The Rest Is History - 385. The Fall of the Aztecs: The Woman Who Changed The World (Part 2)

Episode Date: November 7, 2023

Hernán Cortés has set sail from Cuba, eager to find the truth behind the rumours of gold on the coast of Mexico. Ahead lies a world he can barely imagine - a land of pyramid temples, terrifying gods and unknown peoples - the empire of the Aztecs. But Cortés has a secret weapon: a woman whose very name has become a byword for treachery … In today’s episode, Dominic and Tom explore the extraordinary story of Malinche, the slave-girl given by the Mayans to the Spanish, who becomes Cortés’s translator, guide, lover and adviser. As the expedition moves north along the Mexican coast, is she really doing the Spaniards’ bidding? Or has she secretly taken control, leading them ever closer to a tumultuous and bloody showdown? For all the time, Montezuma is waiting … Don’t miss the second episode in this thrilling account of the Fall of the Aztecs! *Dominic’s book The Fall of the Aztecs is available now from bookshops across the UK - the perfect Christmas present!* *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in New Zealand and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory. the wind and the waves. My friends, he said hoarsely, we are setting out today on a great enterprise, which will be famous in years to come. Out there are vast and wealthy lands and people such as we have never seen before. We will take them for our own, he paused. His men stared back at him. I offer you great rewards, he said, though they will be wrapped

about with great hardships. But as long as you do not abandon me, I will never abandon you, and I will make you the richest men who have ever crossed the sea. We fight for almighty God, and he will give us victory. At that, one of his men hauled up Cortes' golden standard, which had been specially made back in Santiago. And when the others saw the bright red cross and the embroidered motto, Amici saccama crucem, et si nos fidem habemus, vere in hoc signo vincemus, some of them began to cheer. First one or two, then more, and then they were all cheering, their voices raised in a single chorus. For God, for Spain, for gold, for glory. Ringing stuff, Dominic, from your forthcoming children's book. Well, actually, it's not

forthcoming, is it? Is it out now? It's just out. Yes, I think, Tom. Yes, I think it's available in all good booksellers and all bad ones too. So thrilling account of a truly thrilling story, the meeting of Cortes and Moctezuma, Spanish and the Aztecs. And that is a description of Cortes persuading his men to go with him and launch on one of the most extraordinary expeditions of all time. And Tom, do you want to tell people what the Latin is in that? Yes, sorry. Yes. I assume that your readers will all be familiar with Latin. Of course. But it's, what is it? It's, friends, let us follow the cross, and if we have sufficient faith,

then truly it is in the sign of the cross that we will be the conquerors. Yeah. In the first episode, you said how there's a lot of Roman and Greek cosplaying going on with this, and I guess that would be a classic example of it. But it opens up the question of what Cortes' motives are and what his justifications are for what he's doing. Yes. And that, again, opens to the much broader question of, do the Spanish feel they just have the right to go and conquer this because they're all pagans? You know, if there's gold, well, of course, they're going to go and get it. Is there any

sense of idealism at all? Is the reference to the cross just kind of window dressing? But Dominic, to begin with, Cortes has been sent by Velázquez, the governor of Cuba, on the assumption that he is a man without spirit. Yes, a middle manager, a pen pusher. That seems to be the sense. So in the last episode, we talked about how Cortes had gone from Spain to the Caribbean. We talked about the first Spanish expeditions to the coast of Mexico. Of course, they don't know it's the coast of Mexico at this point. It could be a massive island. And how Velazquez decides to send Cortes to basically stake his claim in the new world. Why doesn't Velazquez go himself? Actually, we didn't talk about that last time. The reason is that he's managing Cuba and Cuba is ravaged by smallpox. If you're going to listen to the whole series, you should remember that because that will become very, very important later on. That on Cuba right now, there is this virus that is ripping through the native population

of the Tainos. And Velazquez therefore can't leave Cuba, so he gets Cortes to go for him. But also presumably if you're the governor of Cuba, you can't then go wanging off on some kind of harebrained scheme. Exactly right. Because if you do, and this often happens in the story of the conquistadors, somebody will hear of some exciting new land with more money and more gold and whatnot, and they'll go off. And then when they get back to their original base, bedraggled, miserable, covered with leeches,

they'll get back and they'll find that it's all gone to pot and somebody else has taken their palace and then they're in endless legal cases. The Spanish are very, very legalistic. And you talked about their Cortes' motives. I think it's a really fascinating question. Does he feel that he can go and take what he wants because he's a Christian and because these people are pagans? Because he's also a lawyer. He has a legal background as well. So he's aware of all this. He does. And I guess one way to think about this is to think

about what's he been told? What's he been told to do? So we know what Velazquez's orders were. Velazquez said, go west, have a look around at these new lands that my nephew, Juan de Grialba, has discovered. I want you to find Grialba and to give him all assistance. So in Velazquez's mind, he doesn't know that Grialba, by the way, is already on his way back. In his mind, Cortés is kind of the number two, that his own nephew is the person who's really going to be in charge of all this business. He explicitly says to Cortés, you will spread the gospel of Christianity. That assumption, Tom, the thing about the cross, is definitely there now some historians like to downplay that because they say colonialism is all about greed and you know mercenary motives

