by
Damien F. Mackey
“We may begin, as is appropriate, with the leaders of the conquests, Alexander of Macedon and Cortés of Castile. Both were complex characters, enigmatic and elusive to contemporaries and posterity alike, and both quickly became less the stuff of history than symbols of national aspiration, to be evoked in an amazing range of contexts”.
Brian Bosworth
Introduction
Reading through Graham Hancock’s lengthy account of Cortés and his small
band of Conquistadors against the Aztecs of Tenochtitlán (War God 3: Night of Sorrows, 2017), I began to be struck by how
similar was some of this epic to Alexander the Great and his conquests: the
heroic speeches and encouragement; the god-like self-confidence; the military
brilliance - almost beyond reality - with small armies of battle-hardened troops
conquering masses of enemy, generally with little loss on the side of the
victors.
Prior to this, I had proposed certain parallels between:
Croesus and Montezuma
in which Cortés was there likened somewhat to Choresh (i.e., Cyrus the
Persian).
But, regarding the wars of Conquistadors, on the one hand, and the
Macedonians, on the other, I wondered if anyone might have drawn parallels
between these two scenarios – already suspecting that this would have been the
case. And so I came across this one, Brian Bosworth’s
“A Tale of Two Empires: Hernán Cortés and
Alexander the Great”:
….
Imperialism
is a strangely uniform phenomenon. The modes of acquiring empire tend to be
similar, as do the arguments justifying its acquisition. That is not
surprising. Imperial powers have a tendency to look over their shoulders at
their predecessors, emulate the achievements of the past, and absorb the
traditional philosophies of conquest. Cicero on the just war or Aristotle on
natural slavery were texts familiar to the expansionists of the Renaissance and
early modern periods.1
The ancients provided convenient doctrines of racial superiority, which could
be buttressed by appeals to the divinity. A typical example of complacent
optimism is provided by a certain Daniel Denton, who observed in 1670 ‘that
where the English come to settle a Divine Hand makes way for them by removing
or cutting off the Indians, whether by wars one with the other or by some
raging, mortal disease’.2
God, then, was on the side of the English, and they could provide time-hallowed
justification for their presence in North America. But can the reverse process
be (p.24) justified? Can we, so to speak, call upon the
New World to explain or illuminate the empires of the past? There are indeed
similarities, notably between the conquests of Alexander the Great and those of
the Spaniards in Central America. In both cases the spectacular campaigns of a
handful of years changed the political map of the world. Alexander invaded Asia
Minor in the spring of 334 BC, and a mere four years later he had overrun the
greater part of the Near East, occupied the central capitals of the Persian
Empire, and annexed the accumulated treasure of the imperial people he
defeated. As a direct result of the campaigns the world from Macedon in the
north to Egypt in the south and to Afghanistan in the east came under the
control of a Graeco-Roman elite. Similarly between 1519 and 1522 a group of
Spaniards under Hernán Cortés extended the rule of the Spanish crown from the
east coast of Mexico over almost all Central America. They occupied and
destroyed the Aztec capital and exploited its wealth to sustain the pretensions
of the Spanish monarchs to domination in Europe. An élite of Spanish settlers
moved in, supported by vast encomiendas, and maintained their domination for
almost the length of the Hellenistic monarchies.
So far the similarities, if roughly drawn,
are clear enough. The same can be said for the sources. For the Spanish
conquest there is a rich tradition, predominantly from the conquerors’
perspective. We have the Narrative Letters (Cartas de Relación) in which
Cortés himself justified his actions to his master, Charles V.3
We have several other memoirs from participants, notably the remarkable work by
Bernal Díaz del Castillo, written at the ripe old age of 76, some fifty years
after the events, and significantly entitled The True History of the
Conquest of New Spain.4
(A work that so openly professes its truth one automatically suspects (p.25) of falsehood: think of Lucian.) All this was
supplemented by documentation from the royal investigations into the conduct of
Cortés and his lieutenant, Pedro de Alvarado.5
There are also Mexican versions of the conquest, admittedly written under the
supervision of Spanish priests, but which, however dimly, represent the
perspective of the conquered people.6
Nothing comparable exists from the period of Alexander, no testimony direct or
indirect from the peoples he conquered. On the surface there appears a rich
vein of contemporary memoirs, works of Alexander’s lieutenants and humbler
contemporaries: Ptolemy, Aristobulus, Nearchus, Onesicritus, and Cleitarchus
all wrote significant works, but all are known solely through derivative
authors writing centuries later, when the objective was literary embellishment,
not factual reportage.7
We may suspect bias and misinformation, but it is rare that we have solid
evidence. The historical record of the Spanish conquest can perhaps be used as
an explanatory matrix, showing how historians of the first generation differ in
their record of fact, what they suppress for their convenience and how they
slant the narrative to suit their political interests. Similar motives are at
work, and the subject matter is often startlingly pertinent to the history of
Alexander.
