It is probable that the Aztec refinement existed chiefly in the city of Tenochtitlan or Mexico; or, that the capital of the empire, like the capital of France, absorbed the greater share of the genius and cultivation of the whole country. Our knowledge of Yucatan, and of the wonderful cities which have been revealed in its forests by the industry of Mr. Stephens, is altogether too limited to allow any conjectures, at this period, in regard to their inhabitants. It is likely that they were offshoots from the same race as the Aztecs, and that they all owed the first germs of their separate civilizations to the Toltecs, who, according to the legends, were the great traditionary ancestors of all the progressive races that succeeded each other in emigrating from the north, and finally nestled in the lovely vale of Anahuac.
It is in the examination of such a period that we feel sensibly the want of careful contemporary history, and learn to value those narratives which present us the living picture of an age, even though they are sometimes tainted with the intolerance of religious sectarianism and bigotry, or by the merciless rancor of party malice. They give us, at least, certain material facts, which are independent of the spirit or context of the story. Posterity, which is now eager for details, infinitely prefers a sketch like this, warm and breathing with the vitality of the beings in whose presence and from whose persons it is drawn, to the cold mosaics, made up by skilful artizans, from the disjointed chips which they are forced to discover, harmonize, and polish, amid the discordant materials left by a hundred writers. Such labors, when undertaken by patient men, may sometimes reanimate the past and bring back its scenes, systems and people, with wonderful freshness; yet, after all, they are but mere restorations, and often depend essentially on the vivid imagination which supplies the missing fragments and fills them, for a moment, with an electrical instead of a natural life.
After a careful review of nearly all the historians and writers upon the ancient history of Mexico, we have never encountered a satisfactory view of the Aztec empire, except in the history of the conquest, by our countryman Prescott. His chapters upon the Mexican civilization, are the best specimens in our literature, since the days of Gibbon, of that laborious, truthful, antiquarian temper, which should always characterize a historian who ventures upon the difficult task of portraying the distant past.
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In our rapid sketch of the conquest, we have been compelled to present, occasionally, a few descriptive glimpses of the Aztec architecture, manners, customs and institutions, which have already acquainted the reader with some of the leading features of national character. But it will not be improper, in a work like this, to combine in a separate chapter such views of the whole structure of Mexican society, under the original empire, as may not only afford an idea of the advancement of the nation which Cortéz conquered, but, perhaps, will present the student with some national characteristics of a race that still inhabits Mexico jointly with the Spanish emigrants, and which is the lawful descendant of the wandering tribes who founded the city of Tenochtitlan.
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The Aztec government was a monarchy, but the right to the throne did not fall by the accident of descent upon a lineal relative of the last king, whose age would have entitled him, by European rule, to the royal succession. The brothers of the deceased prince, or his nephews, if he had no nearer kin, were the individuals from whom the new sovereign was chosen by four nobles who had been selected as electors by their own aristocratic body during the preceding reign. These electors, together with the two royal allies of Tezcoco and Tlacopan, who were united in the college as merely honorary personages, decided the question as to the candidate, whose warlike and intellectual qualities were always closely scanned by these severe judges.
The elevation of the new monarch to the throne was pompous: yet, republican and just as was the rite of selection, the ceremony of coronation was not performed until the new king had procured, by conquest in war, a crowd of victims to grace his assumption of the crown with their sacrifice at the altar. The palaces of these princes and their nobles were of the most sumptuous character, according to the description that has been left us by the conquerors themselves.
The royal state and style of these people may be best described in the artless language of Bernal Diaz del Castillo, a soldier of the conquest, whose simple narrative, though sometimes colored with the superstitions of his age, is one of the most valuable and veritable relics of that great event that has been handed down to posterity.
In describing the entrance of the Spaniards into the city—Diaz declares, with characteristic energy, that the whole of what he saw on that occasion appeared to him as if he had beheld it but yesterday;—and he fervently exclaims: "Glory be to our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave us courage to venture on such dangers and brought us safely through them!"