Xicotencatl Axayacatzin, the Tlaxcalan lord executed by Cortés
Son of Xicotencatl the elder of Tepeticpac, Tlaxcalan war-leader at Spanish contact and principal Tlaxcalan opponent of the alliance with Cortés. After the alliance was made he was executed at Texcoco during the march on Tenochtitlan for turning back from the campaign. Diego Muñoz Camargo, writing from inside the confederation, records the Tlaxcalan lords themselves ruling their captain to death under their own war law, and names the succession his line kept afterwards.
Why this wins its question: Xicotencatl the younger, in English-language coverage, is either a minor figure summarised out of Prescott — a Tlaxcalan captain hanged by Cortés — or a nineteenth-century Mexican romantic hero, the independence-era "Xicoténcatl" of Félix Varela's novel and of the Alameda statue. The record from inside Tlaxcala, printed by a Tlaxcalan mestizo who traces both lineages, sits in between: a Spanish request to the Tlaxcalan council, a ruling under Tlaxcalan war law handed down by the very Maxixcatzin who had thrown the son down the council-house steps for arguing to accept the Mexica offer, and a succession that continued the Xicotencatl house afterwards. This object quotes those pages — PA84, PA85, PA87 — and puts the chronicler's own inheritance from both houses on the record next to the ruling.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
Muñoz Camargo names him twice, both times as the son of Xicotencatl the elder of Tepeticpac. On printed page 84 (image-verified running head reads '84') the succession runs "Éste, después de cristiano, no vivió tres años cabales, y le sucedió Ayacatzin Xicotencatl su hijo, aunque tuvo el gobierno antes que el padre muriese mucho tiempo, por estar tan viejo é imposibilitado." A Chavero footnote at the same page records the name as "Axayacatzin; manuscrito de Panes.—R." — the earliest of the manuscript witnesses gives the name with the initial 'a'. The chronicler is a Tlaxcalan writing about his own city's lineages; the footnote is the editor's mark that the form of the son's name varies between the manuscripts he collated.
The same page — image-verified — is where the Tlaxcalan chronicler places the execution: "Este murió ahorcado en Tetzcuco, porque se volvió de la guerra de México, yendo con Cortés por general de su gente, el cual, teniendo amores con una Cacica muy principal Señora, y no pudiendo sufrir tan grande ausencia, se vino de la guerra, y lo mismo hizo otras dos veces, que le fueron perdonadas: no curó de mirar en lo más importante, que yendo últimamente con Cortés se volvió, y quejándose éste á la República de Tlaxcalla" — printed by a Tlaxcalan chronicler as a matter of the record, in a passage immediately following the paragraph in which he calls the father Cortés's first Christian ally.
The next page, PA85 (image-verified running head '85'), gives the Tlaxcalan judicial process. Cortés's message frames the deed as possibly treason and possibly entrapment, and hands the decision to the four señores: "Que los españoles que tal cometían, que morían por ello: que mirasen lo que les parecía y lo que en este caso debían hacer, y que le diesen nueva seguridad de la amistad y palabra que le habían dado." Cortés does not merely hang a captain — he asks the Tlaxcalan republic to rule on one of its own lords, in writing, and the chronicler prints the request.
The Tlaxcalan response, printed on PA85, invokes Tlaxcala's own war law. The four señores' embassy answers "que ellos estaban tan confusos y admirados de cosa tan mal hecha, que si en sus costumbres y leyes de guerra hallaban que tenían pena de muerte los que en semejantes tiempos dejaban á sus capitanes, que la misma ley era la suya, y aun más rigurosa, y que por tanto que allá se lo enviaban preso" — so that Cortés might do what suited him best by the custom of war and carry out the sentence upon him "para que le fuese castigo, y á los demás ejemplo". The desertion of a captain in wartime is a capital offence under Tlaxcalan military law, and the four señores tell Cortés so and hand their own captain over for execution by the custom of war.
The same page (PA85, image-verified) names who cast the vote inside the Tlaxcalan council: "y esta sentencia final dió Maxixcatzin, porque en efecto lo tenía por de mal pecho y por traidor". The alliance's principal Tlaxcalan defender rules the alliance's principal Tlaxcalan opponent to death, and Muñoz Camargo — writing from within the descent of both houses — prints the split. The execution at Texcoco is not, on this account, a Spanish decision that the Tlaxcalans passively accepted; it is a Tlaxcalan decision that Cortés carried out at their request.
The same page (PA85, image-verified) supplies the political ground for that vote. After the Spanish defeat known as the Noche Triste, "cuando vino desbaratado Cortés de México", the Mexica sent embassies to "las cuatro cabeceras y Universidad de Tlaxcalla diciéndoles que acabasen de matar á los cristianos", offering "la mitad del Imperio con Tlaxcalla y que habría paz perpetua entre ellos". "Y entrando en consulta, siempre Maxixcatzin fué de contrario parecer, y este Xicotencatl Ayacatzin estuvo en que se hiciese y concediese lo que los Mexicanos pedían; de lo cual, enojado Maxixcatzin, le dió de rempujones y hizo venir rodando por unas gradas abajo". The alliance was a decision the Tlaxcalan confederation debated with the Mexica embassy on the table and the Spanish defeated in front of them — and the chronicler preserves the losing side's argument.
Muñoz Camargo does not celebrate the execution. He calls the younger Xicotencatl on PA84 "persona valerosísima" — the same word he uses for the father — and gives the desertion an unbecoming motive ("amores con una Cacica muy principal Señora") that a purely hostile witness would have had reason to leave out. The chronicler, a Tlaxcalan mestizo writing decades later, holds two things at once: the alliance was made, and it was made by winning a fight inside the Tlaxcalan republic that ended with one of its own war-leaders hanged at Texcoco.
The line did not end with the execution. Muñoz Camargo continues the succession on the pages that follow — the search returns "PA87" as "Xicotencatl, hijo bastardo de Xicotencatl el viejo, y al tiempo que murió dejó en el señorío á D. Juachin de la Cerda su hijo, y Juachin dejó á Doña Francisca de la Cerda su hija, la cual después casó con D. Leonardo" — the Xicotencatl house was continued under Spanish rule through a bastard son and passed through Christian succession into the sixteenth-century Tlaxcalan nobility the Recopilación would later privilege. The page number is the one the search API reports and was not verified against the printed running head this run.
What this object does not settle. Muñoz Camargo is writing decades after the event, from inside the winning side of the internal Tlaxcalan dispute, and his account is not the only surviving one: Bernal Díaz places the execution at a different moment of the campaign and stresses Cortés's own agency; Cortés's Cartas de Relación mention Xicotencatl the younger only glancingly. Chavero's note on PA84 — "Más de noventa; manuscrito de Panes.—R." on the father's age — is a warning that the printed setting is a composite. The claim is therefore that the Tlaxcalan republican account of the execution reads as it is quoted here, not that the Spanish or later reconstructions agree.