and then 'made peace' between the Cholula and Tlaxcala. His simple statements about these agreements occurring after generations of fighting - are so sweepingly brazen as to be almost funny. Except for what had just happened.

Bernal Diaz in his chapter lxxxiii compares the city's 'high white towers' to those of Valladolid in Spain [p. 173*]. But Cortes goes on at a considerable length to describe the city and what he sees as it's resources in particular, which I have drastically edited here.

"... [S]ituated in a plain ...[the city] has as many as twenty thousand houses within the main part of the city and as many again in the outskirts.... an independent state having fixed boundaries [with] no overlord but... governed like ... Tlaxcala. The people ... wear ... more clothes.... 

This state is very rich in crops, ...[with] much land ... irrigated. The city is more beautiful to look at than any in Spain, ... well proportioned ...[with] many towers ... I counted more than 430 towers.... I have seen no city so fit for Spaniards to live in ... [with] water... common lands suitable for raising cattle... so many people living... not one foot of land is uncultivated, yet ... they suffer hardships for lack of bread.... many poor people who beg from the rich in the streets as ... in Spain...." [Second Letter, pp. 74-5**]

 It would not be long before they were on the road again, marching to Mexico the City.
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* from Bernal Díaz de Castillo: The True History of the Conquest of New Spain translated with an introduction and notes by Janet Burke and Ted Humphrey, Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Co, Inc. 2012

 ** from 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