The months of both May and June were fraught with much tumult in Mexico in 1520. Cortes in a stunning reversal of fortunes, had the newly arrived Panfilo de Narvaev captured, and his newly arrived army put to work. He and his army, had been sent by Diego Velazquez, governor of Cuba in order to capture Cortes and put a stop to his efforts. There was the massacre (and the Aztec version of the massacre) of locals by Spanish forces led by Pedro de Alvarado in the great city during a special festivity of Toxcatl, perhaps as early as May 20. The Aztecs said that massacre was started by the Spanish lust for gold. By the end of this month, Cortes returned to the capital but was too late and, today, it is thought, that Moctezuma saw his end (June 30) after a series of uprisings. It is Diaz that says that the great king was stoned to death by his own people.
The previous year, Cortes had sent a letter and gold and the representatives, Montejo and Puertocarrero, to petition the king in Spain. Along the way they stopped in Cuba, but then made it to Seville in November, 1519. But the king was in Barcelona, raising money for his trip to Germany. These representatives unloaded the treasure to the authorities and then went to Barcelona in January, but the king had left for Burgos. Meanwhile the treasure they had brought back - the gifts of Moctezuma - was held in Seville and had made quite a stir. It was bishop Juan Rodriguez de Fonseca a former conquistador with Columbus and fierce advocate for the governor of Cuba who held some of this treasure. That became a scandal and caused a distance between bishop Fonseca and the Flemish advisers then currently favored around Carlos V.
Montejo and Puertocarrero did gain their audience by March of 1520 with the king, near Valladolid. He was intrigued but listened to Bishop Fonseca and his spokesman Gonzalo de Guzman as well. They characterized Cortes and these men as rebels, usurpers, effectively stealing from under the authority of Governor Velazquez. King Carlos agreed to another audience and this time some of the treasure arrived from Seville. Though some of it as the Cortes partisans avowed, was not brought and used this fact as leverage in their argument against the partisans of bishop Fonseca. The king would not make a definitive claim as for Cortes or the scandal about the treasure, but would not call Cortes a rebel. Then King Carlos sailed off to be crowned emperor Charles V in Germany.
This was good news for the Corets faction. Cortes had not offended the king, and the faction of Velazquez and bishop Fonseca had not shut out their cause. For Fonseca things were not so good. Uprisings by the common people in Burgos, and all over Spain, required his attention. He and governor Velazquez would have to pin their hopes, disappointingly on Narvaez. Panfilo de Narvaez would spend the next couple years imprisoned at Veracruz. It must have seemed a cruel irony to Cortes and his faction, having captured and secured Narvaez only to return to Tenochtitlan and find such tumult in the city. Things had fallen to such a pitch that Cortes and his remaining men were compelled to flee the great city the night Moctezuma was killed.
This draws together and ends the various threads of the story here of the trek Cortes and his men took into the interior of Mexico. There will be occasional looks at the conflict that lasted for the next thirteen months in New Spain, further indications of the will of King Carlos, the effects on the governor in Cuba as well as the career of bishop Fonseca of Burgos and the life of the woman, Malintzin, called Doña Marina.
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culled from pp xxiv-xxvi in "Cortes, Velazquez and Charles V", the introductory essay by JH Elliott (1971), found in 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
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