numbered now seventeen horses, six crossbowmen and four hundred and twenty soldiers. We took merely a single day's food, for the country we were invading was thickly peopled and supplied with maize, fowls and dogs. Keeping a few scouts in advance, we camped for the first night about twelve miles from Tepeaca.
The people there were quite prepared for our coming, for they knew we had found a kindly shelter at Tlaxcala, and they took it for granted that as soon as we felt our strength restored we would overrun their territories. Mexican troops therefore kept guard all along the boundaries, and Tepeaca itself they strongly garrisoned. To this town Cortes, who in all such matters aimed at strict justice and order, sent some prisoners we had taken to ask who and how many were concerned in the murder of the sixteen Spaniards on their way to Mexico; why the Tepeacans had attacked and robbed the farms of the Tlaxcalans; for what reasons such vast numbers of Mexican troops bore them company; and he begged the Tepeacans to come at once and make friends with us and turn the Mexicans out, and if they did not, we should look on them as rebels, murderers and robbers, and, first desolating their country with fire and sword, give them into slavery.
The prisoners faithfully carried our message. If we, however, had sent a threatening summons, the