We may begin, as is appropriate, with the
leaders of the conquests, Alexander of Macedon and Cortés of Castile. Both were
complex characters, enigmatic and elusive to contemporaries and posterity
alike, and both quickly became less the stuff of history than symbols of
national aspiration, to be evoked in an amazing range of contexts. Anthony
Pagden has written of the many personae which Cortés has assumed in modern
writings: ‘the soldier-scholar of the Renaissance, a bandy-legged syphilitic
liar and, most improbable of all, a humane idealist aiding an oppressed people
against tyranny’.8
If one substitutes ‘alcoholic’ (p.26) for
‘syphilitic’, one has a fair, if incomplete, spectrum of modern views of Alexander,
the humanitarian champion of Hellenic culture, the promoter of the brotherhood
of mankind, the sinister Machiavellian schemer, the alcohol-drenched debauchee.
One creates one’s picture, and the sources, if selectively exploited, will
confirm it—provided that one ignores the vast bulk of the evidence. The
undeniable similarity comes in the career of conquest. Despite the differences
in their ages (Cortés was 35, already older than Alexander at his death, when
he set foot in Mexico) and the size of their armies, both had spectacular and
largely unbroken successes against much larger forces. Our sources are
explicit. For Bernal Díaz ‘the plain name Cortés was as highly respected in
Spain and throughout the Indies as the name of Alexander in Macedonia or those
of Julius Caesar, Pompey and Scipio among the Romans or Hannibal in Carthage’.9
Alexander and Cortés alike were endued with an aura of invincibility, and both
exploited the concept for self-glorification. The Macedonian king made victory
inseparable from his person. The great silver decadrachms which he struck to
commemorate his Indian victories depict him holding the thunderbolt of Zeus and
receiving a crown from the hands of personified Victory.10
Even at Athens his erstwhile enemies proposed erecting a statue to him as god
invincible; they had an informed opinion of what would appeal to him and framed
their motion accordingly.11
Unfortunately for Cortés the immense proprietary interest of the Catholic
Church prevented his claiming godhead, but he made the most of his invincibility.
Just before his death he was portrayed with his arms as Marquis of the Valley
of Oaxaca, and the legend proclaims him dux invictissimus.12
(p.27) His invincibility was truly superlative. The
sceptics might point to the Noche triste, the night of sorrows (1 July
1520) when Cortés had to fight his way out of the Mexican capital with the loss
of at least 500 of his Castilian troops (he admits to no more than 150).13
They might also point to Alexander’s first disastrous attempt to storm the
passes into Persia, when his phalanx was smashed by missiles from the hillsides
and withdrew demoralized, leaving its dead in the narrows.14
However, both disasters were retrieved, Alexander’s in a matter of days, that
of Cortés only by the capture and destruction of Tenochtitlan over a year later.
In the long view they could both be considered unconquered, and their military
abilities are beyond question.
We can extend and deepen the investigation by
the study of two parallel episodes, which to me are remarkably similar. Both
Alexander and Cortés were prone to folies de grandeurs, and in both
cases it led to near disaster and massive suffering. In the autumn of 325
Alexander returned from what is now southern Pakistan. His elephants and some
of the heavy infantry and veterans he had sent on an alternative route through
Afghanistan and southern Iran, while he took the bulk of the army, at least
30,000 strong, through the bleakly inhospitable Makran. It was an appalling
hardship, a march of 750 kilometres over sixty days, plagued by sand drifts, monsoonal
floods in the east, and thirst and famine in the west; and the army which
limped into the Gedrosian capital of Pura had eaten its baggage animals and was
reduced to the last stages of exhaustion.15
The parallel in the career of Cortés is his march through Honduras. It began in
October 1525 and took at least six months to cover a distance (p.28) comparable to Alexander’s passage of
Gedrosia. The hardships were comparable: starvation and exhaustion
predominating. Cortés’ forces were often stranded for weeks at a time, while
his Indian followers were impressed into engineering works, constructing vast
log bridges and causeways at great human cost. Not surprisingly Cortés himself
minimizes the hardships. In his detailed Fifth Letter he insinuates that the
forces with him were minute (93 horsemen and some 30 foot soldiers) and
emphasizes the care with which he provisioned the expedition, sending a small
fleet of supply ships to the Tabasco River.16
He somewhat weakens the effect by adding that, as his road lay inland, the
supplies were of very little use. In his description of the march he does not
deny that there were problems with hunger, particularly while building the
bridge over the San Pedro Mártir,17
but they were promptly relieved once his forces crossed over into Acalan.
