BOOK I_History of the Conquest of Mexico; vol. 1/4

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Montezuma Edition

THE WORKS OF WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT

TWENTY-TWO VOLUMES

VOL. I

_The Montezuma Edition of William H. Prescott’s Works is limited to one

thousand copies, of which this is_

No. 345

[Illustration:

_Goupil & Cº., Paris_

]

_Montezuma Edition_

HISTORY OF THE

Conquest of Mexico

WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT

EDITED BY

WILFRED HAROLD MUNRO

PROFESSOR OF EUROPEAN HISTORY IN BROWN UNIVERSITY

AND COMPRISING THE NOTES OF THE EDITION BY

JOHN FOSTER KIRK

“Victrices aquilas alium laturus in orbem”

LUCAN, Pharsalia, lib. v., v. 238

VOL. I

PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

[Illustration: THE LANDING OF CORTÉS AT VERA CRUZ

Page 365]

Electrotyped and Printed by

J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia U. S. A.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE BY THE EDITOR

William Hickling Prescott was born in Salem, Massachusetts, May 4, 1796.

He died in Boston, January 28, 1859. William Prescott, his father, a

lawyer of great ability and of sterling worth, was at one time a judge,

and was frequently elected to public positions of trust and

responsibility. His mother was a daughter of Thomas Hickling, for many

years United States Consul at the Azores. His grandfather, William

Prescott, was in command of the American forces at the battle of Bunker

Hill, June 17, 1775. On both sides, therefore, the future historian was

descended from what Oliver Wendell Holmes aptly termed the “New England

Brahman Stock.” He was prepared for college by an unusually accomplished

scholar, John Sylvester John Gardiner, for many years the rector of

Trinity Church, Boston, and entered Harvard College as a sophomore in

1811. Three years later he graduated with the Class of 1814.

During his junior year came the accident which was to change the whole

course of his life. As he was leaving the dining-hall, in which the

students sat at “Commons,” a biscuit, thrown by a careless

fellow-student, struck him squarely in the left eye and stretched him

senseless upon the floor. Paralysis of the retina was the result; the

injury was beyond the reach of the healing art, and the sight of one eye

was utterly destroyed. After a period of intense suffering, spent in a

darkened room, he recovered sufficiently to resume his college work and

to be graduated with his class. For a year and a half the uninjured eye

served him fairly well. Then, suddenly, acute rheumatism attacked it,

causing, except in occasional periods of intermission, excruciating pain

during the rest of his life. Total darkness, for weeks at a time, was

not infrequently Prescott’s lot, and work, except under a most careful

adjustment of every ray of light, was almost out of the question. Under

these circumstances the career at the bar which his father had planned

for him, and to which he had looked forward with so much pleasure was no

longer to be thought of. Business offered no attractions, even if a

business life had been possible to him in his semi-blindness. He turned

his attention to literature, and found there his vocation.

But for this work he felt that the most careful preparation was

necessary. In a letter, written eighteen months before his death, he

says, “I proposed to devote ten years of my life to the study of ancient

and modern literature, chiefly the latter, and to give ten years more to

some historical work. I have had the good fortune to accomplish this

design pretty nearly within the limits assigned. In the Christmas of

1837 my first work was given to the public.”

During the first ten years of preparation he was a frequent contributor

to the Reviews, writing some of the papers which are printed in the

volume of “Miscellanies” which has always formed part of his “works.”

His historical work was accomplished with the utmost difficulty.

American scholarship was not then advanced, and it was almost impossible

to secure readers who possessed a knowledge of foreign languages.

Pathetically Mr. Prescott tells of the difficulties surmounted. The

secretary he employed at first knew no language but his own. “I taught

him to pronounce the Castilian in a manner suited, I suspect, much more

to my ear than to that of a Spaniard; and we began our wearisome journey

through Mariana’s noble history. I cannot even now recall to mind

without a smile the tedious hours in which, seated under some old trees

in my country residence, we pursued our slow and melancholy way over

pages which afforded no glimmering of light to him, and from which the

light came dimly struggling to me through a half intelligible

vocabulary. But in a few weeks the light became stronger, and I was

cheered by the consciousness of my own improvement; and when we had

toiled our way through seven quartos I found I could understand the book

when read about two-thirds as fast as ordinary English.” Having thus

gathered the ideas of his many authorities from the mechanical lips of

his secretary, Mr. Prescott would ponder them for a time, and would then

dictate the notes for a chapter of from forty to fifty pages. These

notes were read and reread to him while the subject was still fresh in

his memory. He ran them over many times in his mind before he began to

dictate the final copy, and was thus able to escape errors into which

men with full command of their sight frequently fall. For the last

thirty years of his life he made use of a writing instrument for the

blind, the noctograph, by which he was able to write his own pages and

partially to dispense with dictation. With the noctograph he wrote with

great rapidity, but in an almost illegible hand which only the author

and his secretary could read.

