"... as we had such brave captains and soldiers and of such good counsel and judgment, and primarily as we were very certain Our Lord Jesus Christ put his divine hand on all our affairs, four of our captains took Cortes aside in the [temporary makeshift] church together with twelve soldiers in whom he had confidence and confided, and I was one of them; we asked him to look at the net and trap we were in, the great strength of that city, the bridges and causeways, the words of warning they gave us in all the towns through which we had come that [the great god] Huichilobos had advised Montezuma to let us enter his city and they would kill us there; we said he should understand that the hearts of men are very changeable, especially among the Indians, and he should not have confidence in the goodwill and kindness Montezuma was showing us, because from one hour to the next he would change when he felt like attacking; and if he should stop our food or water or raise any bridge, we would not be able to fend for ourselves; and we told him to look at the great number of Indian warriors Montezuma had as his guard, and what could we do to attack them or defend ourselves, because all the houses were in the water? How could our friends the Tlaxcalans enter to help us?" [p. 219]Then if that weren't enough to proclaim their intense sense of urgency, Diaz leaps several flights of order in order to bring the point home.
"Since all this we were telling him was something to think about, he should right away seize Montezuma if we wanted to secure our lives... he should consider ... all the gold Montezuma gave us and what we had seen in the treasury of his father, Axayaca, and all the food we were eating would turn into arsenic in our body, that neither day nor night could we rest nor sleep with this thought, and that if any of our soldiers told him anything other than this, they would be like senseless beasts drawn to the sweetness of the gold, not seeing death staring them in the face." [pp. 219-20]
Prior to this, literally in the text, the men had found a new hidden treasure room and sealed it back up. Prior to that they had asked to build their own church. And this request followed close after having been allowed to view and enter the interior of the inner temple of Huichilobos high atop the great cu. Montezuma had excused himself after this, explaining they had probably offended the god by their presence as outsiders. The sense of doom was apparent to them.
"When Cortes heard this, he said: "Don't believe, gentlemen, that I'm asleep or that I don't have the same concern; I'm sure you must have felt it in me; but, what power do we have to be so bold as to sieze such a great lord in his own palace with his guards and warriors? What means can be found to try to put it into effect without his giving the alarm to his warriors and their attacking us immediately?" [p. 220]
A couple of the captains give a couple more reasons to seize the great king before being attacked. Some said the servants were becoming insolent with the soldiers and the Tlaxcalans agreed that the Mexica were not acting as kind as they had when first the Europeans arrived. They all discussed it at great length, Diaz tell us, and agreed to act quickly but not on one certain plan for that day. The next day, two Tlaxcala arrived with messages from Villa Rica, the settlement built on the coast.
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from ch xciii in Bernal Díaz de Castillo: The True History of the Conquest of New Spain translated with an introduction and notes by Janet Burke and Ted Humphrey, Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Co, Inc. 2012
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