Hunger began in earnest only when he reached his destination at Nito and had to
care for the handful of destitute and starving Spanish settlers whom he found
there18—and
it was the herd of pigs which Cortés had collected for the journey (or the few
survivors) that prevented disaster. He had prepared carefully for the march,
acquiring maps from the chiefs of Tabasco and Xicalango,19 (p.29) and it was his initiative which ensured that
the route was followed even though the natives professed ignorance of it.
Díaz, however, provides a complete contrast.20
For all his admiration of Cortés his resentment gives his narrative an acid
edge. The march was folly, ruined by Cortés’ obstinacy in ignoring the advice
of his lieutenants (including Díaz himself) who advocated a direct route
through the Sierras.21
His detailed account reveals that Cortés took over 250 Spaniards, including
most of the settlers in the town of Coatzacoalcos, who were forced against
their will to join the expedition22—and
their absence led directly to a native revolt. Cortés’ preparations are
denigrated; his famous map described the lands only as far as Acalan,23
and within a few days the expedition was lost; the road they laboriously cut
went round in a circle and after two days intersected itself (‘when Cortés saw
this he was like to burst with rage’). The situation was hardly improved when
the two guides he had brought with the expedition disappeared, and it
transpired that they had been eaten by the starving Indian auxiliaries, some
three thousand of whom followed in his train: Cortés showed his displeasure at
the atrocity by having one of the culprits burned alive.24
In Díaz’ account starvation is an ever-present threat. A few days out from
Iztapa the Spaniards were subsisting on herbs and roots, and were busy at heavy
construction work.25
When the great bridge over the San Pedro Mártir was built, there were numerous
deaths from hunger, and the situation was only alleviated by a successful (p.30) foraging raid led by Díaz himself.26
In fact Díaz represents himself as the saviour of the expedition, the only
person capable of finding supplies in the native villages near by— he was as
indispensable as Xenophon to the Ten Thousand and as shameless in recounting
his services. By contrast, Cortés kept his herd of pigs five days to the rear,
and his quartermaster spread the rumour that they had been eaten by alligators.27
He became the butt of the troops’ mounting exasperation. They seized the
supplies brought by Díaz, refusing to reserve anything for their leader, and
Díaz had to undertake yet another trip to relieve the situation, accompanied
this time by Cortés’ lieutenant, Gonzalo de Sandoval (‘he went with me himself
to bring his share of the food, and would trust no one else, although he had
many soldiers whom he could have sent’).28
For Díaz the whole affair was a bizarre catalogue of extreme hardship, and even
Cortés himself was ‘regretful and discontented’.29
It contrasts sharply with the bland, minimalist account of the leader of the
expedition.
The same variation occurs in our tradition of
Alexander’s march through the Makran. There are two main accounts, both resumed
in the work of Arrian.30
First there is a relatively matter-of-fact description of the journey from
Oreitis (Las Bela) to Pura (Bampur). The hardships are mentioned but not
stressed: the night marches, shortages of water, lack (p.31) of
provisions.31
Even so, it is maintained, Alexander was able to acquire a surplus of grain
which he sent to the coast to provision the fleet which was to sail along the
coast in his wake after the monsoon southerlies abated. One of these convoys
was devoured by its escort (and the source underlines the desperate state of
hunger),32
but it is implied that the bulk of the consignments reached the coast
unscathed. What emerges is a rational scheme to provision the fleet, a scheme
which was in part successful. The undoubted hardships were not catastrophic and
did not take place in the immediate entourage of Alexander. Once again there is
a second version. Nearchus, the actual commander of the Ocean fleet, gave a
vivid account of privation:33
deaths through flash floods in the early part of the march, extreme
difficulties with the shifting sand dunes, chronic thirst and starvation. As
the march continued the draught animals were gradually slaughtered and the
army’s baggage was necessarily discarded.34
There was also trouble with the route. Alexander’s guides may not have been
eaten, but they were baffled by the configuration of the terrain after a
sandstorm and led the army astray.35
Finally, the attempt to provision the fleet was totally ineffectual. If any
supplies reached the coast, they did not remain to be consumed by Nearchus’
men. No supply depot is reported between the coast of Oreitis and Hormuz.36
The difference between the two versions is palpable, however much Arrian may
have (p.32) intensified the lurid details of Nearchus for
rhetorical effect, and it is exactly the contrast we find in the reports of
Cortés’ march to Honduras. One account, which in all probability derives from
Ptolemy, placed the emphasis on Alexander’s leadership. He coped with
impossible conditions with a degree of success, and he treated the one lapse of
discipline with compassionate understanding. That account does not derive from
Alexander himself, but it was written by one of his Bodyguards, one of the
elite marshals of his court, who would have been involved in the planning of
the expedition and shared any opprobrium for the hardships of the march. He
would not have made a feature of the human misery and casualties it incurred.
