camp or from ours. And we all gathered in the square, so many of the enemy charging on us from every side that we had enough to do to keep them off, and even in places where before this rout they would never have dared to come, they killed three horsemen and ten soldiers. Immediately after, in one of the towers of their idols which was near the square, they offered many perfumes and incense of gums which they use in this country, very much like anime, offering them up to their idols in sign of victory; and even if we had wanted to stop this it could not be done, as almost all the people were already hastening towards the camp. In this rout, the adversary killed thirty-five or forty Spaniards and more than one thousand Indians, our friends, and wounded more than twenty Christians; and I came out wounded in one leg. A small field piece was lost and many crossbows, muskets, and arms.[1]
- ↑ This was the last victorious day for the Mexicans, and witnessed their culminating effort against their foes. Quauhtemotzin was everywhere present amongst his troops, urging them to a supreme struggle, and sounding his trumpet of conch-shell, "upon hearing which signal" Bernal Diaz says, "it is impossible to describe the fury with which they closed upon us" (cap. ciii.). Dominating the shouts of "Santiago!" the screams of the wounded, the crash of arms, and the fierce war-cries of the Mexicans, was heard the lugubrious roll of the sacred Tlapanhuehuetl of serpents' skins which the priests beat with inspired frenzy before the war-god on the teocalli. Cortes again owed his escape from instant death to the determination which obsessed the Mexicans to take him alive for the sacrifice. His rescuer was the same Cristobal de Olea who had once before come to his aid in a moment of peril at Xochimilco; with one blow of his sword he cut off the arm of the warrior who held the general, falling dead himself the next moment.
Bernal Diaz says that Olea slew four chiefs before he himself fell (loco citato).
Seven horses were killed, seventy Spaniards were captured alive, Cortes was badly wounded in the leg; Sandoval likewise in three places and both his division and that of Alvarado suffered serious reverses. When an account came to be taken of the extent of the disaster, dismay filled the sinking hearts of the Spaniards, and the Indian allies began to doubt the power of the teules and to ask themselves whether they were not after all fighting on the wrong side. Cortes threw the blame for this catastrophe on Alderete, who had dis-
