In this extremity several of the officers and soldiers, among whom I was
one, waited on Cortes, and advised him to release his prisoners and to
make a fresh offer of friendship with the Tlascalans through these people.
He, who acted on all occasions like a good captain, never failing to
consult with us on affairs of importance, agreed with our present advice,
and gave orders accordingly. Donna Marina, whose noble spirit and
excellent judgment supported her on all occasions of danger, was now of
most essential service to us, as indeed she often was; as she explained in
the most forcible terms to these messengers, that if their countrymen did
not immediately enter into a treaty of peace with us, that we were
resolved to march against their capital, and would utterly destroy it and
their whole nation. Our messengers accordingly went to Tlascala, where
they waited on the chiefs of the republic, the principal messenger bearing
our letter in one hand, as a token of peace, and a dart in the other as a
signal of war, as if giving them their choice of either. Having delivered
our resolute message, it pleased GOD to incline the hearts of these
Tlascalan rulers to enter into terms of accommodation with us. The two
principal chiefs, named Maxicatzin and Xicotencatl the elder[8],
immediately summoned the other chiefs of the republic to council, together
with the cacique of Guaxocingo the ally of the republic, to whom they
represented that all the attacks which they had made against us had been
ineffectual, yet exceedingly destructive to them; that the strangers were
hostile to their inveterate enemies the Mexicans, who had been continually
at war against their republic for upwards of an hundred years, and had so
hemmed them in as to deprive them of procuring cotton or salt; and
therefore that it would be highly conducive to the interests of the
republic to enter into an alliance with these strangers against their
common enemies, and to offer us the daughters of their principal families
for wives, in order to strengthen and perpetuate the alliance between us.
This proposal was unanimously agreed upon by the council, and notice was