Page:Vol 1 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/371

Rh Here among the greatest plotters, and in the holy city, the lesson would be most effective. It might also be claimed that the chiefs were the guilty ones, and should alone have suffered, not the citizens and soldiers; but they were also in arms, even if subordinate, and such discrimination is not observed in our own age.

Outrages equally as cruel are to-day exculpated throughout Christendom as exigencies of war. If we, then, overlook such deeds, how much more excusable are they in the more bloody times of Cortés? But neither now nor then can war, with any of its attendant atrocities, be regarded by right-thinking, humane men as aught but beastly, horrible, diabolical.