Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 2.djvu/106

 ample room to go and come on foot and horseback. There were constantly in the camp, between Spaniards and Indian servants, more than two thousand persons. All the warriors, our friends, were lodged in Cuyoacan, a league and a half from the camp; and the people of these towns likewise supplied us with provisions, of which we stood in great need; especially with fish and cherries, of which there is such a quantity about here, that, during the five or six months of the year they last, they are sufficient for double the inhabitants of the country.

As we on our side had entered the city two or three days successively, besides three or four before, and had always been victorious against the enemy and had killed an infinite number, with our field-pieces, crossbows, and muskets, we thought that any hour they would move to propose peace, which we desired as our own salvation; but nothing availed to bring them to this determination. To reduce them to greater straits, and to see if they could be forced to make peace, I decided to enter the city each day in three or four divisions. I therefore ordered all the people of the cities situated on the water, to come in their canoes, so that day there were in our camp more than a hundred thousand men, our friends. And I ordered the four brigantines, with half the canoes (as many as fifteen hundred) to go on one side, and the other three, with as many more canoes, to go on another, and overrun the greater part of the city and burn and do all the damage they could. I entered by the principal street and found it all free up to the large houses of the square, none of the bridges having been opened. I advanced to the street which leads to Tacuba, where there were six or seven bridges. From there, I ordered a captain to enter another street, with sixty or seventy men and six horsemen to protect their rear, and with them went more than ten or twelve thousand Indians, our friends; and I ordered another captain to do the same in another street; and I,