Montezuma Captured: A Nahuatl Remembrance: November 14, 1519

The last great ruler of the Mexica, Motecuhzoma was captured mid-November by Spanish forces in the capital city. The stories of Nahua elders that friar Sahagun put down decades later, give a vivid tangible account.

"When the Spaniards entered the Royal House, they placed Motecuhzoma under guard and kept him under their vigilance. They also placed a guard over Itzcuauhtzin [the lord of Tlatelolco], but the other lords were permitted to depart.

Then the Spaniards fired one of their cannons, and this caused great confusion in the city. The people scattered in every direction; they fled without rhyme or reason; they ran off as if they were being pursued. It was as if they had eaten the mushrooms that confuse the mind, or seen some dreadful apparition. They were all overcome by terror, as if their hearts had fainted. And when night fell, the panic spread through the city and their fears would not let them sleep.

In the morning the Spaniards told Motecuhzoma what they needed in the way of supplies: tortillas, fried chickens, hen's eggs, pure water, firewood and charcoal. Also: large, clean cooking pots, water jars, pitchers, dishes and other pottery. Motecuhzoma ordered that it be sent to them. The chiefs who received this order were angry with the king and no longer revered or respected him. But they furnished the Spaniards with all the provisions they needed -- food, beverages and water, and fodder for the horses." [page sixty-five - sixty-six]

He would no longer be his own master til the end of his days.
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 The Broken Spears: the Aztec account of the conquest of Mexico, translated, edited with an introduction by Miguel León-Portilla, expanded and with a postscript, Boston, Beacon Press, 2006.

Battle of Campo Morto: August 20, 1482

In the spring of 1482, the Venetians began retaking some salt marshes around Commachio. Over the previous dozen years, south of the Po river delta, the duke of Ferrara, Ercole d'Este had, bit by bit, taken over and begun to run what the Venetians had always claimed was their monopoly on salt.  This was seen as a dispute that was also an act of aggression, with two separate claimants.

Alfonso II of Naples, heir to his father's throne, and as the loyal brother of the wife of the Duke, took his army north to defend his sister and brother-in-law. No one to trifle with, after spending the previous year fighting the Turks in southern Italy, he had seasoned troops. But on the road north, he was stopped and not allowed to cross papal lands in order to get close enough to give relief to the embattled Duke. Outraged at this affront to his dignity, Alfonso turned instead to the nearby rich papal lands, near Rome, and began laying waste to the countryside. The pope was understandably horrified.

Girolamo Riario the captain-general of the papal forces was summoned to defend Rome. He amassed his army inside the city walls near the Appian Gate, on the southern side of the city, and waited. Skirmishes in the countryside, other armies assembled, Girolamo stayed in Rome, on the grounds of the Saint John Lateran church. This was the church [and a link to a virtual tour] where Peter and the other early popes first celebrated mass in Rome. Lev tells us that contemporary storyteller Stefano Infessura even heard that the soldiers of the captain-general were gambling and telling obscene stories in the nave. And worse. Lev, our storyteller, assumes that her heroine, Caterina, the wife of the dissembling Girolamo, must have 'burned with shame', but shows no evidence for it. Months dragged on.

"At the beginning of these tensions Caterina had offered to go to Milan with her husband to "calm and pacify these issues," but nothing came of it. From that letter in January 1482, Caterina wrote nothing more until the final battle of the Salt War played out in August of that year." 

That 'letter' refers to those of Caterina Sforza, collected in a three volume set by Pier Desiderius Pasolini and published in Rome, by Loescher in 1893 and kept in the Milan State Archives. I mention this and the existence of her letters, because our author does and because absence of evidence doesn't make her case. Instead, she helpfully does explain what women of Caterina's station did in those times when their menfolk were or should be at war.

"Like many other women of her age unable to intervene in earthly affairs, she invoked divine assistance. And because Caterina always threw herself wholeheartedly into her endeavors, she did more than light a few candles. According to her eighteenth-century biographer Antonio Burriel, her pale figure, emaciated from fasting, knelt for hours in a penitent's robes at the altar or distributed alms to the poor. She certainly prayed for peace, but probably also that her husband would desist from destroying the last shreds of respectability he enjoyed in Rome." [p.75]

Because I can't read the letters in the Milan archives, this is the only real criticism I might have on occasion, reading Ms Lev's biography of Sforza. As an example, saying that Caterina 'probably had' prayed that her husband 'would desist from destroying the last shreds of respectability he enjoyed...' without seeing the originals, leads a little much. Or later, that "... nothing of substance existed within..." her husband. [p. 77]  Again, I would not be aware of this as a topic without Lev's excellent biography, which is also duly, plentifully cited. But this statement and others like them, posit too much of Caterina's innermost thoughts and motives into such a narrative, with little more than modern supposition for such conjecture. It helps drive the narrative but does so by blurring cultural norms and expectations that we moderns may not share with Italian nobles of the renaissance period.

