"The viceroy, not brooking this saucy answer from a priest, commanded him presently to be apprehended, and to be taken under guard to San Juan de Ulua, and then to be shipped to Spain. The archbishop, having notice of this resolution of the viceroy, retired to Guadalupe, with many of his priests and prebends, leaving a bill of excommunication against the viceroy himself upon the church doors, intending privately to fly to Spain, there to give an account of his carriage and behavior. But he could not escape the care and vigilance of the viceroy, who, with his sergeant and officers, pursued him to Guadalupe, which the archbishop understanding, he betook himself to the sanctuary of the church, and there caused the candles to be lighted upon the altar, and the sacrament of his bread god to be taken out of the tabernacle, and attiring himself with his pontifical vestments, with his mitre on his head, his crosier in one hand, in the other he took his god of bread, and thus, with his train of priests about him at the altar, he waited for the coming of the sergeant and officers, whom he thought, with his god in his hand, and with a Here I am, to astonish and amaze, and to make them, as did Christ the Jews in the garden, to fall backward, and disable them from laying hands on him.
BANISHMENT OF THE ARCHBISHOP.
"The officers, coming into the church, went toward the altar where the bishop stood, and, kneeling down first to worship their god, made short prayers; which being ended, they propounded unto the bishop, with courteous and fair words, the cause of their coming to that place, requiring him to lay down the sacrament [the consecrated wafer], and to come out of the church, and to hear the notification of what orders they brought unto him in the king's name. To whom the archbishop replied, that whereas their master the viceroy was excommunicated, he looked upon him as one out of the pale of the Church, and one without any power or authority to command him in the house of God, and so required them, as they regarded the good of their souls, to depart peaceably, and not to infringe the privileges and immunities of the Church by exercising in it any legal act of secular power and command; and that he would not go out of the church unless they durst take him and the sacrament together. With this the head officer, named Tiroll, stood up and notified unto him an order, in the king's name, to apprehend his person in what place soever he should find him, and to guard him to the port of San Juan de Ulua, and there to deliver him to whom by farther order he should be directed thereto, to be shipped to Spain as a traitor to the king's crown, a troubler of the common peace, and an author and mover of sedition in the commonwealth.
"The archbishop, smiling to Tiroll, answered him, 'Thy master useth too high terms and words, which do better agree unto himself, for I know no mutiny or sedition like to trouble the commonwealth, unless it be by his and Don Pedro Mexia his oppressing of the poor. And as for thy guarding me to San Juan de Ulua, I conjure thee by Jesus Christ, whom thou knowest I hold in my hands, not to use here any violence in God's house, from whose altar I am resolved not to depart; take heed God punish you not, as he did Jeroboam for stretching forth his hand at the altar against the prophet; let his withered hand remind thee of thy duty.' But Tiroll suffered him not to squander away the time and ravel it out with farther preaching, but called to the altar a priest, whom he had brought for the purpose, and commanded him, in the king's name, to take the sacrament [wafer] out of the archbishop's hand; which the priest doing, the archbishop, unvesting himself of his pontificals, yielded himself unto Tiroll; and, taking his leave of all his prebends, requiring them to be witnesses of what had been done, he went prisoner to San Juan de Ulua, where he was delivered to the custody of the governor of the castle, and, not many days after, was sent in a ship prepared for that purpose to Spain, to the king in council, with a full charge of all his carriages and misdemeanors."
CHAPTER XXII.
The old Indian City of Mexico.—The Mosques.—Probable Extent of Civilization.—Aztecs acquired Arts of the Toltecs.—Toltec Civilization, ancient and original.—The Pyramid of Papantla.—The Plunder of Civilization.—Mexico as described by Cortéz.—Montezuma's Court.—The eight Months that Cortéz held Montezuma.—What happened for the next ten Months.—The Siege of Mexico by Cortéz.—Aztecs conquered by Famine and Thirst.—Heroes on Paper and Victories without Bloodshed.—Cortéz and Morgan.
As we have carefully surveyed the suburbs, and all the valley of Mexico, it is time to take a survey of the city itself, and examine its condition at different periods of its history.
THE MEXICO OF THE AZTECS.
The Aztec city of Mexico perished with its conquest by the Spaniards. Day by day, as the siege went on, the Indians that followed the soldiers pulled the houses down, when the latter had passed, and threw the rubbish into the canals; so that, on the day on which the conquest was effected, the city ceased to exist. Many times has that old city been restored, in the imagination of enthusiasts, with its forty pyramids (teocallis) and unnumbered palaces, adorned with all the luxury and magnificence of the most refined civilization, united with barbaric grandeur and inhumanity in so strange a combination as to distract our feelings between hate and admiration.