Note 1174 — Chapter XXXIII · CONTINUATION OF THE SIEGE. June-July, 1521.

Bernal Diaz gives this conversation with some detail, and names Treasurer Alderete as the guilty officer who neglected to fill the channel, intimating that Cortés had been heedlessly allured onward by the Mexicans, leaving Alderete to attend to the filling. He even allows the treasurer to retort to the charge, in Sandoval’s presence, that Cortés’ eagerness had been the cause of the neglect. This is probably an invented account, based on Gomara’s statement that the ‘treasurer,’ no name being given, neglected to fill a channel on his route. Informed of this, Cortés hastened thither to remedy the fault, only to meet the fleeing. Herrera adopts this version, as do most writers, including Prescott; but it is evidently wrong, for Cortés writes clearly that the misfortune occurred on his own route, some distance above its junction with the Tlacopan road, to which they soon retreated. On reaching this road he sent to recall the ‘treasurer and comptroller,’ who were leading their division victoriously at the farther end of it. Owing to their care in filling channels ‘they received no injury in retreating.’ Cartas, 233-4. There can be little doubt about this statement, since Cortés would have been only too glad to cast the blame on any other division than his own. He does not even claim to have been at the front, but in the rear, and near the spot where the neglect occurred. The only question then is, who was the guilty officer? The ‘treasurer’ commanded the centre division, and although there were several treasurers, the royal, late and new, and he who acted for the army, yet the new royal treasurer is undoubtedly meant, and this appears to have been Alderete, according to the statement of several authorities. Hence the accusation against Alderete must be wrong; anything besides this must be conjecture.