Cuāuhtemōc
Banned
The Attack of The Tlaxacallans
- another excerpt from Mateo Nanacacipactli 's The Histories of the Nahuatl People
"So Colon's forces have reached this far inland and Cortes has done nothing? Hm. And to think I was foolish enough to believe he had the situation under control. It's now our war too and it's personal."
- quoted from Xicotencatl II The Younger upon learning the discovery of a Spanish camp.
- another excerpt from Mateo Nanacacipactli 's The Histories of the Nahuatl People
"So Colon's forces have reached this far inland and Cortes has done nothing? Hm. And to think I was foolish enough to believe he had the situation under control. It's now our war too and it's personal."
- quoted from Xicotencatl II The Younger upon learning the discovery of a Spanish camp.
The news of Vera Cruz being captured and destroyed had not only reached Hernan Cortes but also to his former rival and now ally Xicotencatl II The Younger, ruler of Tizatlan. He was well aware of the Spanish invasion army and guessed its intentions in coming here though he assumed that Cortes and his newly trained Naiua army would handle them but he was stunned the moment he heard from Tlaxcallan merchants that Vera Cruz was destroyed. The young warlord immediately informed the other three rulers of the altepetl that composed the Tlaxcallan confederacy of what had happened and it was believed that the invading Spaniards would come for them next. Xicotencatl was unsurprisingly placed in command of a Tlaxcallan army of forty five thousand soldiers, a number far higher than Cortes' own forces though he was aware of the technological gap between the two civilizations from his skirmishes with Cortes and his army. He marched towards the Naiua capital of Tenochtitlan to deliver the news of Vera Cruz's destruction Cortes' regent Geronimo de Aguilar; following that he returned back to Tlaxcala where he expected news from Hernan Cortes.
Xicotencatl did not but historical records dating back twenty years into Cortes' reign tell us that he was told that Diego Colon's army was advancing towards the general to Tlaxcala. It is unknown to historians of the exact reasons behind Colon deciding to confront the Tlaxcallans but what is known that Xicotencatl II The Younger drafted as much as thirty thousand additional men from all over Tlaxcala and added them to his army before marching several miles until being less than a day's away and being told by Tlaxcallan scouts that it was a Spanish camp and a large one at that, numbers estimated that almost ten thousand soldiers were encamped. Xicotencatl was curious over Colon's soldiers being garrisoned this far inland: was he planting men there to stop the flow of reinforcements to the coast where Hernan was or to prevent Hernan from heading back inland? Did the Spanish general have plans to conquer Tenochtitlan. It mattered little to him; all he cared about was Tlaxcala possibly suffering the Vera Cruz's fate and that prompted him to act against the threat.
In the dead of night, Xicotencatl II The Younger's troops entered the camp, overwhelming the Otomi guards and then swarmed upon the Spaniards that slept inside the tents. His men trampled the Spaniards in the tents and whipped out their underfoot, and then finished off the fleeing survivors with a weapon introduced via Cortes, the iron sword. Barely anyone made it out of the bloodied military camp without having their hearts ripped. To the thousands of Spanish soldiers who died that fateful night, what was supposed to be an easy assignment for young conscripts mutated into a large massacre. When dawn broke, the entire Spanish force of almost ten thousand men were crushed and efficiently slaughtered save for a few who were imprisoned while Tlaxcala suffered minimal casualties. The remaining survivors were interrogated by Xicotencatl himself.
It was from then Xicotencatl learned that Colon was expecting reinforcements from Spain's possessions in the Caribbean and had marched back towards Vera Cruz with his main force to await the ships and troops that he requested the King via his middleman Bishop Fornesca for. Colon had split up three thousand men into three auxiliary forces and sent them into different locations within the Naiua Empire, guided by local scouts, and instigate an uprising or two. Xicotencatl, originally planning on returning to Tlaxcala and leave the war to Hernan, decided to march towards the coast as well in the hopes of meeting Diego Colon and crush his army before the Spaniard intended on sending more soldiers into Tlaxcallan lands. He sent a message to the other leaders in Tlaxcala to prepare conscripting more reinforcements while commanding a hundred man emissary to march west to the Naiua capital and tell the regent the same thing before heading to Vera Cruz.
Inside the palace, the regent Geronimo de Aguilar received the news and knew what must be done to boost Tenochtitlan's defenses against possible Spanish invasion. It would take several months to almost a year to do and many European soldiers garrisoned in the so-called Spanish Quarter, most of them being supporters of the late Alvarado, were vehemently opposed to his following policies and civil war almost broke out but by it would pay out during the Siege of Tenochtitlan.
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