CHAPTER XIV.
HO FOR THE CAPITAL
THE Aztec chiefs who visited Tlascala were very anxious that Cortez should take Cholula on his way to visit Montezuma, if the Aztec council should consent that he might come to Mexico at all. They had hoped that the Totonacs and their Spanish allies would quarrel by the way, that the army would perish with hunger and cold as they crossed the bleak mountain-walls of their valley, or, should they survive these perils, that the Tlascalans would entrap and crush them in some of their deep valleys. But all these hopes had proved vain. Montezuma and his council were quaking with fear over the latest despatches from their envoys. The pictures they drew of sleeping villages attacked by a ruthless foe, of murder and pillage and fire, were only too familiar work with all Aztec reporters, but these white men had clothed war with new terrors. Marching in triumph from tribe to tribe, laying the thousands of Tobasco under tribute, they had won allies in Cempoalla without a blow. Now even Tlascalan braves, after their proud ranks had been beaten down like grass in a hailstorm, were bowing under a yoke which all the armies of the confederacy had not been able to fasten upon them. Were they gods, or were they men like themselves? The wisest of their priests now declared
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