Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1.djvu/243

Rh On my return to our quarters, I spoke with those captive lords, and asked them why they wished to kill me treacherously. They answered that it was not their fault, as those of Culua, who were vassals of Montezuma, had put them up to it, and that Montezuma had stationed in such and such a place, (which as we learned afterwards was a league and a half distant), a garrison of fifty thousand men to accomplish it. But they now had learned how they had been deceived, and if I would set one or two of them at liberty, they would gather the people of the city, and return to it with all the women, and children, and chattels; and they prayed me to pardon them the error they had committed, assuring me that, from henceforth, no one should deceive them, and that they would be faithful and loyal vassals of Your Highness and my friends. After having spoken at length to them about their error, I liberated two of them, and the next day the whole city was filled with men, women, and children, and as safe as if nothing of what had passed had ever happened. Immediately afterwards I liberated all the other chiefs and lords whom I had made prisoners, they promising that they would serve Your Majesty very loyally.

During the fifteen or twenty days I remained there, the city and country were completely pacified and