ABSTRACT
The strength of Cortes forces he drew up in the great square or court, surrounded partly by buildings, as before noticed, and in part by a high wall. The arrangements were hardly completed, before the Cholulan caciques appeared, leading a body of levies, tamanes, even more numerous than had been demanded. The long piles of black and smouldering ruins proclaimed the hurricane which had so lately swept over the city, and the walls surrounding the scene of slaughter in the great square, which were standing more than fifty years after the event, told the sad tale of the Massacre of Cholula. These scenes of violence had lasted some hours, when Cortes, moved by the entreaties of some Cholulan chiefs who had been reserved from the massacre, consented, out of regard, as he said, to the latter, the representatives of Montezuma, to call off the soldiers, and put a stop, as well as he could, to further outrage.
