As you read Bernal’s engaging and simple narrative, written at his extreme old age as he looked back on the fabulous adventures of his youth, the strange fact emerges that he had a warmer feeling for Montezuma than for Cortés. Both he and his companions were really fond of the strange king of the Mexicans. They had several reasons for liking him, but it was his boundless generosity that won their hearts. ‘He never omitted giving us every day presents of gold and cloth,’ says Bernal. He used to play pitch and toss with gold pellets and ‘divided what he won among us soldiers on guard’. Cortés had ordered a Spanish page called Orteguilla to attend him, a clever boy who had picked up enough Nauatl to make himself understood. One day Bernal asked Orteguilla ‘to beg Montezuma to do me the favour of giving me a pretry young woman. Montezuma sent for me and said: “They tell me you are in need of cloth and gold and would also like a girl. I will order them to give you one to-day. Treat her well. Her parents are of good family. They will give you cloth and gold.” I answered him with great reverence that I kissed his hands for his great favour and might God our Lord prosper him. He asked Orteguilla what I said. On hearing it translated he remarked: “Bernal seems to me to be a gentleman.” And he told them to give me in addition three small slabs of gold and two loads of mantles. The girl was a lady. Her bearing showed it. She was given the name of Doña Francisca.’ Bernal makes no further mention of this girl.
Cortés had had two sloops built and launched on the lake. He did this as a precaution in case the causeways were shut against him one day and he were cut off from the mainland. These sloops besides oars had sails, which Mexican canoes had not. When Montezuma heard, he asked Cortés to let him go for an excursion in them to an island which was a royal game reserve. Cortés agreed, though he ordered a guard to accompany him. Montezuma invited a large party of courtiers as well as bringing his huntsmen. He embarked with some of them on the fastest of the two sloops and took his seat under an awning. ‘A strong breeze was blowing and the sailors were delighted to please Montezuma. They worked the sails so well, that they went flying along and the canoes which held his huntsmen and the rest of the courtiers were left far behind in spite of the large number of rowers they carried. Montezuma was charmed and said it was a great art this combining of oars and sails.’ They were soon at the island and had a successful day’s hunting. On getting back Montezuma did not omit to tip the Spaniards. ‘He was such a great Prince, so frank and kind,’ adds Bernal.
But Montezuma’s most dazzling generosity was to come. One day he told Cortés that he had decided to give Charles V the treasure hidden in the sealed room. ‘I know you opened the door and saw it,’ he said. ‘Well, I want it all to go to your great king.’
Though the Spaniards had long resolved to take the treasure, they were greatly touched by the offer to give it. ‘Cortés and all of us stood amazed at the vast goodness and liberality of the Great Montezuma. With much reverence we doffed our helmets and returned him thanks. Cortés using words of the greatest affection promised to write to His Majesty of the magnificent generosity of the gift.’
The rule was, as we know, that the Emperor had a right to a fifth of treasure, tribute, revenue or the like received by his representatives in America. Though Montezuma had said all the treasure was to go to him, the Spaniards had no intention of sending it all. At Vera Cruz they had sent all, but there were special reasons on that occasion. For the present, indeed, it was impossible to send any of it, since Cortés had no ship. However, the Royal Fifth was duly put aside. Then the squabble began about the shares. Cortés, as Charles’s representative, in legal fiction if not in actual fact, claimed a fifth for himself; he claimed also the share of a Captain-General; and he claimed for expenses, starting with what he had spent in Cuba to equip the expedition and including all expenditure and losses since. The Captains and the three churchmen also put in heavy claims. When all these had been met, only enough remained to give the rank and file the value of a hundred gold pieces each. As the total value of the treasure was supposed to be about a million gold pieces, the soldiers were grievously disappointed. In spite of the presents, most of them were in debt. They had so far received no pay, only promises. They had thought Montezuma’s treasure was going to make their fortunes. The way Cortés arranged the share-out looked mean in comparison with Montezuma’s noble generosity; and it looked tricky too, says Bernal. We cannot hope to make up accounts which those concerned could not agree on four hundred years ago. But the affair left a bad taste in Bernal’s mouth and provides another indication of his partiality for Montezuma. However, in the long run the share-out did not matter because, as we shall see, the treasure was lost.
