horsemen, who had been left to me, without our receiving any hurt from them, except the labour and fatigue of fighting and hunger. And it truly appeared that it was God who battled for us, because amongst such a multitude of people, so courageous, and skilled in fighting, and with so many kinds of offensive arms,[1] we came out unhurt.
That night I fortified myself in a small tower of their idols, which stood on a small hill, and afterwards, at daybreak, I left two hundred men and all the artillery in the camp. As I was the attacking party I went out towards evening with the horsemen, and a hundred foot soldiers, and four hundred Indians whom I had brought from Cempoal, and three hundred from Yztacmastitan. Before the enemy had time to assemble, I set fire to five or six small places of about a hundred houses each, and brought away about four hundred prisoners, both men and women, fighting my way back to my camp without their doing me any harm. At daybreak the following morning, more than a hundred and forty-nine thousand men, covering all the country, attacked our camp so determinedly that some of them penetrated
- ↑ One of their most formidable weapons was the maquahuitl, commonly referred to by the Spaniards as a sword. It was a stout stick or club, about three and a half feet long, set with a double row of blades made of the stone called itztli, as sharp as razors. The warrior carried this terrible weapon attached to his wrist by a thong, and instances of a horse being disembowelled, or even decapitated at a single blow, are given by many early writers. The blades or itztli were quickly dulled, but, even then, such a weapon wielded by a strong man was a fearsome thing.
Their darts, which are so frequently mentioned, were short lances, whose points were tipped with bone or copper, or simply hardened in the fire. Clavigero identifies them with the Roman Jaculum or Telum Amentatum, and says they were the weapons most feared by the Spaniards. As marksmen, the Mexican bowmen were marvellously quick and accurate; their arrows were also pointed with bone, but, singularly enough, there is no mention throughout the conquest of poison being used on them.
