Another fundamental defect in the subject which Prescott chose was thoroughly appreciated by him. "Its great defect," he wrote in 1845, "is want of unity. A connected tissue of adventures ... but not the especial interest that belongs to the Iliad and to the Conquest of Mexico." In another memorandum (made in 1846) he calls his subject "second rate,—quarrels of banditti over their spoils." This criticism is absolutely just, and it well explains the inferiority of the story of Peru when we contrast it with the book which went before. Up to the capture of the Inca there is no lack of unity; but after that, the stream of narration filters away in different directions, like some river which grows broader and shallower until at last in a multitude of little streams it disappears in dry and sandy soil. The fault is not the fault of the writer. It is inherent in the subject. Nowhere has Prescott written with greater skill. It is only that no display of literary art can give dignity and distinction to that which in itself is unheroic and sometimes even sordid. The one passage which stands out from all the rest is that which sets before us the famous incident at Panama, when Pizarro, at the head of his little band of followers, mutinous, famished, and half-naked, still boldly scorns all thought of a return.
"Drawing his sword he traced a line with it on the sand from East to West. Then, turning towards the South, 'Friends and comrades!' he said, 'on that side are toil, hunger, nakedness, the drenching storm, desertion, and death; on this side ease and pleasure. There lies Peru with its riches; here, Panama and its poverty. Choose, each man, what best becomes a brave Castilian. For my part, I go to the South.' So saying, he stepped across the line."
Here is an heroic event told with that simplicity which means effectiveness. This is the one page in the Peru where the narrator makes us thrill with a sense of what, in its way, verges upon moral sublimity.
As to the historical value of the book, it stands in much the same category as the Conquest of Mexico. All that relates to the actual history of the Conquest is told with the same accurate regard for the original authorities which Prescott always showed, and for this part of the narrative, the original authorities are worthy of credence. The preliminary chapters on Peruvian antiquities are less satisfactory even than the corresponding portions of the other book. Prescott found them very hard to write. He was conscious that the subject was a formidable one. He did the best he could and all that any one could possibly have done at the time in which he wrote. Even now, after the elaborate explorations and researches of Bandelier, Markham, Baessler, Cunow, and others, the social and political relations of the Peruvians are little understood. Much has been learned of their art and of the monuments which they have left behind; but of their institutional history the records still remain obscure. The modern student, however, discovers many indications that they, too, like the Aztecs, were of the Red Race, and that their government was based upon the clan system; so that even the Inca himself, like the Mexican war-chief, was merely the elected executive of a council of the gentes. Here, as in Mexico, the Spaniards carelessly described in terms of Europe the institutions which they found, and made no serious attempt to understand them. Even the account of the Peruvian religion which Prescott gives, in accordance with the statements of the early Catholic missionaries, needs considerable modification.[50]
The Spanish chroniclers whom Prescott followed describe the Peruvians as united under a great monarchy,—an "empire,"—the head of which, the Inca, was an hereditary and absolute ruler, whose person was sacred in that he was divine and the sole giver of law. The system was, therefore, a theocratic one, with the chief priest appointed by the Inca. There was a nobility, but the great offices of state were filled by the members of the imperial family. The rule of the Inca extended over a vast territory, and of it he was the supreme lord, having his wives from among the Virgins of the Sun, the fifteen hundred beautiful maidens who abode in the Palace of the Sun in Cuzco. Over the wonderful system of roads which intersected the empire, the couriers of the Inca passed back and forth with the commands of their master, to which all gave heed. The Peruvian religion was strongly monotheistic in that it recognised the unity, and preëminence of a supreme deity.
Recent investigation has left practically nothing of this interesting fiction which has been repeated by hundreds of writers with every possible magnificence of detail. There was no "empire" of Peru. The Indians of the coast governed themselves, though they sometimes paid tribute to the Cuzco Indians. There was, however, no homogeneous nationality. In the valley of Cuzco there was a tribe known as the Inca, perhaps seventy thousand souls in all, who were locally divided into twelve clans, each having its own government, and dwelling in its own village or ward; for it was a combination of these twelve villages which made up the whole settlement collectively styled Cuzco. A council of the twelve clans chose a war-chief whom some of the other tribes called "Inca," but who was not so called by his own people. He was not an hereditary chief; he could be deposed; he had no especial sanctity. The Virgins of the Sun were something very different from virgins. The road system of the Peruvians really constituted no system at all. The nobles were not nobles. The religion was not monotheistic, but embodied the worship not only of sun, moon, and stars, but of rocks, mountains, stone idols, and a variety of fetishes. Metal-work, pottery, weaving, and building were the chief arts of the Peruvians; but in them all, quaintness, utility, and permanence were more conspicuous than beauty.[51]
Disregarding, however, all questions of Peruvian archæology, we may accept the judgment passed upon the Conquest of Peru by one of the most eminent of modern investigators, Sir Clements Markham, who, as a young man, knew Prescott well, and to whom the reading of this book proved to be an inspiration in his chosen field. Long after Prescott's death, and speaking with the fuller knowledge of the subject which he had acquired, he declared of the Peru: "It deservedly stands in the first rank as a judicious history of the Conquest."
The History of the Reign of Philip II. remains an unfinished work. Its subject, of course, provokes a comparison with the two brilliant histories by Motley,—The Rise of the Dutch Republic and The History of the United Netherlands. The interest in this comparison lies in the view which each of the historians has taken of the gloomy Philip. The contrasted temperaments of the two writers are well indicated in a letter which Motley sent to Prescott after the first volume of Philip II. had appeared. He wrote:—
"I can vouch for its extraordinary accuracy both of narration and of portrait-painting. You do not look at people or events from my point of view, but I am, therefore, a better witness to your fairness and clearness of delineation and statement. You have by nature the judicial mind which is the costume de rigueur of all historians.... I haven't the least of it—I am always in a passion when I write and so shall be accused, very justly perhaps, of the qualities for which Byron commended Mitford, 'wrath and partiality.'"
The two men, indeed, approached their subject in very different fashion. In Motley, rigidly scientific though he was, there are always a touch of emotion, a love of liberty, a hatred of oppression. He once wrote to his father that it gratified him "to pitch into the Duke of Alva and Philip II. to my heart's content." Prescott, on the other hand, was more detached, partly because he was by nature tolerant and calm; and it may be also because his protracted Spanish studies had given him unconsciously the Spanish point of view. He even came at last to adopt this theory himself, and he wrote of it in a humorous way. Thus to Lady Lyell, he declared:—