and cruelty and stuff but of course they're only saying that because they have the christian perspective right right i i mean we've talked about this before with the columbus i won't go into it again but yeah there's a deep ambivalence in the attitude, I think, of many contemporary historians towards the process of Christianization. Because the assumption that the weak, the oppressed, the conquered have a value that is greater than that of their conquerors, itself derives from Christian assumptions. That's fair enough, Tom. The last shall be first, the first shall be last. Yes. I've never heard you make that argument before. I'll make it again. The Mexican historian, Fernando Cervantes, who's based in Britain at the University of Bristol,

in his recent book, Conquistadores, he says, you will not understand what happened in the 16th century, this absolute hinge moment in human history, if you don't appreciate that the conquistadors are serious about being Christians, they genuinely mean it. Everything we know about Cortes suggests that he was actually quite pious, that he really believes. But also, Dominic, just again to touch on something that we've mentioned before, we talked about Las Casas. Yeah, the friar who says the Tainos have souls. Yes, and who argues that as human beings, they have rights just as Christians do. And there is an argument ongoing among the Spanish at this time about what their duty as Christians are. Is it to go out and,

if needs be, impose Christianity at the point of a sword? Or are the charges altogether more ambivalent than that? I think that's absolutely right. The anxiety about empire is there from the beginning. Oh, it definitely is. So as you said, Las Casas, Bartolome de Las Casas, for years, he's been going around preaching and indeed preaching to the conquistadors and saying, you're doing the devil's work. This is terrible. We should be very kind to the native peoples. We should build churches for them and hospitals and nice little villages.

We should make them Spanish, but we shouldn't oppress them and turn them into slaves and all of this stuff. So you're absolutely right. The ambivalence is there. I think the thing is that Cortes goes with very, very complicated motives because he's got complicated instructions. So Velazquez says, I want you to chart the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula. I want you to see if there is a shortcut to China and India. They're still going on about all that business. They haven't given up on the Chinese idea. But here's a weird thing. Velazquez explicitly says to him, are there Amazons? I want you to find out if there are any Amazons. He also says,

we have heard reports on Cuba of people with huge ears and others with faces like dogs. Are they out there? Find the dog people. Here be monsters. Yeah. Find the dog people, please. He also says, and gold. I want you to find out where the Totonacs, who we talked about last time, where they've got their gold from, and who are these people in this city inland, and have they got loads of gold? These are very contradictory instructions. Hug the coast coast but find people with heads like dogs gold and investigate the city but here's what he absolutely doesn't say tom he does not say conquer these lands and when cortez ends up doing or appearing to do just that velazquezquez on Cuba is outraged. Right.

And that's an important part of the story as well, isn't it? Yeah. This is never part. He actually says to Cortes, sleep on your ships. Do not sleep on land. Because of course, there's a bit of Velazquez that thinks, this must be for me. I want to have this as my financial, this is my pension. I don't want Cortes running off with my pension.

And I don't think he thinks at first that Cortez will do that. But here's the fascinating thing about Cortez. Right from the start, this guy who's been this obscure notary, this nobody, and this is what I think shows that he's actually not a nobody, that there is some ambition, opportunism, call it what you will, in him. Because right from the start, as soon as he gets the instructions, he immediately goes beyond them. So he's like, again, to pursue an analogy you made in the previous episode, he is Mark

Zuckerberg and Velazquez is like those two twins. The Winklevoss twins. The Winklevoss twins. Yes, he is. Yes. He is somebody who's, you know, he's the kind of person who's running a tech company and you think you're in partnership with him and you arrive on Monday morning to find he's changed the locks, renamed the company and-

Has made billions on the stock exchange. Yes. Yeah. You've lost all your shares. Andrew Garfield plays this person in the social network. I can't remember what the character's name is. And he arrives outraged to find he's been shut out of the company. This is the position of Cortes and Velasquez,

because the first thing Cortes does is to recruit the guy who brought the message about the gold. So this guy called Pedro de Alvarado, who is, as I said last time, we'll talk about him more later. He is a charismatic, a sort of dazzling, charming, but utterly ruthless and bloodthirsty and hot-tempered character. And Alvarado has brothers, and they have mates. They have a kind of faction, and their faction will pile in. They're like, great, we'll come on this voyage. It's often relatives, isn't it? It's often brothers, cousins, and so on.

Yes, family or regional connections. Because there aren't really structures of command. No. No, this isn't an army. And so it's kind of posses of different people meeting up and splitting off. Exactly. People always think that these are soldiers. Most of them are not soldiers. They're not wearing armor. They're not all disciplined. It's a company of people who are often quite antagonistic to each other, who are rivals, but have agreed to team up temporarily to try and make some money.

So armed entrepreneurs, Matthew Restle, the great historian of this episode, calls them. Exactly. I think it's a great phrase. Now Cortez himself, he starts swanning around. As soon as he's got the command, he buys himself a nice black velvet cloak and a gold medallion and a magnificent kind of plumed hat. And he's wandering around the docks in Cuba in this getup,

like I'm the great captain now. And even at this point, Diego Velazquez, who is their governor, he's like, this wasn't what I was expecting at all. And actually, there's an extraordinary moment where his jester, who's called Francisco, says to him, Hernan Cortes is going to steal all your ships. And Velazquez says, ha, ha, ha, he wouldn't do that. I know Cortes.

