Cortes: or, The discovery, conquest and more recent history of Mexico

Introduction

IN presenting to the public this series of Biographies of Great Adventurers, the publishers design to furnish a concise and accurate account of great events, as related to individual lives.

A high moral and religious sentiment is usually connected with the grandest achievements of men and their greatest gifts to " the world. History is but an aggregation of incomplete biographies — ■ and can never be understood apart from the principles moving the chief actors. This is the reason for the present publications. We feel assured that they will supply a long-felt need in our Sunday-school and Home Libraries.

F. H. A.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Page.

Colossal Head at Izanial Front.

Fernando Cortes ....... .28

View in the Isle of Cuba

Guatemalian Idol ......

Montezuma

Ancient Building at Yucatan

Pyramid of Cholnla ......

View of Mexico ......

A Mexican Temple

Mexican Costumes

The Virgin of Guadaloupe ....

Benito Juarez

Matais Romerio

The Emperor Maximilian

The Empress Carlot.ta ....

The City of Queretaro ....

The Execution of Maximilian

CONTENTS,

Page.

Chapter I

INTRODUCTORY — PROGRESS OF WESTERN DIS- COVERY AFTER COLUMBUS — DESCRIPTION OF MEXICO.

TT is a remarkable fact, that North America, ■*■ the region in which the Anglo-Saxon race has moss clearly developed its character and won some of its chief glories, both in enterprise, legislation, and religion, was first discovered under British auspices. To John Cabot, a Venetian, but residing in England, where (at Bristol) his son Sebastian was born, a license for a voyage of discovery was granted in 1497 by Henry VIL Sebastian was old enough to accompany his father. After passing the southern cape of Ireland, they sailed directly to the west; and on the 24th of June arrived at the large island which forms, as it were, a vast natural breakwater between the waves of the Atlantic and the waters of the great northern system of American lakes, flowing down the river into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. To the English it was indeed what the name given to it imported, and which it has ever since retained, New-found-land. It now constitutes one of the most important portions of the western empire of the British Crown.

The Cabots pursued their researches Southward, and were the earliest discoverers of the mainland of America, the coast line of which they traced as far as Florida. They returned to England with a valuable cargo, and brought with them several of the Datives of the lands they had visited. Years elapsed, however, before colonization began to fix a new race in the territories of the uncivilized Indians, who chiefly lived by hunting, and among whom no elements of social improvement were found. The pilgrim fathers and the Quakers took with them the principles of British religion, liberty, and law; and the history of their descendants, especially when contrasted with that of the colonies founded in Mexico and South America by the Spaniards and Portuguese, most instructively illustrates the character of the Divine administration, and establishes the fact that social prosperity can only be produced by the practical acknowledgment of the supremacy of Divine truth ; and that the extent of its existence will always be in exact proportion to the extent to which that truth is allowed to prevail.

In modern times, after brief agitation and contest, the English colonies secured their independence ; and the United States at once took their place among the nations of Christendom, with settled and liberal institutions, affording to their people advantages, of which they have fully availed themselves, for the secure enjoyment of all the blessings of society, and the rapid promotion of social advancement. More than half a century has elapsed since the Spanish colonies asserted their independence of the parent state. And this was the test of the value to society, of the principles which during three hundred years of dominion, their rulers had established. And what was the result ? As it was with the Spaniards at home, so it was with the Spanish colonists in America, Potent to destroy they were unable to reconstruct ; and the deplorable condition both of Old Spain and Xew in demonstrates, with melancholy certainty, the anti-social character of the religious domination to which they had submitted both their individual, their domestic, and their political life. Identity of cause is proved by identity of effect.

f v 3 by iii»- Spaniards, however, that what iji.i termed West Indian research was most

industrious!] prosecuted; and these i hes

CONQUEST OF MEXICO.