When, after twenty years of labor, the “History of the Reign of

Ferdinand and Isabella” was finished, its author was so doubtful

respecting its value that he proposed simply to put it upon his library

shelf “for the benefit of those who should come after.” His father

wisely combated this morbid judgment and insisted upon its publication.

“The man who writes a book which he is afraid to publish is a coward,”

he said to his son. The work was given to the world in 1837 and was

immediately and immensely successful. Its author, who had hitherto been

only an obscure writer of reviews, took his place at once in the first

rank of contemporary historians,--to use the words of Daniel

Webster,--“like a comet that had blazed out upon the world in full

splendor.” In a very short space of time translations appeared in

Spanish, German, French, and Italian. Critics of many nationalities

joined in concurrent praise.

In a way Mr. Prescott’s achievement was a national triumph. British

reviewers were even more laudatory than were the American. One of the

most striking testimonials came from Richard Ford, the author of the

famous “Handbook for Spain,”--an English scholar whose knowledge of

things Spanish was phenomenal. Mr. Ford wrote, “Mr. Prescott’s is by far

the first historical work which British America has yet produced, and

one that need hardly fear a comparison with any that has issued from the

European press since this century began.” Mr. Ford was not enthusiastic

over American institutions and was by no means prepared to believe that

the American experiment in democratic government was likely to result in

a permanent State. It was with an eye to posterity, therefore, that he

cautiously and vaguely assigned Mr. Prescott not to the United States,

but to British America. The commendatory notices that appeared in

British publications showed that many men besides Mr. Ford were

astounded that “British America” could produce such an excellent

specimen of historical workmanship. Sydney Smith’s praise was most

enthusiastic. He even went so far as to promise the American author a

“Caspian Sea of Soup” if he would visit England.

The new historian was not spoiled by the adulation showered upon him.

Rejoicing in the unexpected praise, he devoted himself with renewed

zeal, and with even greater care, to the composition of another work.

This, “The History of the Conquest of Mexico,” appeared in 1843, and in

less than twelve months seven thousand copies of it had been sold in the

United States. The art of advertising, in which the publishers of

to-day are so proficient, had not then been developed; the “Conquest of

Mexico” made its own way among the reading public. For the English

published in England in sixteen years, and twenty-three were issued in

the United States. Popular approval was even more pronounced than in the

case of the “Ferdinand and Isabella,” and the applause of the reviewers

was also much more loud. The pure and sound English appealed especially

to scholars like Milman. That famous historian placed Prescott “in the

midst of the small community of really good English writers of history

in modern times.” Coming from the editor of the best edition of Gibbon’s

“Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” this was praise indeed. The

_Edinburgh Review_ said, “Every reader of intelligence forgets the

beauty of his coloring in the grandeur of his outline.... Nothing but a

connected sketch of the latter can do justice to the highest charm of

the work.” Stirling, author of the “Cloister Life of the Emperor Charles

the Fifth,” wrote, “The account of the Triste Noche, the woeful night in

which, after the death of Montezuma, Cortés and his band retreated

across the lake and over the broken causeway, cutting their way through

a nation in arms, is one of the finest pictures of modern historical

painting.” The Spanish Royal Academy of History had elected Prescott to

membership in that august body soon after his “History of the Reign of

Ferdinand and Isabella” appeared; other historical societies and

learned bodies now heaped honors upon him.

The historian kept steadily at work. The task to which he had devoted

himself was to tell the tale of Spanish greatness when the fortunes of

Spain were at their highest point. The “History of the Conquest of Peru”

was published in 1847, four years after the appearance of the “Mexico.”

It reads like a romance and has always been the most popular of

Prescott’s works. To-day it is the only history of the early Spanish

achievements in Peru which is regarded as an “authority” on the South

American republic, and is always kept in stock in Peruvian bookstores.

For the English copyright of this work Bentley paid £800. Seventeen

thousand copies were sold in thirteen years. The demand for it is

constant.