He's nothing. He's a nobody. About three days later, he finds the jester has signed up to the expedition as well. So he thinks, oh, this isn't working out. Cortes has got all these horses, dogs. He's borrowed loads of money to get all this. And Velazquez starts to get very nervous. And it's a sign of the looseness, I suppose, the weakness of Spanish rule, that Velazquez starts to get very nervous. And it's a sign of the looseness, I suppose,

the weakness of Spanish rule, that Velazquez tries to cancel it. He says to Cortés, actually, don't go. I'll get someone else to go. I don't want you to go. Under no circumstances go. Cortés completely ignores him. And just heads off.

And in this very famous episode, Velazquez actually goes down to the docks to sort of shut the whole thing down. And there's Cortés sailing off into the distance by kind of on his... So that's the 10th of February, 1519. Cortes is sailing off. And it's a big mission. He's got 11 ships.

He's got 500 men. Of course, the reason they're all going is they've heard about the gold, Tom. Of course. That's the main motivation. I mean, that Christianity does matter to them. I absolutely do not discount it, that Christianity does matter to them. I absolutely do not discount it as some of their critics do. I think they are all true believers and they genuinely think if we can bring people to God, if we can stamp out their religions and impose our own, we are doing a really, really good thing. But the reason they're on that boat

is because they want adventure, they want glory, but they also want to be rich. They're living in worlds of clans and kinship networks and families. And they think it's not just about their own individual wealth. They'll be able to take the money back home. Mommy and daddy will have a nice new house. Uncle Pedro. And God has willed it probably. Yeah. And all of this kind of thing. It's not all white. There are Taino servants, and frankly, there are Taino slaves who are carrying a lot of their stuff. There are almost certainly African slaves. There's probably some African freedmen.

There's one we definitely know about. It was a guy called Handsome John, Juan Garrido, who I think had been enslaved by the Portuguese and had ended up in Spain. And we know he was on the ships with them. Most of the Spaniards are Southerners. So they're from Seville. Some are from extra-majora like Cortes himself. As I said, they're not soldiers.

People have done this amazing work analyzing the backgrounds of the conquistadors. They're artisans. They're blacksmiths, carpenters. So they're people with skills, but who are aspirational. Right. Who've gone to seek a better life. Who want to become Hidalgos. Who want to become the kind of people who go out and seize their own fortunes.

Yes, exactly. And they're not all united behind Cortes. I think that's really important. Cortes is in an insecure position. He's never commanded a company before. That's probably why he's bought this ridiculous hat, because he wants to impress everybody. He needs to prove that he's a captain. And there were different factions. So there are some of those people on those ships are actually very loyal to the governor. And they're led by a guy called Francisco de Montejo,

who we'll mention a bit later on. And then there's the Alvarados. And he probably thinks the Alvarados are very ruthless men. They're like gangsters basically. If I'm not careful, they'll probably stab me in the back and throw me overboard. So I need to keep them on side. So they've got chests full of all the stuff they're going to swap with the locals. They expect a fight. So they've all got swords, they've got some cannons and they've got some guns. A lot of people think, you will often read this in those sort of popular history books that are aimed at CEOs in airport bookshops, that gunpowder, firepower is the key thing that the Spanish have that the Aztecs don't. I think that's quite wrong. The

cannons are actually quite useless. They're good at scaring people, but they're so fiddly, they explode in your face, the gunpowder gets wet. Well, there's a key moment in the story to come where they are useful if you were just faced with an enormous pack of assailants. Yes. Because then it's kind of the grape shot. You can't aim, but a vast seething mass of people and you fire a cannon, then the effects are lethal. But your key weapon is the sword. That is the key technological advantage the Spanish have that the locals don't. They have Toledo swords, which are renowned in Europe, very light steel swords. You can do an awful lot of damage. One Spaniard with a sword can see off an awful lot of natives with clubs. And what about horses? Yes, they do have horses, Tom. They have 16 horses. Now, there are no horses in the Americas. And without exception, when people see the horses, they are terrified.

What are these creatures? Terrifying, gigantic deer. They have horses and they also have wolfhounds. Again, people are terrified of the dogs. Theo, our producer, is just in disbelief. The Aztecs don't even have swords. He says they didn't have swords. They had black volcanic glass obsidian blades, or they had clubs studded with shards of glass, but they didn't have swords. Well, so Camilla Townsend in her wonderful book, Fifth Son, which we've had plenty of reason to mention, she says about this that it was almost as if Renaissance Europe had come face to face with the ancient sumerians yes that the spanish come with the advantage of many many thousands of years more of agriculture than people in the americas and therefore because of agriculture they have been able to construct what

we would call civilization i guess yeah they are more proficient in all the various arts of peace and, of course, of war, not because of any difference in intelligence or anything like that, but simply because they have the head start because of the benefits of the plants and the animals that they have in the old world that the new world don't have. Exactly, exactly. They've come with a whole series of assets that the Aztecs don't have. They have the horses, they have the dogs, they have swords. Of course, later on, they'll have wheels. And they have the ships. They have ships, right. I mean, the ships are the crucial thing

because the ships are so huge that they can bring more and more people. And this, again, I think is a massive part of the story. It is. Perhaps of what Motsuma is worrying about. And one more thing, of course, they have, Tom. They are bringing with them, not at this point, but they will do in future episodes,

