WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT (1796-1859)

William Hickling Prescott, grandson of the hero of Bunker Hill, was born at Salem, Massachusetts, in 1796, and was graduated at Harvard College in the class of 1814. An accident in his senior year nearly deprived him of his eyesight and compelled him for the rest of his life to make use of all the expedients open to the blind student. Inheriting ample means, he was enabled to travel extensively abroad, to employ secretaries and research experts and readers, and to follow to the full his scholarly inclinations which all led, as Irving before him had been led, into the fascinating field of Spanish history. His Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, which was the result of eleven years of patient work, appeared in 1837, his History of the Conquest of Mexico in 1843, and his History of the Conquest of Peru in 1847. His uncompleted History of Philip II was published after his death.

The writings of Prescott, unlike those of most modern historians, belong distinctively to literature. Like Macaulay's work, they have a distinctive style. Prescott was a transition figure: he rejected the stately pompousness of Gibbon and wrote in simple flowing sentences, yet he must be reckoned to-day with the old rather than with the new. He was not romantic in his interpretation of history; rather was he severely classical, and yet he had all the power of a Scott to make stirring scenes alive and thrilling, and to reproduce the atmosphere of a great event. His works as histories have been superseded: they are, in the light of modern research and modern methods, superficial and wrongly emphasized and unphilosophical; they survive now on account of their literary qualities.

RETURN OF COLUMBUS

Great was the agitation in the little community of Palos, as they beheld the wellknown vessel of the admiral re-entering 5 their harbor. Their desponding imaginations had long since consigned him to a watery grave; for, in addition to the preternatural horrors which hung over the voyage, they had experienced the most 10 stormy and disastrous winter within the recollection of the oldest mariners. Most of them had relatives or friends on board. They thronged immediately to the shore to assure themselves with their own eyes 15 of the truth of their return. When they beheld their faces once more, and saw them accompanied by the numerous evidences which they brought back of the success of the expedition, they burst forth 20 in acclamations of joy and gratulation. They awaited the landing of Columbus, when the whole population of the place accompanied him and his crew to the principal church, where solemn thanksgivings were offered up for their return; while every bell in the village sent forth a joyous peal in honor of the glorious event. The admiral was too desirous of

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presenting himself before the sovereigns, to protract his stay long at Palos. He took with him on his journey specimens of the multifarious products of the newlydiscovered regions. He was accompanied by several of the native islanders, arrayed in their simple barbaric costume, and decorated, as he passed through the principal cities, with collars, bracelets, and other ornaments of gold, rudely fashioned. He exhibited also considerable quantities of the same metal in dust, or in crude masses, numerous vegetable exotics, possessed of aromatic or medicinal virtue, and several kinds of quadrupeds unknown in Europe, and birds whose varieties of gaudy plumage gave a brilliant effect to the pageant. The admiral's progress through the country was everywhere impeded by the multitudes thronging forth to gaze at the extraordinary spectacle, and the more extraordinary man, who, in the emphatic language of that time, which has now lost its force from its familiarity, first revealed the existence of a New World.' As he passed through the busy, populous city of Seville, every window, balcony, and housetop, which could afford a glimpse of him, is described to have been

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crowded with spectators. It was the mid-
dle of April before Columbus reached
Barcelona. The nobility and cavaliers in
attendance on the court, together with the
authorities of the city, came to the gates
to receive him, and escorted him to the
royal presence. Ferdinand and Isabella
were seated, with their son, Prince John,
under a superb canopy of state, awaiting
his arrival. On his approach, they rose 10
from their seats, and, extending their
hands to him to salute, caused him to be
seated before them. These were unprece-
dented marks of condescension, to a per-
son of Columbus's rank, in the haughty 15
and ceremonious court of Castile. It was,
indeed, the proudest moment in the life of
Columbus. He had fully established the
truth of his long-contested theory, in the
face of argument, sophistry, sneer, skep- 20
ticism, and contempt. He had achieved
this, not by chance, but by calculation,
supported through the most adverse cir-
cumstances by consummate conduct.
honors paid him, which had hitherto been 25
reserved only for rank, or fortune, or mil-
itary success, purchased by the blood and
tears of thousands, were, in his case, a
homage to intellectual power successfully
exerted in behalf of the noblest interests 30
of humanity.

The

From Ferdinand and Isabella, 1837.

QUEEN ISABELLA

miliarity; yet the respect which she imposed was mingled with the strongest feelings of devotion and love. She showed great tact in accommodating herself to the peculiar situation and character of those around her. She appeared in arms at the head of her troops, and shrunk from none of the hardships of war. During the reforms introduced into the religious houses, she visited the nunneries in person, taking her needlework with her, and passing the day in the society of the inmates. When traveling in Galicia, she attired herself in the costume of the country, borrowing for that purpose the jewels and other ornaments of the ladies there, and returning them with liberal additions. By this condescending and captivating deportment, as well as by her higher qualities, she gained an ascendency over her turbulent subjects which no king of Spain could ever boast.

