The Indians came rushing out upon the plain in a tumultuous mass, with yells of defiance and victory. But the dragoons soon regained their horses, which had been tethered outside the walls, and whose bodies were much protected from the arrows of the natives; and then, in a terrific charge, one hundred steel-clad men, cutting to the right hand and to the left, maddened by the treachery of which they had been the victims, plunged into the densest masses of their foes, and every sabre-blow was death to a half-naked Indian. The slaughter was awful. Brave as the Indians were, they were thrown into a panic, and fled precipitately into the town.
In the retreat from the town, about twenty of the Spaniards had been cut off from their comrades, and had taken refuge in the house assigned to the Governor. Here they valiantly defended themselves against fearful odds. The bold storming of the place by the Spanish troops rescued them from their perilous position. But now all the warriors of both parties crowded together in the public square, fought hand to hand with a ferocity which could not be surpassed. Though the natives were far more numerous than their foes, and were equally brave and strong, still the Spaniards had a vast superiority over them in their bucklers, their impenetrable armor, and their long, keen sabres of steel.
De Soto, conscious that the very existence of his army depended upon the issue of the conflict, was ever in the thickest of the battle, notwithstanding the severity of the wound from which he was suffering. At length, to drive his foes from the protection of their houses, the torch was applied in many places. The timber of which they were built was dry almost as tinder. Soon the whole place was in flames, the fiery billows surging to and fro like a furnace. All alike fled from the conflagration. The horsemen were already upon the plain, and they cut down the fugitive Indians mercilessly.
The sun was then sinking; Mobila was in ruins, and its flaming dwellings formed the funeral pyre of thousands of the dead. The battle had lasted nine hours. To the Spaniards it was one of the most terrible calamities. Eighty-two of their number were slain. Nearly all the rest were more or less severely wounded. Forty-five horses had been shot—an irreparable loss which all the army deeply mourned.
In entering the city, they had piled their camp equipage against the walls. This was all consumed, consisting of clothing, armor, medicines, and all the pearls which they had collected. The disaster to the natives was still more dreadful. It is estimated that six thousand of their number perished by the sword or the flames. The fate of the chieftain is not with certainty known. It is generally supposed that he was slain and was consumed in the flames of his capital.
The situation of the Spanish army that night was distressing in the highest degree. They were hungry, exhausted, dejected, and seventeen hundred dangerous wounds demanded immediate attention. There was but one surgeon of the expedition who survived, and he was a man of but little skill.
De Soto forgot himself and his wound in devotion to the interests of his men. Foraging parties were sent in all directions to obtain food for the sufferers, and straw for bedding. Here the army was compelled many days to remain to recruit from the awful disaster with which it had been so suddenly overwhelmed.