by V. V. Vide
CHAPTER IV.
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--~
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~----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 ofMontezuma. Finding that Cuitlahua, and his forces, had taken no part inthe affair, and had not even visited the city, he immediately sent anembassy to the Spanish camp, disclaiming all participation in thetreacherous counsels and doings of the Cholulans, and severely blamingthem for their unheard of outrage upon the rites of hospitality. Whetherthe sharp-sighted Castilian placed any confidence in these professions,or not, it suited his designs to appear to do so. With the utmostseeming cordiality, he assured the royal messengers that it gave him themost heartfelt satisfaction to know that the treatment he had receivedat Cholula was not instigated or countenanced by their august master,that it was unworthy of a great and wise monarch, and that he shouldproceed 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 wherefor the hospitable reception and entertainment of the Castilians, whomhe had no longer the heart to oppose either by stratagem or by force,Montezuma retired within his palace, and for several days shut himselfup from all intercourse with his chiefs. He was now fully convinced thathis destiny was sealed, and with it that of his family and crown. He wasin the hands of an unappeasable fate. He gave himself up to fasting,prayer and sacrifice. He consulted all his oracles anew. But they gaveno response. He then sought counsel of his chiefs, and the sages of hiscourt. Here again he was distracted by the divided opinions of hisfriends. While many of the princes, overawed by the invincible courageand invariable success of the Castilians, advised a frank and courteousreception, there was still a powerful war-party, with the braveCuitlahua at their head, who were eager to measure lances with thestrangers, and show them that, in order to reach the capital, they hadother foes to contend with and overcome, than half savage Tlascalans, ortrading 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. Anew embassy was immediately despatched, consisting of a numerous suiteof powerful nobles, and a long train of servants bearing rich presentsof gold, and other valuables, and charged with a message couched interms of humble and earnest supplication, proposing, if the Spaniardswould now return, not only to send them home laden with gold to theirutmost wish, but to pay an annual tribute of gold to their master, theking of Spain. Finding that this bribe only fired the grasping conquerorwith a more fixed determination to secure the whole prize for which hehad so long, and against such fearful odds, contended, the messengersyielded the point, and threw wide open to the dreaded foe every avenueto the heart of the empire, assuring him, in the name of the Emperor,that he should be received as a brother, and entertained with theconsideration due to the powerful representative of a mighty monarch.
The march of the Spaniards was now a continued triumph. No longercompelled to fight their way on, they had time to enjoy the rich andvaried scenery, to scale the mountain, explore the caverns and ravinesof the sierras, and the craters of the volcanoes, and show to theadmiring natives, by their agility and love of adventure, that fightingand conquest had neither tamed their spirits, nor exhausted theirphysical powers. As they advanced, they were continually surprised anddelighted with the growing evidences of civilization and high prosperitywhich met them on every side. In the cultivation of the land, in thestyle of architecture, and in all that constitutes the refinement, orcontributes to the comfort of life, the regions they were nowtraversing very far exceeded the best of those through which they hadpassed. They were continually gaining more exalted ideas of the power,wealth and glory of the great Montezuma, and more enlarged views of themagnificence of their own adventure, and the importance of theirposition and movements. The ambition of Cortez reached to theviceroyalty of this splendid empire; and, though accompanied by a merehandful 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 whichhe passed, and visited and complimented by envoys from all the statesembraced in the Mexican domain, the sagacious Spaniard relaxed none ofhis vigilance, nor diminished aught of the strict discipline of hislittle corps. With an eye ever awake to his own safety, and feeling thatthe artful contriver of one stratagem could easily invent another, headvanced from post to post, in martial array, always ready for theexigency that might arise. His course, however, was unmolested. Theresources and hopes of the great king seemed to have been exhausted. Inpassive despair, he was waiting for the hour of his doom.
The terror of the events we have described fell not alone upon theunfortunate Montezuma; nor did they affect him only as monarch of therealm. As a parent, fondly devoted to his children, whose destiny waswrapped up in his, as the father of his people, to whom he had been akind of demi-god, the vicegerent of heaven, entitled to theirunqualified reverence, obedience and love, he felt with tenfoldintensity the bitterness of his humiliation. In all his sufferings anddistresses his wives and children shared, showing, by every token intheir power, their profound respect and affection, and their tendersympathy in all his cares.
