Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 2.djvu/284

 though the others had heard it, they had never consented to take part.The Indian version of Quauhtemotzin's execution, given by Torquemada, who copied it from a Mexican MS., is quite different from the one Cortes gives the Emperor. Cohuanocox, King of Texcoco, spoke privately at Izancanac with his fellow prisoners, saying that were their people not what they were, their Kings would not be so easily reduced to slavery and marched about behind the Spanish commander, and that it would in reality be easy enough to repay Cortes for burning Quauhtemotzin's feet. At this point the others stopped him, but a Mexican, who is called Mexicalcin by early writers and was baptised as Christopher had overheard and reported the words to Cortes, who, without more ado hanged the three Princes that night on a Ceiba tree. Torquemada expresses the opinion that Cortes was weary of guarding the royal captives, and yet dared not free them, and was glad to use the first pretext to kill them.

Bernal Diaz states that both Quauhtemotzin and Tetepanquezatl protested their entire innocence, and that all the Spaniards disapproved of the execution.

Cortes dared much, and there was little articulate public opinion in Mexico whose voice he could not control, but it is doubtful if he would have dared to hang the last three Kings on such vague charges reported by a camp servant, with all Mexico looking on. This, the blackest deed of his life, was done in an obscure part of a remote wilderness.

It were not strange that the royal captives should have talked of their misfortunes and sufferings, when they thought they were alone, or have discussed how it all might have been prevented, or even repaired, but it is a far cry from such communings over their camp-fire to the organisation of a plot to kill their captor and raise a general insurrection against the Spaniards. There seems no discoverable justification for this barbarous and treacherous act. It needed no gift of prophecy for Quauhtemotzin to foresee his fate when he fell into Cortes's hands, and the choice he then expressed for immediate death proved that he cherished no illusions as to what the future held for him. Prescott, in describing the inglorious end of the last Aztec Emperor, says: "might we not rather call him the last of the Aztecs, since from this time, broken in spirit and without a head, the remnant of the nation resigned itself almost without a struggle to the stern yoke of its oppressors?"

It is said that Cortes was disquieted in his conscience after this "execution," and for a long time could not sleep. The murdered captives were: Quauhtemotzin, Emperor of Mexico; Cohuanacox; These two, therefore, were hanged, and I set the others free because it appeared they were to blame for nothing more than having listened to it, although