they're bringing a biological weapon. They're bringing viruses, unwittingly. The smallpox that you mentioned. That will cause enormous damage to the peoples of the New World. So they set off, and their first thing is they land on Cozumel, a very popular island, as I said last time, with divers. They're following the path of Juan de Grialva. They arrive there, Cortes from the beginning. He's shocked, or he says he's shocked, by the temples with the idols and with the signs of sacrifice. He gets his men to roll

the idols down the steps of these temples and put up an effigy of the Virgin Mary. There's no reason for us, I would say, to believe that that's not true. Do we know how this goes down with the locals? The locals are supposedly perturbed by this, but they're terrified. There's these blokes coming with weapons that they have never seen before. He says to them, you must stop human sacrifices. You must accept Christ. And they sort of go along with it, or they pretend to. I mean, it's obvious what they do. They just say, sure, of course we will.

And then they basically wait until the Spaniards have turned their backs. However, at this point, something very peculiar and extraordinary happens. The locals who are Maya, they say, the fellas on the mainland, who are cannibals, by the way, they have a white man with them, a man like you, a Christian. And the Spanish can't believe this. They send a ship over to the mainland with a message to say, is there such a person? He should declare himself and we'll take him back. And they hear nothing. They go back and they're just about to set off and do the next part of their voyage. And in a sort of Hollywood twist, Tom, they're

having mass on the beach. They have mass on the beach. And then they're just about to get into their ships when they see this canoe arriving with a couple of brown-skinned Mayans and a white-skinned man with a massive beard who looks like Robinson Crusoe. And this bloke apparently staggers up the beach towards them. And he says in Spanish, gentlemen, are you truly Christians? Who are you? And unbelievably, it is a white Christian man. And this is an amazing story, an amazing story. He's called Geronimo de Aguilar. He came from

this Seville. He was a friar. He'd come to the New World a decade earlier. He'd been shipwrecked off Jamaica with a load of his colleagues. They had ended up escaping in a rowing boat and they'd been carried off by the tide and they'd washed up on the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula. There they were captured by the locals who, just as the people in Cozumel said, did have a taste for human flesh or appear to have done. The locals ate some of the Spaniards. This is all according to Aguilar. They put the rest in these cages and Aguilar and the others said to themselves, Christ,

we're in a massive larder. They're going to fatten us up for future meals. So they broke out of the cages. They escaped. They were captured by another Maya chieftain who was not a cannibal. By the way, this is all Aguilar's account. I mean- Yeah. So we don't know how true it is. How much of this is true, we do not know. They're captured by this other bloke. He kept them alive as slaves. Most of them died of disease, or just terminal depression but two of them didn't one is aguilar and there's a guy called gonzalo guerrero aguilar apparently because he's a friar he mutters prayers to himself every day to remind himself who he is and he claimed that the mayans

i mean this is very much a projection issue i I suspect, Tom. He claimed that the Mayans kept sending him nubile, half-naked women to tempt him, but that he was so strong-willed that he remembered Jesus and was able to hold out. This is not true of Gonzalo Guerrero. He, to use a colonial term, went completely native. He ended up becoming the chief military advisor to a warlord called Na Chan Can. He married a Mayan woman. He had Mayan kids. He tattooed his face.

Had the plugs and all the works. He had all the plugs in his face. Anyway, they both got this message from Cortez. You know, if there are Europeans on the mainland, here we are. We've come to rescue you. Aguilar went to see Guerra and said, this is our chance. Guerra apparently said, no, I'm too far gone. You know, I've got the plugs.

I've got the tattoos. He's married, is he? He's got kids. Children. Yeah. He had three sons. He said, I'm not going. I'm not going.

And he didn't go. And the amazing thing is, he continued in his post as kind of the Henry Kissinger of sort of advisor to the Mayans. And he actually ended up fighting against the Spaniards later on. He died in his mid-sixties fighting the Spaniards later on. He died in his mid-sixties fighting the Spaniards. What an amazing life. Amazing life, yes. Aguilar, he did go. So he's paddled over to see Cortes. And so he can presumably speak the local language. This is massive. This is massive. Because now for the first time, the Spaniards have a Spaniard with them who can speak one of the Mesoamerican languages.

So Aguilar is a massive asset to Cortes. And what happens next is Cortes gets another asset who is even more important to his, arguably, Tom, you could make a case. The top mistress in history. Not just the top mistress. I would argue she's one of the two or three most important women of all time. Okay. So let's take a break now. And when we come back, we will talk about a woman who ranks in the pantheon

of the most important women of all time. And Dominic, I completely agree with you. Crikey. Tom, this is exciting. Yeah. No, she's a woman whose role is hugely, hugely important in the incredible drama of what we are about to narrate. So's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip and on our Q&A we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com.

