Literature / The True History of the Conquest of Mexico

"¡Viva el emperador, nuestro señor, y Castilla, Castilla, Tlaxcala, Tlaxcala!" ^{In English} "Long life to the Emperor, our lord, and Castile, Castile, Tlaxcala, Tlaxcala!"

—Rallying cry of the Spanish-Tlaxcaltec alliance

The True History of the Conquest of Mexico (in original Spanish, Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España) is a chronicle written in 1568 by Spanish conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo, who served under Hernán Cortés during the Spanish Conquest of the Aztec Empire and part of the Spanish Conquest of the Maya. It covers, in surprising detail, the story of the Spanish expeditions to the continent, from the first attempts to explore the lands from the home base of Cuba to the fall of the Mexica Empire to the hands of the ambitious Spaniards and their angry native allies.

This chronicle was written as both the memoirs of an Old Soldier and a response to the chronicles by Bartolomé de las Casas and Francisco López de Gómara, who Díaz found to be equally unreliable: the former case because De las Casas exaggerated to the moon the real cases of abuses and pillage he found, presumably for the purpose of shocking the reader into sympathizing with the natives, and the latter because López treated his chronicle as hagiography, ignored many things, and made up what he ignored. It can also give the impression that Díaz, like Cortés himself and several other conquistadors, felt he never quite got the respect he hoped from his peers - a true Spanish phenomenon, they say.

A certain current in academia proposes that Bernal Díaz might have not been the true author of the text, this having been alternately proposed as Cortés himself under a cover or another conquistador whose name was fraudulently overwritten to history by Díaz's heirs, but you never know. Also, some editions of the work were doctored by his first publishers to remove emphasis on certain figures (mainly Francisco de Montejo and his relatives) and an amusing chapter after the fall of Tenochtitlan (the victory feast, which ended in an embarrassing collective intoxication by native herbs), so you might find different editions in both Spanish and foreign translations.

Regardless of the previous, the work's literary and historical value has generally endured and earned Díaz the nickname of being "among chroniclers what Daniel Defoe is among novelists". It was translated to English thrice, both abridged and unabridged.

This work contains examples of:

