CHAPTER VI.
THE TRIPLE KINGDOM.
[A. D. 1426.] Though the small kingdom of Tacuba formed one of the allied powers, it took very little part in the future conquests, except to lend its aid to one or the other of its powerful neighbors, and take its small portion of the spoils. Mexico, under Itzcoatl, and with her armies commanded by the brave Montezuma, extended her conquests in all directions. The monarch of Tezcoco had evidently had enough of war and bloodshed; in his years of wanderings, in the many skirmishes and fights in which he had passed his youth, he had gained the true knowledge that the victories of peace are to be preferred over those of war.
The unsettled condition in which the Acolhua kingdom had been left by twenty years of misrule rendered it necessary for its sovereign to give it all his attention. He established councils, civil and military, for the trial of persons charged with crime; he formed schools for the study of poetry, astronomy, music, painting, and history, as well as of the art of divination. These arts were in a very rude state, and little, of course, could result from their study, without the art of writing, or printing, to convey ideas. He divided the city of Tezcoco into over thirty districts; in one dwelt the goldsmiths, in the other the sculptors, in another the weavers, and so on. He built temples and great houses, and planted groves, some of which are in existence at the present day.
