There were many men who wanted to command the third expedition that was to be larger and more important than its predecessors. The four ships of Grijalva were readied for the return to Yucatán, and Velásquez arranged for six more ships to join the fleet. Some men held that Grijalva should be given the new command, but it went instead to Hernán Cortés, the alcalde, or mayor, of the small plantation town of San Juan de Baracoa. Cortés had served under Governor Velásquez in the expedition that had subjugated Cuba in 1511. And during the subsequent years, he had lived off the income of a plantation that had been placed in his custody by Velásquez.

Born in 1485 to a poor country gentleman at Medellin, Spain, the youthful Cortés had been educated for two years at the University of Salamanca. However, his temperament was such that he returned home restless, without a vocation, and ready for adventure. For a time, he considered going to Italy as a soldier, but in 1504, he sailed for the New World.

Popular and influential in the Cuban colony, Cortés was eager to lead the expedition. Whether he was appointed because of political influence or because Velásquez respected him, the expedition soon became the personal project of Cortés. Once he was in command, no one ever successfully challenged his authority.

Cortés immediately began to scour the island for arms, gunpowder, armor, crossbows, and any other munitions he could assemble. What money he could borrow on his plantation and his future he poured into equipping the expedition. It seemed clear to him that any and all debts would be paid off by the wealth that he could pick up on the mainland.

Velásquez nervously watched more than 350 soldiers gather at Santiago de Cuba that winter. And as he listened to his jealous relatives whispering in his ear about the growing power of Cortés, he had second thoughts about his choice of a leader. When Cortés was finally warned that Velásquez was thinking of removing him from command, he resolved to outmaneuver the hesitant governor. Immediately, Cortés ordered all of his officers, sailors, and soldiers aboard their ships. Then, before Velásquez could stammer out a new order, Cortés strode into his office, bade him goodbye, and sailed off to the Cuban port of Trinidad where he hoped he would be beyond the governor’s reach.

At Trinidad, Cortés continued his recruiting, adding to his company the five Alvarado brothers as well as Cristóbal de Olid and the young Gonzalo de Sandoval, who in time was to become a great warrior and Cortés’s most intimate friend. Pedro de Alvarado, Olid, and Sandoval eventually became the senior captains under Cortés, whose title of captain general gave him sufficient power to muster men and materials without further authority. In Trinidad, Cortés was also able to purchase one more ship for his fleet, bringing the total to eleven.

While Cortés waited for weapons and armor to be forged and arrows to be made, Velásquez sent a messenger to the mayor of Trinidad with orders to relieve Cortés of his command - under no circumstances was the mayor to allow the fleet to sail. However, Cortés had quickly won the loyalty of most of his men, even though some were relatives and friends of Velásquez’s. Also, there were too few soldiers in Trinidad to stop the headstrong captain general. Though the mayor was a close relative of Velásquez’s, he timidly ignored the orders of his superior.

Cortés completed his recruiting in Trinidad and sailed for old Havana in southern Cuba where he made his final preparations and gathered what horses he could. Because they were expensive and in short supply, Cortés was only able to purchase sixteen mounts, but these horses were so important to the expedition that, fifty years later, Bernal Díaz del Castillo, the chronicler who sailed with both Córdoba and Cortés, could recall each animal, its personality, its color, and its owner.

Meanwhile, Velásquez was growing increasingly concerned about his inability to control Cortés, and he rushed messengers to old Havana with orders for his lieutenant there to seize Cortés and return him to Santiago de Cuba. Again the captain general learned of the plan, and again resolved to ignore the orders. Instead of obeying the governor, Cortés sent him a flattering letter with the news that the fleet would sail the next day.

On February 10, 1519, the adventurers climbed aboard their ships and sailed for the small island of Cozumel off the coast of Yucatán. Cortés made one stop along the way at Cape San Antonio. There he ordered a muster so he could learn how many men he actually had, what condition they were in, and what they could do. When all were counted, he discovered he had 508 fighting men as well as 100 shipmasters, pilots, and sailors. There were sixteen horses, although not all of them were suited for use in battle. Thirty-two men were armed with crossbows, and thirteen others had firearms called harquebuses (smoothbore matchlock with a stock resembling a rifle and the first to be fired from the shoulder). In addition to several brass guns, there were four falconets.

