Pizarro, dwell exclusively on the darker features of his portrait. There
was no one of her sons to whom Spain was under larger obligations for
extent of empire, for his hand won for her the richest of the Indian
jewels that once sparkled in her imperial diadem. When we contemplate
the perils he braved, the sufferings he patiently endured, the
incredible obstacles he overcame, the magnificent results he effected
with his single arm, as it were, unaided by the government--though
neither a good nor a great man, in the highest sense of that term--it is
impossible not to regard him as a very extraordinary one.
HERNANDO CORTÉS.
BY WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT.
[The Spanish conqueror of Mexico, born 1485, died 1547. Born of a
noble race, he was educated at the University of Salamanca, but
soon devoted his attention to arms. He turned his eyes to America
in 1504, and sailing thither, held various minor offices of trust,
civic and military, till the discovery of Mexico. Cortés was
appointed by Velasquez, the governor-general, to the command of the
new expedition designed for Mexico in 1518. Though afterward
superseded by his jealous superior, he succeeded in evading the
enforcement of the decree, and landed at Tabasco, Mexico, on March
4, 1519. He burned his ships and committed himself to success or
death. His army contained only five hundred and fifty Spaniards,
but with these, and the native allies whom he seduced by his arts,
he conquered the Mexican Empire in little more than two years.
Though he was rewarded with titles and wealth, he was ungratefully
treated by the king--a common fate of the great servants of
Spain--and died in retirement, out of court favor.]
Cortés, at the time of the Mexican Conquest, was thirty-three or
thirty-four years of age. In stature he was rather above the middle
size. His countenance was pale, and his large dark eyes gave an
expression of gravity to his countenance not to have been expected in
one of his cheerful temperament. His figure was slender, at least till
later life; but his chest was deep, his shoulders broad, his frame
muscular and well proportioned. It presented the union of agility and
vigor which qualified him to excel in fencing, horsemanship, and the
other general exercises of chivalry. In his diet he was temperate,
careless of what he ate, and drinking little; while to toil and
privation he seemed perfectly indifferent. His dress--for he did not
disdain the impression produced by such adventitious aids--was such as
to set off his handsome figure to advantage, neither gaudy, nor
striking, nor rich. He wore few ornaments, and usually the same, but
those were of a great price. His manners, frank and soldier-like,
concealed a most cool and calculating spirit. With his gayest humor
there mingled a settled air of resolution which made those who
approached him feel that they must obey; and which infused something
like awe into the attachment of his most devoted followers. Such a
combination, in which love was tempered by authority, was the one
probably best calculated to inspire devotion in the rough and turbulent
spirits among whom his lot was to be cast.
The history of the Conquest is necessarily that of Cortés, who is, if I
may so say, not merely the soul but the body of the enterprise; present
everywhere in person, out in the thick of the fight, or in the building
of the works, with his sword or with his musket, sometimes leading his
soldiers, and sometimes directing his little navy. The negotiations,
intrigues, correspondence, are all conducted by him; and, like Cæsar, he
wrote his own Commentaries in the heat of the stirring scenes which form
the subject of them. His character is marked with the most opposite
traits, embracing qualities apparently the most incompatible. He was
avaricious, yet liberal; bold to desperation, yet cautious and
calculating in his plans; magnanimous, yet very cunning; courteous and
affable in his deportment, yet inexorably stern; lax in his notions of
morality, yet (not uncommon) a sad bigot.
The great feature in his character was constancy of purpose; a constancy
not to be daunted by danger, nor baffled by disappointment, nor wearied
out by impediments and delays.
