The Valley of Mexico—The City and the Causeways—The Conquistadores enter Mexico City—Meeting of Cortes and Montezuma—Greeting of the Aztec emperor to the Spaniards—Tradition of Quetzalcoatl—Splendid reception—The Teocalli—Spanish duplicity—Capture of Montezuma—Spanish gambling—News from Vera Cruz—Forced march to the coast—Cortes defeats Narvaez—Bad news from Mexico—Back to the capital—Alvarado's folly—Barbarous acts of the Spaniards—The fight on the pyramid—Destruction of Aztec idols—Death of Montezuma—Spaniards flee from the city—Frightful struggle on the Causeway—Alvarado's leap—The Noche Triste—Battle of Otumba—Marvellous victory—Spanish recuperation—Cuitlahuac and Guatemoc—Fresh operations against the capital—Building of the brigantines—Aztec tenacity—Expedition to Cuernavaca—Xochimilco—Attack upon the city—Struggles and reverses—Sacrifice of Spaniards—Desertion of the Allies—Return of the Allies—Renewed attacks—Fortitude of the Aztecs—The famous catapult—Sufferings of the Aztecs—Final attack—Appalling slaughter—Ferocious Tlascalans—Fall of Mexico.
The Valley of Mexico is a region of somewhat remarkable topographical character. It consists of a plain or inter-montane basin, enclosed on all sides by ranges of hills, forming a hydrographic entity whose waters have no natural outlet.[15] A group of lakes occupy the central part of this valley, very much reduced, however, in size since the time of the Conquest.
15 See [p. 17].
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THE LAKES OF THE VALLEY OF MEXICO AT THE TIME OF THE
CONQUEST, SHOWING THE CAUSEWAYS TO THE AZTEC ISLAND-CITY OF
TENOCHTITLAN. (From Prescott's "Conquest of Mexico.") |
It was the 8th of November, 1519. Across the southern end of the great Lake Texcoco stretched a singular dyke or causeway, several miles in length and a few yards in width—a road or pathway built up of stone and mortar above the surrounding water, connecting the shores of that inland sea with an island and three other similar causeways. Upon this island arose a beautiful city with streets of strange buildings, above which rose great pyramids with sanctuaries upon their summits; and upon the bosom of the lake numerous canoes were plying, laden with men and merchandise. So rose those towers, and lived and moved the dwellers of this lake city, unknowing and unknown of European man, living their life as if no other world than theirs held sway beneath the firmament of the "unknown God." But the spell is broken. A trumpet sound is ringing through the morning air. Across the causeway comes a troop of strange men-animals—fearful things which snort and tramp, making the causeway rumble, whilst the notes of that strange music echo away among the towers and pyramids of the city, and are borne far over the waters of the lake, to smite the ears of wondering Indians.
Cortes and his Spaniards rode steadily along the causeway, their hearts beating—as well they might—with astonishment, admiration, apprehension, and all those emotions to which their unique and romantic position gave impulse. Guided by the messengers of Montezuma, the white men rode beneath a fortification in mid-causeway, where another similar structure joined it from another shore of the lake, passed the drawbridge and the city walls, and clattered up the stone-paved avenue of Tenochtitlan to where, in pomp and splendour, surrounded by his lords and vassals, the great Aztec chief awaited them, in a royal litter gleaming with polished gold.
Cortes and his men dropped foot to earth, and Montezuma descended from his litter. The Spaniard Conquistador, after the custom of his race, advanced to embrace the chief, "but," wrote Cortes to Charles V., "the two lords in attendance prevented me with their hands that I might not touch him, and both Montezuma and they performed instead their ceremony of kissing the ground."
The meeting of these two chiefs—one the autocrat of a strange, unknown civilisation there in the heart of the mountains, the other the representative of an equally strange and unknown power from an outside world, both, to the other, undreamt of—is of dramatic memory. But the address of Montezuma was singularly dignified, prophetic, or philosophical. After the presents and greetings were exchanged, and the monarch and the invader sate at their ease, he spake in this wise: "You who have come from the direction of the sunrise, from a great lord of some far regions, shall not lack power here to command, for well we know as to our ancestry that we are not of the aborigines of this land where we now dwell, but of that of a great lord—which must be that you represent—who brought us here in ages past, departed, and promised to return. Rest here, therefore, and rejoice; take what you will, my house is yours; but believe not the slanders of my enemies through whose countries you have journeyed."
So strong was the remarkable tradition of Quetzalcoatl, that it had held this powerful chief and his warlike people in check before the invasion of a band of adventurers from abroad. A word of command from him, and the Spaniards, with all their advantages of firearms and horses, could never have passed the causeway or set foot within that impregnable city of Tenochtitlan—that fatal causeway, as indeed it afterwards became.