Page:The Conquest of Mexico Volume 2.djvu/455

 Page 278 (1).—Torquemada had the anecdote from a nephew of one of the Indian matrons, then a very old man himself.—Monarch. Ind., lib. 4, cap. 102.

Page 278 (2).—Monarch. Ind., lib. 4, cap. 102.—Bernal Diaz, Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 156.

Page 279 (1).—"There did not remain a single child, for the fathers and mothers had eaten them (a very grievous thing to see, and much worse to suffer)." (Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva Esp., MS., lib. 12, cap. 39.) The historian derived his accounts from the Mexicans themselves, soon after the event.—One is reminded of the terrible denunciations of Moses: "The tender and delicate woman among you, which would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness and tenderness, her eye shall be evil toward. . . her children which she shall bear; for she shall eat them for want of all things, secretly, in the siege and straitness wherewith thine enemy shall distress thee in thy gates."—Deuteronomy, chap. 28, verses 56, 57.

Page 282 (1).—The testimony is most emphatic and unequivocal to these repeated efforts on the part of Cortés to bring the Aztecs peaceably to terms. Besides his own Letter to the Emperor, see Bernal Diaz, cap. 155;—Herrera, Hist. General, lib. 2, cap. 6, 7;—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 4, cap. 100;—Ixtlilxochitl, Venida de los Esp., pp. 44-48;—Oviedo, Hist. de las Ind., MS., lib. 33, cap. 29, 30.

Page 283 (1).—"The wailing and weeping of the children and women was such that everyone who heard it was heartbroken." (Rel. Terc. ap. Lorenzana, p. 296.) They were a rash and stiff-necked race, exclaims his reverend editor, the archbishop, with a charitable commentary: "They were a stiff-necked people, a people without forethought." Nota.

Page 288 (1).—For the preceding account of the capture of Guatemozin, told with little discrepancy, though with more or less minuteness by the different writers, see Bernal Diaz, Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 156;—Rel. Terc. de Cortés, p. 299;—Gonzalo de las Casas, Defensa, MS.;— Oviedo, Hist. de las Ind., MS., lib. 33, cap. 30;—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 4, cap. 101.

Page 288 (2).—The general, according to Diaz, rebuked his officers for their ill-timed contention, reminding them of the direful effects of a similar quarrel between Marius and Sylla, respecting Jugurtha. (Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 156.) This piece of pedantry savours much more of the old chronicler than his commander. The result of the whole,—not an uncommon one in such cases,—was, that the Emperor granted to neither of the parties, but to Cortés, the exclusive right of commemorating the capture of Guatemozin, by placing his head, together with the heads of seven other captive princes, on the border of his shield.

Page 288 (3).—Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva Esp., lib. 12, cap. 40, MS.

Page 289 (1).—For the portrait of Guatemozin, I again borrow the faithful pencil of Diaz, who knew him—at least his person—well: "Guatemuz was of very graceful make, both in figure and features. His face was rather long, but cheerful, and when his eyes looked at you they appeared rather grave than gentle, and there was no waver in them; he was twenty-three or twenty-four years of age, and his colour inclined more to white than to the colour of the brown Indians."— Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 156.

Page 289 (2).—Bernal Diaz, Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 156.—Also Oviedo, Hist. de las Ind., MS., lib. 33, cap. 48,—and Martyr (de Orbe Novo, dec. 5, cap. 8), who, by the epithet of magnanimo regi, testifies the admiration which Guatemozin's lofty spirit excited in the court of Castile.

Page 289 (3).—The ceremony of marriage, which distinguished the "lawful wife" from the concubine, is described by Don Thoan Cano, in his conversation with Oviedo. According to this, it appears that the only legitimate offspring which Montezuma left at his death, was a son and a daughter, this same princess.