The arrival of the armament from Cuba under Narvaez, sent by Velasquez to punish Cortez for his treason, and his victory over Narvaez, and the union of those troops with his own, belong to the general historian—my task is to exhibit his treatment to the natives; and his next exploit, is that of exposing Montezuma to the view of his exasperated subjects from the battlements of his house, in the hope that his royal puppet might have authority enough to appease them; a scheme which proved the death of the emperor—for his own subjects, indignant at his tame submission to the Spaniards, let fly their arrows at him. The fury of the Mexicans on this catastrophe, the terrible nocturnal retreat of Cortez from the city, still called amongst the inhabitants of Mexico, _La Noche Triste_, the sorrowful night,—the strange battle of Otumba, where Cortez, felling the standard-bearer of the army, dispersed in a moment tens of thousands like a mist,—the flight to Tlascala, and the return again to the siege,—the eight thousand _Tamenes_, or servile Indians, bearing through the hostile country to the lake the brigantines in parts, ready to put together on their arrival,—Father Olmedo blessing the brigantines as they were launched on the lake in the presence of wondering multitudes,—and the desperate siege and assault themselves, all are full of the most stirring interest, and display a sort of satanic grandeur in the man, amidst the horrors into which his ambitious guilt had plunged him, that are only to be compared to that of Napoleon in Russia, beset, in his extremity, by the vengeful warriors of the north. But the crowning disgrace of Cortez, is that of putting to the torture the new emperor, Guatimotzin, the nephew and son-in-law of Montezuma, whom the Mexicans, in admiration of his virtues and talents, had placed on the throne. The bravery with which Guatimotzin had defended his city, the frankness with which he yielded himself when taken, would have made his person sacred in the eyes of a generous conqueror; but Guatimotzin had committed the crime, unpardonable in the eyes of a Spaniard, of casting the treasures for which the Spaniards harassed his country into the lake,—and Cortez had him put to the severest torture to force from him the avowal of where they lay. Even _he_ is said at length to have been ashamed of so base and horrid a business; yet he afterwards put him to death, and the manner in which this, and other barbarities are related by Robertson, is worthy of observation.