Montezuma: An Epic on the Origin and Fate of the Aztec Nation

by Hiram Hoyt Richmond

I have striven to be historically consistent, following the letter of events closely, taking conjectural ground in but few instances.

If I have seemed to be censorious, even to rancor at times, I have only given vent to the repressed indignation of Prescott and other authors on the subject of the Spanish Conquest.

The only possible justification for the excesses of Cortez and his adherents, is the age in which the Conquest took place; and those who seek to justify it in this way, point to the opening of the present century, and to Napoleon, decoying the imbecile king and the weak Asturias into abdication and banishment to make room for his brother Joseph. This is a plague-mark upon the present century, and though a plain case of retributive justice through the visiting of the sins of the fathers upon the children, still the fact remains that the attempt to bring right of any multiple of wrongs, must always record a failure.

A sufficient answer to the latitude of the age, is the fact that a corresponding age gave us Plymouth, and not long after Penn's colony; nor can the Spaniards claim the same justification for excesses as these coincident colonists, all of whom had felt the lash of religious intolerance. The Spanish Conquest, antedating the divisions that followed the reformation, has no such covert for their lustful excrescences.

Any system of religious ethics that severs human responsibility from the domain of conscience, and furnishes a market for the indulgences that cover all the excesses of the body politic, cannot be expected to bring forth the best of fruit from a bloom so blighted by human lust, and so blackened by human selfishness.

If, amid all of their intolerance and deceit, they had respected the homely records and the grotesque landmarks of the nation they destroyed, the cavaliers might have shown them as a slight palliation, and at once furnished the historian the shadow of justification for their abuses; but the mental caste that could adopt any, and every device of deception and treachery to accomplish its ends, threw itself at once into the arms of a priestcraft, if possible more implacable than themselves; and obedient to their demands, tore down their landmarks, and ground their records to powder.

Surely, there is no fanaticism like religious fanaticism, and no licentiousness like that of the unbridled devotee of the Church.

Finally, as a whole, I feel confident that my effort will not fail to create food for thought, and eventually justify the effort which called it forth. To a nature partially Huguenot in its origin, and more so in sympathy and inclination, I have tried to add the temperate element that would impart freedom from undue prejudice and passion; but as the work is of necessity vindicatory on the one hand, and repressive on the other, I have been compelled to use good, plain Saxon words in the closing pages, justified only by the verity of their signification.

The body of the work is given in decimeters, varying in only a few cases where the expression seemed to require a different form.

I would rather not close these already extended remarks without recording my testimony, with that of others, of the positive pleasure experienced both in the progress and completion of a work of this character; and if I shall have been as fortunate in securing and retaining an auditory, I shall be twice blessed; for our highest ambition should ever be that of contributing to the happiness of others.