"Would you not deliver up the prince if he came in your way?" he asked of a peasant who did not recognize him.
"Not I," was the reply.
"What! not for a fair lady's hand, and a rich domain as dowry?"
The peasant shook his head decisively and laughed in disdain.
But, in spite of the loyalty of the people, the prince was in constant danger, and his situation, in the rough fastnesses of the hills and forests, became very distressing.
"Leave me," he said to the faithful few who kept with him in his wanderings and shared his sufferings. "Leave me to my fate. Why should you throw away your lives for one whom fortune steadily persecutes?"
But they clung to his fortunes still, despite their danger and the fact that most of the great nobles of the land had sought safety and reward by an adhesion to the usurper.
Meanwhile, events were working in favor of the fugitive. Maxtla had shown himself an oppressor, and his ambition and military successes had caused much alarm in the surrounding states, where his tyranny was contrasted with the mild rule of the former monarchs of Tezcuco. The friends of the young prince took advantage of this feeling, and succeeded in forming a coalition against his enemy. A day was fixed for a general rising, and on the date appointed Nezahualcoyotl found himself at the head of an army strong enough to face that of Maxtla and the Tepanecs.
The two armies soon met and victory rested on the banner of the young prince, the forces of Maxtla[pg 050] being badly beaten. No longer a hunted fugitive, but at the head of a victorious army, he marched in triumph to the capital which he had left with a price on his head, his joyful subjects crowding to the route of march to render homage to their rightful sovereign. The Mexicans, who were angry at the tyrannic conduct of Maxtla, readily allied themselves with the young victor, and a series of bloody battles followed, the usurper being at length defeated under the walls of his own capital. He was dragged from the baths, to which he had fled for concealment, and sacrificed to the cruel gods of the Aztecs; his royal city was razed to the ground, and its site was reserved as the great slave-market of the surrounding nations.
Thus it was that Nezahualcoyotl came to the throne of his ancestors, where he was to prove himself the greatest monarch of whom we have any record in the American annals. The story of his reign is far too full of detail for the space we can give to it, but is of such interest that we may venture on a concise account of it, as an example of the career of the most illustrious of the ancient American sovereigns.