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to have entered the future scene of their gious rite, and partly, it should seem, from glory and ruin, about the commencement a species of horrible epicurism. On the of the fourteenth century. They found the other hand they governed their dependents plateau of Anahuac, as the whole sur- with all the sullen and inexorable severity rounding table-land was called by its inhab- of those petty Oriental despots under whose itants, peopled by various races of their own poisonous influence a province withers family, by whom the former occupants, into a desert in a single generation. A whoever they may have been, had for sever- Turkish pasha could not rob a famishing al centuries been entirely supplanted. The fellah-a Prussian recruiting officer could city of Mexico was founded in 1325, and the not kidnap a solitary traveller-with more well-known valor and ferocity of its inhabit- hardened indifference than the servants of ants soon rendered them formidable to the Montezuma displayed in exacting his exsurrounding tribes. Their conquests, at orbitant tribute, or in selecting his human first confined to their immediate neighbor- victims from the youth of Anahuac. There hood, gradually crossed the valley; then, is certainly no limit to the ingenuity with crossing the mountains, swept over the which human nature will recognize the most broad extent of the table-land, descended its apparently inconsistent vices; yet it is precipitous sides, and rolled onwards to the strange to find the animal ferocity of the Mexican gulf, and the distant confines of barbarian so successfully blended with the central America.'* Their final territory-callous depravity of the civilized tyrant. though its precise limits cannot be clearly This taste for cruelty was encouraged, ascertained, and were not perhaps very ac- or rather inspired, by the strict observance curately defined-appears to have formed a quadrilateral tract of country, extending across the continent, and 'reaching from about the eighteenth degree north to the twenty-first on the Atlantic, and from the fourteenth to the nineteenth on the Pacific.'t It comprised, according to this calculation, about 16,000 square leagues-an extent, as Mr. Prescott justly remarks, ' truly wonderful, considering it as the acquisition of a people whose whole population and resources had so recently been confined within the walls of their own petty city; and considering, moreover, that the conquered territory was thickly peopled by various races, bred to arms like the Mexicans, and little inferior to them in social organization.'

of a religion perhaps the most horrible and revolting ever professed by human beings. The murderous rites of Moloch, Bhowanee, or Jaggernaut, were not to be compared in atrocity to those of Tlaloc and Huitzilopochli-the Aztec Neptune and Mars. Human sacrifices-usually regarded by the most fanatical idolaters as an awful resource for the expiation of extraordinary crimes, or the propitiation of extraordinary favors-were a necessary and familiar part of the ordinary Aztec worship. Every Mexican altar was literally a human shambles; and every Mexican temple a charnelhouse-in which the traces of daily butchery were so abundant, that the Spaniards forgot at first their religious horror at the sight, in the irrepressible physical disgust which it excited. The number of victims annually slaughtered throughout the Mexican dominions has been variously calculated. But some idea may be formed of its probable amount from the undisputed fact, that 136,000 skulls were counted in the temple of Huitzilopochli-making an average of 680 yearly murders in honor of a single idol, during the two centuries of Az

In spite of all the melancholy interest which attaches to the memory of a brave and magnificent nation, struck down from the highest pitch of their power and prosperity into hopeless slavery, it is impossible to read Mr. Prescott's work without becoming convinced that the Aztecs were, upon the whole, as bloody, barbarous, and worthless a race as ever made themselves a scourge to mankind. They united the vices of the American savage with those of the Asi-tec independence! atic satrap. They carried on war with all the pitiless fury, though with little of the sagacity, of a Mohawk war-party; sparing neither age nor sex, and devoting every captive to torture and death. The most revolting cannibalism was constantly practised at their solemn festivals; partly as a reli

* Prescott, iii. 190. Ibid., i. 5. Ibid., i. 19.

