Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 2.djvu/171

 

the last desperate days, a final appeal was made by Quauhtemotzin to the national gods. Choosing one of the most valiant soldiers, a youth called Tlapaltecatlopuchtzin, from the quarter of Coatlan, he caused him to be vested in the armour of his dead father, the Emperor Ahuitzotl, giving him also the helmet and bow and arrows which adorned the statue of Huitzilopochtli, the god of war, and which were regarded as the most sacred emblems preserved in the temple. Thus accoutred, the young warrior went forth, accompanied by a Chief named Cihuacoatlucotzin, who acted as his herald, and who called upon all the people in the name of the god, from whom they now, in their extremity, demanded a sign. The effort was vain, and the god was silent: this was on the tenth of August. On the night of the eleventh, there burst over the city a terrific storm, in the midst of which the affrighted Mexicans beheld a whirlwind of blood-red fire, throwing out sparks and flashes of light, which seemed to start from the direction of Tepeyaca and, passing over the small quarter of Tenochtitlan still left to them, bury itself in the black waters of the lake. This ominous apparition, which was probably a meteor, was accepted as a portent symbolising the downfall of the empire, and the extinction of their power. Cortes's description of the final assault, the fall of the last entrenchment, and the capture of Quauhtemotzin, is not embellished by rhetoric, but his terse language gave Charles V* a faithful picture of that dreadful massacre. Neither does Bernal Diaz enlarge upon details, and indeed no language could do justice to the horror of the fall of the Aztec city, amidst the crash of battle, the smoke and flame of burning houses, the wails of the vanquished, and the shouts of the victors. The living and the dead choked the canals, the wounded and dying were trampled together with putrefying corpses in the sea of bloody mire into which the streets had been converted; the stifling August air reeked with the mingled smell of fresh carnage and decaying bodies, while, amidst these human shambles, the emaciated forms of women and children, destitute of any refuge, tottered pitifully under the merciless weapons of the savage allies, who gave no quarter, but hunted all alike through this hell of despair, like demons set upon the ghosts of the eternally damned.

The courage of the defenders never flagged; under the leadership