It also makes such 500 year old expectations of how people should act, normative, rather than, as in the case of Caterina Sforza, exceptional, as she very much was. Maybe there isn't the evidence to know what she thought about her husband this summer of 1482. In that case, we shouldn't make it seem certain with abstract ideas like shame and failing honor, or duty. Even if, or especially since, the eighteenth century biographer Pier Desiderio Pasolini was the source for such beliefs and we have no letters of hers to back it up. Lev notes in her introduction the difficulties she had with Pasolini's work. In other areas the author does point out when judgemental, interior thoughts are projected by others, as she does in the case of Stefano Infessura [p. 78-79].

By August, the pope had asked Venice for someone else to break the stalemate. Roberto Malatesta, a mercenery hired by Venice came to Rome and, together with Girolamo's, that is, the pope's forces, marched in parade thru the city. When the day of the battle came, Alfonso's forces had grown to include many of the Colonna, and Savelli families of Rome. Girolamo and the pope had grown very unpopular indeed in the city, by all accounts.
Lev tells us the battle lasted from Four til Eleven o'clock on August 20, 1482 and would be the most bloody Italian battle in a decade. Malatesta's army bravely stood their ground and did great damage to and soundly defeated those forces of Alfonso of Naples. Girolamo had stayed back, 'guarding the tents'. The pope had to accept that Malatetsa was the victor and he was awarded the honors. Like an ancient Roman General, Malatesta was paraded through Rome with a long train of Cardinals behind him, and the people came out and cheered their liberator. But he had contracted dysentery and died within a month.

Girolamo tried to take credit and was ignored. When Malatesta died, as lord of Rimini, his infant son became the new lord there. When Girolamo, desperate for a victory, galloped off to take control of Rimini,  he was stopped by forces from Florence. So, Girolamo returned, empty-handed. Naples had been humiliated, as well as Ferrara. Venice could continue to maintain the works near Commachio. Faenza, still independent, now had a weaker ally in the duke of Ferrara, and greater reason to fear 'empty-handed' Count Girolamo Riario.
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Elizabeth Lev, The Tigress of Forli: Renaissance Italy's most courageous and notorious countess, Caterina Riario Sforza de'Medici : 2011, USA, Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt Publishing Company

Summer Travels, Troubling Portents; From Forli to Venice and Rome:1481

One way to describe the picture of Girolamo Riario that becomes clear is through his failures. Failures it seems true, by his own recurring examples, in Elizabeth Lev's biography of his wife Caterina Sforza. Failures measured by what may have been important then, with regard to personal status and the hierarchical, the political, and the military, the guards, the horses, real-estate, dice. Time after time, especially toward the end he is seen, again and again not measuring up. Because his position in that world was so very powerful and he, seemed never able to fill the shoes of the office, but also, he just as often seemed to make things worse, it seems even easier to condemn his rather dramatic fall from grace. A series of dramatic examples were part of Caterina's life too, and she, somehow managed to not just act extraordinarily, but even save him and all the wealth they'd accumulated and retire to Forli.

So in that sense it may be fitting to draw Girolamo so darkly. On the other hand it makes the 'perfection' of Caterina stand out that much brighter. Always happy, obedient and acting just as she should in all offices and appearances, and then when circumstances forced the issue, she could then triumph over her husband's failings and save them both anyway, despite his mismanagement. But this is the story of the slow downfall of Girolamo Riario that Elizabeth Lev tells.

A thread of that tapestry starts with Ferrara in that summer that the Count and Countess went to Forli, in 1481. In August that same year they took a bunch of their belongings and went to nearby Imola, which they also were lord and lady to. Passing around Faenza the small town between them. Both Forli and Imola were part of the inheritance for Caterina, but they were also newly won for the papal lands of pope Sixtus IV, Girolamo's uncle. Previously, her father the duke of Milan had wanted to cement relations with this pope and his family. The idea was to form an alliance between Milan in securing these as papal lands. The region known as Romagna lay between Venice and everywhere else, near to Florence, halfway to Naples, bordered the important city of Bologna and could suport the eastern coast if needed to. A strong papacy, acting in the interests of Milan and hopefully France as well, could act as a strong check on any of the other strong impulses vying for control of central Italy there. Ferrara, sat on the edge of all this.

The couple stayed only a month in Imola but, the Count set in motion a number of building projects in the style of the Florentines there, and a massive project to pave the muddy roads. He also decided to take the entourage to Venice with his wife Caterina eight months pregnant.