The proverbial expressions which associate brutal ignorance with brutal ferocity, were never more signally verified than by the social history of ancient Mexico. Perhaps no other instance can be produced of a nation which has made such considerable advances in the arts of sensual luxury, while so entirely destitute of intellectual cultivation. In many of the ordinary me

chanical arts, the Aztecs displayed remark-] were unable to form any conception. Their able ingeuuity. Their dwellings and appa- choicest armies were little better than rerel were very commodious, and abounded solute and well-armed mobs, unable to in gorgeous, though somewhat fantastic, manœuvre in concert, destitute of mutual decoration; they were eminently skilful reliance, and liable to be routed at a in the preparation of delicious dishes and stroke by the fall of a leader or the capture beverages; and their system of agriculture of a standard. And to these, the ordinary was far from deficient. But of all pursuits defects of a tumultuary force, they added which require the prolonged exercise of an infatuation peculiar to themselves-the the reasoning faculties, and even of most opinion that it was far less glorious to slay pleasures which appeal to the imagination, an enemy than to drag him as a living victhey were wholly and contentedly ignorant. tim before the shrine of Huitzilopochli. They were altogether unacquainted with Of this absurd and atrocious superstition we alphabetical writing, and even with any need only say, that it was on two occasions, system of symbolical hieroglyphics; and if not more, the undoubted means of preserv their sole records of the past consisted in ing Cortes himself from inevitable death. charts filled with grotesque paintings of the Early in the sixteenth century, an omievents commemorated-most of which were nous foreboding prevailed among the narepresented in so arbitrary and irregular tions of Anahuac, that the downfall of the a manner that even the Priests, to whose care Aztec empire was at hand. Vague ruthe national archives were committed, found mors began to circulate among them conthemselves unable to agree as to their in- cerning the race of mysterious and irreterpretation. Their language was rude, sistible conquerors who had subjugated the but at the same time singularly oumbrous West Indian archipelago: and whom the and artificial in its construction; and must most orthodox sages of Tenochtitlan conhave been in its pronunciation-to judge jectured to be the descendants of the exfrom the rugged knots of consonants by iled demigod Quetzalcoatl, returned to which European writers have endeavored verify the prophecies of ancient tradition to express the proper names belonging to by claiming the abandoned Empire of their it-one of the most uncouth ever articulat- ancestor. The Emperor of Mexico, at ed by human beings. Of painting and this period, was Montezuma, second of the sculpture, considered as imitative arts, name-a name which classical superstition. they may be said-with all their mecha- would have placed among the sounds of nical skill in coloring and carving-to evil omen forbidden to human utterance. have been wholly ignorant. The represen- Ile was a man revered and dreaded by all tations of visible objects in their hierogly- Anahuac for deep policy, success in war, phical maps, were sketched with barely princely dignity of demeanor, haughty sufficient care and skill to show for what serenity of disposition, and rigid sanctity they were intended; and the huge idols in the observance of his dreadful religion. which adorned their temples, were invaria- But his high and resolute spirit was quelled bly hideous and shapeless monsters, which by superstitious awe, and he now awaited, the superstitious Spaniards might well re-in resigned despondency, the appearance gard as the accurate resemblances of infer- of his predestined destroyers. nal spirits. Even in war, the pride and At length the fatal news arrived. In delight of the ferocious Aztecs, they dis- the spring of 1519 a hieroglyphical scroll played their characteristic incapability of was transmitted to Montezuma by the viceforethought and combination. Both their roy of a district upon his eastern coast, weapons of offence, and the defensive ar- containing an elaborate delineation of mor worn by their chiefs, were so well con- several huge canoes, wafted by linen sails, structed, that we find Cortes arming his in- which had disembarked from five to six fantry with the copper-headed lances of hundred strangers on the spot where the Chinantla; and many Spaniards, who were city of Vera Cruz now stands. The visunable to provide themselves with the pan-itors, or invaders, were represented as men oply of a cavalier, preferring the quilted wholly differing in personal appearance tunic of the Aztec, to the buff-coat or from the tribes of Anahuac; but as resemleather corslet which formed the usual bling, in a remarkable manner, the tradigarb of an European private soldier. But tional portrait of the mysterious Quetzalof military tactics, or even of the common coatl. Many of them carried deadly wearules of military discipline, the Mexicans pons, which were said to dart forth thun

