Page:Vol 1 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/578

458 created by the approach of Castilians, it revived only for a moment in the present uprising like the mental illumination preceding death. Montezuma could not have failed to recognize the insecurity of the bonds which held it, and influenced by the predictions of its downfall he readily fell beneath the spell of the superior intellects which were to assume control. It was his misfortune to have lost the sanguine energy of his youth, which might have enabled him to rise above the weaknesses of himself and his age. Duty and honor were overcome by superstition and absorbing love of power, of life, and he reaped the natural fruit of puerile and misdirected efforts by losing both. Resistance might not long have delayed the inevitable, but it would at least have procured for him an end worthy of his grandeur.

Of his many wives may be named the princesses Teitlalco, Acatlan, and Miahuaxochitl, of whom the first named appears to have been the only legitimate consort. By her he left a son, Asupacaci, who fell during the noche triste, and a daughter, Tecuichpo, baptized as Isabel, married consecutively to Quauhtemotzin, the last Mexican sovereign, to visitador general Alonso Grado, to Pedro Andrade Gallego, and to Juan Cano de Saavedra. She had children by the latter two, from whom descend the illustrious families of Andrade-Montezuma and Cano-Montezuma.

By the Princess Acatlan were left two daughters, baptized as María and Mariana. The latter alone left offspring, from whom descends the Sotelo-Montezuma family. By the third wife came to the emperor the son Tlacahuepantzin, known after baptism as Pedro Yohualicahuacatzin Montezuma, whose descendants, the condes de Montezuma y de Tula, intermarried with the noblest families of Spain, and