Montezuma II

“ Thus the struggle went on day after day, till thousands of the Aztecs were dead, and the Spaniards were well nigh worn out with hunger, war, and wounds, for they could not rest a single hour. At length one morning, when the assault was at its hottest, Montezuma himself appeared upon the central tower of the palace, clad in splendid robes and wearing the diadem. Before him stood heralds bearing golden wands, and about him were the nobles who attended him in his captivity, and a guard of Spaniards. ”

“ They carried the litter in which the unfortunate monarch was borne away from his own people, a prisoner under Spanish guard. Hardly was his removal known in the city before the streets were filled with crowds. Some shrieked, others wept, others threw themselves upon the ground as if in their last despairing agony. But Montezuma tried to calm them. He appeared with a smiling countenance, motioned to them with his hand, and assured them he was not a prisoner. ”

“ Montezuma’s occasional appearance in public, and the assertion that he remained with the Spaniards of his free-will, and because the gods desired it, had for a time satisfied the nobles; but the hard irons on his limbs and the cruel burning of patriotic men had opened their eyes somewhat to the true state of affairs. No one knew when his turn might come. Life was insecure enough subject to the caprice of their own sovereign, but the dark uncertain ways of these emissaries of evil were past finding out. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But to these people, and more especially to Montezuma, whose mind was filled already with rumours of the coming of a strange white race, which, as it was truly prophesied, would bring his empire to nothingness, the omens seemed very evil. Indeed, if they had any doubt as to their meaning, it was soon to be dispelled, in their minds at least. For as we stood wonder-struck, a messenger, panting and soiled with travel, arrived among us and prostrating himself before the majesty of the emperor, he drew a painted scroll from his robe and handed it to an attendant noble. ”

“ Half-conquered provinces, groaning under heavy taxation, had yet the remembrance of their former freedom, and were ready to cast off the yoke. It is still more remarkable that the superstition to which Montezuma had surrendered himself as the devoutest votary, which had led him to crowd the altars with human sacrifices in unprecedented numbers, and to ally himself by the strongest ties with the bloody priesthood, now, as it were, turned against him, and prostrated his spirit before the imagined divinity, or at least the predicted success of the stranger. ”

“ All that night the city murmured like a swarm of wasps, and next day at dawn, so far as the eye could reach, the streets and market place were filled with tens of thousands of armed warriors. They threw themselves like a wave upon the walls of the palace of Axa, and like a wave from a rock they were driven back again by the fire of the guns. Thrice they attacked, and thrice they were repulsed. Then Montezuma, the woman king, appeared upon the walls, praying them to desist because, forsooth, did they succeed, he himself might perish. ”

“ When Montezuma departed from the old Cû for his palace, it was not to sleep or rest. The revelation that so disturbed him, that held him wordless on the street, and made him shrink from his people, wild with the promise of pomp and combat, would not be shut out by gates and guards; it clung to his memory, and with him stood by the fountain, walked in the garden, and laid down on his couch. Royalty had no medicine for the trouble; he was restless as a fevered slave, and at times muttered prayers, pronouncing no name but Quetzal’s. ”

“ Montezuma could not have failed to recognize the insecurity of the bonds which held it, and influenced by the predictions of its downfall he readily fell beneath the spell of the superior intellects which were to assume control. It was his misfortune to have lost the sanguine energy of his youth, which might have enabled him to rise above the weaknesses of himself and his age. Duty and honor were overcome by superstition and absorbing love of power, of life, and he reaped the natural fruit of puerile and misdirected efforts by losing both. ”

“ In history's cloister; Egypt and Aztlan
Strike palms upon the bridges of the years;
But Spain denies the privilege to man,
And fills the vacuum with a nation's tears.
O Monarch of the fading, mighty past!
Great Montezuma! we are wed to thee.
Back of thy name the ocean is so vast
That we can only write—Eternity,
And leave the secret in thy broken breast.
We would that we could taken thy warm palm,
Held out in welcome from the mellow West,
And poured upon thy stricken life the balm
Of real enlightenment; and point thee back,
Over the ridges of the years, to God ”

“ He had declared, on his departure, that he or his descendants would again visit them and resume his empire. The wonderful deeds of the Spaniards, their fair complexions, and the quarter whence they came, all showed they were his descendants. If Montezuma had resisted their visit to his capital, it was because he had heard such accounts of their cruelties,—that they sent the lightning to consume his people, or crushed them to pieces under the hard feet of the ferocious animals on which they rode. ”

“ The great Montezuma never ceased his good will towards us and did as we wished in every way save that he never stopped the sacrifice of human beings. Day after day the abomination went on. No protest could induce him to end it. The difficulty for us was to use some means which would not impel the people and the papas to arms. At last Cortes, accompanied by seven officers and soldiers, went to Montezuma and said, "Great monarch, I have already many times begged you not to sacrifice humans to those false gods who are deluding you, and yet the horrors continue every day. ”

“ He then sent a message to Montezuma, representing the disgrace into which he had fallen, by joining himself with wizards and magicians, and declared his resolution to destroy us all. Montezuma was much offended by the proud independence assumed by his nephew, whom he now resolved to circumvent and make prisoner. For this purpose he entrusted his signet to six of his captains, whom he commanded to shew it to certain other leaders among his subjects, who were not well affected to the prince, and to communicate to them his orders to seize Cacamatzin and bring him prisoner to Mexico. ”

