Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican/Volume 1/Book 1/Chapter 10
CHAPTER X.
1521.
It is perhaps one of the most difficult duties of a historian, who desires to present a faithful picture of a remote age, to place himself in such a position as to draw the moral from his story with justice to the people and the deeds he has described. He is obliged to forget, not only his individuality and all the associations or prejudices with which he has grown up surrounded, but he must, in fact, endeavor to make himself a man and an actor in the age of which he writes. He must sympathize justly, but impartially, with the past, and estimate the motives of his fellow beings in the epoch he describes. He must measure his heroes, not by the standard of advanced Christian civilization under which he has been educated, but by the scale of enlightened opinion which was then acknowledged by the most respectable and intellectual classes of society.
When we approach the Conquest of Mexico with these impartial feelings, we are induced to pass lighter judgments on the prominent men of that wonderful enterprise. The love of adventure or glory, the passion of avarice, and the zeal of religion,—all of which mingled their threads with the meshes of this Indian web, were, unquestionably, the predominant motives that led the conquerors to Mexico. In some of them, a single one of these impulses was sufficient to set the bold adventurer in motion;—in others, perhaps, they were all combined. The necessary rapidity of our narrative has confined us more to the detail of prominent incidents than we would have desired had it been our task to disclose the wondrous tale of the conquest alone; but it would be wrong, even in the briefest summary of the enterprise, to pass from the topic without awarding to the moving spirit of the romantic drama the fair estimate which his character and deeds demand.
We have ever regarded Hernando Cortéz as the great controling spirit and embodiment of the conquest, regardless of the brilliant and able men who were grouped around him, all of whom, tempered and regulated by his genius, moved the military machine, step by step, and act by act, until the capital fell before the united armies of discontented Indians and invading Spaniards. It was in the mind of this remarkable personage that every scheme appears to have originated and ripened. This is the report of the most authentic contemporaries. He took counsel, it is true, of his captains, and heard the reports of Sandoval, Olid, and Alvarado; but whenever a great enterprise, in all the wonderful and varied combinations of this adventure, was to be carried into successful execution, it was Cortéz himself who planned it, placed himself at its head, and fought in its midst. The rash youth whom we saw either idling over his tasks at school, or a reckless stripling as he advanced in life, seems to have mellowed suddenly into greatness under the glow of Indian suns which would have emasculated a character of less rude or nervous strength. As soon as a project, worthy of the real power of his genius, presented itself to his mind and opened to his grasp, he became a sobered, steadfast, serious, discreet man. He was at once isolated by his superiority, and contrived to retain, by his wisdom in command, the superiority which was so perfectly manifested by this isolation. This alone, was no trifling task. His natural adroitness not only taught him quickly the value of every man in his command, but also rendered keener the tact by which he strove to use those men when their talents, for good or evil, were once completely ascertained. There were jealousies of Cortéz, but no rivalries. Men from the ranks conspired to displace him, but no leader ever ventured, or perhaps even conceived the idea, whilst under his orders, of superceding the hero of the Mexican conquest. The skill with which he won the loyal heart of that clever Indian girl—his mistress and companion through all the warfare,—discloses to us his power of attaching a sex which is always quickest to detect merit and readiest to discard conceit. We speak now of Cortéz during that period of his career when he was essentially the soul of the conquest, and in which the stern demands of war upon his intellect and heart, did not allow him to sleep for a moment on his post, or to tamper with the elements upon which he relied for success. In all this time he made but few mistakes. The loss of the capital during the first visit is not to be attributed to him. The stain of that calamity must rest forever upon the escutcheon of Alvarado, for the irreparable harm was already done when Cortéz returned from the subjugation of Narvaez.
Nor is it alone as a soldier, at this time, that we are called on to appreciate the talents of our hero. Whilst he planned, fought, travelled, retreated, and diplomatised, he kept an accurate account of the adventures of his troop; and, in his celebrated letters to the Emperor, he has presented us a series of military memoirs, which, after three hundred years, furnish, in reality, the best, but least pretending, narrative of the conquest. Other contemporaries, looking upon the scenes from a variety of points, may serve to add interesting details and more copious illustration to the story; but they support without diminishing the value and truth of the despatches of Cortéz.
The conqueror, in truth, was one of those men whose minds seem to reach results intuitively. Education often ripens genius, as the genial sun and air mature the fruits of the earth which would languish without them. But we sometimes find individuals whose dealings on earth are to be chiefly in energetic and constant action with their fellow creatures, and who are gifted with a finer tact which enables them to penetrate the hearts of all they approach, and by this skilful detection of character are empowered to mould them to their purposes. There are, it is true, many subordinate qualities, besides the mere perceptive faculties, that are needful in such a person. He must possess self-control and discrimination in a remarkable degree. His courage and self-reliance must be unquestionable. He must be able to win by gentleness as well as to control by command or to rule by stratagem; for there are persons whom neither kindness, reason nor authority can lead, but who are nevertheless too important to be disregarded in such an enterprise as that of the conquest of Mexico.
