William Hickling Prescott Part 6

But most impressive of all and most unforgettable is the story of the _noche triste_--the Spanish army and their Indian allies stealing silently and at dead of night out of the city which but a short time before they had entered with so brave a show.

"The night was cloudy, and a drizzling rain, which fell without intermission, added to the obscurity. The great square before the palace was deserted, as, indeed, it had been since the fall of Montezuma. Steadily, and as noiselessly as possible, the Spaniards held their way along the great street of Tlacopan, which so lately had resounded with the tumult of battle. All was now hushed in silence; and they were only reminded of the past by the occasional presence of some solitary corpse, or a dark heap of the slain, which too plainly told where the strife had been hottest. As they pa.s.sed along the lanes and alleys which opened into the great street, or looked down the ca.n.a.ls, whose polished surface gleamed with a sort of ebon l.u.s.tre through the obscurity of night, they easily fancied that they discerned the shadowy forms of their foe lurking in ambush and ready to spring on them. But it was only fancy; and the city slept undisturbed even by the prolonged echoes of the tramp of the horses and the hoa.r.s.e rumbling of the artillery and baggage-trains. At length, a lighter s.p.a.ce beyond the dusky line of buildings showed the van of the army that it was emerging on the open causeway. They might well have congratulated themselves on having thus escaped the dangers of an a.s.sault in the city itself, and that a brief time would place them in comparative safety on the opposite sh.o.r.e. But the Mexicans were not all asleep.

"As the Spaniards drew near the spot where the street opened on the causeway, and were preparing to lay the portable bridge across the uncovered breach, which now met their eyes, several Indian sentinels, who had been stationed at this, as at the other approaches to the city, took the alarm, and fled, rousing their countrymen by their cries. The priests, keeping their night-watch on the summit of the _teocallis_, instantly caught the tidings and sounded their sh.e.l.ls, while the huge drum in the desolate temple of the war-G.o.d sent forth those solemn tones, which, heard only in seasons of calamity, vibrated through every corner of the capital.

The Spaniards saw that no time was to be lost.... Before they had time to defile across the narrow pa.s.sage, a gathering sound was heard, like that of a mighty forest agitated by the winds. It grew louder and louder, while on the dark waters of the lake was heard a plashing noise, as of many oars. Then came a few stones and arrows striking at random among the hurrying troops. They fell every moment faster and more furious, till they thickened into a terrible tempest, while the very heavens were rent with the yells and warcries of myriads of combatants, who seemed all at once to be swarming over land and lake!"

What reader of this pa.s.sage can forget the ominous, melancholy note of that great war drum? It is one of the most haunting things in all literature--like the blood-stained hands of the guilty queen in _Macbeth_, or the footprint on the sand in _Robinson Crusoe_, or the chill, mirthless laughter of the madwoman in _Jane Eyre_.

One other splendidly vital pa.s.sage is that which recounts the last great agony on the retreat from Mexico. The shattered remnants of the army of Cortes are toiling slowly onward to the coast, faint with famine and fatigue, deprived of the arms which in their flight they had thrown away, and hara.s.sed by their dusky enemies, who hover about them, calling out in tones of menace, "Hasten on! You will soon find yourselves where you cannot escape!"

"As the army was climbing the mountain steeps which shut in the Valley of Otompan, the vedettes came in with the intelligence that a powerful body was encamped on the other side, apparently awaiting their approach. The intelligence was soon confirmed by their own eyes, as they turned the crest of the sierra, and saw spread out, below, a mighty host, filling up the whole depth of the valley, and giving to it the appearance, from the white cotton mail of the warriors, of being covered with snow.... As far as the eye could reach, were to be seen shields and waving banners, fantastic helmets, forests of shining spears, the bright feather-mail of the chief, and the coa.r.s.e cotton panoply of his follower, all mingled together in wild confusion and tossing to and fro like the billows of a troubled ocean. It was a sight to fill the stoutest heart among the Christians with dismay, heightened by the previous expectation of soon reaching the friendly land which was to terminate their wearisome pilgrimage. Even Cortes, as he contrasted the tremendous array before him with his own diminished squadrons, wasted by disease and enfeebled by hunger and fatigue, could not escape the conviction that his last hour had arrived."[33]

But it is not merely in vivid narration and description of events that the _Conquest of Mexico_ attains so rare a degree of excellence. Here, as nowhere else, has Prescott succeeded in delineating character. All the chief actors of his great historic drama not only live and breathe, but they are as distinctly differentiated as they must have been in life. Cortes and his lieutenants are persons whom we actually come to know in the pages of Prescott, just as in the pages of Xenophon we come to know Clearchus and the adventurous generals who, like Cortes, made their way into the heart of a great empire and faced barbarians in battle. The comparison between Xenophon and Prescott is, indeed, a very natural one, and it was made quite early after the appearance of the _Ferdinand and Isabella_ by an English admirer, Mr. Thomas Grenville.

