All Of Which Immediately Ceased
On The Capture Of Guatimotzin.
In consequence of the dispute between
Sandoval and Holguin threatening unpleasant consequences, Cortes related
to them from the Roman history the dispute between Marius and Sylla,
about the capture of Iugurtha, which was ultimately productive of very
fatal civil wars.
He assured them that the whole affair should be
represented to the emperor Don Carlos, by whose arbitration it should be
decided. But in two years after, the emperor authorised Cortes to bear in
his arms the seven kings whom he had subdued, Montezuma, Guatimotzin, and
the princes of Tezcuco, Cojohuacan, Iztapalapa, Tacuba, and Matlatzinco.
It is absolutely truth, to which I swear _amen_! that all the lake, the
houses, and the courts were filled with dead bodies, so that I know not
how to describe the miserable spectacle. All the streets, squares, courts,
and houses of Tlaltelolco, were so covered by them, that we could not take
a single step without treading on or between the bodies of dead Indians.
The lake and the canals were full of them, and the stench was intolerable.
It was for this reason that our troops retired from the city immediately
after the capture of Guatimotzin: Cortes was himself ill for some time,
owing to the dreadful effluvia arising from the putrifying bodies. I have
read the history of the destruction of Jerusalem, but I cannot conceive
that the mortality even there exceeded what I was witness to in Mexico; as
all the warriors from the most distant provinces of that populous empire
were concentrated there, and almost the whole garrison was cut off in
their almost perpetual encounters with us, or perished of famine.
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