He was disagreeably roused from these self-congratulations by intelligence from Mexico. Some difference had occurred between Pedro de Alvarado and the Mexicans, in consequence of which the latter had risen en masse, and were besieging the Spaniards in their quarters. Without loss of time he commenced his march towards the capital, leaving a hundred men at Villa Rica. At Tlascala he was joined by two thousand of his faithful mountain allies; and the whole army then pushed on for the Mexican valley, anxious to relieve Alvarado, whom the Mexicans were now trying to reduce by blockade. On the 24th of June they reached the great lake, and marched along the causeway without opposition, but amidst an ominous stillness. Alvarado clasped his general in his arms for joy; and now for the first time Cortez learned the origin of the revolt. Alvarado, suspecting some conspiracy among the Aztec nobles, had treacherously massacred a number of them collected at a religious festival, and the inhabitants had risen to take vengeance for the injury. Cortez sharply rebuked his officer for his misconduct; but the evil was already done, and to punish Alvarado would have been attended with no good effect. Moodily and bitterly, therefore, Cortez expended his vexation on the unhappy Mexican monarch, accusing him of being concerned in the insurrection, and calling upon him to check it, and procure provisions for the Spaniards. Montezuma complied as far as lay in his power: Cortez also used his best endeavors to allay the storm; and for a while it appeared as if their efforts were successful.
The calm was only temporary. The day after the arrival of Cortez, a soldier, who had been sent on an errand by Cortez, returned breathless and bloody to the Spanish quarters. He had been fallen upon by a multitude of Mexicans, who endeavored to drag him away in their canoes for sacrifice, and he had only escaped after a desperate struggle. The whole city, he said, was in arms; the drawbridges were broken down: and they would soon attack the Spaniards in their strong hold.
The news was too true. The Aztecs poured along the streets like a flood, approaching the square where the Spaniards were lodged, while the terraced roofs of all the houses in the vicinity were crowded with slingers and archers, ready to shower their missiles upon the besieged. And now commenced a struggle which lasted seven days and to which there is no parallel in history. Day after day the fighting was renewed, the Spaniards either making a sally upon the besiegers, or beating them back when they advanced to storm or set fire to their quarters. The only relaxation was at night, when the Mexicans generally drew off. The Spaniards were always victorious; but their losses were considerable in every action, and the perseverance of the Mexicans alarmed them. Instead of yielding to their first defeats, they seemed to act on the conviction that they must be defeated continually until the Spaniards were all slain. This resolution astonished Cortez, who till now had undervalued the courage of the Aztecs. His soldiers, especially those who had come into the country with Narvaez, heaped reproaches upon him; although when they saw his conduct in the fray—the bravery with which he would spur his horse into the thickest of the enemy, the generosity with which he would risk his own life to rescue a comrade from the hands of a crowd of Aztecs—their reproaches were lost in admiration.
Wearied out by his incessant efforts, and perceiving the hopelessness of continuing a contest against so many myriads of enemies—for recruits were flocking in from the neighboring country to assist the Mexicans against the common foe—Cortez resolved to try the effects of negotiation, and to employ Montezuma as his intercessor. At his request, therefore, Montezuma, dressed in his imperial robes, appeared on a terraced roof, where he was visible to the multitude gathered in the great square. A silence ensued, and Montezuma was parleying with four nobles who approached him, when suddenly a shower of stones and arrows fell on the spot where he was standing. The Spanish soldiers tried to interpose their bucklers; but it was too late; Montezuma fell to the ground, his head bleeding from the effects of a blow with a stone. He was immediately removed, and every means used for his recovery: nor was the wound of itself dangerous. But his kingly spirit had received a wound which no words could heal; he had been reviled and struck by his own subjects, among whom hitherto he had walked as a sacred being: he refused to live any longer. He tore the bandages from his head, and rejected all nourishment; and in a short time the Spaniards were informed that their unhappy prisoner was dead. Cortez and many of the men could not refrain from weeping; and the body was surrendered to the Mexicans with every testimony of respect.
The fighting was now commenced with greater fury, and prodigies of valor were performed by the Spaniards; but all to no purpose. Another attempt was made to induce the enemy to come to terms. The only answer was the threat that they would all be sacrificed to the gods, and the appalling information, ‘You cannot escape; the bridges are broken down.’ At last, as death was before their eyes, it was determined by Cortez, and all the officers and soldiers, to quit the city during the night as they hoped at that time to find the enemy less alert.
Towards midnight, on the 1st of July 1520, they left their quarters secretly, most of the soldiers loading themselves with the gold which remained over and above the royal share, and proceeded as silently as possible towards the western causeway leading to Tlacopan, by which, as being the shortest of the three (two miles long), they thought it would be the easiest to effect a passage. In this causeway there were three drawbridges, separated by intervals nearly equal; and aware that these had been destroyed by the Mexicans, Cortez had provided a portable bridge, made of timber, the carriage of which he intrusted to forty picked soldiers. The van of the army was led by Sandoval, with two hundred foot and a body of horse under his command; the baggage, large guns and prisoners came next, guarded by Cortez and a band of veterans; and the rear was brought up by Pedro de Alvarado and Valasquez de Leon, commanding the strength of the infantry.