opened the way for the establishment of those maoiiificent, wealthy, and almost imperial de-

pendencies of the Spanish crown, the viceroyalties of Mexico and Peru. The mistaken notions of Columbus respecting the proximity of Asia to the islands which he had discovered, had never been removed from his mind. He believed to the last, that the great sea to the south, of which, in his later voyages he heard so many vague rumors, was the Indian Ocean ; and that somewhere along the coasts which he had been enabled only so imperfectly to trace, there must be a strait by which the Caribbean Sea would be connected with it. The discovery of this supposed strait, was one of the objects of that spirit of adventure which he had excited in Spain ; while that chivalrous temper, so congenial to the Spanish character, and which the Moorish campaign had revived, but which it had not been sufficient to exhaust, prompted many who were left without employment at the close of the war, and whose warlike restlessness was utterly unsuited to a state of peace and of increasing legal order, to seek beyond the ocean for a field in which it might be exercised.

The existence of this temper demands particular notice. It would scarcely be possible without it to understand the narratives of the subjugation of Mexico and Peru. Deeds of individual daring and prowess were produced by this disposition, which remind the reader of the fabulous periods of both ancient and modern history — of Hercules and Theseus, and of Amadis de Gaul and the Paladins of Charlemagne ; of the epics of Homer and Tasso. We are not to conceive of the character of these knightly adventurers from the ideas furnished by the gentlemen travellers or commercial speculators of our own day. They more closely resembled the knights-errant of romantic fiction. Clad in steel, hardy and fear- . adding to personal courage the skill of a scientific military discipline, seated on those •.( itul war-horses which as much terrified the Indians as the elephants of Pyrrhus did the

Romans, when first employed against them, and possessing, especially in addition to sword and lance, those newly-invented engines of destruction, which made them appear, to their untutored and superstitious opponents, as the children of the sky, wielding the thunder and lightning of their dreaded deities; thus prepared to act, and resolutely bent on a continually advancing movement, patient under toil, their courage stimulated by opposition, rising to the height of the difficulties they found in their way, instead of being intimidated by them, and eagerly, and yet steadily, marching on to surmount the most tremendous barriers, which threatened to render their progress impossible, and, like the great commander of old, reckoning nothing done while anything remained to be done, it is a matter of admiration, but not of surprise, that, in the expressive phraseologjr of Scripture, they went onward " conquering and to conquer."

But with all this romantic heroism, their character was often shadowed by the darkest evils.

Capable of vast conceptions, and employing means to realize them equally skilful and daring, of moral excellence they furnished no examples, of Christian virtue no traces, unless in that impassioned, bigoted spirit of proselytism which they termed " zeal." However the evils of their nature might be restrained where restraint seemed necessary for success, they not only existed, but were the master-principles which stimulated their cause. Zealous in religion, vet a religion which might have had its origin with the infernal enemies of God and man, characterized as it chiefly was by falsehood and cruelty. The}- were insatiably avaricious, and utterly unscrupulous in the means they employed to gratify their "accursed thirst for gold." We may not speak of the feebleness of moral principle, but of its total absence. The superiority of European intelligence 1 , they exhibited only as a cunning, more tile in expedients than that which the semirilized barbarian tribes whom they subdued They waded to empire through blood, and their religion was only less cruel than the sanguinary superstitions of Mexico. Their faith was merely the belief of the verbal expression of the religious dogmas taught them by the vassals of the Roman hierarchy, and their worship the outward observance of the ritual which Rome had invented and imposed ; and of conversion they had no other notion than that of a verbal reception of their creed, connected with submission to baptism. They regarded the unbelieving idolaters as holding possessions of which they might lawfully be deprived by the professors of the true faith ; and they saw no inconsistency between their usual course of rapine and slaughter, and those brief pauses from a violence — to which they immediately returned — which were necessaiy for the performance of some religious ceremony. Such was their religion, that it took its place among the other elements of their character, and occasioned no appearance of incongruity. Ruthless and treacherous murders perpetrated by wholesale, were preluded by the stage-glitter of the mass. With the mass their campaigns were interspersed, with the mass their triumphs were celebrated.