"A mighty baggage train of thirty-six mules and twenty-one carts announced the arrival of the couple in Ravenna, and on September 8 [1481] they cruised into Venice on special gondolas constructed for the arrival of exalted guests." [p. 70]

Lev reports that Lorenzo de'Medici knew that Girolamo was asking Venice for help in squeezing Ercole d'Este, the duke of Ferrara. If the Venetians could help him, they could keep Reggio or all they took from Ferrara. He only wanted Faenza, the small town disrupting the route between Forli and Imola, between what were now his holdings. The Venetians threw parties for them, gave him honorable titles but would not commit on any future plans. All this Lev, says came from the personal archives of Lorenzo de'Medici in the Florence state archives. [p. 71]

When the couple returned to Forli in late September, they took a route that went around Ferrara. Even so, before they got home they were attacked. It was called the Artisan Uprising but Lev says they were acting on the impetus of the duke of Ferrara and Lorenzo de'Medici.  Instead, the local loyal captain Gian Francesco Maruzzi, Il Tolentino quashed the tumult and the next day, Girolamo went to mass with three hundred armed guards. [p. 72]

This is really only the first chapter of the story of what would become the War on Ferrara and the slow demise of Girolamo Riario. Continuing home, as the summer travel turned fall, they left children and treasure in Imola, the safer town. By the end of October, and within a few days of their arrival back in Rome, Caterina gave birth to a healthy baby girl, named for her grandmother Bianca. Girolamo waited until November to give the order to hang those implicated in the uprising back in Forli. [p.73]
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quotes and pagination from Elizabeth Lev, The Tigress of Forli: Renaissance Italy's most courageous and notorious countess, Caterina Riario Sforza de'Medici : 2011, USA, Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt Publishing Company

Otranto Seized By Turks, 1480; Riarios Go To Forli, 1481

It was late in July, 1480 that 128 Turkish ships swarmed near Otranto, Italy, the eastern most harbor on the easternmost edge of the Italian peninsula. Within two weeks the Turks had taken Otranto and beheaded 800 men who, it is said, would not renounce their Christian faith. This fleet of Turks would stay in Italy all winter, and into the spring, taking town after town until finally withdrawing in April, 1481. Ferdinand I, the king of Naples struck a truce, which was also partly settled by Alfonso II, his son with his army that had retaken Otranto.

Earlier this year, on February 28, 2013, Pope Benedict XVI stepped down to the shock of the Catholic World. One of his last requests as pope was to set in motion the necessary processes to canonize those 800 'martyrs of Otranto'.  It thus became one of the first things that the new pope Francis I had on his schedule to perform after celebrating the Easter holidays and becoming pope. He is reported  (by Al Jazeera and also slightly differently by the guardian) to have said,  in the May12 ceremony that

"While we venerate the martyrs of Otrante, ask God to support the many Christians who ... still suffer from violence and to give them the courage to be devout and to respond to evil with goodness." He also commented on abortion, saying legislation should be introduced to "protect all human beings from the first moment of their existence."

The AlJazeera report cited above, said the pope had said, "... Christians who ... still suffer from violence and give them the courage and fate to respond to evil with goodness." Which is an interesting difference in translated speech in the modern age.
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The news of the attack, of course, in 1480, shocked everyone. The pope called for a crusade. Naples responded affirmatively, and even Florence said it would help. France and Hungary sent money and troops. The pope's captain general, Girolamo Riario himself likely stayed in Rome. He's not heard mentioned in the efforts against the Turks. Venice could not afford to commit actual troops as they had signed a truce the year before with the sultan's ministers. This would be remembered as more evidence of Venetian duplicity.

In August, some seventy ships attacked Vieste and in September, a monastery that held a huge library was destroyed. In October, Pino Ordelaffi was killed by his own people. Despite the chaos stirred up by the loss of more and more Christian towns on south-eastern Italy, the pope secured Forli for his captain general who immediately sent Gian Francesco Maruzzi to act as it's temporary captain. It was a good thing, too. This loyal captain for Girolama Riario would save his chief, time and again over the next few years. The relatives of Pino Ordelaffi tried to retake Forli, but Maruzzi, called 'Il Tolentino' quickly seized them and had the conspirators hung, He spent the rest of the year installing new security measures and keeping his ear to the ground hoping to make things ready for a springtime visit by it's new owners. [p. 63]

Treasure was heaped up, horses harnessed, troops amassed, the attendants, courtiers, ministers, ladies-in-waiting were gathered together with the family, including the two baby boys of Caterina and Girolamo and all set off for Forli soon after Easter, 1481. Caterina was five months pregnant, so all sizes of clothing had to be brought along with jewelry and dinnerware. All the silverware of course, to receive guests and impress the people of Forli had to be mustered as well. Many carriages, many horses, many armed guards arrived in procession, including many members of the Roman nobility as part of the great retinue of the Count. These men were not fighting against the Turks in and near Otranto.

