The parties closed with the desperate fury of men who had no hope but in victory. Quarter1 was neither asked nor given; and to fly was impossible. The edge of the area was unprotected by parapet2. The least slip would be fatal; and the combatants, as they struggled in mortal agony, were sometimes seen to roll over the sheer3 sides of the precipice together.
Cortes himself is said to have had a narrow escape from this dreadful fate. Two warriors, of strong, muscular frames,1Quarter: mercy.
2Parapet: a low wall, especially one protecting the edge of a roof, bridge, or the like.
3Sheer: steep; straight up and down.
seized on him, and were dragging him violently toward the brink of the teocalli. Aware of their intention, he struggled with all his force, and, before they could accomplish their purpose, succeeded in tearing himself from their grasp and hurling one of them over the walls with his own arm. The story is not improbable in itself, for Cortes was a man of uncommon agility and strength.
The battle lasted with unintermitting1 fury for three hours.
The number of the enemy was double that of the Christians; and it seemed as if it were a contest which must be determined by numbers and brute force rather than by superior science. But it was not so. The invulnerable2 armor of the Spaniard, his sword of matchless temper3, and his skill in the use of it, gave him advantages which far outweighed the odds of physical strength and numbers.
After doing all that the courage of despair could enable men to do, resistance grew fainter and fainter on the side of the Aztecs. One after another they had fallen. Two or three priests only survived to be led away in triumph by the victors. Every other combatant was stretched a corpse on the bloody arena4, or had been hurled from the giddy heights. Yet the loss of the Spaniards was not inconsiderable; it amounted to forty-five of their best men; and nearly all the remainder were more or less1 Unintermitting: uninterrupted; not stopping. 2 Invulnerable: that cannot be injured.
3Temper: hardness. Metal is tempered or hardened by repeated heating and cooling.
4Arena: place of public contest.
injured in the desperate conflict.
The victorious cavaliers now rushed toward the sanctuaries. The lower story was of stone, the two upper were of wood. Penetrating into their recesses, they had the mortification to find the image of the Virgin and the Cross removed. But in the other edifice they still beheld the grim figure of the Mexican war god, with his censer of smoking hearts, and the walls of his temple reeking with gore,-not improbably of their own countrymen.
With shouts of triumph the Christians tore the uncouth monster from his niche, and tumbled him, in the presence of the horror-struck Aztecs, down the steps of the teocalli. They then set fire to the accursed building. The flames speedily ran up the slender towers, sending forth an ominous light over city, lake, and valley, to the remotest hut among the mountains. It was the funeral pyre1 of paganism, and proclaimed the fall of that sanguinary2 religion which had so long, like a dark cloud, hung over the fair region of Anahuac3.
1Pyre: heap; pile.
2Sanguinary: bloody; cruel.
3Anahuac: the plateau of Mexico.