der and lightning at their pleasure; and [tors regarded their perpetual enemy 'the their leaders were sheathed in complete Spaniard.' The energetic Castilian, so armor of a beautiful and impenetrable indefatigable in pursuing his own selfish metal. Above all, they were accompanied ends, displayed much of that callous insenby several stately and powerful quadrupeds, sibility to right and justice, and much of far superior in size to any known in Ana- that listless indifference to the sufferings of huac, which were trained to carry their others, which distinguish the natives of masters, completely armed, upon their Southern Europe. He was, moreover, backs, and to overthrow their enemies in easily excited to active crimes of the deepbattle. These astounding strangers were, est dye, by the intolerant bigotry which in fact, a Spanish expedition from the isl- was the disgrace of his age, or by the vinand of Cuba, consisting of sixteen horse- dictive sensibility to offence which is still men, and five hundred and fifty-three foot the disgrace of his nation. And he fresoldiers, under the leading of the renowned quently added to these grievous failings a Hernando Cortes. burning thirst for wealth, which never flinched from the most fearful danger while a hope of gratification remained. The more ignoble vices of the Spanish character were never so effectually repressed, as by the truly remarkable man who now commanded their army.

It might be difficult to point out, in the history of mankind, a race of more formidable conquerors, or more ruthless masters, than the mighty nation for whom this little band of adventurers acted in some sort as a forlorn hope. Spain, in the sixteenth century, was undoubtedly the Hernando Cortes was the descendant first nation in Europe for military power of an ancient and honorable family in and enterprising ambition. At the great the province of Estremadura. He was battle of Ravenna, the Spanish infantry had born in 1485, at the little town of Medelbeen found superior in arms and discipline lin, and left Spain at the age of nineteen to those formidable Swiss phalanxes, whose to settle in the West Indies. In a few victories over the Burgundian chivalry years he was master of a flourishing estate may be regarded as the origin of the mo- in the new colony of Cuba, married to a dern system of warfare. There needed no young and beautiful wife, and in high famore to place the conquerors where the vor with the governor, Velasquez-a weak, Swedes afterwards stood under Gustavus, haughty and violent man, from whose rethe Prussians under Frederick, and the sentment Cortes had, at his first arrival, French under Napoleon-at the very head incurred considerable peril. In this situaof European soldiership. This power was tion he attained the prime of life. Every wielded by a race whose thirst for conquest thing seemed to promise an old age of was inflamed by every feeling which can peaceful privacy to the wealthy and prosat once change men into beasts of prey-perous colonist. But there was in him an by the insatiable pride of the Roman, the adventurous spirit, which was lulled only, greedy rapacity of the Hun or the Goth, not extinguished, by tranquillity; and he no the fanatic zeal of the Crusader, and the sooner learned that Velasquez was fitting romantic vanity of the knight-errant. The out a squadron for a voyage of discovery Spanish cavalier may be described, with to the American continent, than he used little exaggeration, as a champion who every effort to procure the command. His united the pugnacious ardor of Cæsar, of acknowledged merit, and the interest of Alaric, of St. Dominic, and of Amadis de his friends, at first prevailed with the govGaul. And his enthusiastic bravery was ernor; but the jealous temper of Velasgenerally supported by that constitutional quez, and his knowledge of the lieutenant's insensibility to hardship and privation, and daring and ambitious character, induced that apathetic calmness under disappoint- him, while the fleet was actually fitting ment or defeat, in which even the English out at St. Jago de Cuba, to change his soldier, so justly famed for his physical mind, and determine to appoint another strength and his undaunted intrepidity, has commander. Cortes acted in this emergenbeen found inferior to the degenerate de-cy, with his usual unhesitating audacity. scendants of the American conquerors. He got under way by night with all his But these qualities were unfortunately com- ships, half stored and equipped as they bined with others, which went far to justify were, and sailed from Cuba, never more to the mingled dread and abhorrence with return-thus at once embracing the alterwhich even our proud and fearless ances-native of complete success in his enter

prise, or of irretrievable ruin from the enmity of his employer.