Nor is our admiration of the characteristics we have endeavored to sketch, diminished when we examine the elements of the original army that flocked to the standard of Cortéz. The Spanish court and camps,—the Spanish towns and sea-ports,—had sent forth a motley band to the islands. The sedate and worthier portions of Castlian society were not wooed abroad by the alluring accounts of the New World and its prolific wealth. They did not choose to leave hereditary homes and comfortable emolument which made those homes the permanent abodes of contentment if not of luxury. But there were others in the dense crowds of Spain whose habits, disposition and education, fostered in them all the love of ease and elegance, without bestowing the means of gratifying their desires. These men regarded the New-World as a short and easy road to opulence and distinction. There were others too, whose reckless or dissipated habits had wasted their fortunes and blasted their names in their native towns, and who could not bear to look upon the scenes of their youth, or the companions of their more fortunate days, whilst poverty and disgrace deprived them of the rights of free and equal social intercourse. These were the poor and proud;—the noisy and the riotous;—the soldier, half bandit, half warrior;—the sailor, half mutineer, half pirate;—the zealot whose bigotry magnified the dangers of Indian life into the glory of martyrdom; and the avaricious man who dreamed that the very sands of the Indian Isles were strewn with gems and gold. Among all this mass of wayward lust and ambition, there were some lofty spirits whose love of glory, whose passionate devotion to adventure, and whose genuine anxiety to spread the true word of God among the infidels, sanctified and adorned the enterprise, whilst their personal efforts and influence were continually directed towards the noble purpose of redeeming it from cruelty. These men recollected that posterity would set its seal upon their deeds, whilst many of them acted from a higher and purer Christian motive, devoid of all that narrow selfishness with which others kept their eyes fixed on the present and the future for the popular opinion that was to disgrace or dignify them on the pages of history.
Such were the Spanish materials of the armies with which Cortéz invaded Mexico; and yet, even with all the masterly genius he possessed to mould and lead such discordant elements, what could he have substantially effected, against the Aztec Empire, with his handful of men,—armed, mounted and equipped as they were,—without his Indian allies? These he had to conquer, to win, to control, to bind to him, forever, with the chains of an indestructible loyalty. He did not even know their language, but relied on the double interpretation of an Indian girl and a Spanish soldier. Nor is it less remarkable that he not only gained these allies, but preserved their fealty, not in success alone, but under the most disheartening disaster, when it was really their interest to destroy rather than to sustain him, and when not only their allegiance but their religion invoked a dreadful vengeance on the sac-religious hands that despoiled their temples, overthrew their Gods, and made a jest of their most sacred rites. It was, indeed, not only a victory over the judgments, but over the superstitions, of an excitable, ardent and perhaps unreflective nation; and, in whatever aspect we regard the man who effected it solely by the omnipotence of his will, we are more and more forced to admire the majesty of his genius and the fortune or providence that made him a chosen and conspicuous instrument in the development of our continent.
The conquest of Mexico,—in its relation to the rest of the world,—has a double aspect, worthy of examination. The subsequent history and condition of the country, which we design to treat in the following pages, will develope one of these topics;—the condition of the country, at the period of the conquest, will disclose another, whilst it palliates, if it does not altogether apologize for the cruelties and apparent rapine by which the subjugation of the empire was effected.
CHAPTER XI.
1521—1522.
The capital had no sooner fallen and the ruins been searched in vain for the abundant treasures which the conquerors imagined were hoarded by the Aztecs, than murmurs of discontent broke forth in the Spanish camp against Cortéz for his supposed concealment of the plunder. There was a mingled sentiment of distrust both of the conqueror and Guatemozin; and, at last, the querulousness and taunts rose to such an offensive height, that it was resolved to apply the torture to the dethroned prince in order to wrest from him the secret hiding place of his ancestral wealth. We blush to record that Cortéz consented to this iniquity, but it was probably owing to an avaricious and mutinous spirit in his ranks which he was unable at the moment to control. The same Indian stoicism that characterised the unfortunate prince during the war, still nerved him in his hours of abject disaster. He bore the pangs without quivering or complaint and without revealing any thing that could gratify the Spanish lust of gold, save that vast quantities of the precious metal had been thrown into the lake,—from which but little was ultimately recovered even by the most expert divers.
The news of the fall of Mexico was soon spread from sea to sea, and couriers were despatched by distant tribes and princes to ascertain the truth of the prodigious disaster. The independent kingdom of Michoacan, lying between the vale of Anahuac or Mexico and the Pacific, was one of the first to send its envoys, and finally even its king, to the capital;—and two small detachments of Spaniards returned with the new visiters, penetrating their country and passing with them even to the waters of the western ocean itself, on whose shores they planted the cross in token of rightful possession. They returned by the northern districts, and brought with them the first specimens of gold and pearls from the region now known as California.
It was not long, however, before Cortéz resolved to make his conquest available by the re-construction of the capital that he had been forced reluctantly to mutilate and partly level during the siege. The ancient city was nearly in ruins. The massive relics of idolatry, and the huge stones of which the chief palaces had been constructed, were cast into the canals. The desolation was complete on the site of the ancient imperial residence. And the Indians, who had served in the work of dilapidation, were even compelled by their Spanish leader and his task masters to be the principal laborers in the toil of building up a city which should surpass in splendor the ancient pride of Anahuac.
Meanwhile the sagacious mind of Cortéz was not only busy with the present duties and occupations of his men in Mexico, but began to dwell,—now that the intense excitement of active war was over,—upon the condition of his relations with the Spanish Court and the government in the islands. He despatched to Castile, letters, presents, and the "royal fifth," together with an enormous emerald whose base was as broad as the palm of his hand. With the General's missives, went a letter from his army, commending the heroic leader, and beseeching its royal master to confirm Cortéz in his authority and to ratify all his proceedings. Quiñones and Avila, the two envoys, sailed for home; but one of them, lucklessly, perished in a brawl at the Azores, whilst Avila, who resumed the voyage to Spain, after the loss of his companion, was taken by a French privateer, who bore the spoils of the Mexicans to the Court of Francis the First. The letters and despatches of Cortéz and his army, however, were saved, and Avila, privately and safely forwarded them to the Spanish sovereign.
At the Court of Charles the Fifth there were, of course, numerous intrigues against the successful conqueror. The hatred of Velasquez had not been suffered to slumber in the breast of that disappointed governor, and Fonseca, Bishop of Burgos, who was chief of the colonial department, and doubtless adroitly plied and stimulated by Velasquez, managed to obtain from the churchman,