The author’s fame was now fully established. He was everywhere regarded

as one of the greatest of living historians, and honors and wealth

flowed steadily towards him. His income from his books was very large.

Stirling estimates it at from £4000 to £5000 per annum. This, in

addition to the fortune he had inherited, made Mr. Prescott a very

wealthy man in the years when the enormous incomes of to-day were hardly

dreamed of. He was as methodical and careful in pecuniary affairs as in

his literary work. A most accurate account was kept of his receipts and

expenditures, and one-tenth of his income was always devoted to charity.

In 1850 he made a short visit to Europe, spending some time upon the

Continent but more in England and Scotland. Everywhere he was lionized

in a way that would have turned the heads of most men. The University of

Oxford made him a D.C.L. The doors of the houses where learning was

honored opened at his approach. His own charming personality was,

however, one of the greatest factors in his social success. As a man he

was most lovable.

Upon his return to America he devoted himself to writing the “History of

the Reign of Philip the Second,” for which task he had accumulated an

extensive collection of documentary “authorities.” This work was to

appear in six volumes, and for it the author was offered £1000 a volume

by two publishers. Two volumes were published in 1855 and a third

appeared three years later. Macaulay pronounced “Philip the Second” Mr.

Prescott’s best work. Its style is more finished, its use of authorities

more masterly than in the previous volumes. For dramatic interest the

chapters describing the defence of Malta by the Knights of the Hospital

of St. John of Jerusalem are quite equal to the account of the “Triste

Noche,” of Cortés and his companions in Mexico, which so excited the

admiration of Stirling. But the work was never to be completed. After

two volumes had appeared, there was published “Prescott’s Edition of

Robertson’s Charles the Fifth.” This was simply a new edition of the

Scottish historian’s work, with additions dealing with the later years

of the Emperor’s life which Robertson had not treated. In it is given

the true story of the emperor’s retirement and death. Mr. Prescott had

for Robertson a very great admiration. He always acknowledged his deep

obligation to him, and he felt that it would be most unnecessary, and in

fact almost presumptuous, for him to attempt to re-write a history which

the Scottsman had written so well. In these three works, “Ferdinand and

Isabella,” “Charles the Fifth,” and “Philip the Second,” a century and a

half of the most important part of Spanish history is presented. That

Prescott did not live to complete the third must always be regarded as a

great calamity by the literary world.

Besides the volumes already specified, another, of “Miscellaneous

Essays” (a selection from his earlier contributions to reviews and other

periodicals) has always been included in Prescott’s published works. To

the historical student this volume is even more interesting than to the

general reader. It illustrates the change, which, since its publication,

has taken place in the methods of the reviewer and of the writer of

history as well.

On February 4, 1858, Mr. Prescott was stricken with paralysis. The shock

was a slight one. He soon recovered from its effects and continued with

undaunted perseverance his literary work. In less than a year, January

28, 1859, while at work in his library with his secretary, he fell back

speechless from a second attack and died an hour or so afterwards.

It is quite within bounds to say that no historian’s death ever affected

more profoundly the community in which he dwelt. Other authors have been

respected and admired by those with whom they came in contact, Prescott

was universally loved. No American writer was perhaps more sincerely and

more widely mourned. Affable, generous, courtly, thoughtful for others,

singularly winning in his personal appearance, he had drawn the hearts

of all his associates to himself, while the gracious, kindly humanity

manifested in every page of his writings had endeared him to thousands

of readers in all parts of the world.

Mr. Prescott’s distinguishing characteristic was his intense love for

truth. As an author he had no thesis to establish. He never wasted time

in arguments wherewith to demonstrate the soundness of his views. His

single desire was to set forth with scrupulous accuracy all the facts

which belonged to his subject. Some critics will have it that his

tendency towards hero-worship occasionally leads him into extravagance

of statement and that his gorgeous descriptions sometimes blind us to

most unpleasant facts. This is possibly partly true in the case of

“Ferdinand and Isabella,” his first work, but even in those volumes the

reader will almost always find footnotes to establish the author’s

statements or to indicate the possibility of a doubt which he himself

felt. In clear grasp of facts, in vivid powers of narration, combined

with artistic control of details, no historical writer has exceeded him.

The power of philosophical analysis he did not possess in so high a

degree, but no philosophical historian of the first rank was ever so

widely read as William Hickling Prescott has been and still is.

