Battle and Aftermath at Tenochtitlan, 1568

From Bernal Diaz del Castillo. The True History of the Conquest of New Spain, [1568]. [Genaro Garcia, ed. Reprinted for the Hakluyt Society of London, 1908. 153-154; 185-186.]

Our method of fighting in all three camps was as follows. All the soldiers kept watch on the causeways together with our launches on either side, half the horsemen went the rounds in Tacuba, where the bread was made for us and where we kept our baggage, and the other half guarded the bridges and the causeway. Early in the morning we prepared our arms to fight with the enemy, who tried to penetrate into our camp and endeavoured to defeat us, and they acted in the same way at the camp of Cortez and of Sandoval. This lasted only during five days for then we adopted another plan which I speak about later on. Let me tell now how the Mexicans offered great sacrifice and celebrated festivals every night at their great Cue at Tlatelolco and sounded their cursed drum, trumpets, kettle drums, and shells, and uttered yells and howls, and kept many bonfires of burning wood all night long. Then they sacrificed our comrades to their accursed Huichilobos and Tescatepuca whom they consulted, and inasmuch as they are evil, they replied so as to delude them to believe that on the morning following that very night they were sure to all of us and the Tlaxcalans and all others who might come to our assistance. When our allies heard this they believed it to be true because they had seen us defeated and saw that we were not fighting as we used to do.

Let us leave these sayings that came from their accursed idols and relate that in the morning many regiments came to surround us and attack us, and they relieved one another from time to time, some with one kind of device and plumes and distinguishing marks and then others with a different uniform. Then when we were fighting with them they shouted insults calling us cowards, and good-for-nothings, neither for making houses nor plantations of maize; and that we only came to plunder their city and were evil men fleeing form our own country and king and master. . . .

Let us leave this and let us speak of the dead bodies and heads that were in the houses where Guatemoc had taken refuge. I say on my oath, Amern, that all the houses and the palisades in the lake were full of heads and corpses and I do not know how to describe it for in the streets and courts of Tlatelolco there was no difference, and we could not walk except among corpses and heads of dead Indians.

I have read about the destruction of Jerusalem but I know not for certain if there was greater mortality than this, for of the great number of the warriors from all the provinces and towns subject to Mexico who had crowded in (to the city) most of them died, and as I have already said, thus the land and the lake and the palisades were full of dead bodies, and stank so much that no one could endure it, and for this reason, as soon as Guatemoc was captured, each one of the Captains went to his own camp, as I have already said, and even Cortez was ill from the stench which assailed his nostrils, and from headache, during the days we were in Tlatelolco.