On the other hand, Nearchus had the same perspective as Díaz. He was making the
most of a situation which he had not created. He could stress the miseries of
the march which made it impossible for any provision to be made for him. It was
almost a miracle that the land forces escaped with such comparatively small
losses to the fighting forces. By contrast he was instrumental in saving the
fleet—just as Díaz claims he delivered Cortés and his men from starvation.
Despite the lack of provisions, the hostile coast, an incompetent head
steersman, he brought the fleet to Hormuz practically untouched. It was his
stratagem that extorted food from the natives on the Gedrosian coast, his
initiative that coped with the threat from a school of whales, his foresight
which saved the fleet from disaster when Onesicritus proposed extending the
voyage west to the Arabian peninsula.37
The hardship and near catastrophe suffered by the land forces served to
highlight Nearchus’ achievement. At the least he had vindicated his proud boast
to Alexander that he would bring ships and men safe to Persis—and on his own
account he had surpassed Alexander himself.
The similarities extend beyond the sources to
the motivation of the two expeditions. All writers are somewhat baffled by the
reasons for Cortés’ march to Honduras. On the surface it is transparent enough.
Cortés was infuriated by (p.33) the
defection of one of his captains. Cristóbal de Olid, whom he had dispatched to
establish a settlement in Honduras, had gone over to his mortal enemy, Diego
Velázquez, the governor of Cuba.38
That was a violation of Cortés’ authority as governor of New Spain, authority
which had been only recently conferred (Cortés received the news in September
1523, only four months before Olid’s betrayal). It is not surprising that
Cortés reacted with fury, and imprudently threatened to cross to Cuba and
arrest Velázquez,39
and it is only natural that he sent a punitive force, a flotilla of five ships
with a complement of conquistadors under his relative, Francisco de Las Casas.
It is understandable, as Díaz states, that he had suspicions that Las Casas
would fail and decided upon a second expedition led by himself.40
What is not explained is why he went overland and took the route he did. Díaz
maintains that he might have gone far more easily by way of the uplands, from
Coatzacoalcos to Chiapa, from Chiapa to Guatemala, and from Guatemala to Olid’s
base at Naco. Instead Cortés insisted on the coastal route, although he knew
that there were substantial rivers to cross as well as unforgiving marshy
terrain and heavy jungle. Even Díaz gives no explanation for the march, and the
only hint we have is Cortés’ remark to his emperor that ‘I had been for a long
time idle and attempted no new thing in Your Majesty’s service’.41
He would not rest indefinitely on his laurels after the capture of
Tenochtitlan, but would carry out an epic march through the most difficult of
terrain to crush a rebel against his authority. The route was chosen precisely
because it was the most difficult and challenging.
(p.34) In the event it nearly killed him. He and his
men arrived at the Honduran coast in the last stages of exhaustion, in no
condition to crush any rebel, and he was lucky that Olid had already been
captured and beheaded—through a combination of good luck and incompetence.42
Alexander’s motivation is on record.
According to Nearchus, Alexander went into the Makran in full knowledge of the
difficulties of the terrain because he wished to eclipse the achievements of
Semiramis, the legendary conqueror-queen of Babylon, and Cyrus the Great, the
founder of the Persian Empire.43
Both had allegedly come to grief in the Makran, escaping with a handful of
survivors. By contrast, Alexander intended to bring his own army through
intact. Like Cortés he had political reasons for concern. There were reports of
insubordination among the governors of the western satrapies of his empire, and
he took the first steps to quash the unrest before he embarked on the desert
march. When he arrived in Carmania, he was met by the generals from Media who
had completed a 1,700-kilometre march the length of Iran44
and had obviously been summoned while he was still in India, as, it seems, was
Apollo-dorus, the military commandant in Babylonia.45
Alexander conducted a full investigation, and had the Median generals executed
for insubordination and misgovernment. Apollo-dorus remained under suspicion.46
The king had every reason to return and restore order among his errant
subordinates, but, like Cortés, he chose the route which was most challenging
and he did so to prove his pre-eminence as a leader of armies. He would bring
his forces intact through the desert which had beaten Cyrus. In that he was
partially (p.35) successful. The casualties he sustained were
largely suffered by the camp followers, the women and children in the army’s
train, and, though his troops arrived in Pura in an exhausted and demoralized
state, they were soon rehabilitated and their military efficiency was
unimpaired.