"The arrival of the Riarios was the grandest procession in the history of Forli. Nobles carrying banners and lances marched at the head, as brass horns announced their passage ... pennants proudly proclaimed the artisan trades, and the leading citizen of each of the four neighborhoods of Forli marched in the throng.... Caterina, Girolamo, and their children were resplendent in multicoloured silks... soldiers wore silver cloaks over their armor, ... the knights ... in gold brocade. The people of Forli crowded the alleys and climbed onto balconies to catch a glimpse of the splendid retinue, which included members of the ancient noble Roman houses of Orsini, Colonna and Savelli. Decked ... in fine pearls, rare jewels, and sumptuous fabrics, the rainbow of courtiers looked more than worthy of their renowned heritage." [pp. 64-65]

When they all arrived, there was a great celebration lasting many days. But after initially playing his part, the Count himself soon withdrew from the crowds. A tour of much of the treasure brought from Rome was offered for locals to come and see more of the richness of their new lords.  That same May, news arrived in Italy that Mehmet II, famed Ottoman sultan of the Turks, the conqueror of Constantinople, had died. All of Italy rejoiced. The Turks had run out of food and supplies, so they struck a truce with the king of Naples and many withdrew leaving a sizable contingent to protect their interests. When a great festival was held in July, 1481 in Forli, jousts and a mock battle based on the siege at Otranto were held. The Count promised the people he would ban some taxes and lower others to further rejoicing of the people. [p. 67]
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quotes and pagination from Elizabeth Lev, The Tigress of Forli: Renaissance Italy's most courageous and notorious countess, Caterina Riario Sforza de'Medici : 2011, USA, Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt Publishing Company

Cortes Meets Motecuhzoma: November 8, 1519

The meeting between Motecuhzoma and Cortes that Bernal Diaz said happened on this day was at first accepted at face-value. The two met, it was historic, dramatic, consequential and has loomed large for both parties and many others, down to the current day. Cortes had been wanting this day to come for some months and he would also want it to be remembered in a certain way. The locals had their varying recollections, and Bernal Diaz had his version, too. But those stories that came from the sixteenth century had accepted the initial story told by Cortes with little in any means for scrutiny or understanding of the immediate environment, the temporal context of the day and these prior months of Spanish advancement in Mesoamerica.

Matthew Restall gives a great breakdown of the meeting between Cortes and Motecuhzoma as one centerpiece in his fifth chapter of Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest. There was an attempted handshake, according to Cortes and a gift by him of a great necklace. Cortes says he tried to hug the great leader but was stopped by his guards from touching him. Restall points out that Gomara in the official biography of Cortes 'glosses over this and said they saluted each other.' Bernal Diaz said they both 'bowed deeply' toward each other, but Restall says that neither Cortes nor Gomara mention this.
Further, Restall points out that the bowing and the direct address of Motecuhzoma to Cortes, as told by the locals of friar Sahagun decades later, broke with the strict adherence to the leader's own protocol. No one was allowed to look directly at the great leader unless he gave permission. But Restall says, the way they tell it "... suggests that Moctezuma took the initiative in breaking the taboo, permitting Cortes to look right at him, attempting to meet him at a cultural  halfway point."  He sees the same thing in the Spanish versions of this meeting but says they put a greater emphasis on Montezuma essentially "submitting to Cortes ... prostrated himself". [p. 80]

There really is no way to square these overlapping circles. One can only set the accounts beside each other and compare them and think through the events that led them to this point. Like any encounter. Unless another way is found to hear them or witness it, some other definitive document or some type of time machine that could take us back to the event. As we recall and remember and set things down, it's human nature, we also ammend, reformulate, focus on specific items and re-interpret, for whatever reasons. As time goes by. We want stories to be remembered that make us look good. We want them to show the best aspects of people we like, or are like us. We want to see people putting their best foot forward, to try to do 'good' things. Cortes said he was doing it for God and King and for his men. These basic motives were themselves, we know, subject to quite a bit of manipulation. Then and later.