# - C

• 24-Hour Armor: Deconstructed. The Spaniards have the custom to go around fully armed among the Tlaxcaltecs, with Cortés making the point that they have to be always ready, but this offends Xicohtencatl I and Maxixcatzin, who come to believe the Mexicas have convinced the Spaniards that the Tlaxcaltecs will betray them in any moment. The two chieftains even offer to give Cortés hostages so he will trust them, and Cortés has to explain that it's simply their military ways and that he needs no hostages.
• Aborted Arc: Francisco Hernández de Córdoba (the explorer, not the captain of the first expedition) is searching for a chance to betray his Bad Boss, Pedro Arias de Ávila, just like Cortés did with Diego Velázquez. Cortés finds out about this and promises him help whenever he does it. However, Arias finds out about this too and has Hernández killed.
• Agony of the Feet: Díaz and some partners hurt their feet in the Cuban seborucos (their name for a kind of pointed stones) after they suffer a shipwreck and lose their shoes in the process.
• The Alliance: One between Spaniards, Totonacs and Tlaxcaltecs (as well as Tlaxcaltec vassals like the Otomis and Huejotzingo) that only grows bigger with more tribes and states through the story. By the end of the siege of Tenochtitlan, the conquest could be aptly renamed Mexicas vs. The World.
• The All-Solving Hammer:
  • The Tlaxcaltecs seem more than a bit overeager to take arms. They have to be battled to get them to listen to diplomacy to begin with, and after learning that the Spaniards are going to Tenochtitlan to see what they can do with the Mexica Empire, they insist on giving them 10,000 Tlaxcaltec warriors just in case, a contingent that Cortés has to reduce to 1000 because he argues the Mexicas will never open their doors to him with so many warriors from an enemy nation. Later, when Cortés asks Xicohtencatl I for an army to invade Texcoco and start the retake of Tenochtitlan, the Tlaxcalan is so delighted that he states he will give Cortés any number of troops he wants.
  • The author denies Bartolomé de las Casas' claims that Pedro de Alvarado caused the Massacre in the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan solely to steal the noblemen's gold jewels, and instead states that Alvarado did it because the noblemen were secretly plotting against him with the festival as an excuse. Certainly, a theft like that seems Stupid Evil enough to doubt that Alvarado would have risked a total Mexica revolt for a petty booty he could have obtained by safer means. However, the whole attack still comes across as an utterly suicidal way to counter a plot, which naturally makes Cortés angry at him when he finds out about it.
• All That Glitters: Many crewmen in the Grijalva expedition end up sorely disappointed when they find out the bad-quality gold they believed to have traded is actually copper.
• Altar Diplomacy:
  • The natives' favorite way to seal alliances is to offer their daughters or nieces in marriage. Xicomecoatl initiates it by giving the Spaniards eight Totonac princesses, among them Francisca, who hooks up with Alonso Hernández Puertocarrero.
  • The lords of Tlaxcala marry off five of their daughters to five Spanish captains, the most important being Xicohtencatl's daughter (baptized Luisa) to Pedro de Alvarado and Maxixcatzin's (baptized Elvira) to Juan Velázquez.
  • By his own petition, Díaz himself is given a Mexica noblewoman also baptized as Francisca.
  • When Diego de Ordaz visits Coatzacoalcos with Moctezuma's license, the villagers complain to him that their Mexica garrison oppress and pillage them. Ordaz orders the local Mexica to stop, overjoying the villagers so much that they give him gold and a wife so an alliance can be made.
• Ambiguously Human: When Cortés defies the Mexican rule and actually succeeds, the Totonacs reason the Spaniards must be superhuman to be so brave and fearsome. Olintecle, a chieftain from Xocotlan, later comes to the same conclusion upon seeing the horses, dogs and weapons of the expedition. Contrary to popular belief, nothing is said about them being gods, though.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • The narrator mentions casually that five women died along with many soldiers in the fights after the evacuation of Tenochtitlan, which has been interpreted by reviewers as a reference to Cortés' Amazon Brigade, detailed by other semi-contemporaneous chroniclers such as Cervantes de Salazar and Torquemada (no, not the inquisitor). As Díaz often doesn't go into detail about footsoldiers and takes a lot about them for granted, it's difficult to know whether he meant that. Díaz surely places several of the most famous women soldiers in Cortés' victory feast, some of them without their husbands, which further fuels the implication those were women that had become notable by their own merits on the conquest.
  • Among the women, Díaz give a couple mentions of María de Estrada, the famed Spanish Action Girl, but only describes her needing to be rescued along with non-combatant women like Marina, which has led authors to speculate her battlefield feats might have been exaggerated. Again, however, she is among the women mentioned in the victory feast, which would be pretty inexplicable if she wasn't as relevant as claimed.
  • Moctezuma's death. He's hurt by the stones thrown by his rebellious subjects, but he's still alive when the Spaniards get him inside, and he doesn't seem to be dying, yet they find him dead next morning. Friar Bartolomé de Olmedo speculates he committed suicide by poison, but nothing about it is discovered.
  • The narration speaks about an important Tlaxcalan captain named Chichimecatecle (likely a corruption of Chichimecatecuhtli), who seems to be more than a mere military man due to his influence, but he cannot be easily identified even in other sources. It has been proposed that "chichimecatecuhtli" was actually a symbolic title and that his true name was another.
• Antagonist in Mourning: Even if Moctezuma dies cursing them, the Spaniards end up crying for a man they had grown to respect.
• Apathetic Citizens:
  • Averted with the Totonacs, subjects to the Mexicas who, as soon as they observe their lords have finished negotiations with Cortés, go quickly themselves to the Spanish camp and start their own negotiations to see if they can help them.
  • The Tlaxcaltecs are not apathetic either, only that they mistake the Cortesians for enemies, and it takes three battles and a lot of diplomacy to convince them that they are all much better in the same side.
• Artistic License – Engineering: Díaz claims 100.000 skulls of human victims could be counted in the Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlan, but in real life, the temple could "only" contain around 1800. We can infer he's doing a theatrical estimation that doesn't pretend to be accurate, as it's unlikely he seriously expected readers to believe someone actually bothered to count thousands and thousands of skulls during their visits to the Templo. It's also worthy to mention that archaeologists used to believe Bernal had also exaggerated a supposed tower of skulls that was next to the Templo, until in 2017 they actually found it, just with the shape and size he described.
• Artistic License – History:
  • Díaz mixes up the names of two Texcocan chieftains, Tecocoltzin and Ixtlilxochitl (who could blame him, though), claiming the former was baptized as Hernando and the latter as Carlos, when real life it was the reverse: Hernando Ixtlilxochitl and Carlos Tecocoltzin.
  • Sandoval died in Niebla in 1528 and was buried in the Church of San Martín, not Palos in 1527 and the monastery of Santa María de la Rábida, as Díaz claims. Getting the wrong date by a year or two is something common in this kind chronicles.
• Attack Animal: Subverted. The Spaniards carry some hunting dogs, which occasionally startle the natives, but it seems they weren't used in the battlefield at this point of the conquest. Judging by the text, the dogs of the expedition are likely the fast lebrel breed apt for small game, not the big, burly alano español that was more useful for war, which would be introduced in America later. Instead, the horses qualify much more from the indigenous' point of view, as they believe them to be aggressive beasts.
• Attack! Attack... Retreat! Retreat!: During the first naval battle in the lake, Cortés orders his brigantines to delay attack and wait for better wind, which the Mexicas in their war canoes interpret mistakenly as the Spaniards being indecisive and afraid of them. The Mexicas order to charge against what they believe to be an easy prey, but shortly after, the desired wind comes and the Spanish ships advance on it, completely rumpling the indigenous and routing them.
• Awesome by Analysis: In comparison to the Tlaxcaltecs, who almost need an entire war to understand that Spaniards and Totonacs are in their side, the Chinantecs, another tribe enemy to the Mexica, don't commit such mistake when Cpt. Pizarro visits them. Although the presence of Mexica guides unnerves the Chinantecs, they do let the Spaniards in, feel immediately that they don't work for the Mexicas despite the appearances, and quickly send out their own chieftains with a gold tribute to become vassals to the King of Spain. Cortés is so satisfied that he orders the Mexicas not to ever disturb them again.
• Ax-Crazy: Due to their ancestral enmity, the Tlaxcaltecs often become overenthusiastic whenever they have the upper hand on Mexica people and property. Cortés typically tries to stop excessive pillaging, but he's not always successful.
• Badass Army:
  • The Spanish troops. Being formed by many veterans of the European wars, and having the advantage of their excellent formations, cavalry, armors and weapons, they prove repeatedly able to engage and rout insane masses of enemies, who are often lightly armed and armored in comparison.
  • The Tlaxcaltec and Mexica armies are a match for them, featuring large masses of decently organized and very motivated fighters.
• Badass Boast: After conquering the Mexicas, Cortés orders to make a phoenix-shaped culverin with captured silver and gold as a gift to the king, and to add style, he engraves it with the poem "aquesta ave nació sin par / yo en serviros, sin segundo / y vos, sin igual en el mundo" ("this bird was born peerless / I was born matchless at serving you / and you were born without equal in the world").
• Badass Creed: Cortés makes the expedition's to be "Hermanos y compañeros, sigamos la señal de la Santa Cruz con fe verdadera, que con ella venceremos" ("Brothers and companions, let's follow the sign of the Holy Cross with true faith, for through it we will win").
• Badass Preacher: Friar Bartolomé de Olmedo is a Guile Hero whom Cortés uses many times as a spymaster against other Christians, as those are naturally reluctant to mistreat a friar.
• Bad Boss:
  • Captain Alonso de Ávila, whom Díaz openly describes as a jerkass, wounds one of his own soldiers in the arm with a lance because he was not marching properly.
  • A soldier named Mora is caught stealing from the Totonacs, which gets Cortés so angry that he orders him to be hanged. From their point of view, Cortés is not being a Bad Boss himself, as he knows well they need to strengthen their native alliances and any disruption of it can be fatal; it's rather Alvarado who thinks of Cortés is going too far and intervenes to save the thief's life.
  • Back when they were at war with the Spaniards and the Totonacs, the Tlaxcaltecs sacrifice two of their priests, who had claimed that the Spaniards were magical beings that lost all their power by night, a prophecy that (unsurprisingly) proved disastrously inaccurate.
  • Pedro Arias de Ávila, a rival conquistador, is infamous in the Indies for mistreating and gratuitously executing his underlings, among them the famous Vasco Núñez de Balboa. His own lieutenants, like Pedro de Garro, Francisco Hernández and the Bachiller Moreno, plot to betray him, with various levels of success.
  • Again, Cortés' men think he went too far when he executed Cuauhtemoc for having talked among his own men about revolting in the jungle. This apparently never came to fruition, because the Mexicas, being more interested in coming out of the Hungry Jungle alive, and knowing they would not do so without Cortés, were unwilling to revolt and cut their odd shorter. Notably, Cortés himself later becomes somber about his own action.
• Barefoot Poverty: Friar Toribio de Benavente gives all of his money to the indigenous he preaches to, and effectively keeps himself in a voluntary state of pious poverty, even going without sandals around.
• Batman Gambit: Attempted, although not achieved, when some Totonac captains claim that a Mexica army is attacking their lands and ask Cortés to go destroy them. When the Spaniards arrive in the place, an already suspicious Cortés discovers the attackers are not Mexicas, but a local tribe that rivaled the Totonacs, which the latter knew perfectly. Realizing the Totonacs have tried to deceive him to massacre their petty enemies, Cortés scolds them and forces everybody to be united against the real Mexicas.
• Battle Butler: Cortés' butlers, Cristóbal de Guzmán and Cristóbal de Olea (not to mistake with Cristóbal de Olid), who also partake in the fighting.
• Because You Were Nice to Me:
  • Marina demonstrates an Undying Loyalty to Cortés after being rescued from slavery and given an important role in the new political order.
  • What finally convinces the Tlaxcaltecs that Cortés is honest about being in their side is the fact that, despite having miraculously routed them thrice, he has never stopped sending envoys of peace and freeing his war prisoners.
• Beat Them at Their Own Game: The Utlatán Mayans excel at guerrilla warfare, but Alvarado beats them at this, despite his meager numbers, by having cavalry and his own Mayan allies from Quetzaltenango, which allow him to deliver hit-and-run attacks in the right places every time.
• The Berserker: Tlaxcala employs Otomi tribesmen as guerrilleros, as they are famous for their aggression. This comes handy to deflect some fault for their initial war with the Spaniards, as they claim the Otomi were too eager to attack them and many Tlaxcaltec garrisons around the zone got carried away. Díaz never discovers whether this is true or an excuse.
