The assault upon the garden and palace of Guatimozin, though the last
blow given to his power, it has not been thought needful to describe in
any of its details. It is well known, that the occasion was used by the
few nobles of the empire who yet survived, to withdraw their monarch
with his family from the island, in the vain hope of reaching the main
land, through a line of brigantines and armed piraguas. It is also well
known, that, notwithstanding the stratagem with which these faithful
barbarians essayed to protect the last of their native lords, by
exposing their own defenceless gondolas to destruction, he was captured,
in consequence of his magnanimous self-devotion, and transferred with
his trembling family, from his royal piragua to the galley of Garci
Holguin.
Drums, trumpets, falconets, fire-arms, and human voices at once
proclaimed the importance of the capture, and the triumph of the
victors; and with all the speed of sails and oars, the fortunate
cavalier bore his prize towards the nearest landing in possession of the
Spaniards, deriding and even defying the claim set up by Sandoval, as
the superior officer, to the honour of presenting the prisoner to the
Captain-General. Long before he had reached the palace of Axajacatl, it
was known throughout the whole city that Guatimozin was in the hands of
the besiegers. The warriors who still fought in the garden, beheld the
surrender on the lake, instantly threw down their arms, and submitted
with sullen indifference to the fate they had long anticipated. With the
interview betwixt the king and the conqueror all readers are familiar.
The Captain-General, sumptuously dressed, and in the midst of such state
as could be prepared for an occasion so imposing, received the prisoner,
(in whose wasted figure and dejected countenance it was not possible to
recognize the half-forgotten Olin,) in the hall of the palace of
Axajacatl, where his ancestors had been kings and princes, but into
which he now entered a captive and vassal. The Captain-General received
him not only with respect, but with an appearance of sympathy and
kindness. In truth, he could not but admire the fortitude of his
youthful foe; and he reflected, not without exultation, that if his
desperate resistance had increased the pains and perils of conquest, and
frequently dashed all hopes of success, it had made his own triumph a
thousand times more glorious. He descended from his chair of state, and
raising the dejected captive from the floor, upon which he had flung
himself in token of submission, he embraced him with many expressions of
respect and encouragement.
"Fear not--neither for thy life nor crown," he said. "Thou perceivest,
the king of Spain, my master, is invincible. Reign still in Mexico; but
reign as his vassal."
He would have replaced on the captive's head the copilli of gold, which
had been brought from the gondola and put into his hand; but Guatimozin
rejected it with a melancholy gesture, saying,
"It is the Teuctli's--I am no more the king. Malintzin! be merciful to
the people of Mexico: they are now slaves. Have pity also on the women
and children, that come from the palace; for they are of the household
of Montezuma. As for myself, Malintzin, hearken to what I say. The kings
of Mexico have all died; when they gave their breath to heaven, the
crown was on their front, and the sceptres on their bosom. Why then
should I live, who am no longer a king? Malintzin, I have fought for
Mexico, I have shed blood for my country, and now I shed tears; I can do
no more for my people--It is fitting, therefore, that I should die--But
I should die like a king."--He extended his hand, and touched the
jewelled dagger that glittered in the baldric of his foe. The action was
without any sign of hostility, and his countenance, now uplifted upon
Cortes, was bathed with tears. "Let Malintzin do the work--Plunge this
dagger into my bosom, and let me depart."
There was something affecting even to the iron-hearted conqueror in the
situation and demeanour of the poor infidel, thus beseeching, and
evidently with as much sincerity as simplicity, a death of honour after
a life of patriotism; and Cortes would have renewed his caresses and
assurances of friendship, had not his ears been that moment struck by
voices without, pronouncing the name of Juan Lerma, with brutal
execrations. He signed to those cavaliers who had conducted the monarch
to his presence, to lead him away; and a moment after, Juan Lerma was
conducted up to his footstool. Dejected, spiritless, overcome perhaps by
the ferocious calls for vengeance which had heralded his steps to the
palace, as well as by the exhaustion of long bodily suffering, he did
not raise his eyes from the floor, until he heard the voice of Cortes
pronounce the faltering words,--
"Juan of Castillejo, I have done you a great wrong.--Yes," he continued,
with a louder voice, when Juan looked up, surprised not more by his
altered tones than by a name so unexpected and unknown, "Yes, and let
all bear witness to my confession;--I have done thee, not one wrong
only, but many; for which I heartily repent me, and, before all this
assemblage, do beseech thy forgiveness."
