Attended by Sandoval and others, Cortés hastened to the house of the accused and found several persons assembled. Some were secured as they sought escape.
Villafañe found time to take a paper from his breast and tear it in pieces, but Cortés gathered and arranged them,48 and was grieved to read the names of quite a number of promising persons whom he had honored and regarded as friends.
Villafañe confessed the details of the plot, which had been forming since the Tepeaca campaign. A court-martial was held, presided over by Cortés himself, and there being no doubt of his guilt, the accused was condemned to death and promptly hanged from the window of his dwelling.49
Cortés had probably no doubt regarding the guilt of the persons named on the list, but the prosecution of so many notable men might not be prudent, and would only widen the breach between himself and the malcontents and gain them sympathy. The day following the execution the general called a meeting.
Many were the consciences that pricked their possessors to trembling on that occasion. But the sage Cortés preferred the traitors should risk their necks in winning for him Mexico, rather than himself to break them with a rope.
Napoleon, who in national warfare could open with his sword the veins of the people until there poured forth torrents of blood, shrank in horror from blood shed in civil broils. It was policy with Cortés, however. So, after finishing his narration of the conspiracy, he coolly informed them that Villafañe had refused to reveal his accomplices, and he could not therefore name the guilty. There were no doubt men amongst them with real or fancied grievances which may have induced them to harbor