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Updated: May 29, 2025
There was a desperate battle, our allies fled, but the soldiers stood their ground and thanks to the aid of the Blessed Virgin resisted all the attacks made upon them. But eight of the men were slain, and Juan himself was mortally wounded. The Indian prisoners taken said that the attack, like that at Cholula, had been made by the orders of Montezuma.
They were such pictures as the high-priests, for a bribe, showed to Alexander in the innermost shrine of the white temple in the Libyan oasis: such pictures as the pontiff of the sun strove to hide from Cortez, when, sword in hand, he burst open the sanctorum of the pyramid-fane at Cholula: such pictures as you may still see, perhaps, in the central alcove of the excavated mansion of Pansa, in Pompeii in that part of it called by Varro the hollow of the house: such pictures as Martial and Seutonius mention as being found in the private cabinet of the Emperor Tiberius: such pictures as are delineated on the bronze medals, to this day dug up on the ancient island of Capreas: such pictures as you might have beheld in an arched recess, leading from the left hand of the secret side-gallery of the temple of Aphrodite in Corinth.
Here Indian philosophers met upon a common footing with Indian merchants. Its government, too, was republican; and upon these very plains, three hundred years ago and more, flourished two powerful republics, Tlascala and Cholula. The first was the Lacedæmon, the second the Athens of the Indian world, and when united they had successfully resisted the armies of Montezuma and his Aztecs.
Here was the great temple of the god, a pyramid whose base covered forty-four acres, and whose height was a hundred and eighty feet; the platform on its summit, where the sacrifices took place, being an acre in size. Cortez, however, decided upon visiting Cholula.
But at the same time, he knew that if they were successful, the most horrible fate awaited him and his companions; and the treacherous plot, of which they had so nearly been the victims, excited the same feelings in his mind as in that of the Spaniards. The terrible vengeance taken by the Spaniards at Cholula struck terror into the minds of the Mexicans.
They have been loaded with gifts, but forbidden to come here. Yet since they came, in spite of orders, we have seemed as if we feared to meet them; and I blush at the thought of the treacherous plan to destroy them, at Cholula. "The gods had prophesied that they would find their grave there. But the gods were wrong; and it may be that the God of the whites is more powerful than ours.
Therefore, after a short consultation with his officers, he decided finally to take the road to Cholula. This ancient city lay six leagues to the south of Tlascala, and was most populous and flourishing. The inhabitants excelled in the art of working in metals and manufacturing cotton cloth and delicate pottery, but were indisposed to war, and less distinguished for courage than for cunning.
As for the great city of Cholula, it never had an existence; for if there had been, only three hundred years ago, such a city here, composed of 40,000 houses, with 400 towers, besides the 400 mosques, then some vestige or fragment of a fallen wall or a ruined tower would still be visible.
Even in Mexico these of Teotihuacán are not the largest; for, though the pyramid of Cholula is no higher, it covers far more ground. Were these monuments in Egypt, they would only rank, from their size, in the second class. As has often been remarked, such buildings as these can only be raised under peculiar social conditions.
If not, how is it that they did not avenge the indignities offered to them by the whites, at Cempoalla, where their images were hurled down from their altars? And at Cholula, where the most sacred of all the temples was attacked and captured, and the emblem of the White God set up on its summit? "You yourself, Roger Hawkshaw, warned us against these Spaniards.
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