to a prince hateful to them from boyhood. The return from captivity of the deposed Cohuanacoch had created a sympathy which soon turned the current of popularity in favor of one who had suffered so much for the national cause. Aware of the feeling with respect to himself, Ixtlilxochitl felt it almost a matter of necessity to leave his brother at Tezcuco in enjoyment of the regal honors accorded him before his very face. He even thought it politic to assign him a certain portion of the revenue. He withdrew to his former northern domains, establishing his capital at Otumba, where a new palace was erected.[1]
Not unlike the rewards of Ixtlilxochitl were those of the Tlascaltecs, to whom the Spaniards owed a vast debt — their lives, and the moral and physical aid which sustained them in adversity, and in the initiatory operations which led to ultimate success. In this act of forging fetters for adjoining peoples, fetters which were also to shackle themselves, they had been impelled not alone by a hatred of the Aztecs, more intense and exalted than that of the Tezcucan prince, but by a friendship based on admiration, and cemented by Cortés' politic favors. At the opening of the Tepeaca campaign they had certainly been led to form great expectations,[2] and promises flowed freely when
- ↑ According to Ixtlilxochitl, Hor. Crueldades, 61, he agreed with Cohuanacoch, out of brotherly love it seems, to divide the kingdom with him; the brother to rule as king at Tezcuco, and control Chalco, Quauhnahuac, Itzucun, Tlahuac, and other provinces as far as the South Sea, while Ixtlilxochitl retained the northern provinces, and those extending toward the North Sea. This assumed division is based on the former limits of the Chichimec empire. It is not likely that a Tezcucan monarch received even nominal honors in half the provinces named. See Native Races, v. 395-6, for boundaries assigned by the terms of the tripartite alliance in 1431, which had become practically obsolete before the Spaniards arrived. Ixtlilxochitl seeks to magnify the power of his ancestry to promote his claims. He allows his namesake to take possession of the northern kingdom on March 19, 1523, and to build palaces also at Teotihuacan and at Tecpitpac, a site given him by his father. Hor. Crueldades, 53. Brasseur de Bourbourg, Hist. Nat. Civ., iv. 563-4, assumes that while Cohuanacoch received the tribute and nominal sovereignty of all the kingdom, the brother controlled the general administration and the armies, to prevent any revolt.
- ↑ By a craftily worded document issued to them by Cortés, wherein flow-
