BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE OF TECUICHPO.
Tell me, ascribest thou influence to the stars?
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“Wo! wo! wo! to the imperial House of Tenochtitlan!
Never saw I the heavens in so inauspicious an
aspect. Dark portentous influences appear on every
side. May the horoscope of the infant daughter of
Montezuma never be fulfilled.”
These were the awful words of the priestly astrologer
of Tenochtitlan, uttered with solemn and oracular
emphasis from the lofty Teocalli, where he had been
long and studiously watching the heavens, and calculating
the relative positions and combinations of the
stars. A deep unutterable gloom seemed to pervade his
soul. Several times he traversed the broad terrace, in
a terrible agitation; his splendid pontifical robes flowing
loosely in the breeze, and his tall majestic figure
relieved against the clear sky, like some colossal moving
statue,—and then, in tones of deeper grief than
before, finding no error in his calculations, reiterated
his oracular curse—“Wo! wo! wo! to the imperial
House of Tenochtitlan!” Casting down his instruments
to the earth, and tearing his hair in the violence
of his emotions, he prostrated himself on the altar, and
poured forth a loud and earnest prayer to all his gods.
“Is there no favoring omen in any quarter, venerable
father?” inquired the agitated messenger from
the palace, when the prayer was ended—“is there no
one of those bright spheres above us, that will deign to
smile on the destiny of the young princess?”
“It is full of mysterious, portentous contradictions,”
replied the astrologer. “Good and evil influences contend
for the mastery. The evil prevail, but the good
are not wholly extinguished. The life of the princess
will be a life of sorrow, but there will be a peculiar
brightness in its end. Yet the aspect of every sign in
the heavens is wo, and only wo, to the imperial House
of Montezuma.”
Faith in the revelations of astrology was a deeply
rooted superstition with the Aztecs. It pervaded the
whole structure of society, affecting the most intelligent
and well-informed, as well as the humblest and most
ignorant individual. In this case, the prophetic wailings
of the priestly oracle rolled, like a long funereal
knell, through the magnificent halls of the imperial
palace, and fell upon the ear of the monarch, as if it had
been a voice from the unseen world. Montezuma was
reclining on a splendidly embroidered couch, in his private
apartment, anxiously awaiting the response of the
celestial oracle. He was magnificently arrayed in his
royal robes of green, richly ornamented with variegated
feather-work, and elaborately inwrought with gold and
silver. His sandals were of pure gold, with ties and
anklets of gold and silver thread, curiously interwoven
with a variegated cotton cord. On his head was a rich
fillet of gold, with a beautiful plume bending gracefully
over one side, casting a melancholy shade over his
handsome but naturally pensive features. A few of the
royal princes sat, in respectful silence, at the farther
end of the chamber, waiting, with an anxiety almost
equal to that of the monarch, the return of the royal
messenger.
The apartments of the emperor were richly hung
with tapestry of ornamental feather-work, rivalling, in
the brilliancy of its dyes, and the beautiful harmony of
its arrangement, the celebrated Gobelin tapestry. The
floor was a tesselated pavement of porphyry and other
beautiful stones. Numerous torches, supported in massive
silver stands, delicately carved with fanciful figures
of various kinds, blazed through the apartment, lighting
up, with an almost noonday brilliancy, the gorgeous
folds of the plumed hangings, and filling the whole
palace with the sweet breath of the odoriferous gums
of which they were composed.
The emperor leaned pensively on his hand, seemingly
oppressed with some superstitious melancholy
forebodings. Perhaps the shadow of that mysterious
prophecy, which betokened the extinction of the Aztec
dynasty, and the consequent ruin of his house, was
passing athwart the troubled sky of his mind, veiling
the always doubtful future in mists of tenfold dimness.
Whatever it was that disturbed his royal serenity, his
reverie was soon broken by the sound of an approaching
footstep. For a moment, nothing was heard but the
measured tread of the trembling messenger, pacing
with unwilling step the long corridor, that led to the
royal presence. With his head bowed upon his breast,
his eyes fixed upon the pavement, his person veiled in
the coarse nequen,[A]
and his feet bare, he stood before
the monarch, dumb as a statue.
“What response bring you,” eagerly enquired the
emperor, “from the burning oracles of heaven? How
reads the destiny of my new-born infant?”
“The response be to the enemies of the great Montezuma,”
replied the messenger, without lifting his eyes
from the floor, “and the destiny it foreshadows to the
children of them that hate him.”
“Speak,” exclaimed the monarch, “What message
do you bring from the priest of the stars?”
“Alas! my royal master, my message is full of wo—my
heart faints, and my tongue refuses its office to
give it utterance. The old prophet bade me say, that
the celestial influences are all unpropitious; that the
destiny of the infant princess is a life of sorrow, with a
gleam of more than earthly brightness in its evening
horizon. And then, prostrating himself upon the great
altar, he groaned out one long, deep, heart-rending wail
for the imperial House of Tenochtitlan, and the golden
realm of Anahuac.”
A deeper shade came over the brow of Montezuma,
and heaving a sigh from the very depths of a soul that
had long been agitated by melancholy forebodings of
coming evil, he raised his eyes to heaven, and said,
“the will of the gods be done.” Then, waving his
hand to his attendants, they bowed their heads, and
retired in silence from the apartment.
“It has come at last,” inwardly groaned the monarch,
as soon as he found himself alone—“it has
come at last—that fearful prophecy, that has so long
hung, like the shadow of a great cloud, over my
devoted house, is now to be fulfilled. The fates have
willed it, and there is no escape from their dread
decrees. I must make ready for the sacrifice.”
Nerved by the stern influence of this dark fatalism,
Montezuma brushed a tear from his eye, and putting a
royal restraint upon the turbulent sorrows and fears of
his paternal heart, hastened to the apartments of the
queen, to break to her, with all the gentleness and caution
which her delicate and precarious circumstances
required, the mournful issue of their inquiries at the
court of heaven, into the future destiny and prospects
of their new-born babe.
A deep gloom hung over the palace and the city.
Every heart, even the most humble and unobserved,
sympathized in the disappointment, and shared the distress,
of their sovereign. And the day, which should
have been consecrated to loyal congratulations, and
general festivities, became, as by common consent, a
sort of national fast, a season of universal lamentation.
The little stranger was welcomed into life with that
peculiar chastened tenderness, which is the natural
offspring of love and pity—love, such as infant innocence
wins spontaneously from every heart—pity, such
as melancholy forebodings of coming years of sorrow to
one beloved, cannot fail to awaken. She was regarded
as the most beautiful and the most interesting of all her
race. Every look and motion seemed to have its peculiar
significance in indicating the victim of a remarkable
destiny. And it is not to be wondered at, that a
superstition so sad, and an affection so tender and solicitous,
discovered an almost miraculous precocity in
the first developments of the intellectual and moral
qualities of its subject. She was the attractive centre
of all the admiration and love of the royal household.
Imagination fancied a peculiar sadness in her eye, and
her merry laugh was supposed to mingle an element of
sadness in its tones. Her mild and winning manners,
and her affectionate disposition made her the idol of all
whom she loved; and each one strove to do her service,
as if hoping to avert, in some measure, the coming doom
of their darling; while she clung to the fond and
devoted hearts around her, as the ivy clings to the oak,
which receives its embraces, and is necessary to its
support.
When the young princess, who received the name of
Tecuichpo, had arrived at the age of one year, she was
given in charge to a young and beautiful slave, whom
the Emperor had recently obtained from Azcapozalco.
Karee was gifted with rare powers of minstrelsy. Her
voice had the sweetness, power and compass of a
mocking bird, and all day long she warbled her ever-changing
lays, as if her natural breathing were music,
and song the natural flow of her thoughts. She soon
became passionately devoted to the little pet, and exerted
all her uncommon gifts to amuse and instruct her.
She taught her all the native songs of Azcapozalco
and Mexitli, instructed her in dancing, embroidery and
feather-work, and initiated her into the science of
picture-writing and the fanciful language of flowers.
Karee and her royal charge were never apart. Gentle
and timid as the dove, Tecuichpo clung to her new
nurse, as to the bosom of a mother. Even in her early
infancy, she would so sweetly respond, like an echo,
to the gentle lullaby, and mingle her little notes so symphoniously
with those of Karee, that it excited the
wonder and admiration of all. Karee was passionately
fond of flowers. It was indeed an element in the
national taste of this remarkable people. But Karee
was unusually gifted in her preceptions of natural
beauty, and seemed to have a soul most delicately
attuned to the spirit and language of flowers, the painted
hieroglyphics of nature. She loved to exercise her
exuberant fancy in decorating her little mistress, and
often contrived so to arrange them upon the various
parts of her person and dress, as to make her at different
times, the emblematic representation of every bright and
beautiful spirit, that was supposed to people their celestial
paradise, or to hover, on wings of love and gentle
care, about the path of those whom the gods delighted
to favor.
It was the daily custom for Karee to carry the young
princess into the apartment of the Emperor, as soon as
he rose from his siesta, to receive the affectionate
caresses which her royal father was so fond of lavishing
upon her. At such times, Tecuichpo would often
take with her some rich chaplets of flowers which
Karee had woven for her, and amuse herself and her
father, by arranging them in a coronet on his brow, or
twining them, in every fantastic form, about his person,
to make, as she said, a flower-god of him, who was a
sun to all the flowers of her earthly paradise.
One day, when the young princess was sleeping in
her little arbor, the ever watchful nurse observed a
viper among the flowers, which she had strown about
her pillow, just ready to dart its venomous fang into
the bosom of her darling. Quick as lightning she
seized the reptile in her hand, and, before he had time
to turn upon her, flung him upon the floor, and crushed
him under her sandalled heel. Passionately embracing
her dear charge, she hastened with her to the apartments
of the queen, and related the story of her narrow
escape, with so much of the eloquence of gratitude for
being the favored instrument of her deliverance from so
cruel a death, that it deeply affected the heart of the
queen. She embraced her child and Karee, as if both
were, for the moment, equally dear to her; and then, in
return for the faithful service, rendered at the hazard of
her own life, she promised to bestow upon the slave
whatever she chose to ask. “Give me, O give me
freedom, and a chinampa, and I ask no more,” was the
eager reply of Karee to this unexpected offer of the
queen. The request was immediately granted; and
the first sorrow that ever clouded the heart of the lovely
Tecuichpo, was that of parting with her faithful and
loving Karee.
A chinampa was a floating island in the lake of
Tezcuco, upon whose very bosom the imperial city was
built. They were very numerous, and some of them
were large, and extremely beautiful. They were
formed by the alluvial deposit in the waters of the lake,
and by occasional masses of earth detached from the
shores, held together by the fibrous roots, with which
they were penetrated, and which in that luxurious
clime, put out their feelers in every direction, and
gathered to their embrace whatever of nutriment and
support the richly impregnated waters afforded. In the
process of a few years accumulation, the floating mass
increased in length, breadth and thickness, till it
became an island, capable of sustaining not only shrubs
and trees, but sometimes a human habitation. Some
of these were from two to three hundred feet square,
and could be moved about at pleasure, like a raft, from
city to city, along the borders of the lake. The natives,
who were skilful gardeners, and passionately devoted
to the cultivation of flowers, improved upon this
beautiful hint of nature, to enlarge their means of supplying
the capital with fruits, vegetables and flowers.
Constructing small rafts of reeds, anchoring them out in
the lake, and then covering them with the sediment
drawn up from the bottom, they soon found them
covered with a thrifty vegetation, and a vigorous soil,
from which they were able to produce a large supply of
the various luxuries of their highly favored clime.
It was to one of these fairy gardens that the beautiful
Karee retired, rich in the priceless jewel of freedom,
and feeling that a chinampa all her own, and flowers
to train and commune with, was the summit of human
desire. Karee was no common character. Gifted by
nature with unusual talents, she had, though in adverse
circumstances, cultivated them by all the means in her
power. Remarkably quick of perception, and shrewd
and accurate of observation, with a memory that
retained every thing that was committed to it, in its
exact outlines and proportions, she was enabled to
gather materials for improvement from every scene
through which she passed. Her imagination was
exceedingly powerful and active, sometimes wild and
terrific, but kept in balance by a sound judgment and a
discriminating taste. Her love of flowers was a
passion, a part of her nature. For her they had a language,
if not a soul. And there was not one of all the
endless varieties of that luxuriant clime, that had not a
definite and emphatic place in the vocabulary of her
fancy. The history of her life she could have written
in her floral dialect, and to her, though its lines might
have faded rapidly, its pages would have been always
legible and eloquent. Her attachments were strong
and enduring, and there was that element of heroism
in her soul, that she would unhesitatingly have sacrificed
life for the object of her love.
It is not to be wondered at, that, with such qualities
of mind and heart, Karee was deeply impressed with
the solemn and imposing superstitions of the Aztec
religion. The rites and ceremonies by which they
were illustrated and sustained, were well calculated to
stir to its very depths, a soul like hers, and give the
fullest exercise to her wild imagination. That pompous
ritual, those terrible orgies, repeated before her eyes
almost daily from her infancy, had become blended
with the thoughts and associations of her mind, and intimately
related to every scene that interested her heart,
or engaged her fancy. Yet her soul was not enslaved
to that dark and dismal superstition. Though accustomed
to an awful veneration of the priesthood, she did
not regard them as a superior race of beings, or listen
to their words, as if they had been audible voices from
heaven. Her spirit shrunk from many of the darker
revelations of the established mythology, and openly
revolted from some of its inhuman exactions. Its
chains hung loosely upon her; and she seemed fully
prepared for the freedom of a purer and loftier faith.
Her extreme beauty, her bewitching gaiety, and her
varied talents, attracted many admirers, and some noble
and worthy suitors. But Karee had another destiny to
fulfil. She felt herself to be the guardian angel of the
ill-fated Tecuichpo, and her love for the princess left no
room for any other passion in her heart. She therefore
refused all solicitations, and remained the solitary
mistress of her floating island.
Karee’s departure from the palace, did not in any
degree lessen her interest in the welfare of the young
princess. She was assiduous in her attention to every
thing that could promote her happiness; and seemed to
value the flowers she cultivated on her chinampa
chiefly as they afforded her the means of daily correspondence
with Tecuichpo. She managed her island
like a canoe, and moved about from one part of the
beautiful lake to another, visiting by turns the cities that
glittered on its margin, and sometimes traversing the
valleys in search of new flowers, or exploring the
ravines and caverns of the mountains for whatever of
rare and precious she might chance to find. The
chivalry of the Aztecs rendered such adventures perfectly
safe, their women being always regarded with the
greatest tenderness and respect, and treated with a delicacy
seldom surpassed in the most civilized countries of
Christendom.
This chivalric sentiment was, not improbably heightened,
in the case of Karee, in part by her extreme beauty,
and in part by the power of her genius and the brilliancy
of her wit. She commanded respect by the force
of her intellect, and the purity of her heart; while the
uncommon depth and splendor of her imagination, when
excited by any favorite theme, and the seemingly inexhaustible
fruitfulness of her mental resources, invested
her, in the view of the multitude, with something of the
dignity, and much of the superstitious charm of a
prophetess.
YOUTH OF THE PRINCESS—HER EARLY LOVE REVEALED—PROPHETIC
ANNOUNCEMENT AND SUDDEN ARRIVAL OF
THE SPANIARDS.
Breathe not his noble name even to the winds,
Lest they my love reveal.
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I have mystical lore,
And coming events cast their shadows before.
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The childhood of the fair princess passed away without
any event of importance, except the occasional
recurrence of those dark prophecies which overshadowed
her entrance into life. Her father, who had
exercised the office of priest before he came to the
throne, was thoroughly imbued with the superstitious
reverence for astrology, which formed a part of the
religion of the Aztecs. To all the predictions of this
mystic science he yielded implicit belief, regarding
whatever it foreshadowed as the fixed decrees of fate.
He was, therefore, fully prepared, and always on the
look-out, for new revelations to confirm and establish
his faith. These were sometimes found in the trivial
occurrences of every-day life, and sometimes in the
sinister aspect of the heavenly bodies, at peculiar
epochs in the life of his daughter. With this superstitious
foreboding of evil, the pensive character of the
princess harmonized so well, as to afford, to the mind
of the too credulous monarch, another unquestionable
indication of her destiny. It seemed to be written on
her brow, that her life was a doomed one; and each
returning year was counted as the last, and entered
upon with gloomy forebodings of some terrible catastrophe.
As her life advanced, her charms, both of person and
character matured and increased; and, at the age of
fourteen, there was not a maiden in all the golden
cities of Anahuac, who could compare with Tecuichpo.
Her exceeding loveliness was the theme of many a
song, and the fame of her beauty and her accomplishments
was published in all the neighboring nations.
While yet a child, her hand was eagerly sought by
Cacamo, of the royal house of Tezcuco; but, with the
true chivalry of an unselfish devotion, his suit was
withdrawn, on discovering that her young affections
were already engaged to another. The discovery was
made in a manner too singular and striking to be suffered
to pass unnoticed.
In the course of her wanderings in the forest, Karee
had taken captive a beautiful parrot, of the most gorgeous
plumage, and the most astonishing capacity.
This chatterer, after due training and discipline, she
had presented to her favorite princess, among a
thousand other tokens of her unchangeable affection.
Tecuichpo loved the beautiful mimic, to whom she
gave the name of Karee-o-thán—the voice of Karee,—and
often amused herself with teaching her to repeat
the words which she loved best to hear. Without
being aware of the publicity she was thus giving to her
most treasured thoughts, she entrusted to the talkative
bird the secret of her love, by associating with the most
endearing epithets, the name of her favored cavalier.
While strolling about the magnificent gardens attached
to the palace of Montezuma, Cacamo was wont to
breathe out, in impassioned song, his love for Tecuichpo,
repeating her name, with every expression of
passionate regard, which the language afforded. Karee-o-thán
was often flying about in the gardens, and
soliloquizing in the arbors, the favorite resorts of her
beautiful mistress, and often attracted the notice of
Cacamo.
One evening, as the prince was more than usually
eloquent in pouring into the ear of Zephyr the tale
of his love, the mimic bird, perched upon a flowering
orange tree, that filled the garden with its delicious
perfume, repeated the name of his mistress, as often as
her lover uttered it, occasionally connecting with it the
name of Guatimozin, and then adding some endearing
epithet, expressive of the most ardent admiration. The
prince was first amused, and then vexed, at the frequent
repetition of the name of his rival. In vain did
he endeavor to induce the mischievous bird to substitute
his own name for that of Guatimozin. As often as he
uttered the name of the princess, the echo in the orange
tree gave back “noble Guatimozin,” or “sweet Guatimozin,”
or some other similar response, which left no
doubt on the mind of Cacamo, that the heart of his
mistress was pre-occupied, and that the nephew of
Montezuma was the favored object of her love. The
next day, he bade adieu to Tenochtitlan, placed himself
at the head of the army of Tezcuco, and plunged
into a war then raging with a distant tribe on the west,
hoping to bury his disappointment in the exciting
scenes of conquest.
Guatimozin was of the royal blood, and, as his after
history will show, of a right royal and heroic spirit.
From his childhood, he had exhibited an unusual
maturity of judgment, coupled with an energy, activity,
and fearlessness of spirit, which gave early assurance
of a heroism worthy of the supreme command, and an
intellectual superiority that might claim succession to
the throne. His training was in the court and the
camp, and he seemed equally at home and in his element,
amid the refined gaieties of the palace, the grave
deliberations of the royal council, and the mad revelry
of the battle-field. His figure was of the most perfect
manly proportions, tall, commanding, graceful—his
countenance was marked with that peculiar blending
of benignity and majesty, which made it unspeakably
beautiful and winning to those whom he loved, and
terrible to those on whom he frowned. He was mild,
humane, generous, confiding; yet sternly and heroically
just. His country was his idol. The one great passion
of his soul, to which all other thoughts and affections
were subordinate and tributary, was patriotism.
On that altar, if he had possessed a thousand lives, he
would freely have laid them all. Such was the noble
prince who had won the heart of Tecuichpo.
Meanwhile, to the anxious eye of her imperial father,
the clouds of fate seemed to hang deep and dark over
the realm of Anahuac. Long before the prophetic wail,
which welcomed the lovely Tecuichpo to a life of sorrow,
Montezuma had imbibed from the dark legends of
ancient prophecies, and the faint outgivings of his own
priestly oracles, a deep and ineradicable impression that
some terrible calamity was impending over the realm,
and that he was to be the last of its native monarchs.
It was dimly foreshadowed, in these prophetic revelations,
that the descendants of a noble and powerful race
of men, who had many ages before occupied that
beautiful region, and filled it with the works of their
genius, but who had been driven out by the cruelty
and perfidy of the Toltecs, would return, invested with
supernatural power from heaven, to re-possess their
ancient inheritance.[B]
To this leading and long established
faith, every dark and doubtful omen contributed
its appropriate share of confirmation. To this, every
significant event was deemed to have a more or less
intimate relation. So that, at this particular epoch, not
only the superstitious monarch, and his priestly astrologers,
but the whole nation of Azteca were prepared, as
were the ancient Jews at the advent of the Messiah, for
great events, though utterly unable to imagine what
might be the nature of the expected change.
These gloomy forebodings of coming evil so thoroughly
possessed the mind of Montezuma, that the
commanding dignity and pride of the monarch gave
way before the absorbing anxiety of the man and the
father, and, in a manner, unfitted him for the duties of
the lofty place he had so nobly filled. He yielded, as
will be seen in the sequel, not without grief, but without
resistance, to the fixed decrees of fate, and awaited
the issue, as a victim for the heaven-appointed sacrifice.
It was about fifteen years after the prophetic
announcement of the doom of the young princess of the
empire, that Montezuma was reclining in his summer
saloon, where he had been gloomily brooding over his
darkening prospects, till his soul was filled with sadness.
His beautiful daughter was with him, striving to cheer
his heart with the always welcome music of her songs,
and the affectionate expression of a love as pure and
deep as ever warmed the heart of a devoted child. She
had gone that day into the royal presence to ask a boon
for her early and faithful friend, Karee. This lovely
and gifted creature, now in the full maturity of all her
wonderful powers of mind, and personal attractions, had
often been admitted, as a special favorite, into the royal
presence, to exhibit her remarkable powers of minstrelsy,
and her almost supernatural gifts as an improvisatrice
of the wild melodies of Anahuac. Some of
her chants were of rare pathos and sublimity, and sometimes
she was so carried away with the impassioned
vehemence of her inspiration, that she seemed an
inspired messenger from the skies, uttering in their language
the oracles of the gods. On this occasion, she had
requested permission to sing a new chant in the palace,
that she might seize the opportunity to breathe a prophetic
warning in the ear of the emperor. She had
thrice dreamed that the dark cloud which had so long
hung over that devoted land, had burst in an overwhelming
storm, upon the capital, and buried Montezuma
and all his house in indiscriminate ruin. She had
seen the demon of destruction, in the guize of a snow
white angel, clad in burnished silver, borne on a fiery
animal, of great power, and fleet as the wind, having
under him a small band of warriors, guarded and
mounted like himself, armed with thunderbolts which
they hurled at will against all who opposed their progress.
She had seen the monarch of Tenochtitlan, with
his hosts of armed Mexicans, and the tributary armies
of Tezcuco, Islacapan, Chalco, and all the cities of that
glorious valley, tremble and cower before this small
band of invaders, and yield himself without a blow to
their hands. She had seen the thousands and tens of
thousands of her beloved land fall before this handful
of strangers, and melt away, like the mists of the morning
before the rising sun. And she had heard a voice
from the dark cloud as it broke, saying, sternly, as the
forked lightning leaped into the heart of the imperial
palace, “The gods help only those who help themselves.”
Filled and agitated with the stirring influence of this
prophetic vision, Karee, who had always regarded herself
as the guardian genius of Tecuichpo, now imagined
the sphere of her duty greatly enlarged, and deemed
herself specially commissioned to save the empire from
impending destruction. Weaving her vision, and the
warning it uttered, into one of her most impassioned
chants, and arraying herself as the priestess of nature,
she followed Tecuichpo, with a firm step into the royal
presence, and, with the boldness and eloquence of a
prophetess, warned him of the coming danger, and
urged him to arouse from his apathy, unbecoming the
monarch of a proud and powerful nation, cast off the
slavery of his superstitious fears, and prepare to meet,
with the power of a man, and the wisdom of a king,
whatever evil might come upon him. Rising with the
kindling inspiration of her theme, she ventured gently
to reproach the awe-struck monarch with his unmanly
fears, and to remind him that on his single will, and the
firmness of his soul, hung not only his own destiny but
that of wife and children; and more than that, of a
whole nation, whose myriads of households looked up
to him, as the common father of them all, the heaven-appointed
guardian of their lives, liberty and happiness.
At length, alarmed at her own energy and boldness, so
unwonted even to the proudest noble of the realm, in
that royal presence, she bent her knee, and baring her
bosom, she lowered her voice almost to a whisper, and
said imploringly—
Strike, monarch! strike, this heart is thine,
To live or die for thee;
Strike, but heed this voice of mine
It comes from heaven, through me;
It comes to save this blessed land,
It comes thy soul to free
From those dark fears, and bid thee stand
The monarch father of thy land,
That only lives in thee.
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Strike, father! if my words too bold
Thy royal ears offend;
The visions of the night are told,
Thy destiny the gods unfold—
Oh! be thy people’s friend,
True to thyself, to them, to heaven—
So shall this lowering cloud be riven
And light and peace descend,
To bless this golden realm, and save
Tecuichpo from an early grave.
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The vision of the beautiful pythoness had deeply and
powerfully affected the soul of Montezuma; and her
closing appeal moved him even to tears. Though
accustomed to the most obsequious deference from all
his subjects, even from the proudest of his nobles, he
had listened to every word of Karee with the profoundest
attention and interest, as if it had been from the acknowledged
oracle of heaven. When she ceased, there was
a breathless silence in the hall. The monarch drew
his lovely daughter to his bosom in a passionate
embrace. Karee remained prostrate, with her face to
the ground, her heart throbbing almost audibly with the
violence of her emotions. Suddenly, a deep long blast
from a distant trumpet announced the arrival of a
courier at the capital. It was a signal for all the attendants
to retire. Tecuichpo tenderly kissing her father,
took Karee by the hand, raised her up and led her out,
and the monarch was left alone.
In a few moments, the courier arrived and entering,
barefoot and veiled, into the royal presence, bowed to
the very ground, handed a scroll to the king, and
departed. When Montezuma had unrolled the scroll,
he seemed for a moment, as if struck with instant paralysis.
Fear, astonishment, dismay, seized upon his
soul. The vision of Karee was already fulfilled. The
pictured tablet was the very counterpart of her oracular
chant—the literal interpretation of her prophetic vision.
It announced the arrival within the realms of Montezuma,
of a band of pale faced strangers, clad in burnished
armor, each having at his command a beautiful
animal of great power, hitherto unknown in that
country, that bore him with the speed of the wind
wherever he would go, and seemed, while he was
mounted, to be a part of himself. It described their
weapons, representing them as having the lightning and
thunder at their disposal, which they caused to issue
sometimes from dark heavy engines, which they
dragged along the ground, and sometimes from smaller
ones which they carried in their hands. It delineated,
faithfully and skilfully their “water houses,” or ships,
in which they traversed the great waters, from a far distant
country. The peculiar costume and bearing of their
commander, and of his chiefs, were also happily represented
in the rich coloring for which the Aztecs were
distinguished. Nothing was omitted in their entire
array, which could serve to convey to the eye of the
emperor a correct and complete impression of the appearance,
numbers and power of the strangers. It was all
before him, at a glance, a living speaking picture, and
told the story of the invasion as graphically and eloquently,
as if he had been himself a witness of their
debarkation, and of their feats of horsemanship. It was
all before him, a terrible living reality. The gods
whom he worshipped had sent these strangers to fulfil
their own irresistible purposes—if, indeed, these were
not the gods themselves, in human form.
The mind of Montezuma was overwhelmed. Like
Belshazzar, when the divine hand appeared writing his
doom on the wall, his soul fainted in him, his knees
smote together, and he sat, in blank astonishment,
gazing on the picture before him, as if the very tablet
possessed a supernatural power of destruction.
