Originally Posted by
Spear Dog
Wall of text warning!
@saxdude. I agree that Diaz's account must be considered to fall well short of accurate, but it can't be dismissed out of hand and embellishments can be adjusted for. Other contemporary accounts agree on issues such as the size of the Mexica (Aztec) forces and of Cortez's allied forces, the sequence of events, who won, who lost, who died, who didn't, etc. and the story in general, specifics aside, is accepted as historically as reliable an account as any first hand account from antiquity is.
The problem is that first hand accounts from antiquity are unreliable at best, especially when the text itself is meant for a royal probation where you have to make clear your part in the campaign. While the sequence of events is largely accurate, the numbers, to which Bernal Diaz had no reason to have access to and Cortez no reason to honestly give, are exaggerrated to portray spanish courage and force of arms against the natives to the King. And even then the sequence of events is largely a product of heavy biases and propaganda, case in point the massacre at cholula and Tenochtitlan (which are curiously censored in works from Diego Duran), and the assassination of Motecuhzoma and Cuautemoc, the lord of Tacuba and the priest that objected to his murder.
You really have to read between the lines in some of these works and compare and contrast the data from all points, including ideology and reason for writing.
Moctezuma's belief that Cortez might have been an incarnation of Quetzalcoatl indeed worked in Cortez's favour and he exploited it brilliantly, gaining access to the centre of Tenochtitlan, the Mexica centre of power (and some believe one to the world's largest cities at that time) and access to Moctezuma himself, which he also exploited - that act had mixed results at the time but ultimately may have been one of the deciding factors. It should be remembered that Moctezuma was a Priest King and that as such for him religion, politics and war all served the same purpose and had the same goals. The capture of Moctezuma is certainly the tactic that Pizarro most surely borrowed from Cortez in capturing The Inca, Atahualpa.
It is worth noting that when Cortez and the conquistadors seized Moctezuma they were isolated from their allies in the centre of Tenochtitlan. At this point the conquistadors were on their own. The consequences of the capture of Moctezuma were that the Mexica turned up with so much gold that all the conquistadors found new resolve and enthusiasm for their expedition, while obversely the Mexica realised that Moctezuma was not the man for the job and probably no longer enjoyed the favour of the gods - which allowed other, more competent and combative leaders to come forward to organise the Mexica forces, including the incitement of the city's massive civilian population.
The allies were distrubted directly outside of the compound that the Spaniards where in.
When Moctezuma was killed - most accounts agree this happened during the first assault on the conquistador compound - the whole city rose against the Spanish. The flight of the conquistadors out of Tenochtitlan is a remarkable feat of combat in itself and perhaps the most exciting passage in 'The discovery and conquest....'. It was now that their alliance with the Tlaxcalteca paid off, as the surviving conquistadors found refuge there and were able to eventually recover and reorganise.
Just barely though, there were factions inside of Tlaxcala that were weary of the spaniards, had they lost at the battle of Otumba and had Cortez managed to escape, I doubt he would have found an ally in Tlaxcala. The escape itself was a massacre though, and a good portion of the Tlaxcalan army that was in tenochtitlan was terminated, while the spanish forces were greatly diminshed.
@HuangCaesar. It is only at this point that Cortez's conquistador army was substantially increased. The Governor of Cuba, Velasquez, sent Panfilo de Navarez with "sixteen ships, fourteen hundred soldiers, ninety cross-bowmen, seventy musketeers and eighty horses" (from Senor Don Genaro Garcia's introduction to '..History and Conquest...', 1904) to arrest Cortez and 'punish' his followers as traitors on the spurious charge that they had rebelled. However, on seeing the wealth Cortez's force had already accumulated they quickly ignored the orders of Velasquez joined with Cortez.
Funnily enough, the cavalry was quickly forgon after the Noche triste, a number of 25 horses are described to have been used in Otumba, the rest having died in Tenochtitlan or not been available.
@Sharpe. I have some difficulty with your assertion that the Mexica empire was decimated by European disease before the time of Cortez's arrival. While this was certainly the case in subsequent years, their is no mention of such in Diaz's account and the Indies subject Kingdoms of the Mexica that Cortez allied to his cause are also not reported as being decimated by disease. There was little understanding of the epidemiology of disease in Cortez's day and they would have had no reason to believe it was their fault so also no reason not to record it. In the Caribbean on the other hand, the indigenous population had been devastated by disease and the African slave trade was yet to emerge. The indigenous population had been the labour resource of the colonists and it was the crisis posed by this rapidly declining source of slave labour that instigated the expeditions to the west. The second expedition of Juan de Grijalva which sailed from the Yucatan up the coast to present day Vera Cruz reported "a large settled monarchy.
The thing is that there was steady commerce between the carribean and mesoamerica, desease reached the continent well before the spaniards did, not to mention that the campaign itself took 2 years, it was not immediate.
As for luck and opportunistic exploitation, what can I say? Cortez was clearly a very good pro-active General!
** In general, I feel that some aspects the of tech difference gets overplayed a bit, but also agree that it was one of the deciding factors. The relatively small force of conquistadors and enormous numbers of massed combatants they found themselves engaged with, nullifies to a large degree any advantage gunpowder small arms gave them. Their greatest advantage was in their steel edged weapons, steel armour and horses, their armour perhaps being the most important as it surely played a role in their surviving to be reinforced. Their training in European warfare and any previous military experience would rate them the status of military elite and is also a significant factor.
I think the biggest technological advantages was the armor and the horses rather than than swords or small arms, while the armor helped them survive the strikes of Aztec weapons, besides the fact that they were aiming to maim and not kill, they also served as a ideological factor, shining in the sun in the midst of battle would have given the Spaniards a more godly appearance to the warriors, enfasizing there status as warriors of the light and the heavens, which always won against the forces of the underworld and the night. Ideology is very important in these types of conflicts, and the spaniards, wittingly or not, used it brilliantly.
Warfare with horses on the other hand, was quickly understood by Aztec forces and adapted accordingly, avoiding plain set piece battles for ambushes and quick skirmishes, however their part in the battle of Otumba was decisive, I doubt they would have managed to get anywhere near the Cihuacoatl had they not had them.
It's hard not to emphasise that in the initial stages of this campaign, up until the well after the flight from Tenochtitlan, we are talking about a band of 400 to 500 men against an established empire - and that they ultimately prevailed.
But they had a force of Totonacs and Tlaxcalans at there disposal well before their arrival to Tenochtitlan, they had been planting alliances and rebelion from the very moment they set foot on Zempoala, the band of 400/500 men just marching into tenochtitlan is greatly exagerated by the probanza.
@Sharpe, again. Do I really have to define 'great' or 'greatest'. they're pretty common words in everyday usage and don't have a singular definition. - they're used in every second ad on TV. You can take it to mean whatever you like. Scale, achievement, outcome.... whatever.