"My forgiveness, senor!" stammered Juan, while all the rest looked on in
amazement.
"Thy forgiveness," repeated the conqueror, with double emphasis. "Thou
hast been belied to me, bitterly maligned; but heaven has punished the
slanderer, who slew mine own peace of mind, that he might compass thy
death."
"Alas, senor," said Juan; "in his death-gasp, Guzman confessed to me--"
"Speak not of Guzman--forget him.--Have ye heard, my masters! and well
taken note of what is spoken? Now begone, all, and leave me alone with
my recovered prodigal.--Juan--Juan Lerma,--Juan of Castillejo," he
cried, as soon as the wondering audience had vanished; "if Guzman have
confessed to you, you must know why I have been maddened into wrath and
injustice.--But thy sister, Juan, where is thy sister? my poor
Magdalena? Ah, Juan! it was but a fiendish aberration, that set me
against the child of my sister!"
With these words, he threw himself upon Juan's neck, and embraced him
with a fervour that indicated the return of all his old affections,
uttering a thousand exclamations, in which he mingled recurrences to the
past with many a reference to the present and future. "This will be a
glad day to Catalina, for she ever loved thee--Dolt that I was, to think
that her love could be aught but a mother's! My father, Juan, my father,
too! his gray hairs will yet be laid in a grave of joy; for he shall
behold the son of his daughter seated in the inheritance of a noble
father. And thy sister--she shall shine with the proudest and
noblest.--I knew thee upon the causeway, too, though I was left in a
coma, and half expiring. We have full proof of thy claims.--And thy
princess, too--dost thou remember the silver cross?" taking it from his
bosom--"Were there a duke's son demanded her, she should be thine.--What
ho! some one bring me--But, nay--Thy sister, Juan! does she not live?"
Juan was stunned, stupified, bewildered, by a transformation in his own
character and in the feelings of the general, so sudden and so
marvellous. Yet he strove to reply to the last question, and was in the
act of uttering a broken and hasty explanation, when a loud cry came
from the passage, and rushing out, they beheld a party of soldiers
bearing, in a litter of robes torn from the burning palace, the body, or
the living frame, they knew not which, of the unhappy nun, over whom the
penitent Gregorio was bitterly lamenting.
It was indeed Magdalena, her garments scorched, her face like the face
of the dying. Yet she did not seem to have suffered from the flames. The
soldiers had found her in a part of the palace not touched by the fire,
and scarce invaded by the smoke; and perhaps a subtle physician would
have traced her dreadful condition rather to some overpowering
convulsion of spirit than to any physical, injury. She was indeed dying,
the victim of contending passions, with which the education of a
cloister had so ill fitted her to contend.
We will not speak of the meeting of Juan and his dark-eyed proselyte. It
took place beside the couch of the dying girl, who, for love of him, had
given up the vows of religion and the fame of woman, and perished with
frenzy, when she discovered that that love was more than the love of a
sister.
At nightfall, and while she still lay insensible, save that a faint moan
occasionally trembled from her lips, there arose a tempest of lightning,
thunder, and rain, far exceeding in violence any that had before burst
over the heads of the Spaniards, and which Bernal Diaz has recorded in
his history, as having been the most dreadful that ever confounded his
mind and senses. It seemed as if the warlike divinities of Mexico were
now taking leave of their broken altars and subjugated people, with a
display of strength and fury, never more to be exercised. It ceased not
until midnight, and then only when it had discharged a bolt that shook
the island to its foundation, and tumbled many a ruined cabin and
dilapidated palace, upon the heads of their unhappy inmates.