He was a knight-errant in the literal sense of the word. Of all the band
of adventurous cavaliers whom Spain, in the sixteenth century, sent
forth on the career of discovery and conquest, there was none more
deeply filled with the spirit of romantic enterprise than Hernando
Cortés. Dangers and difficulties, instead of deterring, seemed to have a
charm in his eyes. They were necessary to rouse him to a full
consciousness of his powers. He grappled with them at the outset, and,
if I may so express myself, seemed to prefer to take his enterprises by
the most difficult side. He conceived, at the first moment of his
landing in Mexico, the design of its conquest. When he saw the strength
of its civilization, he was not turned from his purpose. When he was
assailed by the superior force of Narvaez, he still persisted in it; and
when he was driven in ruin from the capital, he still cherished his
original idea. How successfully he carried it into execution, we have
seen. After the few years of repose which succeeded the Conquest, his
adventurous spirit impelled him to that dreary march across the marshes
of Chiapa; and, after another interval, to seek his fortunes on the
stormy Californian gulf. When he found that no other continent remained
for him to conquer, he made serious proposals to the emperor to equip a
fleet at his own expense, with which he would sail to the Moluccas, and
subdue the Spice Islands for the crown of Castile!
This spirit of knight-errantry might lead us to under-value his talents
as a general, and to regard him merely in the light of a lucky
adventurer. But this would be doing him injustice; for Cortés was
certainly a great general, if that man be one who performs great
achievements with the resources which his own genius has created. There
is probably no instance in history where so vast an enterprise has been
achieved by means apparently so inadequate. He may be truly said to have
effected the conquest by his own resources. If he was indebted for his
success to the co-operation of the Indian tribes, it was the force of
his genius that obtained command of such materials. He arrested the arm
that was lifted to smite him, and made it do battle in his behalf. He
beat the Tlascalans, and made them his stanch allies. He beat the
soldiers of Narvaez, and doubled his effective force by it. When his
own men deserted him he did not desert himself. He drew them back by
degrees, and compelled them to act by his will till they were all as one
man. He brought together the most miscellaneous collection of
mercenaries who ever fought under one standard--adventurers from Cuba
and the isles, craving for gold; hidalgos, who came from the old country
to win laurels; broken-down cavaliers, who hoped to mend their fortunes
in the New World; vagabonds flying from justice; the grasping followers
of Narvaez, and his own reckless veterans--men with hardly a common tie,
and burning with the spirit of jealousy and faction; wild tribes of the
natives from all parts of the country, who had been sworn enemies from
their cradles, and who had met only to cut one another’s throats and to
procure victims for sacrifice; men, in short, differing in race, in
language, and in interests, with scarcely anything in common among them.
Yet this motley congregation was assembled in one camp, compelled to
bend to the will of one man, to consort together in harmony, to breathe,
as it were, one spirit, and to move on a common principle of action! It
is in this wonderful power over the discordant masses thus gathered
under his banner that we recognize the genius of the great commander no
less than in the skill of his military operations.
His power over the minds of his soldiers was a natural result of their
confidence in his abilities. But it is also to be attributed to his
popular manners--that happy union of authority and companionship which
fitted him for the command of a band of roving adventurers. It would not
have done for him to have fenced himself round with the stately reserve
of a commander of regular forces. He was embarked with his men in a
common adventure, and nearly on terms of equality, since he held his
commission by no legal warrant. But while he indulged this freedom and
familiarity with his soldiers, he never allowed it to interfere with
their strict obedience, nor to impair the severity of discipline. When
he had risen to higher consideration, although he affected more state,
he still admitted his veterans to the same intimacy. “He preferred,”
says Diaz, “to be called ‘Cortés’ by us, to being called by any title;
and with good reason,” continues the enthusiastic old cavalier, “for the
name of Cortés is as famous in our day as was that of Cæsar among the
Romans, or of Hannibal among the Carthaginians.” He showed the same kind
regard toward his ancient comrades in the very last act of his life; for
he appropriated a sum by his will for the celebration of two thousand
masses for the souls of those who had fought with him in the campaigns
of Mexico.
His character has been unconsciously traced by the hand of a master--
“And oft the chieftain deigned to aid
And mingle in the mirth they made;
For though, with men of high degree,
The proudest of the proud was he,
Yet, trained in camps, he knew the art
To win the soldier’s hardy heart.
