On St John’s day, 24th of June 1520, we again entered Mexico[1], where we met with a very different reception from what we had experienced on our former entry, on the 8th November 1519, seven months and a half before.  Not one of the nobles of our acquaintance came now to meet us, and the whole city seemed to have been deserted by its inhabitants.  On entering our quarters, Montezuma advanced to embrace Cortes, and to congratulate him on his victory; but our general turned from him with disdain, and would neither speak to him nor listen to his address, on which the king returned to his apartment much cast down.  Cortes made inquiry into the causes and circumstances of the late commotion, from all of which it was evident that it had neither been instigated nor approved by Montezuma; as if he had chosen to act against our garrison, they might all have been as easily destroyed as only seven.  Alvarado said, that the Indians were enraged at the detention of their sovereign, and by the erection of the cross in their temple; and that when they went, as they said by order of their gods, to pull it down, all their strength was unable to move it from its place; and that Montezuma had strictly enjoined them to desist from all such attempts.  In justification of himself, Alvarado alleged that the friends and subjects of Montezuma had planned the attack upon him for the liberation of their sovereign, at the time when they believed Cortes and his army had been destroyed by Narvaez:  And being questioned why he had fallen on the Mexicans, while holding a festival in honour of their gods, he pretended that he had intelligence of their hostile intentions from a priest and two nobles, and thought it safest to be beforehand with them.  When pressed by Cortes to say whether the Mexicans had not asked and obtained his permission to hold that festival, he acknowledged it was so, and that he had fallen upon them by anticipation, that he might terrify them into submission, and prevent them from going to war with the Spaniards.  Cortes was highly displeased with the conduct of Alvarado, and censured him in the strongest terms.

Alvarado alleged that during one of the attacks of the Mexicans on his quarters, he had endeavoured to fire off one of his guns and could not get the priming to take fire; but sometime afterwards, when they were in great danger, the gun went off of itself and made prodigious havock among the enemy, who were thus miraculously repulsed, and the Spaniards saved from inevitable destruction.  He said also, that the garrison being in great distress for water, they sank a pit in one of the courts, when immediately a spring of the sweetest water sprung up.  I know that there was a spring in the city which often produced tolerably fresh water[2].  Glory be to GOD for all his mercies!  Some alleged that Alvarado was excited to this attack by avarice, in order to plunder the Indians of their golden ornaments during the festival; but I am satisfied his attack proceeded from a mistaken idea of preventing insurrection by terror.  It is certain, that even after the massacre at the temple, Montezuma used every endeavour to prevent his subjects from attacking our people:  but they were so enraged that nothing could restrain their eager thirst for vengeance.