Page:About Mexico - Past and Present.djvu/219

Rh faithfully and was not in any way to blame for the rebellion. Both seemed hopeful that quiet would be restored when Cortez returned.

Marching around the southern border of Lake Tezcuco, Cortez approached Mexico by the same causeway over which he rode in such state the autumn before. How changed the scene now! The silence of death brooded over the waters. Scarcely a sign of life was visible anywhere till he reached the quarters where the Spanish sentinel aloft in the tower called out that the commander had come. "They received us," says Cortez, "with as great joy as though we had restored their lives to them, which they already considered as lost."

It seems that Alvarado, the hot-headed young cavalier who had been left in command, had attacked the natives during a month of special religious festivals, and that six hundred of the flower of Aztec warriors had been butchered in cold blood. The Spaniards were accused of plundering the bodies of the slain. Alvarado excused himself to his angry general for this outrage by charging the Aztecs with a plot to surprise the garrison and murder them all. The story may have had its origin with the Tlascalans, who no doubt longed to break the friendship between the Spaniards and their own lifelong enemies, in order that they might themselves have a share in the spoils of war.

Whatever may have been the occasion of the outbreak, the long-pent-up hatred of the natives had now burst forth with fury. A cry for vengeance rang through the city. The people attacked the garrison with mine and with fire. Montezuma pleaded with them in vain. At last open hostilities ceased, but the markets were closed