It is a fearful truth, illustrated and demonstrated by the whole history of these Spanish adventurers, that when Christianity is deprived of its spiritual life, and reduced to a merely verbal profession and external system, it loses all its power of moral influence and resistance ; and as the human body, when life departs, comes at once under the law of chemical agency, and passes into decomposition and decay, so the lifeless body of Christianity becomes powerless for resisting temptation, and capable of combining with the worst elements of human corruption, a lid even of supplying a poison, inoculation with which is death. These are dark pages of human history, replete with crime and chronicled in blood ; but truth and wisdom, however, demand that they be not passed over, but be made to fur- Dish the instruction which they involve. Against these fatal and ruinous errors the living Church ought in all ages to protest, and against the slightest tendency to admit them most carefully to guard. The evils of a dead Christianity are scarcely less numerous than the blessings produced by its living power. How " perilous" were such "times," was never more loudly declared than by the proceedings of these chivalrous soldiers of the Spanish Inquisition, whose heroism was as the boldness of demons. Let s} r stems be compared in their results. "By their fruits shall ye know them." Long before the Pilgrim Fathers began to struggle Avith their fearful difficulties in New England, sustained only by their trust in their Saviour-God, Mexico and Peru were brilliant gems in the imperial diadem of Spain. What are they now ? What is Spain itself?

Before any particular description of Mexico can be even attempted, attention must be paid to one of the leading facts of physical geography, and to that wise and beneficent law which is connected with it in the constitution of nature. Every one knows that the surface of the earth is not a level plain, but that there are great inequalities of hill and dale ; inequalities which are trivial as the roughnesses on the peel of the orange when compared with the entire magnitude of the globe, but large, sometimes stupendously so, when viewed in relation to the strength and stature of man. Some of the peaks of the vast range of the Himalaya Mountains, in the northern portion of India, rise to the height of twenty-seven thousand feet above the level of the ocean, and are supposed to be the loftiest in the world.

Now, in relation to this fact, there exists a remarkable law, which is most beneficial in its operation. Every one knows that sensible heat, the heat that man feels, is always in proportion to the elevation of the sun above the horizon at noon. In winter, when it is lowest, the weather ba colder : in summer, when highest, hotter. If, bj travelling southward, the sun's elevation is increased, the weather becomes warmer ; till, at the equator, where twice a year the sun is vertical, directly over head it is hottest of all. The geographical rule is, that the temperature of the climate is always in proportion to the distance from the equator north or south ; the extreme of heat being at the equator, and of cold at the north and south poles which are at the greatest distance from it.

Now there is another rule — we might almost call it a wonderful one, but so are all the works of God. It might be thought that the higher we went the hotter we should be. But it is not so. A comparatively small distance in elevation, taking the level of the ocean as the point of departure for our measurement is equivalent to a great distance on level ground from the equator. Take for instance, the very lofty mountain-range in the north of India. At the foot and for a little distance upwards, there are the usual vegetable productions of the tropics ; as we continue to ascend the average temperature is cooler and the vegetation of more temperate climates succeeds, just as it does for instance, in proceeding northwards from the equator ; till ascending higher we come at length to colder regions, and then to where there is perpetual winter, to the reign of ice and snow. The river Ganges, which pours its unfailing streams through the whole length of tropical India, rises high up the Himalayas where the ground is always covered with snow, flowing out of a cavern of perpetual frost. The river may thus be said to be fed by the melting snows of a tropical region, whose actual temperature is that of the frigid zone. On the acclivities of such mountains, therefore, all the varieties of the temperature of the earth's level surface may be found, from that of the equator through those of the temperate climates to that of the poles.

From this general law, we turn to that particular application of it which is furnished by the mountains of America. With a, slight interruption, there is a continuous range of mountains from the southernmost point of South America to the commencement of the Isthmus of Darien. This range — the Andes — throughout its whole length keeps close to the western shore of the continent; in some parts the base reaches to the very coast, never receding many miles from it. This range enters the isthmus, which in its narrowest part for a considerable length it occupies. Where the isthmus opens out again it comes nearer to the eastern coast on the Gulf of Mexico. It then pursues its course to the north, keeping nearer the western shore. It is here generally known now under the name of the Rocky Mountains, the western base of which, as in the neighborhood of the Columbia River, comes close to the Pacific.

