The conquest of Mexico was achieved mainly by one man, Cortez; but while Pizarro was virtually the head of the expedition against Peru, he was accompanied by others whose plans were often opposed to his own, and whose personal devotion could never be counted upon. Each of these men held regular correspondence with the court of Spain, and Pizarro never knew when his own account of the capture of a city or settlement of a colony would be contradicted by the statement of one of his officers. After the capture and death of the Inca, which was the real conquest of the country from the natives, Pizarro was obliged to reconquer Peru from his own officers, who quarrelled with him and among themselves continually.
The conquest is shown to be a war of adventurers, a crusade of buccaneers, who wanted only gold. The sieges and battles of the Spaniards read like massacres, and the story of the death of the Inca like an unbelievable horror of the Dark Ages. This scene, contrasted with the glowing description of the former magnificence of the Inca, shows Prescott in his most brilliant mood as a writer. Perhaps his greatest gift is this power of reproducing faithfully the actual spirit of the conquest, a spirit which, in spite of the glitter of arms and splendor of religious ceremonial, proves to have been one of greed and lowest selfishness.
The Conquest of Peru, published in 1847, when Prescott was fifty-two years old, was the last of his historical works. These three histories, with three volumes of an uncompleted life of Philip II., which promised to be his greatest work, and a volume of essays comprise Prescott's contribution to American literature, and begin that series of brilliant historical works of which American letters boast.
Prescott, during the most of his literary life, was obliged to sit quietly in his study, leaving to other hands the collection of the materials for his work. For, besides the accident which during his college life deprived him of one eye, he was always delicate. Sometimes he would be kept for months in a darkened room, and at best his life was one of seclusion. The strife of the world and of action was not for him. In his library, surrounded by his books and assisted by his secretary, he sought for truth as the old alchemists sought for gold. Patient and tireless he unravelled thread after thread of the fabric from which he was to weave the history of the Spanish conquests.
If Prescott had had access to documents which have since come to light, if he had been able to visit the places he described, and to study their unwritten records, his work would have been a splendid and imperishable monument to the dead civilization of the Aztec and Peruvian.
As it is, it must serve as a guiding light pointing to the right way, one which shed lustre on the new literature of his country and opened an unexplored region to the American writer.