For the additional knowledge concerning the historian, which will

unquestionably be desired after a perusal of his writings, the reader is

referred to the charming biography, published by George Ticknor in 1864,

and reissued with this edition of Prescott’s works.

More than thirty years have elapsed since the last revised edition was

presented to the public. Its editor, Mr. John Foster Kirk, was

pre-eminently fitted for his work. He had been Mr. Prescott’s private

secretary for eleven years, and was perhaps more familiar than was any

other man with the period of Spanish history of which Prescott wrote. He

had, moreover, himself achieved a most enviable international reputation

by his “Life of Charles the Bold.” In his notes he condensed the

additional information which a generation of scholars had contributed to

the subjects treated of in Prescott’s pages. Those notes are all

incorporated in the present edition.

But since Kirk’s notes were penned another generation of students has

been investigating the history of Spain--a generation which has enjoyed

more abundant opportunities for research than any scholars before had

known. Numberless manuscripts have been rescued from monastic limbo, the

caked dust of centuries has been scraped away from scores of volumes in

the public archives, and the searchlights of modern scientific

investigation have been turned upon places that once seemed hopelessly

dark. As if this were not enough, explorers from many lands have plunged

into the depths of the Mexican forests, and penetrated the quebradas of

the Andes, in attempts to wrest from them the secrets of their ancient

history.

The result is an immense number of volumes filled with statements

startlingly diverse and with conclusions widely conflicting. Many of

these volumes, especially those that emanated from the explorers, were

written by men unskilled in historical writing,--special pleaders, and

not historians,--men who were more anxious to demonstrate the soundness

of their own theories than to arrive at absolute knowledge concerning

the institutions of Peru and of Mexico.

It has been the task of the editor of this edition to separate from this

mass of material the conclusions in which scholars for the most part

agree, and to embody those conclusions in additional footnotes. He has

not ordinarily deemed it necessary to specify the authors read. Because

he knows that the average reader abhors quotations hurled at him in

unfamiliar tongues, he has, in quoting, always used the best known

authority in English.

In preparing these new volumes for the press the texts of editions

previously issued have been carefully compared in order to insure

perfect accuracy. In all such matters the publishers have aimed to put

forth Prescott’s writings in the form that must be regarded for many

years to come as the standard edition of America’s most popular

historian.

WILFRED H. MUNRO.

BROWN UNIVERSITY,

December 20, 1904.

EDITOR’S PREFACE

The publication of Prescott’s second work, “The History of the Conquest

of Mexico,” was justly regarded as the greatest achievement in American

historical writing. The theme was not a new one. Other writers had

essayed to tell the story of Hernando Cortés and of the marvellous

empire which that daring and resourceful captain had converted into a

province of Spain, but never before had one attempted the task in whom

patient research, careful reflection, and brilliant historical

imagination were so happily blended. The result of Prescott’s labors was

hailed with delight throughout the English-speaking world. His work was

speedily translated into many languages and his subject acquired an

interest which it has never since lost. To use the words of another

American scholar,[1] who did not agree with Prescott in many of the

conclusions he reached respecting the so-called Aztec civilization, “It

called into existence a larger number of works than was ever before

written upon any people of the same number and of the same importance.”

In order to appreciate the sensation the book created we must go

backward almost two generations and place ourselves in a country which

numbered hardly more than eighteen millions of inhabitants--less people

than now dwell in the New England States and in the four neighboring

Middle States,--New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. These

people were for the most part scattered throughout the regions bordering

upon the Atlantic Ocean and the Great Lakes. Comparatively few were to

be found west of the Mississippi River. Texas was an independent

republic. California and the lands adjacent belonged to Mexico. The

ownership of the vast region then vaguely known as Oregon had not been

settled. Alaska was Russian territory. Between the Mississippi and the

Sierras of California stretched great wastes of prairie and desert, of

mountain and table-land, which now support millions of people, but which

even so far-seeing a statesman as Daniel Webster then supposed would

never become fit for human habitation. Communication between even the

most thickly-settled States was exasperatingly infrequent. The first

public telegraph line had not been constructed; the railway system of

the country was still in feeble infancy; letters were carried at so much

per mile and at a very heavy charge; the postage upon books was

exceedingly costly. Only three years had elapsed since the first

transatlantic steamship line (the Cunard) had started its pioneer vessel

across the ocean. Newspapers for a long time afterwards headed their

columns with announcements of news so many “days later from Europe.”