• BFG: Most indigenous tribes, both enemy and friendly, wield two-handed swords which Díaz calls espadas de navajas ("swords of razors") or montantes de navajas ("longswords of razors"), clearly identifiable with the famous macuahuitl. As Díaz explains, those weapons are heavy and capable of powerful slashes, sometimes even managing to decapitate a horse with ease, though not as quick and maneuverable as the Spanish swords.
• Big Bad:
  • Governor Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar is Cortés' Arch-Enemy for most of the story. He's assisted by Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, Bishop of Burgos, who eventually outlasts him as an antagonist.
  • Gonzalo de Salazar, Cortés' traitorous underling, after Cortés departs from Honduras.
• Big Fun: Xicomecoatl, the Totonac chieftain of Cempoal, is described as being really fat and lazy (he even goes unnamed in the text, being only referred as the Fat Cacique), but also a friendly chief and an ally to Cortés and company.
• Big Good:
  • Xicohtencatl I and Maxixcatzin, the oldest and most poweful of the four lords of Tlaxcala, are seen like this by the Spaniards. After the latter's death of smallpox, the former also becomes one of the first important natives to convert to Christianity.
  • Interestingly, the Spaniards' vision of Moctezuma also fits this trope, even although his role would imply him to be the story's Big Bad instead. Even although they hold him hostage, he remains being a regal, respected figure, seemingly loyal to King Charles V, in whose power Cortés and company trust to keep the Mexica Empire under control.
  • Álvaro de Zúñiga, Duke of Béjar, and Cortés' own father Martín act as their benefactors back in Spain.
  • Also Pope Adrian VI, who recognizes Cortés' role in helping Catholicism and demotes the Bishop of Burgos to end his meddling. Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor, also supports them.
  • King Charles V himself could be considered another, as he does the same with Governor Velázquez, but he changes his mind too often about Cortés, and eventually ends up not having Hernán's back anymore, even if he grants him a marquisate and a military job.
• Big Guy Fatality Syndrome: Díaz mentions a big soldier named Luis Cano, nicknamed Liscano, who did wonders with his two-handed longsword in Diego de Ordás's squad before being killed in action in Tenochtitlan.
• Birds of a Feather: Marina becomes Cortés' concubine, and like him, she is described as a natural leader, with Díaz stating she "had a lot of being and dominated absolutely among the natives in all of New Spain."
• Black Comedy Burst: The first battle against Tlaxcala in Tehuacingo is harsh and dramatic, but this gets a bit marred when Díaz comments a certain Spanish cavalryman likely died from his wounds, because he never saw him again.
• Blood Knight: Cortés' indigenous allies are usually the most bloodthirsty of his troops, often indulging in enslaving other natives and setting their villages in fire for the kicks even whenever it's nothing personal. In an occasion, the Tlaxcaltecs refuse to guard the rear end of a column with Sandoval, and only get convinced to do so because they are reminded that ambushes often target that position and therefore they will be the most likely to engage the enemy.
• Blood on the Debate Floor: When the Spaniards return decimated from the Sad Night, Xicohtencatl II, their Arch-Enemy in the Tlaxcallan government, tries to convince the Tlaxcaltec senate to accept the Mexica's offer to kill them all in exchange for peace. However, the chieftains find this a mistake, with Maxixcatzin arguing that Cortés' presence had brought them much more power and safety than ever, and instead order Xicohtencatl II to be arrested for his boneheaded ways. They do give him the chance to defend himself, but when he still tries to push his agenda, Maxixcatzin, Chichimecatecuhtli and even Xicohtencatl I rise up from their seats and literally throw him to the floor. Only his father's intercession stops them from executing him, but later, upon a coup attempt, Xicohtencatl I has enough and orders him to be killed.
• Boisterous Weakling: Salvatierra, Narváez's lieutenant, constantly boasts of being eager to throw down, but he excuses himself out of the real battle by claiming to be ill. He is later outed as a coward when the Cortesians capture him.
• Boring, but Practical: Díaz admits in the prologue that he's not a great writer like those of the ancient chronicles, but he believes that being as faithful as possible to the facts is the best way to write them down. Also counts as Damned by Faint Praise.
• Bows Versus Crossbows: The natives employ bows, while the Spaniard use crossbows. No explicit comparison is made about them, though, and it would be a moot point given that the Spaniards in this case fight along many other natives and therefore bows and crossbows are used in combo.
• Burning the Ships: Cortés' captains, with Díaz himself among them, advise him to dismantle the ships to avoid expeditioners to be tempted to desert back to Cuba, and to use the crewmen and materials for more useful purposes.
• The Cameo: Bartolomé de las Casas has a cameo in Cuba. His Arch-Enemy Toribio de Benavente also appears later, with a more significant role.
• Cassandra Truth: When Salazar convinces New Spain that Cortés and his men died in Honduras, Juana Mansilla, wife of one of those men, doesn't believe it, so Salazar opts to call her a witch and flog her. Keep in mind The Spanish Inquisition was not established yet in the Indies, and in case it was, it would have likely impeded the action (witchcraft was mostly considered non-existent). When everything is sorted out, Alonso de Estrada organize a parade to honor Juana for her loyalty.
• The Cavalry Arrives Late:
  • Before the battle with Narváez's army, Cortés sends two messengers to the Chinantec state in order to bring warriors and weapons. However, the battle is so quick that only the first of the messengers returns in time to bring the weapons and 200-300 tribesmen; the other, Hernando de Barrientos, who was coming at the head of 2,000 Chinantec warriors, arrives when the Cortesians have already won.
  • Xicohtencatl I and Maxixcatzin reveal that they were aware of the Mexica ambush of Otumba, but they weren't able to help Cortés because it took a time for the Tlaxcaltecs to gather an army of a size able to match the Mexicas'. Again, the Cortesians manage to fend for themselves without reinforcements.
  • Gonzalo de Sandoval, already annoyed because he has to return to defend Chalco against the Mexicas immediately after another Mexica attack (which got Cortés angry, because he mistakenly though Sandoval had returned without finishing the job), discovers the Chalcans have already routed the Mexicas by themselves this time, meaning he went back for nothing.
• Cavalry Refusal: When Cortés busts Moctezuma out for having secretly contacted Narváez, the emperor offers to make up by lending Cortés 5,000 Mexica warriors to fight his rival. Cortés doesn't trust him, so he asks his allies Xicohtencatl and Maxixcatzin for 5,000 Tlaxcaltecs, a much safer option. However, having already tasted Spanish weapons to Cortés' own hands in their previous battles, the Tlaxcaltec warriors turn out to be too scared to help. Cortés then goes to another allied tribe, the Chinantecs, to ask for 2,000 fighters, but those arrive late. Cortés ends up not really needing any native help during the battle, but he must have been cursing his luck all throughout.
• The Charmer: Cortés is almost bizarrely good at attracting the most unlikely people's loyalty, be it by persuasion, force, pardon, bribe or any other measure. People constantly turn on their factions in his favor, when not joining him fully. Juan Velázquez is one the first and best examples, given that by the start of the expedition he is a rebel Cortés has to put literally in chains, and shortly after he becomes one of his most loyal captains, participating in one of the Tlaxcaltec marriages to seal their alliance. However, Cortés is far from infallible, and a lot of people end up turning on him too.
• Chased by Angry Natives:
  • The first expedition by Hernández de Córdoba ends this way, with a bloody retreat for the ships while chased by an immense force of Mayans. Their later incursion to Florida ends the same way, although this time they do it with more time because one of the pilots had previously served under Juan Ponce de León and knew the tribes would attack.
  • This is basically how the Spaniards exit Tenochtitlan the first time, with the subversion that there are also native among them.
  • Díaz himself and other Spaniards are sent to pacify a Cimatec revolt, and they instead find themselves under heavy arrow fire even before actually seeing them. They are forced to run away, with several of them dying. Later, Díaz and Luis Marín return with an army to take revenge.
• The Chessmaster: Regardless of the moral considerations a modern reader might have, this portrayal of Cortés absolutely shines as a strategist and tactician. He uses manipulation, psychological warfare, military excellence and a flawless diplomacy to secure allies, gather information, choose his battles and be victorious almost every time, as well as saving the day whenever he isn't.
• The Chief's Daughter: Marina was one, only that the chief died and her stepmother sold her as a slave. She hooks up with Cortés.
• Combat Pragmatist: The Tlaxcalans are clear in that Cortés should spare no Mexica if he wars against them, telling him to kill "the young, so he cannot take arms, and the old, so he cannot give advice."
• The Consigliere: Friar Bartolomé de Olmedo is one of Cortés' most trusted advisors. Much to the friar's chagrin, this often makes Cortés keep him around when Bartolomé would like to be preaching somewhere else.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: Some crewmen plan to desert to Governor Velázquez and sell the expedition's messengers to him, but one of the traitors repents and tells Cortés, who hangs some of them, flogs others and orders the third one to have his feet cut off.
• Corpse Land: The conquered Tenochtitlan is so filled with corpses (both old and recent) that Cortés gets literally sick from all the putrid vapors, and Díaz comments the city looked like they imagined to be Jerusalem after being conquered.
• The Corrupter: The always silver-tongued Cortés keeps Moctezuma under control appealing to his own kingly desires, promising him that not matter how much abuse he takes from the Spaniards, they will reward Moctezuma with many new lands for his empire once its adhesion to Charles V's rule is complete. The increasingly overwhelmed Moctezuma acknowledges this is easier said than done, but the combination of pressure and temptation is too much for him (that or, very probably, he is playing a double game and just pretending to be convinced).
• The Corruptible:
  • Narváez's army is formed by conquistadores that have been hearing stories of fabulous indigenous treasures for weeks, and to make things worse for him, he's too unpopular and bad of a leader to hold their greed in check. Naturally, it almost takes no effort to Cortés and company to gain their loyalty.
  • Cortés' own lieutenant Cristóbal de Olid is described to have too much ambition and too little common sense. By induction of the riotous soldier Briones and some bandits from the Garayan army, he pledges his loyalty to Governor Velázquez and betrays Cortés. It ends with Olid assassinated by Cortesian agents.
• Corrupt Politician: Governor of Cuba Diego Velázquez, who has his Establishing Character Moment when he proposes to make illegal slaves behind the authorities' back, and later writes to the king giving himself the glory of finding gold as if he had led the Hernández expedition himself.
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • Cortés gives a speech on this before going to war against Tlaxcala, advising his men to be ready for a fight even if the moment hasn't come yet.
  • Upon learning that Cortés intends to go to Tenochtitlan by the Mexican road of Cholula, the Tlaxcala lords offer him to take 10,000 of their warriors as protection, although Cortés only takes 1,000 (along with other 1,000 porters) on the reasoning that so many warriors of a rival nation might scare the Mexicas into not letting him in. His reasoning is sound, although it ends up being useless when the whole city rises against them.
  • When Cristóbal de Olid betrays Cortés, the latter sends Francisco de las Casas in a flotilla to terminate him with extreme prejudice. However, just in case, Cortés himself follows him by land with 3,000 Mexicas to crush the Olidians (a meager 370 men) in case the mission fails. Ironically, Cortés is right, for the flotilla is destroyed by a storm and De las Casas is forced to improbably fulfill his mission by deception, but his insistence on going by land turns out the biggest mistake of his career: the expedition through the Hungry Jungle goes so badly that Cortés is considered MIA.
  • Even in the previous case, when a couple of indigenous guides abandon him, Cortés reveals he had brought cosmography gear and manages to find the way nonetheless.
• Cultured Badass:
  • Or Wicked Cultured depending on the reader's sympathies, evidently. In any case, Cortés is an admirer of Greek and Roman culture and history, making a lot of references and comparisons to them: he gives his flag a quote clearly taken from Constantine the Great's in hoc signo vinces, later compares the situation of the capture of Cuauhtemoc to that of Jugurtha by Sulla and Marius, and if the opinion of some of his underlings is fit to judge by, he is a fanboy of Alexander the Great who wants to carve his own conquest and mix of cultures and bloods.
  • Cortés' captains are not uncultured either, as when he discusses about Roman history with them, they are quick to compare him to Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon, as well as Alexander. Bernal Díaz himself can be considered an example of this by all the comparisons he makes between Cortés and other historical figures.