“ Why should Montezuma’s daughter and the princess of the Otomie escape the fate of the emperor of the Aztecs? If her womanhood does not protect her, has she anything to hope of her lost rank?”
“Cortes knows nothing of this, I swear it,” said Marina. “To the rest he has been driven by the clamour of the soldiers, who taunt him with stealing treasure that he has never found. But of this last wickedness he is innocent.” ”

“ The emperor begged him to become a Mexican citizen, but he replied that on no account would he prove a traitor to his country. Montezuma then once more offered him his liberty, but he strenuously refused to return to Tlascala, having undergone the disgrace of defeat and capture. He begged Montezuma to terminate his unhappy existence by sacrificing him to the gods, thus ending the dishonour he felt in living on after having undergone defeat, and at the same time fulfilling the highest aspiration of his life—to die the death of a warrior on the stone of combat. ”

“ Montezuma's reign was a succession of campaigns against revolting provinces, interspersed with the erection of magnificent temples, frequent and extensive immolations of human victims, and omens of disaster sent by the gods to trouble the mind of the superstitious monarch. When at last the day drew near when Mexico must struggle single-handed for the retention of her supremacy against a combination of all the Nahua powers, the last chance for success in such an unequal contest disappeared with the re-inforcement of the enemy by Spanish valor, Spanish armor, and Spanish horses ”

“ Montezuma was, however, a valiant and skillful warrior, and sacrificed oftener his inclinations to his interests in the treatment of his armies than in other cases. His policy of course gradually alienated the classes on which the prosperity of the empire chiefly rested, and ensured the fall of the Aztec power whenever disaffection should have an opportunity to ally itself with foreign [458] foes. The bursting of the storm was averted for some fifteen years by the strength of the Acolhua and Tepanec alliance, and by the strength of the Mexican army. ”

“ Then with the utmost composure and indifference of manner he turned to Montezuma and replied that there was nothing he wished more heartily than to return to his fatherland, but, as all his vessels were destroyed, he must build others and would have to request the necessary assistance. Montezuma could not conceal his delight. He embraced Cortes, overwhelmed him with caresses, and assured him that his declaration would satisfy his priests and his subjects, both of whom were desirous the strangers should leave. ”

“ The landscape is not disfigured here, as in many other quarters, by the white and barren patches, so offensive to the sight; but the eye wanders over an unbroken expanse of meadows and cultivated fields, waving with rich harvests of European grain. Montezuma’s gardens stretched for miles around the base of the hill. Two statues of that monarch and his father, cut in bas-relief in the porphyry, were spared till the middle of the last century; [338] and the grounds are still shaded by gigantic cypresses, more than fifty feet in circumference, which were centuries old at the time of the Conquest. ”

“ This power to depose, though seldom exercised, was vital in the gentile organization. Montezuma was no exception to the rule. It required time to reach this result from the peculiar circumstances of the case, for a good reason was necessary. When Montezuma allowed himself, through intimidation, to be conducted from his place of residence to the quarters of Cortes where he was placed under confinement, the Aztecs were paralyzed for a time for the want of a military commander. ”

“ He should also regret another step to which he should be driven, if he quitted it under these circumstances,—that of taking the emperor along with him.
Montezuma was evidently troubled by this last suggestion. He inquired how long it would take to build the vessels, and finally consented to send a sufficient number of workmen to the coast, to act under the orders of the Spaniards; meanwhile, he would use his authority to restrain the impatience of the people, under the assurance that the white men would leave the land, when the means for it were provided. ”

“ Far from exhibiting that love for peace and desire to promote happiness, which were attributes of the god of the air, they had shown themselves men of blood, full of lust, and fit servants of that prince of darkness who is supposed to reside in the depths of the infernal regions. However, Montezuma was now a willing tool in the hands of Cortez for the enslaving of his people. He repeated to his nobles what the Spaniard directed, and they assented, declaring themselves vassals of the new king, though with sobs, and sighs, and groans, weeping and lamenting the fall of their own mighty empire. ”

“ The place is now a tangled wilderness of wild shrubs, where the myrtle mingles its dark, glossy leaves with the red berries and delicate foliage of the pepper-tree. Surely there is no spot better suited to awaken meditation on the past; none where the traveller, as he sits under those stately cypresses grey with the moss of ages, can so fitly ponder on the sad destinies of the Indian races and the monarch who once held his courtly revels under the shadow of their branches.
The domestic establishment of Montezuma was on the same scale of barbaric splendour as everything else about him. ”

“ Even King Montezuma, who did not believe in these signs and reports, began to think that there must be some truth in these reports, and began to get alarmed and prepared for the emergency.
Thus, the great prince, Montezuma, who, by his valor and good success in the wars, had, in a few years of his reign (before Cortez came) , subdued the better part of a hundred cities and towns to his dominion, and in the height of his glory he was foretold of his downfall, which proved true. ”

“ Montezuma's eyes were now open to the true character of the invaders. Gods of the air no longer were they now to him. Intelligence must have reached him by this time of their cruel acts in Tabasco, of their insatiable lust, of their low-born manners and total lack of all generous feelings. These were not the attributes of gods, that they displayed!
Some of the Spanish writers would have us believe that Montezuma consulted his gods, making sacrifices to them of tender children, and they commanded him to repel the invaders. ”