few; for, practically, the whole body of the army had remained faithful
to the Priest Captain and was with him in Culhuacan. For the most part,
also, the regular troops scattered through the garrisons of the various
towns had betaken themselves immediately to Culhuacan upon the
acknowledgment by the civil officers of these towns of the authority of
the new government; and at the same time had departed with them nearly
all the priests, and such few persons of the upper classes as desired
the maintenance of the ancient order of things. The result of which
general movement at least gave us the advantage of carrying on
unmolested our own work of concentrating and organizing; and, so far,
was a positive service to us.

As the nucleus of our army we had the corps that Tizoc commanded, the
highly organized body of troops charged with the important duty of
guarding the Barred Pass; and we had also the few hundreds of men who
had come out with us from Culhuacan. From these sources we were able to
draw officers to command the irregular force, largely made up of
Tlahuicos, that the Council rapidly got together; while for the
organizing of the main body of our troops, the savages who worked in the
mine, the bold stroke was made of mingling them with the men who, until
then, had been their most relentless enemies--the soldiers who had
served as their guards. That it was possible to put in operation this
daring plan was due, I think, in great part to the fact that both guards
and miners were led to accept the extraordinary fellowship that it
created by a genuine shock of surprise; and before they had at all
recovered from their astonishment their interests became identical,
through their common need of defending themselves against a common
enemy. And, further, I am well convinced that the Tlahuicos had been in
part prepared, before our coming into the valley, to join in the revolt
that under any circumstances could not have been much longer delayed. In
regard to this matter, Tizoc persistently evaded my questions; but I
remembered very distinctly his curious hesitancy when he had told me of
the effective part that the servile class could be made to take in the
event of a rebellion; and I perceived many evidences of a secret
understanding between him and certain of the miners during the time that
the gathering for war was going on in Huitzilan. Therefore, I inferred
that the seeds of revolt which germinated so readily had been long sin