or doom, which the priests said, was from the mouth of the war-god, appeased by the late victory), the superstitious Indians of Cortes's forces sneaked off in the night.
"Continued reverses, in the face of long-continued action and desire for the attaining a given end, forges in the finer calibre of mind a spirit of unremitting purpose. Blow after blow, which would turn away the ordinary individual from his endeavour, serves to steel the real hero to a dispassionate and persistent patience, and the purpose from its very intensity becomes almost a sacred cause, and seems to obtain from the unseen powers of circumstance success at last. So with Cortes and others of the Spaniards. The period prescribed by the somewhat rash prophecy of the Aztec priests and their infernal oracle having passed without anything remarkable having taken place, the Tlascalan and Texcocan allies, upbraided and warned by the Spaniards' messengers, now sneaked back to resume the attack against the city. The Aztecs had sought to cause disaffection in outlying places by sending round the bloody heads of decapitated Spaniards and horses, but with little effect. Cortes then prepared for a final effort. The plan adopted was to be slower but surer than the former one of simple slaughter. It was determined to raze the city to the ground; to destroy the buildings step by step, fill up the canals, and so lay waste the whole area from the outside, so that unobstructed advance might be maintained.
"The execution of this plan was begun. The city ends of the causeways were captured and held; street after street was demolished, and canal after canal filled up amid scenes of incessant fighting and slaughter. Day after day the Spaniards returned to their work; day after day with admirable tenacity the inhabitants of Tenochtitlan disputed the ground inch by inch, watered with the blood of themselves, their women and their children. Their supplies cut off, famine and pestilence wrought more terrible havoc among them—crowded as they gradually became into one quarter of the city—than the arms of the Spaniards and the Tlascalans. At the termination of each day's work the Spanish prepared an ambuscade for the enemy, drawing them on by seeming to retire, and massacring them with the artillery and gun-fire and lances, to say nothing of the weapons of their savage allies. On one of these occasions 'the enemy rushed out yelling as if they had gained the greatest victory in the world,' Cortes wrote in his dispatches, and 'more than five hundred, all of the bravest and principal men, were killed in this ambush.' He added, and it was a common occurrence, 'our allies'—the Indians—'supped well that night, cutting up and eating their captives!' During the days of this terrible siege the famous catapult was made, an extraordinary engine to discharge great stones upon the enemy. This was to enable the Spaniards to husband their powder, which was getting low, and the Aztecs watched the construction of this machine with certain fear. It was completed and set to work, but the builder, a Spanish soldier of inventive faculty, nearly played the part of the engineer hoist with his own petard, for the great stone fired rose, it is true, but went straight up and descended again upon the machine, which was ever afterwards the laughing-stock of the army.
"Further severe losses were now inflicted upon the beleaguered inhabitants, as more ammunition had been obtained. Peace had again been offered by the Spaniards, and again refused by the Aztecs. An Aztec chief of high rank had been captured, and then returned to Guatemoc as a peace envoy. The Mexicans' reply was to execute and sacrifice the unfortunate emissary, and then collecting their forces they poured out upon the causeways like a furious tide, which seemed as if it would sweep all before it. But the Spaniards were prepared. The narrow causeways were commanded by the artillery, which poured such a deadly hail upon the enemy's numbers that they returned fleeing to the city.