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ber of desultory onsets, each of which is made by an enemy inferior in arms, in muAfter touching at one or two places on tual confidence, and probably in number, the coast, where they met with a friendly to themselves. In other words, the assailreception, the Spanish fleet arrived in the ants can only hope to succeed by resoluteriver Tabasco in March 1519. The na- ly coming forward to be slaughtered, untives obstinately refused to permit any com- til their opponents are either exterminated munication with the shore; nor was their man by man, or overpowered by bodily subjugation in any manner essential to the fatigue. This is a task which human regreat object of the expedition. But Cor- solution will seldom long support; and tes, urged by the spirit of knight-errantry, when once the courage of an army is quellwhich sometimes overcame his natural ed, it signifies little whether the panicgood sense and humanity, and, we must in stricken multitude be more or fewer in fairness add, by a sincere though mistaken number-for as a modern military writer zeal for the honor of Christianity, resolved has shrewdly remarked, a loss which would to plant the cross among these contuma- frighten fifty men will equally frighten fifty cious idolaters. He landed in spite of a thousand. It may therefore be fairly asdesperate resistance, took possession of serted, that almost the only real antagothe neighboring town, and, when the war- nists defeated at Ceutla, were a few hunriors of the nation assembled to repel him, dred of the bravest Tabascan warriors, encountered and signally defeated their and that the rest of their army, except so whole force upon the neighboring plains of far as their presence tended to encourage Ceutla. their champions and dishearten their enemies, might as well have been encamped on the shore of the Pacific. The true merit of these singular victories—and it was merit of the very highest order-consisted in the calm and steady confidence with which the Spaniards discerned the weakness of their opponents, and availed themselves of their own strength. A few hundred Swiss pikemen or English archers, would probably have been an obstacle more physically formidable than the largest armies of Anahuac; but to perceive this fact must have required all the cool circumspection which is the highest characteristic of true heroism. The assault of an Indian army was, in short, one of the many trials which are easily surmounted by the brave, but become fearfully perilous to the timid and irresolute.

It is not always easy for the pacific reader to form an accurate judgment of the real merit and peril of such an exploit as this, and many others of the same nature hereafter to be noticed. A victory by a small body of troops, over au army twenty or thirty times their number, appears at first sight so prodigious an achievement, that we are apt to account for it in our own minds as we account for the feats of Achilles, or Rinaldo, by ascribing superhuman powers to the one party, or contemptible imbecility to the other. But a moment's reflection will show the real possibility, and the real difficulty, of such a victory. Every man, whether a soldier or not, will readily comprehend, that though fifty thousand men may make a simultaneous charge upon five hundred, it is physically impossible for more than a very small The Tabascans, now convinced of their proportion of the assailants to come at any inferiority in strength, had none of the given moment into actual collision with motives for persevering resistance which the assailed. When the latter are over-induced the haughty Aztec to prefer death powered, it is not in consequence of each to submission. The day after the battle of soldier finding himself engaged with several Ceutla, an embassy arrived in the Spanish enemies at once, but by the united weight camp bearing offers of peace and homage, of the hostile column breaking their ranks, which were, of course, readily accepted. or by a rapid succession of determined Presents were exchanged, allegiance sworn charges. Both these means of attack re-to the King of Spain, and mass celebrated quire at least the rudiments of military in the principal temple of Tabasco. After discipline; and consequently an army not this, Cortes continued his voyage along the possessing those rudiments, can very sel- coast, until he anchored, as we have seen, dom bring their whole force to bear upon off Vera Cruz on the 21st of May. an inferior body drawn up in close order. There was naturally great doubt and In such a case, the task of the assailed great difference of opinion, in the royal party consists in repulsing a certain num-council at Mexico, whether the Spaniards

heavy displeasure of Montezuma, were arrested and expelled from the town; and owed their lives to the politic protection of Cortes himself. An embassy was speedily received from their master, remonstrating in very mild terms against this proceeding, and requiring an explanation. Cortes sent back a courteous but evasive answer; and concluded by stating his intention to visit Mexico, and justify his conduct to the Emperor in person.

