William Hickling Prescott

by Harry Thurston Peck

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. Cortés 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 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 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 Cortés, Sandoval, and Alvarado. Cortés 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 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 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 gods."[35]

The contrast between this dreamy, superstitious, 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 Cortés 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 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 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 circumstance 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 classify 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 Salammbô? 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, 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. Prescott, following the notices of Las Casas, Herrera, Bernal Diaz, Oviedo, Cortés himself, and the writer who is known as the conquistador anonimo, had simply weighed the assertions 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 altitude.

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 substitute 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 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, 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 Phœnician; 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 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 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 coarseness. 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 assertion 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 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 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." ...