What compelled Moctezuma that day to go meet Cortes down on the causeway? He didn't have to. Was it curiosity? A mixture of political pressure, a sense of superiority that such a great leader might after all, have? A need perhaps, to show dominance toward this stranger, who Moctezuma might well expect to use at some point for his own advantage. Perhaps even against the long-term enemy of the Tlaxcala or others toward the coast. Perhaps they might act as decent buffers against these soldiers from the ocean, for awhile. But first, what sort of people were they? They were obviously people. After all the evidence of how they ate and lived, this had to be obvious. We also, as we have to eat, as humans, we want to know the truth, as well as somehow, to see justice done. Whatever that is and for whoever that is. But then there are divisions, if not over what happened, and what is to be done, but then over what it all means.

Many years later, historians and officials wanted in hindsight, for their own reasons, to see Montezuma giving away the empire, even accepting that he had been beat or that he thought the Europeans were gods or otherwise invincible. Maybe he did, but probably, he didn't. But truly, the two leaders did not understand each other, coming from two very different cultures and with very different assumptions about what was to be gained in such a meeting. Different ideas about what the future could look like from this point on could develop.
Finding out what lay in common between them depended on the translators of Aguilar and Malintzin to explain every subtlety in every conversation. These conversations between the two would continue for several days. Malintzin knew the subtleties of the Nahua elite from the point of view of a child but not those of the Mexica. Aguilar knew how wily Cortes could be but had failures in diplomacy himself.
It is entirely possible that Motecuhzoma did not realize the danger he was in, especially considering how many diverging and converging forces he was used to balancing in his great realm over a seventeen year reign. His days as leader would soon come to an end.
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quotes from Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest by Matthew Restall, New York, Oxford University Press Inc., 2004

Diaz Sees Mexico From The Inside: November 7, 1519

On the morning of November 7, Bernal Diaz says, they at last came to the great City of Motecuhzoma's capital. It was in fact, a group of many cities (like Iztapalapa), some built on the water and some on land. Giant causeways connected the various parts of the sprawling urban clusters, on which that morning, many people had already gathered to go about their work as well as come to see the newcomers. But there were just as many it seemed on the water, in canoes going every which way. Carrying flowers and feathers in great multitudes, alongside brightly painted buildings or massive white limestone constructions, that looked to be growing on top of each other, covered by vines and flowers, swarming with birds, stretching up into the sky. Like a dream, he says, they moved through a wondrous world that none of them had expected or could have foreseen.

"The next morning we arrived at a broad causeway, and we headed for Iztapalapa. When we saw so many cities and towns built in the water, and other great towns on dry land, and that causeway so straight and level as it went to Mexcio, we were amazed. We said it looked like the enchanted things they tell of in the book of Amadis because of the great towers and cus and buildings that are in the water, all built of stonemasonry. Some of our soldiers even asked if what we saw was not a dream, and it is not to be wondered at that I write here in this way, because there is so much to ponder that I do not know how to describe it: seeing things never heard of nor even dreamed of as we were seeing ... when we entered that town of Iztapalapa, seeing the palace where we were lodged, how large and well built it was, of very fine stonework, and the wood from cedar and other fine-smelling trees, with great courtyards and rooms, things wonderful to see, covered with decorated cotton awnings. After having looked carefully at all that, we went to the orchard and garden, which was such a wonderful thing to see and to pass through that I never grew tired of experiencing the variety of trees and the scent each one had, the terraces full of roses and flowers, the many fruit trees and native rose gardens, a pond of fresh water, and ... through an opening they had made, large canoes could enter the garden from the lake without landing, everything very whitened and bright with all kinds of stone and pictures on it that gave much to ponder, and birds of many kinds and species that came into the pond. I say again that I was there looking at it, and I believed that never in the world had lands like these been discovered.... Now all this is fallen down, ruined; there is nothing." [pp. 189-90]

And as an old man, Diaz remembered what was lost.

The book of Amadis was a popular book in the day. Camilla Townsend says [ch. 1, note 24, p. 235] in her book Malintzin's Choices that "... the tale of Amadis was a thirteenth-century story, but Garci Rodriguez de Montalvo had published an edition of the work in 1508 in Zaragoza...". This book was known by some of the companions of Diaz to the New World. Here's a blog about that.
The next day, they went up the causeway and Cortes met the great and powerful Motecuhzoma. By now it should be clear that what they had there was a failure to communicate. But it doesn't at all seem the fault of the translator Malintzin, but that of the two leaders, entrenched in their roles.
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quotes and pagination, unless otherwise noted, from ch lxxxvii,  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

Before Tenochtitlan and Popocatepetl: Cortes Could Still Tell Tall-Tales

Hernan Cortes on the way to meet Motecuhzoma passed near two mountains, Iztaccihuatl and Popocatepetl.  During the few days remaining before reaching Tenochtitlan, they also passed through a number of cities and towns and were met by the nephew of the great ruler. Cortes said that this man was the one who told him after long explanations that they would rather 'bar the road' than let him and his men go to see Motecuhzoma. This is told in the context of Cortes being encouraged to go a route that his scouts had said was dangerous and easy for ambushes. The constant drum of deception and potential trickery threads through the whole narrative by this point, in Cortes' Second Letter to his King and Emperor Carlos V. This excerpt about the volcano is a brief respite from that.

