In Justification Of Himself, Alvarado Alleged That The
Friends And Subjects Of Montezuma Had Planned The Attack Upon Him For The
Liberation Of Their Sovereign, At The Time When They Believed Cortes And
His Army Had Been Destroyed By Narvaez:
And being questioned why he had
fallen on the Mexicans, while holding a festival in honour of their gods,
He pretended that he had intelligence of their hostile intentions from a
priest and two nobles, and thought it safest to be beforehand with them.
When pressed by Cortes to say whether the Mexicans had not asked and
obtained his permission to hold that festival, he acknowledged it was so,
and that he had fallen upon them by anticipation, that he might terrify
them into submission, and prevent them from going to war with the
Spaniards. Cortes was highly displeased with the conduct of Alvarado, and
censured him in the strongest terms.
Alvarado alleged that during one of the attacks of the Mexicans on his
quarters, he had endeavoured to fire off one of his guns and could not get
the priming to take fire; but sometime afterwards, when they were in great
danger, the gun went off of itself and made prodigious havock among the
enemy, who were thus miraculously repulsed, and the Spaniards saved from
inevitable destruction. He said also, that the garrison being in great
distress for water, they sank a pit in one of the courts, when immediately
a spring of the sweetest water sprung up. I know that there was a spring
in the city which often produced tolerably fresh water[2]. Glory be to GOD
for all his mercies!
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