The night was dark and rainy. The Spaniards reached the causeway without being interrupted. The portable bridge was laid across the first moat or gap, and a great part of the army had gone over it in safety, and were already approaching the second gap, when, through the stillness of the night, there was heard the boom of the great drum from the top of the Mexican war temple, the rushing of myriads of pursuers along the causeway from behind, and the splashing of the oars of thousands of canoes full of warriors, which were advancing through the lake on both sides of the causeway. Showers of arrows fell on the rearguard as they were passing over the portable bridge; and the Aztecs, clambering up the sides of the causeway, grappled with the soldiers, and tried to drag them into the water. Throwing off these assailants by main strength, Alvarado and his men steadily and expeditiously moved on. Meanwhile the vanguard under Sandoval having reached the second gap, were waiting until the portable bridge should be brought up to enable them to cross it. Goaded with the arrows which were discharged upon them in clouds from the Aztec canoes, they grew impatient of the delay, and began to cast anxious glances backward along the causeway for the appearance of the bridge. Suddenly the appalling news was passed along that the bridge had stuck so fast at the first opening that it could not be pulled up. The weight of the men and heavy baggage crossing it had fastened it into the earth so firmly as to defy extrication. When this awful intelligence reached the vanguard, order and command were at an end; uproar and confusion ensued; and, seized with the instinct of self-preservation, each man tried to shift for himself. Flinging themselves headlong into the gap, they struggled with the Mexican warriors in the water, upsetting their canoes in their drowning agonies. Rank after rank followed, each trampling upon the bodies of its predecessors, and floundering among the canoes which lay between them and the opposite side. Sandoval and a few of the cavalry swam their horses across; some of the foot also were able to reach the side of the causeway and climb up; but of the vanguard, the great majority were drowned, or slain, or carried off wounded in the Mexican canoes. Meanwhile on came the rest of the army; men, carriages, guns, baggage, all were swept into the trench, which was soon choked up by the wreck. Over this bridge of broken wagons, bales of cotton, and the dead bodies of their companions and enemies, Cortez and his veterans were able to reach the other side of the trench with less difficulty. Here, joining Sandoval and the few survivors of his band, they dashed along the causeway towards the third and last opening, regardless of the darts and arrows which the Mexicans discharged among them from their canoes. Reaching the third trench, they crossed it in the same manner as the last, but without so much loss, and were rapidly approaching the mainland, when looking back through the dim morning light, they saw Alvarado and his rearguard pent up on the causeway between the second and third bridges, and almost overborne by the Mexicans who surounded them. Cortez, Sandoval, and a few of the horse instantly wheeled round to the rescue; and recrossing the third gap, shouted their battle-cry, and interposed between the Spaniards and their pursuers. This timely succor enabled most of the infantry to escape; and at length all had crossed the opening except Cortez, Sandoval, Alvarado, and a few others. Cortez, Sandoval, and the rest soon followed, carried through by their horses; and only one man remained upon the Mexican extremity of the causeway. It was Pedro de Alvarado; his horse was slain; and he was standing on the brink, surrounded by enemies ready drag him off, should he plunge into the trench. Five or six warriors were already advancing from behind to seize him, when, casting one glance at the opposite edge where his countrymen were waiting him, he planted one end of his long lance among the rubbish which choked up the gap, and, rising in the air, cleared it at a bound. The spot where this tremendous feat was executed still bears the name of Alvarado’s Leap.
The Mexicans now desisted from the pursuit; and the relics of the Spanish army, advancing along the remainder of the causeway, entered Tlacopan. Here they did not remain long, being anxious to place themselves beyond the reach of the Mexicans, and to arrive at Tlascala, the city of their faithful allies. They were now able to count the losses which they had sustained during the night. About four hundred and fifty Spaniards, and nearly four thousand Tlascalans, had been drowned, slain, or made prisoners during the passage along the causeway; a loss which, added to the numbers killed in the battles within the city, reduced the army to little more than a fourth of what it had been when it entered Mexico ten days before. But the most deplorable part was the loss of all the artillery, firearms, and ammunition, not so much as a musket remaining among the five hundred who survived. Still, under this accumulation of misfortunes, his heart did not sink; and his resolution was taken not to leave the country till he had regained his former footing in it, and annexed it as a province to the dominions of his sovereign.
His first object was to reach Tlascala, where he might recruit the strength of his men—almost all of whom were stiff with wounds—and arrange his future proceedings. After many difficulties, and another great battle, in which he defeated the Mexicans, he reached it on the 9th of July, 1520. They were kindly received by the generous mountaineers, who withstood all the solicitations of the Mexican sovereign, Cuitlahua, Montezuma’s brother and successor, that they would assist him in driving the Spaniards out of the country.
It was early in autumn before Cortez left Tlascala. His intention was first to punish several states of Anahuac which had revolted during his absence in Mexico, especially the districts of Tepeaca and Cachula; and then, after having reduced the whole country east of the Mexican valley, to return to the capital itself, and take it by storm. With a force so reduced as his, without cannons or other firearms, this was an apparently hopeless enterprise; but hopeless was a word of which Cortez did not know the meaning. Fortunately, while engaged in subduing the eastern districts of Anahuac, he received reinforcements which he never anticipated. Velasquez, ignorant of the fate of the expedition which he had sent under Narvaez, and supposing that Cortez was by this time a prisoner in the hands of his rival, had despatched a ship with stores, arms, and ammunition to the colony of Villa Rica. The vessel touched at the port; the captain and his men disembarked, suspecting nothing, and were instantly seized by the officer of Cortez; nor did it require much persuasion to induce the whole crew to enlist under the standard of a man of whom they had heard so many eulogies. A second vessel sent by Velasquez soon afterwards shared the same fate; three ships sent by the governor of Jamaica to prosecute discoveries, and plant colonies in central America, chancing also to land at Villa Rica, their crews joined the army of Cortez; and lastly, a merchant vessel, loaded with provisions and all the necessaries of war, arrived at the Mexican coast, and was purchased by Cortez—sailors, cargo, and all.