He found the Spanish garrison hemmed in, and reduced to extremities, by a people who, stimulated by superstition and maddened by a fresh and atrocious outrage, seemed suddenly to have exchanged timidity for desperation. The return of Cortez with his formidable reinforcement did not abate their ferocity. Even the person of Montezuma, who was exposed on the Spanish rampart, ceased to command respect, and he received three wounds from stones and arrows, from the effects of which, aggravated by rage and a deep sense of his degradation, he expired. The Mexicans now sought to blockade their enemies and reduce them by hunger; and, as Cortez had not the command of the lake, he found it necessary immediately to evacuate the city. But he was taken at disadvantage in traversing by night (July 1, 1520) one of the long causeways which connect the city with the shores of the lake in which it stands; and on mustering those who reached the mainland, he found his small battalion of Europeans reduced by one-half, with the loss of all the horses, baggage, artillery, and most of the treasure which had been amassed by individual soldiers. The anniversary of this calamity was long, and may be still, distinguished in New Spain by the appellation of Noche Triste, the sad night.
By a circuitous route, and not without cutting their way through an immense army assembled to intercept them, the Spaniards returned to the friendly Indians of Tlascala, among whom Cortez meant to recruit his exhausted companions, and to wait until fresh supplies of men and stores could be obtained from the West India islands. Some vessels which put into the harbour of Vera Cruz afforded an unexpected reinforcement of 180 men; and on the 28th of December Cortez began to retrace his march towards Mexico. At Tezeuco, the second city of the empire, situated on the banks of the lake, about twenty miles from the capital, he established his head-quarters for four months, during which the timbers of twelve small vessels, cut out in the mountains of Tlascala, were put together. This force ensured the command of the lake, for the Mexicans had nothing larger than canoes; and just before their completion, a reinforcement of 200 men, with arms and stores, arrived from Hispaniola. At the beginning of May, 1521, with about 800 Europeans, Cortez commenced the siege of Mexico itself.
Guatimozin, a nephew of Montezuma, who had succeeded to the throne, made a resolute defence; and Cortez, aware of the danger of entangling his troops in the streets, yet anxious to preserve the buildings as a trophy of his victory, urged the siege with unusual caution. Each day he pushed his way as far as possible into the city; but he returned to his quarters at night, during which the barricades of the causeways were repaired, and on the morrow a fresh battle was to be fought on the same ground. Thus matters went until the 3d of July, when Cortez, impatient of so protracted a resistance, made a desperate attempt to carry every thing before him in one great assault. Experience improved the Mexicans in the art of war. When the Spaniards, by the energy of their attack, had forced a way into the heart of the city, Guatimozin led them still onwards by a show of slackened resistance, while he detached troops, by land and water, to beset the breaches in the causeway by which it was necessary for the enemy to retire. At a given signal, the great drum of the god of war was struck, and the Mexicans returned to the attack, their hatred of the invaders stimulated by the ferocity of their superstition. The Spaniards were compelled to give way, and disorder was converted into absolute rout by the promiscuous onset of the natives, when they arrived at the breach. Above sixty Europeans perished, for those who were taken prisoners were offered as sacrifices on the Mexican altars. After this reverse Cortez took a surer way to success, and as fast as his troops made a lodgment, he caused the houses to be levelled with the ground. When three quarters of the city were thus destroyed, and those who defended the remainder were exhausted by famine and disease, Guatimozin yielded to the persuasion of those who urged him to preserve himself, to renew the war in the remote provinces of the empire. But he was intercepted and captured with his family, as he sought to escape across the lake; and on the loss of their sovereign, the Mexicans ceased to resist. The siege thus ended August 13, 1521.
