asy victims. But after that terrific struggle the savages
were resting too, and the Spaniards were permitted to escape. They
struck out for the friendly pueblo of Tlaxcala by a circuitous route to
avoid their enemies, but were attacked at every intervening pueblo. In
the plains of Otumba was their most desperate hour. Surrounded and
overwhelmed by the savages, they gave themselves up for lost. But
fortunately Cortez recognized one of the medicine men by his rich dress,
and in a last desperate charge, with Alvarado and a few other officers,
struck down the person upon whom the superstitious Indians hang so much
of the fate of war. The wizard dead, his awe-struck followers gave way;
and again the Spaniards came out from the very jaws of death.

In the siege of Mexico,--the bloodiest and most romantic siege in all
America,--Alvarado was probably the foremost figure after Cortez. The
great general was the head of that remarkable campaign, and a head
indeed worth having. There is nothing in history quite like his
achievement in having thirteen brigantines built at Tlaxcala and
transported on the shoulders of men over fifty miles inland across the
mountains to be launched on the lake of Mexico and aid in the siege. The
nearest to it was the great feat of Balboa in taking two brigantines
across the Isthmus. The exploits of Hannibal the great Carthaginian at
the siege of Tarentum, and of the Spanish "Great Captain" Gonzalo de
Cordova at the same place, were not at all to be compared to either.

In the seventy-three days' fighting of the siege, Alvarado was the right
hand as Cortez was the head.

The dashing lieutenant had command of the force which pushed its assault
along the same causeway by which they had retreated on the _Noche
Triste_. In one of the battles Cortez's horse was killed under him, and
the conqueror was being dragged off by the Indians when one of his pages
dashed forward and saved him. In the final assault and desperate
struggle in the city Cortez led half the Spanish force, and Alvarado the
other half; and the latter it was who conducted that memorable storming
of the great teocalli.

After the conquest of Mexico, in which he had won such honors, Alvarado
was sent by Cortez to the conquest of Guatemala, with a small force. He
marched down through Oaxaca and Tehuantepec to Guatemala, meeting a
resistance characteristically Indian. There were three principal tribes
in Guatemala,--the Quiche, Zutuhil, and Cac