Calling upon this gentleman one day, Mr. Everett found him in his library reading Xenophon's _Anabasis_ in the original Greek. Mr. Everett made some casual remark upon the merits of that book, whereupon Mr.

Grenville holding up a volume of _Ferdinand and Isabella_ said, "Here is one far superior."[34]

Xenophon's character-drawing was done in his own way, briefly and in dry-point; yet Clearchus, Proxenus, and Menon are not more subtly distinguished from each other than are Cortes, Sandoval, and Alvarado.

Cortes is very real,--a bold, martial figure, the ideal man of action, gallant in bearing and powerful of physique, tireless, confident, and exerting a magnetic influence over all who come into his presence; gifted also with a truly Spanish craft, and not without a touch of Spanish cruelty. Sandoval is the true knight,--loyal, devoted to his chief, wise, and worthy of all trust. Alvarado is the reckless man-at-arms,--daring to desperation, hot-tempered, fickle, and pa.s.sionate, yet with all his faults a man to extort one's liking, even as he compelled the Aztecs to admire him for his intrepidity and frankness. Over against these three brilliant figures stands the melancholy form of Montezuma, around whom, even from the first, one feels gathering the darkness of his coming fate. He reminds one of some hero of Greek tragedy, doomed to destruction and intensely conscious of it, yet striving in vain against the decree of an inexorable destiny.

One recalls him as he is described when the head of a Spanish soldier had been cut off and sent to him.

"It was uncommonly large and covered with hair; and, as Montezuma gazed on the ferocious features, rendered more horrible by death, he seemed to read in them the dark lineaments of the destined destroyers of his house. He turned from it with a shudder, and commanded that it should be taken from the city, and not offered at the shrine of any of his G.o.ds."[35]

The contrast between this dreamy, superst.i.tious, half-hearted, and almost womanish prince and his successor Guatemozin is splendidly worked out. Guatemozin's fierce patriotism, his hatred of the Spaniards, his ferocity in battle, and his stubborn unwillingness to yield are displayed with consummate art, yet in such a way as to win one's sympathy for him without estranging it from those who conquered him. A touch of sentiment is delicately infused into the whole narrative of the Conquest by the manner in which Prescott has treated the relations of Cortes and the Indian girl, Marina. Here we find interesting evidence of Prescott's innate purity of mind and thought, for he undoubtedly idealised this girl and suppressed, or at any rate pa.s.sed over very lightly, the truth which Bernal Diaz, on the other hand, sets forth with the blunt coa.r.s.eness of a foul-mouthed old soldier.[36] No one would gather from Prescott's pages that Marina had been the mistress of other men before Cortes. Nor do we get any hint from him that Cortes wearied of her in the end, and thrust her off upon one of his captains whom he made drunk in order to render him willing to go through the forms of marriage with her. In Prescott's narrative she is lovely, graceful, generous, and true; and the only hint that is given of her former life is found in the statement that "she had her errors."[37] To his readers she is, after a fashion, the heroine of the Conquest,--the tender, affectionate companion of the Conqueror, sharing his dangers or averting them, and not seldom mitigating by her influence the sternness of his character. Another instance of Prescott's delicacy of mind is found in the way in which he glides swiftly over the whole topic of the position which women occupied among the Aztecs, although his Spanish sources were brutally explicit on this point. There were some things, therefore, from which Prescott shrank instinctively and in which he allowed his sensitive modesty to soften and refine upon the truth.

The mention of this circ.u.mstance leads one to consider the much-mooted question as to how far the _Conquest of Mexico_ may be accepted as veracious history. Is it history at all or is it, as some have said, historical romance? Are we to cla.s.sify it with such books as those of Ranke and Parkman, whose brilliancy of style is wholly compatible with scrupulous fidelity to historic fact, or must we think of it as verging upon the category of romances built up around the material which history affords--with books like _Ivanhoe_ and _Harold_ and _Salammbo_? In the years immediately following its publication, Prescott's great work was accepted as indubitably accurate. His imposing array of foot-notes, his thorough acquaintance with the Spanish chronicles, and the unstinted approval given to him by contemporary historians inspired in the public an implicit faith. Then, here and there, a sceptic began to raise his head, and to question, not the good faith of Prescott, but rather the value of the very sources upon which Prescott's history had been built.