That's therestisentertainment.com. Hello, welcome back to The Rest Is History. We've had a lot of men up till now, Dominic, in this story, and we haven't had many women. But let's come on to this extraordinary woman who comes to be known as La Melinche, but not her original name. Who is she? How does she kind of fall into the hands of Cortez? What's the story? So La Malinche, as she is known, had grown up on the coast of Mexico in the province of Coatzacoalcos. And her father had been a kind of local bigwig in their village. They spoke the same language as the Aztecs, but they weren't Aztecs. They weren't Mexica. She's a Nahua, ethnically. Her father died when she was young, and her mother married again. And sometime after that, the girl who ends up being known as La Melinche was taken to the coast, perhaps against her

mother's will, or by her mother, or no one knows. She was put in a canoe and they paddled off and she was effectively sold into slavery, into Mayan slavery. She ended up moving between different owners, different lords, I guess. And eventually she ends up probably in her mid to late teens. It's impossible for us to know. We don't even know her name. She ends up in a Maya trading town called Potonchan, which is a big slave trading and general kind of market town. It's up river. It's in the rainforest. So people can picture it.

People there live in adobe huts. So huts have kind of beaten mud with thatched roofs. And in Potonchan, she is probably one of hundreds and thousands of slaves. And one day, they see these huge wooden contraptions coming up the river. These are the Spanish ships. So the Spanish have come up the coast. Cortes has come up the coast, having recruited Aguilar as an interpreter. They've come to the state of what is now Tabasco, and they've turned up river and come inland because they've heard reports of a town. The townsfolk initially welcome the Spaniards, then they fall out with them.

This is so often the way. Is that because the Spanish have overstepped the mark? Who knows? The Spanish use their cannon and their horses, so two of the things we mentioned in the first half, Tom, to scare them, to defeat them, basically. The Maya seem to be particularly frightened of the horses. Basically, the Maya agree to give in, and they do two things that are really important because other people will do the same later on. Number one, they say they will embrace Christ, give up their local gods and embrace Christ. You can imagine just how sincerely they're making that promise. And the other promise they're making is they will acknowledge the king of Spain as their overlord. That's meaningless, isn't it?

Of course. Yeah. They don't know where he is, who he is. They'll just say whatever it takes to make these bearded interlopers go away. Terrifying intruders, yeah. Yeah. They give them loads of food. They say to them, because the Spanish, of course, are saying, do you have gold?

And they say, no. But the guys down the road, they course, are saying, do you have gold? And they say, no. But the guys down the road, they have. They have loads of gold. Go and ask them. It's probably at that moment that Hernan Cortes first hears the word, the Mexica, the people of the Valley of Mexico. They have loads of gold. You should go and find out them.

Now, the people of Potonchan say, you go, go off, you'll find loads of gold up the coast. We will give you 20 slave girls, because you want female company to cook and clean and are sex slaves as well. And La Melinche is one of these 20 young women or teenage girls who are given to the Spanish. They're all baptized and they're all given Spanish names, but I don't think it takes much imagination to suppose that many of them are not very well treated. Now, at first, she doesn't massively stand out, but the Spanish set off again with the slaves, with the food they've collected from this town. They go up the coast and three days before Easter, they reach the Isle of Sacrifices,

which is where Juan de Grialba had found pyramids littered with skulls. And they're there, they're based there. And some people paddle over from the mainland. These are the Totonacs who had- The guys who'd been so friendly before. Been so friendly before. And Cortes says to Geronimo de Aguilar, come on then, do your stuff. And the Totonacs start speaking and Aguilar, come on then, do your stuff. And the Tottenhacks start speaking.

And Aguilar's face kind of turns white with terror because he doesn't understand a word they're saying because he only speaks Mayan. And it's at that point that this girl steps forward and she says to Aguilar in Mayan, this is fine. I understand what they're saying because they are Nawaz like me. They speak Nahuatl and I can say it to you and you can then translate it into Spanish. And this becomes this chain of communication that is so important because everything the Totonacs are saying, she translates into Mayan and Aguilar can translate it into Spanish. And over time, what seems to have happened is that actually Aguilar can translate it into Spanish. And over time, what seems to

have happened is that actually Aguilar becomes redundant because it must've taken quite a long time, but she learns Spanish. Because she proves to have an incredible facility for languages. So she's obviously picked up Mayan and she picks up Spanish very, very soon. And this for Cortes is the most incredible piece of luck, isn't it? Because without this, he simply cannot understand the world that he's entering. Yeah. People may, listening to this, think, so what? It's just an interpreter. They're massively overstating this.

It is absolutely crucial. And the best historians of the conquest, so people like we mentioned Camilla Townsend or Matthew Restle, they really emphasize this because it's not just saying what people are saying. It is that, as you said, it's like they've landed on an alien planet and they don't understand anything. They don't have a universal translator, so they need to find one. I mean, Captain Kirk landing on the planet, he has to be able to speak to the aliens. That's the whole gimmick. But if he doesn't, then... But it's not just understanding what the aliens are saying. It's they need somebody who would explain to them, who are the gods? What is the expected ritual here? When you meet a dignitary

from this particular town, do you bow or do you kneel or what do you do? They don't know anything and she has to explain everything to them. But more than that, to the Spaniards, all these Indians, as they call them, are presumably indistinguishable. But in fact, of course, they're not because they all speak different languages. They come from different cultures and lots of them are hostile to each other. So I would say another crucial part role that La Malinche pays is that she detests the Mexica. She really detests them because they are the ones who have sold her into slavery. All the horrors that have been visited on her since childhood, she blames on the Mexica and she is now Cortez's right-hand woman. So must be playing a crucial role in encouraging him to do it.

