t to learn to their cost the lengths of Aztec
tenacity and ferocity. It will be recollected that the city was
connected to the lake shores by means of four causeways, built above
the surface of the water; engineering structures of stone and mortar
and earth, which had from the first aroused the admiration of the
Spaniards. These causeways, whilst they rendered the city almost
impregnable from attack, were a source of weakness in the easy
cutting-off of food supplies, which they afforded to the enemy. A
simultaneous assault on all these approaches was organised by the
Spaniards, under Sandoval, Alvarado, and Cortes himself, respectively,
whilst the brigantines, with their raking artillery, were to support
the attack by water, aided by the canoes of the Tlascalan and Texcocan
allies. A series of attacks was made by this method, and at last the
various bodies of Spaniards advanced along the causeways and gained the
city walls. But frightful disaster befel them. The comparative ease
with which they entered the city aroused Cortes's suspicions; and at
that moment, from the summit of the great _teocalli_, rang out a
fearful note--the horn of Guatemoc, calling for vengeance and a
concerted attack. The notes of the horn struck some ominous sense of
chill in the Spaniards' breasts, and the soldier-penman, Bernal Diaz,
who was fighting valiantly there, says that the noise echoed and
re-echoed, and rang in his ears for days afterwards. The Spaniards on
this, as on other occasions, had foolishly neglected to secure the
breaches in the causeways as they passed, or at least the rash Alvarado
had not done so with his command, his earlier lesson unheeded; and when
the Christians were hurled backwards--for their easy entrance into the
great square of the city had been in the nature of a decoy--disaster
befel them, which at one moment seemed as if it would be a repetition
of that of the _Noche Triste_. "The moment I reached that fearful
bridge," Cortes wrote in his despatches, "I saw the Spaniards returning
in full flight." Remaining to hold the breach, if possible, and cover
the retreat, the chivalrous Cortes almost lost his life from a furious
attack by the barbarians in their canoes, and was only saved by the
devotion of his own men and Indian allies, who gave their lives in his
rescue. Word, nevertheless, had gone forth among the men that Cortes
had fallen; and the savages, throwing before the faces of Alvarado and
Sandoval the bloody