Yet within a year seven thousand copies of the “Conquest of Mexico” were

sold in this sparsely-settled country, notwithstanding its slow methods

of communication. Boston was acknowledged to be the literary centre of

the nation, and Prescott, with the modesty which was his marked

characteristic, had supposed that the unlooked-for success which had

attended his first literary venture was due to the interest of his

personal friends in that city of culture. Such a supposition was no

longer tenable. Nor was it possible to ascribe its great popularity to

the influence of opinions expressed in Great Britain. The unprecedented

success of the book was due not to personal interest in its author, not

to the favorable judgment of literary Boston, not to the commendation of

the English reviews, but to the merits of the work itself. A wonderful

story was told wonderfully well. Men read it and commented upon it as

they do not comment upon books at the present time. They discussed it

not only on those rare occasions when they met friends from far away,

but in the long epistles they sent to those friends,--those letters from

which we to-day get so many glimpses of the life of the first half of

the nineteenth century. It was passed from hand to hand in the

communities where only the envied few were able to buy books, but where

all men, in those far less strenuous days, were anxious to read

them,--in those days also when the average critical judgment concerning

good literature was more highly developed than it now is, and men were

much more given to reflection and discussion than they now are.

As has been stated elsewhere, Mr. Prescott was a man of considerable

wealth. He was therefore able to place upon his library tables a much

larger amount of material with which to work than is ordinarily

possible. Not only did he purchase most of the books published upon his

subject, but he also secured copies of more valuable documentary

material from the libraries and public archives both of Spain and of

Mexico,--in this way gradually accumulating that library which was at

his death the finest private collection of books in America.

His method of composition has already been described. First, his hours

of work with his secretary were scrupulously observed each day; then

came the hours of reflection and of careful sifting of authorities

before pen was placed upon paper, followed by still more careful

reflection before the final copy was written. The tendency to

hero-worship which he shared with most American, and indeed with most

British, writers became much less marked as his chapters

increased,--though surely he may well be pardoned for rejoicing as he

does in the exploits of one of the greatest generals in European

history. It was perhaps admiration for that great captain which led him

to write the history of his conquests.

In reading the “Mexico” we must always remember that the task to which

Prescott devoted his energies was to give an accurate account of the

stupendous campaigns through which Cortés made himself master of the

lands of the Aztecs, and not to describe minutely the institutions

Cortés encountered in the Valley of Mexico. An account of the habits,

customs, and laws of the people of that valley was essential to a

proper comprehension of the magnitude of the Conquest. That account

Prescott constructed with material gathered from all available sources,

realizing all the while how very unsatisfactory those sources were. It

fills about half a volume, but, as he says in his first preface, it cost

him as much labor, and nearly as much time, as all the rest of his

history. This part of the work has been subjected to much severe

criticism, of which mention is made in the notes of this edition. Not a

few of the conclusions therein set forth have been shown to be

erroneous. For example, Mr. Prescott did not understand the institutions

of the Aztecs. It would have been most marvellous if he had. And yet it

must be said that, notwithstanding the time spent in research since

Prescott’s introductory chapters were penned, surprisingly little more

is really _known_ to-day concerning the ancient Aztec nation than was

known at that time. Writers who rejected his conclusions put forth

conjectures without number to supplant them, but most of those

conjectures were not founded upon facts. Their authors were for the most

part theorists, and not simply searchers for truth, as Prescott was.

Until a larger number of the so-called “Codices” shall have been brought

to light, and men shall have learned to read them as scholars have

learned to read the hieroglyphics of the East, little more absolute

_knowledge_ is likely to be secured. It is hardly possible, however,

that many more “Codices” will ever be found. If they exist, they are

probably lying unnoticed in some obscure monastery in Spain, or under a

mass of material, as yet unclassified, in the public archives of that

country. Of the many agencies that have worked for their destruction

three especially may be noted. First, the climate of the Mexican land,

with the innumerable insects that a tropical climate breeds; second, the

stern determination of the Mexicans themselves to destroy the memorials

of their ancient state; and, lastly, the holocausts of Zumárraga, first

archbishop of Mexico, whose hand, as Prescott says, “fell more heavily

than that of time itself upon the Aztec monuments.” This prelate,

emulating in his achievement the auto da fe of Arabic manuscripts which

Archbishop Ximenes had celebrated in Granada twenty years before, burned

all the manuscripts and other idolatrous material he could collect in

one great “mountain-heap” in the market-place of Tlatelolco.[2]

