Note 101 — Chapter VIII

Alvarado intimates, in the defence of his conduct which forms part of the process, one source of the rumors respecting the rising of the Aztecs, by saying that the existence of such a scheme was matter of public notoriety among the Tlascalans. He adds that he obtained more precise intelligence from two or three Indians, one a Tezcucan, another a slave whom he had rescued from the sacrifice to which he had been doomed by the Aztecs; that these latter, under cover of the festivities, had planned an insurrection against the Spaniards, in which he and his countrymen were all to be exterminated. At the same time they determined to tear down the image of the Virgin which had been raised in the temple, and in its place to substitute that of their war-god, Huitzilopochtli. Montezuma was accused of being privy to this conspiracy. Thus instructed, Alvarado, as he asserts, got his men in readiness to resist the enemy, who, after a short encounter, was repulsed with slaughter, while one Spaniard was slain, and he himself, with several others, severely wounded (Proceso, pp. 66, 67). But although a long array of witnesses, most of them probably his ancient friends and comrades, are introduced to endorse his statement, one who reflects on the submissive spirit hitherto shown, not only by Montezuma, but his subjects, in their dealings with the Spaniards, and contrasts it with the fierce and unscrupulous temper displayed by Alvarado, will have little doubt on whose head the guilt of the massacre must rest; and as little seems to have been felt by most of the writers of the time who have spoken of the affair.