And I would guess furthermore, also further down the line, when in due course she comes to meet with Moctezuma and talk to people in Tenochtitlan, is that she's seen these ships. So she knows that there are these structures that can cross the sea and presumably can bring infinite numbers more of the Spaniards. So she better probably than anyone else in America, the native peoples in America has an understanding of what the Spaniards represent. Yeah. It's not just a few isolated, you know, 200 men, 300 men, whatever. It's vast fleets, vast teeming numbers of people, all armed with steel and cannon and dogs and horses.

So she knows what's coming. There are so many interesting elements of this, Tom. First of all, La Melinche, she's much younger than Cortez. She ends up, big spoiler alert, she will end up bearing him a child some historians i mean so the tradition in mexico is to see her as the great betrayer the sex crazed kind of traitor who sells out her own people of course she doesn't see it as selling out her own people she hates them but they're not her people are they no yeah exactly exactly exactly more recently the trend has been to see her as

a kind of a victim, as somebody who was sold into slavery, as somebody who became Cortez's plaything, Cortez's sex slave. But of course, another way of looking at this, another dimension, I'm not saying one of them is right and the other is wrong. They may be both true, is that she has agency herself. Well, she's manipulating Cortez. Manipulating him. That's the fascinating thing because everything Cortes later writes to Charles V, the King of Spain, everything that he says about what has happened, he is repeating what she has told him because he doesn't speak the language. But also, Dominic, an intriguing absence is that he doesn't dwell on her. He doesn't mention her. He will say occasionally that he has a translator because otherwise the letters he's writing back to the Spanish king are wholly implausible because he has to have a translator.

But he understands what he has in Malinche, but he does kind of resent it as well, doesn't he? He does, I think so. And particularly in due course when the native people that he's coming up against start calling him Malinche. Well, here's the fascinating thing. So in the chronicles and the painted books, she often is there. She's often a figure in the native people's recollections of what happened. They pay a lot of attention to her because she's such an extraordinary figure to

them. Imagine that scene that we started the whole series with, Tom, the Spaniards coming down the causeway. They're going to meet the Aztecs for the first time. It's the Spaniards. And standing next to Cortes is a Nahuatl-speaking, brown-skinned, native young woman who must seem really weird to Montezuma and his courtiers. And the thing is, as you rightly say, they also, in their accounts, call Cortes Malinche. They've confused the two characters. And he's aware of this and resentful of it. So what we cannot know as historians is in these negotiations, as you say, it's a bit

like an alien landed in Europe in the 30 Years' War. The alien, they might look like all the people are the same. They all believe in the same God. They're all basically the same people. But of course, the alien would need someone to explain that actually the Swedes hate the French. Or it's like if an alien landed now and was trying to make sense of the Russians and the Ukrainians. Right. Yeah. But how much is Malinche twisting everything that is happening? She's doing all the deal-making. She has to be in all the negotiations. She's the person who has to relay all Cortes' offers. think that the Spaniards, even though they are massively outnumbered, that they are worth

investing in and that they may well be able to play the role that she wants them to play because she knows that there are more of them to come. And I would say that those are the two aspects that are kind of crucial to understanding what Cortes does, but also in the long run, what Moctezuma does. Yeah. And also, crucially, Cortés' allies, because this actually doesn't end up being a battle between Cortés versus the Aztecs. It's Cortés and lots of other native peoples against the Aztecs, which is a fascinating element.

And Malinche is crucial in that, in doing all the diplomacy. Okay, so we've set her up. Cortés is still chatting to the Totonacs through her, and they seem to get on brilliantly with Cortes. They seem to have gone on generally very well with the Spaniards. They're friendly to them. They might well be frightened. We don't know. They give them beans and bits of Turkey and tortillas and all this stuff. Cortes is now on the shore. He's on the coast. He's done the one thing actually that Velazquez told him not to do, which is gone to the mainland. He's sleeping on the mainland. And on Easter Sunday, another

extraordinary thing happens. These blokes turn up on the shore who are not Totonacs. They're dressed in very fancy cloaks and feathered headdresses. These people are the representatives of the Mexica, of the Aztecs. And they're led by a guy who the different versions of his name, but let's call him Tendile. He says, I'm the emperor's kind of regional governor. I'm the regional bigwig. And he says to Cortes, the emperor miles inland in this city they haven't seen or anything, but they've heard rumors of it. The emperor is delighted that you've come.

Very pleased to welcome you. Very great news. We've got you lots of nice gifts emperor is delighted that you've come very pleased to welcome you very great news we've got you lots of nice gifts we've got you some gold and some feathers cortez is very pleased this is what he was hoping for he gives tendila a coat and a chair gives him an armchair bizarrely and and some beads and the count we have says that tendila regarded these presents with absolute contempt i have no need for an armchair, whatever. And he says to them, we'll build you a camp on the shore. Cortes says, oh, great, lovely. Cortes then organizes two demonstrations.

One, very pleasingly for you, Tom, is a demonstration of Christianity. So they set up a cross and he and his men all say their prayers. And you can imagine the scene. I mean, Dendile watches this with this sort of, again, kind of weak smile. Dominic, on that subject of conducting a mass, erecting a cross and all that kind of thing. By this point, is it not also an obligation on the part of Spaniards meeting with pagans that they have to read out a pronouncement. Oh yes. The requirement it's called, isn't it?

