of the
Spaniards at Mexico was terminated by the events of the _triste noche_.

The mere handful that had at first entered the city had been increased
by the army of Narvaez, so that when the news reached Cortez that
Alvarado and the eighty odd men that had been left with him in the city
were threatened with difficulty, he marched a well-appointed army of
fourteen hundred men, besides two hundred Tlascalans, to his relief.
Their retreat to Tlascala has already been described, the character of
the brigantines has been discussed, as well as the absurd story of his
having dug a slip or launching canal at Tezcuco, twelve feet broad and
twelve feet deep. We have seen that the towns and villages said to have
been built in the lake, and the still greater number of large towns on
the main land, could only have been petty Indian hamlets, and that the
central portions of the valley of Mexico would not have been habitable
if the lakes of Mexico had been any thing more than evaporation ponds.
And, lest I should venture too far, I will conclude this remark by
adverting to the testimony of Diaz, which concedes that when his book
was written the face of the country was substantially as it now is, and
as I have already described it to be. But he endeavors to save the
story of the Conquest by the shallow pretense that, during the few
years that intervened between that event and the date of his history,
the whole face of the country had completely changed.[48]

The great mystery is why so large a body of Spaniards, if they really
amounted to the number claimed by Cortez, should have retreated from
the city at all, as they do not complain of being short of provisions.
They had the great _teocalli_ for a fortress, on which they might have
planted their cannon, and leveled the city in a few days, if not in a
few hours, and the great Plaza in which to manoeuvre their cavalry
and protect the Indians while leveling the rubbish of the broken walls.
But a panic having seized them, and having escaped from the city by a
badly-managed night retreat, ten months elapsed before the Spaniards,
on the 13th of May, 1521, laid siege to the city. And with varying
success the siege was continued just three months, until Guatemozin was
taken prisoner, on the 13th of August, 1521, so that the siege was
carried on in the midst of the rainy season, when the flats must have
been covered with water, and the ditches well filled. No difficulty was
experienced in b