As a matter of fact, long before Prescott's time, the reports and narratives of the conquerors had in parts been doubted. As early as the eighteenth century Lafitau, the Jesuit missionary, in a treatise published in 1723,[38] had discussed with great acuteness some questions of American ethnology in a spirit of scientific criticism; and later in the same century, James Adair had gathered valuable material in the same department of knowledge.[39] Even earlier, the Spanish Jesuit, Jose de Acosta, had published a treatise which exhibits traces of a critical method.[40] Again, Robertson, in his _History of America_ (a book, by the way, which Prescott had studied very carefully), shows an independence of att.i.tude and an ac.u.men which find expression in a definite disagreement with much that had been set down by the Spanish chroniclers. Such criticism as these and other isolated writers had brought to bear was directed against that part of the accepted tradition which relates to the Aztec civilisation. Prescott, following the notices of Las Casas, Herrera, Bernal Diaz, Oviedo, Cortes himself, and the writer who is known as the _conquistador anonimo_, had simply weighed the a.s.sertions of one as against those of another, striving to reconcile their discrepancies of statement and following one rather than the other, according to the apparent preponderance of probability. He did not, however, perceive in these discrepancies the clue which might have guided him, as it subsequently did others, to a clearer understanding of the actual facts. Therefore, he has painted for us the Mexico of Montezuma in gorgeous colours, seeing in it a great Empire, possessed of a civilisation no less splendid than that of Western Europe, and exhibiting a political and social system comparable with that which Europeans knew. The magnificence and wealth of this fancied Empire gave, indeed, the necessary background to his story of the Conquest. It was a stage setting which raised the exploits of the conquerors to a lofty and almost epic alt.i.tude.

The first serious attempt directly to discredit the accuracy of this description was made by an American writer, Mr. Robert A. Wilson. Wilson was an enthusiastic amateur who took a particular interest in the ethnology of the American Indians. He had travelled in Mexico. He knew something of the Indians of our Western territory, and he had read the Spanish chroniclers. The result of his observations was a thorough disbelief in the traditional picture of Aztec civilisation. He, therefore, set out to demolish it and to offer in its place a subst.i.tute based upon such facts as he had gathered and such theories as he had formed. After publishing a preliminary treatise which attracted some attention, he wrote a bulky volume ent.i.tled _A New History of the Conquest of Mexico_.[41] In the introduction to this book he declares that his visit to Mexico had shaken his belief "in those Spanish historic romances upon which Mr. Prescott has founded his magnificent tale of the conquest of Mexico." He adds that the despatches of Cortes are the only valuable written authority, and that these consist of two distinct parts,--first, "an accurate detail of adventures consistent throughout with the topography of the region in which they occurred"; and second, "a ma.s.s of foreign material, apparently borrowed from fables of the Moorish era, for effect in Spain." "It was not in great battles, but in a rapid succession of skirmishes, that he distinguished himself and won the character ... of an adroit leader in Indian war." Wilson endeavours to show, in the first place, that the Aztecs were simply a branch of the American Indian race; that their manners and customs were essentially those of the more northern tribes; that the origin of the whole race was Phoenician; and that the Spanish account of early Mexico is almost wholly fabulous. Writing of the different historians of the Conquest, he mentions Prescott in the following words:--

"A more delicate duty remains,--to speak freely of an American whose success in the field of literature has raised him to the highest rank. His talents have not only immortalised himself--they have added a new charm to the subject of his histories. He showed his faith by the expenditure of a fortune at the commencement of his enterprise, in the purchase of books and Mss. relating to 'America of the Spaniards.' These were the materials out of which he framed his two histories of the two aboriginal empires, Mexico and Peru. At the time these works were written he could not have had the remotest idea of the circ.u.mstances under which his Spanish authorities had been produced, or of the external pressure that gave them their peculiar form and character. He could hardly understand that peculiar organisation of Spanish society through which one set of opinions might be uniformly expressed in public, while the intellectual cla.s.ses in secret entertain entirely opposite ones. He acted throughout in the most perfect good faith; and if, on a subsequent scrutiny, his authorities have proved to be the fabulous creations of Spanish-Arabian fancy, he is not in fault. They were the standards when he made use of them--a sufficient justification of his acts. 'This beautiful world we inhabit,' said an East Indian philosopher, 'rests on the back of a mighty elephant; the elephant stands on the back of a monster turtle; the turtle rests upon a serpent; and the serpent on nothing.' Thus stand the literary monuments Mr. Prescott has constructed. They are castles resting upon a cloud which reflects an eastern sunrise upon a western horizon."

This book appeared in the year of Prescott's death, and he himself made no published comment on it. A very sharp notice, however, was written by some one who did not sign his name, but who was undoubtedly very near to Prescott.[42] The writer of this notice had little difficulty in showing that Wilson was a very slipshod investigator; that he was in many respects ignorant of the very authorities whom he attempted to refute; and that as a writer he was very crude indeed. Some portions of this paper may be quoted, mainly because they sum up such of Mr.

