Returning to our history, it is not to be supposed that this powerful Aztec nation, with their fine capital of Tenochtitlan, were the only people inhabiting the land of Anahuac at that time. Several other peoples held sway there. On the eastern side of Lake Texcoco, a few leagues away, lived the Texcocans, already mentioned; one of the tribes who also had come "from the north" in early days and who had settled there. They also had developed or inherited a civilisation akin to that of the Toltecs, far more refined and important than that of their neighbours and kindred, the Aztecs. It was about the end of the twelfth century when the Texcocans established themselves, building a splendid capital and developing an extensive empire. But misfortune fell upon them as the centuries went on. Soon after the beginning of the fifteenth century they were attacked and overwhelmed by the Tepanecas, another of the seven kindred tribes: their city reduced and their monarch assassinated. But there arose a picturesque figure, the saviour of his country—Prince Nezahualcoyotl, son of the dead king. The prince passed years in disguise, as a fugitive, but at length was permitted to return to the capital, where he led a life of study. But his talents aroused the jealousy of the Tepanec usurper, who saw a danger of the people acclaiming him as their rightful lord and throwing off the yoke of the strangers. Nezahualcoyotl again became a fugitive, having escaped with his life by a stratagem, disappearing through a cloud of incense into a secret passage. But as the years went on the Texcocans, goaded to revolt by grievous taxation, arose: and seizing the moment, the outlawed prince put himself at the head of his people and regained his rightful position, largely with the assistance of the neighbouring Mexicans of Tenochtitlan.
Then followed what has been termed the golden age of Texcoco. Its art, poets, and historians became renowned throughout Anahuac, and its collected literature was the centre of historical lore. Indeed, this it was that was so perversely destroyed by the first Archbishop of Mexico, Zumarraga, after the Conquest—an irremediable loss. The prince or emperor was a philosopher and a poet, and he has left some remarkable examples of his philosophical prayers to the "Unknown God," in whom he believed, abhorring the human sacrifices of his neighbours the Aztecs. He has been termed the "Solomon of Anahuac," although the severe code of laws he instituted have earned him a harsher name in addition.
Under this régime agriculture prospered exceedingly, and a large population cultivated all the available ground, just as under the Incas of Peru the Andine slopes were terraced and cultivated. Splendid buildings were erected, and a style of luxurious living inaugurated somewhat after the fashion of Oriental history, and the descriptions of the magnificence of the royal appurtenances fill pages of the historians' accounts. Most of this history was written by the famous Ixtlilxochitl, son of this great emperor, who occupied the throne at the time of the Conquest and became an ally of the Spaniards against the Aztec. It is upon the writings of this prince-historian that much of the material of the later writers of the history of Mexico and the Conquest is founded.
In the construction of his palaces and buildings Nezahualcoyotl employed vast bodies of natives, after the manner of an Egyptian potentate of old. Baths, hanging-gardens, groves of cedar, harems, villas, temples formed the beautiful and luxurious Texcotzinco, the prince's residence, as described by its historian. To-day the mounds and débris of sculptured stone which formed the place scarcely arrest the traveller's attention. In the midst of his luxury the emperor fell a prey to a passion for the betrothed of one of his subjects, a beautiful maiden. The unhappy individual who had thus become his monarch's rival—he was a veteran chief in the army—was needlessly sent on a military expedition, where he fell, and the hand of his promised bride was free for the monarch's taking. So was enacted upon these high regions of Anahuac a tragic episode, as of David and Uriah, to the blemish of an otherwise noble name and of a mind above the superstitions of his time.
"Truly, the gods which I adore; idols of stone and wood: speak not, nor feel, neither could they fashion the beauty of the heavens—the sun, the moon, and the stars ... nor yet the earth and the streams, the trees and the plants which beautify it. Some powerful, hidden, and unknown God must be the Creator of the universe, and he alone can console me in my affliction or still the bitter anguish of this heart."[6] So spake Nezahualcoyotl.
6 I have translated this from the Spanish of Ixtlilxochitl as quoted by Prescott.—C. R. E.
Urged probably by the feelings of the philosopher (whose ponderings on the infinite may occasion him more anguish perhaps than the ordinary vicissitudes of life), the monarch raised up a temple to the "Unknown God," in which neither images nor sacrifices were permitted.
After somewhat more than half a century of his reign, and at a time calculated as the beginning of the last quarter of the fifteenth century, this remarkable philosopher-king died, and was succeeded by his son Nezahualpilli, who in a measure followed in his father's footsteps. But he also passed away, his life having been overshadowed to some extent by the singular belief or prediction of the fall of his people in the coming of the white man from the East—a belief which influenced both the Texcocans and the Aztecs. His son Ixtlilxochitl, the historian above named, was in power at the time of the conquest by the Spaniards, but he hated the Aztecs with a bitter hatred in consequence of their influence upon his people, and the installing by the machinations of Montezuma of an elder brother upon the throne, which had plunged the kingdom into civil war. This was in the second decade of the sixteenth century.
The Texcocans, in conjunction with yet another and smaller people living on the west side of the lake at Tlacopan, formed with the Aztecs a confederation or triple alliance of three republics, by which they agreed to stand together against all comers, and to divide all territory and results of conquest in agreed proportion. They carried on war and annexation around them for a considerable period, extending their sway far beyond the Valley of Mexico, or Anahuac, which formed their home, passing the Sierra Madre mountains to the east, until about the middle of the fifteenth century—under Montezuma—the land and tribes acknowledging their sway reached to the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. To the south their arms and influence penetrated into what are now Guatemala and Nicaragua, whilst to the west they exercised sovereignty to the shores of the Pacific.