"Eight leagues from the city of Churultecal [Cholula] are two very high and very remarkable mountains; for at the end of August there is so much snow on top of them that nothing else can be seen, and from one of them, which is the higher, there appears often both by day and by night a great cloud of smoke as big as a house which goes straight as an arrow up into the clouds, and seems to come out with such force that even though there are very strong winds on top of the mountain they cannot turn it. Because I have always wished to render Your Highness a very particular account of all the things of this land, I wished to know the explanation of this which seemed to me something of a miracle, so I sent ten of my companions, such as were qualified for such an undertaking, with some natives to guide them; and I urged them to attempt to climb the mountain and discover the secret of the smoke, whence it came, and how. These men went and made every effort to climb the mountain but were not able to on account of the very great quantity of snow that is there and the whirlwinds of ash which comes out of the mountain, and also because they could not endure the great cold which they encountered there.... while they were there the smoke started to come out, with such force and noise, they said, it seemed the whole mountain was falling down, so they descended and brought much snow and icicles for us to see, for this seemed to be something very rare in these parts... because of the climate." [pp 77-78]

It was these scouts, however, who had seen and reported back to Cortes about a clear, shorter road that led to Tenochtitlan. He asked the ambassadors from Motecuhzoma about this shorter route who explained they preferred he take another route because that way led to Acatzingo who were at present enemies of the Mexica. They told Cortes that they would have to bear supplies 'from another road' if they were to continue that way. Implying a greater hardship on themselves. [p. 78]
But Cortes forged onward down the route he had decided on despite their entreaties. As it turned out the people of Acatzingo, Cortes spells it 'Guasucingo', welcomed all of them with open arms, gave them girls and gold and they were all given new quarters, built and ready for them there: "... although I brought with me more than four thousand ... natives..." of Tlaxcala, Cholula, Cempoal, there was "... plenty to eat for all, and in all the rooms very great fires and plenty of firewood, for it was very cold... very close to those two mountains...". They were, he said, allies with the Tlaxcalans. [p. 79]

There, a dignitary, 'he said he was' the brother of Motecuhzoma who came and asked him, begged him to turn back and not to proceed, giving him "three thousand  pesos de oro" saying the road forward was bad and there was no provisions that way, etc. Cortes said that,

"... were it in my power to return I would do so to please Mutezuma, but that I had come to this land by Your Majesty's commands, and the principle thing of which I had been ordered to give an account of was of Mutezuma and his great city, of which and of whom Your Highness had known for many years." [p.79]

If there is a truthful statement there, I can't seem to find it. And he is writing this to the King that he is saying that he is lying to this dignitary and doing it in that same king's name. On His order supposedly that the king knew he had not given. Cortes is saying, in paraphrase, 'I lied to this guy in your name and told him I was doing this on your orders, which we know you didn't do.'

Though they were well quartered there, another night-time secret attack was discovered. The next day a new place, Ayotzinco gave Cortes forty girls and plenty of food. But at night there was another 'attack' and 'fifteen or twenty spies' were taken or killed by his men.

The next day, another dignitary from Motecuhzoma, this time a young seemingly revered nephew made entreaties for him not to go further. In Ayotzinco:

"On the following morning, as I was preparing to leave the town, ten or twelve lords, of great importance, as I later discovered, came to see me, and among them there was one great chief, a young man of about twenty-five to whom they all showed great reverence, so much so that after he stepped down from the litter in which he came all the others began to clear the stones and straw from the ground in front of him. When they came to where I was they told me they had come on behalf of Mutezuma, their lord... I answered and appeased them ... that no harm could ensue from my coming, but rather much profit. I then gave them some of the things I had with me and they departed." [p.81]

Much harm would come and little profit for them.
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from The Second Letter 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

Near Iztaccihuatl: Mexica Meet Spaniards and their Allies: October 1519

In their versions of the European approach to Tenochtitlan, upon leaving Cholula, the Mexica and other locals set down a number of stories. Some were told to the friar Sahagun, and are now found in what is called the Codex Florentinus, and some were later collected and set down still later by Diego Munoz Camargos for the City and governor of Tlaxcala. Another source, the Codex Ramirez details stories of locals and Europeans in Texcoco (compiled probably before 1580 by Fray Diego Duran), that other chronicles do not mention.

The Mexica of friar Sahagun gave a very visual, pictorial narrative.