Though the Spaniards had a tenderness for Montezuma, there was the other side of his character to give them pause, the monstrous side, the religious side, when as priest-king he took life that the gods might live. During these months, November 1519 to April 1520, several important Mexican festivals fell due, the great Humming Bird’s on November 22nd, the rain god, Haloc’s, on December 12th, Uamatecutli (The Old Lady’s) feast on January 1st, and the fire god’s, Xiuhtecutli (The Turquoise Lord), on January 21st. Montezuma, though resident with Cortés, continued to carry out his religious duties as usual. ‘From one day to another he never ceased his sacrifices at which human beings were killed,’ says Bernal. In his own palace, as we know, he had cages of victims and a private sacrificial stone. It is hardly to be supposed that with the rest of his things he moved these across to Lord Face of Water’s palace, as Cortés had forbidden him to make human sacrifices. Nevertheless he seems to have managed. Perhaps he was able to slip into his own palace for a moment, as it was practically next door. That should have been easy, as he was on such good terms with the Spaniards. The fact was that he dared not neglect his religious duties. He was more convinced of the necessity of the magic rituals than was Cortés of the Mass. The Mass insured individual salvation after death; his rituals insured that humanity could live.
Cortés was doing his best to convert him to Christianity. One wonders how the Gospel story came through Doña Marina’s mouth. What did Montezuma make of it, what could he make of it? Christianity could only be the religion which Quetzalcoatl had taught in his previous visit to earth. If there was no alternative to receiving Quetzalcoatl, was there any to accepting his religion? This difficult question, which has been hanging over us for some time and whose answer cannot be longer deferred, again illustrates Montezuma’s agonizing dilemma. Quetzalcoatl on his last visit had preached against the old gods and their ritual of sacrifice. And what had happened? The old gods had struck back. Smoking Mirror, their leader, had won. Quetzalcoatl had had to go. But that was not all. The gods, much displeased at the attempt to displace them, had punished the ruling race, which, as stated, was at that time the Toltecs. Disasters overtook it; it passed out of existence. This clash with the old gods must be avoided this time, if the Mexica (People of the Maguey Hare) were to survive. The only way a clash could be avoided would be by retaining the old worship while accepting the new. The new religion would have its temples, but the old temples would be kept up. Montezuma had a basis for this plan. The worship of Quetzalcoatl already existed at Cholula. His ritual could be brought up-to-date, more temples built. He could be advanced without undue detriment to the ancient deities. Instead of the Spaniards christianizing Mexico, the Mexicans could weave Christianity into their own system of thought.
But Montezuma was painfully aware that to steer such a course was exceedingly difficult. The gods were already angry at what had happened. He was far from forgetting the terrible apparition of Smoking Mirror to his magicians. Any day a message might be conveyed to him from the Humming Bird or the others, speaking through priest-mediums at the time of sacrifice, that Quetzalcoatl was to be driven out. The supernatural clash he so much hoped to avoid would then be inevitable, with incalculably evil results for the nation. His right, his only, course was to propitiate the old gods with the magic sacrifices which they demanded, at the same time protecting Cortés by every means in his power.
Thanks to Bernal, who records such a great deal of what he saw, though he did not always understand its inner meaning, there has come down to us a view of Montezuma when he visited the great temple opposite Lord Face of Water’s palace, probably to attend the rain god, Tlaloc’s, festival, whose shrine was next to the Humming Bird’s on top of the pyramid. He had asked Cortés’ permission, as he wished to go in state and in the most public manner, so as to reassure the people that he was not neglecting the gods. Cortés gave permission provided there was no sacrifice of human beings.
Montezuma ‘set off in his rich litter accompanied by many of his lords. His staff of office was carried before him. A company of Spaniards followed.’ The Padre de la Merced, one of the churchmen, was with them. They entered the immense courtyard of the temple through the Serpent Wall. The first thing they saw was the tlacbtli court, where the game was played whose balls, as I have mentioned, were made of rubber exported by the Totonacs. It was not played for amusement, but for magical reasons; was not a sport but a ritual. At the Humming Bird’s feast on November 22nd, for instance, a priest dressed as the Messenger of Death descended from the top of the pyramid to the ball court and killed four slave victims in it. To the left of the ball court was the prison where captives awaiting sacrifice were kept. On the right was the small temple of Xipe, a vegetation god, whose magic ritual had the horrid peculiarity that the victims were flayed after their hearts had been taken out, and their skins worn by dancers for twenty days, until they rotted. (It is curious to remark that this ritual inspired some of the greatest Mexican works of art, such as the stone mask in the British Museum, which represents the skin of the face of a sacrificed victim, a work where horror dissolves in beauty, for us a mystery, but not so for the artist, for whom the sacrifice had a magical beauty.)
