Meanwhile the Aztecs at Chapultepec, growing arrogant, provoked their neighbors, and were repressed by those who were more powerful. But they abided their time. They were good fighters, and the Colhua ruler courted them to assist him in his maraudings, and thus they were becoming accustomed to warfare and to conquest, and were giving favors to be repaid. This intercourse, whether of association or rivalry, of the Colhuas and Mexicans (Aztecs), was continued through succeeding periods, with a confusion of dates and events which it is hard to make clear. There was mutual distrust and confidence alternately, and it all ended in the Aztecs settling on an island in the lake, where later they founded Tenochtitlan, or Mexico.[839] Here they developed those bloody rites of sacrifice which had already disgusted their allies and neighbors.
THE LAKE OF MEXICO.
A map which did service in different forms in various books about Mexico and its aboriginal localities in the early part of the eighteenth century. It is here taken from the Voyages de Francois Coreal (Amsterdam, 1722).
Meanwhile the powers at Colhuacan and Azcapuzalco flourished and repressed uprisings, and out of all the strife Tezozomoc came into prominence with his Tepanecs, and amid it all the Aztecs, siding here and there, gained territory. With all this occurring in different parts of his dominions, the Chichimec potentate grew stronger and stronger, and while by his countenance the old Toltec influences more and more predominated. And so it was a flourishing government, with little to mar its prospects but the ambition of Tezozomoc, the Tepanec chieftain, and the rising power of the Aztecs, who had now become divided into Mexicans and Tlatelulcas. The famous ruler of the Chichimecs, Techotl, died in a.d. 1357, and the young Ixtlilxochitl took his power with all its emblems. The people of Tenochtitlan, or their rulers, were adepts in practising those arts of diplomacy by which an ambitious nation places itself beside its superiors to secure a sort of reflected consequence. Thus they pursued matrimonial alliances and other acts of prudence. Both Tenochtitlan and its neighbor Tlatelulco grew apace, while skilled artisans and commercial industries helped to raise them in importance.
The young Ixtlilxochitl at Tezcuco was not so fortunate, and it soon looked as if the Tepanec prince, Tezozomoc, was only waiting an opportunity to rebel. It was also pretty clear that he would have the aid of Mexico and Tlatelulco, and that he would succeed in securing the sympathy of many wavering vassals or allies. The plans of the Tepanec chieftain at last ripened, and he invaded the Tezcucan territory in 1415. In the war which followed, Ixtlilxochitl reversed the tide and invaded the Tepanec territory, besieging and capturing its capital, Azcapuzalco.[840] The conqueror lost by his clemency what he had gained by arms, and it was not long before he was in turn shut up in his own capital. He did not succeed in defending it, and was at last killed. So Tezozomoc reached his vantage of ambition, and was now in his old age the lord paramount of the country. He tried to harmonize the varied elements of his people; but the Mexicans had not fared in the general successes as they had hoped for, and were only openly content. The death of Tezozomoc prepared the way for one of his sons, Maxtla, to seize the command, and the vassal lords soon found that the spirit which had murdered a brother had aims that threatened wider desolation. The Mexicans were the particular object of Maxtla’s oppressive spirit, and by the choice of Itzcoatl for their ruler, who had been for many years the Mexican war-chief, that people defied the lord of all, and in this they were joined by the Tlatelulcas under Quauhtlatohuatzin, and by lesser allies. Under this combination of his enemies Maxtla’s capital fell, the usurper was sacrificed, and the honors of the victory were shared by Itzcoatl, Nezahualcoyotl (the Acolhuan prince whose imperial rights Maxtla had usurped), and Montezuma, the first of the name,—all who had in their several capacities led the army of three or four hundred thousand allies, if we may believe the figures, to their successes, which occurred apparently somewhere between 1425 and 1430. The political result was a tripartite confederacy in Anáhuac, consisting of Acolhua, Mexico, and Tlacopan. In the division of spoils, the latter was to have one fifth, and the others two fifths each, the Acolhuan prince presiding in their councils as senior.[841]
The next hundred years is a record of the increasing power of this confederacy, with a constant tendency to give Mexico a larger influence.[842] The two capitals, Tenochtitlan and Tezcuco, looking at each other across the lake, were uninterruptedly growing in splendor, or in what the historians call by that word,[843] with all the adjuncts of public works,—causeways, canals, aqueducts, temples, palaces and gardens, and other evidences of wealth, which perhaps these modern terms only approximately represent. Tezcuco was taken possession of by Nezahualcoyotl as his ancient inheritance, and his confederate Itzcoatl placed the crown on his head. Together they made war north and south. Xochimilco, on the lake next south of Mexico, yielded; and the people of Chalco, which was on the most southern of the string of lakes, revolted and were suppressed more than once, as opportunities offered. The confederates crossed the ridge that formed the southern bound of the Mexican valley and sacked Quauhnahuac. The Mexican ruler had in all this gained a certain ascendency in the valley coalition, when he died in 1440, and his nephew, Montezuma the soldier, and first of the name,[844] succeeded him. This prince soon had on his hands another war with Chalco, and with the aid of his confederates he finally humbled its presumptuous people. So, with or without pretence, the wars and conquests went on, if for no other reasons, to obtain prisoners for sacrifice.[845] They were diversified at times, particularly in 1449, by contests with the powers of nature, when the rising waters of the lake threatened to drown their cities, and when, one evil being cured, others in the shape of famine and plague succeeded.
Sometimes in the wars the confederates over-calculated their own prowess, as when Atonaltzin of Tilantongo sent them reeling back, only, however, to make better preparations and to succeed at last. In another war to the southeast they captured, as the accounts say, over six thousand victims for the stone of sacrifice.