They love a captain to obey,
Boisterous as March, yet fresh as May;
With open hand, and brow as free,
Lover of wine and minstrelsy;
Ever the first to scale a tower,
As venturous in a lady’s bower;
Such buxom chief shall lead his host
From India’s fires to Zembla’s frost.”
Cortés, without much violence, might have sat for this portrait of
Marmion.
Cortés was not a vulgar conqueror. He did not conquer from the mere
ambition of conquest. If he destroyed the ancient capital of the Aztecs,
it was to build up a more magnificent capital on its ruins. If he
desolated the land and broke up its existing institutions, he employed
the short period of his administration in digesting schemes for
introducing there a more improved culture and a higher civilization. In
all his expeditions he was careful to study the resources of the
country, its social organization, and its physical capacities. He
enjoined it on his captains to attend particularly to these objects. If
he was greedy of gold, like most of the Spanish cavaliers in the New
World, it was not to hoard it, nor merely to lavish it in the support of
a princely establishment, but to secure funds for prosecuting his
glorious discoveries. Witness his costly expeditions to the Gulf of
California.
His enterprises were not undertaken solely for mercenary objects, as is
shown by the various expeditions he set on foot for the discovery of a
communication between the Atlantic and the Pacific. In his schemes of
ambition he showed a respect for the interests of science, to be
referred partly to the natural superiority of his mind, but partly, no
doubt, to the influence of early education. It is, indeed, hardly
possible that a person of his wayward and mercurial temper should have
improved his advantages at the university, but he brought away from it a
tincture of scholarship seldom found among the cavaliers of the period,
and which had its influence in enlarging his own conceptions. His
celebrated letters are written with a simple elegance that, as I have
already had occasion to remark, have caused them to be compared to the
military narrative of Cæsar. It will not be easy to find in the
chronicles of the period a more concise yet comprehensive statement, not
only of the events of his campaigns, but of the circumstances most
worthy of notice in the character of the conquered countries.
Cortés was not cruel; at least, not cruel as compared with most of those
who followed his iron trade. The path of the conqueror is necessarily
marked with blood. He was not too scrupulous, indeed, in the execution
of his plans. He swept away the obstacles which lay in his track; and
his fame is darkened by the commission of more than one act which his
boldest apologist will find it hard to vindicate. But he was not cruel.
He allowed no outrage on his unresisting foes. This may seem small
praise, but it is an exception to the usual conduct of his countrymen in
their conquests, and it is something to be in advance of one’s time. He
was severe, it may be added, in enforcing obedience to his orders for
protecting their persons and their property. With his licentious crew,
it was sometimes not without hazard that he was so. After the Conquest,
he sanctioned the system of _repartimientos_; but so did Columbus. He
endeavored to regulate it by the most humane laws, and continued to
suggest many important changes for ameliorating the condition of the
natives. The best commentary on his conduct, in this respect, is the
deference that was shown him by the Indians, and the confidence with
which they appealed to him for protection in all their subsequent
distresses.
MARTIN LUTHER.
BY THOMAS CARLYLE.
[Leader of the German Reformation, born 1483, died 1546. Educated
at the University of Erfurt, and originally intending to become a
lawyer, he was carried by religious enthusiasm into an Augustinian
convent. After taking orders he became in a few years Professor of
Philosophy in the Wittenberg University, and Doctor of Theology. It
was not till the promulgation of indulgences for sin, issued by
Pope Leo V to raise funds for the building of the Cathedral of St.