In these lovely demonstrations of filial affection, none were moreassiduous or warm-hearted, and none more successful in reaching theheart of the broken spirited monarch, or winning from him an occasionalsmile of hope, than Tecuichpo. Just ripening into womanhood, with everygift of person, mind and heart that could satisfy the pride of themonarch, and requite to the full the yearning love of the father, thefair princess lavished on him all her powers of persuasion andcondolence. It was all in vain. It even aggravated his sorrows; for itwas on _her_ account, and that of others dearer to him than his ownlife, that he suffered most deeply. The mysterious shadows that hadbrooded so darkly over the infancy of his lovely daughter, had neverceased to shed a chilling gloom over his mind. Her clouded destiny waslinked with his, not merely as a child, but as one specifically markedout, by infallible signs from heaven, for a signal doom. Hissuperstitious faith invested her and her fate with a peculiarsacredness. She was as one whom the gods had devoted to an awfulsacrifice, from which neither imperial power nor paternal love couldrescue her. It therefore pierced his soul with a deeper pang to gazeupon her loveliness, and witness her amiable efforts to soothe andsustain him in the midst of calamities that were more terrible andoverwhelming to her, than even to himself. If, by offering himself as asacrifice to his offended gods, he could have propitiated their favorfor his family and his people, and handed down to his posterity anundiminished empire and an untarnished crown, he would have gone with asmuch pride and pleasure, to the altar, as to a triumphal festival thatshould celebrate his victory, and clothe his brow with unfading laurel.But in this sacrifice there was no substitution. He was himself the mostdistinguished victim, destined to the highest and hottest place on thegreat altar of his country, where a hecatomb would scarce suffice toappease the anger of the offended gods.
Gathering his royal household around him, he explained to them thepeculiarity of his position, avowing his entire confidence in theancient prophecy, which declared that the realm of Anahuac belonged to arace of white men, who had gone away, for a season towards the risingsun, and who, after the lapse of ages, were to return in power, andclaim their inheritance. It was the predestined arrangement of the gods,and could not be resisted. He had, from the beginning felt thatresistance was who
lly vain, and had only attempted it, in deference tothe urgent advice and solicitations of his best and most experiencedcounsellors. For himself, he was ready, at any time, to stand at hispost, and die, if necessary, in defence of his crown and his people. Buthe could not contend with the gods. Empires and crowns, and the livesand happiness of nations, were at their disposal, and kings and subjectsalike must submit to their righteous requirements. It was but thedictate of common piety to say "the will of the gods be done." Hard andtrying as it was, he felt it incumbent on him to relinquish his crownand his honors, at their bidding, as cheerfully as he should lay downhis life, when his destined hour should arrive. He counselled them tobow submissively to their inevitable fate, in the hope that, thoughhumbled, broken and scattered in this world, they might meet and dwelltogether in peace in the paradise of the gods.
His wives and children wept around him. They besought him to hope yetfor the best--to turn away his thoughts from the dark visions on whichhe had dwelt too long and too intensely. Their mysterious forebodings ofevil might yet be averted, through the favor of the gods, to whom achildlike, cheerful confidence in their benignity and paternal regard,was more acceptable, than that blind abandonment, sometimes mistaken forsubmission, which views them as stern, arbitrary, and implacabletyrants, rather than as parents of the human family, watching over itfor the good of mankind, and ordering all events for the welfare oftheir true children.
This was a cheerful faith, and, seasonably adopted, might have saved thelife and throne of Montezuma, and preserved, for many years, theintegrity of his empire. But his heart was not prepared to receive it.Steeped in the dismal superstitions of the Aztec faith, and yieldinghimself unreservedly to the guidance and dictation of its constitutedoracles, he had never, for a moment, allowed himself to falter in hisconviction, that the Aztec dynasty was to terminate with him, and thathe and his family were doomed to a terrible destruction, in theoverthrow of the sacred institutions of his beloved land.
The scene was too thrilling for the tender heart of Tecuichpo, and sheswooned away in the arms of her father, who had drawn her towards him inan affectionate embrace. The attendants were called, and, as soon as theunhappy princess was restored to consciousness, the king directed theroyal barges to be prepared, and went out, with all his household, toenjoy the invigorating air of the lake, and seek relief from the darkthoughts that oppressed and overwhelmed them, in contemplating, fromvarious points in view, the rich and varied scenery of that gloriousvalley.
