William Hickling Prescott

Prescott's masterpiece. More than that, it is one of the most brilliant examples wh

the True Faith in arms against a bloody form of paganism. In Prescott's treatment of this theme we find displayed the conscious skill of the born artist who subordinates everything to the dramatic development of the central motive. The style is Prescott's at its best,-not terse and pointed like Macaulay's, nor yet so intimately persuasive as that of Parkman, but nevertheless free, flowing, and often stately-the fit instrument of expres

ity. Prescott had studied very carefully the manner in which Irving had written the story of Columbus, and he learned a valu

ng from one petty island to another, all inhabited sailing from one petty island to another, all inhabited by savages, and having the same general character. Nothing can be more monotonous, and, of course, more likely to involve the writer in barren repetition.... Irving should have abridged this part of his story, and instead of four volumes, have brought it into two.... The conquest of Mexico, though very inferior in the leading idea which forms its basis to the

ng in the narrative is subordinated to this. Every event is made to bear directly upon the development of this leading motive. The art of Prescott in this book is the art of a great dramatist who keeps his eye and brain intent upon the true catastrophe, in the light of which alone the other episodes possess significance. To the general reader this supreme moment comes when Cortés makes his second entry into Mexico, returning over "the black and blasted environs," to avenge the horrors of the noche triste, and in one last tre

part and parcel of our intellectual possessions. In them Prescott has risen to a height of true greatness as a story-teller, and masterful word-painter. Of these, for example, is the account of the burning of the ships,[30] when Cortés, by destroying his fleet, cuts off from his wavering troops all hope of a return home except as conquerors, and when, facing them, in imminent peril of de

sting his guns in such a manner as to protect the approaches to the camp. His eyes, it may well be believed, did not close during the night. Indeed, every Spaniard lay down in his arms, and every horse stood saddled and bridled, ready for instant service. But no assault was meditated b

chapter we feel something of the exultation of the Castilian soldier when morning breaks, and Cortés receives the Cholulan chiefs, astounds them by revealing that he knows their plot, and then, before they can recover from their thunders

ience in that day, were much longer than in ours, he forced back the press by charging with the horse into the midst. The steeds, the guns, the weapons of the Spaniards, were all new to the Cholulans. Notwithstanding the novelty

h, being partly of wood, were speedily set on fire. Others fled to the temples. One strong party, with a number of priests at its head, got possession of the great teocalli. There was a vulgar tradition, already alluded to, that on removal of part of the walls the god would send forth an inundation to overwhelm his enemies. The superstitious Cholulans with great difficulty succeeded in wrenching away some of the stones in the walls of the edifice. But dust, not water, followed. Their false god deserted them in the hour of need. In despair they flung themselves into the wooden turrets that crowned

the Spaniards as they rode down their enemy, and with the shrill whistle of the Tlascalans, who gave full scope to the long-cherished rancour of ancient rivalry. The tumult was still further swelled by the incessant rattle of

e account of the entrance of the Spanish army into Mexico as Montezuma's guest, and of the splendid city which they beheld,-the broad streets coated with a hard cement, the intersecting canals, the inner lake darkened by thousands of canoes, the great market-places, the long vista of snowy mansions, their inner porticoes embellished with porphyry and jasper, and the fountains of crystal water

-the Spanish army and their Indian allies stealing silently and at dead of night o

litary corpse, or a dark heap of the slain, which too plainly told where the strife had been hottest. As they passed along the lanes and alleys which opened into the great street, or looked down the canals, whose polished surface gleamed with a sort of ebon lustre 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

tly caught the tidings and sounded their shells, while the huge drum in the desolate temple of the war-god 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 passage, a gathering sound was heard, like that of a mighty forest agitated by the winds. It gre

he most haunting things in all literature-like the blood-stained hands of the guilty queen in Macbeth, or

tés 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

t 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 coarse 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 s

ants 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 Cortés, 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 appe

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 passionate, 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

e by death, he seemed to read in them the dark lineaments of the destined destroyers of his house. He turned from it wit

, for he undoubtedly idealised this girl and suppressed, or at any rate passed over very lightly, the truth which Bernal Diaz, on the other hand, sets forth with the blunt coarseness 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 Cortés. Nor do we get any hint from him that Cortés 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 s

ory 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, José 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 attitude and an acumen 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. Pr

ing a preliminary treatise which attracted some attention, he wrote a bulky volume entitled 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 Cortés 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 mass of foreign material, appare

ks were written he could not have had the remotest idea of the circumstances 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 classes 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 t

escott.[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

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 coarseness. He concedes Mr. Presc

hem, 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 class,'-such, we may hope, as that which the author saw on his visit to the Massasaugus, where, to his immense astonishment, he found the people 'clothed, and in their right min

s 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 embarrassments and dangers which, even on Mr. Wilson's showing, must have taxed all

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 entitled 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 thoro

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 circumstances 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 chastity 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

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 substitute 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 conqueror

as 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, an

immediate followers, who had the best means of information; too highly coloured, it may be, by the proneness to exagg

tory against the fanciful chapters of the Spaniards who wrote a generatio

en 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 passion of the collector; and now and then in minor matters it has led him into error.[48] Thus, in certain passages relating to the voyage of Cortés 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 manuscript copy of Juan Diaz, overlooking the obviously correct and c