should be received in a friendly or a hos- he marched with his whole army to Cemtile manner. But Montezuma,' says Mr. poalla, the chief city of the Totonacs; Prescott, preferred a halfway course-as where he was welcomed with the utmost usual, the most impolitic. He resolved to delight and veneration. The whole nation send an embassy with such a magnificent was formally taken under the protection of present to the strangers, as should impress Spain; the idols in the Cempoallan temples them with a high idea of his grandeur and were thrown down and replaced by the resources; while, at the same time, he crucifix; and a Spanish fortress or colony, would forbid their approach to his capital. to be named La Villa Rica, was founded This was to reveal at once both his wealth upon the neighboring coast. Some Aztec and his weakness.'* We are rather in-envoys who chanced to arrive in Cempoalla, clined to dissent from this censure. We and who threatened the Totonacs with the think that the determination of Montezuma was upon the whole the wisest that could have been taken; and we suspect, from the conduct of Cortes, that he strongly felt the difficulty thus thrown in his way. It would have been folly to admit the formidable strangers into the heart of the Aztec Empire, if they could be kept out. It would have been equal folly to rush into hostilities against them, if they could be kept out peaceably. But there was a chance that, if neither welcomed nor provoked, they might depart in peace; and this chance we think Montezuma did right to essay. Indeed, there can be no doubt that his policy was very nearly successful. An invitation to the capital, or an unsuccessful assault upon the Spanish camp, would infallibly have been the signal for an immediate march upon Mexico. But the firm yet courteous prohibition of the Indian emperor, discouraged the Spaniards without exasperating them; and they became eager to set sail on their return to Cuba. Cortes himself was indeed, as usual, sanguine and resolute; but it is impossible to conceive that he could have prevailed on his followers to support him, had not a fortunate accident given him the means of raising their hopes of success.

It was now, we think, that Montezuma was found wanting to his country and himself. After the communication received by Cortes at Vera Cruza, his present message, however respectful in terms, was, in fact, an open defiance of authority. A firm and temperate warning of the consequences, backed by a formidable show of preparation for resistance, might yet have induced the adventurers to pause before they suffered their leader to plunge them into a deadly conflict with a great Empire, of whose power and resources they were wholly ignorant. But Cortes, who perhaps feared such a measure, guarded against its possible effect, by a stroke of that prompt and perilous daring in which he surpassed all men. He exerted his authority and influence to procure a report from the pilots Very shortly after the unfavorable mes-in charge of the fleet, that the ships were sage of Montezuma had been received, an unseaworthy; and he unscrupulously acted embassy arrived in the Spanish camp from upon this report, by ordering the whole the Totonacs-an Indian tribe inhabiting squadron to be dismantled and sunk by a the coast to the northward of Vera Cruz, party of his most devoted followers, without and lately subdued by the Aztecs-bearing the knowledge of the army. Had this offers of allegiance, bitter complaints of measure been adopted by general consent, oppression, and entreaties for protection. it would still have been one of the most This communication was eagerly listened daring recorded in history. But the peril to by the general. . . . An important which Cortes shared with his followers truth now flashed on his mind; for his was trifling compared to that which he inquick eye discerned, in this spirit of dis- curred from their resentment. The Spancontent, a potent lever, by the aid of which ish Chroniclers have not given us the parhe might hope to overturn the barbaric ticulars of the mutiny which took place, empire.'t With as little delay as possible, when the army first learned that their retreat had been wilfully cut off by their leader; but they agree that never was

- Prescott, i. 287.

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↑ Ib. 299.

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