Paralyzed with the influence of his long indulged
fears so singularly and strikingly realized, the monarch
sat alone, neither seeking comfort, nor asking counsel
of any one, till the hour of the evening repast. The
summons aroused him from his reverie; but he regarded
it not. He remained alone, in his own private apartments,
during the whole night, fasting and sleepless,
traversing the marble halls in an agony of agitation.
With the first light of the morning, the shrill notes of
the trumpet, reverberating along the shadowy slopes of
the cordilleras, announced the approach of another
courier from the camp of the strangers. It rung in the
ears of the dejected monarch, like an alarum. He
awoke at once from his stupor, and began to consider
what was to be done. The warning of Karee rushed
upon his recollection. Her bold and timely appeal
struck him to the heart. He resolved to be once more
the monarch, and the father of his people. Uttering an
earnest prayer to all his gods, he awaited the arrival of
the courier.
Swift of foot as the mountain deer, the steps of the
messenger were soon heard, measuring with solemn
pace, the long corridor of the royal mansion, as one who
felt that he was approaching the presence of majesty,
and bearing a message pregnant with the most important
issues to the common weal. Bowing low, with that
profound reverence, which was rigorously exacted of all
who approached the presence of Montezuma, he touched
the ground with his right hand, and then, his eyes bent
to the earth, delivered his pictured scroll, and retired.
It was a courteous and complimentary message from the
strangers he so much dreaded, requesting that they
might be permitted to pay their respects to his imperial
majesty, in his own capital. The quick-sighted monarch
perceived at once that prudence and policy
required that this interview should be prevented.
A council of the wisest and most experienced of the
Aztec nobles was immediately called. The opinions
of the royal advisers were variously expressed, but all,
with one accord, agreed that the request of the strangers
could not be granted. Some counselled a bold and
warlike message, commanding the intruders to depart
instantly, on pain of the royal displeasure. Some
recommended their forcible expulsion by the army of
the empire. The more aged and experienced, who had
learned how much easier it is to avoid, than to escape, a
danger, proposed a more courteous and peaceable reply
to the message of the strangers. They deemed it
unworthy of a great and powerful monarch, to be
angry, when the people of another nation visited his
territories, or requested permission to see his capital.
To manifest, or feel any thing like fear, in such a case,
would be a reproach alike upon his courage and his
patriotism. So long, therefore, as the strangers conducted
themselves peaceably, and with becoming deference
to the will of the emperor, and the laws of the
realm, they should be treated civilly, and hospitably
entertained.
To this wise and prudent counsel, the monarch was
already fully prepared to yield. It was strongly
seconded by his superstitious reverence for the heaven-sent
strangers, and his mortal dread of their superhuman
power. He, therefore, selected the noblest and
wisest of his chiefs as ambassadors, to bear his message,
which was kindly and courteously expressed; at
the same time conveying a firm but respectful refusal to
admit the foreigners to an interview in the capital, or
to extend to them the protection of the court, after a
reasonable time had elapsed for their re-embarkation.
This message was accompanied with a munificent royal
present, consisting of the richest and most beautiful
suits of apparel for the chief and all his men, with
gorgeous capes and robes of feather-work, glittering
with jewels—precious stones richly set in gold, and
many magnificent ornaments of pure gold.
At the head of this embassy were princes of high
estate, and most noble bearing, commanding in person,
and of great distinction, both at the court and in the
camp. When they arrived near the encampment of
the strangers, which was the spot where the city of
Vera Cruz now stands, they sent a courier forward,
to announce their approach, and prepare for their
reception.
The meeting of the parties was one of no little pomp
and ceremony, for the courtly manners and chivalric
bearing of the European cavaliers were scarcely superior,
in impressiveness and effect, to the barbaric splendor,
and graceful consciousness of power, which characterized
the flower of the Aztec nobility. The chief,
advancing towards the invaders, bowed low to earth,
touching the ground with his right hand, then raising
it to his head, and presenting it to his guest, announced
himself as the envoy and servant of the great Montezuma,
sole monarch and master of all the realms of
Anahuac; and demanded the name of the stranger, the
country from which he came, and the motives which
induced him to trespass upon the sacred territories of
his royal master, and to presume to ask an interview
with the emperor, in his capital. The Castilian chieftain,
with a courteous and knightly bearing replied,
that his name was Hernando Cortez—that he was one
of the humblest of the servants of the great Charles, the
mighty monarch of Spain, and sovereign ruler of the
Indies, and that he had come, with his little band of
followers, to pay his court to the great Montezuma, and
to bear to him the fraternal salutation of his master,
which he could only deliver in person.
The reply of the Mexican was dignified, courteous,
and pointed, and left no hope to the Spaniard, that he
would then be able to effect his purpose, of visiting in
person the golden city. “If,” said the prince, “your
monarch had come himself to our shores, he might
well demand a personal meeting with our lord, the
emperor, but when he sends his servant to represent
him, he surely cannot presume to do more than communicate
with the servants of the great Montezuma.
If it were possible that another sun should visit yonder
sky, he might look upon our sun, in his march, and
move and shine in his presence. But the moon and
the stars cannot shine when he is abroad. They can
look upon each other only when he withdraws his
light.”
The royal message having been delivered, the presents
which accompanied it were brought forward, and
spread out upon mats, in front of the general’s tent.
The Spaniards were struck, with surprise and admiration
at the fineness of the texture of the cloths, the
richness of their dyes, the gorgeous coloring and tasteful
arrangement of the feather-work, the masterly workmanship
and exquisite finish of the jewelry, and, above
all, the immense value, and magnificent size of the
golden toys which were presented them. They conceived,
at once, the most exalted ideas of the riches of
the country, and the munificence and splendor of the
monarch that ruled over it. Their avarice and cupidity
were strongly excited, and more than one of the inferior
officers, as well as their general, formed the immediate
resolution, that, in despite of the imperial interdict,
they would endeavor, either by diplomacy or by force,
to win their way to the capital, which they supposed
must of necessity be the grand depository of all the
treasures in the empire. Their intentions were kept
secret, even from each other, and, under cover of a specious
submission to the expressed will of the monarch,
Cortez requested permission to delay his departure, till
his men should be recruited, and his stores replenished
for his long voyage.
Meanwhile, taking advantage of this unauthorized
reprieve, the artful and indefatigable Castilian contrived
to draw off from their unwilling and burdensome
allegiance to Montezuma, the Totonacs, a considerable
tribe, residing in that part of the country where he had
effected his landing; and so to impress them with a
sense of his own power and the lenity of his government,
as to bind them to him in a solemn treaty of alliance.
He also sent an embassy to the Tlascalans, a
nation that had long maintained its independence
against the ambitious encroachments of Mexico, and
held Montezuma their natural and only foe. They
were a brave and warlike people, and nearly as far
advanced in the arts of civilization as their enemies.
Their government was a kind of republic. Cortez, with
magniloquent pretensions of invincible power, and inexhaustible
resources, proposed to assist the Tlascalans in
reducing the power of Mexico, and putting an end to
the oppressions and exactions of Montezuma. For this
purpose, he asked leave to pass through their country,
on his march to the great capital.
Distrusting the intentions of the strangers, and fearing
that, instead of a disinterested friend and ally, they
should find in them only a new enemy, whom, once
admitted, they could never expel from their dominions,
and whose yoke might be even harder to bear than
that which the Aztec monarch had in vain attempted
to fasten upon them—the proposed alliance of the
Spaniards was rejected, with such bold and ample
demonstrations of hostility, as left no room for doubt,
that any attempt to force a passage through their territories,
would be fiercely and ably contested.
Never daunted by obstacles, though somewhat perplexed,
the brave Cortez rushed forward, encountered
the almost countless hosts of the Tlascalan army, and,
after several severe and deadly contests, in which the
skill and prowess of his handful of men, with their
terrible horses and yet more terrible fire-arms, were
nearly overpowered by the immense numbers, astonishing
bravery, and comparative skill of the enemy, he
succeeded in terrifying them into submission, and winning
them to a treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive,
against the tyrant Montezuma, the common enemy
of all the nations of Anahuac. By these singular and
unparalleled successes, the little band of Castilian
adventurers found themselves fortified, in the heart of
the country, in close alliance with two powerful tribes,
who swelled their army to ten times its original number,
besides supplying them liberally with all the provisions
that were needed for themselves and horses.
Never was adventure so rashly undertaken, or so
boldly pushed, as this singular expedition of the
Spanish cavaliers. And never, probably, were there
associated, in one little band, so many of the master
spirits of chivalry, the true material of a conquering
army. The compeers of Cortez, who submitted to his
authority, and acted in perfect harmony with him, as
if they were but subordinate parts of himself, were
each competent to command a host, and lead it on to
certain victory. The impetuous, daring Alvarado, the
cool, courageous, trusty Sandoval, the high-spirited,
chivalrous Olid, the rash, head-long, cruel Velasquez
de Leon, and others, worthy to be the comrades of
these, and of Cortez—when have the ranks of the war-god
assigned so many master spirits to one enterprize?
And the brave, the gifted, the indomitable Xicotencatl,
the mountain chief of Tlascala, whom the Spaniards,
with so much difficulty, first subdued and then won to
their cause, as an ally—what a noble personification
of the soul and spirit of heroism, realizing in personal
bravery, martial skill and prowess, and in all the commanding
qualities of person and of character, which go
to constitute the victorious warrior, the best pictures of
the type-heroes of epic poetry and history.
In all their previous discoveries in the New World,
the progress of the Spaniards to victory was easy, and
almost unresisted. The invaders of Mexico, however,
found themselves suddenly introduced to a new people,
and new scenes—to nations of warriors, to races intelligent,
civilized, and competent to self-government and
self-defence. And all the skill, courage, and energy of
their ablest commanders, and their bravest men, would
have availed them nothing in their herculean enterprize,
if they had not craftily and skilfully worked
upon the jealousies and differences existing between
the various tribes and nations of Anahuac, and fomented
the long smothered discontents, and unwritten complaints
of an over-taxed and sternly-governed people,
into open and clamorous resistance to the despotic sway
of Montezuma. It is curious and melancholy to
observe, how eagerly they shook off the golden yoke
of their hereditary monarch, for the iron one of a new
master, and exchanged their long-established servitude
to their legitimate king and their pagan gods, for a
more galling, hopeless, and wasting slavery to the cruel
and rapacious invader, under the life-promising Sign
of the Cross, the desecrated banner of the Prince of
Peace.
SUPERSTITIOUS FEAR AND VACILLATING POLICY OF
MONTEZUMA.
The land was ours—this glorious land—
With all its wealth of woods and streams—
Our warriors, strong in heart and hand,
Our daughters, beautiful as dreams.
|
| ——— |
And then we heard the omens say,
That God had sent his angels forth
To sweep our ancient tribes away—
|
While these events were transpiring in the ever
moving camp of the victorious invaders, the imperial
court of Tenochtitlan was agitated and distracted by the
divided counsels and wavering policy of the superstitious,
fear-stricken monarch, and his various advisers.
At one time, deeply offended by their audacious disregard
of his positive prohibitions, and roused to a sense
of his duty as a king, by the prophetic warning of
Karee, which never ceased to ring in his ears, Montezuma
was almost persuaded to give in to the war-party,
and send out an army that should overwhelm the
strangers at a blow. But, before this noble purpose had
time to mature itself into action, all his superstitious
fears would revive, and, without coming to any decision
either to move or stand still, he would pause in timid
inaction, till some new success had made the invaders
more formidable than before, and invested their mission
with something more of that preternatural sacredness,
which alone had power to unman the monarch, and
disarm his craving ambition. At each advance of the
conquering Castilians, he realized the growing necessity
of prompt and efficient measures of defence, while at
the same time he felt a greater reluctance to contend
with fate. The result was, that he only dallied with
the foe, by continually sending new embassies, each,
with larger and richer presents than the preceding,
having no effect but to add fuel to their already burning
thirst for gold, and strengthen their determination to
accomplish their original purpose.
These royal embassies were less and less firm and
peremptory in their terms, until they assumed the tone
of expostulation, and assigning various and often conflicting
reasons why the Spaniards should not pursue
their route any farther towards the imperial city. At
length, when the courier announced the arrival of the
mysterious band at Tlascala, and the consummation of
the alliance between them and his old and bitter
enemies, together with the defection of many cities and
districts, he felt it impossible to remain any longer
undecided. His throne trembled under him. He must
act, or it would fall, and involve him and his house in
inevitable ruin. Instead, however, of a bold and
masterly activity in the defence of his capital and
crown, he changed his policy altogether, and sending a
new embassy with more splendid gifts than ever,
invited the strangers to his court, and promised them all
the hospitalities of his empire. He designated the route
they should pursue, and gave orders for their reception
in all the towns and cities through which they should
pass.
Montezuma was politic and wise in some things; and
the purpose he had now in view, if it had not been
frustrated, would have been deemed a master-stroke of
policy, worthy of the ablest disciples of the Macchiavellian
school. Perceiving the necessity of breaking
up this combination of new and old enemies, he had
recourse to stratagem to effect it, intending that the
strangers, whom he dared not to oppose with direct
violence, should fall into the snare they had laid for
themselves, in thrusting themselves forward, in despite
of his repeated remonstrances, into the heart of his
empire. He feared to raise his own hand to destroy
them, because they were, in his view, commissioned of
heaven to overturn his throne; but he deemed it perfectly
consistent with this reverence for the decrees of
fate, to lay a snare into which they should fall, and so
destroy themselves. He little understood the watchfulness
and circumspection of the man he had to deal
with, or the tremendous advantage which their armor
of proof and their engines of destruction gave the
Europeans over the almost naked Mexicans, with their
primitive weapons of offence. It was his plan to separate
the foreigners from their new Indian allies, and invite
them to come alone to the capital, as was first proposed.
And he designed to assign them accommodations in one
of the ancient palaces, in the heart of the city, where,
surrounded by high walls, on every side, they should
be shut up from all intercourse with the people, and left
to perish of famine.
When this purpose was formed, the monarch kept it
a profound secret in his own breast. The ambassadors
whom he sent to the Castilian camp, were of the highest
ranks of the nobility, and were accompanied by a long
train of slaves, bearing the rich presents, by which the
wily monarch hoped at the same time to display his
own royal munificence, and to propitiate the favor of the
dreaded strangers. Every new display of this kind
only served more effectually to defeat his own hopes;
for the avarice of the Spaniards, whose lust of gold was
absolutely insatiable, was so far from being satisfied
with this profusion of royal gifts, that it was only the
more inflamed with every new accession to their
treasures. The only effect, therefore, of these repeated
embassies was to confirm the Spaniards in their convictions
of the conscious weakness of the Mexicans, and
make them the more resolute in pushing forward to
complete the subjugation of the whole country, and
possess themselves of all its seemingly inexhaustible
treasures of gold.
Montezuma had now another difficulty to contend
with, in his endeavor to rid himself of the intruders.
The Tlascalans represented him to Cortez as false and
deceitful as he was ambitious and rapacious, and used
every argument in their power to dissuade him from
committing himself to his hands. But the bold adventurer,
always confident in his own resources, seemed
never to think of danger when an object was to be
accomplished, or to regard any thing as impossible
which he desired to attain. As soon as the door was
thrown open to his amicable approach to the capital, he
set himself to prepare for the march. The expostulations
and suspicions of the Tlascalans made him, perhaps,
more careful in his preparations against a surprise, and
more rigorous in the discipline of his little corps, than
he might otherwise have been. Wherever he was, his
camp was as cautiously posted, as fully and rigidly
guarded as if, on the eve of battle, he was hourly
expecting an assault. This watchfulness was maintained
throughout the whole adventurous campaign, as
well when in the midst of friends and allies, as when
surrounded by hostile legions.
After the royal ambassadors had departed with their
pacific message, the mind of Montezuma was harassed
and agitated with many doubts of the propriety of the
course he had adopted. His nobles, and the tributary
princes of the neighboring cities of Tezcuco, Tlacopan,
and Iztapalapan, were divided in their opinions. Some
complained, though not loudly, of the weak and vacillating
policy of the king. Some, even of the common
people, feared the consequences, anticipating the most
disastrous results, in accordance with their superstitious
veneration for the oracles of their faith. The third day
after the departure of the envoys, the king was pacing
up and down one of the beautifully shaded walks of the
royal gardens, listening with a disturbed mind to the
powerful expostulations of his brother, Cuitlahua, who,
from the beginning, had vehemently opposed every
concession to the invaders, and urgently solicited permission
to lead the army against them, and drive them
from the land. Suddenly, a voice as of a distant choir
of chanters arrested his ear. The melody was solemn,
sweet and soothing. It seemed to come sometimes
from the upper regions of the air, in tones of silvery
clearness and power, sometimes from beneath, in suppressed
and muffled harmony, as when the swell organ
soliloquises with all its valves closed,—sometimes it
retreated, as if dying into an echo along the distant
avenues of royal palms and aged cypresses, or the
citron and orange groves that skirted the farther end of
the garden, and then, suddenly, and with great power,
it burst in the full tide of impassioned song, from every
tree and bower in that vast paradise of terrestrial sweets.
Enchanted by the more than Circean melody, the
brothers paused in their animated discourse, and stood,
for a few moments, in silent wonder and fixed attention.
Presently the chanting ceased, and one solitary voice
broke forth in plaintive but emphatic recitative as from
the midst of the sparkling jet that played its ceaseless
tune in the grand porphyritic basin near which they
stood. The words, which were simple and oracular,
struck deep into the heart of Montezuma, and found a
ready response in that of his royal brother.
The lion[C]
walks forth in his power and pride,
The terror and lord of the forest wide—
When the fox appears, shall he flee and hide?
|
| ——— |
The eagle’s nest is strong and high,
Unquestioned monarch of the sky—
Should he quail before the falcon’s eye?
|
| ——— |
The sun rides forth through the heavens afar,
Dispensing light from his flaming car—
Should he veil his glory, or turn him back,
When the meteor flashes athwart his track?
|
| ——— |
Shall the eagle invite the hawk to his nest?
Shall the fox with the lion sit down as a guest?
Shall the meteor look out from the noonday sky,
When the sun in his power is flaming by?
|
The pauses in this significant chant were followed
by choral symphonies, expressing, as eloquently as
inarticulate sounds could do, the most earnest remonstrance,
the most moving expostulation. When this
was concluded, the same sweet voice broke forth again,
in tones of solemn tenderness and majestic power, in a
prophetic warning to Montezuma.
Beware, mighty monarch! beware of the hour,
When the pale-faced intruder shall come to this bower!
Beware of the weakness that whispers of fear,
When the all-grasping, gold-seeking Spaniard is near!
Beware how thou readest the dark scroll of fate!
Its mystic revealings may warn thee too late,
That the power to command, and the strength to oppose,
Are gone, when thou openest the gate to thy foes.
The white men are mortal—frail sons of the earth,
They know not, they claim not, a heavenly birth;
They bow to disease, and they fall by the sword,
Pale fear can disarm them, grim death is their lord;
And those terrible coursers, so fiery and strong,
That bear them like ravenous tigers along,
The fleet winged arrow shall pierce them, and slay,
And leave them to eagles and vultures a prey.
|
Up, monarch! arouse thee—the hour is at hand
When the dark howling tempest shall sweep o’er thy land.
Thy doubts and thy fears, ever changing, are rife
With peril to liberty, honor and life;
And this timid inaction shall surely bring down
To the dust, in dishonor, thy glorious crown;
And leave, to all time, on thy once-honored head,
The curse of a nation forsaken, betrayed.
Oh! rouse thee, brave monarch! there’s power in thy hand
To scatter the clouds that hang over thy land.
Speak, speak but the word, there is magic in thee,
Before which the ruthless invader shall flee,
And myriads of braves, all equipped for defence,
Shall leap at thy bidding, and banish him hence;
And the gods, who would frown on the recreant slave,
Will stand by their altars, and fight for the brave.
|
The effect of this mysterious warning upon the mind
of Montezuma was exceedingly powerful, and seemed,
for a time, to change his purpose and fix his resolution.
With an energy and decision to which he had long
been a stranger, he turned to his brother, and said,
“Cuitlahua, you are right. This realm is mine. The
gods have made me the father of this people. I must
and will defend them. The strangers shall be driven
back, or die. They shall never profane the temples
and altars of Tenochtitlan, by entering within its gates,
or looking upon its walls. Go, marshall your host, and
prepare to meet them, before they advance a step
further.”
Exulting in this sudden demonstration of his ancient
martial spirit in his royal brother, and fired with a
double zeal in the cause he had so much at heart, by
the thrilling influence upon his soul of the mysterious
oracle, whose message had been uttered in his hearing,
Cuitlahua scarcely waited for the ordinary courtesy of
bidding farewell to the king, but flew with the speed
of the wind, to execute the grateful trust committed to
him. Despatching his messengers in every direction,
only a few hours elapsed before his army was drawn
up in the great square of the city; and, ere the sun had
gone down, they had passed the gates, traversed the
grand causeway that linked the amphibious city with
the main land, and pitched their camp in a favorable
position, several leagues on the way to Cholula.
The ardent imagination of the prince of Iztapalapan
kindled at the prospect now opened before. The
clouds, so long hanging over his beloved country, were
dissipated as by magic, and the clear light of heaven
streamed in upon his path, promising a quick and easy
conquest, a glorious triumph, and a permanent peace.
He had been in many battles, but had never been
defeated. He believed the Mexican army invincible
any where, but especially on their own soil, and fighting
for their altars and their hearths. Terrible as the
invading strangers had been hitherto, he had no fear
of the coming encounter. He confidently expected to
annihilate them at a blow. Happily his soldiers were
all animated with the same spirit, and they took to
their rest that night, eager for the morning to come,
that should light them on their way to a certain and
glorious victory.
No sooner had the army departed, than a change
came over the spirit of the ill-fated Montezuma. The
demons of doubt and fear returned to perplex and harass
his soul, and to incline him again to that vacillating
policy, those half way measures, by which his doom
was to be sealed. In an agony of distrust and suspense,
he recounted to himself the history of the past, reviewing
all those dark and fearful prophecies, those oft-repeated
and mysteriously significant omens, which,
for so many years, had foreshadowed the events of the
present day, and revealed the inevitable doom of the
empire, sealed with the signet of heaven. The impressions
produced by the recent warnings of Karee faded
and disappeared before the deep and indelible traces of
those ancient oracles, on which he had been accustomed
from his youth sacredly to rely. He was once
more adrift in a tempest of contending impulses, at one
moment abandoning all in a paroxism of despair, at
another, vainly flattering himself with the hope of
deliverance in some ill-formed stratagem, but never
nerving himself to a tone of resolute defiance, or venturing
to rest a hope on the issue of an open encounter.
The result of all this agitation was, another abandonment
of his noble purpose of defence, and a new
resort to stratagem. But the plan of operations, and
the scene of execution, were changed. Cholula was
selected as the theatre of destruction. The Spaniards
had already been invited to take that city in their route,
and orders had been given, and preparations made, for
their hospitable reception. It was now resolved to
make their acceptance of that invitation the signal and
seal of their destruction. They were to be drawn into
the city, alone, under the pretence that the presence of
their Tlascalan allies, who were the ancient and bitter
enemies of the Cholulans, would be likely to create disturbance
in the city, and lead to collision if not to
bloodshed. The Cholulans were instructed to provide
them with a place of encampment, in the heart of their
city, where they could easily be surrounded, and cut to
pieces. The streets of the city were then to be broken
up by deep pits in some places, and barricades in
others, to impede the movements of the horses, more
dreaded than even the thunder and lightning of their
riders. This being completed under cover of the
night, the city was to be filled with soldiers ready to do
the work of execution, while the brave Cuitlahua, with
the flower of the army of Tenochtitlan, was to encamp
at a convenient distance without the walls, to render
prompt assistance, in case it should be needed.
This plan being fully arranged in the mind of the
Emperor, messengers were despatched with the light of
the morning, to arrest the movements of Cuitlahua, and
convey the necessary orders to the governor of Cholula.
The warlike chieftain was deeply chagrined, and bitterly
disappointed, in finding his orders so suddenly
countermanded. He saw only certain ruin in the ever-wavering
policy of the king, and was unable to conceive
of any hope, except in striking a bold and decisive
blow. He was willing to stake all upon a single cast,
and drive back the insolent invader, or perish in the
attempt. But Montezuma was the absolute monarch.
His word was law; and, though not irreversible like
that of the Medo-Persian, it was never to be questioned
by any of his subjects. The hero must therefore rest
on his arms, and await the issue of a doubtful stratagem.
Meanwhile, the eager and self sufficient Castilians
had pushed forward to Cholula, and entered its gates,
under a royal escort, that came out to meet them, and
amid the constrained shouts and half hearted congratulations
of a countless multitude of natives, who with
mingled fear, hatred and curiosity, gazed on the conquerors
as a superior race of beings, and made way for
them on every side, to take possession of their city.
They were received with the greatest deference and
consideration by the chiefs of the little republic, and
the ambassadors of Montezuma, who had halted on
their way, to prepare a more honorable reception for
their guests, and further to ingratiate them with their
master, by doing away, as far they could, the unfavorable
impressions of him and his people, which might
have made on their minds, by their intercourse with
their old and implacable enemies of the republic of
Tlascala.
Such was the mutual jealousy and hatred of these
neighboring nations, that, while the Cholulans could,
in no wise agree to admit the Tlascalans to accompany
Cortez into their city, they, on their part, were extremely
reluctant to allow him to go in alone, assuring
him in the strongest terms, that they were the most
treacherous and deceitful of men, and their promises
and professions utterly unworthy of confidence. Scorning
danger, however, and determined at all hazards, to
embrace every opening that seemed to facilitate his
approach to the Mexican capital, he marched fearlessly
in, and took up his quarters in the great square, or
market place. Here, ample accommodations were provided
for him and his band. Every courtesy was
extended to them by the citizens and their rulers.
Their table was amply supplied with all the necessaries
and luxuries of the place. They were regarded with a
kind of superstitious awe by the multitude, as a race of
beings belonging to another world, of ethereal mould,
and supernatural powers; and their camp was visited
by those of all ranks, and all ages, eager to catch a
view of the terrible strangers.
A few days after their arrival, a new embassy from
the imperial palace was announced. They held no
communication with Cortez, but had a long consultation
with the previous envoys still remaining there, and
with the authorities of the city. From this time, there
was a striking change in the aspect of the Cholulans
towards their guests. They were soon made to perceive
and feel that, though invited, they were not
welcome guests. The daily supplies for their table
were greatly diminished. They received but few and
formal visits from the chiefs, and but cold attention
from any of the nobles. Cortez was quick to perceive
the change, but unable to divine its meaning. It
caused him many an anxious hour, especially when he
remembered the serious and urgent representations of
his Tlascalan allies of the deceitful and treacherous
character of the Cholulans. His apprehensions were by
no means diminished, when he learned from the morning
report of the night guards, that through the entire
night, which had hitherto been a season of perfect
silence and repose in the city, sounds were heard on
every side, as of people earnestly engaged in some
works of fortification, sometimes digging in the earth,
sometimes laying up stones in heaps, and in various
other ways, “vexing the dull ear of night with uncouth
noise.” It was found, on examination, that the streets
in many places were barricaded, and holes, in others,
were lightly covered with branches of trees. Unable
to explain these matters, and not wishing to give offence
to his entertainers by enquiring too curiously into what
might be no more than the ordinary preparation for a
national festival, he sent one of his chief officers to
report to the Tlascalan commander, without the gates
of the city, and enquire what might be the meaning of
these singular movements. Having learned in reply,
that a hostile attack was undoubtedly contemplated,
and that a large force of Mexicans, under command of
the brave Cuitlahua, brother of Montezuma, was encamped
at no great distance, ready to co-operate with
the Cholulans at a moment’s warning, and that a great
number of victims had been offered in sacrifice, to propitiate
the favor of their gods, the haughty Spaniard
found his position any thing but agreeable. He was a
stranger to fear, but he was certainly most sadly perplexed.
And, when, in addition to the information
already received, he learned from Marina, his female
interpreter, that she had been warned by a friend in the
city to abandon the Spaniards, that she might not be
involved in their ruin, he was, for a time, quite at a
loss what to do. To retreat, would be to manifest fear,
and a distrust of his own resources, which might be
fatal to his future influence with the natives. To
remain where he was—inactive, would be to stand still
in the yawning crater of a volcano, when the overcharged
cauldron below had already begun to belch
forth sulphureous flames and smoke.
