Native Chiefs Sent as Envoys to the Tlascalan Capital—Their Favorable Reception—Xicotencatl Plans Resistance to Cortés—Sends out Spies—Cortés Sends them back Mutilated—The Spaniards Attack and Defeat Xicotencatl—Night Encounters—General Dissatisfaction and a Desire to Return to Villa Rica—Envoys Arrive from Montezuma—Cortés Receives Xicotencatl and the Tlascalan Lords—Peace Concluded—Tlascala—Festivities and Rejoicings—Mass Celebrated—Cortés Inclined to Extreme Religious Zeal—Brides Presented to the Spaniards—Appropriate Ceremonies—Preparing to Leave Tlascala for Cholula—Communications with the Cholultecs.
In the late battle three chiefs had been captured, and they together with two others were sent, this time to the Tlascalan capital direct, to carry an offer of peace, and to explain that the Spaniards would not have harmed their warriors had they not been obliged to do so. If peace was still declined they would come and destroy them all.
Meanwhile Cortés set out on another foraging and raiding expedition, and “burned more than ten towns, one exceeding three thousand houses,” retiring by the early afternoon, when the Indians began to gather in aid of the raided neighbors.1
Tired of the fruitless fighting, attended with loss of life and property only to themselves as it appeared, the peace party in Tlascala had been gaining the ascendancy, with the efforts of Maxixcatzin, supported as he now was by the powerful factions which had quarrelled with the general. When the peace messengers of Cortés arrived they were