Land without chimneys; or, the byways of Mexico

by Alfred Oscar Coffin

Itzacoatl “The Great” was king and died in 1440, having served his country thirty years as a general and thirteen as king. His nephew Montezuma I. succeeded him. In 1449 the city was swept by a flood, and he built an immense dike nine miles long to protect the city from the lake. This dike at the present day is called Albarredo Vieja. He also had his portrait sculptured on the rocks at Chapultepec. Montezuma I. was the ablest of the Aztec kings and built and fortified the outposts of the city and died in 1469 after a reign of twenty years.

It had become a custom for each king to prove his right to be king by conquering his enemies and bringing the prisoners home to be sacrificed at his coronation. This was to make and keep the young men as warriors. Axayacatl was the sixth king and he immediately set out against the kingdom of Tehuantepec to capture prisoners for his coronation sacrifice. He added their territory to his own and returned home laden with spoil, and had his portrait sculptured on the rock of Chapultepec by the side of Montezuma I. He died in 1481 and his son Tizoc succeeded. In his short reign of five years, he conquered fourteen cities and built more temples in the capital. Ahuitzotl was his successor, and immediately began work on the great temple begun in previous years. He began war to get victims for his coronation, which he postponed till the temple should be completed, which was four years. When the dedication day arrived, festivities lasted four days, and fifteen thousand prisoners were sacrificed upon the altar of the war-god. This king extended the Mexican empire to its present limits and died in 1502. He was liberal, and when he received tribute from his vassal states, he called the people together and distributed it among them. To his soldiers he gave bars of gold and silver, and precious stones.

His successor was Montezuma II. whom Cortez so foully murdered in later years. Montezuma was an oriental despot, and he made his capital the fairest city in the new world. His predecessors had guaranteed the integrity of their island city by every means in their power. The temple occupied the great place now covered by the Cathedral and Plaza Mayor. It was surrounded by a wall of stone and lime, ornamented by figures of serpents raised in relief which had the name of cotepantla, wall of serpents. This quadrangled wall was pierced with huge battlemented gateways, opening upon the four principal streets of the city. Over these gates were arsenals, and within the walls were barracks of thousands of soldiers.

Throughout the city were canals by the side of the streets in this new world Venice, so that canoes from their trading excursions could traverse any part of the city. Great military causeways led to the mainland across the lakes, and were guarded by drawbridges, to shut the enemy out or shut themselves in. The city could not be entered by any other way than these causeways. The southern one was called Iztapalapan and was seven miles long. The northern one was Tepejecac, three miles long, which now leads to Guadalupe. The other two were Tlacopam and Chapultepec and were each two miles long, They were broad enough to allow ten men abreast on horseback, and are all in use today. The city was nine miles in circumference and was guarded at every point.

No sooner was Montezuma elected, than he waged war upon the Otomites to get victims for his inaugural, and returned with five thousand prisoners which were promptly slaughtered to the war-god, and then he became a very tyrant. He immediately dismissed all ordinary servants, and compelled six hundred princes of the royal blood in his conquered provinces to be his servants, and they had to approach him barefooted and in common apparel. On the streets his subjects must close their eyes when he passed and not look upon his dazzling greatness. He drank from gold vessels and no vessel was ever used the second time. Swift runners by relays, brought him fresh fish and fruits each day from the gulf, a distance of two hundred miles. A thousand women were in his harem, and when a favorite prince deserved a favor, he made him a present of one of his houris.

Menageries and aviaries, representing all the birds and animals of his kingdom from New Mexico to Guatemala, were provided for, and fed daily with the food each was accustomed to. In the midst of his extravagances, Cortez appeared on the other side of the lake with a hundred and fifty thousand Indian allies of the valley, who were only too anxious to see their ancient enemy humbled.

Montezuma was the only Aztec king who was no soldier. He allowed the crafty Spaniards to fill his capital, and to buy their departure, filled their room to the ceiling with gold and silver, which only whetted the appetites of the treasure-seekers and they asked for more. Montezuma was treacherously imprisoned and was afterwards murdered by Cortez, then the Mexicans rose in their might on that terrible July night in 1520 and drove them from the city, and Guatemotzin was made king. He was a soldier from the old stock, and had he been king at first, the Spaniards would never have set foot in Tenochtitlan. He immediately put the city in defense for the return of the Spaniards. Meanwhile Cortez built a fleet of boats for the lake and got men and cannon from Cuba, and spent a year in organizing the disaffected Indians in the valley against their ancient enemy.

The next year, in May 1521, he appeared again with Indians from every nation in the valley, according to the exaggerated Spanish authority, five hundred and twenty thousand men, and laid siege to the city by land and by water, for three months, and then occurred a scene that has never been exceeded in history for bravery.

The Mexicans were born warriors to a man. The besieging army was armed with cannon and muskets and sword and horse, and was clad in steel coats of mail, yet for three months there were daily hand-to-hand combats, where Mexicans fought with short obsidian knives against the blades of Toledo. The great city, nine miles in circumference, was filled with people to the brim, their food supply cut off, the aqueduct which brought them fresh water from Chapultepec across the lake, destroyed; forced to drink the brackish salt water from the lake, and to eat the bark and roots from trees, yet they asked no quarter. Mothers would sit and see their starved children die at their breasts, and then ravenously devour their dead bodies. Men wounded unto death, would still hurl defiance at the invaders when too weak to hurl their weapons.

Cortez had succeeded so well in his blockade that all the timorous nations in the valley, like wolves around a wounded bison, severed their allegiance to the Aztec king and flocked to the Spaniards, till he had, by his own figures, nearly half a million men around the doomed city. He sent embassadors to Guatemotzin to surrender, as resistance was hopeless. Guatemotzin ordered the messengers to be sacrificed. Then Cortez ordered his men to tear the city down as they went, as every house contained Mexican warriors. For days they fought and destroyed. The Mexicans resisted every inch of the ground, and when a Spaniard was captured, would take him to the temple and sacrifice him in full view of the Spanish army. The city was reeking with the unburied dead, and the Mexicans were eating the flesh of their comrades, but they asked no quarter. Cortez hated to destroy so beautiful a city, and after twelve days of fighting and seven-eighths of the houses had been destroyed and the canals filled with the rubbish, he sent another commission to treat with Guatemotzin. “Tell Malinche the Aztecs are men and not children,” was his answer. Thus angered, Cortez turned his savage Indian allies upon the starving emaciated Mexicans, and butchered forty thousand more that night before they stopped to rest, and then waited till morning and sent another embassy to the proud king. “Tell Malinche I am prepared to die where I am,” was all his answer; and the stench and steam from the putrifying bodies was terrible, but no man, woman or child begged for mercy, so Cortez ordered the destruction of the rest of the city. All day long they tore down walls upon weak and dead and dying Mexicans, but met defiance from everyone like a wounded tiger, tracked to his lair by the trailing huntsman. To the Indian allies they would say: “Aye, destroy, but the more you tear down the more you will have to build up. If we conquer, we will make you rebuild; if the white man conquer, he will make you rebuild;” and still the destruction went on.