The character of the conqueror was one precisely
adapted to such exigencies as this. Through the
whole course of his wonderful career, he seems to have
rushed into difficulty, for the mere pleasure of fighting
his way out. In order to extricate himself, he never
lost a moment in parleying or diplomacy. His measures
were bold, decided, and direct, indicating a self-reliance,
and a confidence in his men and means,
which is the surest guaranty of success. In this case,
having satisfied himself of the actual existence of a
conspiracy, he sent for the chief rulers, upbraided them
with their want of hospitality, informed them that he
should leave the place at break of day the next morning,
and demanded a large number of men, to assist in
removing his baggage. Promising to comply with this
demand, which favored the execution of their own
designs, the chiefs departed, and Cortez and his band,
sleeping on their arms, prepared for the coming
conflict.
Punctually, at the peep of dawn, the princes of Cholula
marched into the court, accompanied by a much
larger number of men than Cortez had required. With
a calm bold air, the haughty Castilian confronted them,
charging them with treachery, and detailing all the circumstances
of the concerted massacre. He upbraided
them with their duplicity and baseness, and gave them
to understand that they should pay dear for their false-hearted
and cruel designs against those, who, confiding
in their hospitality and promises of friendship, had
come to their city, and slept quietly within their gates.
Thunderstruck at this unexpected turn of affairs,
and fearing more than ever the strange beings, who
could read their very thoughts, and fathom the designs
which were yet scarcely matured in their own bosoms,
the disconcerted magnates tremblingly pleaded guilty
to the charge, and attempted to excuse themselves, by
urging their allegiance to Montezuma, and the duty
and necessity of obeying his commands, however
repugnant to their own feelings.
It was not the policy of Cortez to admit this plea, in
extenuation of their treachery. He preferred to cast
the whole burden upon them alone, and leave the way
open for an easy disclaimer on the part of the emperor,
hoping thereby the more readily to gain a peaceable
entry into the capital. Without waiting, therefore, for
any further explanations, or instituting any inquiry
into the comparative guilt of the parties, he gave the
signal to his soldiers, who, with a general discharge of
their artillery and fire arms, rushed upon the unprepared
multitude, mowing them down like grass, and
trampling them under the hoofs of their horses. A
general massacre ensued. Not one of the chiefs
escaped, and only so many of their panic-struck followers,
as could feign themselves dead, or bury themselves,
till the tempest was past, under the heaps of their slain
comrades.
Thus taken by surprise, and driven, before they
were ready, into an unequal conflict with enemies who
had, by some miracle, as they supposed, anticipated
their movements, and struck the first blow, the Cholulans
rushed in from all parts of their city, hoping to
retrieve, by their numbers and prowess, the disadvantage
of the lost onset. Cortez had prepared for this.
He had ordered his artillery to be stationed at the main
entrances to the square, where they poured in a raking
fire upon the assailants, rushing in from all the avenues.
The surprise being so sudden, and the leaders
having been shot down at the first charge, confusion
and consternation prevailed among the discomfited
Cholulans, who alternately fled, like affrighted sheep,
from the scene of slaughter, and then rushed back, like
exasperated wolves, to the work of death.
In anticipation of this conflict, the Spanish general
had concerted a signal with his Tlascalan allies, without
the gates, who now came rushing in, like hungry
tigers, revelling in the opportunity to inflict a terrible
vengeance upon their ancient enemies. Falling upon
their rear, as they crowded in from the remoter quarters
of the city towards the field of carnage, they drove
them in upon the weapons of the Spaniards, from
which there was now no escape. Turning upon this
new enemy, they fought with desperate bravery, to win
a retreat. But they were cut down on this side and that,
till the streets were scarcely passable for the heaps of
the dead and dying that cumbered them. Those who
took refuge in their houses and temples, found no
safety in such retreats, for they were instantly fired
by the Tlascalans, and their defenders perished miserably
in the flames.
There was one scene in the midst of this desolating
conflict, that was truly sublime,—one of those strange
combinations of moral and physical grandeur, which
sometimes occur in the dark annals of human warfare,
investing with a kind of hallowed interest, which the
lapse of ages serves only to soften, but never destroys,
those spectacles of savage but heroic cruelty, where
every death is elevated into a martyrdom, and the very
ground saturated with human blood becomes a consecrated
field, clothed with laurels of never-fading green.
It was the last act in that bloody drama, enacted on the
lofty summit of the great Teocalli, the principal temple
of Cholula, and the centre of attraction to all the votaries
of the Aztec religion, throughout the wide realms
of Anahuac. Driven from street to street, and from
quarter to quarter, and falling back, as a forlorn hope,
upon the sanctuary, and the support and encouragement
of the hoary men, who presided over the mysteries
of their faith, they made a bold and desperate
stand, in defence of all that was dear and holy in their
homes and their altars. Step by step, they contested
this hallowed ground, till they reached the upper terrace,
where the great temple stood. This was an
area of four hundred feet square, at an elevation of
two hundred feet from the level of the surrounding
streets. On this elevated platform, the furious combatants
fought hand to hand; the priest, in his sacred
garments, mingling in the savage conflict with the
humblest of his followers—the steel-clad Castilian, the
Tlascalan and the Cholulan, of every rank and grade,
each eager only to slay his man, grappled in the mortal
conflict, till one or the other fell in the death struggle,
or tumbled over the side of the mound, to be dashed in
pieces below. As the half-armed, half-naked natives
melted away before the heavy and destructive weapons
of the invulnerable Spaniards, they were repeatedly
offered quarter, but scorned to accept it. One only submitted,
when, pierced with countless wounds, he could
stand no longer. All the rest, to a man, fought desperately
till he fell, and many, even then, in the agonies
of the last struggle, seized their antagonists by the legs,
and rolled with them over the parapet, to the certain
death of both.
At length the conflict ceased for want of a victim,
and the conquering Castilian, with a few of his Tlascalan
allies, stood alone, in undisputed possession of
this lofty vantage ground. The disheartened Cholulans,
without leaders, without counsellors, seeing their sacred
temple in the hands of their enemies, felt that all was
lost. Not another blow was struck, but every where
they bowed in submission to the irresistible conqueror.
The thunder of the artillery, and the smoke of the
burning buildings, rising in a heavy column to the
skies, announced to the Mexican army the conflict that
was raging within the city. But, having orders not to
engage in the fray, unless notified by the Cholulan
chiefs that his assistance was necessary, the brave
Cuitlahua was compelled to wait the summons. Burning
to vindicate the honor of the Mexican arms, the
hero chafed under this cruel restraint, like a tiger
chained in full view of his prey. He little doubted that
the Castilians would fall by the hands of the Cholulans,
encompassed as they were on every side, with no room
for escape, or for the action of their horses. But he
longed to have a share in the victory. Drawing up his
forces in the order of march, he stood, the whole day,
in readiness to move at a moment’s warning; and in
this attitude, he was still standing, when the tidings of
the terrible disaster in the city reached him.
His veteran legions were with difficulty restrained
from rushing to the rescue. The army was almost in
a state of mutiny, from their eagerness to avenge their
slaughtered brethren in Cholula; and all the military
authority, and unbounded influence of Cuitlahua were
required to keep them in a state of due subordination.
The influence and authority of Cortez, on the other
hand, were scarcely sufficient to restrain his victorious
allies from ravaging the city, and putting men,
women, and children to an indiscriminate slaughter.
So bitter and pervading was the old national animosity,
that life was scarcely worth possessing to a Tlascalan,
if he must share its daily blessings side by
side with the Aztec. He hated the whole nation
with a perfect implacable hatred. He execrated the
very name, and never uttered it without a curse. Of
this universal malediction, the Cholulan was honored
with more than his appropriate share. The other subjects
and tributaries of Montezuma they feared as well
as hated. The Cholulans they affected also to despise,
though their contempt was not so thorough as to mitigate
in the least their fierce and uncontrollable hatred.
AGITATIONS IN THE CAPITAL—THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD—THE
SPANIARDS STEADILY ADVANCING.
For monarchs tremble on their thrones,
And ’neath the gem-lit crown,
Care, fear, and envy dwell—
|
| ——— |
——They come,
Mysterious, dreaded band!
With clang of trumpet, torch and brand;
With lightning speed, with lightning power,
They scale the lofty mountain tower,
And sweep along the vale—
Who shall arrest their proud career,
And save our doomed land?
|
This position of affairs suited the timid and vacillating
policy of Montezuma. Finding that Cuitlahua, and his
forces, had taken no part in the affair, and had not
even visited the city, he immediately sent an embassy
to the Spanish camp, disclaiming all participation in
the treacherous counsels and doings of the Cholulans,
and severely blaming them for their unheard of outrage
upon the rites of hospitality. Whether the sharp-sighted
Castilian placed any confidence in these professions,
or not, it suited his designs to appear to do so.
With the utmost seeming cordiality, he assured the
royal messengers that it gave him the most heartfelt
satisfaction to know that the treatment he had received
at Cholula was not instigated or countenanced by their
august master, that it was unworthy of a great and
wise monarch, and that he should proceed on his route
to the capital, with the same confidence as before, and
visit the emperor as if nothing had happened to hinder
his progress.
Withdrawing the forces under Cuitlahua, and giving
orders every where for the hospitable reception and
entertainment of the Castilians, whom he had no longer
the heart to oppose either by stratagem or by force,
Montezuma retired within his palace, and for several
days shut himself up from all intercourse with his
chiefs. He was now fully convinced that his destiny
was sealed, and with it that of his family and crown.
He was in the hands of an unappeasable fate. He
gave himself up to fasting, prayer and sacrifice. He
consulted all his oracles anew. But they gave no
response. He then sought counsel of his chiefs, and
the sages of his court. Here again he was distracted
by the divided opinions of his friends. While many of
the princes, overawed by the invincible courage and
invariable success of the Castilians, advised a frank
and courteous reception, there was still a powerful war-party,
with the brave Cuitlahua at their head, who
were eager to measure lances with the strangers, and
show them that, in order to reach the capital, they had
other foes to contend with and overcome, than half
savage Tlascalans, or trading Cholulans.
Montezuma found no difficulty in following the
counsel of the majority, though the mystic warning of
Karee had not wholly faded from his mind. A new
embassy was immediately despatched, consisting of a
numerous suite of powerful nobles, and a long train of
servants bearing rich presents of gold, and other valuables,
and charged with a message couched in terms of
humble and earnest supplication, proposing, if the
Spaniards would now return, not only to send them
home laden with gold to their utmost wish, but to pay
an annual tribute of gold to their master, the king of
Spain. Finding that this bribe only fired the grasping
conqueror with a more fixed determination to secure
the whole prize for which he had so long, and against
such fearful odds, contended, the messengers yielded the
point, and threw wide open to the dreaded foe every
avenue to the heart of the empire, assuring him, in the
name of the Emperor, that he should be received as a
brother, and entertained with the consideration due to
the powerful representative of a mighty monarch.
The march of the Spaniards was now a continued
triumph. No longer compelled to fight their way on,
they had time to enjoy the rich and varied scenery, to
scale the mountain, explore the caverns and ravines of
the sierras, and the craters of the volcanoes, and show
to the admiring natives, by their agility and love of
adventure, that fighting and conquest had neither tamed
their spirits, nor exhausted their physical powers. As
they advanced, they were continually surprised and
delighted with the growing evidences of civilization and
high prosperity which met them on every side. In the
cultivation of the land, in the style of architecture, and
in all that constitutes the refinement, or contributes to
the comfort of life, the regions they were now traversing
very far exceeded the best of those through which they
had passed. They were continually gaining more
exalted ideas of the power, wealth and glory of the
great Montezuma, and more enlarged views of the magnificence
of their own adventure, and the importance of
their position and movements. The ambition of Cortez
reached to the viceroyalty of this splendid empire; and,
though accompanied by a mere handful of men, their
past achievements inspired him with confidence, that
he could carry every thing before him.
Though entertained with lordly munificence in every
place through which he passed, and visited and complimented
by envoys from all the states embraced in
the Mexican domain, the sagacious Spaniard relaxed
none of his vigilance, nor diminished aught of the
strict discipline of his little corps. With an eye ever
awake to his own safety, and feeling that the artful
contriver of one stratagem could easily invent another,
he advanced from post to post, in martial array, always
ready for the exigency that might arise. His course,
however, was unmolested. The resources and hopes
of the great king seemed to have been exhausted. In
passive despair, he was waiting for the hour of his
doom.
The terror of the events we have described fell not
alone upon the unfortunate Montezuma; nor did they
affect him only as monarch of the realm. As a parent,
fondly devoted to his children, whose destiny was
wrapped up in his, as the father of his people, to whom
he had been a kind of demi-god, the vicegerent of
heaven, entitled to their unqualified reverence, obedience
and love, he felt with tenfold intensity the
bitterness of his humiliation. In all his sufferings and
distresses his wives and children shared, showing, by
every token in their power, their profound respect and
affection, and their tender sympathy in all his cares.
In these lovely demonstrations of filial affection, none
were more assiduous or warm-hearted, and none more
successful in reaching the heart of the broken spirited
monarch, or winning from him an occasional smile of
hope, than Tecuichpo. Just ripening into womanhood,
with every gift of person, mind and heart that could
satisfy the pride of the monarch, and requite to the full
the yearning love of the father, the fair princess
lavished on him all her powers of persuasion and
condolence. It was all in vain. It even aggravated
his sorrows; for it was on her account, and that of
others dearer to him than his own life, that he suffered
most deeply. The mysterious shadows that had
brooded so darkly over the infancy of his lovely daughter,
had never ceased to shed a chilling gloom over
his mind. Her clouded destiny was linked with his,
not merely as a child, but as one specifically marked
out, by infallible signs from heaven, for a signal doom.
His superstitious faith invested her and her fate with a
peculiar sacredness. She was as one whom the gods
had devoted to an awful sacrifice, from which neither
imperial power nor paternal love could rescue her. It
therefore pierced his soul with a deeper pang to gaze
upon her loveliness, and witness her amiable efforts to
soothe and sustain him in the midst of calamities that
were more terrible and overwhelming to her, than even
to himself. If, by offering himself as a sacrifice to his
offended gods, he could have propitiated their favor for
his family and his people, and handed down to his posterity
an undiminished empire and an untarnished
crown, he would have gone with as much pride and
pleasure, to the altar, as to a triumphal festival that
should celebrate his victory, and clothe his brow with
unfading laurel. But in this sacrifice there was no
substitution. He was himself the most distinguished
victim, destined to the highest and hottest place on the
great altar of his country, where a hecatomb would
scarce suffice to appease the anger of the offended gods.
Gathering his royal household around him, he
explained to them the peculiarity of his position, avowing
his entire confidence in the ancient prophecy, which
declared that the realm of Anahuac belonged to a race
of white men, who had gone away, for a season towards
the rising sun, and who, after the lapse of ages, were to
return in power, and claim their inheritance. It was
the predestined arrangement of the gods, and could not
be resisted. He had, from the beginning felt that resistance
was wholly vain, and had only attempted it, in
deference to the urgent advice and solicitations of his
best and most experienced counsellors. For himself,
he was ready, at any time, to stand at his post, and die,
if necessary, in defence of his crown and his people.
But he could not contend with the gods. Empires and
crowns, and the lives and happiness of nations, were
at their disposal, and kings and subjects alike must submit
to their righteous requirements. It was but the
dictate of common piety to say “the will of the gods
be done.” Hard and trying as it was, he felt it incumbent
on him to relinquish his crown and his honors, at
their bidding, as cheerfully as he should lay down his
life, when his destined hour should arrive. He counselled
them to bow submissively to their inevitable fate,
in the hope that, though humbled, broken and scattered
in this world, they might meet and dwell together in
peace in the paradise of the gods.
His wives and children wept around him. They
besought him to hope yet for the best—to turn away
his thoughts from the dark visions on which he had
dwelt too long and too intensely. Their mysterious
forebodings of evil might yet be averted, through the
favor of the gods, to whom a childlike, cheerful confidence
in their benignity and paternal regard, was more
acceptable, than that blind abandonment, sometimes
mistaken for submission, which views them as stern,
arbitrary, and implacable tyrants, rather than as parents
of the human family, watching over it for the good of
mankind, and ordering all events for the welfare of
their true children.
This was a cheerful faith, and, seasonably adopted,
might have saved the life and throne of Montezuma,
and preserved, for many years, the integrity of his
empire. But his heart was not prepared to receive it.
Steeped in the dismal superstitions of the Aztec faith,
and yielding himself unreservedly to the guidance and
dictation of its constituted oracles, he had never, for a
moment, allowed himself to falter in his conviction,
that the Aztec dynasty was to terminate with him, and
that he and his family were doomed to a terrible
destruction, in the overthrow of the sacred institutions
of his beloved land.
The scene was too thrilling for the tender heart of
Tecuichpo, and she swooned away in the arms of her
father, who had drawn her towards him in an affectionate
embrace. The attendants were called, and, as
soon as the unhappy princess was restored to consciousness,
the king directed the royal barges to be prepared,
and went out, with all his household, to enjoy the invigorating
air of the lake, and seek relief from the dark
thoughts that oppressed and overwhelmed them, in
contemplating, from various points in view, the rich
and varied scenery of that glorious valley.
It was a brave spectacle to behold, when the imperial
majesty of Tenochtitlan condescended to accompany
his little fleet on such an excursion. The gaily
appointed canoes, with their gorgeous canopies of
embroidered cotton, and feather-work; the splendid
robes and plumes of the king and his attendants; the
rich and fanciful attire of the women; the light, graceful,
arrowy motions of the painted skiffs, as they
danced along the waves; together with the wonderful
beauty of the lake, and its swimming gardens of
flowers, presented a toute ensemble more like the fairy
pictures of some enchanted sphere, than any thing
we can now realize as belonging to this plain, prosaic,
matter-of-fact world of ours. On this occasion, it
seemed more gay and fairy-like than ever, in contrast,
perhaps, with the deep gloom that had settled
on the land, pervading every heart, with its sombre
shadows.
The light pirogues of the natives, flying hither and
thither over the glassy waters, on errands of business
or of pleasure, arrayed in flowers, or freighted with
fruits and vegetables for the grand market of Tenochtitlan,
made way, on every side, for the advance of the
royal cortege, which, threading the shining avenues
between the gaily-colored chinampas, that spotted the
surface of that beautiful lake, like so many islands of
flowers on the bosom of the ocean, danced over the
waters to the sound of music, and the merry voices
of glad hearts, rejoicing in the sunny smiles that now
played on the countenance of the king, as if the clouds
that had so long overshadowed it, were never to return.
Tecuichpo, restored to more than her wonted gaiety,
was full of life and animation. Never had she seemed,
in the eyes of her doting father, and of the admiring
courtiers, half so lovely as at this moment. She was
the centre attraction for all eyes. Her resplendent
beauty, her fairy-like gracefulness of motion, and the
artless simplicity of her manners, won the admiring
notice of all. Her gaiety was infectious. Her merry
laugh reached, with a sort of electric influence, every
heart in that bright company, and compelled even her
father to abandon, for the time, his sad and solemn
reflections, and give himself up to the spirit of the hour
and the scene.
Guatimozin was there, and exerted all his eloquence
to keep up the spirit of the hour, in the earnest hope
that Montezuma would put on all the monarch again,
and assert the majesty of his insulted crown, and the
rights of his house and his people, in despite of omen
or legend, and in the face of every foe.
Tecuichpo became more and more animated, till she
seemed quite lifted above herself and the world about
her. Suddenly rising in the midst, and pointing, with
great energy of expression, to the royal eagle of Mexico,
then sweeping down from his mountain eyrie, to
prey upon the ocelot of the distant valley, she exclaimed—
’Tis he! ’Tis he! our imperial bird!
Whom the gods to our aid have sent;
I saw him in my dream, and heard,
As down from his airy flight he bent,
His victor shout, with the dying wail,
Of the coming foe, borne on the gale;
While the air was dark with the gathering throng
Of bold young eaglets, that swept along
From every cliff, in fierceness and wrath,
To gorge on their prey, in the mountain path.
|
When she ceased, an echo from a richly cultivated
chinampa, which they were then passing, seemed to
take up and prolong the strain.
I saw it too, and I heard the scream,
In the midst of my dark and troubled dream;
’Twas a dream of despair for our doomed land,
For his wings were bound by the royal hand;
His talons were wreathed with a golden chain,
He smelt the prey, and he chafed in vain,
For they trampled him down, in their brave career,
While our monarch looked on with unmanly fear,
Till his crown and his sceptre in dust were laid low,
And proud Tenochtitlan had passed to the foe.
|
The last words of this solemn chant died away on
the ear, just as the royal barge rounded the little artificial
promontory, which the ingenious Karee had
constructed, for the double purpose of an arbor and
look-out, at one of the angles of her chinampa. Leaning
over the brow, and supporting herself by the overhanging
branch of a luxuriant myrtle, she dropped a
wreath of evergreen upon the head of Tecuichpo, and
said—
Oh! child of doom,
Thy long sealed destiny is come—
One brief, dark, dreadful night,
Then on those blessed eyes
Another day shall rise,
Fair, glorious, bright,
With an unearthly endless light.
Thou shall lay down
An earthly crown,
To win a starry sceptre in the skies
|
At this moment, signals were heard among the distant
hills, which, answered and repeated from countless
stations along the wild sierras, and reverberated by a
thousand echoes as they came, burst upon the quiet
valley, like the confused shouts of a mighty host rushing
to battle. It fell like a death-knell upon the ear of
Montezuma. It announced the arrival, within the
mountain wall which encompassed his golden valley,
of the dreaded strangers. It heralded their near approach
to his capital, and the exposure of all he held
dear to their irresistible power—their terrible rapacity.
His heart sunk within him. But he had gone too far
to retract. It was the act of the gods, not his. Banishing
from his mind the impressions of the scenes just
passed, he waved his hand to the rowers, and instantly
every prow was turned, and the gaily caparisoned, but
melancholy, terror-stricken pageant moved rapidly back
to the city.
Tenochtitlan was now alive with the bustle of preparation.
It was the preparation, not for war, which
would far better have suited the multitude both of the
chiefs and the people, but for the hospitable reception
and entertainment of the strangers. The great imperial
palace, which had been the royal residence of the father
of Montezuma, was fitted up for their accommodation.
With its numberless apartments, its spacious courts,
and magnificent gardens, it was sufficient for an army
much larger than that of the Castilians, swelled as it
was by the company of their Tlascalan allies. Every
room was newly hung with beautifully colored tapestry,
and furnished with all the conveniences and luxuries
of Mexican life. The appointments and provisions
were all on a most liberal scale, for the Emperor was
as generous and munificent as the golden mountains
from which he drew his inexhaustible treasures.
Intending that nothing should be wanting to the
graciousness of his submission to this act of constrained
courtesy, Montezuma proposed to his brother Cuitlahua,
to choose a royal retinue from the flower of the Aztec
nobility, and go out to meet the strangers; and bid them
welcome, in his name, to his realm and his capital.
From this the soul of the proud undaunted soldier
revolted, and he entreated so earnestly to be excused
from executing a commission, so much at variance
with his feelings and his convictions, that the monarch
relented, and assigned the mission to Cacama, the
young prince of Tezcuco.
Nothing could exceed the gorgeous splendor of this
embassy. Borne in a beautiful palanquin, canopied
and curtained with the rarest of Mexican feather-work,
richly powdered with jewels, and glittering with gold,
Cacama, preceded and followed by a long train of
noble veterans and youths, all apparelled in the gayest
costume of their country, presented himself before the
advancing host. His approach, and the errand on
which he came, having been announced by a herald,
Cortez halted his band, and drew up his forces in the
best possible array, to give him a fitting reception.
The meeting took place at Ajotzinco, on, or rather
within, the borders of the lake Chalco, the first of the
bright chain of inland lakes which the Spaniards had
seen, and the place where they first saw that species of
amphibious architecture, which prevailed so extensively
among the Mexicans. When the royal embassy
arrived in front of the waiting army, Cacama alighted
from his palanquin, while his obsequious officers swept
the ground before him, that he might not soil his royal
feet, by too rude a contact with the earth. He was a
young man of about twenty five years, with a fine
manly countenance, a noble and commanding figure,
and an address and manners that would have done
honor to the most courtly knight of Christendom.
Stepping forward with a bland and dignified courtesy,
he made the customary Mexican salutation to persons
of high rank, touching his right hand to the ground,
and raising it to his head. Cortez embraced him as he
rose, and the prince, in the name of his royal master,
gave the strangers a hearty welcome, assuring them
that they should be received with a hospitality, and
treated with a respect, becoming the representatives of
a great and mighty prince. He then presented Cortez
with a number of large and valuable pearls, which act
of munificence was immediately returned by the present
of a necklace of cut glass, hung over his neck by Cortez.
As glass was not known to the Mexicans, it probably
had in their eyes the value of the rarest jewels.
This interview being over, the royal envoy hastened
back to the capital, while the Castilians and their allies,
in the two-fold character of hostile invaders and invited
guests, followed his steps by slow, easy and cautious
marches. After a few days, during which they passed
through large tracts of highly cultivated and fertile
ground, and several of the beautiful towns and cities of
the plateau, they arrived at Iztapalapan, a place of
great beauty, and large resources, and the residence of
Cuitlahua, the noble brother of Montezuma. At the
command of the Emperor, Cuitlahua, as governor of
this place, received the strangers with courtesy, and
treated them with attention. But it was a cold courtesy,
and a constrained attention. With a proud and
haughty mien, the brave soldier exhibited to the
wondering strangers, all the riches and curiosities of the
place, disposing every thing in such a manner as to
impress them most powerfully with the immense wealth
of the empire, and the irresistible power of the Emperor.
He collected around him all the richest and most potent
nobles in his neighborhood, and displayed a magnificence
of style, and a prodigality of expenditure, that
was truly princely. The extent and beauty of his
gardens, his beautiful aviary, stocked with every variety
of the gorgeously plumed birds of that tropical clime,
his menagerie, containing a full representation of all the
wild races of animals in Anahuac, struck the Spaniards
with surprise and admiration; while the architecture
of his palaces, and the many refinements of his style of
living, gave them the highest ideas of the advanced
state of civilization to which the Mexicans had attained.
But, so far from disheartening them in their grand
design, all they saw of wealth and splendor in the
inferior cities, only served to inflame their desire to see
the capital, and learn if any thing more brilliant and
wonderful than they had yet seen, could be furnished
at the great metropolis. While they were daily more
and more convinced of the power and resources of their
enemy, and the seeming impossibility of their own
enterprise, they were also daily more and more inflamed
with the desire and purpose to possess themselves of the
incalculable treasures which every where met their
eyes. The cold aspect, and lofty bearing of the Prince
Cuitlahua, the commander-in-chief of the Mexican
armies, and heir apparent to its throne, left no doubt
that the final struggle for power would be ably and bitterly
contested, and that the wealth they so ardently
coveted, would be dearly bought. To a heart less bold
and self-reliant than that of Cortez, it would have been
no enviable position, to be shut up, with his little band
of followers, within the gates of a city, commanded by
so brave and experienced a soldier, whose personal
feelings and views were known to be of the most hostile
character. To the iron-hearted Castilian, it was but a
scene in the progress of his romantic adventure; and,
the greater the difficulty, the more imminent the peril,
the more cordially he trusted to his good genius, or his
patron saint, he seems not to have known which, to
carry him triumphantly through.
They were now but one day’s march, and that a
short and easy one, from the imperial city. Already
they had seen it from a distance, resting, or rather
riding, on the bosom of the lake, glowing and glittering
in the sunbeams, like some resplendent constellation,
transferred from the azure above to the azure below.
