Читать книгу The Historical Child - Oscar Chrisman - Страница 4

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When the Spaniards entered Mexico, in the sixteenth century, and conquered it, they found the ruling people to be the Aztecs and whose capital city, Tenochtitlan (Mexico City), was on an island in the lake of Tezcoco. The Aztecs were not the first inhabitants of Mexico as they had entered the country some five hundred years before the Spanish conquest and through alliances and conquests had become the ruling power about a century before the appearance of the Spaniards. The people whom the Aztecs found when they entered Mexico told them of a great people who had lived before their time and the ruins of whose great buildings remained and still exist to the present day and who were designated the Toltecs. It has been claimed for the Toltecs a very high state of civilization, much in advance of the Aztecs, and some even holding that it really equaled the civilization of the present time.

Mexico at the time of the conquest by the Spaniards was a monarchy, in which the king stood supreme as he was a priest of their great god, commander-in-chief of the military forces, and supreme judge. The throne, however, was not hereditary, as upon a vacancy a ruler was selected by four officers appointed for that purpose by the nobles and principal officials of the kingdom. The king was usually taken from the ruling family and might have been a brother of the late ruler or a nephew belonging to an elder branch. The office-holders were usually appointed for life and at their death the vacancies were filled by appointment by the king. The people were divided into classes. The highest class was a landed aristocracy, who paid no definite taxes but owed service to the king; a second class, who ranked with the landed aristocracy, was a military nobility who held land at the king's goodwill; the next class embraced the freemen, who held land in common and paid taxes in common; below these were a class of freemen who rented the lands of the lord and made payment to him for the same; and the lowest of all were the serfs, who were bound to the soil. They maintained a military system and made war upon neighboring tribes; at the time of the coming of the Spaniards this seemed to have been carried on mostly for the purpose of securing captives for the human sacrifices demanded by their religion. They had an elaborate and efficient judicial system and the laws seem to have been justly administered to all alike, whether the ones before the courts were of higher rank or of the common people.