THE AZTEC MONARCHY ELECTIVE. 



101 



Cortez conquered, but, perhaps, will present the student with some 

 national characteristics of a race that still inhabits Mexico jointly 

 with the Spanish emigrants, and which is the lawful descendant 

 of the wandering tribes who founded the city of Tenochtitlan. 



The Aztec government was a monarchy, but the right to the 

 throne did not fall by the accident of descent upon a lineal relative 

 of the last king, whose age would have entitled him, by European 

 rule, to the royal succession. The brothers of the deceased prince, 

 or his nephews, if he had no nearer kin, were the individuals from 

 whom the new sovereign was chosen by four nobles who had been 

 selected as electors by their own aristocratic body during the pre- 

 ceding reign. These electors, together with the two royal allies of 

 Tezcoco and Tlacopan, who were united in the college as merely 

 honorary personages, decided the question as to the candidate, 

 whose warlike and intellectual qualities were always closely 

 scanned by these severe judges. 



The elevation of the new monarch to the throne was pompous : 

 yet, republican and just as was the rite of selection, the ceremony 

 of coronation was not performed until the new king had procured, 

 by conquest in war, a crowd of victims to grace his assumption 

 of the crown with their sacrifice at the altar. The palaces of these 

 princes and their nobles were of the most sumptuous character, ac- 

 cording to the description that has been left us by the conquerors 

 themselves. 



The royal state and style of these people may be best described 

 in the artless language of Bernal Diaz del Castillo, a soldier of 

 the conquest, whose simple narrative, though sometimes colored 

 with the superstitions of his age, is one of the most valuable and 

 veritable relics of that great event that has been handed down to 

 posterity. 



In describing the entrance of the Spaniards into the city — Diaz 

 declares, with characteristic energy, that the whole of what he saw 

 on that occasion appeared to him as if he had beheld it but yester- 

 day; — and he fervently exclaims: "Glory be to our Lord Jesus 

 Christ, who gave us courage to venture on such dangers and 

 brought us safely through them ! " 



The Spaniards, as we have already said in a preceding chapter, 

 were lodged and entertained at the expense of Montezuma, who 

 welcomed them as his guests, and unwisely attempted to convince 

 them of his power by exhibiting his wealth and state. Two hun- 

 dred of his nobility stood as guards in his ante-chamber. 



