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 Cortés to leave behind him an unbroken record of victory, and though Tabasco was but a step on the road to Mexico, he resolved to teach the natives a lesson and at all hazards to take up his quarters that night in the town.

The captain, Alonzo de Avila, with a detachment of a hundred men, was despatched secretly down the river with orders to march on the town from the rear, while the main body prepared to advance openly. But before beginning the attack, Cortés, conforming to the instructions of the Royal Council in Spain, caused his interpreter to make a grandiloquent and to the Indians quite incomprehensible proclamation. This manifesto, which had been drawn up by "learned divines" in Spain, was used by all Spanish discoverers in the New World to justify their high-handed actions. "I, Hernando Cortés so began the extra-ordinary formula, "servant of the high and mighty kings of Castile and Leon, civilisers of barbarous nations, their messenger and captain, notify and make known to you that ... all the people of the earth. . . were given in charge, by God our Lord, to one person, named Saint Peter." Then followed an account of the Pope's donation "of these islands and continents of the ocean sea, and all that they contain, to the Catholic kings of Castile." To resist a Spanish army was thus clearly rank rebellion, and the proclamation ended with a threat: "If you do not submit, ... by the aid of God ... I will subdue you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and of his Majesty; and I will take your wives and children, and make slaves of them. . . and I will do 48