War never exhibited a more demoniac aspect. The natives opposed their advance, crowded their rear, and clambered up the sides of the causeway, attacking the foe on each flank with indescribable fury. Fresh warriors instantly rushed into the place where their comrades had fallen, and those in the rear of the tumultuous mass crowded their companions in the front ranks resistlessly upon the compact enemy.
Noche triste.
There were three chasms in the causeway broken by the Mexicans which the Spaniards were compelled to bridge in the darkness and the storm, and while assailed by an innumerable and almost an invisible foe. Imagination can not compass the horrors of that night. Noche triste, dismal night, is the name by which it has ever since been distinguished. In the awful confusion, military skill and discipline were of but little avail. The Spaniards could with difficulty distinguish friend from foe, and ere long they were nearly all quite swept away by the torrent rushing so resistlessly upon them.
THE BATTLE UPON THE CAUSEWAY.
Separation of the Spaniards.
March to the rescue.
Destruction of a part of the army.
Cortez succeeded in keeping about a hundred men around him, and, using the bodies of the dead to aid him in bridging two chasms, he at length reached the main land. The horrid clamor still rose from the darkness of the causeway as his companions, left behind, were struggling in desperation with the multitudes who inclosed them. Cortez heroically, with every man in his little band still able to fight, marched back to their rescue. A few succeeded in breaking through the enemy, and joined him. Multitudes were struck down or hurled into the lake; but dreadful was the anguish of Cortez as he heard, piercing through the clamor, the cries for help of his companions who were seized by the natives as captives, and who were being borne away to be offered in sacrifice to their gods. The few who escaped, exhausted and bleeding, clung together for the remainder of the night near the village of Tacuba, where the causeway reached the main land.
When the first gray of the lurid morning dawned, the whole length of the causeway was seen covered with the bodies of the slain. The chasms were clogged up with fragments of artillery, baggage-wagons, dead horses, and the corpses of Spaniards and natives. The features of the dead were distorted by all the hateful passions of the strife. A few only had escaped. Nearly all the horses, all the cannon, all the plundered treasure, and all the baggage-wagons, were either sunk in the lake, or were floating in fragments upon its surface. The storm had passed away, and the placid waters were blackened with the war-canoes of the natives. Not even a musket remained to the Spaniards. Bernal Diaz records that in this bloody night eight hundred and seventy of the Spaniards perished. More than four thousand of their allies were also slain.
Sorrow of Cortez.