Alexander was also free to clean up the
pockets of insubordination. At first he was cautious and calculating. While his
men were still weak he treated the satrap of Carmania, Astaspes, with affable
courtesy, only later catching him off guard and executing him (so sparking a
local revolt).47
That contrasted with the savagery with which he greeted Abulites, the satrap of
Susa, berating him at their first meeting and personally spearing his son with
a sarisa.48
Then his troops were fully recovered, and the satrap was helpless. But the
desert march had been a great miscalculation. It inflicted prodigious hardship,
more, we are told, than the sum total of the other tribulations which the
Macedonians endured in Asia.49
It must have increased the resentment at Alexander’s unceasing pursuit of
glory, and his emulation of the heroic figures of the past was no more than
extravagant bravado.
We have then two episodes of personal
self-indulgence, both potentially disastrous. For Cortés the march to Honduras
came when he was at the height of his glory, governor of the whole of New Spain
and owner of vast estates which allegedly brought an income of 200 million
pesos. His authority lapsed during his long absence, when rumours of his death
were rife, and, although he was able to re-establish himself temporarily on his
return, he was suspended from his governorship, subjected to an official
investigation, and returned to Spain in 1528. For Alexander the consequences were
less harmful. He was able to restore his authority by systematic execution of
his subordinates, and he neutralized the resentment of the army by mass
demobilization of his veterans. Perhaps the most damaging (p.36) aspect
of the affair was its demonstration of the lengths to which he would go to
rival the great exploits of history and mythology. If he had traversed Gedrosia
in order to outdo Semiramis and Cyrus, would he not follow Heracles to the
Straits of Gibraltar? The limits of his ambition were boundless, as were the
sacrifices he demanded to reach them, and it was only a matter of time before
disaster struck. He had no overlord to impose curbs on his ambition. He could
not be demoted or recalled. He could, however, be killed if he presented too much
of a threat to those around him, and the Gedrosian episode was a stark
illustration of the magnitude of the dangers he voluntarily embraced.
We can extend the narrative similarities
beyond the personae of the conquerors. In more general ways the sources echo
each other and reveal comparable values, comparable modes of thought. One of
the most striking phenomena is what can only be termed a sanitization of the
military carnage. Both Cortés and Alexander led forces which were technically
superior to anything they encountered. The firearms, crossbows, plate armour,
and Toledo steel of the conquistadors were set against the obsidian clubs and
quilted cotton armour of their Indian adversaries, while Alexander found
nothing to match the six-metre long sarisae of his Macedonian phalanx or
the discipline of mass engagement which he and his father had inculcated.
Singly and collectively they outstripped their adversaries in all branches of
military technology. Not surprisingly we read of epic combats in which the invaders
were outnumbered many times and still won without significant losses. In his
description of the first battle against the Tlaxcalans (later his most loyal
allies) in September 1519 Cortés claims to have fought all day with half a
dozen guns, five or six harquebuses, forty crossbowmen, and thirteen horsemen
against a host of Indians which he modestly estimates as 100,000 strong, and
did so without damage ‘except from exhaustion and hunger’.50
Díaz describes the same engagement with more reticence: there were only 3,000 (p.37) Tlaxcalans, and they inflicted severe wounds
with their obsidian ‘broadswords’. Four Spaniards were hurt, one fatally, while
the Indians left seventeen dead.51
The epic scale of Cortés’ narrative has been much reduced, but Díaz is still
impressive in describing the lethal effects of the obsidian weapons which, he
claims, literally decapitated one of the Spanish horses.52
The enemy is represented as formidable, and the achievement of the conquerors
is maximized. The same thinking almost certainly underlies the commemorative
coinage of Alexander, which displayed the archers, elephants, and war chariots
of his Indian adversaries, showing all with eyes to see the fearsome qualities
of the troops which had defeated them.
What is not stressed is the effect of the fighting
upon the conquered. Our sources for Cortés and Alexander alike write of huge
casualties, but there is no attempt to spell out what those casualties implied.
For that we need to turn to the records of the Indian informants whose
testimony was compiled by Fray Bernadino de Sahagún in 1555. The most vivid
description concerns the mysterious episode in 1520 when Cortés’ lieutenant,
Pedro de Alvarado, violated the national festival held by his permission in the
capital, and massacred the largely defenceless celebrants. The results were
gruesome, luridly illustrated in picture and prose:
They attacked all the celebrants, stabbing
them, spearing them, striking them with their swords. They attacked some of
them from behind, and these fell instantly to the ground with their entrails
hanging out. Others they beheaded: they cut off their heads, or split their
heads to pieces. They struck others in the shoulders and their arms were torn
from their bodies. They wounded some in the thigh and some in the calf. They slashed
others in the abdomen and their entrails all spilled to the ground. Some
attempted to run away, but their entrails dragged as they ran …53
(p.38) There could not be a more telling description
of the effect of finely honed Toledo steel upon human flesh, and it is not
surprising that the Spanish sources do not dwell on the details of the carnage.
