Their plans were well laid. They prepared an ambush, allowed Cortés to pass the frontier, and then, after a little skirmishing, suddenly fell upon him with an overwhelming force, which to the astonished view of the Spaniards appeared to number 100,000 men. Notwithstanding the immense odds opposed to them, the Spaniards bravely maintained their ground; and at length, after a desperate conflict, the Tlascalans, daunted by the horses and the fire-arms of the Spaniards, to which they were unaccustomed, and disheartened by the havoc they sustained in this to them novel species of warfare, retreated. Among the slain were eight of their principal chiefs. On the side of the Spaniards the loss was inconsiderable. Thinking that this experience of the prowess of the Spaniards might have wrought a change in the disposition of the Tlascalans towards him, Cortés now determined to send an embassy to their camp with overtures of peace. The proposals were promptly rejected, and a message of defiance was returned from the Tlascalan general. The next day another battle followed, the odds being even greater than in the former engagement; but Spanish prowess, aided by dissensions in the Tlascalan camp, again proved victorious. The Tlascalans, thus repulsed, were assured by their priests, that their enemies, being children of the sun, received strength from his beams by day, and therefore must be attacked in the night; and that, being withdrawn from his rays, their vigor declined, and they faded and became like other men. A renewed trial, however, proved the falsity of this assertion, and, after desperate efforts against the invading foe, the Tlascalans were compelled to sue for peace. A treaty of alliance was formed for mutual protection, and Cortés and his troops were received, as beings of a superior order, into the city of Tlascala. After recruiting himself for twenty days at Tlascala, during which time Cortés sought to gain all the information he could respecting the condition of the Mexican empire, he prepared to resume his march. During his stay, the Tlascalans yielded readily to all his requests and commands, except the one by which they were required to dethrone their own gods, and substitute the objects of the Spaniards’ worship. Cortés, indignant at their refusal, was going to effect his object by force, had he not been restrained by the prudence of his chaplain, Olmedo, who represented to him the danger of such an attempt. The Tlascalans, therefore, were left to their own religious rites and objects of worship.