144 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 102 



405. While he was enjoying this majesty and prosperity, valiant 

 Fernando Cortes, who later became Marques del Valle, came in with 

 his companions at the end of the year 15 18, and in his very palace 

 where he had over 3,000 men on guard and among them over 600 

 nobles, as Gomara states on folio 107, more by divine order than 

 by human powers, he captured him ; for besides his personal guard 

 just mentioned, and the fact that it was in his own country and in a 

 city which was one of the greatest strongholds in the world, there 

 were over 200,000 men in it, by all of whom he was liked and be- 

 loved ; they might easily have killed the Spaniards and sacrificed them, 

 and even have eaten them, which was a common practice among 

 them. 



406. But God in His divine wisdom had chosen Cortes and his 

 few companions as instruments for the deliverance of those blind 

 heathen from slavery to the Devil, by preaching to them His Holy 

 Gospel and giving it to them all for their understanding ; accordingly 

 He so influenced the will of the Emperor Motezuma (who had them 

 all shut up in his palace and if his subjects had had an inkling that 

 he would like to have the Spaniards slain, they would all have 

 perished without a single one escaping) that he conceived a special 

 love and affection for Fernando Cortes and his followers, continu- 

 ally making them gifts and presents and commanding his men to 

 obey and respect the Spaniards. But when Fernando Cortes had 

 returned to Vera Cruz to oppose Pamphilo de Narvaez, having left 

 the Emperor Motezuma in charge of his men, Cortes being absent 

 the Indians rebelled and bottled up the Spaniards whom he had left 

 under the charge of the Emperor Motezuma, and if Cortes had not 

 returned speedily, they would all have perished. Finally at his com- 

 ing the Spaniards took courage and defended themselves from the 

 fury of the Indians and the attacks they were making ; in order to 

 calm them by the presence and the actual sight of their king, Cortes 

 and his companions asked Motezuma to go up to a high point in the 

 palace where they could see him, and order them to cease the fighting 

 and the madness they were indulging in; and after he had ordered 

 them to stop their attacks and quiet down, for a short time they 

 remained silent, but then they returned to the charge and with loud 

 cries began throwing stones, and although our soldiers shielded him 

 at the point where he was standing, he was cruelly wounded by a 

 missile from one of his own people, so that he died a few days later, 

 to the great distress both of the Spaniards and his own subjects, and 

 without having received the baptism which he had so much desired 

 and had begged of Cortes ; it was planned for Easter, that being a 



