Here a daughter clung to the neck of her aged father, here husbands and wives bade each other a last farewell, here mothers kissed their little children, and on every side rose up the sounds of bitter agony, the agony of those who parted for ever.

I buried my face in my hands, wondering as I had often wondered before, how a God whose name is Mercy can bear to look upon sights that break the hearts of sinful men to witness.
Presently I raised my eyes and spoke to Otomie, who was at my side, asking her if she would not send our son away with the others, passing him off as the child of common people.
'Nay, husband,' she answered, 'it is better for him to die with us, than to live as a slave of the Spaniards.' At length it was over and the gates had shut behind the last of them.
Soon we heard the distant challenge of the Spanish sentries as they perceived them, and the sounds of some shots followed by cries.
'Doubtless the Tlascalans are massacring them,' I said.

But it was not so.

When a few had been killed the leaders of the Spaniards found that they waged war upon an unarmed mob, made up for the most part of aged people, women and children, and their commander, Bernal Diaz, a merciful man if a rough one, ordered that the onslaught should cease.

Indeed he did more, for when all the able-bodied men, together with such children as were sufficiently strong to bear the fatigues of travel, had been sorted out to be sold as slaves, he suffered the rest of that melancholy company to depart whither they would.