ered as Cortez
conquered, and against just as fearful odds; whose enemies were armed,
not with copper arrows and glass knives, but with European muskets,
European cannon, and most dangerous of all, European discipline. I say
Cortez did wonders in his time; but I say too that our Indian heroes have
done more, and done it in a better cause.

And that is the history of the conquest of Mexico. What, you may ask, is
that the end? When we are leaving the Spaniards a worn-out and starving
handful struggling back for refuge to Tlascala, without anything but
their old swords; do you call _that_ a conquest?

Yes, I do; just as I call the getting back to Cawnpore, after the relief
of Lucknow, the conquest of India. It showed which was the better man,
Englishman or sepoy, just as the retreat from Mexico showed which was the
better man, Spaniard or Indian. The sepoys were cowed from that day,
just as the Mexicans were cowed after Otumba. They had fought with all
possible odds on their side, and been _licked_; and when men are once
cowed, all the rest is merely a work of time.

So it was with Cortez. He went back to Tlascala. He got by mere
accident, as we say, a reinforcement of Spaniards. He stirred up all the
Indian nations round, who were weary of the cruel tyranny of the
Mexicans; he made large boats to navigate the lake, and he marched back
upon Mexico the next year with about six hundred Spaniards and nine
cannon--about half the force which he had had before; but with a hundred
thousand Indian allies, who, like the sturdy Tlascalans, proved as true
to him as steel. Truly, if he was not a great general, who is?

He marched back, taking city after city as he went, and besieged Mexico.
It was a long and weary siege. The Indians fought like fiends. The
causeways had to be taken yard by yard; but Cortez, wise by sad
experience, put his cannon into the boats and swept them from the water.
Then the city had to be taken house by house. The Indians drove him back
again and again, till they were starved to skeletons, and those who used
to eat their enemies were driven to eat each other. Still they would not
give in. At last, after many weeks of fighting, it was all over. The
glorious Mexican empire was crumbled to dust. Those proud nobles, who
used to fat themselves upon the bodies of all the nations round, were
reduced to a handful of starving beggars. The cross of Christ was set
up, where the hearts of human creat