But when that additional knowledge shall have been attained, it is

hardly likely that any man will attempt to write anew the history of the

Spanish Conquest. The information secured from the rude pictorial

descriptions of the Aztec scribes and from the chiselled inscriptions of

the Aztec sculptors will be incorporated as footnotes in subsequent

editions of Prescott’s volumes. For even the critics who arraign

Prescott most severely for his misconception of Aztec institutions admit

that in everything which he wrote concerning the Conquest and the men

who took part in it he adhered most carefully to facts and followed

conscientiously the narratives of the participants. Those narratives,

as Prescott’s most prominent critic (Mr. Lewis H. Morgan) admits, “may

be trusted in whatever relates to the acts of the Spaniards and to the

acts and the personal characteristics of the Indians; in whatever

relates to their weapons, implements, and utensils, fabrics, food, and

raiment, and things of a similar character.”

Because he followed those contemporary writers so carefully, because

with his vivid historical imagination he was able to transport himself

into the remote past, to live with the conquering Spaniards the life of

toil and privation that was sometimes almost beyond their iron

endurance, to share with them their ever-present danger, to rejoice with

them in their final victories, because so living, sharing, and rejoicing

he was able to translate their dull stories into pages that sparkle with

the fulness of life, men will still turn to those pages for the most

graphic account of the exploits of Cortés and his associates,--for

generations yet to come his work will continue to be read as one of the

greatest masterpieces of descriptive literature.

W. H. M.

PREFACE

As the Conquest of Mexico has occupied the pens of Solís and of

Robertson, two of the ablest historians of their respective nations, it

might seem that little could remain at the present day to be gleaned by

the historical inquirer. But Robertson’s narrative is necessarily brief,

forming only part of a more extended work; and neither the British nor

the Castilian author was provided with the important materials for

relating this event which have been since assembled by the industry of

Spanish scholars. The scholar who led the way in these researches was

Don Juan Baptista Muñoz, the celebrated historiographer of the Indies,

who, by a royal edict, was allowed free access to the national archives,

and to all libraries, public, private, and monastic, in the kingdom and

its colonies. The result of his long labors was a vast body of

materials, of which unhappily he did not live to reap the benefit

himself. His manuscripts were deposited, after his death, in the

archives of the Royal Academy of History at Madrid; and that collection

was subsequently augmented by the manuscripts of Don Vargas Ponçe,

President of the Academy, obtained, like those of Muñoz, from different

quarters, but especially from the archives of the Indies at Seville.

On my application to the Academy, in 1838, for permission to copy that

part of this inestimable collection relating to Mexico and Peru, it was

freely acceded to, and an eminent German scholar, one of their own

number, was appointed to superintend the collation and transcription of

the manuscripts; and this, it may be added, before I had any claim on

the courtesy of that respectable body, as one of its associates. This

conduct shows the advance of a liberal spirit in the Peninsula since the

time of Dr. Robertson, who complains that he was denied admission to the

most important public repositories. The favor with which my own

application was regarded, however, must chiefly be attributed to the

kind offices of the venerable President of the Academy, Don Martin

Fernandez de Navarrete; a scholar whose personal character has secured

to him the same high consideration at home which his literary labors

have obtained abroad. To this eminent person I am under still further

obligations, for the free use which he has allowed me to make of his own

manuscripts,--the fruits of a life of accumulation, and the basis of

those valuable publications with which he has at different times

illustrated the Spanish colonial history.

From these three magnificent collections, the result of half a century’s

careful researches, I have obtained a mass of unpublished documents,

relating to the Conquest and Settlement of Mexico and of Peru,

comprising altogether about eight thousand folio pages. They consist of

instructions of the Court, military and private journals,

correspondence of the great actors in the scenes, legal instruments,

contemporary chronicles, and the like, drawn from all the principal

places in the extensive colonial empire of Spain, as well as from the

public archives in the Peninsula.

I have still further fortified the collection by gleaning such materials

from Mexico itself as had been overlooked by my illustrious predecessors

in these researches. For these I am indebted to the courtesy of Count

Cortina, and, yet more, to that of Don Lúcas Alaman, Minister of Foreign

Affairs in Mexico; but, above all, to my excellent friend, Don Angel

Calderon de la Barca, late Minister Plenipotentiary to that country from

the court of Madrid,--a gentleman whose high and estimable qualities,

even more than his station, secured him the public confidence, and

gained him free access to every place of interest and importance in

Mexico.

