Qualpopoca
Qualpopoca | |
|---|---|
| Died | November 1519 |
| Nationality | Aztec |
| Occupation(s) | Aztec administrator and military officer |
Qualpopoca (or Quetzalpopoca) was an
Operations in Nauhtla
Qualpopoca first appears in the historical record when he was ordered by the Aztec Emperor
To restore the province to Aztec control, Moctezuma despatched Qualpopoca with instructions to defeat the Totonacs and their Spanish allies. Arriving in October 1519, Qualpopoca demanded that the Totonac towns pay their regular tribute to the Aztec capital,
The battle was short, the Totonac forces routing early on and Escalante forced to withdraw under heavy attack, leaving Nauthla in flames. During the retreat, Escalante was mortally wounded, five Spaniards were killed and one, Juan de Argüello, captured. As was traditional in Aztec society, Argüello and the captured Totonacs were sacrificed, the Spaniard's head being sent to Moctezuma as a trophy.[2] Cortes later suggested in a letter, as justification for the death of Qualpopoca, that these men were not killed or captured in battle, but rather had been sent by the Spanish as emissaries and guides to Qualpopoca who had had them seized and sacrificed.[3]
Intrigues in Tenochtitlan
When word of the battle reached Tenochtitlan on 14 November 1519, there was consternation. Hernán Cortés and his force of 300 conquistadors and several thousand Totonac and Tlaxcalan allies had reached the city a week earlier and were living in one of the city's palaces as guests of Moctezuma. The presence of the Spanish and their traditional enemies the Tlaxcalans caused unease in the city, especially following their massacre of the population of Cholula a few weeks earlier. News of the battle at Nauhtla, accompanied by the arrival of Argüello's head, alarmed the Aztec government that it might provoke the Spanish or their allies into an attack on the city's nobility as had happened at Cholula. The head was sent away and Moctezuma agreed to a private meeting with Cortes.[2]
Cortes arrived with 35 armed men and, after a brief preamble, informed Moctezuma that he would either join the Spanish in their accommodation as a hostage or he would be killed on the spot along with his advisors and attendants. Despite arguing and pleading with Cortes, Moctezuma eventually submitted to the Spanish and, with his principal advisors, moved to the Spanish accommodation where he became a prisoner in all but name. Although allowed to continue to rule as before, all of Moctezuma's proclamations, correspondence and movements were controlled by Cortes.[4]
Death of Qualpopoca
| "I often pause to consider the heroic actions of that time. I seem to see the present before my eyes; and I believe that we performed them not of our own volition but by the guidance of God. For what soldiers in the world, numbering only four hundred – and we were even fewer – would have dared to enter a city such as Mexico . . . and, having seized so great a prince, execute his captains before his eyes?"[5] |
The Conquest of New Spain, Bernal Díaz del Castillo.[6]
|
.png)
One of the first actions of the new prisoner emperor was to order the arrest of Qualpopoca, two of his sons and 15 other Aztec nobles. These men were brought to Tenochtitlan where Moctezuma gave them to Cortes. Under questioning, Qualpopoca insisted that he had been acting on his own initiative when attacking Escalante but later changed his story, possibly under torture, to claim that Moctezuma had deliberately ordered him to wage war on the Spanish. Cortes informed Moctezuma of this and told him that although he considered the Emperor guilty of ordering the attack on Escalante's men, Cortes would protect him from harm.[7]
Cortes then brought a shackled Moctezuma out into the great plaza in front of the Templo Mayor and made him watch, along with thousands of citizens of Tenochtitlan, as Qualpopoca, his sons and the fifteen other prisoners were tied to stakes, surrounded with bundles or arrows and wooden weapons from the Aztec armouries and burnt to death. According to some accounts, the crowd watched the spectacle in total silence and when the prisoners were dead, Cortes told Moctezuma he could go free. Terrified by the anger of his subjects following this public execution of one of his most senior officers, Moctezuma refused. Over the next few months the Aztec Emperor would gradually lose the respect of his people, culminating in his death on the Noche Triste on 30 June 1520.[8]
Notes
References
- Díaz, Bernal (1963) [1576]. The Conquest of New Spain. J. M. Cohen (trans.). Penguin Classics.
- ISBN 0-7126-6079-8.