If the map of the two continents be examined, it will be seen that the isthmus widens so as almost to suggest to the fancy the form of a funnel for pouring liquids into a narrow-necked bottle, the spout being bent somewhat horizontally. The northern and widening portion is

Mexico. The conformation of the land is very remarkable. It is almost filled with the outspreading mountain-range. On the eastern coast the base sometimes comes within twenty or thirty miles of the sea. and is seldom more than sixty miles distant. After a steep ascent of several thousand feet, large expanses of table-land are found — plains sometimes so surrounded by still higher mountains as to form vast valleys. Some of these mountains are volcanoes, and are from their immense height, visible to a great distance in the Gulf of Mexico. A singular instance of this occurred to Mr. Bullock, who saw from the deck of the vessel in which he was sailing to Vera Cruz, the summit of the volcano of Popocatapetl, nearly eighteen thousand feet above the level of the sea. He was then about a hundred and twenty miles from land and the mountain was many miles farther k in the interior. Such a combination of circumstances as rendered it visible to him, though of coui ssible can very seldom exist.

It was in the evening, and the position of the vessel was such that Popoeatapetl was exactly in a line between the observer and the setting sun. The consequence was that the snowy summit of the volcano so intercepted the beams of the sun as to appear like a cloudy pyramid from the distance, rather shadowed than distinctly pencilled on the solar disc.

On the western extremity of the Gulf of Mexico there is a plain, varying in breadth from thirty or forty to a hundred miles, and even more. The name of Tierras Calientes, " hot countries," is given to it. Tropical productions are found here ; and in some seasons, tropical diseases are fearfully destructive of human life. The acclivity of the hills rising from these plains is very steep. Sometimes in the space of ten or twenty miles, the traveller will have ascended five or six thousand feet. In a journey from Vera Cruz of six hundred miles, he finds only two portions of the road where for a short distance carriages may be used. He soon discovers that he is leaving the tropical for an increasingly temperate climate. The rocks are often almost perpendicular on the side of ravines even terrificalh T great. Towards the summit of the acclivity, the weather is often "severe^ cold and violent tempests occasionally occur.

But confining our description to the neighborhood of the capital : let the reader suppose that he is journeying to it from Vera Cruz, and that all the difficulties of the ascent are surmounted ; one of the grandest views in the world is now spread before him. He stands on the eastern summit of the elevated ground which forms the Vale of Tenochtitlan, as it was termed in 1530, now the Valley of Mexico. This vale, even at the height of nearly eight thousand feet above the

-level, is surrounded by hills in some parts

peat elevation. On the north side these only

a few hundred feet. Towards the south

they in«* much higher. Near the south-eastern

md feet above the level of the ocean, and always covered with snow. And more to the south is Popocatapetl, the highest mountain in Mexico, ascending to an elevation of little less than eighteen thousand feet. The valley itself is of an oblong form, extending from north to south about fifty-two, and from east to west about thirty-four miles. Its circuit is rather more than two hundred miles, and its area about one thousand seven hundred square miles. Of this surface, however, about one-tenth is occupied — at least was so at the time of the conquest by the Spaniards — b} r four large lakes. The largest of these, Tezcuco, had at that time an area of seventy-seven square miles. The city itself stood in the centre of the valley-plain ; and though exceedingly magnificent, was built upon piles in the lake, and was connected with the shore by strongly-constructed causeways. When first seen by the Spaniards it stood in all its glory like another Venice, only rising from a mountain-lake instead of from the ocean itself.

Here, while Columbus was opening the way to the western world, the predecessors of Montezuma, the despotic emperors of Mexico, were reigning in barbaric splendor.

Chapter II

BIRTH — EDUCATION — SAILS FOR HISPANIOLA — SECRETARY TO VELASQUEZ — IMPRISONMENT — RELEASE AND MARRIAGE.

