APPENDIX VII.
DEATH OF MONTEZUMA
Montezuma's assurance to the people that he was not held a prisoner, but lived with the Spaniards from choice, free to come and go at his pleasure, was so contrary to obvious facts, and his reproof to them for taking arms, as though they had been the aggressors, was so unjust, that he failed to secure the cessation of hostilities. On the contrary, he had hardly finished speaking when the young prince Quauhtemotzin, who was one of the leaders of the people, reviled him as a coward and the effeminate tool of the Spaniards, declaring that his subjects renounced obedience to one who had so degraded his royal dignity. With that he hurled a stone, and, in the volley of missiles which followed, one struck the Emperor on the head (Codex Ramirez in Orozco y Berra, tom. iv., cap. x.; Acosta, Hist. Nat. y. Moral de las Indias, lib. vii., cap. xxvi.). Clavigero refuses to believe that Quauhtemotzin so insulted his royal uncle, but offers no reason for his disbelief. The Spaniards, who had been charged to protect Monteztmia's person with their shields, were not quick enough, and it is said he was also wounded by arrows in the arm and in the leg. The wounds were not, however, serious, but the unfortunate monarch was evidently determined not to survive this supreme humiliation, and, refusing to allow his hurts to be properly dressed, he remained without food in a profoundly dejected condition. Herrera describes Cortes as showing the greatest concern, solicitously visiting the Emperor to comfort him, but it seems little likely that in the midst of his perilous occupations the commander found time to condole with his wounded captive, for Montezuma's tardy efforts for peace had failed completely, and, though Prescott says that the Aztecs "shocked at their own sacrilegious act. . . dispersed, panic-struck in different directions. . . so that not one of the multitudinous array remained in the great square," there seems to be no authority for believing that any such dramatic revulsion of feeling took place. Montezuma had fallen from his royalty and his high priesthood, to be a thing of scorn and loathing to his people, while his influence on the course of events was less than nil. Montezuma Xocoyotzin ninth king of Mexico died on June 30, 1520, in the fifty-fourth year of his age, the eighteenth of his reign, and in the seventh month of his captivity.
His death was attributed, by the Spaniards, to the wound caused
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