They had seen its noble ally, the metropolis of the
sister kingdom of Tezcuco, shining in rival though
unequal splendor, on the opposite shore of the lake,
and many other splendid cities, beautiful towns, and
lovely hamlets, studding its bright border, in its entire
circuit, like mingled gems and pearls, richly set in the
band of the imperial diadem, all reposing under the
shadow, and eclipsed by the superior glory, of the capital,
the crowning jewel of the Western World. They
had seen the chinampas, those wandering gardens of
verdure and flowers, seeming more like the fairy creations
of poetry, than the sober realities of life, and
reminding them of those islands of the blest, which
they had been told, in their childish days, floated about
in the ethereal regions above, freighted with blessings
for the virtuous, and sometimes stooping so near to
earth as to permit the weary and the waiting to escape
from their toils and trials here, and find repose in their
celestial paradise. They had seen and admired the
wonderful works of art, the causeways of vast extent,
constructed with scientific accuracy, and of great
strength and durability—the canals and aqueducts,
and bridges, which would have done honor to the
genius and industry of the proudest nation in Europe.
It now remained to them to see the imperial lord of all
these wide and luxuriant realms, and to enter, as
invited guests, into the gates of his royal abode.
ARRIVAL OF THE SPANIARDS AT THE CAPITAL—THEIR
RECEPTION BY MONTEZUMA—DETERMINED HOSTILITY
OF GUATIMOZIN.
Hark! at the very portals now they stand,
Demanding entrance. Can I shut them out,
When all the gods commission them to come?
Can we admit them, and preserve intact
Our honor and the state?
|
The spectacle of this day, the eighth of November,
1519, has not its parallel in the annals of history, and
will probably never be repeated in the history of man.
The sovereign and absolute monarch of a populous
and powerful empire, stooping from his imperial throne,
flinging wide open the gates of his capital, and condescending
to go out, and receive with an apparent welcome
an invading foe, whom he had in vain attempted
to keep out, but whom he had now the power to crush
under his feet in a moment. That invading foe consisted
only of a few hundred adventurers, three thousand
miles from home, in the heart of the country they had
ravaged, and surrounded by countless thousands of
exasperated foes, burning to revenge the injuries and
insults they had received at the hands of the strangers,
and only held back from rushing upon them, like herds
of ravening tigers, by the strong arm of the royal prohibition.
Their position was like that of a group of
children in a menagerie, amusing themselves with
teasing and exasperating the caged animals around
them. The furious creatures glare on them with looks
of rage, growling fiercely, and gnashing their teeth.
The keeper sympathizes with his enraged subjects,
burning to let them loose upon their annoyers, but
restrained by that mysterious agency, in which the
divine hand is every where moulding and subduing
the natural impulses of humanity, and working out its
own wise ends by the wrath and passions of men.
Let the keeper but raise the bar of that cage for a
moment, and not one of the bright group would be left
to tell the tragic issue of their sport. Let the terror-stricken
Montezuma put on once more the air of a
monarch, and raise his finger as a signal for the onset,
before the enemy has become entrenched in his fortress,
and few, if any, of that brave band would be left
to tell the world of their fate—the marvellous story of
the Conquest would never be told; the Aztec dynasty
would outlive the period assigned it by those mystic
oracles; and Montezuma, recovered from the dark
dreams of an imagination disordered by superstition—the
long dreaded crisis of his destiny passed—would
have swayed again the sceptre of undisputed empire
over the broad and beautiful realms of Anahuac.
Having once vanquished and destroyed the terrible
strangers, and stripped them of that supernatural defence,
which the idea of their celestial origin threw
around them, he would never again have yielded his
soul to so unmanly a fear. If such had been the issue
of the invasion of Cortez and his band, it is doubtful
whether the Aztec dynasty would ever have been overthrown.
The civilization of Europe would soon have
been engrafted upon its own. Christianity would have
taken the place of their dark and bloody paganism;
which, with a people so far enlightened as they were,
could not have endured for a moment the noon-day
blaze of the gospel; and the terrible power of that heathen
despot would have been softened, without weakening
it, into the consolidated colossal strength of an
enlightened, Christian, peaceful empire. Christianity
propagated by fire and sword consumes centuries, and
wastes whole generations of men, in effecting a revolution,
which they who go with the olive branch in their
hand, and the gospel of peace in their hearts, require
only a few years to accomplish. Witness the recent
triumphs of a peaceful Christianity in the Sandwich
Islands, as contrasted with the bloody and wasting
Crusades of Spaniards in all portions of the new
world.
With the earliest dawn, the reveille was beaten in
the Spanish camp, and all the forces were mustered and
drawn up in the order of their march. Cortez, at the
head of the cavalry, formed the advanced guard, followed
immediately by the Castilian infantry in solid column.
The artillery and baggage occupied the centre, while
the dark files of the Tlascalan savages brought up the
rear. The whole number was less than seven thousand,
not more than three hundred and fifty of whom were
Spaniards. Putting on their most imposing array, with
gay flaunting banners, and the stirring notes of the
trumpet, swelling over lake and grove, and rolling away
in distant echoes among the mountains, they issued
forth from the city, just as the rising sun, surmounting
the eastern cordillera, poured the golden stream of day
over the beautiful valley, and lighted up a thousand
resplendent fires among the gilded domes, and enameled
temples of the capital, and the rich tiara of tributary
cities and towns that encircled it. Moving rapidly
forward, they soon entered upon the grand causeway,
which, passing through the capital, spans the entire
breadth of the Tezcucan lake, constituting then the
main entrance, as its remains do now the principal
southern avenue, to the city of Mexico. It was composed
of immense stones, fashioned with geometrical
precision, well laid in cement, and capable of withstanding
for ages the play of the waters, and the ravages of
time. It was of sufficient width, throughout its whole
extent, to allow ten horsemen to ride abreast. It was
interrupted in several places by well built draw bridges
for the accommodation of the numerous boats, that
carried on a brisk trade with the several towns on the
lake, and for the better defence of the city against an
invading foe. At the distance of about half a league
from the capital, it was also traversed by a thick heavy
wall of stone, about twelve feet high, surmounted and
fortified by towers at each extremity. In the centre
was a battlemented gateway, of sufficient strength to
resist any force that could be brought against it, by the
rude enginery of native warfare. This was called the
Fort of Xoloc.
Here they were met by a very numerous and powerful
body of Aztec nobles, splendidly arrayed in their
gayest costume, who came to announce the approach of
Montezuma, and again in his name to bid the strangers
welcome to the capital. As each of the chiefs presented
himself, in his turn, to Cortez, and made the customary
formal salutation, a considerable time was consumed in
the ceremony; which was somewhat more tedious than
interesting to the hot spirited Spaniards.
When this was over, they passed briskly on, and
soon beheld the glittering retinue of the Emperor
emerging from the principal gate of the city. The
royal palanquin, blazing with burnished gold and precious
stones, was borne on the shoulders of the principal
nobles of the land, while crowds of others, of equal or
inferior rank, thronged in obsequious attendance around.
It was preceded by three officers, bearing golden wands.
Over it was a canopy of gaudy feather-work, powdered
with jewels, and fringed with silver, resting on four
richly carved and inlaid pillars, and supported by four
nobles of the same rank with the bearers. These were
all bare-footed, and walked with a slow measured pace,
as conscious of the majesty of their burden, and with
eyes bent on the ground. Arrived within a convenient
distance, the train halted, and Montezuma, alighting
from his palanquin, came forward, leaning on the arms
of his royal relatives, the lords of Tezcuco and Iztapalapan.
As the monarch advanced, under the same
gorgeous canopy which had before screened him from
the public gaze, and the glare of the mid-day sun, the
ground was covered with cotton tapestry, while all his
subjects of high and low degree, who lined the sides of
the causeway, bent their heads and fixed their eyes on
the ground, as unworthy to look upon so much majesty.
Some prostrated themselves on the ground before him,
and all in that mighty throng were awed by his presence
into a silence that was absolutely oppressive.
The appearance of Montezuma was in the highest
degree interesting to the Spanish general and his followers.
Flung over his shoulders was the tilmatli, or
large square cloak, manufactured from the finest cotton,
with the embroidered ends gathered in a knot round his
neck. Under this was a tunic of green, embroidered
with exquisite taste, extending almost to his knees, and
confined at the waist, by a rich jeweled vest. His feet
were protected by sandals of gold, bound with leathern
thongs richly embossed with the same metal. The
cloak, the tunic, and the sandals were profusely sprinkled
with pearls and precious stones. On his head was
a panache of plumes of the royal green, waving gracefully
in the light breeze.
He was then about forty years of age. His person
was tall, slender, and well proportioned. His complexion
was somewhat fairer than that of his race
generally. His countenance was expressive of great
benignity. His carriage was serious, dignified and
even majestic, and, without the least tincture of haughtiness,
or affectation of importance, he moved with the
stately air of one born to command, and accustomed to
the homage of all about him.
The strangers halted, as the monarch drew near.
Cortez, dismounting, threw his reins to a page, and,
supported by a few of his principal cavaliers, advanced
to meet him. What an interview! How full of thrilling
interest to both parties! How painfully thrilling
to Montezuma, who now saw before him, standing on
the very threshold of his citadel, the all-conquering
white man, whose history was so mysteriously blended
with his own; whose coming and power had been
foreshadowed for ages in the prophetic traditions of his
country, confirmed again by his own most sacred
oracles, and repeated by so many signs, and omens, and
fearful prognostics, that he was compelled either to
regard him as the heaven-sent representative of the
ancient rightful lords of the soil, or to abandon his
early and cherished faith, the religion of his fathers,
and of the ancient race from which they sprung.
Putting a royal restraint upon the feelings which
almost overwhelmed him, the monarch received his
guest with princely courtesy, expressing great pleasure
in seeing him personally, and extending to him the
hospitalities of his capital. The Castilian replied with
expressions of the most profound respect, and with
many and ample acknowledgments for the substantial
proofs which the Emperor had already given of his
more than royal munificence. He then hung on the
neck of the king a sparkling chain of colored crystal, at
the same time making a movement, as if he would
embrace him. He was prevented, however, by the
timely interference of two Aztec lords from thus profaning,
before the assembled multitudes of his people,
the sacred person of their master.
After this formal introduction and interchange of
civilities, Montezuma appointed his brother, the bold
Cuitlahua, to conduct the Spaniards to their quarters in
the city, and returned in the same princely state in
which he came, amid the prostrate thousands of his
subjects. Pondering deeply, as the train moved slowly
on, upon the fearful crisis in his affairs which had now
arrived, his ear was arrested by a faint low voice in the
crowd, which he instantly recognized as Karee’s, breathing
out a plaintive wail, as if in soliloquy with her own
soul, or in high communion with the spirits of the
unseen world. The strain was wild and broken, but
its tenor was deeply mournful and deprecatory. It
concluded with these emphatic words—
The proud eagle may turn to his eyrie again,
But his pinions are clipped, and his foot feels the chain,
He is monarch no more in his wide domain—
The falcon has come to his nest.
|
With an air of bold and martial triumph, their colors
flying, and music briskly playing, the Spaniards, with
the singular trail of half savage Tlascalans, the deadly
enemies of the Aztecs, made their entrance into the
southern quarter of the renowned Tenochtitlan, and
were escorted by the brave Cuitlahua, to the royal
palace of Axayacatl, in the heart of the city, once the
residence of Montezuma’s father, and now appropriated
to the accommodation of Cortez and his followers.
As they marched through the crowded streets, new
subjects of wonder and admiration greeted them on
every side. The grandeur and extent of the city, the
superior style of its architecture, the ample dimensions,
immense strength, and costly ornaments of the numerous
palaces, pyramids and temples, separated and
surrounded by broad terraced gardens in the highest
possible state of cultivation, and teeming with flowers
of every hue and name—the lofty tapering sanctuaries,
and altars blazing with inextinguishable fires,—and
above all, the innumerable throngs of people who
swarmed through the streets and canals, filling every
door-way and window, and clustering on the flat roof
of every building as they passed, filled them with
mingled emotions of admiration, surprise and fear.
The swarming myriads of the Aztecs were, on their
part, no less interested and amazed at the spectacle
presented by their strange visitors. An intense and
all-absorbing curiosity pervaded the entire mass of the
people. Nothing could surpass their wonder and
admiration of the prancing steeds, or four legged and
double-headed men, as to their simple view they seemed
to be, the rider as he sat with ease in his saddle, appearing
to be but a part of the animal on which he rode.
The piercing tones of the loud mouthed trumpets,
astonished and delighted them exceedingly. But the
deep thunder of the artillery as it burst upon them amid
volumes of sulphurous smoke and flame, and then rolled
away in long reverberated echoes among the mountains,
filled them with indescribable alarm, and made
them feel that the all-destroying god of war was indeed
among them in the guise of men.
While these scenes were enacting in the city, the
palace was shrouded in the deepest gloom. When the
monarch arrayed himself, in the morning, to go forth to
meet the strangers, several incidents occurred, which
were deemed peculiarly ominous, confirming all the
superstitious forebodings of the king, and tending to
take away from the yet trusting hearts of his household,
their last remaining hope. The imperial clasp,
which bound his girdle in front, bearing as its device,
richly engraven on the precious chalchivitl, the emblem
of despotic power, which was the eagle pouncing upon
the ocelot—snapped in twain, scattering the fragments
of the eagle’s head upon the marble pavement. The
principal jewel in the royal diadem was found loose,
and trembling in its setting. But, more portentous
than all to the mind of the devout Montezuma, the
priest, who had charge of the great altar on the
Teocalli of Huitzilopotchli, had been seized with convulsions
during the preceding night, and fallen dead at
his post. The perpetual fire had gone out, for want of
a hand to replenish it, and when the morning sun shot
his first beams upon that high altar, there was not a
spark among the blackened embers, to answer his
reviving glow.
It was impossible to shake off the influence of presages
like these. From infancy, he had been taught
to read in all such incidents, the shadowy revealings
of the will of the gods, the dark lines of destiny foreshown
to the faithful. The soul of Montezuma was
oppressed almost to sinking. But he roused himself to
his task, and went forth, feeling, as he went, that the
ground trembled beneath his feet, while an untimely
night gathered at noon-day over the sky.
Among the noble princes who graced the court of
Montezuma, there was no one of a nobler bearing, or a
loftier heart, than his nephew Guatimozin, the favored
lover of Tecuichpo. Unlike her disappointed suitor,
the Prince of Tezcuco, he had uniformly and powerfully
opposed the timid policy of the king, and urged,
with Cuitlahua, a bold and unyielding resistance to the
encroachments of the intruding Spaniards. His reluctance
to their admission to the capital was so great, that
he refused to witness the humiliating spectacle; preferring
to shut himself up in the palace, and sustain, if he
could, the fainting courage of the princess, and her
mother. All that could be done by eloquence, inspired
by patriotic zeal and inflamed by a pure and refined
love, was attempted by the accomplished youth, till,
excited and inflamed by his own efforts to comfort and
persuade others, and nerved to higher resolves, by a
new contemplation of the inestimable heart-treasures,
which were staked upon the issue, a new hope seemed
to dawn upon the clouded horizon of their destiny.
“My fair princess,” cried the impassioned lover, “it
shall not be. These wide and glorious realms, teeming
with untold thousands of brave and patriotic hearts,
ready and able to defend our altars and our hearths,
shall never pass away to a mere handful of pale-faced
invaders. They must, they shall be driven back. Or,
if our gods have utterly deserted us—if the time has
indeed come, when the power and glory of the Aztec is
to pass away for ever, let the Aztec, to a man, pass
away with it. Let us perish together by our altars,
and leave to the rapacious intruder a ravaged and
depopulated country. Let not one remain to grace
his triumph, or bow his neck to the ignominious
yoke.”
“Nay, my sweet cousin,” she replied, with a tone
and look of indescribable tenderness, “we will indeed
die together, if need be, but let us first see if we cannot
live together.”
“Live?” exclaimed Guatimozin. “Oh! Tecuichpo,
what would I not attempt, what would I not sacrifice,
to the hope of living, if I might share that life with
you. But my country! my allegiance! how can I
sacrifice that which is not my own?—that inheritance
which was all my birth-right, and which, as it preceded,
must necessarily be paramount to, all the other
relations of life.”
“But, my father! dear Guatimozin! must he not be
obeyed?”
“Yes, and he shall be. But he must be persuaded,
even at this late hour, to dismiss the strangers, and
banish them for ever from his domains. He has no
right to yield it up. It belongs to his subjects no less
than to him. He belongs to them, by the same sacred
bond that binds them all to him. He may not sacrifice
them to a scruple, which has in it more of superstition
than of religion. I must go to the Temple of Cholula,
and bring up the hoary old prophet of Quetzalcoatl,
and see if he cannot move the too tender conscience of
your father, and persuade him that his duty to his gods
cannot, by any possibility, be made to conflict with his
duty to his empire, and the mighty family of dependent
children, whom the gods have committed to his
care.”
“Oh! not now, Guatimozin, I pray you. Do not
leave us at this terrible moment. Stay, and sustain
with your courageous hopes the sad heart of my dear
father, who is utterly overwhelmed with the dire omens
of this dismal morning.”
“Omens! Oh! Tecuichpo, shall we not rather say
that the gods have thus frowned upon our cowardly
abandonment of their altars, than that they design, in
these dark portents, to denounce an irreversible doom,
which our prayers cannot avert, nor our combined wisdom
and courage prevent?”
At this moment Montezuma returned. But the deep
distress depicted in his countenance, and the air of
stern reserve which he assumed in the presence of
those whose counsels would tend to shake his resolve,
effectually prevented Guatimozin from pursuing, at that
moment, the object nearest his heart. He retired into
the garden, where he was soon joined by the fair princess,
who wished to divert him from his purposed
visit to Cholula, knowing full well it would be a fruitless
mission.
“But why, my brave cousin, may not my father be
right, in feeling that these strangers are sent to us from
the gods? And if from the gods, then surely for our
good; for the gods are all beneficence, and can only
intend the well-being of their children, in all the
changes that befal us here. Perhaps these strangers
will teach us more of the beings whom we worship,
and direct us how we may serve them better than
we now do, and so partake more largely of their
favor.”
“Alas! my beloved, how can we hope that they
who come to destroy, whose only god is gold—to the
possession of which they are ready to sacrifice life,
love, honor, every thing—how can we hope that they
will teach us any thing better or higher than we learn
from the ancient oracles of our faith, and the holy
priesthood of our religion? No, it cannot be. Their
pathway is drenched in blood, and so it will be, till the
throne, and he who honors it, are laid in dust at their
feet, and you and I, and all the myriads of our people,
have become their abject slaves.”
“Say not so, I beseech you, dear Guatimozin.
Where my father leads, I must follow, and hope for
the best. And you must follow too, for I cannot go
without you. Here, take this rose, and wear it as a
pledge to me, over this sparkling fountain, that you
will no more hazard the imperial displeasure, and the
anger of the gods, by your bold and rash resistance of
the known decrees of fate. And I will weave a chaplet
of the same, to lay upon the altar, to propitiate for
us all the favor of heaven.”
There was too much real chivalry in the heart of
Guatimozin, to resist the earnest love and eloquent
persuasion of his lady-love. He kissed her fair cheek
in token of submission to her sway, and then led her to
the palace, to learn if any thing new had transpired to
encourage his hope that his wishes would yet be realized,
in the exclusion of the Spaniards from the city.
As they passed along, they heard Karee-o-thán, the garrulous
pet of the Princess, seemingly soliloquising
among the branches of the flowering orange that hung
over her favorite arbor. They paused a moment, but
could gather nothing from his chatterings but “Brave
Guatimozin! noble Guatimozin! all is yours.”
“An omen! my sweet cousin, a genuine emphatic
omen! Even Karee-o-thán encourages me in my treason.
I wish I knew how she would respond to the
name of this redoubtable Cortez. Pray ask her,
Tecuichpo, what she thinks of the Spaniard.”
“Fear you not to trifle thus?” asked Tecuichpo.
“Fear not, brave Guatimozin!” responded the parrot.
“There, I have it again, my love; all she says is
against you. And what do you say of Malinché, pretty
Karee-o-thán?”
“Poor Malinché! brave Guatimozin.”
“Bravo!” exclaimed the Prince, “the bird is as
good as an omen, and I”——
At that moment, Karee appeared, and coming towards
them in great haste and trepidation, informed
them that the Spaniards had already reached their
quarters in the old palace, and that Montezuma had
gone thither, in royal state, to receive them.
“And what think you of all these things, my fairy
queen,” asked Guatimozin, playfully.
“Wo! wo! wo! to the imperial house of Tenochtitlan!”
energetically replied Karee,—“its glory is
departed for ever,—its crown has fallen from the head
of the great Montezuma, and there is none able to wear
it, or to redeem it from the hand of the spoiler. Thou,
most noble Prince, wilt do all that mortal courage and
prowess can do, to rescue it from desecration, and to
protect the house of Montezuma from the cruel fate to
which he has delivered it up; but it will be all in vain.
He must perish by an ignominious death. They must
pass under the yoke of the strangers, and thou, too,
after all thy noble struggles and sacrifices, must perish
miserably under their cruel and implacable rapacity.”
This was too much for Tecuichpo. She looked upon
Karee as an inspired prophetess, and had always found
it exceedingly difficult to sustain the filial confidence
which sanctified every act and every purpose of her
royal father, when the powerful incantations of Karee
were directed against them. It was a continual struggle
between an affectionate superstition, and filial love.
But that first, and holiest, and strongest instinct of her
heart prevailed, and she clung the more warmly to her
father, when she found that every thing else was
against him. But now the shaft had pierced her at
another and an unguarded point. Her spirit fainted
within her. She swooned in the arms of Guatimozin,
and was borne to her apartment in a state of insensibility,
where, under the kind and skilful nursing of
Karee, and the affectionate assurances of Guatimozin,
she was soon restored to health, and her accustomed
cheerfulness. But these ceaseless agitations, these
painful alternations of hope and fear, were slowly
wearing upon her gentle spirit, and undermining a
frame so delicately sensitive, that, like the aspen,
———It trembled when the sleeping breeze
But dreamed of waking.
|
MUNIFICENCE OF MONTEZUMA—THE ROYAL BANQUET—THE
REQUITAL—THE EMPEROR A PRISONER IN HIS
OWN PALACE.
“Was that thunder?”
|
| ——— |
Those splendid halls resound with revelry,
And song, and dance lead on the tardy dawn.
|
| ——— |
From the hall of his fathers in anguish he fled,
Nor again will its marble re-echo his tread.
|
Montezuma was always and every where munificent.
When he had, though reluctantly, admitted the strangers
into his capital, he prepared to give them a royally
hospitable entertainment. Partly by way of triumph
in the success of their movements hitherto, and partly
by way of amusing, and at the same time overawing
their entertainers, the Spaniards, the day after their
arrival in the city, made a grand military display in
their quarters, and in the neighboring streets. They
exercised their prancing steeds in all the feats of horsemanship,
racing, leaping, and careering, in all the wild
majesty of the trained charger, under the three fold discipline
of bit and spur, and cheering shout. They
rushed upon each other in the mock warfare of the
tournament, with clashing sword and glancing spear,
and then, discharging their carbines in the air, separated
amid clouds of dust and smoke, as if driven asunder
by the bolts of heaven in their own hands. The
astonished natives, accustomed only to the simple
weapons of primitive warfare, looked on with undisguised
admiration, not unmixed with fear. The strange
beings before them, wielding such unwonted powers,
seemed indeed to have descended upon earth from some
higher sphere, and to partake of that mysterious and
fearful character, which they had been wont to ascribe
to inhabitants of the spiritual world. But when, in
closing off the day’s entertainment, they brought out the
loud-mouthed artillery, and shook the very foundations
of the city with their oft-repeated thunders, the spirit
of the Aztec sunk within him, and he felt, as he retired
to his dwelling, that it was for no good end, that men of
such power, having such fearful engines at their command,
had been permitted to fix their quarters in one
of the fortresses of Tenochtitlan.
“Alas!” said an ancient Cacique from the northern
frontier, “we are fallen upon evil times. Our enemies
are even now in the citadel—enemies whom we know
not, whose mode of warfare we do not understand,
whose weapons defy alike our powers of imitation and
resistance. Let us abandon the field, and retire to the
far north, whence our fathers came, and rear a new empire
amid the impregnable fastnesses of the mountains.”
“Who talks of abandoning the field to the enemy?”
interrupted Guatimozin,—“Let no Aztec harbor so base
a thought. Rather let us stand by our altars and die,
if die we must.”
“Right,” cried the youthful prince Axayatl, from
the southern slope of the Sierra, “why should the all-conquering
Aztec tremble at this display of the mysterious
strangers? Are not the millions of Anahuac a
match for a few hundred of their enemies, in whatever
form they come? Be they gods, or be they demons,
they belong not to this soil, nor this soil to them, and,
by all our altars and all our gods, they must retire or
perish, though we, and our wives, and our children
perish with them.”
“Give us your hand, brave Axayatl,” exclaimed
Cuitlahua and Guatimozin, at the same instant, “be
that our vow in life and in death, and wo to the base
Aztec, that abandons the standard of Montezuma, or
whispers of submission to the haughty stranger.”
Thus were the councils of the people divided between
a timid superstition, and a bold uncompromising patriotism.
There wanted not the material, if well directed,
to annihilate, at a blow, the hopes of the daring invaders.
The arm of the nation was strong and sinewy,
but “the head was sick, and the heart faint.” The
Emperor, the hitherto proud and self-sufficient Montezuma,—
Like a struck eagle fainting in his nest,
|
had cowered to a phantom of his own diseased imagination,
and weakly consented to regard them as gods,
whose passions, appetites and vices proved them to be
men, and whose diminished numbers, after every battle
they had fought, showed they were of mortal mould.
On the following day, a magnificent banquet was
prepared for Cortez, and his officers, in the imperial
palace. It was graced by the presence of all the
nobility of Azteca, with all the pride and beauty of their
household divinities—for, among this refined people,
the wife and the daughter held her appropriate rank,
and woman exercised all the influence, which, among
(so called) civilized nations, Christianity alone has
assigned her. Every apartment of that spacious and
magnificent pile blazed with the light of odoriferous
torches, which sent up their clouds of incense from
hundreds of gold and silver stands, elaborately carved
and embossed in every form that fancy could suggest,
or ingenuity invent. Flowers of every hue and name
were profusely distributed through the rooms, clustered
in beautiful vases, or hung in gorgeous festoons and
luxurious chaplets from the walls. The costume of the
monarch and his court was as rich and gorgeous, as
the rare and variegated plumagé, with a lavish use of
gold and gems, could make it. The women were as
splendidly apparelled as the men. Many of them were
extremely beautiful. Some were distinguished for
their easy refinement of manners, which charmed, no
less than it astonished, the Castilian knights, who had
been accustomed to suppose that nothing so beautiful,
or refined, could be found without the borders of Spain.
By special command of the Emperor, all his nobles
were present at this festival, so that Guatimozin, contrary
to his own will and purpose, was brought into
contact with Cortez, and his steel-clad cavaliers.
Tecuichpo also was there, in all her maiden loveliness,
outshining all the stars of that splendid galaxy. And
yet she was as a star in eclipse, for her soul was
oppressed with those mysterious shadows that hung
over her destiny and that of her father, as connected
with the coming of these white men. Karee was there
in attendance upon her mistress, as she still delighted
to call her; but her attention was more absorbed by the
strangers than by Tecuichpo. She watched every
movement, and scanned every countenance with a scrutiny
that did not escape their observation, in order to
read, as well as she could, the character of each. Her
scrutiny satisfied herself, and she whispered in the ear
of the Princess, that “if these were gods, they came
from the dark, and not from the sunny side of heaven.”
It was a rare spectacle, which this royal banquet
presented. The contrast between the steel-clad cavaliers
of Castile, whose burnished armor blazed and
glittered in the brilliant torch-light, and rung under
their heavy martial tramp upon the marble floor,
and the comparatively fairy figures of the gaudily
apparelled Aztecs, was as strong as could possibly be
presented in a scene like this. The costumes and customs
of each were matter of wonder and admiration to
the other. The Aztec trembled at the mysterious
power, the incomprehensible weapons, of the white
man. The Castilian, if he did not tremble, fully appreciated
the danger of a little band, separated and scattered
among a festive throng of warlike men, amid the
interminable labyrinths of the imperial palace, and
under the eye of a monarch whose word was absolute
law to all the myriads of his people.
But, whatever was passing in the inner man, the
Aztec and the Castilian, alike, appeared perfectly at
ease, each abandoning himself to the festivities of the
occasion, as if each, unannoyed by the presence of a
stranger, were revelling in the security of his own
castle, and celebrating some time-honored festival of his
own people.
