Aztec

"You hear, Revered Brother!" Cuitlahuac stormed at Motecuzóma. "The creatures even dare to boast that they are coming to confront you personally! We have every excuse to swoop upon them, and now is the time to do it. As the Lord Mixtli predicted, they are nearly helpless in those mountains. We need not fear their animals or weapons. You can no longer say wait!"

"I say wait," Motecuzóma replied, imperturbable. "And I have good reason. Waiting will save many lives."

Cuitlihuac literally snarled, "Tell me: when in all of history has any single life ever been saved?"

Motecuzóma looked a

If Motecuzóma had confided to Texcala's ruler Xicotenca what we had learned of the white men's fighting capabilities and limitations, the Texcalteca would wisely have pounced upon the white men somewhere in the steep mountains of which their nation" has an abundance. Instead, Xicotenca's son and war chief, Xicotenca the Younger, chose to make his stand on one of Texcala's few level grounds of great expanse. In the traditional ma

As we in Tenochtítlan heard later, Cortés walked out of a wood on the edge of that plain, leading his four hundred fifty white soldiers and by then about three thousand warriors of the Totonaca and other tribes, to find himself facing, on the other side of that ground, a solid wall of Texcalteca, at least ten thousand of them; some reports said as many as thirty thousand. Even if Cortés had been deranged by disease, as alleged, he would have recognized the formidability of his opponents. They were garbed in their quilted armor of yellow and white. They bore their many great feather ba

Cortés must have wished then that he had better allies than his Totonaca, with their weapons made mostly of sawfish snouts and sharpened bones, their unwieldy shields which were nothing but the carapaces of sea turtles. But if Cortés was at all worried, he remained calm enough to keep his most outlandish weapon concealed. The Texcalteca saw only him and those of his army who were afoot. All the horses, including his own, were still in the wood, and at his command they stayed there, out of sight of the defenders of Texcala.

As tradition dictated, several Texcalteca lords stepped forward from their ranks and crossed the green plain between the two armies, and ceremoniously presented the symbolic weapons, the feather mantles and shields, to declare that a state of hostility existed. Cortés deliberately lengthened that ceremony by asking that the meaning of it be explained to him. And I should remark that Aguilar was by then seldom needed as an intermediate interpreter; the woman Malintzin had exerted herself to learn Spanish, and she had progressed rapidly; after all, bed is the best place to learn any language. So, after acknowledging the Texcalteca's declaration, Cortés made one of his own, unrolling a scroll and reading from it while Malintzin translated to the waiting lords. I can repeat it from memory, for he made the same proclamation outside every village, town, city and nation that shut itself against his approach. He first demanded that he be let enter without hindrance, and then he said:

"But if you will not comply, then, with the help of God, I will enter by force. I will make war against you with the utmost violence. I will bind you to the yoke of obedience to our Holy Church and our King Carlos. I will take your wives and children, and make them slaves, or sell them, according to His Majesty's pleasure. I will seize your belongings, and do you all the mischief in my power, regarding you as rebellious subjects who maliciously refuse to submit to their lawful sovereign. Therefore, all ensuing bloodshed and calamity are to be imputed to you, and not to His Majesty or to me or to the gentlemen who serve under me."

It can be imagined that the Texcalteca lords were not much pleased to be called subjects of any alien, or to be told that they were disobeying any alien in defending their own frontier. If anything, those haughty words only heightened their desire for bloody battle, and the bloodier the better. So they made no reply, but turned and stalked back the long distance to where their warriors were more and more loudly whooping and making their flutes shriek and their drums throb.

But that exchange of formalities had given Cortés's men ample time to assemble and position their ten big-mouthed ca

Not Cortés nor any of his men moved to meet them in the traditional ma