Yeah, the requirements. Requiremento. So since the mid-1510s, it has been a legal requirement that a Spanish captain arriving in the New World seeking to subjugate new, must read them this legal document that is- In Spanish. In Spanish, history of the world, and a sort of explanation of how Jesus came and everybody must be Christian. The King of Spain is doing God's work.

You are now a vassal of Spain. You must be Christians. If you're in breach of your obligations, we will kill you. Yeah. You know, all this. be Christians. If you're in breach of your obligations, we will kill you. He's got to read this in Spanish, even if people are hurling spears at him. I think two things to say about that. The first is that, of course, to our way of thinking, it's grotesque, but this is not simply a 21st century perspective. Again, Las Casas, who keeps appearing as a commentary on what the conquistadors

are doing throughout these episodes, he says of the requirement that it was unjust, impious, scandalous, irrational, and absurd. Of course it's absurd. It's mental. I mean, it's completely deranged. And that's because the real target is not the natives. It's other Christians back in Europe. Yeah.

Which in turn kind of highlights the way in which the Spanish are very, very legalistically minded. They're extraordinary, Tom, I think. I think reading this story, the amazing thing is that in the middle of these, what they would perceive as their adventures, of course, a critic now would say these are horrendous campaigns involving terrible war crimes, but they would see them as their great adventures. But they have to justify them legally. As they keep stopping and signing contracts, making depositions before lawyers. And this really matters to them because actually the two things that happen to you as a conquistador,

the two things that could happen to you, one, you will die a horrible death in the jungle at some point, or two, you will spend the last 20 years embroiled in legal cases back in Spain, being sued and countersued by other conquistadors. It's like the United States now. They live in this incredibly legalistic world. Litigious world. Litigious world. I mean, Cortes has trained in law. There's a reason for that because to be a bureaucrat, to advance, you needed a legal training. And the Spanish, of course, Las Casas and other people think the requirement is just bizarre. Why are you reading this legal documents in Spanish? But lots of them take it quite seriously.

Cortés undoubtedly sailed with a copy of the requirement and almost certainly kept reading it to people. So maybe it was at this point. I mean, who knows? But just one further thought, Las Casas is celebrated and commemorated as a man who argues that the Native Americans have rights by virtue of being human. And that's obviously a crucial part of our inheritance in the 21st century. But there is also something implicit in the requirement, which is that it's acknowledging that the native peoples who live in these lands have a right to the lands. I mean, they're being asked to basically to give it up, no question about that. But kind of, I mean, it will sound weird to make this argument, but in the long run,

it's this acknowledgement that native peoples do have rights to the land that they inhabit that will provide the legal basis again for something that is taken for granted now, that indigenous peoples have rights to the lands that their ancestors have occupied. Yeah. The Spanish take all these legal niceties incredibly seriously. And later on in the 16th century, there are delegations that will go to Spain, to the royal court, to say, back in 1520, whatever, our ancestors made a deal with the conquistadors,

and now you have to honor that deal. And sometimes they win the cases. Right. The Spanish are much more respectful of these than, say, the English settlers are in North America. Oh, yeah. Undoubtedly. The Spanish take this stuff respectful of these than, say, the English settlers are in North America. cannons. He gets his men to ride around. The Aztecs turn white when they see the horses with fear. They're genuinely shaken by the cannon fire and stuff. Now, Cortes says to Tendile, I would love to meet your emperor. I would love to see your capital. And Tendile says, no, no, no. We've got a terrible drought. You can't do that. Then there is a fatal exchange, or at least we think there probably was. It's a much mythologized moment. Cortez is supposed to have said,

do you have lots of gold? And Tindale says, of course, we have loads of gold. And Cortez says, oh, that's great because we suffer from a sickness of the heart, which can be cured only by gold. I mean, that's one of the most famous things that Cortez is ever supposed to have said. I can still see Michael Wood saying it on TV

in the series, Conquistadors, because it's a great story. But I wonder whether that might be a sort of after-the-fact kind of story bolted on, as so many of these things may be. However, what is fascinating is the emperor in the city that they have still not seen keeps sending them gifts. More gifts arrive of gold, of jewelry, of feathers, of trinkets of various kinds. Now, if anybody has ever read the story as a child, or they've read Hugh Thomas's book, Conquest, or they've read the William Prescott's 19th century version of this story, they will know that Montezuma and the Aztecs thought the Spanish were gods,

that they were sending them the gifts in a desperate attempt to keep them away, that they were terrified of them. But I think it's fair to say, isn't it, Tom, that modern historians are exceedingly suspicious of this story. I cannot think of a single modern historian who thinks that the Aztecs thought the Spaniards were gods. There's no evidence at the time they think they're gods. So Cortes does write letters to King Charles V, tell him what he's up to. And he never says in those letters, I was mistaken for a god. But the earliest reference to it is mid-16th century, isn't it? Exactly. So Bernal Diaz, the conquistador, I mean, even he may be making things up, may be getting things wrong. Even he, I mean, he's definitely making things up, I think.