With a benign dignity and grace, the Queen, and her
suite of high-born ladies, received the homage of the
cavaliers, after they had been presented to the Emperor.
She was struck with admiration at the graceful and
dignified bearing of the Castilian, which, while it
showed all the deference and respect due to her sex
and her rank, had nothing in it, of that abject servility,
which placed an impassable barrier between the Aztec
noble and his monarch, and made them appear to
belong to distinct races of being. To the chivalrous,
impassioned Castilian, accustomed to worship woman,
and pay an almost divine homage to beauty, in the
courtly halls and sunny bowers of Spain, the scene presented
a perfect constellation of grace and loveliness.
The flashing eye of the Aztec maiden, as lustrous and
eloquent as any in the gardens of Hesperides; the jetty
tresses, glittering with gems and pearls, or chastely
decorated with natural flowers; the easy grace of the
loose flowing robe, revealing the full rich bust and the
rounded limb, in its fairest proportions, won the instant
admiration of every mailed knight, and brought again
to his lips his oft-repeated vows of love and devotion.
But of little avail were honied lips and eloquent
tongues to the gallant cavaliers at that magic fête.
They formed no medium of communion with the bright
spirits, and gay hearts around them. The doom of
Babel was on them all, and there was no interpreter.
Nothing daunted by obstacles seemingly insurmountable,
the gay Spaniards resolved, that, where bright
eyes were to be gazed on, and sweet smiles won from
the ranks of youth and beauty, they would make a way
for themselves. The first ceremonies of presentation
over, each knight addressed himself to some chosen
fair one, and by sign and gesture, and speaking look,
and smile of eloquent flattery, commenced a spirited
pantomimic attack, to the infinite amusement of all the
gay throng around. It was met with wonderful spirit,
and ready ingenuity, by the Aztec maidens, to whom
the dialect of signs, and the language of hieroglyphics
was perfectly familiar; that being the only written language
of all the nations of Anahuac.
The spirit and interest of the scene that followed surpasses
all attempt at description. Abandoned to the
gaiety of the hour, the Spaniards forgot alike their
schemes of ambition and aggrandisement, and the
peculiar perils which surrounded them; while the
Aztec revellers dismissed, for the moment, both their
superstitious dread of the white man, and their patriotic
disgust at his daring pretensions to universal
dominion.
The noble Sandoval, attracted by the mild beaming
eye, and sweet smile of the Princess Tecuichpo, with a
profound obeisance, laid his plumed helmet at her feet,
and choosing, from a vase at her side, a half blown
rose, which he gracefully twined with a sprig of amaranth,
he first pressed it to his own heart and lips, and
then placed it among the glittering gems upon her
bosom. With queenly courtesy and grace, the fair
princess received this gallant token, and instantly
responded to it, by stooping down, and weaving among
the plumes, so courteously laid at her feet, another, of
such rare beauty and brilliancy of hue, that it quite
eclipsed the gayest feather in the hall.
Cortez and Alvarado were, each in his turn, struck
with the deep, dark, piercing eye of Karee, and each
put forth his best endeavor to win from her a smile.
But it was so coldly given, and accompanied with a
look so deep and searching, that the general quailed
before it, as he had never done before to mortal eye.
Instantly recovering himself, he put on such a smile
of blended grace and dignity, as melted at once the icy
reserve of the maiden, and opened the way for a long
and animated parley. It was full of sparkles and
power, but could not be translated into any living
tongue, without losing all its force and brilliancy.
Meanwhile, an animated discussion had arisen between
Guatimozin and the Prince of Tezcuco, touching
the propriety of receiving gifts from the strangers, or, in
any way, acknowledging their claims as friends. The
showy trinket, which Cacama had received from Cortez
at Ajotzinco, and which he displayed on his person
at this festival, gave rise to the dispute.
“It is wrong,” urged Guatimozin, “wrong to our
country and wrong to ourselves. Let them gain what
they can from the exuberant munificence of the Emperor,
and let them stay in peace, while he permits and
requires it,—but let us not weaken our hands, by
touching their gifts, or accepting their tokens. When
they depart, let them not boast that they have left any
remembrancer behind them, or laid claims upon our
hands, by their gifts, which we have freely accepted.”
“Surely, my dear cousin,” said the Princess, “you
make too much of so small a matter. They are but
common courtesies, and too trifling for such grave consideration
and argument.”
“Not so, believe me, my fair cousin. They take us
on the weak side of the heart—they blind our eyes to
our true relations, unnerve our arms, and blunt our
weapons of defence.”
“What then would you do,” asked Cacama, as if
more than half persuaded that Guatimozin was right in
his views of duty.
“Do,” replied the Prince, with startling energy of
tone and manner, “I would fling it at his feet, or trample
it under my own, before his eyes, and show him that
I scorn him and his gifts alike.”
Tecuichpo turned suddenly round at this remark, as
if fearing the stranger would understand it, and in her
agitation, dropped a magnificent jewel from her dress,
and with it the rose so gallantly presented by Sandoval.
A dozen princes and cavaliers sprang, at the same
instant, to replace the precious toy. Pedro Orteguilla,
the beautiful young page of Cortez, was so fortunate as
to recover it. Doffing his cap, and kneeling gracefully
at her feet, he presented it to the Princess with an air of
admiring deference, and, by signs, solicited the honor
of replacing it upon her arm.
This little incident put an end to the discussion,
which was growing too warm for the occasion, and the
festivities went on as gaily as before.
A group of sprightly, mischief loving girls, who had
clustered round the cool basin of a sparkling jet d’ eau,
and were amusing themselves by free and fearless
comments upon the appearance and manners of the
strangers, arrested the eye of the impulsive, humor
loving Alvarado, and drew him to solicit a share in
their sport; for, in beating a retreat from the eagle
glance of Karee, he had strolled into an illuminated
arbor, in one of the open courts of the palace. With
hand, and eye, and lip, now appealing in emphatic
gesture to the stars above, and now, with ready tact
and admirable sagacity distributing the flowers among
the gay naiads of the fountain, he soon ingratiated
himself into their favor, and engaged them in a brilliant
and animated pantomime, which, if it wanted the eloquence
of words, found ample compensation for that
defect, in the merry shout and ringing laugh, that
accompanied each labored attempt to utter, or interpret,
a sentiment. The gallant cavalier soon found himself
loaded with a profusion of floral favors. For every
flower he bestowed upon the fair nymphs, he received
an appropriate return, till his hands were full, and he
found it necessary to arrange them upon his person.
Instantly the whole group, as by one impulse of
artistic taste, seized the idea, and resolved to array him
as a flower-god. The magnificent cactus flashed
among the plumes of his helmet—a pair of splendid
magnolias, tastefully adjusted on either shoulder, supplied
the place of the silver epaulette—a rich cluster
of unfading forget-me-not, covered and eclipsed the
gilded star upon his breastplate; while every joint in
his armor, and every loop and button of his doublet,
was set with its appropriate garden gem. Long
wreaths of a blossoming vine were dexterously intertwined
with flowers of every brilliant hue, and hung
like a gorgeous sash over his right shoulder, its gay
streamers waving in the gentle breeze, or winding themselves
about the scabbard of his sword. His hands
were gloved with a moss of the most delicate green
velvet, dotted with golden stars, and his boots transformed
into buskins of the most approved classic pattern,
by alternate bands of jessamine and scarlet lobelia,
crossed and plaided with strings of anemone and hyacinth.
Thus arrayed, his face skilfully masked with the
flowering wax-plant despoiled of its leaves, he was
conducted into the presence of the Queen, under a
continually increasing escort of bright girls and fair
dames, where, with due reverence to her majesty, and
with the gallantry becoming a true knight, he begged,
by significant looks and signs, to be permitted to lay all
his bright honors at the feet of the lovely Tecuichpo.
The signal being given at this moment, he offered
his arm to the Princess, and led the way into the banqueting
hall, where the luxuries of all the climes of
earth seemed to be spread out in endless profusion, and
where, the native song of the Aztec alternating with the
martial strains of the Castilian band, the night wore
away with feasting and revelry.
The day had almost dawned, when the strangers,
laden with presents of inestimable value, returned to
their quarters, burdened with the weight of their treasures,
and deeply impressed with the more than regal
munificence of their host, and the unimagined loveliness
and grace of the fair beings, who gave life and
beauty to his magnificent court.
“If these white gods can be bought, dear father,” the
Princess naively remarked, as they took their leave,
“you have surely paid a price worthy of the ransom of
the proudest monarch on earth.”
“The more you bribe them,” interrupted Guatimozin,
“the less you bind them. They have not the soul of
an Aztec, who scorns to receive a favor that does not
pledge his heart in return. The Spaniard’s heart has
nothing to do with his hand. He takes your gift, only
to be the better able to plot and compass your ruin.”
The Emperor sighed, as he listened to a remark, to
which he could make no reply. It brought again
before his agitated mind, the only course he could
safely adopt in the present crisis of his affairs. In
vain did his paternal heart second the suggestion, and
his kingly pride urge its immediate adoption. He had
not the moral courage to execute his own resolve.
Superstition had wholly unmanned him.
The victorious Spaniard had now reached the goal
he had so long aimed at. But his position was far
from agreeable, or promising. With a small force, he
was completely shut up in the heart of an immense and
powerful empire, teeming with millions of warriors,
who were deemed terrible and invincible by those
whom he had found so formidable, and who might, at
a word or a look from their sovereign, either rush in
and overwhelm him at once, or withhold all supplies,
and leave them to perish of famine in their quarters.
Cortez realized the critical position into which he
was drawn, and resolved immediately on one of his bold
measures, to turn it to his own advantage. Soliciting
an interview with Montezuma, in which he was accompanied
by some of his bravest cavaliers, he informed
the monarch, that it was not an idle curiosity that had
drawn him to encounter the perils, and undergo the
toils, of the adventure that had brought him to the
capital. He came, as the accredited ambassador of the
mighty monarch of Castile, to whom many kings and
many broad lands were tributary, and who was the
rightful lord of all the territories on which his armies
had set their foot. And the object of the present interview
was, to demand of the king an acknowledgment
of his allegiance to his royal master, and his consent to
pay an annual tribute for his crown.
The mind of the superstitious Montezuma had long
been preparing for this acknowledgment. With little
apparent constraint, therefore, he responded to this
haughty demand—that the oracles of his religion had
long ago instructed him, that the territories over which
he reigned belonged to a race of white men, who had
removed to other lands beyond the rising sun, but
would return, in process of time, invested with more
than mortal power, to claim their original inheritance.
For his part, he was fully convinced that that time had
now arrived—that the Spaniards were the men of destiny
foretold by a long line of presages and traditions,
and that he was fully prepared to acknowledge the
king of Castile as his lord, and pay allegiance to him
as such.
“And recognize me,” interposed the wily Castilian,
“as his accredited ambassador, and representative?”
The monarch assented.
The Aztec nobles, who surrounded the throne, were
thunderstruck at the humble tone, and humiliating
attitude assumed by their once proud and imperious
lord. But they were accustomed to unqualified and
unquestioning submission to the word of the king.
They accordingly, at his command, gave a full assent
to all that he had said, and agreed to recognize Cortez
as the representative of their new sovereign. Guatimozin
left the hall in disgust, and hastened to Iztapalapan,
to report the progress of their humiliation to
Cuitlahua.
Even with this arrangement, which had been accomplished
so much more easily than he had expected,
Cortez was by no means satisfied. He was still in the
power of the Mexican, and could never feel safe in the
position he held, without some substantial pledge, that
the peace of the city would be preserved, and the
ground he had already secured be left to him in undisturbed
possession. To secure this, he conceived and
executed a bolder and more audacious measure than
that which we have just related. Soliciting another
and a private interview with the Emperor, and directing
his best and bravest cavaliers, with some of their
chosen men, to keep near and about the palace, and be
in readiness to sustain and defend him, if any resistance
or outbreak should follow his daring attempt, he
entered the royal presence. As the Spaniards always
carried their arms, it excited no suspicion, to see them
on this occasion fully equipped.
This disposition of his men and officers being effected,
the bold cavalier addressed himself, in a stern voice, to
the Emperor, charging him with secretly designing the
destruction of his guests, and alleging, in support of the
charge, some of the incidents already related, and others
of more recent occurrence, in which some of the vassals
of Montezuma had surprised and slain a party of
Spaniards, who relied upon their hospitality. These
were artfully woven into a tale of imaginary wrongs,
for which he boldly pretended to claim instant redress,
or rather security against their repetition.
The monarch was thunderstruck at the charge,
while he, as well as the few attendants that remained
near his person, with difficulty restrained the expression
of their indignation at the disrespectful tone of the
address, so unlike that to which the royal ears were
accustomed. He peremptorily denied the charge. But
Cortez was not to be foiled thus. He knew that he had
now gone too far to retract, and that the change of feeling
now produced would ensure his speedy destruction,
if he failed of securing the object of the present interview.
He, therefore, repeated the charge, assuring the
monarch that such was the belief of all his men, and
that nothing would convince them of his innocence, or
make them willing to rest quietly in the capital, but the
consent of the king to transfer his residence, for a time,
to their quarters. And this he boldly demanded of him,
in the name of their common sovereign, the great king
of Castile, and he could not refuse obedience, without
breaking allegiance with him.
“When was it ever known,” exclaimed the astonished
and offended king, “that the monarch of a great
people voluntarily left his own palace, to become a
prisoner in the camp of a foreign nation. If I should
consent to such indignity, my own subjects would every
where cry out against it, and a storm would be raised,
which could only be hushed when the last Spaniard
was sacrificed to the outraged honor of their king, and
the wrath of their offended gods.”
“No, my imperial lord,” replied the politic and
smooth tongued knight, “your majesty entirely misapprehends
my meaning, and the position in which I
would place you. I only propose a temporary removal
from one of your royal palaces to another, a thing of
frequent occurrence, and therefore not likely to excite
remark among your people. You can bring all your
household and your court with you, and have the same
royal attendance, as you now do. This show of confidence
and regard, on your part, will inspire my men
with new confidence in your kind intentions, and give
stability in the eyes of your own people, to the friendly
relations existing between us.”
Montezuma still protested that it was unworthy the
dignity and majesty of the sovereign lord of Anahuac,
thus to submit his motions to the direction of strangers,
as it was a daring presumption and impiety, on their
part, to suggest it. He therefore, peremptorily declined
the proposal, and requested the general to say no more
about it, if he would retain the position he now held in
his regard, and that of his people.
Upon this, the iron-souled Castilian assumed a loftier
aspect, and a bolder tone, and abruptly assured the
monarch that it was a point he was not at liberty to
dispense with. If he would not remove peaceably and
quietly to the Spanish quarters, he must be carried
there forcibly, though it should involve a struggle that
should drench the palace in blood, and sacrifice the life
of every man in his army.
Suddenly, the spirit of the monarch was gone. His
old dread of the white man revived in all its power.
He felt himself compelled by his destiny, to do as he
was required. Signifying his assent to the haughty
demand of the stranger, he ordered his nobles to make
ready his palanquin, that he might go in royal state,
and not appear in the eyes of his subjects, as he passed
along, as a prisoner in his own capital.
With looks of astonishment, not unmingled with
indignation, the proud chiefs obeyed, marching under
their royal burden, with solemn pace and downcast
looks, in utter silence, but nursing in their hearts an
implacable hatred against the insulting Castilians, and
a burning rage, which was yet to burst upon their
devoted heads in an overwhelming storm of wrath. As
they passed the threshold of the imperial palace, which
their once proud but now humbled lord was never to
recross, they heaved a deep sigh, as if the dark shadows
of the future already hung frowningly over their
heads. It was responded to by a deep, mysterious,
sepulchral groan, which seemed to issue from the very
heart of the earth, while, at the same instant, a royal
eagle, sailing proudly over the capital, struck by an
invisible leaden messenger from one of the sure-sighted
marksmen in the Castilian camp, fluttered in his lofty
flight, drooped his strong wing, and, with a terrible
death shriek, the blood streaming freely from his
wound, fell into the court, at the very feet of the royal
procession.
The fate of Montezuma, and of his empire, was now
sealed. He had, with his own hand, taken the crown
from his head, and laid it at the feet of the Spaniard.
And, more than all, he had humbled himself in the
eyes of his own subjects, and diminished, though few
were hardy enough to avow it, the profound respect and
reverence with which they were accustomed to regard
him. To his own immediate household, he had represented
this removal as a voluntary act of courtesy, on
his part, designed to compliment the strangers, by
becoming, for a time, their guest, and to inspire them,
by his personal presence among them, with confidence
in his professions of regard, as well as to show his own
people how strong the bond of amity was between
them. At the same time, however, that he assured
them of his personal safety and his confidence that
all would end well, he recommended his wives
and children to leave him, for the present, and take
up their abode in his rural mountain palace at Chapoltepec.
The timid and sensitive Tecuichpo was thrown into
the deepest distress by this suggestion. She could not
doubt the repeated assurances of her royal father, and
yet she could not divest herself of the sad impression
that his liberty, and perhaps his life, was in danger, in
thus separating himself from the strong arms and
devoted hearts of his own people, his natural protectors,
and throwing himself, unarmed, into the garrison of
the fearful strangers. What security could she have
that he would ever return, or that violence would not
be offered to his sacred person by those who looked
upon him only as the vassal of their own sovereign, to
be used for his purposes and theirs, as their own selfishness
and rapacity might dictate.
“Leave us not, my dear father,” she exclaimed, “or
at least compel not us to leave you. Rather in darkness
and in trouble than at any other time, would we
stand at your side, to administer, as far as we may, to
your comfort, and to share, and perhaps lighten, your
sorrows.”
“Nay, my beloved child,” the grateful monarch
calmly replied, “I have no need, at this time, of your
solace, or your counsel. I go among friends, who
respect my person and my authority, and who well
know that their own safety in Tenochtitlan, depends
entirely upon retaining my friendship, which alone can
shield them from being overwhelmed, and swept away
like chaff, before the countless hosts of my warrior
bands. Why then should I fear for myself. But for
you, and your mother, and your sisters, the camp of the
strangers is not a fitting place for you. They have
customs of their own, and are slow to recognize the propriety
of ours, deeming us, as they do, an inferior race
of beings. They are bold and free in their manners,
quite too much so for the refined delicacy of an Aztec
maiden, or an Aztec matron, as you yourself both saw
and felt, at the festival of their reception. How shall I
expose you to the rude gaze of these foreign cavaliers,
and perhaps to the rude speeches of their soldiers. No,
my beloved, go to your retirement at Chapoltepec, and
train the flowers there for my coming, which will be at
the approaching festival of the new moon.”
“But will you certainly come to us then, my dear
father? Karee says”——
“Trouble me not with the dreams of Karee, my
sweet child. They are not always as loyal as they
should be. I believe I am right in what I am now
doing, and I cannot be diverted from it by the mystic
night visions of your favorite. Go, and the gods be
with you.”
So saying, he tore himself from her embrace, and
returned to his own apartments to attire himself for the
removal.
The fiery, high spirited Guatimozin was so disgusted
with this act of suicidal cowardice, on the part of his
royal master, that he withdrew at once from the city,
taking with him his servants and retainers, as well as
his immense private treasures, and took up his abode at
his country palace or castle, where he lived in all the
pseudo-regal state and magnificence of a feudal baron,
or a petty sovereign. Here he opened a correspondence
with a large number of the principal nobles of the
realm, who, like him, felt that the time had come to
prepare for a terrible crisis. They concerted no measures,
for they dared not move openly without the command
or assent of their master; but they exchanged
sentiments, and encouraged each other in their patriotic
purpose, to defend their country from subjugation to a
foreign foe, and their altars from desecration.
Passing Chapoltepec on his way, the noble Prince
sought an interview with his lovely mistress, to inform
her that, while the pledge he had given, in accepting
the proffered rose, over the sparkling fountain of
Tenochtitlan, should be sacredly regarded, he must be
allowed to see with his own eyes, when danger was
near, and to raise his arm in her defence, and in that
of his country, from whatever quarter the threatened
danger might come. He found her, bathed in tears,
wandering wildly up and down, amid the shade of the
tall cypresses that overhang and almost bury that
mountain retreat. Her raven hair had escaped from
its pearl-studded band, and was flying loosely in the
breeze; the wonted bloom was gone from her cheek,
and the brilliant lustre of her dark flashing eye had
given way to a sad and subdued expression, which
was more in keeping with the uniform mildness and
gentleness of her spirit. Separated from her adored
parent, and banished from the city of her love and her
pride, she began to feel more deeply than she had ever
done, the terror of those dark omens which had clouded
her destiny, and marked her out as the doomed Princess
of Anahuac. While she could cling to her father,
and feel that she was to share all that might befal him,
and perhaps, by sharing it, extract some portion of the
bitterness from the cup which he was compelled to
drink, she was calm and hopeful. But now, the sheet-anchor
of her soul was gone, and she was drifting, at
the mercy of the waves, she knew not whither.
“My sweet cousin,” said Guatimozin gently, as he
arrested her flying step, “why this sudden abandonment
to grief and despair. Dark as the clouds may be
over our heads, all is not lost. Know you not, my
love, that ten thousand times ten thousand brave
hearts and strong arms are pledged, by every bond of
loyalty and love, to rush to the rescue, the moment
that any violence is offered to the sacred person of
our lord. Be assured not a hair of his head shall be
touched.”
“Ah! my brave Guatimozin! I know full well your
courage and your zeal. But of what avail to us will
be the direst vengeance your arms can wreak on the
strangers, after the violence is done, and the honored
head of my father—oh! that I should live to speak it!—laid
low at their feet!”
“Fear not, my beloved, they dare not, with all their
boasted power, they dare not lay a rude hand upon that
sacred person. They know, they feel, that they are
treading on a mighty volcano, that may burst out
at any moment, and overwhelm them in hopeless
destruction. It is this sense of impending danger only
that has induced them to invite the Emperor to their
quarters, and so to urge their suit, that he could not,
as their professed friend, deny it. While he is there,
they will feel safe, for his hand alone can stay the pent
up fires, that they break not forth at once. Fear not.
I go to-night to Iztapalapan, to confer with your royal
uncle, the intrepid Cuitlahua. The noble Cacama
joins us there, convinced already that his was a mistaken
policy, when he counselled your father to receive
the strangers courteously, and treat them as friends.”
“And what can Cacama do?”
“That is yet to be seen. He is convinced of his
error, and is ready to atone for it with his life. With
Cacama, with Cuitlahua, with a thousand more like
them—chiefs who never feared danger, and never
knew defeat—why should we despair, or even doubt?”
“But how know you, Guatimozin, that these Castilian
strangers regard their own safety as any way
involved in that of Montezuma?”
“I gathered it from the oracle, my love, and from
omens which never deceive.”
“What oracle? What omens? I pray you explain?”
“The omens were their own troubled looks and
clouded brows, while this strange negotiation was
pending, and the guarded watchfulness, with which
they now protect their guest, and prevent the intrusion
upon his privacy of any considerable number of his
friends, at the same time.”
“Prince Guatimozin, do I understand the import of
those terrible words? Is my father already a prisoner
in his own palace?”
“What else, my sweet cousin, seeing he cannot
come forth, if he would, and we can only approach
him by permission?”
“O ye gods! has it come to this? Fly, Guatimozin.
Fly to Iztapalapan. I release you from your pledge.
Sound the alarm throughout the realm. And, if need
be, I will arm, and with you to the rescue.”
“Not so fast, brave princess; it is just this rashness
that may endanger the precious head we would rescue.
His life is safe at present; let us not put it to hazard,
by moving too soon, or striking a useless blow.”
“But I see not yet, my dear cousin, how it is ascertained
that my father is secure from further outrage.
May it not be their policy to take away the head,
hoping thus to dishearten and distract our people, and
make them an easy prey to their victorious arms.”
“If so, they know not the spirit of the Aztec. To a
man, throughout these broad realms, they would shed
their last drop, to avenge the foul sacrilege, nor rest in
their work of vengeance, till every altar in the land
was drenched in the blood of the captive foe. But you
forget that I have oracle as well as omen to sustain my
faith.”
“What oracle has condescended, at last, to give us
light? I thought they had all been silent, not deigning,
since the advent of these mysterious strangers, any
response to our prayers.”
“Karee is never deaf, or silent, where the welfare of
Tecuichpo is concerned.”
“Karee?”
“Yes, love, Karee! I want no better or more trusty
oracle. She has, you know, a sort of ubiquity. Nothing
escapes her keen observation. Few mysteries
are too deep for her sagacity to unravel. In her brief
occasional encounters with the strangers, she has
gathered the meaning of not a few of the words of their
strange tongue. What she has once heard she never
forgets. Presuming that no one could understand
them, they have talked freely and boldly in her presence.
And it is from her that I learn, that the Castilian
general said to one of his officers, as he crossed
the court yard, this morning—‘While we have the
Emperor with us, we are safe. We must see to it, he
does not escape.’”
“Escape?” shrieked the agitated Princess; “then he
is indeed a prisoner. But these white men are gods,
are the gods treacherous?”
“The gods of the deep are all treachery, but not
those of the blue fields and bright stars above us. But,
be they gods from below, or gods from above, they are
not the gods of Anahuac, nor shall they claim a foot of
its soil, till it is drenched with the blood of the Aztec.
Farewell. Fear not. I will yet see you return in
triumph to the imperial halls of Tenochtitlan.”
TREACHERY AND RETRIBUTION—MASSACRE OF THE AZTEC
NOBILITY—DEATH OF MONTEZUMA.
And bloody treason triumphed.
|
| ——— |
Feeling dies not by the knife;
That cuts at once and kills; its tortured strife
Is with distilled affliction, drop by drop
Oozing its bitterness. Our world is rife
With grief and sorrow; all that we would prop,
Or would be propped with, falls; where shall the ruin stop?
|
Passing lightly over some of the subsequent incidents
of this stirring period, we must hasten to the catastrophe
of our long drawn tale.
Secure in the possession of his royal prisoner, Cortez
now thought he might safely leave the capital, for a
while, and respond to a demand which pressed urgently
upon him, to relieve his little colony at Vera Cruz,
threatened with destruction, not by the natives, but a
new band of adventurers from Spain, who had come to
dispute the spoils with the conquerors. Leaving one
of his principal officers in command, with a part of the
forces, he placed himself at the head of the remainder,
and marched quietly off on his new expedition.
Alvarado was a brave knight, but of a rash and
headlong disposition, and utterly destitute of that cool
prudence and far-seeing sagacity which was requisite
for so important a station. He soon involved himself
in a most wicked and unjust quarrel with the Aztecs,
which had well nigh overwhelmed him and his diminished
band in utter ruin.
Not long after the departure of Cortez, one of the great
national festivals of the Aztecs occurred, at which the
flower of the nobility, not of Tenochtitlan alone, but of
all the neighboring cities and towns, were present. They
came only to the peaceful performance of the wonted
rites of their religion, and consequently came unarmed.
Their numbers were very great. They were all apparelled
in the richest costume of their country. Their
snow white vestments, their splendid mantles of feather-work,
powdered all over with jewels; their sandals of
gold or silver, and their gaudy head-dresses of many-colored
plumes, made an imposing and magnificent
display, as they moved in solemn procession, to the
simple music of their shells and horns, towards the
court yard of the great Teocalli, where the festival was
to be celebrated. The immense area was thronged
with the gay multitude of worshippers, who, unsuspicious
of treachery, gave themselves up to the wild
dances and all the customary evolutions of Indian festivity.
In the midst of their solemn sports, Alvarado,
with his band of armed followers, rushed in, like so many
tigers let loose upon their prey, and put them to an
indiscriminate slaughter. Scarce one of that gay company
escaped the ruthless massacre. The holy place
was drenched with the best blood of Anahuac, and
mourning, desolation, and wo were carried into all the
principal families in the land.