I have also to acknowledge the very kind offices rendered to me by the

Count Camaldoli at Naples; by the Duke of Serradifalco in Sicily, a

nobleman whose science gives additional lustre to his rank; and by the

Duke of Monteleone, the present representative of Cortés, who has

courteously opened the archives of his family to my inspection. To these

names must also be added that of Sir Thomas Phillips, Bart., whose

precious collection of manuscripts probably surpasses in extent that of

any private gentleman in Great Britain, if not in Europe; that of M.

Ternaux-Compans, the proprietor of the valuable literary collection of

Don Antonio Uguina, including the papers of Muñoz, the fruits of which

he is giving to the world in his excellent translations; and, lastly,

that of my friend and countryman, Arthur Middleton, Esq., late

Chargé-d’Affaires from the United States at the court of Madrid, for the

efficient aid he has afforded me in prosecuting my inquiries in that

capital.

In addition to this stock of original documents obtained through these

various sources, I have diligently provided myself with such printed

works as have reference to the subject, including the magnificent

publications, which have appeared both in France and England, on the

Antiquities of Mexico, which, from their cost and colossal dimensions,

would seem better suited to a public than to a private library.

Having thus stated the nature of my materials, and the sources whence

they are derived, it remains for me to add a few observations on the

general plan and composition of the work. Among the remarkable

achievements of the Spaniards in the sixteenth century, there is no one

more striking to the imagination than the conquest of Mexico. The

subversion of a great empire by a handful of adventurers, taken with all

its strange and picturesque accompaniments, has the air of romance

rather than of sober history; and it is not easy to treat such a theme

according to the severe rules prescribed by historical criticism. But,

notwithstanding the seductions of the subject, I have conscientiously

endeavored to distinguish fact from fiction, and to establish the

narrative on as broad a basis as possible of contemporary evidence; and

I have taken occasion to corroborate the text by ample citations from

authorities, usually in the original, since few of them can be very

accessible to the reader. In these extracts I have scrupulously

conformed to the ancient orthography, however obsolete and even

barbarous, rather than impair in any degree the integrity of the

original document.

Although the subject of the work is, properly, only the Conquest of

Mexico, I have prepared the way for it by such a view of the

civilization of the ancient Mexicans as might acquaint the reader with

the character of this extraordinary race, and enable him to understand

the difficulties which the Spaniards had to encounter in their

subjugation. This Introductory part of the work, with the essay in the

Appendix which properly belongs to the Introduction,[3] although both

together making only half a volume, has cost me as much labor, and

nearly as much time, as the remainder of the history. If I shall have

succeeded in giving the reader a just idea of the true nature and extent

of the civilization to which the Mexicans had attained, it will not be

labor lost.

The story of the Conquest terminates with the fall of the capital. Yet I

have preferred to continue the narrative to the death of Cortés, relying

on the interest which the development of his character in his military

career may have excited in the reader. I am not insensible to the hazard

I incur by such a course. The mind, previously occupied with one great

idea, that of the subversion of the capital, may feel the prolongation

of the story beyond that point superfluous, if not tedious, and may find

it difficult, after the excitement caused by witnessing a great national

catastrophe, to take an interest in the adventures of a private

individual. Solís took the more politic course of concluding his

narrative with the fall of Mexico, and thus leaves his readers with the

full impression of that memorable event, undisturbed, on their minds. To

prolong the narrative is to expose the historian to the error so much

censured by the French critics in some of their most celebrated dramas,

where the author by a premature _dénouement_ has impaired the interest

of his piece. It is the defect that necessarily attaches, though in a

greater degree, to the history of Columbus, in which petty adventures

among a group of islands make up the sequel of a life that opened with

the magnificent discovery of a World,--a defect, in short, which it has

required all the genius of Irving and the magical charm of his style

perfectly to overcome.

Notwithstanding these objections, I have been induced to continue the

narrative, partly from deference to the opinion of several Spanish

scholars, who considered that the biography of Cortés had not been fully

exhibited, and partly from the circumstance of my having such a body of

original materials for this biography at my command. And I cannot regret

that I have adopted this course; since, whatever lustre the Conquest may

reflect on Cortés as a military achievement, it gives but an imperfect

idea of his enlightened spirit and of his comprehensive and versatile

genius.

