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.