Well, we'll talk about him in due course, but yeah. But he's probably our best contemporary source, Spanish source. He never says they thought we were gods. He says they treated us like nobles, they treated us like lords, they gave us gifts and all this business, but he never says they thought Hernan Cortes was the reincarnation of Quetzalcoatl or whatever. So Camilla Townsend, her argument is that the Mexica are trying to work out who these people are. Who are they? They always identify people by their homeland and they don't know what the homeland is that these people are coming from. But the one thing that they come to identify the Spanish with is a profound devotion to their God because they keep going on about Christ and so on. And so they come to

think that they are emissaries from a god and there is apparently some word in now what that if your emissaries of a god but it can over the course of the 16th century this word shaded into becoming yeah someone of divine origin and so she argues that that's perhaps what happened but i think the aztecs never thought that they were gods. I mean, another possibility is the Aztecs use, I mean, high status Aztec language is very flowery. Their idiom is very flowery. You know, you're a great Lord, amazing person, all this kind of stuff. And the Spanish may simply have misunderstood. But Cortes would say if he'd been treated as a god. I think so, yeah. And he wasn been treated as a god i think so yeah and he wasn't treated as a god anyway he's there on the coast now he does something very odd at this point by the way this

is the crucial moment of decision he can either go inland completely disobeying his orders or he can do what grialva did which is potter along the coast a bit and then go back and report back to velazquez and this is where i think his character is so important because lots of other people would have gone back at this point and obeyed their orders. And it's at this point that Cortes becomes the Cortes that ends up in the history books because he says, sod my orders. I'm going to go inland and find the city for myself. He must have been told, I imagine, by Malinche, you will find allies, that you are strong and the Aztecs are weak. He must have had some incentive to do this because he's walking into... Because otherwise, it's insane.

Right, exactly. It's a mad thing to do. And he gathers his men and he says to them, look, I know we all said we'd go back. I know we've got the orders from Velazquez. However, if he were here, he would see what a fine land this is and how pleasing it would be to God and the king if we were to build a town here. This is the legalism, by the way. He says, let's found a town here on the coast. And we will call it the Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz, the rich town of the true cross. And we'll all be citizens of the town. Everybody gets a vote in the town council. Let's have the

town council elections right now. I mean, this will sound so weird. The Spanish have the town council elections. They all have a vote. Surprise, surprise, the councillors rule the captains of the party. And they all say, let's go for it. They do. Cortes formally resigns as head of the expedition. And they immediately say, you are no longer the head of the expedition. We are appointing you chief justice and captain general of our town. This sounds like an absolutely bizarre thing to do, but this gives him legal sanction. It indemnifies him against being prosecuted for disobeying his orders. But also, it goes back to what we were talking about earlier, that this is not a military expedition.

Cortes is not there as a captain general with people with official ranks below him. He has to persuade all these kind of moving groups of people with different rivalries, different loyalties, to go with him. Yes. And he knows, of course, that some of them are Velazquez's men, and they have to be dealt with as well. He does, and he gets rid of them in a very cunning way, but one that will come back to bite him with massive consequences. So he says, the first thing to do is we need to send all the treasure back,

not to Cuba, but to Spain. Let's send it back to the king. This is a good way of him buttering up the king when the king finds out he's disobeyed his orders. And he says, the perfect person to do this is you, Francisco de Montejo. So this is Velazquez's chief ally on his ships. It's a good way of getting him out of the equation with all the treasure and buying credit with the king of Spain. So he does that. And then he does this thing that has gone down in legend. So as Montejo is off, he says, the rest of the ships... Now, a lot of people will think, aha, he burns them because that's the legend. He doesn't burn his ships. That's a very Alexander the Great style. Julian the Appestate.

Yeah. Kind of legend. Exactly. Actually, what he does is he says, we'll beach them, drag them up onto the shore because we don't need them anymore. We don't need them floating in the sea. Because they'd rot, wouldn't they, if they were left in the sea? Exactly. And we will use some of the timber for our new towns. They do build this new town. It's important for them to have a base. And he leaves some of his men behind. So he beaches his ships and he now can't go back. And it also sends a message, of course, to any faint hearts. We are going on whether you like it or not. And then by the time they've all got ready, it is the 16th of August, 1519, and he tells his men to assemble on the beach. They have mass, as they always do before a big moment. Then he steps up to tell them

his plan. A thrilling moment, pivotal moment, Spanish preparing to march on this incredibly terrifying sounding city, great capital of a great empire? Is it madness? Is it courage? Have they perhaps been deceived either by La Milice or maybe even by the Mexica themselves, which is a theory that's very recently been put forward and perhaps we'll discuss in the next episode. But anyway, a pivotal moment. And in our next episode, you can hear what Cortez's plan was and the fruits of the march on Tenochtitlan and the great confrontation between Cortez and Boc de Zuma. So all to come, absolutely thrilling stuff. Now, if you're happy to wait, you're happy to wait. And maybe the anticipation will just make it all the greater. But if you don't want to wait, you can, of course, join the Restless History Club,

where all the episodes describing this extraordinary episode in history are waiting to be listened to. So go to the restlesshistorypod.com and we will be back with the next episode, either almost immediately or in a few days time either way we'll see you soon bye-bye bye-bye i'm marina hyde and i'm richard osmond and together we host the rest is entertainment it's your weekly fix of entertainment news reviews reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works.

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