HERNANDO CORTES 153 opportunities of their position in order to advance their ends which were, first plunder, secondly conquest, and, thirdly the extension of the authority of Spain and of the Christian religion. In pursuit of these ends upon some slight pretext Cortes seized the person of Montezuma, the great emperor, and imprisoned him in one of his own palaces whence, however, he was still allowed to direct the government and issue his commands. Meanwhile reports of Cortes' doings and success had reached Velasquez the Governor of Cuba, who determined to despatch an expedition to conquer or capt- ure him as a traitor. Accordingly eighteen vessels containing nearly a thousand white men were placed under the command of Panfilo de Narvaez, and reached Vera Cruz in April, 1520. When Cortes heard of the arrival of this armament and its object which was to punish him for his supposed rebellion, he marched from Mexico, leaving the little garrison and the person of Montezuma in charge of his comrade Alvarado. Although he had with him but two hundred and fifty men in all, he did not hesitate to hazard a night attack upon Narvaez who was strongly encamped at Cempoalla. It was completely successful ; Narvaez was wounded, captured, and sent in chains to Vera Cruz, while the army that had come to conquer him swore allegiance to Cortes as Captain-General and marched with him back to Mexico. Here great events were in progress. Moved to the deed by fear or by the discovery of some real or fancied plot against the Spaniards, Alvarado, the deputy of Cortes, had fallen upon the unarmed Aztec nobles while they were celebrating a feast in the courtyard of the great temple, and butchered some six hundred of them with every circumstance of brutality. Then at last the patient Aztecs rose and until the womanly Montezuma begged them to desist, attacked the palace where the Spaniards were quartered, with fury. At the intervention of their monarch the attack was turned to a blockade and Cortes arrived from his victory over Narvaez to find his companions in desperate straits. Reinforced by fresh soldiers the Spaniards carried on the war with activity.. They assaulted and captured the great pyramid, putting to the sword the priests of human sacrifice and burning the blood-stained temples of the gods. Also they made sev- eral sallies into the city and repelled onslaughts upon the palace, it was in the course of one of these attacks that Montezuma received the wound tnat brought about his death. Mounting the central tower of the palace he implored his sub- jects to cease from attacking his friends the Spaniards, whereupon in their fury they overwhelmed him with a shower of darts and stones, inflicting injuries from which in course of a few days he died. Surrounded as he was on every side by thousands of fierce enemies determined to stretch every Spaniard upon the stone of sacrifice, Cortes saw the 'impossibility of maintaining the unequal fight and de- termined on retreat. Accordingly on the night of July i, 1520, the Spaniards and their native allies sallied from the fortress, and laden with gold from Montezuma's treasury, took the route of Tlacopan. Soon their escape was de- tected and instantly a fierce attack was made upon them from every quar- ter. The bridge that they had brought with them to span the gaps in the cause- way became fixed in the mud, so that their only path across the canals lay over