It was a fearful stroke, and fearfully was it repaid
upon the heads of the guilty murderers. On every side
the cry of vengeance arose, and its hoarse murmurs
came rolling in upon the capital, like the distant howlings
of a gathering tempest. Myriads of outraged
Aztecs, smarting and chafing under their wounds, and
thirsting for a worthy revenge, thronged the avenues
to the capital, and demanded the treacherous strangers
to be offered in sacrifice to their offended gods. Guatimozin,
and many other brave, powerful, fearless chiefs
were there, eager to seize the opportunity to chastise
the insolent intruder. Day after day, they stormed the
quarters of the beleaguered foe, pouring in upon them
vollies of arrows, darts and stones, that sorely discomfited,
though it could not dislodge them. Every assailable
point was so well guarded by those terrible engines
of destruction, the fire-belching artillery, that the assailants,
numerous as they were, and spurred on by an
ungovernable rage, could make but little impression
upon them. Nevertheless, they would inevitably have
carried the defences, and swept away the little band of
ruthless murderers, had not Montezuma interposed, and
besought them, for his sake, to desist from their hostile
attacks. From regard to his safety, they suspended
their active operations, but did not relinquish their
settled purpose of vengeance.
One means of annoyance was left to them, which
would soon have reduced the fortress to submission,
had not an unexpected succor arrived. All supplies
were cut off from the camp,—already famine began to
stare them in the face, and relax the iron sinew and
with it the iron will, of the haughty Castilian. They
were beginning to be reduced to extremities. A few
days more, and the undefended garrison would have
fallen into the hands of those merciless avengers of
blood, who would have doomed every individual to the
sacrifice.
At this critical juncture, the all powerful, invincible
Cortez returned, his forces greatly increased by the
accession of the very band that had been sent against
him—Narvaez, who had been commissioned to displace
him, having become his friend, and arrayed himself,
with his whole company and munitions of war,
under his banner. Hearing of the disastrous position
of his friends in the capital, he hastened with rapid
strides and forced marches to their relief. His progress
was unimpeded by any hostilities on the part of Aztecs,
or their allies, till he entered the city, and joined his
forces with those of Alvarado in the beleaguered citadel.
It seems to have been the purpose of the chiefs to permit
a free ingress of the entire force of the enemy, preferring
rather to shut them up to famine there, than
to meet them in the open field.
No sooner was the General, with his augmented
army, enclosed within the walls of the fortress, than
active and fearful demonstrations of the roused and
unappeasable spirit of the people began to be made.
The streets and lanes of the city, which were silent and
deserted as he passed through them to his quarters,
began to swarm with innumerable multitudes of warriors,
as if the stones, and the very dust of the earth,
were suddenly transformed into armed men. The flat
roofs of their temples and dwellings were covered on
every side with fierce wild figures, frantic with rage,
who taunted the Spaniards with their cruel treachery,
and threatened them, in the most violent language,
with a terrible revenge. “You are now again in our
power,” they cried, “and you cannot escape. Shut up
in your narrow quarters, you are doomed to the lingering
tortures of famine, and wo to the traitorous Aztec,
that furnishes a morsel to relieve your hunger. When,
at length, the faintness of death overtakes you, and you
can no longer offer resistance to our arms, we will again
spread the tables in your prison-house, and fatten you
for the sacrifice.”
No longer restrained by their reverence for Montezuma,
whose pusillanimity had been the cause of all
his and their troubles, they recommenced their active
operations, and stormed the defences with an energy
and perseverance that was truly appalling. Day after
day they deluged the place with arrows and missiles
of every kind, which fell in pitiless showers upon the
heads of the besieged, till scarcely one was left without
some wound or bruise. In vain did they apply, as
before, to their royal prisoner, to appease the rage of his
subjects, and induce them once more to send them the
customary supplies. In moody silence he shut himself
up in his room, brooding over the ingratitude and
treachery of Cortez, and the injuries and insults he had
received at his hand.
Exasperated by this sudden reversal of his schemes
of conquest, and maddened by the sense of hunger
which began to be severely felt in his camp, Cortez
resolved to strike terror into the ranks of the besiegers,
by a vigorous sortie at the head of all his cavalry.
First sweeping the avenue by a well directed fire from
his heavy guns, which were planted at the main
entrance of the fortress, he rushed out, with all his
steel clad cavaliers, trampling the unprotected assailants
under the iron hoofs of the horses, and dealing
death on every side. The mighty mass gave way
before the terrific charge of the advancing column, but
immediately closed in upon its rear as it passed, till it
was completely swallowed up in an interminable sea
of fierce and angry foes, whose accumulating waves
swept in from every avenue, and threatened to sweep
them all away, in despite of the fury and power of their
dreaded chargers. Convinced of his danger, the intrepid
Castilian wheeled his horse about, and with a furious
shout, called on his brave band to break a way through
the serried ranks of the enemy. Plunging, rearing and
leaping, under the double spur of the rider, and the
piercing shafts of his foe, the fiery animals broke in
upon the living wall that impeded their way, and
rushed fiercely on, trampling down hundreds in their
path, till they regained the open avenue, that was
defended by their own artillery. It was not without
serious loss, however, that this retreat was achieved.
The fierce Aztecs threw themselves upon the horses, in
the crowd, hanging upon their legs, sometimes inflicting
serious wounds upon them, and sometimes grappling
with their riders, dragging them from their saddles,
and carrying off to captivity or sacrifice. At the
same time, they were sorely beset by showers of
stones and darts that poured upon their heads from
every building as they passed, battering and breaking
their armor, and terribly bruising both the horse and
his rider.
These sorties were several times repeated, but always
with the same doubtful success. The loss of the Spaniards
was always much less than that of their enemy.
But the latter could better afford to lose a thousand,
than the former to lose one. Their ranks were instantly
replenished with fresh combatants, who crowded in
upon the scene of conflict, like the countless thousands
of the over-peopled North, that swarmed upon the fair
fields of Italy, as if some used-up world had been suddenly
emptied of its inhabitants. Their numbers
seemed rather to increase than to diminish with every
new onset. In the same proportion their fierce resolution
increased.
The haughty Spaniard was now convinced that he
had wholly mistaken the character of the people, whom
he had thought to trample down at his pleasure. A
spirit was raised which could not be laid, either by
persuasion or by force. He saw and felt his danger,
without the power to avert it. At length, either by
threats or entreaties, or both, he prevailed on the captive
Montezuma once more to interpose in his behalf,
by employing what authority remained to him against
his own best friends and faithful subjects.
The Aztecs, forsaken of their monarch, had bold and
talented leaders, who were competent both to devise
and to execute the measures deemed necessary for the
public good, and to lead on their marshalled hosts, to
battle and to victory. Cacama, the young Prince
of Tezcuco, burning to retrieve his fatal error in
counselling and aiding the friendly reception of the
Spaniards, now joined all his resources with those of
Cuitlahua and Guatimozin, in endeavoring to recover
the ground they had lost. Their first object was, to
rescue the Emperor from his inglorious imprisonment,
never doubting that, with his sacred person at their
head, they would be able to annihilate the treacherous
intruders at a blow.
Not far from the city of Tezcuco, and standing out
on the bosom of the lake, several hundred yards from
the shore, was a solitary castle of a heavy and sombre
architecture, built upon piles, at such an elevation as to
be above the influence of any extraordinary swell in
the waters of the lake. Consequently, when at its ordinary
level, boats could pass freely under. At this place
the princes were accustomed to meet for private deliberation.
Cortez was informed of these meetings, and knew
too well the effect of the counsels there matured, not to
wish them broken up. With a boldness of design
peculiar to himself, he resolved to make Montezuma
the instrument of their destruction. He represented to
that monarch the danger to his own interests, of allowing
such a junto of able and ambitious men to assume
the guidance of the public affairs, and undertake to
direct the movements of the people. “What can they
do more,” he craftily exclaimed, “but assume the reins
of government, under the specious pretence, which they
now falsely set up, that their king is deprived of his
freedom to act, and therefore no longer a king. If,
now, you would save your sceptre and your crown,
assert at once your imperial prerogative—show them
you have still the power to speak and to act—command
them, on pain of your royal displeasure, to lay down
their arms, desist from their treasonable assemblages,
and repair at once to your court, to answer for their
unloyal designs.”
Misled by false representations of the facts, and
deceived by the specious arguments of the Spaniard,
Montezuma despatched a message to the lord of Tezcuco,
under the great seal of the empire, which it was
high treason to disregard, commanding him instantly
to appear before his master, to answer for his irregular
and ill-advised proceedings. Cacama was too well
aware of the real position of Montezuma, and of the
constraint under which he acted, to give any heed to
his mandate.
“Tell my royal master,” he replied, “that I am too
much his friend to obey him in this instance. Let him
banish the false-hearted Spaniards from his capital, the
vipers whom he has taken to his bosom—let him
ascend once more his imperial throne, not as a vassal,
but as the rightful lord of all these realms, and Cacama
will joyfully lay his crown, his life, his all, at his feet.
Montezuma is my master when he is master of himself.
To that dignity we intend to restore him, or perish in
the attempt.”
On the evening of the fourth day after the return of
the royal messenger, with this spirited reply of Cacama,
a light pirogue, guided by a single hand, its sole occupant,
might have been seen gliding silently over the
Lake to the water-palace, the chosen rendezvous of
the patriot princes. By the proud and majestic bearing
of the boatman, it could be no other than Guatimozin.
Securing his skiff by a cord passed through the fingers
of a gigantic hand, curiously carved from the jutting
rafters on which the floor of the palace was laid, he
ascended the steps to the hall, which he found unoccupied
and still. He was presently joined by Cuitlahua
and Cacama, arriving from different directions, in the
same stealthy manner. Their number was soon increased
by the arrival of four Tezcucan lords, from
whom some important communications were expected.
Scarcely had they entered the hall, and seated themselves,
when, a slight noise from without attracting his
attention, Guatimozin rose, and went towards the door,
to ascertain the cause.
“It is only the chafing of our pirogues against the
piles,” said one of the new comers—“let us proceed to
business.”
Guatimozin, true to his own impulses, heeded not the
remark. Stepping upon the outer battlement, he discerned
a slight figure in a canoe, moving in the shadow
of the building, and apparently seeking concealment.
Supposing it might be a servant, left by the Tezcucans
in charge of their boats, he was about returning, when
a gentle voice whispered his name.
“Who calls Guatimozin?” he replied in a whisper,
at the same time leaning towards the intruder.
“Beware of the Tezcucans, beware.” The voice
was Karee’s, but the skiff shot away, like an arrow,
before the Prince had time for further parley.
Returning to the council, he instantly demanded, as
if nothing had happened, that the plans of the evening
should be laid open.
A pictured scroll was then produced by the Tezcucans,
representing the contemplated movements of the
enemy, which they professed to have ascertained from
authentic sources, and delineating a plan of operations
against them. Guatimozin, somewhat bewildered by
the warning he had received, sat down with his friends
to the examination of this scroll. But, while seemingly
intent upon that alone, he contrived to keep a close
watch upon the movements of the Tezcucans. It was
soon evident that their thoughts were not wholly
engrossed by the business before them. A slight noise
from without, followed instantly by an exchange of
significant looks between two of the party, confirmed
his suspicions. Instantly dashing away the false scroll,
and springing to his feet, he boldly charged the traitors
with a conspiracy; and demanded an immediate explanation.
Alarmed at this mysterious and premature disclosure
of their designs, the chief of the party, without
venturing a word of reply, gave a shrill, piercing whistle,
which was immediately responded to from without.
Finding himself entrapped, and not knowing what
numbers he might have to contend with, Guatimozin
sprang to the door, stretching one of the conspirators on
the floor as he passed, and succeeded in reaching his
skiff, just as a band of armed men rushed in from the
other quarter. Cuitlahua also effected his escape,
though not without a desperate encounter with one of
the advancing party, who attempted to arrest his flight.
To seize his antagonist with a powerful embrace, to
fling him over the parapet into the water, and to plunge
in after him, was the work of an instant. Swimming
under water for some distance, and rising to the surface
within the shadow of the building, he took possession
of the nearest canoe, and, following in the wake of
Guatimozin, was soon out of the reach of danger, or
pursuit.
Cacama, unsuspicious of danger, and intent only on
the object of their meeting, was so engrossed with the
scroll, and the plans delineated upon it, that he did not
fully comprehend the meaning of this sudden interruption
of their council, until his two friends had disappeared,
and, in their place, a band of twenty armed
men stood before him. Resistance was vain. By
order of the chief of the conspirators, he was seized,
securely bound, and carried a prisoner to Tenochtitlan.
There, though treated with indignity by Cortez, and
with severity by Montezuma, he maintained a haughty
and independent bearing, sternly refusing to yield, in
the slightest degree, to the insolent dictation of the one,
or the pusillanimous policy of the other. Cuitlahua
was afterwards seized in his own palace of Iztapalapan;
but, after a short detention, was released again, at
the instigation of Montezuma.
These outrages, so far from intimidating the people,
only excited and incensed them the more, and led to
other and more desperate assaults upon the beleaguered
foe, till Cortez, apprehensive of ultimate defeat and
ruin, applied once more to Montezuma, proposing that
he should appear in person before his people, and
require them to lay down their arms, retire to their
homes, and leave his guests in peaceable possession of
the quarters he had voluntarily assigned them.
Arrayed in his royal robes, with the imperial diadem
upon his head, preceded by his officers of state, bearing
the golden wands, the emblem of despotic power, and
accompanied by a considerable train of his own nobles,
and some of the principal Castilian cavaliers, the unfortunate
monarch appeared on the battlements, to remonstrate
with his own people for their zeal in the defence
of his crown and honor, and appease the rage of his
subjects for insults offered to his own person, and to
those of his loyal nobles. His presence was instantly
recognized by the thronging multitudes below and
around. Some prostrated themselves on the earth in
profound reverence, some bent the knee, and all waited
in breathless silence to hear that voice, which had so
long ruled them with despotic sway.
With a sad, but at the same time a calm and dignified
tone, the monarch addressed them, “My children,”
said he, “why are you here in this fierce array. The
strangers are my friends. I abide with them as their
voluntary guest, and all that you do against them is
done against me, your sovereign and father.”
When the monarch declared himself the friend of the
detested Spaniard, a murmur of discontent and rage
arose, and ran through the assembled host. Their
ungovernable fury burst at once the barrier of loyalty,
and vented itself in curses upon the king who could, in
the hour of their peril, thus basely forsake his people,
and endeavor to betray them into the hands of a
treacherous and blood thirsty foe. “Base Aztec!”
they cried, “woman! coward! go back to the viper
friends whom you have taken to your bosom. No longer
worthy to reign over us, we cast away our allegiance
for ever.” At the same moment, some powerful arm,
more fearless than the rest, aimed a huge stone at the
unprotected head of the king, which brought him senseless
to the ground. His attendants, put off their guard
by the previous calm and reverential attention of the
crowd, were taken by surprise. In vain they interposed
their shields and bucklers, to protect his person
from further violence. The fatal blow was struck.
The great Montezuma had received his death-wound
from the hand of one of his own subjects, who, but a
moment before, would have sacrificed a hundred lives,
had he possessed them, to shield the person of his monarch
from violence and dishonor.
The effect of this unexpected catastrophe seemed
equally appalling to both the belligerent parties. The
Aztecs, struck aghast at their own sacrilegious deed,
dispersed in sorrow and shame to their homes; while
the Spaniards felt that they had lost their only remaining
hold upon the forbearance and regard of a mighty
people, whose confidence they had shamefully abused,
and whose altars and houses they had wantonly desecrated.
It was a season of agonizing suspense. To
retreat from their post, and abandon the conquest which
they once imagined was nearly achieved, might be as
disastrous as it would be humiliating. To remain in
their narrow quarters, surrounded with countless thousands
of exasperated foes, on whom they must be
dependent for their daily supplies of food, seemed little
better than madness. To the proud spirit of the
haughty Castilian, the alternative was scarcely less to
be dreaded than martyrdom. It was manifestly, however,
the only resource, and he resolved to evacuate the
city.
Meanwhile, active hostilities had been temporarily
suspended. The unhappy Montezuma, smitten even
more severely in heart than in person, refused alike the
condolence of his friends and the skill of the Castilian
surgeon. Tearing off the bandages from his wounds,
“leave me alone,” he cried, “I have already outlived
my honor and the affection and confidence of my people.
Why should I look again upon the sun or the
earth. The one has no light, the other no flowers for
me. Let me die here. I feel indeed that the gods
have smitten me, when I fall by the hand of one of my
own people.”
In this disconsolate mood, the spirit of Montezuma
took its flight. In vain did the Castilian general
endeavor to suppress, for a time, the tidings of his
death. The loud wailing of his attendants, would
have published it far and wide among the thousands
of affectionate hearts, that listened for every sound that
issued from the palace, if they had not, unknown to
the Spaniards, established a kind of telegraphic signal,
by means of which they communicated to the priests
on the great Teocalli, daily reports of the progress of
his disease. When the sad signal was given, announcing
the solemn fact, that the great Montezuma had laid
down his honors and his troubles together, it was
responded to by the mournful tones of the great drum
of the temple, by ten measured muffled strokes, conveying
the melancholy intelligence to every dwelling in
Tenochtitlan.
The breathing of that populous city was now one
universal wail, that seemed to penetrate the very heavens.
Partly from a sincere regard for the fallen
monarch, and partly from the hope that he might thus
conciliate the good will of his afflicted subjects, Cortez
directed his remains to be placed in a splendid coffin,
and borne in solemn procession, by his own nobles, to
his palace, that it might be interred with the customary
regal honors. It was received by his people with every
demonstration of affectionate joy and respect. Conveyed
with great pomp to the castle of Chapoltepec,
followed by an immense train of priests, nobles, and
common people, it was interred amid all the imposing
ceremonies of the Aztec religion. His wives and
children, frantic with grief, gathered around those hallowed
remains, and testified, by all those tender and
delicate tokens which seem the natural expression of a
refined feminine sorrow, their profound sense of the
inestimable loss they had sustained.
By one of those singular coincidences, which tend so
strongly to confirm the too easy credulity of the superstitious,
and give an unnatural emphasis to the common
accidents of life, it was the festival of the new
moon, the very day on which Montezuma had promised
Tecuichpo that he would join the household
circle at Chapoltepec, that his lifeless remains were
borne thither, in the solemn funereal procession.
“Alas! my father,” she cried, “is this the fulfilment
of that only promise which sustained my sinking courage
in the hour of separation?” She said no more.
The more profound the sorrow, the fewer words it has
to spare. “The shallow murmur, but the deep are
dumb.”
BRIEF REIGN OF CUITLAHUA—EXPULSION OF THE
SPANIARDS—GUATIMOZIN CHOSEN EMPEROR—HIS MARRIAGE
WITH TECUICUPO.
Grief follows grief. The crowned head
So late the nation’s hope, is laid
Low in the dust.
|
| ——— |
Defeat and triumph, tears and smiles,
Life, death, true glory and the depths of shame,
The funeral pall and the pure bridal robe,
In close proximity—
|
The sacred dust restored to its native earth, and the
last hallowed rites performed over the sepulchre of the
departed, the thoughts of the people were immediately
turned to the succession. All eyes were fixed on Cuitlahua,
the noble brother of Montezuma, whose intrepid
spirit, and deadly hatred of the intruding Spaniards,
accorded with the now universal sentiment of the
nation. He was elected, without a dissenting voice, by
the grand council of the nobles. Accepting, with alacrity,
the post of responsibility and danger, he was
immediately inaugurated and crowned, with all the
gorgeous rites, and imposing ceremonies which a pagan
priesthood delight to throw around every important
event, in which their holy influence is necessarily
involved.
During the progress of these mournful and exciting
events, the rigors of the siege had not been materially
relaxed, though all active hostilities had been suspended.
They were now to be renewed with tenfold
energy, under the lead of their warlike monarch, who
had often led the armies of Anahuac to victory, and
who had never known defeat.
When the Castilian general was informed that the
heroic Cuitlahua had been placed on the throne of Montezuma,
and was about to take the field in person, he
perceived the necessity of adopting prompt and decided
measures. The retreat had already been resolved on.
It was now to be put in execution, and that, without
delay. As it was the custom of the Aztec, to suspend
all hostilities during the night, Cortez determined to
avail himself of that season to make his escape.
Accordingly, every thing being made ready for the
departure, and the city being hushed in a seemingly
profound repose, the gates were thrown open, and the
little army, with its long train of Indian allies, sallied
stealthily forth, not to the stirring notes of drum or
trumpet, but with hushed breath and a cautious tread,
ill accordant with the haughty bearing, and vaunting
air, with which they had hitherto attempted to lord it
over the proud metropolis of Anahuac.
But, though quiet, the sagacious and determined
Aztec was wide awake. He had anticipated this
stealthy movement of his pent up foe, and resolved that
he should not thus escape the snare into which his own
audacious insolence had drawn him. The last files of
the retreating army had not yet passed out from their
entrenchments, when a long loud blast from the horn
of the great Teocalli, stirred the city to its utmost borders,
calling out the mighty host, who had slept upon
their arms, eager for the summons which should bring
them once more to an engagement with their foe.
Confident as the Spaniard was in the overwhelming
power of his cavalry and artillery, he preferred rather
to make good his retreat, while he could, than to show
his prowess in these perilous circumstances. The
hoarse distant murmurs which fell upon their ears at
every street as they passed, indicated too plainly the
mustering of a mighty host, which soon came rushing
in upon them from all quarters, like the swelling surges
of a stormy sea, each higher and more terrible than
that which preceded. They fell upon the flying foe
with the ferocity of tigers, about to be disappointed of
their prey. From every lane and alley, and from the
roof of every house, they pelted them with ceaseless
vollies of stones. They grappled with them, man to
man, reckless of life or limb, so that they could maim
or destroy an enemy.
Alvarado, with a portion of the cavalry, brought up
the rear of the retreating army, in order to repel, with
an occasional charge upon the enemy’s ranks, those
furious onsets which might have overwhelmed the
small body of Spanish infantry, or the unmailed and
lightly armed Tlascalan allies. The cavalier and his
horse, encased in armor of proof, could better cope with
the weapons and missiles of their assailants, while they
often turned upon them, with a fierce and irresistible
charge, trampling hundreds in the dust, and mowing
down whole ranks on this side and that, with their
trenchant broadswords.
In this manner the fugitives defiled through the great
southern avenue, and came out upon the grand causeway,
by which they had twice entered the city. Here
they were met by new and fresh squadrons of the
enemy, thronging the sides of the dike in their light
canoes, and showering down arrows thick as hail upon
the advancing column. Sometimes keeping upon the
causeway, they would grapple each with his man, and
drag him off into the water, to be picked up by those in
the canoes, and hurried off to a terrible and certain fate,
on the great altar of their War-god. Their numbers
increased every moment, till the lake was literally alive
with them.
At length the advancing column was brought to
stand; while a cry of despair from the van revealed
the fearful position in which they stood in the midst of
their implacable foes. The bridges which intersected
the dike had been removed by order of the Emperor.
They had now reached the first opening thus made in
the causeway. A sudden shout from the myriads of
Aztec warriors that hung about them on all sides, told
at once their own wild triumph, and the awfully perilous
position of their enemy. Crowded together on a
narrow causeway, in ranks so close as to render their
arms and their weapons almost entirely useless—arrested
in front by a wide chasm which it was impossible
to pass—their retreat cut off in the rear, by the
living masses that blocked up every avenue, and pressed
them forward upon the crowded ranks of their comrades—assailed
on both sides from the water, through
the whole length of the closely compacted column—while
all these dangers were enhanced a hundred-fold
by the darkness of the night—there seemed no possibility
of escape for one of that brave host.
Cortez was with the principal part of the cavalry in
the centre of the column, so wedged in by the compacted
mass of his own forces, as to be quite unable
either to advance or retreat, without trampling them
under his feet, or crowding them off the causeway.
He comprehended in a moment the perilous position he
was in. But such was the utter confusion and dismay
of the whole army, and such the horrid din of clashing
arms, and the yet more horrid yells of the savage foe,
that he in vain attempted either to direct or encourage
his men. His voice was drowned in the uproar.
Sandoval, one of his bravest and most trusty officers,
who led the van, with a few other cavaliers as bold as
himself, resolved to push forward at any personal
hazard, rather than stand still to perish in one confused
mass, dashed their steeds into the water, and made for
the other side of the gap. Some succeeded in effecting
a landing, while others, with their horses, perished in
the attempt, or fell into the hands of the watchful boatmen.
The first movement being thus made, an impetus
was given to the moving column from behind, that
drove the front ranks, nolens volens, into the breach.
By far the greater part sank to rise no more, or were
picked up by the Aztecs, and hurried away to a far
more terrible death. At length the breach was filled
up by the bodies of the dead, and the baggage and artillery
which occupied the centre, so that the rear had a
clear passage over the fatal chasm.
A second and a third breach was yet to be passed.
It was accomplished as before, only by making a bridge
of the bodies of one half, for the other half to walk upon.
Meanwhile the enemy hung upon flank and rear, with
unappeasable rage, striking down and picking up vast
numbers of victims, until, when the last breach was
cleared, and a footing gained upon terra-firma, there
was scarce a remnant left of the gallant band that
entered upon that fatal causeway. The iron-hearted
Cortez was so overcome with the sight of his shattered
band, and the absence of so many brave comrades,
when the morning light appeared, that he sat down
upon a rock that overlooked the scene of desolation,
and gave vent to his emotions in a flood of tears.
Had the Mexicans followed up this success by falling
upon the broken dispirited remnant of the Castilian
army, they would probably have vanquished and
destroyed them to a man. They were suffered, however,
to proceed unmolested for several days, until their
strength and spirits were somewhat recruited. Then,
though attacked by immensely superior numbers, they
succeeded in putting them to rout.
The new Emperor, Cuitlahua, having signalized his
accession to the throne by the almost total destruction
of the formidable foe, who had spread the terror of his
arms far and wide through all the realms of Anahuac,
proceeded to fortify his capital and kingdom against
another invasion. The dikes and canals were thoroughly
repaired, the walls were strengthened and
extended, the army enlarged and improved in discipline
by some of the lessons which so able a general,
was not slow to learn from the Spaniards. The
immense treasures they had drawn from the munificent
Montezuma, and which, in the disasters of that melancholy
night, they had been compelled to leave behind,
were all recovered and expended in these works of
defence. Their arms, too, were gathered up, and served
to improve and render more effective many of the more
primitive weapons of the Aztecs. In the midst of these
wise and patriotic efforts to guard against the probable
return of the Spaniards, Cuitlahua was seized with a
loathsome disease, which in a few days brought him to
the grave, after a brief reign of four months.
This was a terrible blow to the nation. It was felt
throughout all the borders of Anahuac, as the severest
frown of their gods. But partially recovered from the
shock occasioned by the death of Montezuma, they
were now beginning to feel their hopes renewed, and
their courage reviving, under the bold and decided
measures, and the signal successes of their new Emperor.
He was the idol of the army. His intrepid bravery,
his high military talents, his unyielding patriotism, and
deadly hatred of the white men, had secured for him
the confidence of all the wisest and best men of the
realm, so that, with one heart and one voice, they rallied
around his standard, assured that, under his energetic
sway, the ancient glory and pre-eminence of the
Aztec crown would be not only ably asserted, but effectually
re-established.
His fall, like a mighty earthquake, shook the empire
to its centre. For a moment it seemed as if all was
lost—hopelessly, irretrievably lost. The long funereal
wail, that swelled up from every dwelling and every
heart in that devoted land, seemed like the expiring
groan of a world. But it was only for a moment. The
first shock past, they found themselves still standing,
though among ruins. Their land, their temples, their
dwellings, still remained. Their wise and experienced
counsellors were all in their midst. Their host of
armed men were still at their post, unbroken, undivided,
unappalled. The imperial mantle had not fallen to the
earth.
As by immediate direction from heaven, all eyes
were turned to Guatimozin. He was nephew to the
last two monarchs, and though only a young man, had
distinguished himself both in the council and in the
field. He had uniformly opposed the admission of the
Spaniards to the capital. He had been prominent in
all the recent attacks upon their quarters, and had especially
signalized himself in the terrible overthrow of the
disastrous night of their retreat. He had all the coolness
and intrepidity of a veteran warrior, with all the
fire and impetuosity of youth. He was about twenty-five
years of age, of an elegant commanding figure, and
so terrible in war that even his followers trembled in
his presence.