"When the massacre at Cholula was complete, the strangers set out again toward the City of Mexico. They came in battle array, as conquerors, and the dust rose in whirlwinds on the roads. Their spears glinted in the sun, and their pennons fluttered like bats. They made a loud clamor as they marched, for their coats of mail and their weapons clashed and rattled. Some of them were dressed in glistening iron from head to foot; they terrified everyone who saw them.

Their dogs came with them, running ahead of the column. They raised their muzzles high; they lifted their muzzles to the wind. They raced on before with saliva dripping from their jaws." [page forty-one]

The Europeans, then passing amongst the volcanoes of Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl ...

"... Motecuhzoma dispatched various chiefs. Tzihuacpopocatzin was at their head, and he took with him a great many representatives. They went out to meet the Spaniards ... there in the Eagle Pass. They gave the "gods" ensigns of golds, and ensigns of quetzal feathers, and golden necklaces. And when they were given these presents, the Spaniards burst into smiles; their eyes shone with pleasure; they were delighted by them. They picked up the gold and fingered it like monkeys; they seemed to be transported by joy, as if their hearts were illumined and made new.

The truth is that they longed and lusted for gold. Their bodies swelled with greed, and their hunger was ravenous; they hungered like pigs for that gold. They snatched at the golden ensigns, waved them from side to side and examined every inch of them. They were like one who speaks a barbarous tongue: everything they said was in a barbarous tongue." [pages fifty-one to fifty-two]

Like the old saying, with the shoe on the other foot, the actions of the Spaniards, even at this relatively early stage, seem revealed as pure, naked forms of aggression. Marching as conquerors, lusting after gold, babbling incomprehensibly, showing no tact or sense of decorum, certainly not knowing the local traditions. The viewpoint of the Mexica seems clearly expressed, but also the great hostility the other non-Mexica held is given vent.
Met by another Mexica ambassador sent by Motecuhzoma, the Spaniards show their loyalty to their allies already made and scepticism toward this new ambassador. Though not mentioned specifically, it is very likely that Malintzin translated here and repeated all these things back and forth.

"When they saw Tzihuacpopocatzin, they asked: "Is this Motecuhzoma, by any chance?" They asked this of their allies, the liars from Tlaxcala and Cempoala, their shrewd and deceitful confederates.

They replied: "He is not Motecuhzoma, our lords. He is his envoy Tzihuacpopocatzin."

The Spaniards asked him: "Are you Motecuhzoma, by any chance?"

"Yes," he said, "I am your servant. I am Motecuhzoma."

But the allies said: "You fool! Why try to deceive us? Who do you think we are?" And they said: 

      "You cannot deceive us; you cannot make fools of us.                                                                You cannot frighten us; you cannot blind our eyes.                                                                    You cannot stare us down; we will not look away.                                                                    You cannot bewitch our eyes or turn them aside.                                                                      You cannot dim our eyes or make them swoon.                                                                        You cannot fill them with dust or shut them with slime.                                                              You are not Motecuhzoma; he is there in his city.                                                                      He cannot hide from us. Where can he go?                                                                              Can he fly away like a bird? Can he tunnel the earth?                                                                Can he burrow into a mountain, to hide inside it?                                                                      We are coming to see him, to meet him face to face.                                                                  We are coming to hear his words from his own lips."" [page fifty-two]

The ambassador seems to have decided to give the Spaniards what they wanted: some gold and an assurance he was whom they sought. But these allies, it can be said, were beginning to achieve some measure of vengeance after years of persecution with their new advantageous allies and would not be dissuaded from their new goal.
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all quotes from The Broken Spears: the Aztec account of the conquest of Mexico, translated, edited with an introduction by Miguel León-Portilla, expanded and with a postscript, Boston, Beacon Press, 2006.

       

some electoral news: November 5, 2013

It's election night in many states and cities in the US.

• New Jersey State Governor Chris Christie seems to have won by a big margin. Christie will say that this win should make him a contender in a 2016 presidential election. Chris Hayes has a panel who give an overview of results. 5 min audio
• Bill De Blasio the first liberal Democrat in many years to get this far will be the next Mayor of New York City. Wall Street types are already talking of moving to New Jersey.
• In a poor pool of candidates, Terry McAuliffe will be the next Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia. But the Republican  Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli was much more the social conservative in several ways
• The more moderate of two Republicans won the availaable Alabama House of Representatives seat.

It's official, the CIA will take on all aspects of the drone program for the foreseeable future.

planet money had a talk about what economic bubbles look like and don't, by last month's Nobel Prize winning economists; 16 min audio

NPR also says their brand is worth nearly half a billion $. Not the assets, the brand. 5 min

How do right in the US sell the idea of cutting Social Security to their constituents? By lying about it.