It was in the midst of this conflict of the elements, that the broken
spirit passed from its weary prison; and what had been beauty and
affection, genius and passion, became a clod, to claim kindred with its
fellow of the valley. It was better indeed that she should thus perish;
for her nature was above that of earth, and even the passion that
destroyed her, pure, enthusiastic, and devoted as it was, was unworthy
the spirit it had subdued. It was such as is the molewarp to the
rose-bush, or the myrtle-tree, which he can destroy by burrowing at
their roots, even when the winter's blast can scarce rive away a branch.
The remains of this ill-fated being were interred upon a sequestered
hill, west of Mexico, where Gregorio Castillejo built a hermitage, and
mourned over her for the few years he survived her. He left the odour of
sanctity behind him, and the hermitage is now forgotten in the chapel
built upon its site, and dedicated to Our Lady de los Remedios. To this
place Cortes withdrew, with his whole army, in order that the ruined
city might be purified of corses and rubbish, that rendered it horrible
even to a soldier, no longer inflamed by the fire of battle. He soon,
however, removed to Xochimilco, the Field of Flowers, where the time of
the purification was devoted to solemn rejoicings and profane
festivities.
To all those who may yet be disposed to consider our account of the
strength and splendour of the empire of Montezuma as fabulous, we
recommend no better study than the honest, worthy, and single-minded
historian, Bernal Diaz del Castillo, who lived to complete his _Historia
Verdadera_, fifty years afterwards, in the loyal city of Guatimala, in
which he held the honourable post of Regidor, the venerable, and, at
that period, almost the sole survivor of the followers of Cortes. He has
recorded one striking proof of the vast multitudes of pagans that had
been concentrated within the island of Mexico. After averring, with a
solemn oath, that, after the fall of the city, the streets, houses,
squares, courts, and canals, were so covered with dead bodies, that it
was impossible to move without treading upon them, he relates, that,
Cortes having ordered all who survived, principally women and children,
and the wounded, to evacuate the city, preparatory to its purification,
'for _three days and three nights_, all the causeways were full of the
wretched fugitives, who were so weak and sickly, so squalid and
pestilential, that it was misery to behold them.' Three broad highways,
covered, for the space of three days and nights, by a moving mass of
widows and orphans, the trophies of a gallant achievement! the first
fruits of the ambition of a single individual!
As Bernal Diaz retained, to the last, a jealous regard for the honour of
his leader, this friendly weakness, taken into consideration along with
the infirmities of memory incident to his advanced age, may perhaps
account for his failure to complete the story of Juan Lerma. He may have
recollected, as is often the case with an old man, the earliest facts of
the story, while the later ones slipped entirely from his mind.
Of Cortes himself, it is scarce necessary to apprize the reader, that he
lived to subdue other empires, and experience the ingratitude of a
monarch, whose favour he had so amply merited. He fought for renown, for
his king, and for heaven. Heaven alone can judge the merit of his acts,
for men are yet unwilling to sit in judgment upon the brave; his king
requited him with insults and positive oppression; and fame has placed
him among those who have trodden out the wine-press of human desolation,
and live in marble.
As for the young Count of Castillejo, his claims to the inheritance of
his father were too well substantiated to be resisted; and the crimes of
Gregorio had left none to oppose. As a subordinate in the work of
conquest, there was nothing in him to be feared; and when he bore from a
land he could only remember with sorrow, a bride whose father had borne
the witching name of king, he was received with as much favour, and
distinguished by as many honours, as any other _Conquistador_, who
transplanted among the dames of Castile, a wife wooed within the palaces
of Montezuma.
The fate of Guatimozin is well known. The crown he was still enforced to
wear did not protect him from the torture of fire; nor could his noble
character and unhappy fall secure him from a death of degradation. Four
years after the fall of his empire, and at a distance of several hundred
leagues from his native valley, he expiated upon a gibbet, a crime that
existed only in the gloomy and remorseful imagination of the Conqueror.
And thus, with two royal kinsmen, kings and feudatories of Anahuac, he
was left to swing in the winds, and feed the vultures, of a distant and
desert land. He merited a higher distinction, a loftier respect, and a
profounder compassion, than men will willingly accord to a barbarian and
INFIDEL.
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Infidel, Vol. II., by Robert Montgomery Bird