His muster completed, Cortés continued on to Cozumel. When he arrived on the island, he began to search for an interpreter. The few native prisoners his men could take there repeated over and over one word - Castilian. Since this was a name the Spaniards used to refer to themselves, Cortés concluded that the natives could only have learned it from a Spaniard. To find him, Cortés sent his small boats to the mainland with written messages to be left with the natives who were to take them to any European castaway on the shores of Yucatán. Within two weeks, Cortés’s messages produced Jerónimo de Aguilar, who had been shipwrecked on the coast eight years before. Gratefully, he came across to Cozumel and joined Cortés.

At last, Cortés was ready for his landing upon the mainland. On March 4, 1519, the fleet left Cozumel. The weather was good on the first day, and the high-sterned ships moved quickly along before the wind. But at nightfall, a vicious headwind scattered the vessels and threatened to drive them back onto Cuba’s dark shore. Fortunately, the fierce winds blew themselves out that very night, and the expedition was able to sail westward once more. Finally, on March 12, the fleet dropped anchor at the entrance of the Grijalva River. The larger vessels remained offshore while the smaller ones landed the soldiers at the Cape of Palms, several miles from the town of Tabasco. As Cortés and his men beached their small boats, they could see that the river and its banks were swarming with Indians, a number of whom the Spaniards rounded up and questioned. Thus, they learned the reason for the natives’ great numbers and apparent hostility: The people of Tabasco had been accused of cowardice by their neighbors for having traded with Grijalva on his visit the preceding year. Now they were prepared to regain their honor. Where Grijalva had found friends and trade, Cortés faced a battle.

Sending Aguilar forward to explain that he came in peace, Cortés offered to trade with the Tabascans and even tried to buy their friendship. However, the natives warned Aguilar that if the Spaniards advanced beyond the palm trees along the shore, they would attack.

The next day, Cortés prepared to occupy the town of Tabasco. He approached it from the river with his small boats and sent a column overland through a narrow pass to enclose the Indians between his two forces. He was not anxious for a fight, and through a messenger he tried one last time to allay the fears of the natives. When this failed, the battle began.

The Tabascans and their allies attacked before the Spaniards could beach their boats, and Cortés had to fight his way ashore through the mud. At length, the conquistadors reached the town where they fought their way from bloody street to bloody street as the natives refused to abandon their homes. Then the overland column reached the outskirts of Tabasco, and the two Spanish forces were united. Though encircled, the Tabascans refused to yield, and Cortés had to fight for every foot of ground he captured. Finally, he gained a large courtyard with three buildings that housed idols. The natives had gathered their valuables there, and when they saw the Spaniards enter the buildings, they gave up the struggle and fled.

Immediately after the natives had retreated, Cortés hacked three slashes into the trunk of a large tree growing in the courtyard and took possession of the land in the name of King Charles I of Spain. Cortés declared that he was prepared to defend this claim against any objections with the sword he held in his own hand. When no one attempted to challenge his dramatic proclamation, he sheathed his sword.

After the ceremony, he counted his wounded and found that fourteen were injured. Cortés did what he could to help them and then appointed sentries to watch for any further attack. That night the Spaniards slept in the courtyard with their weapons at their sides. They realized that their control of Tabasco had brought them only a momentary respite.

For the next several days, Cortés’s captains scouted the countryside, trying without success to establish peaceful contact with the Indians. Then one day, a Spanish column was ambushed. During the skirmish, three Indian prisoners were taken, and from them Cortés learned that all of the natives in the nearby area were gathering for a full-scale attack against them. Frustrated and angry at his inability to bring about a peace parley, he decided to face the Indians. On March 25, thirteen days after reaching Tabasco, Cortés fought his second pitched battle.

He called for a two-pronged attack. Leading the cavalry, Cortés moved through the forest in an effort to surprise the enemy while his men formed ranks on an open plain near the town of Cintla. As soon as his soldiers arrived there, a mass of Indians swarmed over the small Spanish force. In the first assault, a fierce barrage of arrows, darts, and stones wounded seventy of the Spaniards. The Spanish guns roared back, and hundreds of Indians fell. Then the two forces closed. The conquistadors hacked away at the Indians with their steel weapons, slowly pushing them back. But the natives were so numerous that their heavy losses seemed to have no effect on them.