Wilson's points as were in reality important. The first paragraph has also a somewhat personal interest.

"Directly and knowingly, as we shall hereafter show, he has availed himself of Mr. Prescott's labours to an extent which demanded the most ample 'acknowledgment.' No such acknowledgment is made. But we beg to ask Mr. Wilson whether there were not other reasons why he should have spoken of this eminent writer, if not with deference, at least with respect. He himself informs us that 'most kindly relations' existed between them. If we are not misinformed, Mr.

Wilson opened the correspondence by modestly requesting the loan of Mr. Prescott's collection of works relating to Mexican history, for the purpose of enabling him to write a refutation of the latter's History of the Conquest. That the replies which he received were courteous and kindly, we need hardly say. He was informed, that, although the constant use made of the collection by its possessor for the correction of his own work must prevent a full compliance with this request, yet any particular books which he might designate should be sent to him, and, if he were disposed to make a visit to Boston, the fullest opportunities should be granted him for the prosecution of his researches. This invitation Mr. Wilson did not think fit to accept. Books which were got in readiness for transmission to him he failed to send for. He had, in the meantime, discovered that 'the American standpoint' did not require any examination of 'authorities.' We regret that it should also have rendered superfluous an acquaintance with the customs of civilised society. The tone in which he speaks of his distinguished predecessor is sometimes amusing from the conceit which it displays, sometimes disgusting from its impudence and coa.r.s.eness.

He concedes Mr. Prescott's good faith in the use of his materials.

It was only his ignorance and want of the proper qualifications that prevented him from using them aright 'His non-acquaintance with Indian character is much to be regretted.' Mr. Wilson himself enjoys, as he tells us, the inestimable advantage of being the son of an adopted member of the Iroquois tribe. Nay, 'his ancestors, for several generations, dwelt near the Indian agency at Cherry Valley, on Wilson's Patent, though in Cooperstown village was he born.' We perceive the author's fondness for the inverted style in composition,--acquired, perhaps, in the course of his long study of aboriginal oratory. Even without such proofs, and without his own a.s.sertion of the fact, it would not have been difficult, we think, to conjecture his familiarity with the forms of speech common among barbarous nations....

"Mr. Wilson ... has found, from his own observation,--the only source of knowledge, if such it can be called, on which he is willing to place much reliance,--that the Ojibways and Iroquois are savages, and he rightly argues that their ancestors must have been savages. From these premises, without any process of reasoning, he leaps at once to the conclusion, that in no part of America could the aboriginal inhabitants ever have lived in any other than a savage state. Hence he tells us, that, in all statements regarding them, everything 'must be rejected that is inconsistent with well-established Indian traits.' The ancient Mexican empire was, according to his showing, nothing more than one of those confederacies of tribes with which the reader of early New England history is perfectly familiar. The far-famed city of Mexico was 'an Indian village of the first cla.s.s,'--such, we may hope, as that which the author saw on his visit to the Ma.s.sasaugus, where, to his immense astonishment, he found the people 'clothed, and in their right minds.' The Aztecs, he argues, could not have built temples, for the Iroquois do not build temples. The Aztecs could not have been idolaters or offered up human sacrifices, for the Iroquois are not idolaters and do not offer up human sacrifices. The Aztecs could not have been addicted to cannibalism, for the Iroquois never eat human flesh, unless driven to it by hunger. This is what Mr.

Wilson means by the 'American standpoint'; and those who adopt his views may consider the whole question settled without any debate."

"If, at Mr. Wilson's summons, we reject as improbable a series of events supported by far stronger evidence than can be adduced for the conquests of Alexander, the Crusades, or the Norman conquest of England, what is it, we may ask, that he calls upon us to believe?

His scepticism, as so often happens, affords the measure of his credulity. He contends that Cortes, the greatest Spaniard of the sixteenth century, a man little acquainted with books, but endowed with a gigantic genius and with all the qualities requisite for success in warlike enterprises and an adventurous career, had his brain so filled with the romances of chivalry, and so preoccupied with reminiscences of the Spanish contests with the Moslems, that he saw in the New World nothing but duplicates of those contests,--that his heated imagination turned wigwams into palaces, Indian villages into cities like Granada, swamps into lakes, a tribe of savages into an empire of civilised men,--that, in the midst of embarra.s.sments and dangers which, even on Mr. Wilson's showing, must have taxed all his faculties to the utmost, he employed himself chiefly in coining lies with which to deceive his imperial master and all the inhabitants of Christendom,--that, although he had a host of powerful enemies among his countrymen, enemies who were in a position to discover the truth, his statements pa.s.sed unchallenged and uncontradicted by them,--that the numerous adventurers and explorers who followed in his track, instead of exposing the falsity of his relations and descriptions, found their interest in embellishing the narrative."