It was a brave spectacle to behold, when the imperial majesty ofTenochtitlan condescended to accompany his little fleet on such anexcursion. The gaily appointed canoes, with their gorgeous canopies ofembroidered cotton, and feather-work; the splendid robes and plumes ofthe king and his attendants; the rich and fanciful attire of the women;the light, graceful, arrowy motions of the painted skiffs, as theydanced along the waves; together with the wonderful beauty of the lake,and its swimming gardens of flowers, presented a _toute ensemble_ morelike the fairy pictures of some enchanted sphere, than any thing we cannow realize as belonging to this plain, prosaic, matter-of-fact world ofours. On this occasion, it seemed more gay and fairy-like than ever, incontrast, 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 theglassy waters, on errands of business or of pleasure, arrayed inflowers, or freighted with fruits and vegetables for the grand market ofTenochtitlan, made way, on every side, for the advance of the royalcortege, which, threading the shining avenues between the gaily-colored_chinampas_, that spotted the surface of that beautiful lake, like somany islands of flowers on the bosom of the ocean, danced over thewaters to the sound of music, and the merry voices of glad hearts,rejoicing in the sunny smiles that now played on the countenance of theking, as if the clouds that had so long overshadowed it, were never toreturn. Tecuichpo, restored to more than her wonted gaiety, was full oflife and animation. Never had she seemed, in the eyes of her dotingfather, and of the admiring courtiers, half so lovely as at this moment.She was the centre attraction for all eyes. Her resplendent beauty, herfairy-like gracefulness of motion, and the artless simplicity of hermanners, won the admiring notice of all. Her gaiety was infectious. Hermerry laugh reached, with a sort of electric influence, every heart inthat bright company, and compelled even her father to abandon, for thetime, his sad and solemn reflections, and give himself up to the spiritof the hour and the scene.
Guatimozin was there, and exerted all his eloquence to keep up thespirit of the hour, in the earnest hope that Montezuma would put on allthe monarch again, and assert the majesty of his insulted crown, and therights of his house and his people, in despite of omen or legend, and inthe face of every foe.
Tecuichpo became more and more animated, till she seemed quite liftedabove herself and the world about her. Suddenly rising in the midst, andpointing, with great energy of expression, to the royal eagle ofMexico, then sweeping down from his mountain eyrie, to prey upon theocelot 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 theywere 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 theroyal barge rounded the little artificial promontory, which theingenious Karee had constructed, for the double purpose of an arbor andlook-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 quietvalley, like the confused shouts of a mighty host rushing to battle. Itfell like a death-knell upon the ear of Montezuma. It announced thearrival, within the mountain wall which encompassed his golden valley,of the dreaded strangers. It heralded their near approach to hiscapital, and the exposure of all he held dear to their irresistiblepower--their terrible rapacity. His heart sunk within him. But he hadgone too far to retract. It was the act of the gods, not his. Banishingfrom his mind the impressions of the scenes just passed, he waved hishand to the rowers, and instantly every prow was turned, and the gailycaparisoned, but melancholy, terror-stricken pageant moved rapidly backto the city.
Tenochtitlan was now alive with the bustle of preparation. It was thepreparation, not for war, which would far better have suited themultitude both of the chiefs and the people, but for the hospitablereception and entertainment of the strangers. The great imperial palace,which had been the royal residence of the father of Montezuma, wasfitted up for their accommodation. With its numberless apartments, itsspacious courts, and magnificent gardens
, it was sufficient for an armymuch larger than that of the Castilians, swelled as it was by thecompany of their Tlascalan allies. Every room was newly hung withbeautifully colored tapestry, and furnished with all the conveniencesand luxuries of Mexican life. The appointments and provisions were allon a most liberal scale, for the Emperor was as generous and munificentas the golden mountains from which he drew his inexhaustible treasures.
Intending that nothing should be wanting to the graciousness of hissubmission to this act of constrained courtesy, Montezuma proposed tohis brother Cuitlahua, to choose a royal retinue from the flower of theAztec 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 theproud undaunted soldier revolted, and he entreated so earnestly to beexcused from executing a commission, so much at variance with hisfeelings and his convictions, that the monarch relented, and assignedthe mission to Cacama, the young prince of Tezcuco.
Nothing could exceed the gorgeous splendor of this embassy. Borne in abeautiful palanquin, canopied and curtained with the rarest of Mexicanfeather-work, richly powdered with jewels, and glittering with gold,Cacama, preceded and followed by a long train of noble veterans andyouths, all apparelled in the gayest costume of their country, presentedhimself before the advancing host. His approach, and the errand on whichhe came, having been announced by a herald, Cortez halted his band, anddrew up his forces in the best possible array, to give him a fittingreception.