The Spaniards were beginning to tire, and they were impatient for the arrival of Cortés and the cavalry to relieve them. Finally, after an hour of fighting, the horsemen appeared, attacking the Indians from the rear. The impression created by horses and riders, a sight the Indians had never before seen, and the speed with which the cavalry drove through the enemy lines, broke the attack. The Tabascans panicked and fled. Eight hundred Indians were left dead on the battlefield while Cortés had lost only two men.

In this battle, the basic military pattern of the conquest was established. On one side was a small force of Spaniards; on the other, an overwhelming number of natives. The Spaniards generally wore steel armor, fought with steel swords and with guns and cannons, and they were supported by cavalry. The Indians fought bare-chested, or protected by padded jackets, and carried wicker shields. They shot stone-tipped arrows or swung wooden swords edged with obsidian.

On the day following the battle, Cortés was visited by a delegation of minor Tabascan chiefs. They were well-dressed, and they carried fish, birds, and fruit as gifts. They first asked permission to bury their dead, and then they agreed to give Cortés whatever he demanded. He accepted their homage, and the following day, the people of Tabasco and the neighboring towns returned with more gifts - golden ornaments, dogs, and ducks.

The Indians also brought with them a number of women slaves whom they gave to Cortés and his officers as presents. One of these slaves was to be more valuable to Cortés than any of the gold. The Spaniards named her Doña Marina. She was a young, highly-intelligent princess who had been sold into slavery by her parents. She spoke both the Maya language of the coastal Indians and the Nahuatl language, which was spoken by many peoples of the interior, and she possessed a great facility for all language. Soon Doña Marina became Cortés’s chief interpreter.

After five days, during which the Spaniards rested and made their first notable attempt to win the Indians to Christianity - they raised a great cross for the Indians to contemplate - Cortés and his men once more boarded their ships and set out to find a rich city along the coast. The wind was fair, and the small fleet hugged the shore, sailing past the Alvarado and the Banderas rivers, where Grijalva had traded beads for gold, past the Island of Sacrifices, where Grijalva’s men had seen the bloody altars, and finally anchored off the island of San Juan de Ulúa, in the harbor of present-day Veracruz, on Holy Thursday, 1519.

On Good Friday, Cortés and his expedition disembarked, built a small camp, and made contact with the local Indians, members of a powerful nation called the Aztecs. The next day, the Spaniards were visited by an emissary of the Aztecs’ great leader, Emperor Moctezuma II (also known as Montezuma), whose empire included most of the people in the country called Mexico. Gifts were exchanged, and Cortés fired off his cannons and performed cavalry maneuvers to impress his guests. Later, Cortés suggested that he would like to meet with the emperor, and the emissary agreed to carry to Moctezuma the message of Cortés and the respects of the Spanish king. During the week that the Spaniards awaited the return of the ambassadors, Cortés sent his ships farther northward along the coast to locate a safe harbor and a place where a fortified town could be built.

Finally, Moctezuma’s ambassadors returned and politely informed Cortés that under no circumstances could the emperor grant him an audience. They did not go on to explain Moctezuma’s reason, which was that he feared the rivalry of this strange new visitor from beyond the sea. To soften the refusal, the ambassadors presented the Spanish leader with gifts of gold and some precious stones. The sight of these treasures convinced Cortés and his fellow conquistadors that if they were to take over the riches of the New World, they should first meet with the Aztec ruler. However, Cortés did not have the authority from his own king to treat with royalty, to march in conquest, or even to settle on the mainland. What power he held had been given him by Velásquez, and that was merely to explore, trade, and return.

After a series of secret meetings with his most-trusted officers, Cortés set out to improve his political position and remove himself from the authority of Velásquez. He knew enough about Spanish governmental intrigue to see that no independent move would succeed. All power was granted by the king of Spain, and no one could change that fact. It was the king who had appointed Velásquez, and Velásquez had, in turn, appointed Cortés.

