outrage is very laconic:

"Had I not done this to them, they would have done the same to me."

[Illustration: MASSACRE IN CHOLULA.]

Such is war--congenial employment only for fiends. It is Satan's work,
and can be efficiently prosecuted only by Satan's instruments. Six
thousand Cholulans were slain in this awful massacre. The Spaniards
were now sufficiently avenged. Cortez issued a proclamation offering
pardon to all who had escaped the massacre, and inviting them to
return to their smouldering homes. Slowly they returned, women and
children, from the mountains where they had fled; some, who had
feigned death, crept from beneath the bodies of the slain, and
others emerged from hiding-places in their devastated dwellings. The
cacique of the Cholulans had been killed in the general slaughter.
Cortez appointed a brother of the late cacique to rule over the city,
and, in apparently a sincere proclamation, informed the bereaved and
miserable survivors that it was with the greatest sorrow that he
had found himself compelled by their treachery to this terrible
punishment. The Tlascalans, glutted with the blood of their ancient
foes, were compelled to surrender all their prisoners, for Cortez
would allow of no human sacrifices.

Cortez thought that the natives were now in a very suitable frame of
mind for his peculiar kind of conversion. They were truly very pliant.
No resistance was offered to the Spanish soldiers as they tumbled the
idols out of the temples, and reared in their stead the cross and the
image of the Virgin. Public thanksgivings were then offered to God in
the purified temples of the heathen for the victory he had vouchsafed,
and mass was celebrated by the whole army.

In the year 1842, Hon. Waddy Thompson passed over the plain where once
stood the city of Cholula. He thus describes it:

"The great city of Cholula was situated about six miles from
the present city of Puebla. It was here the terrible
slaughter was committed which has left the deepest stain
upon the otherwise glorious and wonderful character of
Cortez. Not a vestige--literally none--not a brick or a
stone standing upon another, remains of this immense city
except the great pyramid, which still stands in gloomy and
solitary grandeur in the vast plain which surrounds it, and
there it will stand forever. This pyramid is built of
unburned bricks. Its dimensions, as given by Humboldt, are,