The meeting took place at Ajotzinco, on, or rather within, the bordersof the lake Chalco, the first of the bright chain of inland lakes whichthe Spaniards had seen, and the place where they first saw that speciesof amphibious architecture, which prevailed so extensively among theMexicans. When the royal embassy arrived in front of the waiting army,Cacama alighted from his palanquin, while his obsequious officers sweptthe ground before him, that he might not soil his royal feet, by toorude a contact with the earth. He was a young man of about twenty fiveyears, with a fine manly countenance, a noble and commanding figure, andan address and manners that would have done honor to the most courtlyknight of Christendom. Stepping forward with a bland and dignifiedcourtesy, he made the customary Mexican salutation to persons of highrank, 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 royalmaster, gave the strangers a hearty welcome, assuring them that theyshould be received with a hospitality, and treated with a respect,becoming the representatives of a great and mighty prince. He thenpresented Cortez with a number of large and valuable pearls, which actof munificence was immediately returned by the present of a necklace ofcut glass, hung over his neck by Cortez. As glass was not known to theMexicans, 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 ofhostile invaders and invited guests, followed his steps by slow, easyand cautious marches. After a few days, during which they passed throughlarge tracts of highly cultivated and fertile ground, and several of thebeautiful towns and cities of the plateau, they arrived at Iztapalapan,a place of great beauty, and large resources, and the residence ofCuitlahua, the noble brother of Montezuma. At the command of theEmperor, Cuitlahua, as governor of this place, received the strangerswith courtesy, and treated them with attention. But it was a coldcourtesy, and a constrained attention. With a proud and haughty mien,the brave soldier exhibited to the wondering strangers, all the richesand curiosities of the place, disposing every thing in such a manner asto impress them most powerfully with the immense wealth of the empire,and the irresistible power of the Emperor. He collected around him allthe richest and most potent nobles in his neighborhood, and displayed amagnificence of style, and a prodigality of expenditure, that was trulyprincely. The extent and beauty of his gardens, his beautiful aviary,stocked with every variety of the gorgeously plumed birds of thattropical clime, his menagerie, containing a full representation of allthe wild races of animals in Anahuac, struck the Spaniards with surpriseand admiration; while the architecture of his palaces, and the manyrefinements of his style of living, gave them the highest ideas of theadvanced state of civilization to which the Mexicans had attained.
But, so far from disheartening them in their grand design, all they sawof wealth and splendor in the inferior cities, only served to inflametheir desire to see the capital, and learn if any thing more brilliantand wonderful than they had yet seen, could be furnished at the greatmetropolis. While they were daily more and more convinced of the powerand resources of their enemy, and the seeming impossibility of their ownenterprise, they were also daily more and more inflamed with the desireand purpose to possess themselves of the incalculable treasures whichevery where met their eyes. The cold aspect, and lofty bearing of thePrince Cuitlahua, the commander-in-chief of the Mexican armies, and heirapparent to its throne, left no doubt that the final struggle for powerwould be ably and bitterly contested, and that the wealth they soardently coveted, would be dearly bought. To a heart less bold andself-reliant than that of Cortez, it would have been no enviableposition, to be shut up, with his little band of followers, within thegates of a city, commanded by so brave and experienced a soldier, whosepersonal feelings and views were known to be of the most hostilecharacter. To the iron-hearted Castilian, it was but a scene in theprogress of his romantic adventure; and, the greater the difficulty, themore imminent the peril, the more cordially he trusted to his goodgenius, or his patron saint, he seems not to have known which, to carryhim triumphantly through.
They were now but one day's march, and that a short and easy one, fromthe imperial city. Already they had seen it from a distance, resting,or rather riding, on the bosom of the lake, glowing and glittering inthe sunbeams, like some resplendent constellation, transferred from theazure above to the azure below. They had seen its noble ally, themetropolis of the sister kingdom of Tezcuco, shining in rival thoughunequal splendor, on the opposite shore of the lake, and many othersplendid cities, beautiful towns, and lovely hamlets, studding itsbright border, in its entire circuit, like mingled gems and pearls,richly set in the band of the imperial diadem, all reposing under theshadow, and eclipsed by the superior glory, of the capital, the crowningjewel of the Western World. They had seen the _chinampas_, thosewandering gardens of verdure and flowers, seeming more like the fairycreations of poetry, than the sober realities of life, and remindingthem of those islands of the blest, which they had been told, in theirchildish days, floated about in the ethereal regions above, freightedwith blessings for the virtuous, and sometimes stooping so near to earthas to permit the weary and the waiting to escape from their toils andtrials here, and find repose in their celestial paradise. They had seenand admired the wonderful works of art, the causeways of vast extent,constructed with scientific accuracy, and of great strength anddurability--the canals and aqueducts, and bridges, which would have donehonor to the genius and industry of the proudest nation in Europe. Itnow remained to them to see the imperial lord of all these wide andluxuriant realms, and to enter, as invited guests, into the gates of hisroyal abode.