during the negotiations, were called forward and the order was given for assault, Sandoval directing the fleet along the shore and up the canals to the rear. Since they will not have peace, they shall have war!" cried Cortés. Then the carnage became fearful. Spaniards and auxiliaries alike, two hundred thousand strong and more, so it was said, abandoned themselves to the butchery, while Satan smiled approval. In helpless despair, like cooped beasts in the shambles, they received the death-blow as a deliverance.[1] I will not paint the sickening details so often told of chasms filled, and narrow streets blockaded high with the dead bodies of the unoffending, while down upon the living settled desolation. It must indeed have been appalling when he who had brought to pass such horrors writes: "Such was the cry and weeping of children and women that not one amongst us but was moved to the heart." Then he attempts to throw upon the allies the blame of it. "Never," he says, "was such cruelty seen, beyond all bounds of nature, as among these natives." Already, before this massacre of forty thousand[2] the streets and houses were filled with human putridity, so that now the Spaniards were forced to burn that quarter of the city to save themselves from infection.
Another morrow engenders fresh horrors. The three heavy guns are brought forward to assist in dislodging the besieged. Fearful lest the emperor escape him in canoes, Cortés directs Sandoval to place vessels on the watch for fugitives, particularly at the basin of Tlatelulco,[3] into which it is proposed to drive
- ↑ 'Ni tenian ni hallaban flechas ni varas ni piedras con que nos ofender . . . No tenian paso por donde andar sino por encinia de los muertos y por las azoteas.' Cortes, Cartas, 234.
- ↑ 'Mataron y prendieron mas de cuarenta mil ánimas.' Id. Ixtlilxochitl, Hor. Crueldades, 48, raises the number to 59,000, while Duran states that over 40,000 men and women perished while fleeing. Hist. Ind., MS., ii. 510. What pained the conquerors most, however, was the sight and knowledge of what immense quantity of booty eluded them to pass into the hands of these marauders.
- ↑ 'Entre la Garita del Peralvillo, la place de Santiago de Tlatelolco et le pont d'Amaxac.' So says Pichardo. Humboldt, Essai Pol., i. 193. Donde se
