[129] Captain Diaz, a little loth sometimes, is emphatic in his encomiums on the valor shown by his commander on this occasion. “Here Cortés showed himself a very man, such as he always was. Oh, what a fighting, what a strenuous battle, did we have! It was a memorable thing to see us flowing with blood and full of wounds, and more than forty soldiers slain.” (Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 126.) The pens of the old chroniclers keep pace with their swords in the display of this brilliant exploit:--“colla penna e colla spada,” equally fortunate. See Rel. Seg. de Cortés, ap. Lorenzana, p. 138.--Gomara, Crónica, cap. 106.--Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, MS., lib. 12, cap. 22.--Herrera, Hist. general, dec. 2, lib. 10, cap. 9.--Oviedo, Hist. de las Ind., MS., lib. 33, cap. 13.--Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 4, cap. 69. [130] Archbishop Lorenzana is of opinion that this image of the Virgin is the same now seen in the church of _Nuestra Señora de los Remedios_! (Rel. Seg. de Cortés, ap. Lorenzana, p. 138, nota.) In what way the Virgin survived the sack of the city and was brought to light again, he does not inform us. But the more difficult to explain, the more undoubted the miracle. [131] No achievement in the war struck more awe into the Mexicans than this storming of the great temple, in which the white men seemed to bid defiance equally to the powers of God and man. Hieroglyphical paintings minutely commemorating it were to be frequently found among the natives after the Conquest. The sensitive Captain Diaz intimates that those which he saw made full as much account of the wounds and losses of the Christians as the facts would warrant. (Hist. de la Conquista, ubi supra.) It was the only way in which the conquered could take their revenge. [132] “Sequenti nocte, nostri erumpentes in vna viarum arci vicina, domos combussêre tercentum: in altera plerasque e quibus arci molestia fiebat. Ita nunc trucidando, nunc diruendo, et interdum vulnera recipiendo, in pontibus et in viis, diebus noctibusque multis laboratum est utrinque.” (Martyr, De Orbe Novo, dec. 5, cap. 6.) In the number of actions and their general result, namely, the victories, barren victories, of the Christians, all writers are agreed. But as to time, place, circumstance, or order, no two hold together. How shall the historian of the present day make a harmonious tissue out of these motley and many-colored threads? [133] It is the name by which she is still celebrated in the popular minstrelsy of Mexico. Was the famous Tlascalan mountain, _sierra de_ _Malinche_,--anciently “Mattalcueye,”--named in compliment to the Indian damsel? At all events, it was an honor well merited from her adopted countrymen. [134] According to Cortés, they boasted, in somewhat loftier strain, they could spare twenty-five thousand for one: “á morir veinte y cinco mil de ellos, y uno de los nuestros.” Rel. Seg. de Cortés, ap. Lorenzana, p. 139.