D - H

• Darkest Hour: Due to their lack of success against the seemingly endless salties of Tenochtitlan, and after the Mexicas spread propaganda that an oracle has foretold that they will lose soon the war, most native allies lose their will to fight and return to their homelands, leaving behind their own chieftains with only their bodyguards. According to Díaz, their number goes down from 24,000 to 200. Fortunately for the Spaniards, it turns out most of the work was already done; their new strategy to submit the city by hunger, forced by the circumstances, is much more successful, and a lot of the allied warriors end up returning to give the final blow.
• David Versus Goliath:
  • Cortés and his 500 soldiers (possibly less, given that many of his men remained on the ships as sailors and marines) trump Tabasco's army of 12,000 via superior strategy, weapons and ships, as well as the psychological factor of the horses, which scare the crap out of the natives.
  • The initial scuffles against Tlaxcala also take this shape, as Díaz talks of a 40,000-50,000 strong army pitted against the familiar 500-or-so Spaniards and a Totonac contingent which, even if its size is not given, cannot possibly be as huge (other sources say they were around 500 men too). It's tempting to believe Díaz is wildly overstating the enemy numbers, but given what we later see of Tlaxcala's manpower, he's likely not exaggerating by much; he also explains their large numbers were actually a big factor of their defeats, because they often bottlenecked themselves on the battlefield and were unable to use their ranged weapons comfortably.
  • Cortés advances to conquer Pánuco with 380 Spaniards and 10,000 Mexica allies, only to find a Huastec force five times bigger, who also plays at home and in a difficult terrain. Even so, he is victorious, avenging the earlier expedition by Francisco de Garay that had been massacred there.
• Death by Irony: A soldier dies of drinking too much water in Florida after a long period of thirst. The expedition to Honduras later has 21 people dying by eating too much after having been hungry for many days.
• Defeat Means Friendship:
  • More of a draw, even a future loss for the Spaniards if the whole thing didn't end soon, but the Tlaxcalans only ally with the Spaniards after shockingly failing to beat them thrice on the battlefield despite their humongous numbers advantage.
  • This seems to be the case with Pánfilo de Narváez, who gets all friendly and chummy with Cortés when he is freed, but once he returns to Spain, he becomes his sworn enemy again.
  • When Francisco de Garay's attempt to rival Cortés ends failing terribly, with accidents, defeats and desertions, he ends up joining Cortés himself, helped by the fact that Cortés and his lieutenants used to be friends of his.
  • Cortés keeps Cuauhtemoc around after conquering his empire. However, in a subversion, he doesn't trust him, and brings him along when Cortés goes to Honduras to hunt down Cristóbal de Olid. It turns out Cuauhtemoc had some thoughts of betraying Cortés and revolt against Spain, so Cortés ultimately executes him there.
  • Unlike Cuahtemoc, the Mexicas acclaim Cortés when the latter turns out to be alive and returns to Tenochtitlan to oust the corrupt governor Salazar, not only out of self-interest, but also because, unlike Salazar, Cortés had actually proven to be a good governor, ordering to rebuild Tenochtitlan after the conquest and treating its citizens justly.
• Defensive Feint Trap: Sandoval arrives to Pánuco with 150 Spaniards and 8,000 Tlaxcaltecs and Mexicas, but he finds that his numbers are useless because the mountain passes are too well defended by the Huastecs. After failing to force his way in by way of a bait, he instead turns his back and, possibly inspired by an identical fact by Viriathus in the Lusitanian Wars, pretends to flee for three days in order to get the Huastecs to sally and chase him. He then turns back and destroys them.
• Department of Redundancy Department: It shows sometimes that Díaz was not a professional writer, such as the amusing line "and they were told that their idols are bad and that they are not good."
• Determinator: The resistance of both sides of the Siege of Tenochtitlan is ferocious, with the Mexicas relentlessly performing attacks on the besiegers and modifying their tactics for every occasion, and the Cortesians methodically taking on every challenge with their own adaptative tactics and pushing forward to the end. In fact, both sides despair at some point about how unbeatable the other seems to be, yet both keep giving and taking.
• Determined Defeatist:
  • The wars with Tlaxcala take a huge psychological toll on the Spanish soldiers, as the roughly 1,000 Cortesians are effectively taking on tens of thousands of warriors from a confederation that can keep pouring those numbers on the battlefield virtually forever, meaning the Spaniards are essentially fighting a lost war. However, Díaz notes that regardless of how much they complain, they never step back or stop fighting.
  • The Tlaxcaltecs try to convince Cortés to take the road of Huejotzingo, a friendly state of theirs, and not Cholula, a state vassal to the Mexica Empire with a poweful garrison. However, Cortés wants to eye the Mexica power and has also the reassurance that Cholula is not far from Tlaxcala in case of needing reinforcements, so he settles on going that route. The Tlaxcaltecs realize trouble is coming, but they still offer Cortés to take a great army to make things big time.
• Dissonant Serenity: Marina, whom Díaz and company never find even a bit affected by all the war and fighting. Judging by her Dark and Troubled Past, it's likely few things could scare her by that point.
• Divide and Conquer: Cortés capitalizes on the discontent of many Mexican vassals towards their lords to disengage them from the Mexica rule and turn them into his own allies.
• The Dividual: Xicohtencatl the Elder has a pair of sons that are only referred as the Xicohtencatl Brothers. It's unclear if they happen to be both named that way; it might be so, considering the old man was claimed in other chronicles to have hundreds of children with many wives.
• Divine Intervention: Mexica warriors tell Moctezuma that a brave Spanish lady helped saving Juan de Escalante's troops in Nautla. Moctezuma infers she was the Virgin Mary, and Díaz recounts some Spaniards said the same.
• Downer Beginning: As soon as Díaz arrived in Cuba from Panamá, the island suffered a rather Body Horror plague.
• Drag Queen: Mexicas are descibed to have male prostitutes dressed as women.
• The Dragon:
  • Pánfilo de Narváez and Cristóbal de Tapia serve as Governor Velázquez's Co-Dragons (though not always simultaneously) in his enmity with Cortés and company.
  • Pedro Almírez Chirinos acts as Gonzalo de Salazar's main henchman.
• Drama Queen: Miguel Díaz de Auz, an expeditioner sent from Jamaica by Francisco de Garay whose contingent joins the Cortesians, does a ridiculous act to get Cortés to believe in his loyalty, lying down on the ground and putting his own dagger over his chest for Cortés to kill him. Obviously, Hernán is not amused and tells him to cut the nonsense.
• The Dreaded:
  • The Spaniards' improbable resistance against the Tlaxcaltecs make them (even more) fearsome around Mesoamerica, and the news eventually reach Moctezuma himself, whose messengers claim to be willing to give any quantity of tribute to King Charles V as long as they don't come near his city. Their subsequent turnover of the ambush of Cholula only adds to this, as local people now think the Cortesians are also telepaths who cannot be deceived either.
  • Cortés' sole name among the natives later quells down a revolt, without him even having to travel there.
  • A humorous incident happen when a delegation of monks and friars arrives in New Spain, among them the famous Toribio de Benavente. Cortés and company kneel before them as a sign of Christian respect, and when Cuauhtemoc and the Mexicas see their conquerors prostrating themselves in front of such weird, poor-looking people, they panic, believing the friars to be something even more otherwordly.
  • When Cortés' enemies convince King Charles V to send an army to arrest him, the king alerts the Spanish admiral in Santo Domingo. However, the latter never leaves the harbor: he is too well informed of Cortés' power and resources, and simply doesn't believe he could stand a chance against him in an invasion attempt. Later, Cortés' benefactors manage to convince the king of his innocence, and the order is revoked.
  • Again, the news of Cortés being alive are enough to make New Spain revolt against the corrupt Gonzalo de Salazar and reinstate the absent Cortés as governor.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • Possibly Moctezuma, whom Friar Bartolomé believes might have secretly taken poison to take his own life after the Despair Event Horizon of being stoned by his own people.
  • When Tenochtitlan is finally conquered and Cuauhtemoc is brought to Cortés, the Mexica declares he did all he could and, having failed, asks Cortés to execute him. The Spaniard, however, refuses (although he will do later for unrelated reasons).
• Dumb Muscle: Although Díaz doesn't lampshade it, it's perceptible that Pedro de Sandoval is a great soldier and usually gets the things done, but definitely not cut out for either strategizing or decision-making. His role in the massacre of Tenochtitlan almost dooms the entire expedition, and in his later conquest of Guatemala, his Mayan allies have to do all the intelligence work for him (and he still gets deceived by other Mayan allies, who wanted his help basically to pillage and rape their neighbors).
• Easily Forgiven:
  • This is constantly used by Cortés to turn enemies into allies, being fully aware that trying to rightly punish everybody that deserves it is simply not viable, and instead he can use their help much more. Alonso de Ávila and Friar Bartolomé de Olmedo later comment on it, snarking that Cortés seems to want to emulate Alexander the Great for real because he treats his vanquished enemies better than his victorious soldiers.
  • Cortés pardons the Garayan conquistadores that incited Cristóbal de Olid to revolt.
  • It's mentioned that Marina did this after the chronicle's events, when she found again her stepmother and stepbrother (who had sold her into slavery to remove her as a heir) and let them go, even giving them some riches. Díaz compares this to the Biblical story of Joseph.
• Easy Evangelism: Sometimes averted, sometimes played straight and justified. Generally, the more superstitious and/or scared the natives are, they easier Cortés and company have it to convert them. When those factors don't align, more dramatic measures have to be taken, such as threatening with withdrawing military help, or ameliorating it by having the former pagan priests put as caretakers of the new churches - or just letting it aside for the moment.
• Easy Logistics: Averted. The Tlaxcaltecs and Totonacs are immensely helpful not only by lending warriors, guides and messengers, but also by mounting supply lines to the Cortesian army. Cortés also orders to protect especially the state of Chalco, which is located between Texcoco and Tlaxcala and has large corn fields to feed their troops.
• Eat the Evidence: Some former soldiers of Narváez concocted a plan to murder Cortés, but the latter finds about it and arrests their leader Antonio de Villafaña, obtaining the paper where they had all signed in order to reclaim the goods later. As the list shows there were a lot of people on it, which makes it very difficult to try to arrest them all at once, he claims Villafaña ate the paper to dispose of it, leaving the culprits a way to forget it and redeem themselves.
• End of an Age:
  • After Cuauhtemoc is captured and the conquest of the Mexicas is completed, Bernal describes a supernatural silence falls on them all, with Tenochtitlan being now destroyed and empty after three months of savage war.
  • When Cortés sends messengers to all the former Mexican vassals that Tenochtitlan has fallen, many of their chieftains come, completely bewildered, only to find out whether such thing is even possible. Some of then even bring their own children, which get shown around the ruins while their parents tell them about how much did they fear the former power.
• Enemy Mine:
  • Xicomecoatl, the Totonac chieftain, sends messengers to the Cortesian army behind the Mexicas' backs, and after they finally meet, he's quick to take Cortés' polite invitation to help, revealing that the Mexica Empire has his people heavily subjugated and demands many of his tribesmen to sacrifice and enslave every year.
  • The Confederation of Tlaxcala wages war against the Spaniards and Totonacs on the belief those fight on the name of the Mexica Empire, but once the confusion is cleared out, they eagerly join forces with Cortés to get support against the Mexicas.
  • Moctezuma becomes one briefly with Cortés and company, as he learns that his nephew Cacamatzin of Texcoco is trying to revolt against the Cortesians and plans to dispose of Moctezuma and put himself on the throne if the latter doesn't help them. Later, Cacamatzin's brothers join Cortés too.
  • The Chiapanecs are known to be the best warriors in Mesoamerica, whom even the Mexica Empire failed to conquer, but when the Spaniards and the Mexicas join forces with the people of Xaltepec, a tribe who was enslaved Helot-style by the Chiapanecs, the latter are finally defeated.
• Epic Fail:
  • Alonso de Grado is sent by Cortés to replace the fallen Juan de Escalante in Veracruz, but as soon as he arrives, he starts abusing his position to get gold and women, and even tries to turn people towards Governor Velázquez and against Cortés. With such subtlety, it takes absolutely no time for Cortés to hear about it and arrest De Grado, who eventually becomes more loyal after spending some time in a pillory in Tenochtitlan.
  • Cortés' plan to quietly exit Tenochtitlan, which is really their only plan available, turns Gone Horribly Wrong and most of his people is killed in the process. However, in a subversion, Cortés and most of his higher ranked guys manage to escape, so the plan is ultimately a success.
  • The Chiapanec shamaness promises her people that they will magically defeat the Spanish-Mexica army by having her in the frontlines. Unfortunately, this only makes her easy to capture by the Mexica auxiliars, who promptly rip her apart.
  • A soldier named Rodrigo Mañueco, trying to cheer Cortés up during his depression, boasts he will go up a high mountain in a marathon while wearing his armor. He does, only that he also dies of exhaustion.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The story features an important indigenous named Chichimecatecle, whose position seems to be a sort of supreme commander of Tlaxcalan armies. In reality, however, "Chichimecatecle" is likely a corruption of "chichimecatecuhtli", which was not a given name, but a title (itmeans "Lord of the Peoples" or something on the line), and given that the rest of his countrymen only address him by this, his real identity remains unknown.
• Every Man Has His Price: Cortés uses constant bribes to get things his way. According to Díaz, even Alonso de Ávila ceases being a douchebag after being given enough money on hand. Also Cristóbal de Tapia, a servant of his enemies who had been promised Cortés' job, ends up leaving him be in exchange for gold.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • As a condition to fund part of Hernández de Córdoba's fleet, Governor Velázquez orders them to invade some nearby islands and make slaves out of their populations, something that was actually illegal by the Spanish laws since 1503. Díaz and their partners refuse, and Velázquez eventually concedes.
  • Cortés is angry at Pedro de Alvarado for leading an incursion on Cozumel, pointing out that sacking and plundering is not the right way to govern the lands, and soon orders the goods to be handed back to their owners, with an added payment for each. He also refuses to shoot at the Garay expedition as his captains want to do.
  • When Sandoval manages to pacify the Huastecs from Pánuco, he makes a point to execute only the culprits of the rebellion and leave free everybody else. Knowing the revolt was caused by Spaniards from the Garayan army pillaging and oppressing the villages, he arrests those and executes them too.
  • Sandoval ends up serving as a police force against the conquistadors of Pedro Arias de Ávila, who had sent them to pillage and enslave natives after executing their more honorable lieutenant Francisco Hernández. Arias also had a vessel essentially practicing piracy against coastal villages, and again, the Cortesians are forced to fight it off (and the ship's captain eventually betrays Arias).
• Everyone Join the Party:
  • Both Spaniards and indigenous join the Cortesian army throughout the conquer when they have the upper hand, the former attracted by the riches and the latter by the chance of revenge against the Mexicas. The natives later feel a lack of success and quickly return home, but after hearing things have improved, they come again.
  • Some nearby Tlaxcalan armies are quick to join the Massacre of Cholula at the moment they hear Cortés and his forces are fighting them.
• The Face: Marina, who acts as the Spanish spokesperson thanks to her knowledge of the language and charisma, to the point it's Cortés who gets nicknamed "Marina's Lord" (Malinche) by the natives.
• Fantastic Flora: Díaz plants some orange seeds next to a Tezcatlipoca temple in Tonalá during the Grijalva expedition. When the priests find them, as the plants are unknown and bizarre to the natives, they keep tending them, and apparently the entire province ends up filled with orange trees over time.
• Fat Bastard: Governor Velázquez, the Corrupt Politician, is apparently very fat, although it's mentioned he lost weight with all the Cortés affair's stress.
• A Father to His Men: While the soldiers often complain about the gold, and it does really seem Cortés gives out more money in bribes than in payments, the chronicle portrays him as a wise and caring, if very strict, leader and commander.
• Flaying Alive: Subverted. Most likely not alive (it might be, though), but the indigenous flay the skin of sacrificed people and sometimes keep it as a trophy. The Spaniards often find flayed faces of their own kin in the temples of the cities they conquer.
• Formerly Fit: For most of the chronicle, Cortés is a very athletic man, as fitting for a Frontline General, but after the adventure in the Hibueras, Bernal remembers he got fat.
• From Bad to Worse:
  • The Cortesians' capture of Moctezuma cannot last forever, and it comes to a point that they are forced to promise to leave soon the Mexica Empire. Then Narváez appears with his army causing trouble in the allied lines, and Cortés has to detach a part of his army in midst of the instability of Tenochtitlan to take care of him. And then, upon his return, it turns out Alvarado has completely screwed things, and the whole city, and therefore the empire, has revolted against them.
  • From Moctezuma's perspective, the assimilation of Narváez's army by Cortés takes this shape. After he had hoped him to dispose of Cortés, it turns out Narváez has only made Cortés much stronger, and now there are 1,300 more foreigners and a similar number of Tlaxcaltecs in his city.
• Frontline General: Cortés himself often fights at the frontlines, which gets him briefly captured twice.
• Gambit Pileup: Cortés is far from being the only manipulator in the game, as his native allies often try to instrumentalize his military and political help just as happily since the very start.
• Gasshole: A Spanish soldier named Trujillo is flogged when Moctezuma complains that he could heard him doing traques (read: loudly farting) during his night guard, even after Moctezuma chastised him and gave him gold not to do it again. Amusingly, some versions of the text censor the action and replace it by "dishonest things", which has led some authors to wrongly believe Trujillo was pleasuring himself with improper noises instead.
• General Failure:
  • Pánfilo de Narváez is very unpopular among his own men, fails utterly at both diplomacy and espionage, and lets subversion undermine his army, all before being defeated in battle by an enemy he outnumbered almost by 3 on 1. One of his ship crews is even convinced to betray him by the hostage they were carrying (and the story doesn't cover the fact that, some years later, Narváez would later get himself killed in an expedition to the Mississippi). There is a pop belief that pánfilo, a Spanish word translatable as "dumbass" or something alike, comes from this man.
  • Francisco de Garay, while much more honorable and straightforward than Narváez, is just as bad of a general. His attempt to conquer Pánuco ends up failing disastrously when he chooses the wrong routes, gets literally swamped down, and loses control of his troops, who start deserting him once they heard about Cortés and his richer lands (even his fleet abandons him and goes to join the Cortesian port of Veracruz). Like Narváez, his army also suffers a ridiculous defeat, being 840 men yet losing to a minuscule team by Pedro Vallejo, who brings home 40 hostages accused of being stealing around.
  • Francisco de Garay's son turns out to be somehow even worse. His management of the army is so bad that he loses completely control of his men and those end up becoming marauders and bandits, causing a ton of trouble for Cortés and company. Discipline gets so bad that, in Bernal's words, the soldiers were stealing and pillaging as if they were in Moorish land (Serious Business at the time). Unsurprisingly, the tribes of the place soon revolt against them.
  • Cristóbal de Olid had previously proved to be an excellent field commander, but when he takes control of his own expedition and betrays Cortés, it turns out he isn't as good of a general after all. He idiotically pardons two important enemies out of pride and is shown to barely hold his camp together, so to the surprise of nobody, the former two end up taking over and executing him.
• Gilded Cage: Moctezuma's arrest consists simply of moving from his own palace to the one the Spaniards are inhabiting. The Spaniards ensure he is still just as well treated and served there, as their own safety is on the line.
• God Guise: Zig-zagged. Contrary to popular belief, Cortés and company are not seen as returning gods by the natives, but as a sort of returning ancestors who come to take over. This said, there are some natives that do believe them at first to be teules, meaning supernatural or divine beings, but this is dispelled pretty fast anyway. From that point, the natives keep calling them teules because the name has stuck, not because they actually believe them to be divine.
• Going Native: Gonzalo Guerrero and Jerónimo de Aguilar, two Spanish survivors that were held as slaves among the Mayans. The latter is eager to return among his countrymen, though, while the latter isn't, doubting they will welcome him back now that he's a full-fledged Indian (as well as possibly a hidden extra reason: Jerónimo also claims Guerrero was the mastermind behind the indigenous attacks to the Hernández expedition).
• The Good King: Díaz dedicates a lot of words to tell how much he, Cortés and many other captains admired Moctezuma, describing him as a wise old king whom they eventually got very close with despite being his captors. He considers Moctezuma a true king of the New Spain and claims they would have cherished him the same had him been a lesser man. This, ultimately, only makes the next events all more tragic.
• Guile Hero:
  • Alonso de Ávila is capture on the sea by a French corsair and sent to a fortress in France, but he manages to fulfill his mission, that of sending some letters to the King of Spain, by convincing the warden that he will get a rich ransom if the letters reach their addressee.
  • Martín de Orantes, a manservant to Cortés, manages to skillfully sneak into Mexico City with the news that Cortés is alive.
  • Guzmán, the artisan whom conspirators hired to make a key to free Salazar, manages to learn their entire plan and inform the Cortesians about it.
• A Handful for an Eye: Many of the native tribes have the custom to throw handfuls of dirt to blind enemies.
• The Heart: Cristóbal de Olea (not Olid), the soldier who saves Cortés' life in a Heroic Sacrifice, was cherished by his colleagues for how kind and helpful he was to everybody, to the point Díaz admits he gets teary-eyed when he thinks on him.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • Realizing his last chance to get revenge on the Cortesians has been crushed in the failed night ambush, Xicohtencatl II is appalled and gives no more trouble.
  • Or Villainous BSoD depending on the reader, naturally. Tormented by the Hungry Jungle, by The Chains of Commanding, by illness, by a head injury, and finally by awful news of having been declared MIA in New Spain, Cortés completely breaks down in the Hibueras and catches a hellish depression. Only the arrival of his cousin, Friar Diego Altamirano, with news that the whole MIA thing has been solved, manages to snap his mind into place.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Cortés' butlers and a Tlaxcaltec warrior die while rescuing Cortés after being seized in one of the skirmishes in Xochimilco.
• Hero of Another Story:
  • The chronicles briefly mentions Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, the famous explorer of North America.
  • Navigator Álvaro de Saavedra Cerón is also mentioned.
• Honest Corporate Executive: Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón, who is sent from the Audiencia Real in Cuba with orders from the king himself that Narváez must abort his mission to capture Cortés. As Narváez doesn't like this turn, he orders Vázquez to be arrested and sent to Governor Velázquez by ship to be removed from the events. However, it turns out Vázquez is also a bit of a Guile Hero himself, and bribes the crew so they take him back to a safe port, where he can tell about all the nonsense.
• Honor Before Reason: Xicohtencatl II argues against the council of Tlaxcala because he doesn't want to serve the distant, foreign king Charles V and his cronies. This causes a riot, and Maxixcatzin tells him to shut his mouth and remember that their alliance with Cortés has saved them from the Mexica's stranglehold and given them more prestige than they had in an entire century.
• Human Resources: Díaz mentions that when they lack oil, they cauterize the wounds with the fat of enemy corpses.
• Human Sacrifice: Ubiquitous through the chronicle, as it's practiced by Mayans, Mexicas, Tlaxcaltecs and just every indigenous state. The Spaniards and Totonacs almost come to blows when Cortés demands them to cease in this custom, but the latter ultimately acquiesce (tearfully so) because they cannot defeat the Mexicas without the Spaniards' help. Later, after the Mexica Empire is conquered, the Spaniards find out they used to sacrifice 2,000 people per year, including children, only in the lake-city. Modern estimations believe the whole empire likely sacrificed around 10,000.

