Xico, near where Cortés first entered the Mexican highlands

In one of these towns Cortés happened to see a soldier called de Mora...take two fowls from an Indian's house. Enraged that any soldier should do such a thing in a friendly town and before his very eyes, he immediately ordered a halter to be thrown around his neck, and de Mora would have been hanged if Pedro de Alvarado...had not cut the halter with his sword when the poor man was already half throttled . . . --Bernal Díaz del Castillo

March inland...

We dared not charge them except all together for fear they might break our ranks, and when we did charge them there were more than twenty companies ready to resist us, and our lives were in great danger. For they were so numerous that they could have blinded us with clods of earth if God, of His great mercy, had not aided and protected us. --Bernal Díaz del Castillo

...and war with Tlaxcala

With a couple of thousand Totonac guides, porters, allies and/or hostages, the conquistadors marched inland. They climbed out of the coastal plane into the highlands of central Mexico, stopping at a number of towns to barter for supplies, recruit allies, and save souls. Picture Cortés, atop the local pyramid, arguing with the town council: "Forget Moctezuma...Carlos is your man. And these fierce heathen idols will not do. There is only one God, and you should worship only Him (and his mother, of course). And for Heaven's sake, stop sacrificing people and eating their flesh. That's just too disgusting!"

We went to Xico, a small coffee-producing town south of Jalapa. Cortés almost certainly went through here. They didn't stop long in any place, for he was anxious to get to the real action in the great Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. But first they had to go through Tlaxcala.

The Tlaxcalans were fierce enemies of the Aztecs, an enmity which would make them Cortés' staunchest allies in the coming war and earn them a special tax exemption throughout the 300 years of Spanish colonial rule. At first they believed he was in cahoots with Moctezuma and they opposed him with tens of thousands of armed warriors. They had several pitched battles and many skirmishes. Thousands of Indians were killed, and most of the conquistadors were wounded; Díaz reports that they used the fat of dead Indians to dress their wounds, no other dressing being at hand. A Tlaxcalan general sent emissaries to sue for peace; when they turned out to be spies, Cortés had their hands chopped off and sent them back. Eventually, the Tlaxcalans sued for peace.

The victory of Cortés' small band over the vastly more numerous Tlaxcalans, whom the Aztecs had been unable to conquer in 100 years, must have been shocking news to Moctezuma.

• NEXT: Massacre at Cholula

• TOP

• CONQUEST OF MEXICO — home
• Cortés and La Malinche — March 1519
• La Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz — April-July 1519
• The march inland and war with Tlaxcala — August-September 1519
• Massacre at Cholula — October 1519
• La Gran Tenochtitlan — November 1519
• Desperate return to Cempoala — May 1520
• La noche triste — July 1520
• Tlatelolco — August 1521
• Heroic Defense of Mexiko-Tenochtitlan — Indigenous Account

NOTE: Quotes from Díaz and Cortés are from the following sources:
The Conquest of New Spain, Bernal Díaz del Castillo. Translated by J. M. Cohen. Penguin Books, 1963.
Letters from Mexico, Hernán Cortés. Translated by Anthony Pagden. Yale University Press, 1986.