The Mastering of Mexico/Foreword
You, sirs, tell the truth when you say that even the most renowned generals of Rome have not done such great deeds as ours. Histories telling of these events will say, God willing, greater things of us than of what has happened before; and that we were in worshipful service to God and our country, and were guided by true justice and Christian feeling.
—Cortez addressing his comrades
during the war in Tlaxcala.
Besides the great mercies which the Almighty granted us in all we did, it seems His blessing was upon the arm of us soldiers and the good counsel we gave Cortes—how to do all things in the right way.
—Bernal Diaz del Castillo.
FOREWORD
An incomparable picture-story told long ago how a few hundred Spaniards subdued a militarized country and its tens of thousands of warriors mustered against them. After going up from a sea-board to a capital city—this time to the splendid, Aztec city of Mexico—another Xenophon wrote another Anabasis. It is a wonderful tale, and no one can say why, before this book, it has not belonged, in part at least, to a public as avid as the American for straightforward stories of pluck, pertinacity, foresight and a final dazzling success.
Seventy years or so ago Prescott said the story was one of the two pillars on which history of the Conquest mainly rested. The fastidious scholar wondered at what the Conquistador called his own "plain and rude" tale, where "truth supplies the place of art and eloquence," and although he found Diaz' matchless narrative "vulgar" in several phases, he confessed it would be read and re-read by scholar and school-boy while compositions of phrase-polishers slept undisturbed on their shelves.
To us of to-day Bernal Diaz del Castillo is not "vulgar." Profounder sentiments strengthen our vision. To our thinking Diaz' work is that of a writer of notable stature—of a spirit as sincere as his body was enduring, who, fifty years after he had had no mean part in one of the greatest expeditions known to mankind, himself wrote with astounding vizualizing power of what he and his comrades did and suffered. His story is that of a man of ardent piety and of a sense of justice and endeavor after right, according to the standards of his generation, that add significance to every sentence—the chronicle of a veteran soldier of sturdy, single-hearted faith in himself and his comrades and his Captain Cortes, a human of simple tastes and a heart with a brotherhood for the cannibal Aztec.
Like certain other noteworthy writings the narrative of Bernal Diaz del Castillo had an unusual history. Before publication in its original Spanish the manuscript copy sent to Spain is said to have suffered the solicitude of a friar of the Order of Mercy, who garbled facts, suppressed parts, interpolated others, changed names and took privileges editors have unfortunately been known to take. This Padre Remón's version, first published in 1632, was the one various translators, as our earlier English, the French, German and others, used in turning the story into their mother tongues. Within the last quarter of a century, however, the True History—that of the old Conquistador himself, preserved in the archives of Guatemala where he finally settled after the Conquest—the True History has had the excellent fortune of an edition brought out in Mexico through the initiation, and under the direction, of Señor Don Genaro García; and of translation into English by the Honorable Professor of Archaeology of the National Museum of Mexico and publication by The Hakluyt Society.
Besides Bernal Diaz of Castile scores of writers, such as Acosta, Cortes, Solis, Herrera, have prompted to this retelling of Diaz' tale of the great city's capture. And also such as "T. N." (Thomas Nicholas) and his black letter, "The Pleasant Historie of the Conquest of the Weast India now called New Spayne," "out of the Spanish" of Gomara, 1578; certain narrators in "Purchas, his Pilgrim"; Maurice Keatinge in his translation of "The True History of the Conquest of Mexico," 1800; and others; but chiefest, and originally affording the foundation of our narrative, John Graham Lockhart in his "Memoirs of the Conquistador, Bernal Diaz del Castillo," 1844. Without the sincere, admirable work of these Englishmen this book would not have been. But their age-scented, and sometimes cumbrous, volumes not infrequently stand idle in our libraries. This book is for everyday use, offered with full knowledge that the veteran Spaniard wished nothing taken from his work because all he said was true. To Bernal Diaz del Castillo, however, days and weeks were as hours to us. For to-day's reader, to save his precious and pleasing story, we have to elide certain parts.
In the past we have often been told that the Conquest of Mexico was a most glorious exploit, due wholly to an absolutist, a poser of quasi omniscient intellect and callous emotion, a leader driving subordinated soldiers. The following pages show, rather, a human Cortes—able, untiringly active in mind and body, gently intimate and comrade-like of heart, subtle in speech, but ardent, imaginative and ambitious enough to grasp opportunities and mould them to his own advantage. These pages prove, also, by constant reference to "our Captain" and his seeking and accepting counsel from his company of soldiers, that the Conquest was a democratic, community affair, each soldier of fortune present by his own choice and with vote and speech indicating his personal, independent wish in general matters; that the little band of self-respecting, adventurous Spaniards who set out to conquer the Aztec empire were self-reliant, "common soldiers," each of a dozen or so having money enough in pocket to buy himself that noble aider to the Conquest, a horse, but all seemingly served by a substantially founded education, and gifted with the ability to do their own thinking in practical affairs of life; that from these facts the expedition had its success.
To Mr. Alfred Percival Maudslay of Morney Cross, Hereford, England, for permission to quote from his beautiful translation, "The True History of the Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Diaz del Castillo," and to Mr. Thomas A. Joyce of the Department of Ethnography of the British Museum for his generously allowing full use of his "Mexican Archæology," our thanks are due.
New York, 1916.