The battles would lose their heroic aura, and the conquistadors would appear
more like abattoir workers. For Alexander’s campaigns there is nothing to
compare with the Indian testimony. Nobody describes what it was like to be
spitted by a sarisa with its ferocious leaf-shaped blade fifty
centimetres long (although the Alexander mosaic gives a visual representation).
As a result one becomes immune to the casualty figures. Alexander’s men may
have killed countless thousands, but one gets the impression that nobody was
really hurt, just as in some Disney cartoon. However, there must have been
scenes of slaughter which made Alvorado’s massacre at Tenochtitlan look tame.
Consider the final scene at the Granicus, when the 20,000 Greek mercenaries
were left stranded on the battlefield to be surrounded by Alexander’s
victorious army, the phalanx pressing their front, the cavalry harrying the
sides and rear. The king disregarded their appeal for quarter, and a massacre
ensued.54
Whether or not 90 per cent were cut down, as Arrian and Plutarch imply, there
is no doubt that many thousands fell, and the circumstances would not have been
pretty. Given the large circular shields of the Greeks and their massed
formation, the wounds inflicted by the sarisae would have been
predominantly in the face and throat—otherwise in the groin. There was a
similar scene at the end of the battle of the Hydaspes, when the Indian battle
line was entrapped by the phalanx and a cordon of (p.39) Macedonian
cavalry, and the horror of the slaughter was intensified by maddened elephants
caught within their own disorganized mass of infantry and trampling
indiscriminately everything in their path.55
Few commanders have been more expert than Alexander in creating the conditions
for mass slaughter, and his troops developed a terrible efficiency in killing.
The conquest came at a high price in blood and agony. Vast areas in the west
may have fallen to him without serious resistance, but from the great rebellion
in Sogdiana in the summer of 329 to his invasion of the Makran in October 325
there was almost continuous fighting, scores of towns destroyed and whole
populations, civilian and military alike, massacred.
The human cost is something best ignored by
those who inflict it. Conquerors are in a position to control the record and
take the high moral ground. If they attack, it is because they have been
provoked and threatened, and the people they subjugate have a tendency to
submit themselves voluntarily to their yoke. If they then change their mind, it
is an act of rebellion; reprisals and condign punishment are justified. All
these are common phenomena, too familiar to require illustration. What is,
however, notable in the record of the Spaniards in the Americas and the
Graeco-Macedonians in the far east is an atmosphere of wonder, a stress upon
the marvels of the new territories.56
In part it is sheer curiosity, sometimes tinged with a modicum of nostalgic
admiration, but there is also a demonstrable tendency to depict the conquered
as alien. However wonderful they may be, they are different from us and can
therefore be treated differently. For the Spaniards in Mexico it was a simple
matter. The natives were not Christian; their deities were portrayed in
alarming and revolting imagery, and, worst of all, they practised human sacrifice,
eating the remains of the victims after their palpitating hearts had been torn
out and offered to the sun. The suppression of such practices was easy enough
to justify, and Cortés’ narrative letters are full of the complacent sermons he
allegedly (p.40) delivered, denouncing the twin evils of human
sacrifice and sodomy. These were easy targets; the vice of the natives
justified wholesale iconoclasm, massacre, and the burning alive of
recalcitrants.57
But in other ways the Spaniards have strongly traditional reactions to more
familiar situations. They have the same prejudice in favour of agriculture and
against nomadic populations that had prevailed since antiquity. In the
Alexander authors we find the traditional admiration of the Saka nomads of the
north-east as exemplars of the virtues of poverty,58
but there is also the traditional exasperation against the depredations of the
nomadic peoples of the Zagros. The marauding Cossaeans, who lived between Media
and Babylonia, had a bad reputation for brigandage and received presents from
the Great King to ensure safe passage when he moved court from Ecbatana to
Babylon.59
That alone justified Alexander’s unprovoked attack late in 324. The Cossaeans
were terrified into temporary submission and were subjected to a colonizing
policy in which the new settlers would transform them from nomads into
‘ploughmen and labourers on the land’, as Nearchus coyly puts it.60
In other words they ceased to be free herdsmen and became serfs labouring to
support an alien military population. Cortés displays exactly the same attitude
when he promises Charles V that he will subjugate the nomad Chichimeca peoples
of the north. They are said to be very barbarous and less intelligent than the
rest of the natives. He has therefore sent a small expedition to pacify them
and settle if they show some aptitude. If not, they will be reduced to slavery.