The victors were greatly disappointed in the amount of the precious metals which fell into their hands. What remained of the royal treasures Guatimozin had ordered to be thrown into the lake. Much spoil was carried off by the Indian auxiliaries, and much probably was lost or destroyed in the ruins of the city. The whole treasure collected was inferior in amount to that which the Spaniards had formerly received as a present from Montezuma; and the adventurers clamorously expressed their dissatisfaction. Pressed by this spirit of discontent, Cortez gave way to a passion, as alien to that undefined feeling which we call the spirit of chivalry, as to the natural laws of charity and justice; and tried, in vain, to extract by torture from the royal prisoner and one of his favourite followers a discovery of the treasures which were supposed to be hidden. Overcome by pain, the latter cast a look on his master, which seemed to ask permission to reveal what he knew. Guatimozin indignantly replied to the implied entreaty—“Am I reposing on a bed of flowers?” and the faithful subject kept silence, and died. The emperor, with his two principal officers, was afterwards hanged, on a groundless charge of having excited insurrection.
The provinces were readily overrun after the fall of the capital, and made subject to Spain; though intolerable oppression often produced insurrections, which were put down with unrelenting severity. Having conquered an empire without commission from the monarch in whose name he made war, Cortez narrowly escaped having to answer as a criminal for the irregularity of his proceedings. But in 1522 he succeeded in procuring a royal commission, which constituted him captain-general and governor of New Spain. Still his actions were watched with an ungenerous though natural jealousy; and his situation became so critical, that he resolved, in 1528, to return to Castile, and answer, before no inferior tribunal, such charges as might be urged against him. He appeared with the splendour which became one who had unlocked the treasures of the New World; and his own ample fortune, contrasted with the smallness of the sum divided among his comrades, gave birth to a belief that he had not dealt fairly in the partition of the spoil. As his return to Spain put an end to all fears of his ambition, he was received with the favour which such brilliant services merited. He was invested with the order of St. Jago, the highest rank of Spanish knighthood; and the valley of Guaxaca, with an extensive domain, was erected into a marquisate in his behalf. But he could not obtain what he most desired, the supreme direction of affairs in Mexico. He returned thither in 1530 at the head of the military department, and with authority to prosecute new discoveries; but the direction of civil affairs was vested in a board, entitled the Audience of New Spain. Henceforward we may regard Cortez as a disappointed and unhappy man. Thwarted at home by the double authority established, he sought to reap new glory by exploring the Pacific Ocean; and in 1536 he discovered the peninsula of California, and surveyed part of the gulf which separates it from the American continent. But from that country neither profit nor honour, unless as a geographical discoverer, could be gained; and the result of the expedition neither satisfied the expectations of others, nor repaid the adventurers for the hardships which they underwent. In 1540, wearied and disgusted, Cortez returned to Spain, and found his services forgotten, or at least his person slighted. He served as a volunteer in 1541, in Charles V.’s expedition against Algiers, and had a horse killed under him. This was his last military action. After wearying his proud spirit in fruitless attempts to gain attention from Charles or his ministers to his real or supposed grievances, he retired into seclusion, and died at Seville, December 2, 1547, in the sixty-third year of his age.
We have passed rapidly over the shocking cruelties which marked the progress of the Spanish arms. Some portion of the horror, with which we naturally regard the actors in such events, may be neutralized by the consideration, that men’s notions in all things, and perhaps most especially in matters of international justice, are greatly dependent on the spirit of the time in which they live; and that it is hardly fair to judge actions, which won the admiration of contemporaries, according to the standard of a subsequent age. But even in that age there were not wanting many to raise an indignant voice against the cruelties practised on an unoffending people; and after every just allowance has been made, it is not to be doubted that the treatment of the American aborigines forms a foul stain on the history of Spain, and loads all who were concerned in it with an awful responsibility; and we willingly acknowledge it to have been a just retribution, that of the original settlers few reaped prosperity, repose, or wealth, as the harvest of their arms. With their leaders it was eminently otherwise. Scarce one of those who led the conquerors of Peru escaped a violent death in civil strife; while Cortez (with whom no one divides the fame of conquering Mexico) lived to experience the proverbial ingratitude of courts, and died in that forced obscurity which is most galling to an ambitious mind.
The noble inscription, composed by Southey for the birth-place of Cortez’s early companion in arms and rival in fame, needs but the change of name to render it equally applicable to Cortez himself.
“Pizarro here was born—a greater name
The list of Glory boasts not. Toil and Pain,
Famine, and hostile Elements, and Hosts