Of course Wilson's book was unscientific to a degree, with its Phoenician theories, its estimate of Spanish sources of information, and its a.s.sorted ignorance of many things. Its author, had, however, stumbled upon a bit of truth which no ridicule could shake, and which proved fruitful in suggestion to a very different kind of investigator.

This was Mr. Lewis Henry Morgan, an important name in the history of American ethnological study. As a young man Morgan had felt an interest in the American Indian, which developed into a very unusual enthusiasm.

It led him ultimately to spend a long time among the Iroquois, studying their tribal organisation and social phenomena. He embodied the knowledge so obtained in a book ent.i.tled _The League of the Iroquois_,[43] a truly epoch-making work, though the author himself was at the time wholly unaware of its far-reaching importance. This book described the forms of government, the social organisation, the manners and the customs of the Iroquois, with great accuracy and thoroughness.

Seven years later, Morgan happened to fall in with a camp of Ojibway Indians, and found to his astonishment that their tribal customs were practically identical with those of the Iroquois. While this coincidence was fresh in his mind, Morgan read Wilson's iconoclastic book on Mexico.

The suggestion made by Wilson that the Aztec civilisation was essentially the same as that of the northern tribes of Red Indians did much to crystallise the hypothesis which has now been definitely established as a fact.

Those who do not care to read a long series of monographs and several large volumes in order to arrive at a knowledge of what recent ethnologists hold as true of Ancient Mexico may find the essence of accepted doctrine somewhat divertingly set forth in a paper written by Mr. Morgan in criticism of H. H. Bancroft's _Native Races of the Pacific States_. Mr. Morgan's paper is ent.i.tled "Montezuma's Dinner."[44] In it the statement is briefly made that the Aztecs were simply one branch of the same Red Race which extended all over the American Continent; that their forms of government, their usages, and their occupations were not in kind different from those of the Iroquois, the Ojibways, or any other of the North American Indian tribes. These inst.i.tutions and customs found no a.n.a.logues among civilised nations, and could not, in their day, be explained in terms intelligible to contemporary Europeans. Hence, when the Spaniards under Cortes discovered in Mexico a definite and fully developed form of civilisation, instead of studying it on the a.s.sumption that it might be different from their own, they described it, as Mr. A. F. Bandelier has well said, "in terms of comparison selected from types accessible to the limited knowledge of the times."[45] Thus, they beheld in Montezuma an "emperor" surrounded by "kings," "princes,"

"n.o.bles," and "generals." His residence was to them an imperial palace.

His mode of life showed the magnificent and stately etiquette of a European monarch, with lords-in-waiting, court jesters, pages, secretaries, and household guards. In narrating all these things, the first Spanish observers were wholly honest, although in their enthusiasm they added many a touch of literary colour. Their records are paralleled by those of the English explorers who, in New England, thought they had found "kings" among the Pequods and Narragansetts, and who, in Virginia, viewed Powhatan as an "emperor" and Pocahontas as a "princess." That the Spaniards, like the English, wrote in ignorant good faith, rather than with a desire to deceive, is shown by the fact that they actually did record circ.u.mstances which even then, if critically studied, would have shown the falsity of their general belief. Thus, as Mr. Bandelier points out, the Spaniards tell of the Aztecs that they had great wealth, reared great palaces, and acquired both scientific knowledge and skill in art, while in mechanical appliances they remained on the level of the savage, using stone and flint for tools and weapons, making pottery without the potter's wheel, and weaving intricate patterns with the hand-loom only. Equally inconsistent are the statements that the Aztecs were mild, gentle, virtuous, and kind, and yet that they sacrificed their prisoners with the most savage rites, made war that they might secure more sacrificial victims, viewed marriage as a barter, and regarded chast.i.ty as a restraint.[46] Still further inconsistencies are to be found in the Spanish accounts of the Aztec government. Montezuma, for instance, is picturesquely held to have been an absolute ruler, one whose very name aroused awe and veneration throughout the whole extent of his vast dominions; and yet it is recorded that while still alive he was superseded by Guatemozin; and even Acosta notes that there was a council without whose consent nothing of importance could be done. In fact, under the solvent of Mr. Morgan's criticism, the gorgeous Aztec empire of Cortes and Prescott shrinks to very modest proportions. Montezuma is transformed from an hereditary monarch into an elective war-chief. His dominions become a territory of about the size of the state of Rhode Island. His capital appears as a stronghold built amid marshes and surrounded by flat-roofed houses of _adobe_; while his "palace" is a huge communal-house, built of stone and lime, and inhabited by his gentile kindred, united in one household. The magnificent feast which the Spaniards describe so lusciously,--the throned king served by beautiful women and by stewards who knelt before him without daring to lift their eyes, the dishes of gold and silver, the red and black Cholulan jars filled with foaming chocolate, the "ancient lords" attending at a distance, the orchestra of flutes, reeds, horns, and kettle-drums, and the three thousand guards without--all this is converted by Morgan into a sort of barbaric buffet-luncheon, with Montezuma squatting on the floor, surrounded by his relatives in breech-clouts, and eating a meal prepared in a common cook-house, divided at a common kettle, and eaten out of an earthen bowl.