‘By making slaves of this barbarous people, who are almost savages, Your
Majesty will be served (p.41) and the Spaniards will benefit greatly, as
they will work in the gold mines, and perhaps by living among us some of them
may even be saved.’61
The Aristotelian doctrine of natural slavery shines out here. The Chichimecas
were too uncivilized to be anything but slaves and could therefore be enslaved
and transported without any qualms. It is pleasant to record that in actuality
they retained their independence for over a century, and improved their nomadic
way of life by stealing Spanish horses and firearms.62
Traditional prejudice was matched by
traditional curiosity. It is amusing to find Cortés invoking time-hallowed
interest in Amazons, which had been stimulated by the recent publication of the
romance of Amadis. That vastly popular work dealt with the exploits of the
warrior queen Calafia, who held sway in the rugged but gold-rich island of
California, ‘on the right side of the Indies’. Diego Velázquez had originally
commissioned Cortés to search for Amazons, and some years later Cortés was able
to report to Charles V that there was a distant island off the Pacific coast
which was inhabited by women, without a single man. Mating took place only at
certain seasons, when sexual partners were allowed on the island, and only the
female offspring were retained.63
A kinsman, Francisco Cortés, was given a modest force of horse, crossbowmen,
and artillery and sent to investigate this intriguing story; but the Amazons
remained as stubbornly elusive as the pot of gold at the rainbow’s end.
Alexander received very similar information when he was approached by
Pharasmanes, the ambitious ruler of Chorasmia, just south of the Aral Sea.
Pharasmanes allegedly claimed to be a neighbour of the Amazons and their
homeland near Colchis, and volunteered to lead Alexander on an expedition
against them.64
The political aims are transparent in both cases: Pharasmanes wished to harness
the curiosity (p.42) of the Macedonians into the expansion of his
own kingdom, while Cortés wished for an unlimited brief for exploration and
conquest—as far as the Moluccas and Cathay, if it could be managed.65
The Amazons were the prime drawcard, the ultimate appeal to prurient male
curiosity, but in both cases the motivation of the informants was blatantly
obvious and the reports were disregarded. However, there was much that was
completely new, that could not be accommodated to traditional beliefs and
prejudices. In the literature of the Spanish conquest the most moving
expression of wonder is Bernal Díaz’ panegyric over the marvels of
Tenochtitlan. The city on the water with its great pyramids was almost the
stuff of fairy-tales, ‘like an enchanted vision from the tale of Amadis … It
was all so wonderful that I do not know how to describe this first glimpse of
things never heard of, seen or dreamed of before.’ Díaz proceeds to a rapturous
description of the palaces of stone and cedar wood, the fragrant orchards and
rose gardens, the birds of all breeds and varieties. But then he ends on a
chilling note: ‘But today all that I then saw is overthrown and destroyed;
nothing is left standing.’66
The marvels did not protect the Mexican from the holocaust, and in some ways
they were responsible for it. However wonderful and exotic the environment of
Tenochtitlan, it was proof of the otherness of its inhabitants. They were
different from the Spaniards, and the norms of western civilization did not
apply to them.
Some of the same type of thinking can be
found in the Alexander historians, particularly in their description of India,
which they saw as a land of marvels, with curiosities known from past
literature and an apparently inexhaustible supply of novelties. Perhaps the
closest analogy to Díaz’ outpouring is the description which Onesicritus gave
of the realm of Musicanus, an Indian prince who held sway on the middle Indus,
in the vicinity of the modern town of Alor. Musicanus was slow to submit to
Alexander, but once he did so, admitting his error (‘the most potent method
with (p.43) Alexander for anyone to obtain what he might
desire’), he was confirmed as ruler with a supervisory garrison of Macedonians.67
Alexander, so Arrian states, wondered at the city and its hinterland.68
What he found to marvel at is not explicitly on record. However, Onesicritus,
the head steersman of his fleet, gave a rhapsodic description of the land,
which abounded with all the necessities of life.69
Its inhabitants lived a frugal and healthy life, attaining an age of 130 years.
