Note 190 — Chapter III
Reading edition
The table below may give the reader some idea of the discrepancies in numerical estimates, even among eye-witnesses, and writers who, having access to the actors, are nearly of equal authority:
Killed and Missing.
Cortes, ap. Lorenzana, p. 145,150Spaniards,2000Indians
Cano, ap. Oviedo, lib. 33, cap. 54,1170“8000“
Probanza, etc.,200“2000“
Oviedo, Hist. de las Ind., lib. 33, cap. 13,150“2000“
Camargo,450“4000“
Gomara, cap. 109,450“4000“
Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., cap. 88,450“4000“
Sahagun, lib. 12, cap. 24,300“2000“
Herrera, dec. 2, lib. 10, cap. 12,150“4000“
Bernal Diaz does not take the trouble to agree with himself. After stating that the rear, on which the loss fell heaviest, consisted of 120 men, he adds, in the same paragraph, that 150 of these were slain, which number swells to 200 in a few lines further! Falstaff’s men in buckram! See Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 128.—Cano’s estimate embraces, it is true, those—but their number was comparatively small—who perished subsequently on the march. The same authority states that 270 of the garrison, ignorant of the proposed departure of their countrymen, were perfidiously left in the palace of Axayacatl, where they surrendered on terms, but were subsequently all sacrificed by the Aztecs! (See Appendix, No. 11.) The improbability of this monstrous story, by which the army with all its equipage could leave the citadel without the knowledge of so many of their comrades,—and this be permitted, too, at a juncture which made every man’s co-operation so important,—is too obvious to require refutation. Herrera records, what is much more probable, that Cortés gave particular orders to the captain, Ojeda, to see that none of the sleeping or wounded should, in the hurry of the moment, be overlooked in their quarters. Hist. general, dec. 2, lib. 10, cap. 11.