In the small Spanish camp on the coast, the story soon passed from soldier to soldier that somehow Velásquez had betrayed them all. Indignantly the soldiers muttered that they did not even have the power to make their own decisions. Soon some of these men asked Cortés to take command of a new settlement and form a new colonial administration that would be loyal to the Crown but free of Velásquez. For a time, Cortés feigned loyalty to the governor who had appointed him and to the instructions he had been given. He pretended to need a great deal of persuasion before he finally allowed himself to be selected both chief justice of the new colony and captain general - with a fifth share of all gold discovered after the “royal fifth” had been put aside. The agreement was formally set down by the expedition’s notary, and Cortés no longer felt that he was obligated in any way to Velásquez.

The political maneuvering done, Cortés and his men set out to build a base of operations on the coast. They found a suitable site for their first permanent community in a vicinity where the natives were relatively friendly. With great care, they laid out a town that they called Villa Rica de Vera Cruz - Rich Town of the True Cross - so named because the land was rich and because they had landed on the Holy Friday of the Cross. A pillory was placed in the plaza, and a gallows was erected on the edge of town. Then Cortés named a town council and other officials. Everything was done as legally as possible because what they were doing in Mexico would have to be approved by the king in Spain.

However, each step that Cortés and his friends took infuriated the relatives and friends of Velásquez who were part of the expedition. These men were more eager than ever to return to Cuba and reestablish themselves with the governor whose power was recognized by the king. They did not want to dally in Mexico under the command of a man whom they considered a rebel against established authority. As a consequence, Cortés could wait no longer; he was forced to take immediate action or lose everything he had gained so far. First, and most important, he had to establish contact with Spain, for the final decision about who was to be in command of the Spanish forces on the mainland could be made nowhere but at the court of King Charles.

Gathering up all the gold and the other colorful presents which had been given him by the various chiefs and by the ambassadors of Moctezuma, Cortés implored his followers to give up their shares for the time being and use this treasure to impress the king. When he had finally persuaded them, he outfitted the largest ship in his fleet, loaded the treasure aboard, and provisioned the vessel for the voyage to Spain. For this delicate task, he assigned fifteen sailors and two men whom he greatly trusted - Alonzo Hernández Puertocarrero (also Portocarreo) and Francisco de Montejo - as representatives to inform the king what had already been accomplished and how bright the prospects were for the future.

In the midst of these preparations, several of the followers of Velásquez were making plans to flee the mainland and sail for Cuba. One of their number betrayed his companions to Cortés, who arrested the lot. Two of the conspirators were sentenced to death, a third was to have his feet cut off, and the others were to receive 200 lashes each. Although the records do not tell whether these harsh sentences were carried out, it is doubtful that Cortés would have been inclined to be merciful, for his chief weapon was the disciplined loyalty of his men.

Cortés had every reason to fear that there would be further dissension from those who still favored Velásquez. Also, there were cowards and sluggards who wanted simply to return home to their Cuban farms or were afraid to risk the long march inland to find Emperor Moctezuma. There was only one way Cortés could prevent their flight: He stripped his fleet of the iron, sails, cord, and equipment and scuttled the ships. He left none of the Spaniards a choice: They would have to remain under his command in Mexico. Those who were too old or ill would remain at Villa Rica de Vera Cruz while the others marched inland.

Before Cortés left the coast for his great overland adventure, he concluded an alliance with the chief of Cempoala (also Zempoala) and the rulers of other neighboring towns so that the Spanish defenders of Villa Rica de Vera Cruz would have assistance in case of an attack from Cuba.

When all this was done, there seemed to be nothing to keep Cortés from his meeting with Moctezuma. In mid-August 1519, with the help of several hundred Indians, the Spanish column of probably no more than 350 men marched westward from Cempoala. They kept a close formation, sending on before the main body only the scouts and a few foot soldiers. Ahead, somewhere beyond the mountains, lay the capital city of Mexico. And there they would find Moctezuma, the emperor who held sway over this vast land.

However, the journey was to take longer than Cortés and those with him expected, and on the way, they were to fight many battles that would have turned back less ambitious men.