How do the old south authoritarians plan to sell their dystopian future? They won't.  Nor will they compromise. They'll just take the whole tent down. Tribal resentment drives many of them.

David Corn in Mother Jones says tonight's electoral victories and losses do not mean the end of the teaparty or their supporters. He plays a prudent cautious liberal by comparing the W-L scorecard to the Battle of Chancellorsville, when Robert E Lee scored a real vctory against General Joe Hooker and knew then he could go far with his army. Corn says, "This crowd will not be bowed because RINO Christie won a second term."

How He Does Go On: Bernal Díaz In Cholula: Exposition In Run-Ons

Again I have to return to Bernal Diaz and the ways he says what he does. He has a habit of frequently giving backward glimpse overviews, brief accounts summarizing what had just happened, all throughout the text.

Our translators Janet Burke and Ted Humphrey, in their prefatory 'Note On The Translation' to The True History of The Conquest of New Spain of Bernal Díaz first, briefly lay out their sources and their scholarly apparatus. This includes mention of the massive and 'definitive critical edition' with the thousand page commentaries by José Antonio Barbón Rodríguez. Next they explain how Díaz himself confessed to not having any rhetorical training or even grammar or vocabulary skills to compare with someone like Francisco López de Gómara, the secretary and biographer to Hernan Córtes. They reassert that 'Díaz presents himself as a simple man' before then launching into the numerous difficulties in the work of translating him.

"His vocabulary derives more from his extraordinary life experience than  from reading the great authors.... One finds that he uses a limited vocabulary, that certain phrases occur repeatedly and almost ritualistically, and that he tends to write strung-out, if not run-on sentences that nonetheless cohere." [p. xxxiii]

Here, a footnote is added to explain how they made decisions about punctuation in some of these lengthy sections. Sections that sound very much like verbal clusters once set down as dictation.

"One often finds paragraph-long sentences in which Bernal Díaz recounts a sequence of events or a series of conversational elements, stringing them together with commas or semicolons. In many, if not most instances, we have preserved his sequences by using either commas or semicolons, depending on the length and relative independence of the phrase or clause. We have been particularly careful to do so when we apprehended clear continuity and coherence internal to these sentences. In other words, we have allowed the context, content, and singleness of idea to determine our choices in these instances." [p. xxxiii]

They don't feel it's a good idea to change his text so much as make it clear. But adding any qualifiers or stating what the text seems to imply, is not what they want either They even describe that sort of choice as 'a slippery slope' once one has 'taken the plunge' in accepting 'some' provisional additions or subtractions, then where does one stop? So they just don't want to do that, even if they are 'context-sensitive renderings' that might help with 'specificity and concreteness'. So that's bueno even, as they seem to hint, their translation might be a tad more bland than others. Instead, they are striving toward the goal of capturing his story as Díaz perceived things. Again, from that footnote:

"Another feature of these long sentences is that they sometimes conclude with a short, often not fully relevant coda, and we have generally chosen to leave these as part of the sentence because they seem to us so much a part of Bernal Díaz's thought pattern and style of expression." [p. xxxiii]

A great example comes at the beginning of Díaz's chapter lxxxiv. The massacre at Cholula as described in the previous chapter had occurred. Conversations with all the relevant parties had concluded. Díaz took the time to defend himself from the version told - in the era of his own writings - by friar de Las Casas, and then, at the head of a new chapter (84), almost like bullet points, Díaz rolls out his next run-on sentence. It sounds like an argument, if one hears it as something born of passion rather than style. I do the translator's text the disservice of posting this run-on point by point in such a bullet-point style to make my point. The ellipses and the bullets are inserted to the text of the translators.

• "As fourteen days had passed since we had come to Cholula,
• ... and we had nothing more to do there,...
• ... and we saw that they city was full of people and they were holding markets,
• ... and we had established friendship between the Cholulans and the Tlaxcalans,
• ... and we had erected a cross and admonished them regarding our holy faith,
• ... and we saw that the great Montezuma was sending spies secretly to our camp to find out and inquire what our intention was and whether we were going to go to his city -- 

•  ... because he managed to know everything very fully from his two ambassadors who were in our company --

•  ... our captain determined to consult with certain captains and some soldiers he knew were well disposed toward him,
• ... because, besides being very brave, they gave good advice,
• ...and he never did anything without first getting our opinion." [p. 177]

 The Cortes faction after more discussions, decided they could press on to Mexico City. A number of small outlying towns were encountered, but within two short weeks, the troop had left Cholula, entered Tenochtitlan and captured the great Motecuhzoma.

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quotes and pagination 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