If
Our Allies Had Been With Us We Should Have Been All Lost.
On this occasion
our cavalry saved our rear, and our brigantines did signal service by
clearing our flanks.
After a most severe and long doubtful contest, we
beat off the enemy and made four of their chiefs prisoners, eight of our
soldiers being slain in this tough affair. I fear my readers may be tired
of this constant repetition of battles, which my duty of historian
compels me to relate: But if I were to give an account of every action
which took place during the ninety-three days in which we were engaged in
the siege of this great, strong, and populous city, every day and night of
which time brought a perpetual succession of battles and assaults, my work
would be without end, and would more resemble Amadis de Gaul and other
romances of chivalry than a true history, which it really is.
Cortes became impatient of delay, and proposed in a council of war to make
a general assault on the city, marching at once by all the three causeways,
and uniting our whole force in the great square, whence we could command
all the streets leading to that centre of Mexico. Some of the members of
the council objected greatly to this plan, giving the preference to our
present system of advancing gradually, filling up the ditches as we
proceeded, and destroying the houses to make roads and defences of their
materials. They alleged that if we were to succeed in forcing our way into
the great square, we should in our turn be besieged in the heart of the
city, exactly as we had been before our flight from Mexico, and be
involved in much greater difficulties than now; as the enemy would be
enabled to environ us with their whole force by land and water, and would
cut off all possibility of our retreat, by cutting through the causeways.
But Cortes, after hearing all these well founded reasons, still adhered to
his own plan, and issued orders for the whole army, including the allies,
to attack the city next day, and to use our utmost efforts to get
possession of the great square.
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