Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1.djvu/207

Rh had offered themselves to your royal service, and which I held subjugated and conquered for you. I also mentioned that I had information of a great lord called Montezuma,Muteczuma, Motezuma, Motecuhzoma are some of the various forms used, but, amongst the several spellings of the Aztec sovereign's name, it seems simpler to adopt the one sanctioned by the best English and American usage — Montezuma.

Montezuma Xocoyotzin was one of the six sons of the King Axayacatl ( 1469-81), and was unanimously chosen by the electors to succeed his uncle, Ahuitzotl, from amongst the eligible princes, who, in that instance, were his own five brothers, and the seven sons of the deceased emperor. Montezuma II assumed the appellation of "Xocoyotzin" upon his accession, signifying "younger, to distinguish him from the elder Montezuma, Ilhuicamina. Prescott gives his age as twenty-three at the time of election, but I prefer to follow the authority of the Tezozomoc MS., given in Orozco y Berra, which states that he was born in 1486 and was hence thirty-four years old.

His early career was that of a successful soldier, from which he passed into the priesthood, rising to the grade of a pontiff. At that time he was held in great veneration by the people, as one who received revelations from the gods, and his strict life was a model to his fellows. It is related that, when the news of his election to the imperial throne was brought to him, he was found sweeping the steps of the temple whose altars he served. His temperament was theocratic; he ruled sternly, and ill-brooked opposition, or even counsel, but he was princely in recompensing faithful service. He had embellished his capital, but the liberality which built an aqueduct, a hospital, and new temples in the city, cost the subject provinces dear, and Montezuma being both despotic and a heavy tax-levier, was more feared than loved by his people and allies. Loving order, he understood the science of government, but his finer qualities were marred by his inordinate pride, and most of all by the ferocious superstition which finally lost him his throne and his life. The policy he adopted with Cortes was fatal, and shows us the pitiful figure of the monarch struggling, not against the power of an invading force, but taken in the coils of his own superstition, and reduced to a humble suppliant, offering rich bribes to the man he could have annihilated. The treasures he thus incautiously exposed, argued the existence of still greater in reserve, and whetted the Spaniard's craving for more.

An account of Montezuma's death will be found in a later note. of whom the natives of this country had told me, and who lived, according to their computation of distances, about ninety or a hundred leagues from the coast and port where I had disembarked; and that,