Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 2.djvu/113

 or twenty thousand of our friends, and that in his rear he should take seven horsemen; and that as they captured the bridges and barricades they should be filled up; and they took a dozen men with picks in addition to our friends, who were most useful for the purpose of filling up the bridges. Two other streets lead from the streets of Tacuba to the market-place and are narrower, having more causeways, bridges, and water streets, and I ordered two captains to enter by the broadest of them, with eighty men and more than ten thousand Indians, our friends, and, at the mouth of that street of Tacuba, I placed two heavy field pieces with eight horsemen to guard them. With eight other horsemen and one hundred foot soldiers, amongst whom were more than twenty-five archers and musketeers, and with an infinite number of our friends, I pursued my road, penetrating by the other narrow street as far as possible.

I halted the horsemen at the entrance of it, and ordered them on no account to advance from there, nor to follow after me unless I first ordered them to do so. I then dismounted and we arrived at a barricade they had made at the end of a bridge, which we took with a small field piece, the archers and musketeers advancing by a causeway, which the enemy had broken at two or three different places. Besides these three combats we waged, our friends who entered by the roofs and other places were so numerous that it did not seem that anything could resist us. When the Spaniards took those two bridges, the barricades, and the causeway, our friends advanced by the street without taking any spoils, while I remained with about twenty Spaniards on a small island. I observed that certain of our friends were engaged with the enemy, who sometimes would repel them, driving them into the water, but with our assistance they would turn again upon them. Besides this we took care that from certain cross streets those of the city should