The young prince felt the extreme difficulty of the
crisis, but did not shrink from the arduous and perilous
post assigned him. With a prudence and circumspection,
only to have been expected from one long accustomed
to the cares and perplexities of government, he
set himself to fortify every assailable point, and to prepare
for the worst that might arise, in the event of
another invasion. The works commenced during the
brief reign of Cuitlahua were carried forward to their
completion. By means of regular couriers and spies, a
constant communication was kept up with all parts of
the country. The movements of the Spaniards were
narrowly watched, and their supposed designs frequently
reported to the Emperor. Nothing was omitted
which a sagacious and watchful monarch could do or
devise, to make ready for a severe and protracted contest,
in whatever form it might come.
Thus established on the throne, and strengthened
against a sudden surprise, the ardent young monarch
repaired to Chapoltepec, where the bereaved household
of Montezuma still remained, in sad but peaceful seclusion,
and claimed the hand of the fair Princess
Tecuichpo. Her retiring disposition would have preferred
a humbler and more quiet station. She had seen
enough of the agitations and burdens of a crowned
head; enough of the gaudy emptiness of life in a
palace, and longed to hide herself in some sweet,
sequestered spot, away from the noisy parade and anxious
bustle of a court, where her own home would be
all her world.
“Oh! that that crown had fallen on some other
head,” she exclaimed. “Though there is not another
in Anahuac so worthy to wear it, not one who would
so well sustain its ancient glory, yet I would not that
you should bear the heavy burden, or be exposed to
that desolating storm that is gathering over our devoted
capital and throne.”
“Said I not, my beloved, that I would yet lead you
back in triumph to the royal halls of your ancestors?
I have come to redeem my pledge. Shrink not from a
station which no other can so well adorn. Rather, far
rather would I, if I could, retire with you to the quiet
shades of private life, and find a home in some sweet
glen among the mountains, than wear the crown and
claim the homage of a world. But, my sweet cousin,
the crown must be defended, the throne must be sustained
against the insolent pretensions of these strangers.
And I must do my part in the defence. I dare
not, either as monarch or as subject, withhold myself
from this great work. If I perish, I fall in the service
of my country and her altars. And the higher the station
I hold, the greater the service I render—the heavier
the burden I bear, the brighter the honors I shall win.
As well perish on the throne, as fighting at its foot. I
should be unworthy of the daughter of Montezuma, if I
held any thing too dear to sacrifice on the shrine of my
country.”
“Noble Guatimozin, my heart is yours—my life is
devoted only to you. Lead me where you will, so that
I can share your burdens, and lighten your cares, and
not prove unworthy of such a father and such a lord.
But you forget that mine is a doomed life, that oracles
and omens, signs and presages, have all conspired
against me from my birth.”
“Nay, my love, it is you that forget, not I. For the
very oracles and omens that foreshadowed for you a
clouded morning, promised with equal distinctness a
bright and glorious evening. The tempestuous morning
is passed. The glorious mid-day and the golden
evening are yet to come.”
“You are quite too fast, I fear, my brave cousin, it
was only the evening that was to have light. The
sunset hour of life was to be clear. But what, my dear
Guatimozin, what do you suppose that light is to be?
and whence shall it come?”
“What can it be, but to restore, in your own person
and family, the disputed pre-eminence of the Aztec
dynasty, the tarnished glory of its crown. Rely upon
it, my gentle cousin, that is your destiny. The timid
dove of Chapoltepec shall be transformed to the royal
eagle of Tenochtitlan.”
“That cannot be. I rather fear that the deep cloud
of my doom will overshadow and darken your life.
Better far that I should suffer and perish alone.”
“It must be, Tecuichpo, it shall be. Have not the
gods given you to me? Have they not made me the
defender of the Aztec throne? How then can you doubt
that they call you to share and adorn it?”
“Oh! my lord! those terrible omens—they are but
half fulfilled, and the promised light is yet far in the
distance. Could I be sure that you would share that
light with me——.”
“Come then with me to the palace. It will be all
light for me when you are there, and sure I am that
time will re-interpret those sad omens for you, and turn
them all to sunshine.”
Suddenly the palace of Chapoltepec was changed
from a house of mourning to a house of feasting. The
nuptial rites of the youthful Emperor with the beautiful
princess, were celebrated with great pomp. The festivities
continued through several days, and were honored
by the presence of all the nobility of the empire.
The most costly entertainment was provided for the
numerous guests. The most munificent royal largesses
were bestowed upon the priests, and upon those who
took a prominent part in the grand ceremonies, and
gifts of great value lavishly distributed among all the
inferior attendants. The brilliant and odoriferous treasures
of the royal gardens, and of the chinampas of the
great lake were exhausted in adorning the halls and
chambers of the palace. The refined taste, and
exquisite invention of Karee was every where apparent.
The place, on the day of the nuptials, might
have been taken for the realm and palace of Flora.
The very air was redolent of the incense of flowers,
which brightened the day with their bloom, and of the
odoriferous gums, whose blaze extended the reign of
day far into the realms of night.
It was a national festival, a season of universal
rejoicing. The people now believed that their days of
darkness and temporary depression were passed, and
that all the power and glory of the days of Montezuma
would be restored, under those happy auspices which
made his favorite daughter a sharer of his throne. The
priests sanctioned and confirmed this belief, to the
utmost of their power and influence, giving it out, with
that oracular force and dignity, which they so well
knew how to assume, that such was the true interpretation
of all the singular predictions and presages, which
intimated that the life of the princess would close with
unusual splendor. In this manner, they encouraged
the hopes of the nation, confirmed its allegiance to its
new Emperor, and united all its forces in a solid
phalanx of resistance to every foreign encroachment.
When these ceremonies were concluded, and the
imperial pageant passed from Chapoltepec to the capital,
there was a new and still more imposing display of
the reverence and loyalty of this singular people, and
of the more than oriental magnificence with which they
sustained the splendors of royalty. The road, through
the entire distance, was swept, sprinkled, and strewed
with flowers. The elite of the army, and the nobility
in the gayest costumes, formed a brilliant and numerous
escort, accompanied with flaunting banners, and
every species of spirit-stirring music then known to
Aztecs. The imperial cortege, consisting of a long
array of magnificent palanquins, with their gorgeous
canopies of feather-work, all a-blaze with gold and
jewels, borne on the shoulders of princes and nobles,
occupied the centre of the grand procession. Those of
the Emperor and Empress, which moved side by side,
were distinguished by the exceeding costliness and
beauty of their decorations, and by the superior height
of their canopies, whose sides and ends curved gracefully
to a point in the centre, about three feet above the
cornice, which was surmounted by the imperial diadem
of Mexico. These were followed by the queen mother,
and other members of the royal household, conveyed in
a style but little inferior to the first. This cortege was
immediately preceded and followed by all the priests
and prophets of the nation, in their splendid pontificals,
and bearing the showy insignia of their various orders.
An immense train of the most respectable citizens, merchants,
mechanics, artizans, husbandmen, and men of
every honorable profession brought up the rear. They
were scarcely less gay and brilliant in their costume
than the escort and immediate attendants of the monarch,
though somewhat less uniform in the style of
their decorations. The road, through its entire length,
was flanked by women and children, young men and
maidens, in their gala dresses, with baskets and chaplets
of flowers, which they continually showered upon
the path, in front of the royal palanquins, thus renewing,
at every step of its progress, the floral carpet,
whose freshness and beauty the long escort had trampled
out. Ever and anon a shout would go up from
that vast multitude, so loud and long, that its echoes,
reverberated along the mountain walls that shut in that
beautiful valley from the great world, would be heard
for many a league around. Then, from some little
group of trained chanters, a song of right loyal welcome
would burst forth, accompanied with showers of roses,
and followed by a chorus from thousands of sweet
voices—
Welcome! welcome! warrior, king—
Thrice welcome with the prize you bring.
Star of Montezuma’s line,
O’er the empire, rise and shine!
Flower of Montezuma’s race
Return, thy father’s halls to grace!
Welcome, thrice welcome, mighty one!
The nation’s heart shall be thy throne.
|
FESTIVITIES AT THE COURT OF GUATIMOZIN—HYMENEAL VOW.
Heaven gave to Adam one, and so proclaimed
Her full equality to man. He who
Can ask for more, knows not the worth of one,
And so deserves not any—
|
The imperial court of Tenochtitlan was now again the
radiant centre of attraction to the confederated and
tributary nations of Anahuac. The terror of Guatimozin’s
arm was even more dreaded than that of Montezuma.
He was a mighty man of valor, of that impetuous
courage, and that bold directness of action, which
executes at a blow the purposes and plans, which, with
common minds, would require time and deliberation.
He was at the same time of a generous magnanimous
disposition, open, frank, unsuspecting, and won the
affectionate regard, as well as the prompt unquestioning
obedience of his people. He had too much good
sense, and too wise a regard to the dignity of those
who should attend upon the person of majesty, to
require of his nobles, the officers of his court and
household, those humiliating attentions which were
exacted by Montezuma. He saw that the only effect
of such exactions was to weaken and effeminate the
character of some of his greatest chieftains, reducing
them from proud and powerful friends to fawning
cringing slaves. They were no longer shrouded in the
sombre nequen, as they entered the royal presence, nor
did they go barefoot, with their eyes cast down to the
earth, when they bore the monarch in his luxurious
palanquin. Arrayed in all their costly finery, with
golden or silver sandals, and with a bold, manly, cheerful
bearing, as if they gloried in the precious treasure
which it was their privilege, more than their duty, to
protect and to care for, the imperial palanquin seemed
rather their trophy than their burden, which they were
far more ready to bear, than their master was to occupy.
He was too active and stirring a spirit, to submit often
to such a luxurious conveyance. He was ever in the
midst of his chiefs, consulting and acting for the public
good. He freely discussed with them the great measures
of defence, which he put in progress, and evinced
the remarkable and rare good sense, to adopt wise and
politic suggestions, however humble the source from
which they emanated, and to change his opinion at
once when it was shown to be wrong. He superintended,
in person, the repairing and enlarging of the
fortifications, and the improvement of the tactics and
discipline of the army. By a frugal expenditure of the
vast revenues of the crown, and a careful preservation
of the treasures left by his predecessors, he accumulated
an amount more than equal to the exigencies of a long
and wasting struggle with all the combined foes of the
realm.
Meanwhile, the gay saloons of the palace of Montezuma
were gayer than they had ever been. For a
brief season, the clouds that had so long hung over the
fate of the lovely Tecuichpo seemed to be dissipated.
The skies were all bright above her, and every thing
around her wore a cheerful and promising aspect.
Attracted by her resplendent beauty, the unaffected
ease and graciousness of her manners, and the queenly
magnificence of her court, the youth, beauty, wit, talent
and chivalry of the nation, gathered about her, and
made her life a perpetual gala-day, rivalling in brilliancy
and effect the best days of the gayest courts in
Europe.
Conspicuous among the gay multitude that flitted
about the court, was Nahuitla, Prince of Tlacopan, a
young chief of the Tepanecs. He was just ripening
into manhood, of an uncommonly lithe and agile frame,
exceedingly fair and graceful, and gifted with unusual
powers of intellect. He was one of the rarest geniuses
of the age, and astonished and amused the court with
the variety and beauty of his poems, and other works
of taste. Nor did his intellectual accomplishments
exceed his heroism and loyalty. Guatimozin had not
an abler or more devoted chieftain in all his realm. It
was he who fought side by side with the Emperor in
all his after conflicts, endured with him the horrors of
the wasting siege and painful captivity which followed,
and finally shared his cruel and shameful martyrdom,
at the hands of the then terror-stricken and
cowardly Cortez, declaring with his last breath, that he
desired no better or more glorious lot, than to die by the
side of his lord.
Nahuitla, like all good knights and brave soldiers, to
say nothing of true poets, had a heart warmly susceptible
of tender impressions, and could not resist the bright
eyes and witching smiles, that illuminated the saloons
and gardens of the imperial palace. Promiscuous flirtation
was less hazardous in Tenochtitlan than in most
of the capitals of Christendom. The wealthy nobles
being allowed to marry as many wives as they could
support, the young prince could win the affections of
all the bright daughters of the valley, without at all
apprehending a suit for breach of promise, or a conspiracy
against his own life, or that of his favorite, by
some disappointed rival. How many conquests he
made in one brief campaign, does not appear in the
chronicles of the day. Atlacan, a princess of Tezcuco,
was his first trophy. She was very fair and highly
gifted, resembling in many points of person and character,
the guardian genius of the young Empress, the
talented Karee.
At his first encounter with the Tezcucan princess,
Nahuitla was deeply impressed with a peculiar expression
of thoughtfulness, shading a brilliantly beautiful
countenance, and imposing a kind of constrained awe
upon the stranger. This shadow gradually disappeared
upon a further acquaintance, till the whole face and
person were so lighted up with the fire of her genius
and wit, that it seemed as if invested with a supernatural
halo. Their intercourse was a perfect tournament
of wit, and their brilliant sallies and sparkling
repartees, were the theme of universal admiration.
The princess Atlacan was always attended by a
very prudent, watchful, anxious chaperone, of a fair
exterior, and pleasing manners, who had passed the
meridian of life, and begun to wane into the cool of its
evening. She had also a brother, Maxtli, considerably
older than herself, who, from a two-fold motive, seemed
to delight in disappointing her expectations, and
thwarting her plans. He was a cold, mercenary, selfish
man, who sought only his own aggrandizement.
The princess was a special favorite of her father, who
was a prince of the highest rank, and nearly related to
the reigning king of Tezcuco. She had already
received many substantial proofs of parental partiality,
which her avaricious brother would fain have claimed
for himself. Her brilliant qualities and growing influence
made her an object of jealousy, as seeming to
stand in the way of his own preferment. He had used
every exertion to dispose of her in marriage to some of
her numerous suitors, and had particularly advocated
the cause of a wealthy young merchant of Cholula,
who rejoiced in the euphonous name of Xitentlóxiltlitl,
from whom Maxtli had received large presents of gold
and jewels.
Atlacan despised the merchant, who fondly imagined
that his gold could purchase any jewel in the realm.
She would not listen to his proposals. It was not pride
of family, for in Anahuac, under the Aztec dynasty, the
merchant was a man of note, scarcely inferior to the
proudest noble. But the merchant was only a merchant,
a man of one idea, and that was gold, without
refinement, without sentiment, without heart, like the
majority of the same class of mere money mongers all
the world over.
Maxtli was enraged by his sister’s refusal of this alliance,
which, if it had been consummated, he would
have made subservient to his own interests. He determined,
from mere revenge, to throw obstacles in the
way of her alliance with the gifted prince of Tlacopan.
The annoyances he invented, and the frequent prudential
interposition of her cautious chaperone, who was in
the pay of Maxtli, made her position rather a difficult
one, and often put her disposition to the severest test.
It chanced, one lovely evening, that the lovers had
stolen a march upon both their tormentors, and found,
in the royal gardens, a few moments of that unwatched
uninterrupted conference, which only those in the same
delicate relation, at the same period of life, know how
to appreciate. Their absence from the saloons was
soon noticed. The duenna was severely censured, and
sent in pursuit of the fugitive. Karee, who was in the
secret of the escape, led her a long and wearisome
chase, through the numberless halls and corridors of
that immense pile, and finally left her, at the furthest
extremity of the building, to find her way back as she
could. Then, returning to Maxtli, who could scarce
restrain his rage that they had so long eluded him—
“My lord,” said she, “can you tell me where I shall
find your sister? I have a message for her, which I
can only deliver to her personally.”
“I know not,” he replied angrily, “but she is probably
flirting somewhere with that fool fop, the royal bard of
Tlacopan. But from whom does your message come?”
“That can only be made known to herself. I saw
her some time since, in the garden, leaning upon the
arm of this same royal bard, the only young prince in
Anahuac worthy of such a jewel.”
The prince bit his lip with vexation, and Karee ran
off toward the garden. In a few moments, the poor old
chaperone came blustering along, out of breath and out
of humor.
“Fie upon the giddy girls of this generation,” she
exclaimed, “they know nothing of propriety. I wonder
what would have been thought of such actions
when I was young!”
“Hasten to the garden,” said Maxtli, impatiently,
“your hopeful pupil is there, and that rhyming fop is
with her.”
He might as well have sent her to the labyrinth of
Lemnos or Crete. Covering an immense area, and
traversed in every direction by serpentine walks, shaded
lanes, and magnificent avenues, one might have wandered
up and down there a week, without finding one
who wished to elude pursuit. She obeyed his directions,
however, and was soon lost in mazes more intricate
and perplexing than those of the palace.
Presently the truants returned, by a different path
from that which their pursuer had taken. The princess
wore in her bosom a significant flower, which she had
received and accepted from her admirer. With a light
and joyous step, he led her through the crowded saloon,
and presented her to the queen, craving her sanction to
the vows they had just plighted to each other. Gracefully
placing a chaplet of white roses and amaranths
on their heads, the Empress gave them her blessing.
Guatimozin, approaching at the same instant, confirmed
it with hearty good will, and requested that the nuptials
might be celebrated at an early day, and in his
own palace.
So distinguished a favor could not be refused. In
the course of the next week the solemn ceremonies
were performed; with all the imposing pomp of the
Aztec ritual. A royal banquet was prepared, and the
palace resounded with joyous revelry and music.
When the officiating priest had uttered the last
solemn words which sealed the indissoluble bond,
Nahuitla stood forth, and publicly avowed his belief,
that the gods designed only one woman for each man,
solemnly renounced the old doctrine of polygamy, and
pledged to his young bride, in the presence of his royal
master, and the brilliant throng that had witnessed his
vows of love and constancy, an undivided heart, and
an undivided house.
Struck with surprise and admiration at this unexpected
scene, and impressed with the truth and purity
of the sentiments, and the soundness of the conclusions,
which the brave prince had proclaimed, the Emperor
rose from his throne, and, with a bland but dignified
and solemn air, addressed him:—
“You are right, Nahuitla, my brave prince; I feel it
in my heart, you are right. I feel it in the claim which
your Empress and mine, (looking affectionately at Tecuichpo,)
has in the undivided empire of my heart, and
in that sacred bond of union which is so close, that it
cannot be shared by another without being broken.
In the presence of these holy men, and of these my
witnessing people, I solemnly subscribe to the same
pure vow which you have uttered, pledging my whole
self, in the marriage covenant to this my chosen and
beloved queen, even as she has pledged her whole
self to me. And I ordain the same, as the law of
this my realm, and binding on all my loyal subjects for
ever.”[D]
If the noble Guatimozin had been permitted to
sway the Aztec sceptre in peace, his name would be
embalmed in the hearts of all the women of Anahuac,
and the anniversary of the nuptials of Nahuitla and
Atlacan would be celebrated, to this day, as the household
jubilee of the nation.
The conclusion of this festival—the last of the kind
that was ever celebrated in the halls of Montezuma—was
a unique and magnificent specimen of Aztec taste
and luxury. At a signal from the master of ceremonies,
the royal garden was suddenly illuminated by a
thousand torches, borne by as many well trained servants
in white livery. They were so stationed as to
represent, from different points of view, groups of bright
figures whirling in the mazy evolutions of a wild Indian
dance. The harmony of their movements, and the
picturesque effect of their frequent changes of position,
was truly wonderful. It seemed more like magic than
any thing belonging to the ordinary denizens of earth.
By continually passing and re-passing each other,
approaching and receding, raising and depressing their
torches, the bearers were enabled to describe a great
variety of fantastic figures. So well did they perform
their parts, that, to the crowd of spectators from the
palace, it was a perfect pantomime of light.
At length the dance ended, and the figures of the
various groups in light, gathering around a high altar,
all of fire, seemed waiting for some sacred rite to be
performed. Presently a tall princely figure was seen,
approaching with slow and solemn pace, leading a
lovely female to the altar. The high priest joined their
hands in the indissoluble bond, and waved his wand
of fire over their heads, in token of the divine blessing;
upon which the dance of the torches was instantly
renewed, accompanied with strains of the most joyous
music, each group breathing out its peculiar airs and
melodies, while the whole were beautifully blended and
harmonized by the master spirit of the fête. It seemed
like the bridal of two angels of light, witnessed and
celebrated by all the stars and constellations of the
celestial spheres.
The sudden extinguishment of these pantomimic
stars, revealed to the surprised revellers the presence of
the dawn, before whose coming the stars of every
sphere go out, and revelry gives place to the sober realities
of life.
RETURN OF CORTEZ—SIEGE OF TENOCHTITLAN—BRAVERY
AND SUFFERINGS OF THE AZTECS.
What will not man endure, and woman too,
To guard the hearth and altar? Give to each
A thousand lives, and hedge them close around
With all that makes it martyrdom to die,
And agony to suffer—freely still,
With all their wealth of blood, and love, and tears,
They’ll yield them every one, and dying, wish
They had a thousand more to give—
|
Guatimozin was kept constantly informed of the preparations
and movements of the Spaniards. His faithful
spies followed them in all their marches, and found
no difficulty in divining their general intentions and
plans, as their courage revived on their arrival at Tlascala,
and still more on the accession of a large reinforcement
of Spaniards at Vera Cruz. Cortez was now
as resolute as ever in his purpose of conquest, and
determined to regain his position in the capital, or
perish in the attempt. He went with the sword in one
hand and the olive-branch in the other, if that can be
called an olive-branch, which admits of no answer but
submission, and offers no alternative but slavery or
death. With a large increase of cavalry and artillery,
an ample supply of ammunition, and a force both of
Castilian and Indian allies, more than double of that
which accompanied him on his former expedition, he
took up his line of march from the friendly city of
Tlascala, to cross the mountain barrier that separated
him from his prey. Previous to his departure, he
gave orders for the construction of a considerable
number of brigantines, under the inspection of experienced
Spanish shipwrights, conceiving the singular
and original idea of transporting them, on the shoulders
of his men, across the mountains, and launching
them upon the lake of Tezcuco, to aid him in laying
siege to the city. His march was unchallenged till
he arrived on the very shores of the great lake, and
stood before the walls of Tezcuco.
Here he halted, and sent a message to the governor
to throw open his gates, and renew his allegiance to the
crown of Castile. The messenger returned with a
request that the Spaniard would delay his entry into
the city, until the next morning, when he should be
prepared to give him a suitable reception. Cortez, suspecting
that all was not right, ascended one of the Teocalli
in the neighborhood, to ascertain if any hostile
movement was contemplated. To his surprise, he saw
immense crowds of people, thronging the thoroughfares
on the other side of the city, and going, with as much
of their substance as they could carry, towards the
metropolis. Supposing that the city, when evacuated,
would be given up to the flames, and that he should
thus be cut off not only from supplies, but from a place
of shelter and retreat, he instantly sent forward a strong
body of horse, with a battalion of infantry, to arrest
the fugitives, and to demand an interview with the
cacique.
Flight having been resolved upon, and the city having
been devoted to destruction, as the most effectual
annoyance to the Spaniards, no preparations were made
to resist such a movement as this. The unarmed fugitives
returned to their homes, in great numbers, and the
city, with all its abandoned palaces and temples, offered
ample accommodations to the invaders. The person
of the chief was not secured, he having effected his
escape, with the principal part of his nobles, and all his
army, to the capital. Cortez, assuming to act in the
name of the king of Castile, for whom he claimed the
sovereignty of all these lands, immediately deposed the
reigning chief, absolving the people from all further
allegiance to him, and installed his brother, who was
favorable to the cause of the Spaniards, in his place.
Thus secured in such commanding quarters, the
haughty Castilian surveyed the field around him, and
prepared himself, with great diligence and deliberation,
to regain possession of it. The most liberal and conciliating
overtures were made to the Emperor, if he would
peaceably acknowledge the sovereignty of Castile, and
admit him, as the representative of that crown, to the
capital. These overtures were promptly and scornfully
rejected, and every avenue to amicable negotiation effectually
closed. The people of the country were sternly
forbidden, on pain of death, from holding any intercourse
with the strangers, or from administering, in
any manner, to their wants. Large rewards were
offered for captives, and every inducement held out to
encourage the natives in a resistance, that should admit
of no quarter, and terminate only in the utter extermination
of one of the parties. Guatimozin was a man
every way adapted to a crisis like this. Of a firm
indomitable spirit, patient of suffering and of toil, and
skilful in all the strategy of war and defence, and possessed
of the entire confidence and affection of his own
people, he applied himself to the work of self-preservation,
with an energy and fertility of resource, which
scarcely ever, in a righteous cause, fails to ensure success.
That he was suffered to fail, is one of those
inscrutable providences which stand frequently out on
the page of history, to confound the short-sighted sagacity
of man, and restrain his too inquisitive desire to
fathom the counsels and purposes of heaven.
Perceiving that the ground was to be contested, step
by step, and that not a foot would be yielded but at the
point of the bayonet, and the mouth of the cannon,
Cortez resolved on reducing the smaller towns first,
and so approaching the capital, by slow degrees, leaving
no unfriendly territory behind him, to cut off his
supplies, or annoy his rear. In this manner, after
almost incredible hardships, and many severe contests,
in which his forces were very considerably reduced, he
succeeded in wresting by violence, or winning by diplomacy,
many of the tributary cities and districts from
their allegiance to the Mexican crown. In their attempt
upon Iztapalapan, which was led by Cortez in person,
they were near being entirely overwhelmed by an artificial
inundation of the city. The great dikes were
pierced by the natives, and the waters of the lake came
pouring in upon them, in torrents, from which they made
their escape with the utmost difficulty, with the loss of
all their booty and ammunition, and not a few of their
Indian allies. The place, however, was reduced to
submission. Chalco, Otumba, and many other important
posts were soon after added to the number of the
conquered.
This work of subjugation among the tributary provinces
and cities, was not a little facilitated by the
memory of the iron rule of Montezuma, and his severe
exactions upon all his subjects, to maintain the splendors
of the imperial palace. They had long felt these
exactions to be most burdensome and unequal, and had
only submitted to them by force of the terror of that
name, which made all Anahuac tremble. They were,
therefore, not unwilling to embrace any opportunity to
throw off the Aztec yoke, when they could do it with
the hope of ultimate protection from its vengeance.
They had not long enough tested the administration of
Guatimozin, to look for any relief from their burdens
under his reign. He came to the throne at one of those
signal crises in the affairs of the empire, which
demanded all its resources, both physical and pecuniary,
and was therefore compelled, for the time, rather
to increase than diminish their taxes, and make heavier
requisitions than usual upon their personal services.
They were ready for a change of masters, and, as is
usual in such cases, did not stop to consider whether
the change might not be rather for the worse than for
the better. As soon, therefore, as they ascertained that
the Spanish power was sufficient to protect them against
the fury of their old oppressors, they rushed to their
standard, and arrayed themselves against the brave
defenders of their native land. The event proved that
the rod of iron was exchanged for a two-edged one of
steel, a natural sovereign of their own race, for a worse
than Egyptian task-master, and a subjection which left
undisturbed their ancient customs, and the common
relations of society, for an indiscriminate slavery which
respected neither person nor property, and levelled alike
the public and private institutions of the land.
Meanwhile the brigantines, which had been rapidly
progressing at Tlascala, were completed. They were
thirteen in number. They were first put together, and
tried upon the waters of the Tahnapan; then taken to
pieces, and the timbers, with all the tackle and apparel,
including anchors, transported on the shoulders of
the Tlascalan laborers, over the hills, and through
the narrow defiles of the mountain, a distance of sixty
miles, and re-constructed within the walls of Tezcuco.
To open a communication with the lake, it was still
necessary to make a canal, a mile and a half in length,
twelve feet wide, and as many deep. This was accomplished
in season for launching the little fleet, having
eight thousand men employed upon it during two
months. It was a day of great rejoicing and appropriate
religious solemnity, when that little squadron
appeared, with the ensign of Castile floating proudly at
each mast head, their white sails swelling in the breeze,
the smoke of the cannon rolling around, and the deep
thunder reverberating from every side of the distant
mountains.
There is, perhaps, no single achievement in the
annals of human enterprize, more remarkable than this.