One need not, however, lend himself to so complete a disillusionment as Mr. Morgan in this paper seeks to thrust upon us. Still more recent investigations, such as those of Brinton, McGee, and Bandelier, have restored some of the prestige which Cortes and his followers attached to the early Mexicans. While the Aztecs were very far from possessing a monarchical form of government, and while their society was const.i.tuted far differently from that of any European community, and while they are to be studied simply as one division of the Red Indian race, they were scarcely so primitive as Mr. Morgan would have us think. They differed from their more northern kindred not, to be sure, in kind, but very greatly in degree. Though we have to subst.i.tute the communal-house for the palace, the war-chief for the king, and the tribal organisation for the feudal system, there still remains a great and interesting people, fully organised, rich, warlike, and highly skilled in their own arts. In architecture, weaving, gold and silver work, and pottery, they achieved artistic wonders. Their instinct for the decorative produced results which justified the admiration of their conquerors. Their capital, though it was not the immense city which the Spaniards saw, teeming with a vast population, was, nevertheless, an imposing collection of mansions, great and small, whose snowy whiteness, standing out against the greenery and diversified by glimpses of water, might well impress the imagination of European strangers. If the communal-houses lacked the "golden cupolas" of Disraeli's Oriental fancy, neither were they the "mud huts" which Wilson tells of. If Montezuma was not precisely an occidental Charles the Fifth, neither is he to be regarded as an earlier Sitting Bull.

So far, then, as we have to modify Prescott's chapters which describe the Mexico of Cortes, this modification consists largely in a mere change of terminology. Following the Spanish records, he has accurately reproduced just what the Spaniards saw, or thought they saw, in old Tenocht.i.tlan. He has looked at all things through their eyes; and such errors as he made were the same errors which they had made while they were standing in the great _pueblo_ which was to them the scene of so much suffering and of so great a final triumph. When Prescott wrote, there lived no man who could have gainsaid him. His story represents the most accurate information which was then attainable. As Mr. Thorpe has well expressed it: "No historian is responsible for not using undiscovered evidence. Prescott wrote from the archives of Europe ...

from the European side. If one cares to know how the Old World first understood the New, he will read Prescott." Even Morgan, who goes further in his destructive criticism than any other authoritative writer, admits that Prescott and his sources "may be trusted in whatever relates to the acts of the Spaniards, and to the acts and personal characteristics of the Indians; in whatever relates to their weapons, implements and utensils, fabrics, food and raiment, and things of a similar character." Only in what relates to their government, social relations, and plan of life does the narrative need to be in part rewritten. It is but fair to note that Prescott himself, in his preliminary chapters on the Aztecs, is far from dogmatising. His statements are made with a distinct reserve, and he acknowledges alike the difficulty of the subject and his doubts as to the finality of what he tells. Even in his descriptive pa.s.sages, he is solicitous lest the warm imagination of the Spanish chroniclers may have led them to throw too high a light on what they saw. Thus, after ending his account of Montezuma's household and the Aztec "court," drawn from the pages of Bernal Diaz, Toribio, and Oviedo, he qualifies its gorgeousness in the following sentence:[47]

"Such is the picture of Montezuma's domestic establishment and way of living as delineated by the Conquerors and their immediate followers, who had the best means of information; too highly coloured, it may be, by the p.r.o.neness to exaggerate which was natural to those who first witnessed a spectacle so striking to the imagination, so new and unexpected."

And in a foot-note on the same page he expressly warns the student of history against the fanciful chapters of the Spaniards who wrote a generation later, comparing their accounts with the stories in the _Arabian Nights_.