Peter’s at Rome, that Luther took a stand antagonistic to the Roman
Church. He posted ninety-five Latin theses on the door of the
Wittenberg church as a protest, which contained the germ of the
Protestant doctrine. This bold act kindled a fire throughout
Europe. Luther’s celebrated disputation with Doctor Eck, and his
fierce pamphlets against Rome, which were scattered broadcast by
the press, added fuel to the flames, and he was soon supported by
the sympathy and adherence of many of the nobles, particularly
George of Saxony, the reformer’s own electoral prince, as well as
by the support of large masses of the people. Luther was
excommunicated in 1520, and in the same year was summoned to answer
before Charles V, the German emperor,
[Illustration: MARTIN LUTHER.]
at the Diet of Worms. The reformer defended himself with great
eloquence and vigor, but was placed under the ban of the Empire,
and thenceforward became both a religious and political outlaw. The
Lutheran reformation rapidly spread to France, Switzerland, the
Scandinavian kingdoms, England, and Scotland, during the life of
its apostle, and shook the power of the Roman hierarchy to its very
center. Luther was protected in his work by a powerful band of
German princes, and when he died the larger part of North Germany
had accepted his doctrine. He was perhaps the most extraordinary
figure of an age prolific in great men.]
The Diet of Worms and Luther’s appearance there on the 17th of April,
1521, may be considered as the greatest scene in modern European
history; the point, indeed, from which the whole subsequent history of
civilization takes its rise. After multiplied negotiations and
disputations, it had come to this. The young Emperor Charles V, with all
the princes of Germany, papal nuncios, dignitaries, spiritual and
temporal, are assembled there: Luther is to appear and answer for
himself, whether he will recant or not. The world’s pomp and power sits
there on this hand; on that, stands up for God’s truth one man, the poor
miner, Hans Luther’s son. Friends had reminded him of Huss, advised him
not to go; he would not be advised. A large company of friends rode out
to meet him, with still more earnest warnings; he answered, “Were there
as many devils in Worms as there are roof-tiles, I would on.” The
people, on the morrow, as he went to the hall of the diet, crowded the
windows and house-tops, some of them calling out to him, in solemn
words, not to recant. “Whosoever denieth me before men!” they cried to
him, as in a kind of solemn petition and adjuration. Was it not in
reality a petition too--the petition of the whole world lying in dark
bondage of soul, paralyzed under a black spectral nightmare and
triple-hatted chimera, calling itself Father in God, and what not--“Free
us; it rests with thee; desert us not!”
Luther did not desert us. His speech of two hours distinguished itself
by its respectful, wise, and honest tone; submissive to whatsoever
could lawfully claim submission, not submissive to any more than that.
His writings, he said, were partly his own, partly derived from the Word
of God. As to what was his own, human infirmity entered into it;
unguarded anger, blindness, many things, doubtless, which it were a
blessing for him could he abolish altogether. But as to what stood on
sound truth and the Word of God, he could not recant it. How could he?
“Confute me,” he concluded, “by proofs of Scripture, or else by plain,
just arguments. I can not recant otherwise; for it is neither safe nor
prudent to do aught against conscience. Here stand I; I can do no other.
God assist me!” It is, as we say, the greatest moment in the modern
history of men. English Puritanism, England and its Parliaments,
Americas, and the vast work done in these two centuries; French
Revolution, Europe and its work everywhere at present--the germ of it
all lay there. Had Luther in that moment done other, it had all been
otherwise! The European world was asking him: Am I to sink ever lower
into falsehood, stagnant putrescence, loathsome, accursed death; or,
with what paroxysm, to cast the falsehoods out of me, and be cured and
live?
Great wars, contentions, and disunion followed out of this Reformation,
which last down to our day, and are yet far from ended. Great talk and
crimination has been made about these. They are lamentable, undeniable;
but, after all, what has Luther or his cause to do with them? It seems
strange reasoning to charge the Reformation with all this. When Hercules
turned the purifying river into King Augeas’s stables, I have no doubt
the confusion that resulted was considerable all around, but I think it
was not Hercules’s blame; it was some other’s blame! The Reformation
might bring what results it liked when it came, but the Reformation
simply could not help coming.
Of Luther I will add now, in reference to all these wars and bloodshed,
the noticeable fact that none of them began so long as he continued
living. The controversy did not get to fighting so long as he was there.