"T7ERNAND0 CORTES was born at Me- •*■ dellin, a town in Estremadura in Spain, a. d, 1485. He sprang from a respectable family. His father was a captain of infantry in moderate circumstances. He designed his son for the profession of the law, and sent him to the University of Salamanca to prosecute the requisite preparatory studies. But though his natural abilities were good, he could neither be persuaded to repress the buoyancy of his

spirits, or to stimulate his loitering indolence.

With the classics as then known, he became tolerably well acquainted ; but his time was mostly spent in reference to no particular object, and he persisted in the resolution that he had early formed, to win his bread by the sword rather than the pen. His parents seeing his love of activity and adventure, at length withdrew their objections. At first he thought of proceeding to the Spanish army engaged in the Italian wars under Gonzalvo de Cordova, the " Great Captain/' as he was then termed ; but the New World had been only recently revealed, presenting the attractions so powerful to the Spanish mind in that age, of mystery, glory and wealth. All these were beheld from a distance ; and the hardships and dan gers connected with them were ignorantly or wilfully unperceived. It was a splendid lottery; and the eager spirits of the day looked only at the possible prizes, and refused to take into the account the certain blanks. We have the testimony of Shakspeare, who, though he wrote some years later, referred to the customs of an earlier period, when such enterprises were regarded as among the courses of life which young men would choose for themselves, or to which they would be directed by their fathers.

" While other men of slender reputation, Put forth their sons to seek preferment out : Some to the wars, to try there for ttcne there ; Some to discover islands far away ; Some to the studious universities," &c, &c.

A voyage westward was the choice of young Cortes ; and he was only prevented from sailing in 1502, when he was but seventeen years of age with Nicholas de Ovando, by a serious accident, in consequence of which he was confined to his bed till after the departure of the fleet. He continued in Spain two years longer with no alteration in his habits of mingled activity and indolence. At length in 1504, he sailed for Hispaniola, where Ovando was governor ; and although the voyage was stormy and dangerous, he reached the island in safety.

The governor was absent when he landed ; but the secretary received him kindly and told him that he might easily obtain a liberal grant of land. The reply of Cortes bespeaks his disposition : " I came to get gold, not to till the soil like a peasant." His objections however, were removed by Ovando, and for several years he was engaged as a colonial settler ; varying his agricultural pursuits by joining several military expeditions commanded by Diego Velasquez, designed to repress those insurrections of the natives into which they were frequently driven by the oppressions of their new lords. He thus became acquainted with the wild tactics of Indian warfare, and kept fully alive all that was daring and chivalrous in his character.

In 1511 Velasquez undertook the full establishment of Spanish rule in Cuba ; and Cortes gladly embraced the opportunity of exchanging a manner of life for which the disposition which he cherished altogether unfitted him ; for one to which he could fully devote himself, and in which all his darling habits might be indulged. Throughout the expedition, his unhesitating and unshrinking boldness secured the favor of the commander, while his freedom, good humor and wit were equally efficacious with his fellow-soldiers. None of the higher qualities for which he afterwards became renowned were at that time apparent. He seemed to be more fitted to accomplish the plans devised by the sagacity of others, than to conceive by his own wisdom that which by his own daring, or that of those under his command, should be subsequently executed. But the seeds were in him ; and if the progress of development was slow, it was yet constant and certain.

After the conquest of the island, Velasquez, who now became its governor, appointed him one of his secretaries. But the license which he allowed himself in the pursuit of pleasure frequently exposed him to personal danger, and at length involved him in a serious quarrel with his patron the governor. This led him to join a party which in such a state of society would be sure to exist, composed of persons who believed that their merits were overlooked, their just claims disregarded, and ascribed all the blame to the unjust partiality of Velasquez. These discontented persons met from time to time at the house of Cortes ; and they talked over their grievances till they believed them to be so great as to require the interposition of higher authority. Knowing the fearless disposition of Cortes, they fixed on him as their representative to the governor of Hispaniola, to whom Velasquez was subordinate. The undertaking was a hazardous one, as the arm of the sea, eighteen leagues wide, could only, in their circumstances, be crossed in an open boat. But the plot was discovered and Cortes thrown into prison.