Putting aside, then, the single topic of Aztec ethnology and tribal organisation, it remains to see how far the rest of Prescott's history of the Conquest has stood the test of recent criticism. Here one finds himself on firmer ground, and it may be a.s.serted with entire confidence that Prescott's accuracy cannot be impeached in aught that is essential to the truth of history. His careful use of his authorities, and his excellent judgment in checking the evidence of one by the evidence of another, remain unquestioned. In one respect alone has fault been found with him. His desire to avail himself of every possible aid caused him to procure, often with great difficulty and at great expense, doc.u.ments, or copies of doc.u.ments, which had hitherto been inaccessible to the investigator. So far he was acting in the spirit of the truly scientific scholar. But sometimes the very rarity of these new sources led him to attach an undue value to them. Here and there he has followed them as against the more accessible authorities, even when the latter were altogether trustworthy. In this we find something of the pa.s.sion of the collector; and now and then in minor matters it has led him into error.[48] Thus, in certain pa.s.sages relating to the voyage of Cortes from Havana, Prescott has misstated the course followed by the pilot, as again with regard to the expedition from Santiago de Cuba[49]; and he errs because he has followed a ma.n.u.script copy of Juan Diaz, overlooking the obviously correct and consistent accounts of Bernal Diaz and other standard chroniclers. There are similar though equally unimportant slips elsewhere in his narrative, arising from the same cause. None of them, however, affects the essential accuracy of his text. His masterpiece stands to-day still fundamentally unshaken, a faithful and brilliant panorama of a wonderful episode in history. Those who are inclined to question its veracity do so, not because they can give substantial reasons for their doubt, but because, perhaps, of the romantic colouring which Prescott has infused into his whole narrative, because it is as entertaining as a novel, and because he had the art to trans.m.u.te the acquisitions of laborious research into an enduring monument of pure literature.

CHAPTER IX

"THE CONQUEST OF PERU"--"PHILIP II."

The _Conquest of Peru_ was, for the most part, written more rapidly than any other of Prescott's histories. Much of the material necessary for it had been acquired during his earlier studies, and with this material he had been long familiar when he began to write. The book was, indeed, as he himself described it, a pendant to the _Conquest of Mexico_. Had the latter work not been written, it is likely that the _Conquest of Peru_ would be now accepted as the most popular of Prescott's works.

Unfortunately, it is always subjected to a comparison with the other and greater book, and therefore, relatively, it suffers. In the first place, when so compared, it resembles an imperfect replica of the _Mexico_ rather than an independent history. The theme is, in its nature, the same, and so it lacks the charm of novelty. The exploits of Pizarro do not merely recall to the modern reader the adventurous achievements of Cortes, but, as a matter of fact, they were actually inspired by them.

Thus, Pizarro's march from the coast over the Andes closely resembles the march of Cortes over the Cordilleras. His seizure of the Inca, Atahualpa, was undoubtedly suggested to him by the seizure of Montezuma.

The ma.s.sacre of the Peruvians in Caxamarca reads like a reminiscence of the ma.s.sacre of the Aztecs by Alvarado in Mexico. The fighting, if fighting it may be called, presents the same features as are found in the battles of Cortes. So far as there is any difference in the two narratives, this difference is not in favour of the later book. If Pizarro bears a likeness to Cortes, the likeness is but superficial. His soul is the soul of Cortes _habitans in sicco_. There is none of the frankness of the conqueror of Mexico, none of his chivalry, little of his bluff good comradeship. Pizarro rather impresses one as mean-spirited, avaricious, and cruel, so that we hold lightly his undoubted courage, his persistency, and his endurance. Moreover, the Peruvians are too feeble as antagonists to make the record of their resistance an exciting one. They lack the ferocity of the Aztec character, and when they are slaughtered by the white men, the tale is far more pitiful than stirring. Even Prescott's art cannot make us feel that there is anything romantic in the conquest and butchery of a flock of sheep. The outrages perpetrated upon an effeminate people by their Spanish masters form a long and dreary record of robbery and rape and it is inevitably monotonous.

Another fundamental defect in the subject which Prescott chose was thoroughly appreciated by him. "Its great defect," he wrote in 1845, "is want of unity. A connected tissue of adventures ... but not the especial interest that belongs to the _Iliad_ and to the _Conquest of Mexico_."

In another memorandum (made in 1846) he calls his subject "second rate,--quarrels of banditti over their spoils." This criticism is absolutely just, and it well explains the inferiority of the story of Peru when we contrast it with the book which went before. Up to the capture of the Inca there is no lack of unity; but after that, the stream of narration filters away in different directions, like some river which grows broader and shallower until at last in a mult.i.tude of little streams it disappears in dry and sandy soil. The fault is not the fault of the writer. It is inherent in the subject. Nowhere has Prescott written with greater skill. It is only that no display of literary art can give dignity and distinction to that which in itself is unheroic and sometimes even sordid. The one pa.s.sage which stands out from all the rest is that which sets before us the famous incident at Panama, when Pizarro, at the head of his little band of followers, mutinous, famished, and half-naked, still boldly scorns all thought of a return.