To me it is a proof of his greatness in all senses, this fact. How
seldom do we find a man that has stirred up some vast commotion, who
does not himself perish, swept away in it! Such is the usual course of
revolutionists. Luther continued, in a good degree, sovereign of this
greatest revolution; all Protestants, of what rank or function soever,
looking much to him for guidance; and he held it peaceably, continued
firm at the center of it. A man to do this must have a kingly faculty;
he must have the gift to discern at all turns where the true heart of
the matter lies, and to plant himself courageously on that, as a strong,
true man, that other true men may rally round him there. He will not
continue leader of men otherwise. Luther’s clear, deep force of
judgment, his force of all sorts--of _silence_, of tolerance and
moderation among others--are very notable in these circumstances.
Tolerance, I say; a very genuine kind of tolerance: he distinguishes
what is essential, and what is not; the unessential may go very much as
it will. A complaint comes to him that such and such a reformed preacher
“will not preach without a cassock.” “Well,” answers Luther, “what harm
will a cassock do the man? Let him have a cassock to preach in; let him
have three cassocks, if he find benefit in them!” His conduct in the
matter of Carlstadt’s wild image-breaking; of the Anabaptists; of the
Peasants’ war, shows a noble strength, very different from spasmodic
violence. With sure, prompt insight, he discriminates what is what; a
strong, just man, he speaks forth what is the wise course, and all men
follow him in that. Luther’s written works give similar testimony of
him. The dialect of these speculations is now grown obsolete for us, but
one still reads them with a singular attraction. And, indeed, the mere
grammatical diction is still legible enough. Luther’s merit in literary
history is of the greatest; his dialect became the language of all
writing. They are not well written, these four-and-twenty quartos of
his; written hastily, with quite other than literary objects. But in no
books have I found a more robust, genuine, I will say noble, faculty of
a man than in these. A rugged honesty, homeliness, simplicity; a rugged,
sterling sense and strength. He flashes out illumination from him; his
smiting idiomatic phrases seem to cleave into the very secret of the
matter. Good humor too, nay, tender affection, nobleness, and depth.
This man could have been a poet too! He had to _work_ an epic poem, and
not write one. I call him a great thinker; as, indeed, his greatness of
heart already betokens that.
Richter says of Luther’s words, “His words are half-battles.” They may
be called so. The essential quality of him was, that he could fight and
conquer--that he was a right piece of human valor. No more valiant man,
no mortal heart to be called _braver_, that one has record of, ever
lived in that Teutonic kindred whose character is valor. His defiance of
the “devils” in Worms was not a mere boast, as the like might be if now
spoken. It was a faith of Luther’s that there were devils, spiritual
denizens of the pit, continually besetting men. Many times in his
writings this turns up, and a most small sneer has been grounded on it
by some.
In the room of the Wartburg, where he sat translating the Bible, they
still show you a black spot on the wall, the strange memorial of one of
these conflicts. Luther was translating one of the Psalms; he was worn
down with long labor, with sickness, abstinence from food; there rose
before him some hideous, indefinable image, which he took for the Evil
One, to forbid his work. Luther started up with fiend-defiance, flung
his inkstand at the specter, and it disappeared! The spot still remains
there, a curious monument of several things. Any apothecary’s apprentice
can now tell us what we are to think of this apparition in a scientific
sense; but the man’s heart that dare rise defiant, face to face, against
hell itself, can give no higher proof of fearlessness. The thing he
will quail before exists not on this earth or under it. Fearless enough!
“The devil is aware,” writes he on one occasion, “that this does not
proceed out of fear in me. I have seen and defied innumerable devils.”
Of Duke George, of Leipsic, a great enemy of his, he said, “Duke George
is not equal to one devil--far short of a devil! If I had business at
Leipsic, I would ride into Leipsic, though it rained Duke Georges for
nine days running.” What a reservoir of dukes to ride into!