There is certainly none which more clearly shows, or
more beautifully illustrates, the daring indomitable spirit,
and mighty genius, which alone could have achieved
the conquest of Mexico. Who but Cortez would have
conceived of such a design? Who but Cortez would
have attempted and successfully executed it? To construct
thirteen vessels of sufficient burthen to sustain
the weight and action of heavy cannon, and accommodate
the men and soldiers necessary to navigate and
defend them, at a distance of twenty leagues from the
waters on which they were to swim—to convey them
over mountains, and through deep and difficult defiles,
on the shoulders of men, without the aid of any species
of waggon, or beast of burden, and to do this in the
midst of a country, and with the aid of a people, where
nothing had hitherto been known beyond the primitive
bark canoe, and where the natural associations, and
prevailing superstitions of the natives, were totally
adverse to his design—to accomplish this alone would
immortalize any other man. What was the passage of
the Alps by Hannibal, or by Napoleon, compared to
this? Yet, so replete was the whole expedition of Cortez
with adventures of unparalleled difficulty, and
achievements of dazzling splendor, that this is but a
common event in his history, with nothing small or
insignificant to place it in commanding relief. It was
one of the infelicities in the career of this wonderful
man, that he was continually eclipsing himself, showing
an originality and power of conception, a fertility
of invention and resource, and a determination and
energy in overcoming difficulties, and making occurrences,
seemingly the most adverse, bend to his will
and subserve his designs, which wearies our surprise
and admiration, and actually exhausts our capacity of
astonishment.
Nothing was now wanting to complete the arrangements
of the invader for laying siege to Tenochtitlan.
By the aid of the brigantines, he was able to command
the entire lake, sweeping away the frail canoes of the
natives, like bubbles on the surface. All the cities and
towns on its border had fallen, one after another, into
his hands, though not without a desperate defence, and
frequent and wasting sallies from the foe. The metropolis,
that beautiful and magnificent gem upon the fair
bosom of the lake, now stood alone, deserted by all her
friends and supporters, the object of the concentrated
hostility of the foreign invader, the ancient enemy, and
the recent ally.
In that devoted capital, now so closely and fearfully
invested, there was a spirit and power fully equal to the
awful crisis. As soon as Guatimozin perceived, by
the movements of his enemy, that the city was to be
assailed rather by the slow and wasting siege, than by
the storm of war, he made every possible preparation to
sustain himself at his post. The aged, the infirm, the
sick, and, as far as possible, all the helpless among the
inhabitants, were sent off among the neighboring towns,
and country; while all those who were able to do service
in the army, were brought thence into the city.
Provisions were collected in great quantities, and all
the resources then left to the empire concentrated upon
one point, that of making an obstinate, unyielding
defence. In this condition of affairs the siege commenced;
a large part of the fighting men of the neighboring
cities and towns being in the capital, preparing
to defend it against enemies with whom those cities
and towns were now in close alliance. Though it thus
brought the father against the son, and the son against
the father, in many instances, it did not, in any case,
disappoint the confidence of Guatimozin, or undermine
the loyalty of his troops. There were no deserters from
his standard. Through all the horrors of that wasting
siege, they stood by their sovereign, and their capital,
as if they knew no other home, no other friend.
In vain did the Castilian commander propose terms
of accommodation to the beleaguered city. The
Emperor would not condescend even to an interview.
His chiefs and his people, whenever they had an opportunity
to do so, treated every attempt at compromise
with utter scorn. They derided Cortez upon his disastrous
evacuation of the capital on “the melancholy
night,” assuring him that, if he should enter its gates
now, he would not find a Montezuma on the throne.
They taunted their Tlascalan allies as women, who
would never have dared to approach the capital, without
the protection of the white men.
Sustained by this spirit, the warlike Mexican did not
content himself with mere measures of defence. Frequent
and desperate sallies were made upon the outposts
of the enemy, until it seemed as if the hope of the
noble Guatimozin might possibly be realized, that he
might slowly and gradually destroy an enemy, whom
he could not encounter in a pitched battle.
It was not until the last avenue to the surrounding
country was cut off, by divisions of the invading army,
planted upon all the causeways, supported in all their
movements by the thundering brigantines, that the true
spirit of the besieged began to show itself. Till then,
their tables had been plentifully supplied, and their
hopes continually encouraged by the occasional losses
of their enemy, whose numbers were too small to admit
of much diminution. The priests were unremitting in
their appeals to the patriotism of the people, and in
promises of peculiar divine blessings on all who should
persevere to the last, in defence of their altars and their
gods. Guatimozin was ever among his people, encouraging
them by kind words, and an example of unyielding
defiance to every advance of the foe. He showed
that he was not less the father of his people, than their
king, suffering the same exposure, and enduring the
same fatigues with the boldest and hardiest of his subjects.
Such was their confidence of ultimate success in the
defence of the capital, that the splendor and gaiety of
the court was little diminished, until famine began to
stare them in the face. The aqueduct of Chapoltepec
had been cut off, and there was no longer any supply
of wholesome water in the city. The dark visions of
the lovely queen were now renewed. For a brief season,
she had been permitted to revel in daylight, with
scarcely a cloud to darken the sky above her. Suddenly
that light was obscured. All was gloom and
darkness around her. War, desolating war hovered
once more about the gates of the beloved city. Wan
faces, and haggard forms began to take the places of
the gay, happy, spirited multitudes, that so recently
thronged the palace. The image of her father, insulted
by the stranger, murdered by his own people, rose to
her view. His melancholy desponding look and tone,
as he gave way to the doom which he felt was sealed
upon him, his frequent assurances that the white men
were “the men of destiny,” the heaven appointed proprietors
and rulers of the land, and that wo would
betide all who should oppose their pretensions, or offer
resistance to their invincible arms—all these came up
fresh to her thoughts, and filled her with sadness. Her
own ill-starred destiny too, marked by every possible
sign and presage, as full of darkness and sorrow—the
thought was almost overwhelming. Fain would she
have severed at once the bond that linked her fate with
that of Guatimozin, for she felt that he was only sharing
her doom, and on her account was exposed to these terrible
shafts of fate. The love of Guatimozin, the faithful
devotion of Karee, though they soothed in some
measure her troubled spirit, could not wholly re-assure
her, or dissipate the dreadful thought, that all these terrible
calamities were come upon the nation only as a
part of that dark doom, for which the gods had marked
her out, on her very entrance into life.
It was long before the Emperor and his immediate
household, were made aware of the awful pressure
of famine within that devoted city. Watchful and
observing as he was, the people, with one consent, had
contrived to keep him in comparative ignorance of the
growing scarcity, in order that they might be permitted
to supply his table, as long as possible, with all the
necessaries and luxuries of life. So far was this loyal
devotion carried, that multitudes, both of the chiefs and
of the common people, were daily in the habit of denying
themselves of every thing but what was absolutely
necessary to sustain life, and sending to the palace
every article of fresh food, or delicate fruit, which they
could obtain from their own gardens, or purchase from
those of others. This noble devotion on the part of his
people, was discovered and made known to the Emperor
by Karee. She was the almoner of the bounty of
the queen to multitudes of the poor and the sick, in
different quarters of the city. On one of her errands
of mercy, while she was administering to the comfort
of a poor friend, in the last stages of mortal disease,
made ten-fold more appalling by the absence of almost
every thing that could sustain nature in the final struggle,
she overheard the conversation of a father with his
child in the adjoining room.
“Nay, my dear father, you must eat it. Your
strength is almost gone, and how can you stand among
the fighting men, and defend your king and your
house, when you have eaten nothing for two whole
days?”
“My precious child, I shall find something when I
go out. But this morsel is for you, for I know you
cannot live till I come home, if you do not eat this.
And what will life be worth when you are gone.”
“Father, dear father, I cannot eat it. It will do me
more good to see you eat it, for then I shall be sure you
can live another day at least, and then, who knows but
the gods will send us help.”
Karee could listen no longer. Rushing into the
apartment whence these melancholy sounds proceeded,
she beheld the shadow of a once beautiful girl leaning
on the arm of the pale and wasted figure of a man,
endeavoring to draw him towards a table on which lay
a single morsel of dried fruit, which he had brought in
for her, it being the only food that either of them had
seen for two days.
“Take this,” said she, offering the sweet child a portion
of what she had prepared for the invalid, but
which she was too far gone to receive, “and may it
give you both strength till the day of our deliverance.”
And she instantly returned to the death-bed of her
friend.
To the famishing group it was like the apparition of
an angel, with a gift from the gods. The savory mess
was readily divided, though the affectionate self-denying
child contrived to cheat her father into receiving a
little more than his share, while he tried every effort in
vain, to persuade her to take the larger half. The
wretched pair had not had such a feast for many a long
week. “Ah!” exclaimed the daughter, as she wept
over the luxurious repast, “if our dear mother could
have had such a morsel as this, before she died, to stay
her in that last dreadful agony.”
“Yes, my beloved child,” replied the subdued and
bitterly bereaved father, “but she has gone where there
is plenty, and no tears mingled with it.”
The dried fruit was laid away for the morrow. But
the same kind hand that relieved them on that day,
was there again on the morrow, and on every succeeding
day, till the city was sacked, and the wretched
ghosts of its inhabitants given up to an indiscriminate
slaughter.
When Guatimozin was made acquainted with this
incident, he resolved on making another desperate sally,
with the whole force of his wasted army, in the forlorn
hope of breaking through the ranks of the enemy, and
procuring some subsistence for his famishing people.
Having drawn them up in the great square, his heart
sunk within him, when he saw their pale faces and
emaciated forms, and contrasted them with the fierce,
stout, and seemingly invincible host, whom he had so
often led into battle. But the feeling of despondency
gave way instantly to that stern fixed purpose, that terrible
decision of soul, which is the natural offspring of
desperation. With a firm voice, he addressed them.
“My brave soldiers, we must not any longer lie still.
The enemy is at our gates, and we are perishing in our
own citadel. Have we not once driven them, with a
terrible and almost exterminating slaughter, along those
very causeways which they now claim to occupy and
to close up? Are they more invincible now than then?
Are we less resolute, less fearless? By our famishing
wives and children, by our desecrated altars and gods,
let us rush upon them and overwhelm them at once.”
The monarch had not yet finished his stirring appeal,
when a courier rushed in, bringing tidings that the
several divisions of the besieging army were moving
up the causeways, and approaching the city on every
side.
“They come to their own destruction,” said the monarch,
bitterly, and immediately proceeded to distribute
his men, to give them a fitting reception. The larger
part of the forces were ordered to occupy several somewhat
retired places, amid the great public buildings in
the centre of the city, where they should be in readiness
to obey the royal signal. The remainder were to
go out, in their several divisions, to meet and skirmish
with the advancing foe, doing them as much mischief
as possible, yet suffering themselves to be driven before
them, till they were decoyed into the heart of the city.
The signal would then be given, when every man who
could draw a bow, or wield a lance, or throw a stone,
would be expected to do his duty.
It was a stratagem worthy of Guatimozin, and, in its
execution, had well nigh overwhelmed the Spaniards,
and saved the city. Cortez had appointed with the
captains of each division of his army to meet in the
great square of the city. Each one being eager to be
first at the goal, they followed the retreating Aztecs
without consideration, and without making any provision
for their own retreat. The watchful agents of
Guatimozin were behind as well as before them; and
when they had passed the gates, and were pressing up,
with all the heat and enthusiasm of a victorious army,
into the heart of the city, the bridges were taken up in
their rear, to cut off, if possible, their retreat. When
this was effected, the fatal horn of Guatimozin blew a
long loud blast, from the summit of the great Teocalli.
In an instant, the retreating Aztecs turned upon their
pursuers, like tigers ravening upon their prey; while
swarms of fresh warriors poured in from every lane
and street and avenue, rushing so fiercely upon the
too confident assailants, as to bring them to a sudden
pause in their triumphant career. At the same moment,
the roof of every house and temple, along the
whole line of their march, was covered with men, who
poured upon them such a shower of stones that it
seemed impossible to escape being buried under them.
The tide of battle was now turned. The too daring
invaders were thrown into confusion, and compelled to
retreat. This they soon found, to their bitter cost, was
nearly impossible. When it was discovered that the
bridges, over which they had so recently passed, were
removed, the utmost consternation prevailed. The
heavy cannon were all on board the brigantines, so
that they were unable, as in former times, to mow
down the solid ranks of their foes, and break a way for
their retreat. Their cavalry was of little service, for
they could not leap the wide chasms made by the
removal of the bridges. Cut off in front by the solid
masses of warriors that blocked up every avenue, and
in the rear by these yawning chasms, and hemmed in
on each side by the massive stone walls of the buildings,
they could neither protect themselves, nor effectually
annoy their enemy. They were in imminent
danger of perishing ignobly in the ditch, without even
striking a blow in their own defence.
Fortunately for the invaders, their sagacious and
ever-wakeful general had anticipated the possibility of
such a scene as this, and had taken some measures
to forestall it. His officers, however, were too high-spirited
and self-confident to condescend to the cowardly
drudgery of carrying out his precautionary
measures. They thought only of victory, and the
spoils of the glorious city, which they now regarded as
their own.
In this fearful dilemma, the genius of Cortez did not
desert him. When the first shout of battle reached his
ears, as he was advancing cautiously along the avenue,
he instantly conjectured the cause. Ordering his own
column to halt, and selecting a chosen band of his best
cavalry, he wheeled about, dashed furiously down the
avenue, and put to flight the unarmed Aztecs, who
were doing the work of destruction for him, and had
then almost succeeded in tearing away the foundations
of the great bridge. Making his way through the
deserted streets, with the speed of the wind, he came
round into the other avenue, where one division of his
army was hemmed in, in the manner above described.
Charging impetuously upon the gathering crowds of
Aztecs, he succeeded in forcing his way up to the
chasm, where he stood face to face with his own troops
on the other side. Here, in the midst of a pitiless tempest
of stones, and darts and arrows, he maintained his
stand, while his men, with incredible labor, attempted
to fill up the chasm.
The work was at length accomplished, though not
without the most serious loss to Cortez. Some of his
bravest officers fell in that merciless contest with foes
who would neither give nor receive quarter. Many
were pelted down with the huge stones, that ceased not
to rain upon them from all the neighboring house tops.
Some were taken by the feet as they labored to maintain
a precarious footing on the slippery causeway, and
dragged into the canals, either to be drowned in the
desperate struggle there, or carried off in the canoes to
captivity or sacrifice. Cortez himself narrowly escaped
immolation.
At length, through the indomitable perseverance of
the general, the breach was so far filled up as to make
a practicable passage for the troops. A retreat was
sounded, and that gallant band, which, a few hours
before had rushed in with flaunting banners, and confident
boastings of an easy victory, was glad to escape
from the snare into which they had fallen, their numbers
greatly reduced, their banners soiled and tattered,
and their expectations of ultimate success terribly
shaken. They were pursued through all their march
by the exulting Aztecs, and many a broken head and
bruised limb attested the truth of Guatimozin’s taunting
challenge, that the Spaniards, if they entered the capital
again, would find as many fortresses as there were
houses, as many assailants as stones in the streets.
STRAITNESS OF THE FAMINE. THE FINAL CONFLICT. FLIGHT
AND CAPTURE OF GUATIMOZIN. DESTINY FULFILLED.
Death opens every door,
And sits in every chamber by himself.
If what might feed a sparrow should suffice
For soldiers’ meals, ye have not wherewithal
To linger out three days. For corn, there’s none;
A mouse, imprisoned in your granaries,
Were starved to death.
|
This shameful defeat was a tremendous blow to the
ardent anticipations of the conqueror. Many of the
timid and the discontented in his own ranks availed
themselves of the opportunity to create divisions, and
withdraw from the doubtful contest. The Mexicans,
strengthened by the spoils of their assailants, and yet
more by the new courage which their late success
infused into every heart among them, immediately commenced
repairing their works, clearing their canals, and
making the most vigorous preparations for maintaining
the siege. Their priests, infuriated with the number of
sacrifices which they had been enabled to offer to the
gods, from the captives of high and low degree taken in
the conflict, declared with authoritative solemnity, that
the anger of the gods was now appeased, and that they
had promised unequivocally, the speedy annihilation
of their invading foes. This oracular declaration was,
by the order of Guatimozin, published in the hearing
of the Indian allies of his adversary. It was a politic
stroke, and, if the oracle had not imprudently fixed too
early a day for the execution of the predicted vengeance,
its effect might have been such as to break for
ever the bonds of that unnatural alliance, and leave the
little handful of white men, with all their boasted pretensions
to immortality, to perish by the hands of their
own friends.
But why dwell longer upon the appalling details of
this miserable siege. The day of predicted vengeance
arrived, and the Spaniards survived it. Their superstitious
terror-stricken allies returned to their allegiance.
By a judicious administration of reward and discipline,
of promise and threatening, all disaffection was hushed.
New measures of offence were concerted, with a determination,
on the part of the besiegers, to press into the
city by degrees, securing every step, as they advanced,
by levelling every building, and filling up every ditch,
in their progress, till not one stone should be left upon
another in Tenochtitlan. This terrible resolution was
carried into effect. Every building, whether public or
private, palace, temple, or Teocalli, from which they
could be annoyed by the indomitable Aztec, was laid
waste. The canals were filled up and levelled, so as
to give free scope for the movements of the cavalry and
artillery. The beautiful suburbs were reduced to a
level plain, a dry arid waste, covered with the ruins of
all that was dear and sacred in the eyes of the Aztec.
Slowly, but surely, the Spaniard pressed on towards the
heart of the city, in which the heroic monarch, with his
miserable remnant of starving subjects and skeleton soldiers
were pent up, dying by thousands of famine and
pestilence, and yet ready to suffer a thousand deaths,
rather than yield themselves up to the mercy of the foe.
There was now absolutely nothing left, in earth or
air, to sustain for another day the poor remains of life
in the camp of the besieged. Every foot of ground had
been dug over many times, in quest of roots, and even
of worms. The leaves and bark had been stripped
from every tree and shrub, till there was not a green
thing on all those terraces, which were once like the
gardens of Elysium. The dead and the dying lay in
heaps together, for there was neither life nor spirit in
any that breathed, to do the last office for the departed.
Pestilence was in all the air, so that many even of the
besieging army snuffed it in the breeze that swept over
the city, and fell victims to the very fate which their
cruel rapacity was inflicting on the besieged.
Famine, cruel, gnawing famine, was in the palace of
the Emperor, as well as in the hovel of his meanest
subject. That noble prince quailed not before the fate
that awaited himself. Had he stood alone in that citadel,
with power in his single arm to keep out the foe,
he would have stood till death, in whatever form,
released him from his post, and spurned every suggestion
of compromise or quarter. But the scenes of utter
distress which every where met his eye—the haggard
ghosts of his friends, flitting restlessly before him, or
crawling feebly and with convulsive moans among the
upturned earth, in the forlorn hope of finding another
root—the dead—the dying—the more miserable living
longing for death, and glaring with their horribly
prominent, but glazed and expressionless eye-balls on
each other—this, this was too much for the heart of
Guatimozin.
“What!” he exclaimed, “shall I submit to see my
last friend die before my eyes, and my own sweet wife
perish of hunger, only to retain for another hour the
empty name of king. No. I will endure it no longer.
I will go to Malinché, alone, and unaccompanied, and
offer my life for yours. He only wants our gold. Let
him find that if he can. He will spare you, and wreak
all his vengeance on my head.”
A faint murmur ran through the crowd, and then a
feeble expiring “No, never,” burst feebly from many
lips. One, a little stronger than the rest, arose and
said—
“Most gracious sovereign, think not of us. We only
ask to live and die with and for you. And the more
cruel the death, the more glorious the martyrdom for
our country and our gods. Trust not Malinché.”
The speaker fainted and fell, with his fist clenched,
and his teeth set, as if he felt that he held the last foe
in mortal conflict.
“No, never—trust not Malinché—let us die together,”
was echoed by many sepulchral voices, that seemed
more like the groans of the dead, than the remonstrances
of the living.
“Trust not Malinché, remember my father,” whispered
the fond, devoted, faithful, affectionate wife, now
the shadow of her former self, beautiful in her queenly
sorrow, sublime in her womanly composure.
Guatimozin, the proud, the lofty chief, whose heart
had never known fear, whose soul had never been subdued,
bowed his head upon the bosom of his wife, and
wept. The strong heart, the lion spirit melted.
“Who, who will care for Tecuichpo? Who will
cherish the last daughter of Montezuma?”
“Think not of me, Guatimozin, think of yourself and
your people, I am resigned to my fate. If I may but
die with you, it is all I desire—for how could I live
without you. But think not of trusting Malinché. Let
us remain as we are. Another day, and we shall all
be at rest from our sufferings. And surely it were
better to die together by our altars, than to fall into the
hands of the treacherous stranger.”
“Trust not Malinché,” added Karee. “Was it not
trust in him that brought all this evil upon us? Think
not of submission. You shall see that women can die
as well as men. Let Malinché come, and take possession
of the remains of these mutilated walls and desolated
gardens, but let him not claim one living Aztec,
to be his slave, or his subject.”
A murmur of approbation followed, and then a long
pause ensued. It was like the silence of death. The
whole scene would have made an admirable picture.
At length the silence was broken by the voice of the
young Cacique of Tlacopan.
“My sovereign,” said he, in a faint voice, but with
something of the energy of despair, “there is yet hope.
Let us muster what force we can, of men who are able
to stand, and sally out upon the enemy. We cannot
do him much harm. But, while he is occupied with
us, you and your family, with a few attendants can
escape by a canoe over the lake. As many of us as
have life and strength to do it, will follow you, under
cover of the coming night. Your old subjects will
flock around you there, and we may yet, when we
shall have tasted food, and become men again, make
a stand somewhere against the foe, and drive him
out.”
“It is well! it is well!” was the feeble response on
every side.
“I cannot leave you,” replied the monarch. “What!
shall your king fly, like a coward, while his people
rush upon the enemy only to cover his retreat? No,
that were worse than death—worse than captivity!”
“It is not flight, my beloved sovereign,” responded
the Cacique, “it is an honorable stratagem of war, for
the good of the nation, not less than your own. When
you are gone, we have no head, and we fall at once
into the captivity we so much dread. Leave us but
the name and person of Guatimozin to rally around,
and it will be a tower of strength, which can never
fail us.”
“Yes, yes, it is right,” was whispered on every side—“Go,
noble monarch, go at once. It is a voice from
heaven to save us.”
To this counsel the priests added their earnest advice,
and even Tecuichpo ventured to say, “it whispered of
hope to her heart.” Guatimozin suffered himself to be
overruled. The canoes were made ready in the grand
canal, which yet remained open on the eastern side.
All that could be safely taken of treasure, and of convenient
apparel, was carefully stowed. The Queen and
other ladies of the court, with her faithful Karee, all
wasted to skeletons, and moving painfully, like phantoms
of beauty in a sickly dream, were conveyed to the
barges. The Emperor and his attendants followed,
and all was in readiness for the departure. At that
moment the martial horn was sounded from the great
Teocalli, and the shadowy host of the Aztec army staggered
forth to offer battle to the enemy. It was a fearful
sight. It seemed as if the armies of the dead, the
mighty warriors of the past, had risen from their
graves, to fight for their desecrated altars, and to defend
those very graves from profanation. Feebly, but fearfully,
with glaring eyes and hideous grin, they rushed
upon the serried ranks of the besiegers. A kind of
superstitious terror seized them, as if these shapes were
something more than mortal. For a moment they
gave way to panic, and fell back without striking a
blow. Roused by the stentorian voice of Cortez, they
rallied instantly, and discharging their heavy fire arms,
swept away whole ranks of their frenzied assailants.
It was a brief conflict. Many of the Aztecs fell by the
swords of the Spaniards, and the spears of their merciless
allies. Some fell, faint with their own exertions,
and died without a wound. Some grappled desperately
with the foe, content to die by his hand, if they could
first quench their burning thirst with one drop of his
blood.
At length, a long blast from the horn sounded a
retreat. The poor remnant turned towards the city,
and were suffered to escape unmolested to their desolate
homes.
Meanwhile, the little fleet of Guatimozin had put
forth upon the lake. The canoes separated, as they left
the basin of the canal, taking different directions, the
better to escape the observation of the brigantines. The
precaution was a wise one, but unavailing. The watchful
eye of the besieging general was there. The brigantines
gave chase to the fugitives. Bending to their
paddles with the utmost strength of their feeble emaciated
arms, they found their pursuers gaining upon
them. Casting their gold into the lake, Guatimozin
directed them to cease their exertions, and wait the
approach of the enemy.
“Not without one little effort more, I beseech you,”
exclaimed Karee. “See, my chinampa is close at
hand. Let us try to gain that. It has food on its trees
for many days, and I have there a place of concealment,
curiously contrived beneath the water, where you and
the queen may remain without fear of detection, till we
can effect your escape to the shore.”
In an instant the paddles were in the water, and the
canoe shot ahead with unusual speed. The combined
energy of hope and despair nerved every arm, and fired
every heart. They neared the beautiful chinampa.
Their eyes feasted on its fresh and cooling verdure, and
its ripe fruits hanging luxuriantly on every bough.
Their ears were ravished with the music of the birds,
who had long since deserted their wonted haunts in the
capital.
While the chase was gaining rapidly upon them,
another of those fearful brigantines, which had hitherto
been concealed by the thick foliage of the chinampa,
rounded its little promontory, and appeared suddenly
before them. Instantly, every paddle dropped, every
arm was paralyzed. Not a word was spoken. In passive
silence each one waited for his doom, which was
now inevitable. When the Spaniard had approached
within hailing distance, the Emperor rose in his little
shallop, and, waving his hand proudly, said, “I am
Guatimozin.”
The royal prisoners were treated with the utmost
deference and respect. Being brought into the presence
of Cortez, the monarch, pale, emaciated, the shadow of
what he had been, approached with an air of imperial
dignity, and said—
“Malinché, I have done what I could to defend
myself and protect my people. Now I am your prisoner.
Do what you will with me, but spare my poor
people, who have shown a fidelity and an endurance
worthy of a better fate.”
Cortez, filled with admiration at the proud bearing
of the young monarch, assured him that not only his
family and his people, but himself should be treated
with all respect and tenderness. “Better,” said Guatimozin,
laying his hand on the hilt of the general’s
poignard, “better rid me of life at once, and put an end
to my cares and sufferings together.”
“No,” replied Cortez, “you have defended your capital
like a brave warrior. I respect your patriotism, I
honor you valor, and your firm endurance of suffering.
You shall be my friend and the friend of my sovereign,
and live in honor among your own people.”
The keen eye of the monarch flashed with something
like indignation, when allusion was made to the king
of Castile, and to himself as his vassal.
“In honor I cannot live,” he said proudly, “for I am
defeated. A king I cannot be, for he is no king who is
subject to another. I am your prisoner. The gods
have willed it, and I submit.”
Renewing his politic assurances of friendship and
favor, the conqueror sent for the wife and family of his
captive, first ordering a royal banquet to be prepared for
them. Supported by Karee, leaning on the arm of the
devoted Nahuitla, the lord of Tlacopan, the queen was
ushered into the presence of the conqueror. Her appearance
struck the general and his officers with admiration.
Timid as she was by nature, she had the air and
port of inborn royalty; and, in deference to her husband,
she would not have allowed herself to quail
before the assembled host of Castile, dreaded as they
were, and had long been. With a becoming courtesy,
she returned the respectful salutations of Malinché and
his cavaliers, and asked no other favor than to share
the fate of her lord.
What that fate was, and how the Castilian knight
redeemed his pledges to his unfortunate and noble captives,
is matter of historical record. It is the darkest
page in the memoir of that wonderful chief—a foul blot
upon the name even of that man, who was capable of
requiting the superstitious reverence and confidence of
a Montezuma, with a treacherous and inglorious captivity
in his own palace, and a yet more inglorious
death at the hands of his own subjects. History must
needs record it, dark and painful as it is. Romance
would throw a veil over it.
Years of intense suffering, of harrowing bereavement,
of insult, humiliation, and every species of mental and
social distress, were yet appointed to the daughter of
Montezuma, the bride of Guatimozin. Her predicted
destiny was fulfilled to the letter. She bowed meekly
to her fate, sustaining every reverse with a fortitude and
composure of soul, that indicated a mind of uncommon
resources. It was a long, dark, stormy day, “but in
the evening time there was light.” It was the light of
faith. She abandoned the false gods of her fathers,
and found true and lasting peace in the cross of Jesus
Christ.