"Drawing his sword he traced a line with it on the sand from East to West. Then, turning towards the South, 'Friends and comrades!'

he said, 'on that side are toil, hunger, nakedness, the drenching storm, desertion, and death; on this side ease and pleasure. There lies Peru with its riches; here, Panama and its poverty. Choose, each man, what best becomes a brave Castilian. For my part, I go to the South.' So saying, he stepped across the line."

Here is an heroic event told with that simplicity which means effectiveness. This is the one page in the _Peru_ where the narrator makes us thrill with a sense of what, in its way, verges upon moral sublimity.

As to the historical value of the book, it stands in much the same category as the _Conquest of Mexico_. All that relates to the actual history of the Conquest is told with the same accurate regard for the original authorities which Prescott always showed, and for this part of the narrative, the original authorities are worthy of credence. The preliminary chapters on Peruvian antiquities are less satisfactory even than the corresponding portions of the other book. Prescott found them very hard to write. He was conscious that the subject was a formidable one. He did the best he could and all that any one could possibly have done at the time in which he wrote. Even now, after the elaborate explorations and researches of Bandelier, Markham, Baessler, Cunow, and others, the social and political relations of the Peruvians are little understood. Much has been learned of their art and of the monuments which they have left behind; but of their inst.i.tutional history the records still remain obscure. The modern student, however, discovers many indications that they, too, like the Aztecs, were of the Red Race, and that their government was based upon the clan system; so that even the Inca himself, like the Mexican war-chief, was merely the elected executive of a council of the gentes. Here, as in Mexico, the Spaniards carelessly described in terms of Europe the inst.i.tutions which they found, and made no serious attempt to understand them. Even the account of the Peruvian religion which Prescott gives, in accordance with the statements of the early Catholic missionaries, needs considerable modification.[50]

The Spanish chroniclers whom Prescott followed describe the Peruvians as united under a great monarchy,--an "empire,"--the head of which, the Inca, was an hereditary and absolute ruler, whose person was sacred in that he was divine and the sole giver of law. The system was, therefore, a theocratic one, with the chief priest appointed by the Inca. There was a n.o.bility, but the great offices of state were filled by the members of the imperial family. The rule of the Inca extended over a vast territory, and of it he was the supreme lord, having his wives from among the Virgins of the Sun, the fifteen hundred beautiful maidens who abode in the Palace of the Sun in Cuzco. Over the wonderful system of roads which intersected the empire, the couriers of the Inca pa.s.sed back and forth with the commands of their master, to which all gave heed. The Peruvian religion was strongly monotheistic in that it recognised the unity, and preeminence of a supreme deity.

Recent investigation has left practically nothing of this interesting fiction which has been repeated by hundreds of writers with every possible magnificence of detail. There was no "empire" of Peru. The Indians of the coast governed themselves, though they sometimes paid tribute to the Cuzco Indians. There was, however, no h.o.m.ogeneous nationality. In the valley of Cuzco there was a tribe known as the Inca, perhaps seventy thousand souls in all, who were locally divided into twelve clans, each having its own government, and dwelling in its own village or ward; for it was a combination of these twelve villages which made up the whole settlement collectively styled Cuzco. A council of the twelve clans chose a war-chief whom some of the other tribes called "Inca," but who was not so called by his own people. He was not an hereditary chief; he could be deposed; he had no especial sanct.i.ty. The Virgins of the Sun were something very different from virgins. The road system of the Peruvians really const.i.tuted no system at all. The n.o.bles were not n.o.bles. The religion was not monotheistic, but embodied the worship not only of sun, moon, and stars, but of rocks, mountains, stone idols, and a variety of fetishes. Metal-work, pottery, weaving, and building were the chief arts of the Peruvians; but in them all, quaintness, utility, and permanence were more conspicuous than beauty.[51]

Disregarding, however, all questions of Peruvian archaeology, we may accept the judgment pa.s.sed upon the _Conquest of Peru_ by one of the most eminent of modern investigators, Sir Clements Markham, who, as a young man, knew Prescott well, and to whom the reading of this book proved to be an inspiration in his chosen field. Long after Prescott's death, and speaking with the fuller knowledge of the subject which he had acquired, he declared of the Peru: "It deservedly stands in the first rank as a judicious history of the Conquest."

The _History of the Reign of Philip II._ remains an unfinished work. Its subject, of course, provokes a comparison with the two brilliant histories by Motley,--_The Rise of the Dutch Republic and The History of the United Netherlands_. The interest in this comparison lies in the view which each of the historians has taken of the gloomy Philip. The contrasted temperaments of the two writers are well indicated in a letter which Motley sent to Prescott after the first volume of _Philip II._ had appeared. He wrote:--