they elected a ruler. Tezcuco had been assailed by the Tecpanecs, and its rightful king, Nezahualcoyotl, forced to flee. But with the assistance of the Aztecs and the people of Tlascala, he regained his crown. The Tecpanecs, however, sent an expedition against Mexico, but were signally defeated by the Aztecs under their monarch Itzcoatl, who, in his turn, attacked their chief city and slew their king. These events raised the Aztecs to the position of the most powerful confederacy in the valley of Anahuac. Itzcoatl formed a strong alliance with Tezcuco and Tlacopan, a lesser city, and Mexico entered upon a long career of conquest. Its policy was not to enslave its neighbours, but merely to establish a suzerainty over them and to exact a tribute.
Under the able rule of Motecuhzoma (Montezuma) I, the Aztecs pushed their conquests farther afield. After subduing the more southerly districts, this able soldier-king turned his eyes eastwards, and in 1458 sent an expedition against the Huastecs of the Maya stock on the Mexican Gulf and the Totonacs. But he was also occupied in quelling disturbances in several of the conquered cities nearer his own capital. The Tlascalans, a folk of warlike and turbulent mood, were the hereditary and implacable enemies of the Aztecs, who relied upon constant strife with them for the larger proportion of their sacrificial victims, and, indeed, regarded Tlascala as a species of preserve to supply the altars of their war-god. On the other hand, did an Aztec fall into the hands of the Tlascalans, he became the prey of the military divinity of that people. This unnatural strife between related tribes was fostered by the belief that, unless the sun constantly partook of the steam arising from blood-sacrifice, he would wane and perish; and, because of this belief, thousands were annually immolated upon the pyramids of Huitzilopochtli of Mexico or his prototype Camaxtli of Tlascala. The hatred nourished between these people by this deplorable superstition proved the undoing of both when, at the advent of Cortés, that leader was
