There was now no other opening for diplomacy, nor was delay to be longer suffered. Cortéz, therefore, leaving the mutinous capital in the hands of Pedro de Alvarado, with a band of but one hundred and fifty men to protect the treasure he had amassed,—departed for the shores of the Gulf with only seventy soldiers, but was joined, on his way, by one hundred and twenty men who had retreated from the garrison at Vera Cruz. He was not long in traversing the plains and Cordilleras towards the eastern sea; and falling suddenly on the camp of Narvaez, in the dead of night, he turned the captured artillery against his foe, seized the general, received the capitulation of the army of nine hundred well equipped men, and soon healed the factions which of course existed between the conquerors and the conquered. He had acquired the prestige which always attends extraordinary success or capacity; and men preferred the chances of splendid results under such a leader to the certainty of moderate gain under a general who did not possess his matchless genius. Thus it was that the lordly spirit and commanding talents of Cortéz enabled him to convert the very elements of disaster into the means of present strength and future success!
CHAPTER V.
1520.
CORTÉZ RETURNS TO THE CAPITAL—CAUSES OF THE REVOLT AGAINST THE SPANIARDS.—CORTÉZ CONDEMNS ALVARADO—HIS CONDUCT TO MONTEZUMA.—BATTLE IN THE CITY—MONTEZUMA MEDIATES.—FIGHT ON THE GREAT TEMPLE OR TEOCALLI.—RETREAT OF THE SPANIARDS—NOCHE TRISTE.—FLIGHT OF THE SPANIARDS TO TACUBA.
Whilst Cortéz was beset with the difficulties recounted in our last chapter, and engaged in overcoming Narvaez on the coast, the news reached him of an insurrection in the capital, towards which he immediately turned his steps. On approaching the city, intelligence was brought that the active hostilities of the natives had been changed, for the last fortnight, into a blockade, and that the garrison had suffered dreadfully during his absence. Montezuma, too, despatched an envoy who was instructed to impress the conqueror with the Emperor's continued fidelity, and to exculpate him from all blame in the movement against Alvarado.
On the 24th June, 1520, Cortéz reached the capital. On all sides he saw the melancholy evidences of war. There were neither greeting crowds on the causeways, nor boats on the lake; bridges were broken down; the brigantines or boats he had constructed to secure a retreat over the waters of these inland seas, were destroyed; the whole population seemed to have vanished, and silence brooded over the melancholy scene.
*****
The revolt against the lieutenant Alvarado was generally attributed to his fiery impetuosity, and to the inhuman and motiveless slaughter committed by the Spanish troops, under his authority, during the celebration of a solemn Aztec festival, called the "incensing of Huitzilopotchtli." Six hundred victims, were, on that occasion, slain by the Spaniards, in cold blood, in the neighborhood of the Great Temple; nor was a single native, engaged in the mysterious rites, left alive to tell the tale of the sudden and brutal assault.
Alvarado, it is true, pretended that his spies had satisfactorily proved the existence of a well founded conspiracy, which was designed to explode upon this occasion; but the evidence is not sufficient to justify the disgraceful and horrid deed that must forever tarnish his fame. It is far more probable that rapacity was the true cause of the onslaught, and that the reckless companion of the conqueror, who had been entrusted with brief authority during his absence, miscalculated the power of his Indian foe, and confounded the warlike Mexican of the valley with the weaker soldiers, dwelling in more emasculating climates, whom he had so rapidly confounded and overthrown in his march to the capital.