She spoke the Castilian with much elegance and correctness. She had an easy fluency of discourse, which, though generally of a serious complexion, was occasionally seasoned with agreeable sallies, some of which have passed into proverbs. She was temperate even to abstemiousness in her diet, seldom or never tasting wine, and so frugal in her table, that the daily expenses for herself and family did not exceed the moderate sum of forty ducats. She was equally simple and economical in her apparel. On all public occasions, in35 deed, she displayed a royal magnificence; but she had no relish for it in private; and she freely gave away her clothes and jewels as presents to her friends. Naturally of a sedate, though cheerful temper, she had little taste for the frivolous amusements which make up so much of a court life; and, if she encouraged the presence of minstrels and musicians in her palace, it was to wean her young nobility from the coarser and less intellectual pleasures to which they were addicted.

Her person was of the middle height, and well proportioned. She had a clear, fresh complexion, with light blue eyes and auburn hair,- a style of beauty exceed- 40 ingly rare in Spain. Her features were regular, and universally allowed to be uncommonly

handsome. The illusion which attaches to rank, more especially when united with engaging manners, 45 might lead us to suspect some exaggeration in the encomiums so liberally lavished on her. But they would seem to be in a great measure justified by the portraits that remain of her, which combine a fault- 50 less symmetry of features with singular sweetness and intelligence of expression.

Her manners were most gracious and pleasing. They were marked by natural dignity and modest reserve, tempered by 55 an affability which flowed from the kindliness of her disposition. She was the last person to be approached with undue fa

Among her moral qualities, the most conspicuous, perhaps, was her magnanimity. She betrayed nothing little or selfish in thought or action. Her schemes were vast, and executed in the same noble spirit in which they were conceived. She never employed doubtful agents or sinister measures, but the most direct and open policy. She scorned to avail herself of advantages offered by the perfidy of others. Where she had once given her confidence, she gave her hearty and steady support; and

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and is said to have been present himself in nine pitched battles. He was greatly renowned for his martial prowess, for he belonged to the Quachictin, the highest military order of his nation, and one into which but few even of its sovereigns had been admitted. In later life, he preferred intrigue to violence, as more consonant to his character and priestly education. In

she was scrupulous to redeem any pledge
she had made to those who ventured in
her cause, however unpopular. She sus-
tained Ximenes in all his obnoxious but
salutary reforms. She seconded Colum-
bus in the prosecution of his arduous en-
terprise, and shielded him from the
calumny of his enemies. She did the
same good service to her favorite, Gon-
salvo de Cordova; and the day of her 10 this he was as great an adept as any

death was felt, and, as it proved, truly
felt, by both, as the last of their good for-
tune. Artifice and duplicity were so ab-
horrent to her character, and so averse
from her domestic policy, that, when they 15
appear in the foreign relations of Spain,
it is certainly not imputable to her. She
was incapable of harboring any petty dis-
trust or latent malice; and, although stern
in the execution and exaction of public 20
justice, she made the most generous al-
lowance, and even sometimes advances, to
those who had personally injured her.

But the principle which gave a peculiar
coloring to every feature of Isabella's 25
mind was piety. It shone forth from the
very depths of her soul with a heavenly
radiance, which illuminated her whole
character. Fortunately, her earliest years
had been passed in the rugged school of 30
adversity, under the eye of a mother who
implanted in her serious mind such strong
principles of religion as nothing in after-
life had power to shake. At an early age,
in the flower of youth and beauty, she was 35
introduced to her brother's court; but its
blandishments, so dazzling to a young im-
agination, had no power over hers, for she
was surrounded by a moral atmosphere of
purity,-

'Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt.'

prince of his time, and, by arts not very honorable to himself, succeeded in filching away much of the territory of his royal kinsman of Tezcuco. Severe in the administration of justice, he made important reforms in the arrangement of the tribunals. He introduced other innovations in the royal household, creating new offices, introducing a lavish magnificence and forms of courtly etiquette unknown to his ruder predecessors. He was, in short, most attentive to all that concerned the exterior and pomp of royalty. Stately and decorous, he was careful of his own dignity, and might be said to be as great an actor of majesty' among the barbarian potentates of the New World, as Louis the Fourteenth was among the polished princes of Europe.