They abjured the use of gold and silver, considered excessive practice in
military science iniquitous and had no procedures of civil law. Above all there
was no slavery; young men carried out menial domestic tasks, and the rural
population had almost the serf status of the Laconian helots but was content
with its lot.70
Without a doubt Onesicritus is idealizing, and he may have the self-sufficiency
advocated by his master, Diogenes the Cynic, at the back of his mind. However,
he is explaining and interpreting Indian phenomena, like the social position of
the śūdras, who were serf-like but free members of the society—the
concept of caste no Greek appears to have fully appreciated. His explanation is
cast in polar opposites: everything that the invaders cherished, banquets,
precious metals, chattel slaves, litigation, and military expertise, were
disdained by the people of Musicanus. Onesicritus praised their institutions
highly, but he could not make it plainer that they were the antithesis of
everything Hellenic.71
They may have been successful, virtuous, and admirable but they were also
alien. Accordingly their institutions no more saved them from disaster than did
the beauties of Tenochtitlan. Once Alexander had left to deal with the stubborn
resistance in the mountains to the west, Musicanus rebelled, encouraged by his
Brahman advisers. We need not explore his motives here. What matters is the
consequences. Alexander sent the satrap of (p.44) Sind,
Peithon, son of Agenor, to deal with the rebels. The cities of Musicanus were
destroyed or turned into garrison centres, and their inhabitants were enslaved
en masse. Musicanus and his Brahman advisers were crucified as an example to
the rest—a terrible and perhaps deliberate flouting of Indian custom which
exempted Brahmans from any sort of capital punishment.72
We have the paradox of a realm admired for its peculiar institutions, but
ruthlessly destroyed once it proved recalcitrant. Those very institutions were
a proof of the otherness of the conquered, and the otherness was some
justification for the savagery with which they were treated.
The conquered, however, could not be
portrayed as totally alien. They had to understand their conquerors and
converse with them in a meaningful way. Above all they had to offer submission
and understand what submission meant. Whether Greek or Roman, Spaniard or
English, a conqueror could not simply annex land by unprovoked violence. There
had to be some act of recognition, some voluntary acceptance of the authority
of the invaders. That is clearly illustrated in another fragment of
Onesicritus, his famous account of his meeting with the Brahman sages outside
Taxila.73
This is an elaborate and complicated passage in which Onesicritus retails
Brahman doctrine in a significantly Greek dress. It is hardly reportage of a
specific exchange but a literary re-enactment, and an anthology of Indian
doctrine which Onesicritus had assimilated in his years of interaction with the
court sage, Calanus. For our purposes what is significant is Onesicritus’
report of the doctrine of the senior Brahman, Dandamis. For Dandamis Alexander
shows the interest in ‘philosophy’ which is the mark of a true king, and he
retains it even in his military calling. He can therefore inculcate the virtues
of temperance in his subjects. Dandamis in fact welcomes Alexander, and he adds
that he (p.45) had encouraged the local prince, Taxiles, to
receive him.74
Taxiles had indeed invited Alexander into India long before Alexander was in a
position to invade, and had sent a delegation to the western frontiers to welcome
him into the Indian lands.75
His submission is reinforced by the senior Brahman of northern India, who is
represented hailing Alexander almost as an ideal king. Taxiles, it would seem,
recognized the suzerainty of Alexander, based on his conquest of the Persian
Empire, to which his princedom had once belonged, and Dandamis conferred moral
legitimacy. However alien these Indians may have been, they recognized their
natural sovereign and accepted his authority in unambiguous terms—or so
Alexander’s historians implied.
There is a striking counterpoint in the
accounts of the Spanish conquest, which show the native chiefs accepting a
state of vassalage to the Spanish crown, even though they can have had no
inkling what the Spanish crown was or what the state of vassalage implied.
Nevertheless their statements of submission were translated into Spanish and
solemnly engrossed in legal form by a Spanish notary.76
The most famous submission is that of Montezuma himself in November 1519, when
he first received Cortés into Tenochtitlan. What he actually said we shall
never know. What all sources represent him delivering is explicit recognition
of the Spaniards as his legitimate overlords. Even the Indian accounts of the
meeting have Cortés’ coming predicted by previous Aztec rulers; they were
merely representatives, and Montezuma surrenders his stewardship: ‘Rest now,
and take possession of your royal houses. Welcome to your lands, my lords.’77
This acknowledgement was a moral necessity, and Sahagún, the Spanish editor, (p.46) cannot have allowed any variant to stand in
the record. The Spaniards are even more explicit, most of all Cortés, who put
in Montezuma’s mouth what is almost a classical foundation myth, reminiscent of
the return of the Heraclidae. His people, he says, were brought into the Valley
of Mexico by an overlord, who was in due course rejected by the Aztecs and
disappeared into the east. Since Cortés and his men come from the rising sun
and claim to be the servants of a great lord, they are clearly the descendants
of the Aztec foundation hero and the Aztecs are their vassals. Consequently
‘all that we own is for you to dispose of as you choose’.78
A very comfortable doctrine for the Spaniards, expressed in terms that are
totally unambiguous to them. And it is not surprising that other sources record
Montezuma making much the same statement. Bernal Díaz mentions the prophecies
of Montezuma’s ancestors that some day rulers would come from the rising sun,
and Francisco de Aguilar claimed that the emperor’s submission was recorded by
a notary.79
All this is very suspicious. ….
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