Read Chapter 4 AGITATIONS IN THE CAPITAL—THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD—THE SPANIARDS STEADILY ADVANCING. - Sketches of Aboriginal Life

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.

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Chapter 4 AGITATIONS IN THE CAPITAL-THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD-THE SPANIARDS STEADILY ADVANCING.

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