CHAPTER XII. MARCH TOWARD MEXICO. August-September , 1519.

into pieces, which were sent all over the state to afford opportunity for triumphal celebrations. The loss was greatly regretted, since it would divest the horses of their terrifying character. Those previously killed had been secretly buried. The battle continued until late in the afternoon, without enabling the Indians to make any further impression on the Spanish ranks than inflicting a few wounds, while their own were rapidly thinning under the charges of the cavalry and the volleys of artillery and firelocks. The slaughter had been particularly heavy among the chiefs, and this was the main reason for the retreat which the enemy now began, in good order.³⁰ Their actual loss could not be ascertained, for with humane devotion the wounded and dead were carried off the moment they were stricken; and in this constant self-sacrificing effort the Tlascaltecs lost many lives and advantages. Robertson regards with suspicion the accounts of the great battles fought during the conquest, wherein Indians fell by the score while the Spaniards stood almost unscathed, and Wilson ridicules the whole campaign, reducing the Tlascalan population, for instance, to about ten thousand, with a fighting force of less than one thousand men. Such remarks certainly show a want of familiarity with the subject.³¹ We have often seen, in the New World wars, a thousand naked Americans put to flight by ten steel-clad Europeans, and I have clearly given the reasons. When we look at the Indians, with their comparatively poor weapons, their unprotected bodies, their inefficient discipline and tactics, whereby only a small portion of their force could be made available, the other portion serving rather as an obstruction, their custom of carrying off the dead, and other weak points, and when we contrast them with the well armored Spaniards, with their superior swords and lances, their well calculated movements, and their concerted action carried out under strict and practised officers, and above all their terror-inspiring and ravaging fire-arms and horses—how can we doubt that the latter must have readily been able to overcome vast numbers of native warriors? It