Making their way inward with Montezuma’s procession, the Spaniards next passed a skull rack similar to ones they had already seen, and said to contain over 100,000 skulls. Here to the left was the Calmecatl (House of the Cord), a sort of theological college, and to the right the Temalacatl (Stone Ring), a small circular platform on which victims to be sacrificed to Xipe were tethered by one leg, given a wooden sword edged with down feathers instead of obsidian razors, and made to fight against four fully armed soldiers, a sort of contest which the Romans at their worst included in the gladiatorial games, but which in Mexico was not a cruel sport but part of a magical ritual to make the maize-shoot burst from the seed.
The procession now reached the open space in front of the main pyramid temple, which rose steeply to its summit at the top of a great flight of over a hundred steps. On the platform were the shrines of the Humming Bird and of Tlaloc, the rain god, and before each was a sacrificial, stone.
Bernal now tells what happened on this occasion. ‘When we first came to the gate of the cursed temple, Montezuma ordered them to take him from his litter and he was carried on the shoulders of lords to the foot of the steps. There many priests were waiting to support him under the arms in the ascent. They had already sacrificed in the night four human victims. In spite of what Cortés had said and now the dissuasions of the Padre de la Merced, he paid no heed, but persisted in killing men and boys to complete the sacrifice. We could do nothing but pretend not to notice it. When he had finished sacrificing, and he did not take long about it, we returned with him to our quarters. He was very cheerful and gave presents of golden jewels to us soldiers who accompanied him.’
Before concluding this chapter two questions require to be answered. Why did Montezuma give so many presents to the Spaniards and what would have happened if Cortés had succeeded in converting him to Christianity? The answers to both help to clarify the complex situation.
Montezuma had several reasons for his presents. The most obvious one was that he hoped thereby to keep the Spaniards in a good humour and avoid further humiliations. If they were in his pay, he had a hold on them. Who exactly they were, however, he did not know. At first, as the companions of Cortés, they had all seemed supernatural beings. Bernal frequently states that they were openly called teules, his rendering of the Nauatl word, teotl, god. But when Montezuma began to think that Cortés-Quetzalcoatl had not come direct from an eastern paradise, but from a country ruled by a great king, the Spaniards had to be thought of as servants of that king. They were human beings, yet as the assistants of a divine incarnation they had magical powers. It was therefore fitting to make offerings to them. Even the most minor local deities were given offerings. This conception of the presents as offerings applied, of course, more obviously to those which he gave to Cortés. The gift of the treasure was an oblation. Just as he gave the other gods hearts, which was what they required in their ghostly state, so he gave Cortés-Quetzalcoatl gold, which was what he required as a reincarnated divine ghost. And inasmuch as he gave the unapparent gods all the hearts he had or could get, so he must give the apparent god all the gold he had or could get.
In addition to this grand motive, he had yet a further motive for giving the treasure. It will be recalled that his greatest hope was that Cortés would not stay long. Though at the time of his coming he had declared himself an envoy with a message, who would return whence he came without undue delay, he had since shown no sign of departing. But, argued Montezuma, if I give him all the gold I have, perhaps he will go, for since it is gold he requires, and I am giving him a great quantity, that will suffice him for his purposes, just as the hearts I give the other gods, which are all I have, suffice them for their purposes. Moreover, I will send him gold yearly, as I get it in. If I can induce him to go before the other gods are roused to some furious action, I shall have saved my country. The expenditure of all my gold is not too great a price to pay. So he dared hope though the prophecy hardly allowed a glimmer.
And now let us consider the second question. What would have happened if Cortés had been able to persuade Montezuma to believe in Christianity? Here we find a startling paradox which provides the final proof that Cortés had not grasped the elements of the situation as they were understood by Montezuma. If Montezuma had become a Christian, he would have ceased to believe in Quetzalcoatl. The incursion of Cortés would have been revealed to him in its true light. He would have seen Cortés for what he was, an invader whose intention was to destroy the legitimate government of Mexico and take possession of the country. The duty of Montezuma, as a Christian sovereign, would have been to fight Cortés, drive him out or make him prisoner or kill him. There was nothing in Christianity as interpreted at that date in Europe which gave Cortés or Charles V any excuse for remaining in Mexico if its sovereign was a Catholic. The paradox, then, resides in this—that Cortés was doing his best to dispel the illusion which was his only guarantee of safety. However, he had no chance of dispelling it. Having been fitted into the Mexican astro-magical picture of the universe and, so, satisfactorily explained from their point of view, it was no more possible for him to explain himself otherwise than it would have been for Montezuma to explain that he was other than a man deluded by the Devil.