Page:Vol 2 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/176

 

political and financial projects formed the absorbing motive with the ever increasing swarm of adventurers in New Spain, as elsewhere, Cortés among others had not forgotten the sacred motto under which he had set forth, and to which he attributed his success. In the famous regulations issued at Tlascala before undertaking the siege of Mexico he had sought to recognize their indebtedness to heaven by proclaiming the primary motive of the campaigns to be spiritual conquest, without which the temporal acquisitions must be regarded as unjust. With only one friar, however, whose services, in connection with those of the clergyman Diaz, were almost wholly absorbed by the soldiers, little or no progress could be made toward the great aim. In his letters to Spain,

(166)