Departure from Tlascala—Description of Cholula—The Welcome—Army Quarters in the City—Intimations of a Conspiracy between the Mexicans and Cholultecs—Cortés Asks for Provisions and Warriors—He Holds a Council—Preparations for an Attack—The Lords Enter the Court with the Required Supplies—Cortés Reprimands them in an Address—The Slaughter Begins—Destruction of the City—Butchery and Pillage—Amnesty finally Proclaimed—Xicotencatl Returns to Tlascala—Reconciliation of the Cholultecs and Tlascaltecs—Dedication of a Temple to the Virgin—Reflections on the Massacre of Cholula.
The Spaniards had been three weeks beneath the hospitable roofs of the Tlascaltecs, and now they departed amid expressions of good-will mingled with grief.1 A crowd as large as that which had welcomed their arrival followed them for a considerable distance, and this included all the available warriors of the districts,2 who would gladly have joined the handful of heroes in their quest for wealth and glory amongst the hated Aztecs. Cortés did not think it well, however, to trammel his movements, or to intrude on his various hosts with too large a force of undisciplined and unmanageable men, whom he had not learned to trust, and only about five thousand were allowed to attach themselves to his army.3
Late in the afternoon the army reached the southern border of Tlascala, and camped by a river two leagues from Cholula. The city stood in a vast fertile plain, so thickly covered with plantations and gardens “that not a span of land remained uncultivated.” A network of ditches irrigated the