"And soon the end approaches. The division led by Cortes made a fierce assault; and whilst the battle raged the Spaniards observed that the summit of one of the teocallis was in flames. It was the work of Alvarado's men, who had penetrated already to the plaza. Forces were joined, and the inhabitants of the city, driven into one quarter thereof, still made their stubborn and—now—suicidal stand. For the streets were piled up with corpses, the Aztecs refraining from throwing the bodies of their slain into the lake, or outside the city, in order not to show their weakness. Pestilence and famine had made terrible inroads upon the population. Miserable wretches, men, women and children, were encountered Wandering about careless of the enemy, only bent upon finding some roots, bark or offal which might appease the hunger at their vitals. The salt waters of the lake, which they had been obliged to drink, for the Spaniards had cut the aqueduct which brought the fresh water from Chapultepec, had caused many to sicken and die. Mothers had devoured their dead children; the bodies of the slain had been eaten, and the bark gnawed from the trunks of trees. In their dire extremity some of the chiefs of the beleaguered city called Cortes to the barricade. He went, trusting that capitulation was at hand, for, as both he and his historians record, the slaughter was far from their choosing. 'Do but finish your work quickly,' was the burden of their parley. 'Let us go and rest in the heaven of our war-god; we are weary of life and suffering. How is it that you, a son of the Sun, tarry so long in finishing, when the Sun himself makes circuit of the earth in a day, and so accomplishes his work speedily?'
"This remarkable appeal struck renewed pity to the heart of Cortes, and once more he begged them to surrender and avoid further suffering, and the Spaniards drew off their forces for a space. But the inexorable Guatemoc, although he sent an embassy to say he would hold parley, and the Spaniards waited for him, did not fulfil the promise at the last moment. Incensed at this behaviour, the Spaniards and the Tlascalans renewed the attack with overpowering energy on the one part and barbaric savagery on the other. Contrary to the orders of the Spaniards, their savage allies gave no quarter, but murdered men, women and children in fiendish exultation. The stench of the dead in the beleaguered city was overpowering; the soil was soaked with blood; the gutters ran as in a rain-storm, say the chroniclers, and, wrote Cortes to the King of Spain: 'Such slaughter was done that day on land and water that killed and prisoners numbered forty thousand; and such were the shrieks and weeping of women and children that there were none of us whose hearts did not break.' He adds that it was impossible to contain the savage killing and torturing by their allies the Tlascalans, who practised such cruelty as had never been seen, and 'out of all order of nature.'
"At nightfall the attacking forces drew off, leaving the remainder of the inhabitants of the stricken city to consider their position. It is stated that the Tlascalans made a great banquet of the flesh of the fallen Aztecs, and that on this and other occasions they fished up the bloated bodies of their enemies from the lake and devoured them! At sunrise on the following day Cortes and a few followers entered the city, hoping to have a supplication for terms from Guatemoc. The army was stationed outside the walls, ready, in the event of a refusal—the signal of which should be a musket-shot—to pour in and strike the final blow. A parley was entered into as before, which lasted several hours. 'Do you surrender?' Cortes demanded. The final reply of Guatemoc was, 'I will not come: I prefer to die where I am: do your worst.'
"A musket-shot rang out upon the air; the Spaniards and their allies fell on to merciless slaughter: cannons, muskets, arrows, slings, lances—all told their tale upon the huddled mass of panic-stricken people, who, after presenting a feeble and momentary front, poured forth upon the fatal causeways to escape. Drowned and suffocated in the waters of the lake, mowed down by the fire from the brigantines, and butchered by the brutal Tlascalans, women, children and men struggled and shrieked among that frightful carnage; upon which it were almost impious to dwell further. Guatemoc, with his wife and children, strove to escape, and the canoe containing them was already out upon the lake, when a brigantine ran it down and captured him. All resistance was at an end. No sign of life or authority remained among the ruined walls; the fair city by the lake was broken and tenantless, its idols fallen, and its people fled. The Homeric struggle was over; the conquest of Mexico was accomplished."[10]
Under the long rule of the viceroys that followed the Conquest, Mexico lived her life in a mediaeval but often peaceful and not unhappy state, and had Spain but understood her and developed the resources of the land and protected her simple Indian folk instead of exploiting them, and at the same time antagonizing the colonists, there is no reason why a magnificent and permanent Spanish empire should not have grown to being.
We have remarked elsewhere on the abundant mineral wealth of the country. The great silver deposits of Guanajuato were discovered as a result of a camp-fire made on the rocks by some muleteers, who found refined silver among the ashes, which the heat had smelted