th a very different reception from what we had experienced on our
former entry, on the 8th November 1519, seven months and a half before.
Not one of the nobles of our acquaintance came now to meet us, and the
whole city seemed to have been deserted by its inhabitants. On entering
our quarters, Montezuma advanced to embrace Cortes, and to congratulate
him on his victory; but our general turned from him with disdain, and
would neither speak to him nor listen to his address, on which the king
returned to his apartment much cast down. Cortes made inquiry into the
causes and circumstances of the late commotion, from all of which it was
evident that it had neither been instigated nor approved by Montezuma; as
if he had chosen to act against our garrison, they might all have been as
easily destroyed as only seven. Alvarado said, that the Indians were
enraged at the detention of their sovereign, and by the erection of the
cross in their temple; and that when they went, as they said by order of
their gods, to pull it down, all their strength was unable to move it from
its place; and that Montezuma had strictly enjoined them to desist from
all such attempts. In justification of himself, Alvarado alleged that the
friends and subjects of Montezuma had planned the attack upon him for the
liberation of their sovereign, at the time when they believed Cortes and
his army had been destroyed by Narvaez: And being questioned why he had
fallen on the Mexicans, while holding a festival in honour of their gods,
he pretended that he had intelligence of their hostile intentions from a
priest and two nobles, and thought it safest to be beforehand with them.
When pressed by Cortes to say whether the Mexicans had not asked and
obtained his permission to hold that festival, he acknowledged it was so,
and that he had fallen upon them by anticipation, that he might terrify
them into submission, and prevent them from going to war with the
Spaniards. Cortes was highly displeased with the conduct of Alvarado, and
censured him in the strongest terms.

Alvarado alleged that during one of the attacks of the Mexicans on his
quarters, he had endeavoured to fire off one of his guns and could not get
the priming to take fire; but sometime afterwards, when they were in great
danger, the gun went off of itself and made prodigious havock among the
enemy, who were thus miraculously repulsed, and the Spaniards saved from
inevitable destruction. He said also, that th