"Directly and knowingly, as we shall hereafter show, he has availed himself of Mr. Prescott's labours to an extent which demanded the most ample 'acknowledgment.' No such acknowledgment is made. But we beg to ask Mr. Wilson whether there were not other reasons why he should have spoken of this eminent writer, if not with deference, at least with respect. He himself informs us that 'most kindly relations' existed between them. If we are not misinformed, Mr. Wilson opened the correspondence by modestly requesting the loan of Mr. Prescott's collection of works relating to Mexican history, for the purpose of enabling him to write a refutation of the latter's History of the Conquest. That the replies which he received were courteous and kindly, we need hardly say. He was informed, that, although the constant use made of the collection by its possessor for the correction of his own work must prevent a full compliance with this request, yet any particular books which he might designate should be sent to him, and, if he were disposed to make a visit to Boston, the fullest opportunities should be granted him for the prosecution of his researches. This invitation Mr. Wilson did not think fit to accept. Books which were got in readiness for transmission to him he failed to send for. He had, in the meantime, discovered that 'the American standpoint' did not require any examination of 'authorities.' We regret that it should also have rendered superfluous an acquaintance with the customs of civilised society. The tone in which he speaks of his distinguished predecessor is sometimes amusing from the conceit which it displays, sometimes disgusting from its impudence and coarseness. He concedes Mr. Prescott's good faith in the use of his materials. It was only his ignorance and want of the proper qualifications that prevented him from using them aright 'His non-acquaintance with Indian character is much to be regretted.' Mr. Wilson himself enjoys, as he tells us, the inestimable advantage of being the son of an adopted member of the Iroquois tribe. Nay, 'his ancestors, for several generations, dwelt near the Indian agency at Cherry Valley, on Wilson's Patent, though in Cooperstown village was he born.' We perceive the author's fondness for the inverted style in composition,—acquired, perhaps, in the course of his long study of aboriginal oratory. Even without such proofs, and without his own assertion of the fact, it would not have been difficult, we think, to conjecture his familiarity with the forms of speech common among barbarous nations....
"Mr. Wilson ... has found, from his own observation,—the only source of knowledge, if such it can be called, on which he is willing to place much reliance,—that the Ojibways and Iroquois are savages, and he rightly argues that their ancestors must have been savages. From these premises, without any process of reasoning, he leaps at once to the conclusion, that in no part of America could the aboriginal inhabitants ever have lived in any other than a savage state. Hence he tells us, that, in all statements regarding them, everything 'must be rejected that is inconsistent with well-established Indian traits.' The ancient Mexican empire was, according to his showing, nothing more than one of those confederacies of tribes with which the reader of early New England history is perfectly familiar. The far-famed city of Mexico was 'an Indian village of the first class,'—such, we may hope, as that which the author saw on his visit to the Massasaugus, where, to his immense astonishment, he found the people 'clothed, and in their right minds.' The Aztecs, he argues, could not have built temples, for the Iroquois do not build temples. The Aztecs could not have been idolaters or offered up human sacrifices, for the Iroquois are not idolaters and do not offer up human sacrifices. The Aztecs could not have been addicted to cannibalism, for the Iroquois never eat human flesh, unless driven to it by hunger. This is what Mr. Wilson means by the 'American standpoint'; and those who adopt his views may consider the whole question settled without any debate." ...
"If, at Mr. Wilson's summons, we reject as improbable a series of events supported by far stronger evidence than can be adduced for the conquests of Alexander, the Crusades, or the Norman conquest of England, what is it, we may ask, that he calls upon us to believe? His scepticism, as so often happens, affords the measure of his credulity. He contends that Cortés, the greatest Spaniard of the sixteenth century, a man little acquainted with books, but endowed with a gigantic genius and with all the qualities requisite for success in warlike enterprises and an adventurous career, had his brain so filled with the romances of chivalry, and so preoccupied with reminiscences of the Spanish contests with the Moslems, that he saw in the New World nothing but duplicates of those contests,—that his heated imagination turned wigwams into palaces, Indian villages into cities like Granada, swamps into lakes, a tribe of savages into an empire of civilised men,—that, in the midst of embarrassments and dangers which, even on Mr. Wilson's showing, must have taxed all his faculties to the utmost, he employed himself chiefly in coining lies with which to deceive his imperial master and all the inhabitants of Christendom,—that, although he had a host of powerful enemies among his countrymen, enemies who were in a position to discover the truth, his statements passed unchallenged and uncontradicted by them,—that the numerous adventurers and explorers who followed in his track, instead of exposing the falsity of his relations and descriptions, found their interest in embellishing the narrative."
