"THE CONQUEST OF PERU"--"PHILIP II."
The _Conquest of Peru_ was, for the most part, written more rapidly than
any other of Prescott's histories. Much of the material necessary for it
had been acquired during his earlier studies, and with this material he
had been long familiar when he began to write. The book was, indeed, as
he himself described it, a pendant to the _Conquest of Mexico_. Had the
latter work not been written, it is likely that the _Conquest of Peru_
would be now accepted as the most popular of Prescott's works.
Unfortunately, it is always subjected to a comparison with the other and
greater book, and therefore, relatively, it suffers. In the first place,
when so compared, it resembles an imperfect replica of the _Mexico_
rather than an independent history. The theme is, in its nature, the
same, and so it lacks the charm of novelty. The exploits of Pizarro do
not merely recall to the modern reader the adventurous achievements of
Cortes, but, as a matter of fact, they were actually inspired by them.
Thus, Pizarro's march from the coast over the Andes closely resembles
the march of Cortes over the Cordilleras. His seizure of the Inca,
Atahualpa, was undoubtedly suggested to him by the seizure of Montezuma.
The massacre of the Peruvians in Caxamarca reads like a reminiscence of
the massacre of the Aztecs by Alvarado in Mexico. The fighting, if
fighting it may be called, presents the same features as are found in
the battles of Cortes. So far as there is any difference in the two
narratives, this difference is not in favour of the later book. If
Pizarro bears a likeness to Cortes, the likeness is but superficial. His
soul is the soul of Cortes _habitans in sicco_. There is none of the
frankness of the conqueror of Mexico, none of his chivalry, little of
his bluff good comradeship. Pizarro rather impresses one as
mean-spirited, avaricious, and cruel, so that we hold lightly his
undoubted courage, his persistency, and his endurance. Moreover, the
Peruvians are too feeble as antagonists to make the record of their
resistance an exciting one. They lack the ferocity of the Aztec
character, and when they are slaughtered by the white men, the tale is
far more pitiful than stirring. Even Prescott's art cannot make us feel
that there is anything romantic in the conquest and butchery of a flock
of sheep. The outrages perpetrated upon an effeminate people by their
Spanish masters form a long and dreary record of robbery and rape and it
is inevitably monotonous.
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 preeminence 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 archaeology, 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:--
"If I should go to heaven ... I shall find many acquaintances
there, and some of them very respectable, of the olden time....
Don't you think I should have a kindly greeting from good Isabella?
Even Bloody Mary, I think, will smile on me; for I love the old
Spanish stock, the house of Trastamara. But there is one that I am
sure will owe me a grudge, and that is the very man I have been
making two good volumes upon. With all my good nature, I can't wash
him even into the darkest French grey. He is black and all
black.... Is it not charitable to give Philip a place in heaven?"
Again, he styles Philip one "who may be considered as to other Catholics
what a Puseyite is to other Protestants." And elsewhere he confesses to
"a sneaking fondness for Philip." It was very like him, this hesitation
to condemn; and it recalls a memorandum which he made while writing his
_Peru_: "never call hard names a la Southey." Hence in a letter of his
to Motley, who had sent him a copy of the _Dutch Republic_,--a letter
which forms an interesting complement to Motley's note to him, he
wrote:--
"You have laid it on Philip rather hard. Indeed, you have whittled
him down to such an imperceptible point that there is hardly enough
of him left to hang a newspaper paragraph on, much less five or six
volumes of solid history as I propose to do. But then, you make it
up with your own hero, William of Orange, and I comfort myself with
the reflection that you are looking through a pair of Dutch
spectacles after all."
Prescott's _Philip II_. raised no such questions of accuracy as followed
upon the publications of the Mexican and Peruvian histories. As in the
case of the _Ferdinand and Isabella_, the sources were unimpeachable,
first-hand, and contained the more intimate revelations of incident and
motive. There were no archaeological problems to be solved, no obscure
racial puzzles to perplex the investigator. The reign of Philip had
simply to be interpreted in the light of the revelations which Philip
himself and his contemporaries left behind them--often in papers which
were never meant for more than two pairs of eyes. How complete are these
revelations, one may learn from a striking passage written by Motley,
who speaks in it of the abundant stores of knowledge which lie at the
disposal of the modern student of history.
"To him who has the patience and industry, many mysteries are thus
revealed, which no political sagacity or critical acumen could have
divined. He leans over the shoulder of Philip the Second at his
writing-table, as the King spells patiently out, with cipher-key
in hand, the most concealed hieroglyphics of Parma, or Guise, or
Mendoza.... He enters the cabinet of the deeply pondering
Burghleigh, and takes from the most private drawer the memoranda
which record that minister's unutterable doubtings; he pulls from
the dressing-gown folds of the stealthy, soft-gliding Walsingham
the last secret which he has picked from the Emperor's pigeon-holes
or the Pope's pocket.... He sits invisible at the most secret
councils of the Nassaus and Barneveldt and Buys, or pores with
Farnese over coming victories and vast schemes of universal
conquest; he reads the latest bit of scandal, the minutest
characteristic of King or minister, chronicled by his gossiping
Venetians for the edification of the Forty."[52]
All this material and more was in Prescott's hands, and he made full use
of it. His narrative, moreover, was told in a style which was easy and
unstudied, less glowing than in the _Mexico_, but even better fitted for
the telling of events which were so pregnant with good and ill to
succeeding generations. In the pages of _Philip II._ we have neither the
somewhat formal student who wrote of Ferdinand and Isabella, nor the
romanticist whose imagination was kindled by the reports of Cortes.
