Thus ended Tuesday, the 13th of August 1521, sacred to St Hippolytus, and accordingly adopted by the conquerors as patron saint of the city. During colonial régime the day was annually celebrated by a solemn festival, wherein the leading citizens and officials rode on horseback in procession round the city,
headed by the viceroy and the alférez mayor bearing a banner commemorative of the conquest.35 For seventy-five days consecutively, says Cortés,36 the siege had been wreathing its coils midst almost hourly scenes of bloodshed, wherein nearly one thousand Spaniards and two hundred times that number of allies had taken part, one hundred or thereabout of the former falling, and many thousands among the latter.37
As for the Mexicans, most of the early authorities assert that fully one hundred thousand perished, besides those who died from pest and famine.38 At the order of their sovereign, after the proclamation of peace, the miserable remnant began to evacuate their
pest-holes, and to seek the fields adjacent, now lustrous green under refreshing rains. Ah! it was pitiful, life to them now, this world a great charnel-house filled with the bones of their loved ones, and their hearts dead though still bleeding. What were their sins more than those of others, that they should be so stricken, that they should be so ground to the dust while the conquerors flushed with victory were exulting before God because he had so ordered and accomplished? They had sacrificed human beings on the altars of their gods, sixty thousand in one year, some said. But what were these butcheries of the Spaniards but human sacrifices, of more than six times sixty thousand in one year! Behold them as they file along the causeway, the very sun striking black and stifling on their famine-stricken forms and agonized faces. On them, then, ye conquerors! Complete your work; for in its swift continuance is their earliest rest!39