Velasquez was so enraged, that it is said he was only prevented by powerful intercession from ordering his instant death. He contented himself with confining him in chains. In a few days the prisoner succeeded in effecting his escape ; but was soon recaptured, again fettered and put on board a vessel to be taken to Hispaniola for trial. Scarcely was the vessel under weigh when Cortes managed to free his limbs from the manacles that bound them, and in the darkness of the night let himself down from the vessel into a boat floating below. But the waves were too high and the current too strong for him to expect safely from the boat : he therefore plunged into the water, and when nearly exhausted reached the shore where he fled to the nearest church for sanctuary. His popular manners had made him a general favorite, and his friends labored to effect a reconciliation. It would not be easy to bring two such proud spirits, so differently circumstanced, and each believing himself to be wronged, into the agreement of a cordial reconciliation. This however was at length done, and the union appears to have been permanent. Cortes was not restored to the secretaryship, but he received a liberal grant of land, and was appointed to an important civil office. To these more steady pursuits he for some time devoted himself. He was now married, living happily with his wife ; and possessed of considerable wealth. The bold adventurer appears to have settled down into the regular agricultural trader. An event however occurred which placed him in very different circumstances ; renewed the qualities which had appeared to become dormant; fully developed his hitherto latent faculties ; raised him to an eminence scarcelv inferior to that which Columbus had reached, and in the annals of history inscribed his name as the second of the three great discoverers of the New World — Christopher Columbus, Fernando Cortes, and Francisco Pizarro.

Chapter III

POSITION OF MEXICO — DE CORDOVA LANDS AT YUCATAN — OUTFIT OF EXPEDITION UNDER CORTES TO SUBDUE MEXICO.

TT is astonishing that the sea to the west of A Cuba, now termed the Gulf of Mexico, had so long remained unexplored. An inspection of the map will show the singular conformation of its bounding coast-line. On the south side of the isthmus the course of the land is nearly in a straight direction, something lower than northwest. On the north side where it reaches 15° latitude, at the Bay of Honduras, its direction becomes north with a slight inclination to

the east. This extends to about latitude 22°.

It then turns to the west for two degrees, when it takes a southward direction for four or five degrees, forming the peninsula of Yucatan. Proceeding a few degrees to the west it sweeps north-westward and northward to about latitude 29°, when it takes an easterly direction for about fourteen degrees. In the middle of this upper line of coast — the northern boundary of the gulf — where stands the modern city of New Orleans, the great Mississippi, the "father of waters," pours his floods, about eight degrees due north from the northern extremity of Yucatan. Six degrees from the mouths of the Mississippi the coast takes a south-easterly direction for five degrees, and then turns to the north, forming the peninsula of East Florida. From the north point of Yucatan to the south cape of Florida, a line drawn in a north-east direction would measure about six degrees and a half, and would enclose what would then be the almost circular sea now termed the Gulf of Mexico

Between these points of Florida and Yucatan comes the westerly end of Cuba. From Florida to the nearest part of Cuba is only two degrees; and from the west end of Cuba to Yucatan is no more. If the map be again examined, it will be seen that the Spanish city of Vera Cruz is situated in the lower part of the gulf, just where the coast turns from its north-west to its northern direction.

At Vera Cruz the isthmus from north to south, is three degrees wide ; but a line drawn due west to the shores of the Pacific would measure not less than eight degrees. Supposing the country to be level as it appears on the map, the city of Mexico stands about three degrees on the line from Vera Cruz, that is from the eastern sea or Gulf of Mexico, and five from the western or great Pacific Ocean. If to this description of the coast be added that which has been already furnished of the course of the Andes along the Isthmus of Darien, connecting in one system the vast mountain-sweep of North and South America, some idea may be formed of the character of the regions in which were performed the stupendous exploits of Cortes ; for considering the numerical forces arrayed on * each side, stupendous they indeed were.