The Retreat from Mexico

Part 3 - The Retreat from Mexico

It was indeed in a serious position that Cortez found his troops, threatened by famine, and surrounded by a hostile population. But he was so confident of his ability to overawe the insurgents that he wrote to that effect to the garrison of Vera Cruz, by the same dispatches in which he informed them of his safe arrival in the capital. But scarcely had his messenger been gone half an hour, when he returned breathless with terror, and covered with wounds. "The city," he said, "was all in arms! The drawbridges were raised, and the enemy would soon be upon them!" He spoke truth. It was not long before a hoarse, sullen sound became audible, like that of the roaring of distant waters. It grew louder and louder; till, from the parapet surrounding the enclosure, the great avenues which led to it might be seen dark with the masses of warriors, who came rolling on in a confused tide towards the fortress. At the same time, the terraces and flat roofs in the neighborhood were thronged with combatants brandishing their missiles, who seemed to have risen up as if by magic. It was a spectacle to appall the stoutest.

But this was only the prelude to the disasters that were to befall the Spaniards. The Mexicans made desperate assaults upon the Spanish quarters, in which both sides suffered severely. At last Montezuma, at the request of Cortez, tried to interpose. But his subjects, in fury at what they considered his desertion of them, gave him a wound of which he died. The position became untenable, and Cortez decided on retreat. This was carried out at night, and owing to the failure of a plan for laying a portable bridge across those gaps in the causeway left by the drawbridges, the Spaniards were exposed to a fierce attack from the natives which proved most disastrous. Caught on the narrow space of the causeway, and forced to make their way as best they could across the gaps, they were almost overwhelmed by the throngs of their enemies. Cortez who, with some of the vanguard, had reached comparative safety, dashed back into the thickest of the fight where some of his comrades were making a last stand, and brought them out with him, so that at last all the survivors, a sadly stricken company, reached the mainland.

The story of the reconstruction by Cortez of his shattered and discouraged army is one of the most astonishing chapters in the whole history of the Conquest. Wounded, impoverished, greatly reduced in numbers and broken in spirit by the terrible experience through which they had passed, they demanded that the expedition should be abandoned and they be returned to Cuba. Before long, the practical wisdom and personal influence of Cortez had recovered them, reanimated their spirits, and inspired them with fresh zeal for conquest, and now for revenge. He added to their numbers the very men sent against him by Velasquez at this juncture, whom he persuaded to join him; and had the same success with the members of another rival expedition from Jamaica. Eventually he set out once more for Mexico, with a force of nearly six hundred Spaniards, and a number of allies from Tlascala.