To the eye of the critic there may seem some incongruity in a plan which

combines objects so dissimilar as those embraced by the present history,

where the Introduction, occupied by the antiquities and origin of a

nation, has somewhat the character of a _philosophic_ theme, while the

conclusion is strictly _biographical_, and the two may be supposed to

match indifferently with the main body, or _historical_ portion of the

work. But I may hope that such objections will be found to have less

weight in practice than in theory; and, if properly managed, that the

general views of the Introduction will prepare the reader for the

particulars of the Conquest, and that the great public events narrated

in this will, without violence, open the way to the remaining personal

history of the hero who is the soul of it. Whatever incongruity may

exist in other respects, I may hope that the _unity of interest_, the

only unity held of much importance by modern critics, will be found

still to be preserved.

The distance of the present age from the period of the narrative might

be presumed to secure the historian from undue prejudice or partiality.

Yet by the American and the English reader, acknowledging so different a

moral standard from that of the sixteenth century, I may possibly be

thought too indulgent to the errors of the Conquerors; while by a

Spaniard, accustomed to the undiluted panegyric of Solís, I may be

deemed to have dealt too hardly with them. To such I can only say that,

while, on the one hand, I have not hesitated to expose in their

strongest colors the excesses of the Conquerors, on the other, I have

given them the benefit of such mitigating reflections as might be

suggested by the circumstances and the period in which they lived. I

have endeavored not only to present a picture true in itself, but to

place it in its proper light, and to put the spectator in a proper point

of view for seeing it to the best advantage. I have endeavored, at the

expense of some repetition, to surround him with the spirit of the

times, and, in a word, to make him, if I may so express myself, a

contemporary of the sixteenth century. Whether, and how far, I have

succeeded in this, he must determine.

For one thing, before I conclude, I may reasonably ask the reader’s

indulgence. Owing to the state of my eyes, I have been obliged to use a

writing-case made for the blind, which does not permit the writer to see

his own manuscript. Nor have I ever corrected, or even read, my own

original draft. As the chirography, under these disadvantages, has been

too often careless and obscure, occasional errors, even with the utmost

care of my secretary, must have necessarily occurred in the

transcription, somewhat increased by the barbarous phraseology imported

from my Mexican authorities. I cannot expect that these errors have

always been detected even by the vigilant eye of the perspicacious

critic to whom the proof-sheets have been subjected.

In the Preface to the “History of Ferdinand and Isabella,” I lamented

that, while occupied with that subject, two of its most attractive

parts had engaged the attention of the most popular of American authors,

Washington Irving. By a singular chance, something like the reverse of

this has taken place in the composition of the present history, and I

have found myself unconsciously taking up ground which he was preparing

to occupy. It was not till I had become master of my rich collection of

materials that I was acquainted with this circumstance; and, had he

persevered in his design, I should unhesitatingly have abandoned my own,

if not from courtesy, at least from policy; for, though armed with the

weapons of Achilles, this could give me no hope of success in a

competition with Achilles himself. But no sooner was that distinguished

writer informed of the preparations I had made, than, with the

gentlemanly spirit which will surprise no one who has the pleasure of

his acquaintance, he instantly announced to me his intention of leaving

the subject open to me. While I do but justice to Mr. Irving by this

statement, I feel the prejudice it does to myself in the unavailing

regret I am exciting in the bosom of the reader.

I must not conclude this Preface, too long protracted as it is already,

without a word of acknowledgment to my friend George Ticknor, Esq., the

friend of many years,--for his patient revision of my manuscript; a

labor of love, the worth of which those only can estimate who are

acquainted with his extraordinary erudition and his nice critical taste.

If I have reserved his name for the last in the list of those to whose

good offices I am indebted, it is most assuredly not because I value

his services least.

WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT.

BOSTON, October 1, 1843.

NOTE.--The author’s emendations of this history include many

additional notes, which, being often contradictory to the text,

have been printed between brackets. They were chiefly derived from

the copious annotations of Don José F. Ramirez and Don Lúcas Alaman

to the two Spanish translations published in Mexico. There could be

no stronger guarantee of the value and general accuracy of the work

than the minute labor bestowed upon it by these distinguished

scholars.--K.

GENERAL CONTENTS

BOOK I

INTRODUCTION--VIEW OF THE AZTEC CIVILIZATION