Whilst engaged in fortifying his new acquisition, and rendering it habitable, a second conspiracy was plotted against him; to counteract this, he proposed two methods, the latter of which was the most extraordinary that ever entered the mind of man. In the first place, he proposed to the council, to send an account of the riches, fertility, &c. of the country, to Don Carlos of Austria, the Spanish monarch, and to request him to ratify their proceedings, and to appoint Cortez, by the sign manual, as they had already done, in the name and on the behalf of His Majesty; this they consented to, and a vessel was dispatched for Spain, with orders not to touch at Cuba, for fear of the intention being thwarted by Velasquez. The second proposal was “_To burn the fleet_.” This, after great persuasion, and exhausting all his arts, he obtained their consent to do, and it was accordingly performed; thus leaving between five and six hundred men, at the mercy of a powerful and populous empire. After obtaining this triumph over the adherents of Velasquez, who had no resource but in the capacity of their leader, and in their own courage, marched from Zempoalla, on the 16th of August, 1519, with five hundred soldiers, fifteen horses, and six cannon; the cacique of Zempoalla gave him four hundred warriors and two hundred slaves. The rest of the troops were left as a garrison, to defend Villa Rica. With this force, he entered the state of Tlascala, where he met with great opposition for fourteen days; but after having beaten the Tlascalans at all points, without losing a man, these people made overtures for peace: he accepted their proposals, and they ever after acted as his best allies. He halted twenty days in Tlascala, where he endeavoured, as he had before done at Zempoalla, to convert the natives; but succeeded only in abolishing the immolation of human victims on the altars of their deities. It was by the intervention of a priest, Bartolomeo de Olvedo, his chaplain, whose name deserves to be recorded, that Cortez was restrained from converting the natives by the sword, when he found he could not otherwise attain that object.