I - Q

• I Am a Humanitarian: To the Spaniards' shock and disgust, the natives sometimes eat their sacrificed people and war prisoners, favoring especially their arms and legs. It's also mentioned they have some prisoners being fed so they would be all fat to be sacrificed and eaten, and Díaz also believes they sell human meat in their tianguis or markets (although he admits he's unsure of this last point). Cortés attempts to banish all those customs, although Díaz says it was useless, as the indigenous often did it again as soon as the Spaniards turned their backs to them. Indeed, after Tenochtitlan is taken, native allies like the Tlaxcaltecs and Texcocans are mentioned to have returned home carrying loads of Mexica human meat to eat in parties.
• Identical Stranger: During the first negotiations with Moctezuma, he sends Cortés a chieftain named Quintalbor (or so Díaz recorded his name, perhaps not accurately) that happens to resemble Cortés himself.
• Impersonation Gambit: An expedition sent from Jamaica by Francisco de Garay arrives by chance, though having been warned by Governor Velázquez not to make contact with Cortés. The latter attracts four of its sailors and uses their clothes to disguise his men and get aboard, and although he fails to take command of the expedition, he gets to hire two other soldiers the ship leaves behind.
• Impoverished Patrician: Cortés is introduced as a former mayor of San Juan in Cuba, but he's described as being quite in debt at the moment, in part due to him being too generous and his wife Catalina liking too much shopping.
• In the End, You Are on Your Own: When most native allies abandon Cortés in the siege of Tenochtitlan, all seems lost for the Cortesians and the allies' own states. However, making virtue of necessity, Texcocan chieftain Ixtlilxochitl points out that they have still the advantage: instead of trusting in masses of allies to try to take the city by assault, they only have to lock the siege tighter, ensure Tenochtitlan is not supplied from outside, and wait for the Mexicas to finish their already dwindling reserves of food and water. At the end, while all the previous fighting surely served to grind down the forces stationed in the city, it's the Spaniards and their last loyalists who unlock the final victory, upon which many of the allies return again and help them conquer the city (and butcher its citizens in revenge).
• Involuntary Split Group Split: The revolt in Tenochtitlan takes the Cortesians by surprise, so Spanish teams that were deployed in other points of the Mexica Empire end up uncommunicated as the Mexica rise against them, and several of them are wiped out as a consequence. Alonso de Barrientos, who was acting as an intendent in Chinanta when the conflict explodes, gets his entire team killed, and he only survives himself because the Chinantecs are on Cortés' side and acted to protect him (although he is later mentioned among the casualties of posterior battles, so he lived to die another day).
• Keystone Army: The Mexica armies are heavily dependent on their commanders, so much that they become disordered when those fall. Cortés exploits this during the Battle of Otumba, where they manage to rout them after Spaniard Juan de Salamanca kills the Mexica commander and seizes their battle standard.
• Know When to Fold 'Em:
  • After the first ambush in Champotón, the Hernández expedition finds a Mayan tribe delicate enough to warn them to leave their lands before attacking them. As many Spaniards are still wounded from the previous battle and the opposing forces are just too large, the expedition opts to accept and live to fight another day.
  • The same orders Grijalva when a Mayan chieftain boasts that they have large forces waiting for them if they fight. As the tribe has little gold, and instead claims other tribes have much more treasure, the Spaniard deems them not worthy of the effort and goes in the direction they give.
  • On the other side, when Moctezuma learns that mysterious men able to defeat great armies have arrived seeking gold, he instructs his vassals to trade all the gold they want and to gather info about the foreigners.
• Leeroy Jenkins: During the first campaigns against the Mexica nations, an army of Tlaxcaltecs presses Cortés into deploying them because they want glory and revenge. Cortés aquiesces and deliveres a half-hearted attack with them in Iztapalapa, but it turns out the natives had prepared a trap by releasing the local water dams on them, which ironically kills several native allies because they, unlike the sea-accustomed Spaniards, don't know how to swim.
• Loophole Abuse:
  • The third expedition is originally sent by Governor Velázquez, whose orders they cannot ignore without committing treason. However, if they happened to found a city, they would stop being tied to Velázquez and would instead become tied to said city's council (which would be, of course, formed by themselves). Although Velázquez can order them not to found any city in prevision of this, King Charles V can overrule him and grant them official status by letter if he feels like. All of this is exactly what Cortés and company do in order to escape Velázquez's control.
  • It's not properly explained in the chronicle, but whenever Spaniards marry indigenous princesses, they do so by the native rites, which are not recognized by the Catholic church and instead grant her the status of barraganía or concubinage, thus allowing the men to marry other women by the Christian rites if they wish (some of them, like Sandoval, did remain with their native wives, though). However, the indigenous don't care, as their own rites contemplate polyginy.
  • Cortés does it when he hears Francisco de Garay is coming to conquer Pánuco. He quickly sends his own troops to conquer the land himself, as Garay's conquering license will be rendered null if he happens to find the lands already conquered. After realizing the trick, Garay even intends to storm the just-built Cortesian city, but he eventually realizes his inferiority and accepts to join him instead, choosing another land to conquer.
• Loyal Animal Companion: A hunting bitch that got lost in Términos during the Grijalva expedition is found by Cortés and company, still waiting for the Spaniards to return.
• Lured into a Trap:
  • The Hernández expedition is lured out of their ships by a seemingly friendly Mayan chieftain that promptly has them ambushed in the jungle of Champotón. The Spaniards manage to rout them with the superiority of their weapons, though not without equal casualties. Later, the Grijalva expedition gets revenge on them.
  • The Cholultecs attempt this with the Spanish-Tlaxcaltec-Totonac army, but the ruse is found out and turned savagely on them.
• Made of Iron: Cristóbal de Olid receives many slashes and cuts, and still manages to escape to the countryside before being captured and executed.
• Mad Oracle: Commented by Díaz due to the case of Cervantes el Loco, a local madman that intrudes in Velázquez's entourage to shout that Cortés is going to betray him sooner or later. A second crazy named Juan Millán, supposedly some kind of astrologer, tells him the same, which makes one suspect this was simply really obvious at the time and place.
• Magic Knight: A Spanish soldier and scholar named Botello is popularly believed to be a necromancer, and other soldiers rumor he even has a Familiar. He seems to be also an astrologer, and it's claimed he accurately predicted the best day to abandon Tenochtitlan, but he ironically died there.
• Magnetic Hero: The chronicle's portrayal of Cortés, if faithful, shows he was an undeniably charismatic man. Even if many crewmembers of the third expedition initially prefer to serve under Grijalva again, shortly after meeting Cortés they are clearly willing to challenge Governor Velázquez for him, and the same happens with some civile servants who originally worked for Velázquez, like Diego de Ordás and the governor's own cousin Juan (who later becomes a Cortesian loyalist even after passing some time in chains due to disagreements with the crew). Even Grijalva and the inhabitants of Trinidad are happy to collaborate as soon as they hear how ambitious Cortés' project is.
• Major Injury Underreaction: While walking around at night, Cortés falls off a three store high cabin in the Hibueras and hits his head hard, but he surprises everybody by taking it completely stoically.
• Malicious Slander: Mexicas and Tlaxcaltecs play this endlessly against each other, accusing each other of being traitors and untrustworthy people.
• Manly Tears:
  • Moctezuma and his noblemen feel the end of an age when they have to send word of vassalage to Charles V, so they cannot help but cry. Díaz states a lot of his usual Spanish guards cry too in sympathy and due to the emotion of the scene.
  • Aside from the famous Sad Night, Cortés also sheds tears for some young servants in Xochimilco who were taken alive, and again when Mexica propaganda claims that Sandoval, Díaz himself, and others had been felled in their own camp during the siege.
• Man of Wealth and Taste:
  • Cortés and Alvarado like to be well-dressed, although discreetly so, as described by Díaz.
  • Lampshaded by Diego de Ordaz, who advises Cortés to call himself a don and show some luxury so people will respect him more.
• Master of Disguise: Gonzalo de Sandoval sends two tanned Spaniards dressed as natives to serve as spies in Narváez's camp, and they do it so well that nobody realizes.
• The Matchmaker: Indigenous chieftains often offer women for the Spaniards to marry for political reasons. It's notable that Bernal Díaz himself asks Moctezuma to grant him a woman, claiming to be too poor to find a wife, and the emperor complies, handing him a Mexica princess later baptized as Francisca. Díaz will later have two children with her, Teresa and Diego.