Rather do we find one who has at last reached the highest levels of
historical writing, and who with perfect poise develops a noble theme in
a noble way. The only criticism which has ever been brought against the
book has come from those who, like Thoreau, regard literary finish as a
defect in historical composition. The author of Walden seemed, indeed,
to single out Prescott for special animadversion in this respect, and
his rather rasping sentences contain the only jarring notes that were
sounded by any contemporary of the historian. Thoreau, writing of the
colonial historians of Massachusetts, such as Josselyn, remarked with a
sort of perverse appreciation: "They give you one piece of nature at any
rate, and that is themselves, smacking their lips like a
coach-whip,--none of those emasculated modern histories, such as
Prescott's, cursed with a style."
If style be really a curse to an historian, then Prescott remained under
its ban to the very last. As a bit of vivid writing his description of
the battle of Lepanto was much admired, and Irving thought it the best
thing in the book. A bit of it may be quoted by way of showing that
Prescott in his later years lost nothing of his vivacity or of his
fondness for battle-scenes.
First we see the Turkish armament moving up to battle against the allied
fleets:--
"The galleys spread out, as usual with the Turks, in the form of a
regular half-moon, covering a wider extent of surface than the
combined fleets, which they somewhat exceeded in number. They
presented, indeed, as they drew nearer, a magnificent array, with
their gilded and gaudily-painted prows, and their myriads of
pennons and streamers fluttering gayly in the breeze; while the
rays of the morning sun glanced on the polished scimitars of
Damascus, and on the superb aigrettes of jewels which sparkled in
the turbans of the Ottoman chiefs.... The distance between the two
fleets was now rapidly diminishing. At this solemn moment a
death-like silence reigned throughout the armament of the
confederates. Men seemed to hold their breath, as if absorbed in
the expectation of some great catastrophe. The day was magnificent.
A light breeze, still adverse to the Turks, played on the waters,
somewhat fretted by the contrary winds. It was nearly noon; and as
the sun, mounting through a cloudless sky, rose to the zenith, he
seemed to pause, as if to look down on the beautiful scene, where
the multitude of galleys moving over the water, showed like a
holiday spectacle rather than a preparation for mortal combat."
Then we have the two fleets in the thick of combat:--
"The Pacha opened at once on his enemy a terrible fire of cannon
and musketry. It was returned with equal spirit and much more
effect; for the Turks were observed to shoot over the heads of
their adversaries. The Moslem galley was unprovided with the
defences which protected the sides of the Spanish vessels; and the
troops, crowded together on the lofty prow, presented an easy mark
to their enemy's balls. But though numbers of them fell at every
discharge, their places were soon supplied by those in reserve.
They were enabled, therefore, to keep up an incessant fire, which
wasted the strength of the Spaniards; and, as both Christian and
Mussulman fought with indomitable spirit, it seemed doubtful to
which side victory would incline....
"Thus the fight raged along the whole extent of the entrance to the
Gulf of Lepanto. The volumes of vapour rolling heavily over the
waters effectually shut out from sight whatever was passing at any
considerable distance, unless when a fresher breeze dispelled the
smoke for a moment, or the flashes of the heavy guns threw a
transient gleam on the dark canopy of battle. If the eye of the
spectator could have penetrated the cloud of smoke that enveloped
the combatants, and have embraced the whole scene at a glance, he
would have perceived them broken up into small detachments,
separately engaged one with another, independently of the rest, and
indeed ignorant of all that was doing in other quarters. The
contest exhibited few of those large combinations and skilful
manoeuvres to be expected in a great naval encounter. It was
rather an assemblage of petty actions, resembling those on land.
The galleys, grappling together, presented a level arena, on which
soldier and galley-slave fought hand to hand, and the fate of the
engagement was generally decided by boarding. As in most
hand-to-hand contests, there was an enormous waste of life. The
decks were loaded with corpses, Christian and Moslem lying
promiscuously together in the embrace of death. Instances are
recorded where every man on board was slain or wounded. It was a
ghastly spectacle, where blood flowed in rivulets down the sides of
the vessels, staining the waters of the Gulf for miles around.
"It seemed as if a hurricane had swept over the sea and covered it
with the wreck of the noble armaments which a moment before were so
proudly riding on its bosom. Little had they now to remind one of
their late magnificent array, with their hulls battered, their
masts and spars gone or splintered by the shot, their canvas cut
into shreds and floating wildly on the breeze, while thousands of
wounded and drowning men were clinging to the floating fragments
and calling piteously for help."
Had Prescott lived, his history of Philip II. would have been extended
to a greater length than any of his other books--probably to six volumes
instead of the three which are all that he ever finished. It is likely,
too, that this book would have constituted his surest claim to high rank
as an historian. He came to the writing of it with a mind stored with
the accumulations of twenty years of patient, conscientious study. He
had lost none of his charm as a writer, while he had acquired
laboriously that special knowledge and training which are needed in one
who would be a master of historical research. _Philip II._ shows on
every page the skill with which information drawn from multifarious
sources can be massed and marshalled by one who is not only documented
but who has thoroughly assimilated everything of value which his
documents contain. No better evidence of Prescott's thoroughness is
needed than the tribute which was paid to him by Motley, who had
diligently gleaned in the same field. He said; "I am astonished at your
omniscience. Nothing seems to escape you. Many a little trait of
character, scrap of intelligence, or dab of scene-painting which I had
kept in my most private pocket, thinking I had fished it out of unsunned
depths, I find already in your possession."[53]
And we may well join with Motley in his expression of regret that so
solid a piece of historical composition should remain unfinished.
Writing from Rome to Mr. William Amory soon after Prescott's death,
Motley said:--
"I feel inexpressibly disappointed ... that the noble and crowning
monument of his life, for which he had laid such massive
foundations, and the structure of which had been carried forward in
such a grand and masterly manner, must remain uncompleted, like the
unfinished peristyle of some stately and beautiful temple on which
the night of time has suddenly descended."[54]