He was deeply tinctured, moreover, with that spirit of bigotry which threw such a shade over the latter days of the French monarch. He received the Spaniards as the beings predicted by his oracles. The anxious dread, with which he had evaded their proffered visit, was founded on the same feelings which led him so blindly to resign himself to them on their approach. He felt himself rebuked by their 40 superior genius. He at once conceded all that they demanded,- his treasures, his power, even his person. For their sake, he forsook his wonted occupations, his pleasures, his most familiar habits. He might be said to forego his nature, and, as his subjects asserted, to change his sex and become a woman. If we cannot refuse our contempt for the pusillanimity of the Aztec monarch, it should be miti50 gated by the consideration that his pusillanimity sprung from his superstition, and that superstition in the savage is the substitute for religious principle in the civilized man.

Such was the decorum of her manners that, though encompassed by false friends 45 and open enemies, not the slightest reproach was breathed on her fair name in this corrupt and calumnious court.

From Ferdinand and Isabella, 1837.

THE CHARACTER AND FATE OF

MONTEZUMA

When Montezuma ascended the throne, 55 he was scarcely twenty-three years of age. Young, and ambitious of extending his empire, he was continually engaged in war,

It is not easy to contemplate the fate of Montezuma without feelings of the strongest compassion,- to see him thus borne along the tide of events beyond his power

15

to avert or control; to see him, like some
stately tree, the pride of his own Indian
forests, towering aloft in the pomp and
majesty of its branches, by its very emi-
nence a mark for the thunderbolt, the first
victim of the tempest which was to sweep
over its native hills! When the wise king
of Tezcuco addressed his royal relative at
his coronation, he exclaimed, 'Happy the
empire, which is now in the meridian of its 10
prosperity, for the scepter is given to one
whom the Almighty has in his keeping;
and the nations shall hold him in rever-
ence!' Alas! the subject of this aus-
picious invocation lived to see his empire
melt away like the winter's wreath; to see
a strange race drop, as it were, from the
clouds on his land; to find himself a pris-
oner in the palace of his fathers, the com-
panion of those who were the enemies of 20
his gods and his people; to be insulted,
reviled, trodden in the dust, by the meanest
of his subjects, by those who, a few
months previous, had trembled at his
glance; drawing his last breath in the
halls of a stranger,- a lonely outcast in
the heart of his own capital! He was the
sad victim of destiny,- a destiny as dark
and irresistible in its march as that which
broods over the mythic legends of an- 30
tiquity!

From The History of the Conquest
of Mexico, 1843.

THE BATTLE OF OTUMBA

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pomp and rude splendor of his military. equipment. As far as the eye could reach, were to be seen shields and waving banners, fantastic helmets, forests of shining 5 spears, the bright feather-mail of the chief, and the coarse cotton panoply of his followers, all mingled together in wild confusion, and tossing to and fro like the billows of a troubled ocean. It was a sight to fill the stoutest heart among the Christians with dismay, heightened by the previous expectation of soon reaching the friendly land which was to terminate their wearisome pilgrimage. Even Cortés as he contrasted the tremendous array before him with his own diminished squadrons, wasted by disease and enfeebled by hunger and fatigue, could not escape the conviction that his last hour had arrived.

But his was not the heart to despond; and he gathered strength from the very extremity of his situation. He had no room for hesitation; for there was no alternative left to him. To escape was impossible. He could not retreat on the capital, from which he had been expelled. He must advance,- cut through the enemy, or perish. He hastily made his dispositions for the fight. He gave his force as broad a front as possible, protecting it on each flank by his little body of horse, now reduced to twenty. Fortunately, he had not allowed the invalids, for the last two days, to mount behind the riders, from a desire 35 to spare the horses, so that these were now in tolerable condition; and, indeed, the whole army had been refreshed by halting, as we have seen, two nights and a day in the same place, a delay, however, which had allowed the enemy time to assemble in such force to dispute its prog

As the army was climbing the mountain steeps which shut in the valley of Otompan, the vedettes came in with the intelli- 40 gence, that a powerful body was encamped on the other side, apparently awaiting their approach. The intelligence was soon confirmed by their own eyes, as they turned the crest of the sierra, and saw spread out, 45 below, a mighty host, filling up the whole depth of the valley, and giving to it the appearance, from the white cotton mail of the warriors, of being covered with snow. It consisted of levies from the surround- 50 ing country, and especially the populous territory of Tezcuco, drawn together at the instance of Cuitlahua, Montezuma's successor, and now concentrated on this point to dispute the passage of the Span- 55 iards. Every chief of note had taken the field with his whole array gathered under his standard, proudly displaying all the

ress.

Cortés instructed his cavaliers not to part with their lances, and to direct them at the face. The infantry were to thrust, not strike, with their swords; passing them, at once, through the bodies of their enemies. They were, above all, to aim at the leaders, as the general well knew how much depends on the life of the commander in the wars of barbarians, whose want of subordination makes them impatient of any control but that to which they are accustomed.

He then addressed to his troops a few words of encouragement, as customary with him on the eve of an engagement. He reminded them of the victories they