• A Match Made in Stockholm: After Tenochtitlan is taken, Cortés allows for the Mexicas to recover the female hostages the Spaniards had been taking. The problem, it turns out, is that most of those women have already hooked up with Spanish soldiers and are now Christian, married, pregnant or some combination of them, so they refuse to return to their own people. At the end, out of a contingent of possibly more than a hundred of women, only three of them return.
• Mêlée à Trois: The conquest threatens with turning into one of those when Jean Fleury, the French corsair, captures Ávila's ship and finds the Mexica treasure. The king of France, Francis I, immediately protests against Spain (and Portugal) for having the monopoly of exploration of such rich lands around the world, after which he sends Fleury with a fleet to invade the Indies and take his piece of the cake. However, a Spanish fleet destroys the French one on the road and captures Fleury, and France's participation ends here.
• Merchant City: Cinacantan, whose dwellers are said to be a Proud Merchant Race.
• Minor Major Character:
  • Xicomecoatl hands Cortés one of his nieces, a powerful princess baptized as Catalina (whom Bernal mentions humorously to be very ugly), and it's curious that Hernán doesn't reject her on the grounds of being already married in a monogamous faith, which he later does when Moctezuma of all people offers him to marry his daughter. However, what became of Catalina, or what was her status with Cortés, aren't revealed in the chronicle. Only Cervantes de Salazar, another chronicler, mentions that she stayed in Cempoala and become a sort of backer to Cortés, who used her palace to store weapons and prisoners taken from Narváez.
  • Similarly, Díaz's first wife, the indigenous princess Francisca, is not mentioned in the entire chronicle other than the moment when Moctezuma grants her to him. Given that later in his life, Díaz was more or less forced to re-marry the daughter of a rich man, it's possible that he was trying not to give the whole topic too much publicity.
• Monochrome Casting: Downplayed and later subverted. Cortés' crew is eminently Spanish, with only a handful of Cuban native helpers and black slaves, as well as some black conquistadores themselves. Díaz denies López de Gómara's claim that they had 200-300 Cuban native allies (a mistake by Díaz himself, as the chronicler who claimed this was De las Casas, not Gómara). However, after they ally with Totonacs, Tlaxcaltecs and many other tribes, the counter goes to the other side, and the allied army ends up being an eminently indigenous force with a minority of Spaniards and some blacks at the head.
• Multinational Team: The Cortesian army, formed by Spaniards, Portuguese, Genoese, black Africans, and indigenous of multiple lands.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: The confederation of Tlaxcala is composed of four states (Tepeticpac, Ocotelulco, Tizatlan and Cuyahuiztlan), along with a minor fifth, Topeyanco, ruled by Tecapaneca. Ironically, this Tecapaneca seems to be a pretty important dude: out of the four lords of Tlaxcala, only three appear personally, while Tecapaneca and Chichimecatecuthli (this one seems to be a sort of supreme commander in military affairs) make up for the fourth.
• My Master, Right or Wrong: This is basically Díaz's attitude towards Cortés. Díaz criticizes him openly, calling him a scrooge who paid his yes-men more than his lieutenants, but also admits that Cortés was really a genius who changed the history of Spain forever, and is loyal to him to the very end.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast:
  • Matanzas ("massacres"), a port in Cuba where the natives ambushed and killed a Spanish expedition. One of the few survivors, by the way, would be the famed María de Estrada, who was taken as a wife by the chieftain before being rescued.
  • Isla Sacrificios is the name the Grijalva expedition gives to the island where they find Human Sacrifice for the first time.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Texcocan chieftain Coanacoch attempts to call the state up against the Cortesians, but as he was a very unpopular leader because he had actually murdered his predecessor to take the throne (not to mention said predecessor was Cuicuitzcatzin, an ally of the Spaniards), they turn on him.
• No Name Given: The lone Jamaican tribeswoman rescued by the Hernández expedition in the coast is never named.
• No One Gets Left Behind:
  • Despite being all battered by a battle against hostile natives in Florida, Captain Hernández orders to search for a vanished sentinel named Berrio, but they fail to find him.
  • Averted, and quite dramatically so, during the Sad Night. Some lieutenants try to help the rest of the contingent to exit the city, but being under heavy fire and in critical inferiority, Cortés orders not to wait. They later acknowledge that the order was right, as had they tried to stay and fight, likely nobody would have escaped alive.
• Not Helping Your Cause: The Guatemalan Mayans ask Alvarado for help against their neighbors from Ixquintepec, who supposedly oppress them. This is all a lie: all the Guatemalans want is to wreak havoc on them and steal their women and riches. Unlike Cortés in similar occasions, Alvarado doesn't get a hint of the deception, and when he starts diplomacy with the Ixquintepec Mayans, those end up sealing the whole affair by talking arrogantly and abusively, accidentally giving more power to the lie. The rest is history.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: Governor Velázquez is one, constantly syphoning the benefits of the expeditions, taking the glory for himself, trying to get people to engage in illegal activities, and making things difficult for Cortés and company. When he gets his method turned against him and the expeditioners exploit a loophole to lawfully evade his control, he gets angry and sends an army to arrest them. Bishop Rodríguez de Fonseca also counts, to the point King Charles V himself gets fed of him.
• Old Soldier: According to himself, the author was the only crewman that participated in all the three Spanish expeditions to México.
• One-Man Army:
  • Exploited. When he's required to send troops to help a Totonac tribe, already knowing that the natives consider the Spaniards superb warriors, Cortés chooses an especially old, ugly and scarred Basque arquebusier, Heredia el Viejo (who is also one-legged a and one-eyed, for extra '90s Anti-Hero flavor), and sends him to the natives claiming that he will be enough to dispose of the enemies. Cortés later joins him with his army on the claim he had to go anyway to survey the place, but by then all the land has heard about the individual power and bravery of the foreigners, who only need a single, crippled old man to win battles.
  • When Cortés is captured by Mexica, the soldier Cristóbal de Olea (not to confuse with Cristóbal de Olid) comes out of the gate and cuts down all of the enemies carrying Cortés, although more of them come to him and he is eventually killed in a Heroic Sacrifice. Tlaxcaltec warriors finally manage to extract Cortés safely.
• One-Steve Limit: The natives call Cortés "Malinche" (Malintzin, "Marina's lord") because it's Marina who acts as his tongue and spokesperson. However, Díaz remembers that other Spaniard, Juan Pérez de Artiaga, also received the nickname, as Marina was teaching him the language and thus he was always by her side in the meetings.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Cortés gets all rallied up when he founds out Moctezuma was secretly contacting Narváez in order to get him captured, even after Hernán had promised Moctezuma to compensate for the abuses by expanding his empire after being assimilated into King Charles' rule, and is unusually cold and harsh towards the emperor afterwards.
  • Cortés and his lieutenants are present in the senate of Tlaxcala when Xicohtencatl II is disgraced for his opposition to the Spaniards, but the situation is so nasty that he opts to keep silent, clearly not wanting to worsen things in a delicate moment for his allies.
  • Enslaving natives is illegal in the Spanish Empire, and the expeditioners honor it. However, with the brutality the war against the Mexica Empire, Cortés write a special request to the king be allowed to enslave war prisoners just like their natives allies do, as Mexicas are legally traitors to the Spanish Empire for warring against them after having signed vassalage.
• Our Giants Are Bigger: The Tlaxcaltecs show the Spaniards some bones that belonged to an ancient race their own ancestors had to exterminate due to their wickedness. The bones, probably of dinosaurs or something alike, are described by Díaz to be certainly gigantic, with a femur being as tall as the chronicler himself.
• Out-Gambitted:
  • Moctezuma orders the Cholultecs to let the Cortesian army in and then ambush it, but the Totonacs and Tlaxcaltecs realize the ruse and warn the Spaniards, who in turn concoct a fulminant preemptive strike (not without assuring the Mexican ambassadors in their expedition that the state of Cholula was planning to revolt against them too, so they give Moctezuma an excuse not to break diplomacy). They innocently ask the Cholultecs to form up in the open, where they will be easier to fight, and after a brief confrontation, they attack and destroy them.
  • Xicohtencatl II, already angry that his father and the rest of the Tlaxcala lords are planning to make peace with the Spaniards, sends messengers with the secret mission to lure the Spaniards into a night ambush he's preparing. When Marina and the Totonacs realize the ruse, Cortés orders the spies to be sent back with their hands cut off and the warning that he knows what Xicohtencatl is up to.
  • The Mexicas stop performing naval ambushes in the lake when one of them is turned spectacularly on them, thanks to having previously captured and bribed two of their chiefs.

