to the town, and to assure the
surviving inhabitants that no further harm would be done to them,
if they would return to their homes.

The Spaniards and Tlascalans were drawn up under their respective
leaders. The division of the booty offered no difficulties. The
mountaineers attached no value to gold or jewels, and were well
content with wearing apparel and provisions; while to the share of
the Spaniards fell the valuables taken. Cortez had given strict
orders that no violence should be offered to the women or children,
and his orders had been respected; but many of these and numbers of
men had been made prisoners by the Tlascalans, to carry away into
slavery.

Cortez, however, now persuaded them to liberate their captives; and
so great was his influence that they acceded to his request. The
dead bodies were now collected, and carried outside the city by the
inhabitants.

Cortez, in his letter to the Emperor Charles, says that three
thousand were slain; but most contemporary writers put down the
number of victims at six thousand, and some at even a higher
figure. Order was promptly restored. The inhabitants who had left
the town speedily returned, and the people of the neighborhood
flocked in with supplies. The markets were re-opened, and only the
lines of blackened ruins told of the recent strife.

The massacre was a terrible one, and is a stain upon the memory of
Cortez; who otherwise throughout the campaign acted mercifully,
strictly prohibiting any plundering or ill treatment of the
natives, and punishing all breaches of his orders with great
severity. The best excuse that can be offered is, that in desperate
positions desperate measures must be taken; that the plot, if
successful, would have resulted in the extermination of the
Spaniards; and that the terrible lesson taught was necessary, to
ensure the safety of the expedition. Moreover, a considerable
portion of those who fell, fell in fair fight; and after the action
was over, the inhabitants were well treated. It must, too, be taken
into consideration that the Spaniards were crusaders as well as
discoverers; and that it was their doctrine that all heretics must
be treated as enemies of God, and destroyed accordingly.

Such was not the doctrine of their Church, for as the great
historian Bede writes of King Ethelbert:

"He had learned, from the teachers and authors of his salvation,
that men are to be drawn, not dragged, to heaven."

Roger, with his