Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 2.djvu/172

 of their young sovereign, who kept his serenity throughout and exercised his best generalship. These naked barbarians, weakened by famine and confronted by inevitable defeat, fought against a steel-clad foe, armed with guns both on land and on their ships, which mowed down a very harvest of death at every discharge. Never did they so much as name surrender thus verifying literally the words with which Quauhtemotzin answered the Spanish overtures for peace, that they would all perish to the last man in the city and he would die fighting.

Cortes daily renewed his offers of honourable terms for the Emperor and his people if the city would surrender. Day after day, with infinite patience, he made appointments which Quauhtemotzin never kept; time after time, he wasted hours in waiting for better counsels to prevail; but nothing he could say or do sufficed to allay the distrust of Quauhtemotzin, or bring the Mexicans to terms. Their choice was made; they had had enough of the Spaniards, whose semi-divine character was an exploded myth, and whose presence in the land was felt to be incompatible with the Aztec sovereignty. Cortes protests throughout the greatest reluctance to destroy the city, and declares repeatedly that the necessity of doing so filled him with inexpressible grief. The fate known to be in store for every Spaniard taken alive, and the sight of the hideous rites of sacrifice, performed under the very eyes of the soldiers, helpless to intervene, followed by the cannibal feasts, in which the mangled members of their comrades furnished the banquet, were certainly sufficient to arouse the Spaniards to a very frenzy against such inhuman foes, and yet there is no where found any hint that the spirit of vengeance prompted reprisals on the prisoners who fell into their hands. Such remains of the Spanish victims as could be found were afterwards collected and reverently buried: a chapel dedicated to the Martyrs was erected over the spot, which was afterwards replaced by the Church of San Hipolito (Orozco y Berra, lib. iii., cap. viii.).

Riotous celebrations of the city's fall naturally followed, the opportune arrival of some casks of wine and pork from Cuba furnishing the substance for a banquet, which was followed by dancing. Bernal Diaz remarks that the "plant of Noah was the cause of many fooleries and worse," and that he refrains from mentioning the names of those who disgraced themselves by over-indulgence and unseemly antics. Fray Bartolomé Olmedo was much scandalised at this profane celebration, and quickly asserted his spiritual authority over the men. The next morning a solemn mass of thanksgiving was said, and the good friar delivered a sermon on the moral and religious duties of the conquerors. Cortes and others received the sacraments, and these becoming rites ended decorously with a procession in which the crucifix and an image of the Blessed Virgin, accompanied by the military standards, were carried to the sound of drums, alternating with chanted litanies.