P - Z

• Playing Both Sides:
  • Cortés first persuades the Totonacs to rebel against the Mexicas and hold their emissaries hostage, but then he secretly frees those and sends them back to their country claiming he wants to help the Mexicas to quell down the Totonac rebellion. By this method, he ensures the Mexicas will attack the Totonacs and the latter will be forced to stick with the Spaniards. Even more, when Moctezuma later sends presents for Cortés as a token of gratitude for the warning, the Totonacs come to believe the Mexicas fear the Spaniards and are trying to bribe them rather than going to war.
  • He does it again after he makes peace with the Tlaxcaltecs, as some Mexica ambassadors come to congratulate him for his previous victories. He delays negotiations and tells casually each side that he is exchanging messages with the other, so the Tlaxcaltecs can see that he talks in equal terms with their feared enemies, and the Mexicas can similarly see how Cortés has seemingly submitted their own rivals. The two factions are thus convinced on how mighty of a dude he is.
• Poor Communication Kills:
  • Tlaxcala is initially hostile to Cortés, as he happens to have Totonac warriors in his army, as well as men of Xocotlan and Xalacingo. Given that up to that point all of those had been all part of the Mexica Empire, the Tlaxcaltecs assume the Spaniards must be friends of Moctezuma as well. During their initial battles, even although Cortés sends them war prisoners with messages of peace, diplomacy is delayed by the unlucky fact that the Tlaxcaltec commander is Xicohtencatl II, the most Hot-Blooded and least reasonable of his kind. At the end, 45 Spaniards and many natives of both sides die before peace can be achieved.
  • Juan de Escalante dies along with some of his men in a conflict against the coastal Mexicas, which could have been avoided with a better mail system.
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner:
  • Before fighting the mighty Tlaxcaltecs, the Spanish captains proclaim a laconic "pues que ansí es, adelante en buena hora" ("as it is so, let's go forward in a good pace").
  • Cortés himself seems to have a knack for those, like "Santiago, y a ellos" ("For Saint James, and at them"), and later a more famous one during the Battle of Otumba, "Ea, señores, rompamos por ellos y no quede ninguno dellos sin herida" ("Very well, gentlemen, let's break through them and not leave any of them unhurt").
• Power Copying: Since the second expedition, some of the Spaniards adopt the escaupil or ichcahuipilli cotton armor worn by the natives, as it works fine against their arrows and is in turn less heavy and cumbersome than their own steel armors. The Mexicas also use captured Spanish swords to fashion pikes.
• Quote-to-Quote Combat: When Alonso Hernández Puertocarrero comments with some verses during a talk, Cortés recognizes them as a poem about the Frank hero Roland, and replies in accordance.
• Ridiculously Fast Construction: After playing the Mexicas and Totonacs against each other, Cortés orders a Spanish fortress to be built as quickly as possible for the impending war, to the point he orders everybody able to participate and even goes down himself to help in the construction. The Veracruz fortress is thus built in record time.
• The Rival:
  • Chichimecatecuhtli and Xicohtencatl the Younger are rivals, and as soon as the latter show signs of wanting to betray the Cortesian camp, the former reports on him.
  • The Mexica who informs Cortés about Cuauhtemoc's betrayal is Juan Velázquez Tlacotzin, a Christian indigenous whom Cortés would appoint as Cuauhtemoc's successor after his execution. It's hard not to think Tlacotzin had many personal reasons to be alert.
• Sacrificial Lion: When Juan de Escalante dies, things start going downhill for all sides. Juan Velázquez and his Tlaxcalan wife dying during the Sad Night only seals it.
• Sapient Steed: Exploited. During the peace negotiations with the Tabasco Mayans, whom the Spaniards previously defeated by cavalry, Cortés realizes the natives believe the horses to be sentient creatures, so he orders one of the horses to be angered and brought nearby. The Mayans get terrified in the belief the monster is pissed off at them, and Cortés then plays his part by taking the horse away and claiming he convinced it not to be angry at the messengers.
• Sarcastic Confession: When the rebellious Cristóbal de Olid forces Francisco de las Casas and Gil González to pledge loyalty to him, they get enough good rapport to openly joke that they might betray and kill him someday. Of course, this is exactly what they do.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: When his forces in Tenochtitlan are so weakened that they cannot stop anymore the Cortesians from entering and besieging his own palace, Cuauhtemoc tries to flee with treasure and his harem in some piraguas. However, the Spanish brigantines capture him.
• The Scrooge: Cortés' men accuse him of taking more gold for himself than he should, to the point they coin the idiom "distributing (the booty) like Cortés" to mean someone taking too much for himself. This is apparently true to some degree, as he's far more generous with bribes than with payments, but in the case they first accused him for, that of the fall of Tenochtitlan, Cortés was ironically innocent: his claim that there was little gold was not a lie to secretly cram it up for him, but the simple truth, as it turns out Cuauhtemoc and company had disposed of all the treasure.
• Self-Deprecation: Díaz comments they once gave a discovered harbor an ugly name. The name in particular is Puerto Bernal.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Before Cortés and his fleet can sail away, governor Velázquez's advisers claim that he embarked his soldiers by night so they could not be stopped by officials, which is supposedly a clear sign that Cortés intends to rebel against Velázquez as soon as he can. Nothing of this is true, but as Velázquez buys it and sends people to arrest Cortés, the latter eventually rebels for real.
• Self-Restraint: Moctezuma is initially humiliated to be imprisoned in the palace occupied by the Spaniards, but when they offer to release him after extracting punishment for the Escalante affair, he declines to do so for the time, pointing out that many of his noblemen want him to declare war on the Cortesians and, if he were again available to everybody in the kingdom at that moment, they would argue with him day and night to get him to do so, possibly even deposing him and planting a more favorable monarch. It's also apparent Cortés made sure Moctezuma suspected the rest of Spanish captains are not as comfortable with releasing him as Cortés himself, which would mean even more trouble for him.
• Sex Magic: The Hernández expedition seemingly finds some kind of idol that depicts men having homosexual relationships (most Mesoamerican indigenous didn't quite share the classical Judeo-Christian views towards homosexuality), although they don't find out whether this translates into an actual ritual.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Díaz himself admits he suffers from pre-battle anxiety since an occasion in which he was almost taken to sacrifice.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Xicohtencat the Younger tries to convince the Tlaxcallan senate to kill the Spaniards in order to get the Mexicas' favor, but Maxixcatzin shuts him up.
  "And Maxixcatzin gave a speech in front of everybody, and asked if they could remember or had heard about any time in more than one hundred years that Tlaxcala had been more rich and prosperous than since the teules came to their lands, nor better regarded in all the other lands nor owners of more cotton, gold and salt, as wherever their Tlaxcaltecs went along with the teules, they were honored by respect to the latter [...] And he asked for what cause was now Xicohtencatl proposing such betrayals and devilries, planning to attack and kill [the Spaniards], which would be a mistake, and he said he could not exculpate in any way all the felonies and devilries Xicohtencatl was always harboring in his heart."
• Sibling Rivalry: Two brothers, Diego and Gonzalo de Ocampo, end up in opposing sides in the conflict between Cortés and Garay. The former, being always Crazy-Prepared, brings Diego along when he goes to confront Garay in case they need to negotiate.
• Sinister Minister: Priests who do not belong to the Franciscan or Dominican orders apparently are often like this.
• Slave Brand: After the Spaniards get permission to enslave war prisoners like the indigenous nations, they start branding them with the letter G for guerra ("war") so they can be identified. They later add another mark, R for rescate ("rescue") for the slaves that are voluntarily handed by other indigenous as a tribute whenever they lack gold or silver. The whole war slavery is later closed down (by Díaz himself, who writes home about it) when it turns out many people were exploiting the system to mark and sell people that were neither slaves nor enemies.
• The Smart Guy:
  • Martín López, Cortés' carpenter and shipbuilder, who is constantly in charge of solving issues at these fields.
  • Being an expert in indigenous costumes herself, Marina also counts as The Smart Girl.
• Speech Impediment: Oddly enough, two of Cortés' lieutenants, Juan Velázquez and Diego de Ordaz, are mentioned by Díaz to be stutterers (possibly different types, though), and a third one, Gonzalo de Sandoval, apparently had an ugly lisp too.
• Straight for the Commander: Constantly used by Cortés and company, who don't ignore that Mexica armies quickly become disorganized and ineffective if they lose their commanders. This ends up saving their lifes in Otumba against a vastly superior army.
• The Strategist: Cortés, always prevailing over his enemies both in the battlefield and outside. By the end of the chronicle, one can feel the comparisons Díaz makes between him and historical figures like Alexander the Great, Scipio Africanus and Julius Caesar are actually well earned.
• Suffer the Slings: The natives have slings among their weapons.
• Tactful Translation: A variation. While Cortés and Moctezuma argue about the latter's arrest, captain Juan Velázquez starts loudly voicing his impatience, so the emperor, puzzled for not knowing the Spanish language, asks Marina what is Velázquez shouting. Marina opts not to translate it, rather advising him to accept Cortés' terms.
• Tactical Withdrawal: The Sad Night was essentially an attempt to get out of Tenochtitlan and reach the allied lands, from where they could better face the recently revolted Mexica Empire, only that it was Gone Horribly Wrong. To be frank, the thing was already a low-percentage plan, but it was their only plan available, and it still ultimately worked given that most of the upper Cortesians escaped alive.
• Take That!: The narration include potshots to Francisco López de Gómara, Gonzalo de Illescas, Pablo Jovio and Bartolomé de las Casas every time Díaz feels they lied or gave inaccurate info.
• Teeth Flying: Captain Grijalva gets two teeth broken during their first battle.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill:
  • The first expedition to México ends up with its captain Francisco Hernández de Córdoba receiving no less than ten arrows. Fifty soldiers die as well, and Díaz informs most of the survivors were also wounded (Díaz himself apparently received two arrows and a third that passed grazing).
  • In the war against the Cimatecs, Díaz himself receives seven arrows, but his escaupil armor saves him.
• This Means War Paint: Some Mayan warriors are described going to war while wearing white or black facepaint.
• Too Dumb to Live: Juan de Escalante attempts to engage 4,000 Mexicas with only 40 Spaniards and 2,000 Totonacs, a proportion that Cortés himself might have turned into a victory, but not a lesser commander like him. When the Totonacs find themselves pressed on, they flee the battlefield, and Escalante and his team must do the same, being attacked in the way back and later dying of his wounds.
• Took a Level in Badass: The people from Chalco need initially to be protected by the Cortesians against Mexica attacks, but after they lose the fear to their former rulers, they start organizing their own successful counterattacks with allies from Huejotzingo.
• Took a Level in Jerkass:
  • An amused Díaz notes that the Totonacs enjoy a bit too much being allied to the Spaniards, as they showboat to other tribes about how powerful and superhuman they are.
  • The massacre of the Sad Night unveils a quite darker Cortés, who allows his friends to follow with their more savage customs against the Mexicas.
• Translation with an Agenda: Captain Grijalva orders his native translators, Melchorejo and Julianillo, to assure the Champotón chieftain that his people will be Easily Forgiven for the battle. The Mayans don't return, however, and Díaz suspects the translators actually told the Mayans to go and never return instead.
• Unknown Character:
  • There is a seldom-mentioned Pizarro among Cortés' forces, explicitly said to be part of the Pizarro clan that would become famous with the Spanish Conquest of the Inca Empire. His age is given as 25, but his first name is not mentioned, so we cannot be sure who he was.
  • Citlapopocatzin, the lord of the fourth domain of Tlaxcala, is indirectly mentioned when Tlaxcala is explained to be formed by four domains, but he doesn't personally appear in the chronicle nor is mentioned by name, while the other three (Xicohtencatl, Maxixcatzin and Tlahuexolotzin) do.
• Victory Through Intimidation: Often used and capitalized by the Spaniards, whose weapons and horses scare natives who have never seen them. Even when they get familiar enough to mount a resistance, the Spaniards' ability to take on gigantic forces by formation and strategy often achieves the same effect, demoralizing the natives on the belief the foreigners are simply impossible to beat not matter the numbers.
• Wicked Stepmother: Marina's background. Apparently, after her father's death, her stepmother secretly sold her as a slave so the new heir could go unopposed.
• To Win Without Fighting: The ultimate lesson Cortés learns from chieftain Ixtlilxóchitl in the siege of Tenochtitlan: not trying to meet power with power, but just close off the city and wait for them to run out of food and water.
• World's Best Warrior: The Chiapanecs are said to be the best warriors in Mesoamerica, for the Mexica Empire failed to conquer them. They are surely tough, but a Spanish-Mexica-Chamula army led by Luis Marín conquers them.
• Xanatos Gambit: While negotiating with Pánfilo de Narváez, Cortés sends his lieutenant Juan Velázquez wearing gold jewels as a messenger. When Narváez's men see him so richly dressed, their greed makes them even less loyal to Narváez and more desirous to join Cortés, and Pánfilo cannot do anything to avoid it: if he mistreats Velázquez, he will look petty, and if he lets him arrive and go freely, it will look like he's impressed himself.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Cortés of all people ends up needing one when the remnants of his army finally reach the allied land of Tlaxcala after the Sad Night. Xicohtencatl and Maxixcatzin give him a speech about this.
  "Don't think, [Cortés], that you achieved little by getting out of that powerful city and its bridges, and I say to you that if we already believed you and your people were brave, now we believe it even more. I know well that many men and women of our villages will mourn the death of their sons, husbands, brothers and relatives; don't be sad about it. Much you owe to your gods that they supported you and brought you alive from between so many warriors waiting for you in Otumba."

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