Of course Wilson's book was unscientific to a degree, with its Phœnician theories, its estimate of Spanish sources of information, and its assorted ignorance of many things. Its author, had, however, stumbled upon a bit of truth which no ridicule could shake, and which proved fruitful in suggestion to a very different kind of investigator. This was Mr. Lewis Henry Morgan, an important name in the history of American ethnological study. As a young man Morgan had felt an interest in the American Indian, which developed into a very unusual enthusiasm. It led him ultimately to spend a long time among the Iroquois, studying their tribal organisation and social phenomena. He embodied the knowledge so obtained in a book entitled The League of the Iroquois,[43] a truly epoch-making work, though the author himself was at the time wholly unaware of its far-reaching importance. This book described the forms of government, the social organisation, the manners and the customs of the Iroquois, with great accuracy and thoroughness. Seven years later, Morgan happened to fall in with a camp of Ojibway Indians, and found to his astonishment that their tribal customs were practically identical with those of the Iroquois. While this coincidence was fresh in his mind, Morgan read Wilson's iconoclastic book on Mexico. The suggestion made by Wilson that the Aztec civilisation was essentially the same as that of the northern tribes of Red Indians did much to crystallise the hypothesis which has now been definitely established as a fact.
Those who do not care to read a long series of monographs and several large volumes in order to arrive at a knowledge of what recent ethnologists hold as true of Ancient Mexico may find the essence of accepted doctrine somewhat divertingly set forth in a paper written by Mr. Morgan in criticism of H. H. Bancroft's Native Races of the Pacific States. Mr. Morgan's paper is entitled "Montezuma's Dinner."[44] In it the statement is briefly made that the Aztecs were simply one branch of the same Red Race which extended all over the American Continent; that their forms of government, their usages, and their occupations were not in kind different from those of the Iroquois, the Ojibways, or any other of the North American Indian tribes. These institutions and customs found no analogues among civilised nations, and could not, in their day, be explained in terms intelligible to contemporary Europeans. Hence, when the Spaniards under Cortés discovered in Mexico a definite and fully developed form of civilisation, instead of studying it on the assumption that it might be different from their own, they described it, as Mr. A. F. Bandelier has well said, "in terms of comparison selected from types accessible to the limited knowledge of the times."[45] Thus, they beheld in Montezuma an "emperor" surrounded by "kings," "princes," "nobles," and "generals." His residence was to them an imperial palace. His mode of life showed the magnificent and stately etiquette of a European monarch, with lords-in-waiting, court jesters, pages, secretaries, and household guards. In narrating all these things, the first Spanish observers were wholly honest, although in their enthusiasm they added many a touch of literary colour. Their records are paralleled by those of the English explorers who, in New England, thought they had found "kings" among the Pequods and Narragansetts, and who, in Virginia, viewed Powhatan as an "emperor" and Pocahontas as a "princess." That the Spaniards, like the English, wrote in ignorant good faith, rather than with a desire to deceive, is shown by the fact that they actually did record circumstances which even then, if critically studied, would have shown the falsity of their general belief. Thus, as Mr. Bandelier points out, the Spaniards tell of the Aztecs that they had great wealth, reared great palaces, and acquired both scientific knowledge and skill in art, while in mechanical appliances they remained on the level of the savage, using stone and flint for tools and weapons, making pottery without the potter's wheel, and weaving intricate patterns with the hand-loom only. Equally inconsistent are the statements that the Aztecs were mild, gentle, virtuous, and kind, and yet that they sacrificed their prisoners with the most savage rites, made war that they might secure more sacrificial victims, viewed marriage as a barter, and regarded chastity as a restraint.[46] Still further inconsistencies are to be found in the Spanish accounts of the Aztec government. Montezuma, for instance, is picturesquely held to have been an absolute ruler, one whose very name aroused awe and veneration throughout the whole extent of his vast dominions; and yet it is recorded that while still alive he was superseded by Guatemozin; and even Acosta notes that there was a council without whose consent nothing of importance could be done. In fact, under the solvent of Mr. Morgan's criticism, the gorgeous Aztec empire of Cortés and Prescott shrinks to very modest proportions. Montezuma is transformed from an hereditary monarch into an elective war-chief. His dominions become a territory of about the size of the state of Rhode Island. His capital appears as a stronghold built amid marshes and surrounded by flat-roofed houses of adobe; while his "palace" is a huge communal-house, built of stone and lime, and inhabited by his gentile kindred, united in one household. The magnificent feast which the Spaniards describe so lusciously,—the throned king served by beautiful women and by stewards who knelt before him without daring to lift their eyes, the dishes of gold and silver, the red and black Cholulan jars filled with foaming chocolate, the "ancient lords" attending at a distance, the orchestra of flutes, reeds, horns, and kettle-drums, and the three thousand guards without—all this is converted by Morgan into a sort of barbaric buffet-luncheon, with Montezuma squatting on the floor, surrounded by his relatives in breech-clouts, and eating a meal prepared in a common cook-house, divided at a common kettle, and eaten out of an earthen bowl.
One need not, however, lend himself to so complete a disillusionment as Mr. Morgan in this paper seeks to thrust upon us. Still more recent investigations, such as those of Brinton, McGee, and Bandelier, have restored some of the prestige which Cortés and his followers attached to the early Mexicans. While the Aztecs were very far from possessing a monarchical form of government, and while their society was constituted far differently from that of any European community, and while they are to be studied simply as one division of the Red Indian race, they were scarcely so primitive as Mr. Morgan would have us think. They differed from their more northern kindred not, to be sure, in kind, but very greatly in degree. Though we have to substitute the communal-house for the palace, the war-chief for the king, and the tribal organisation for the feudal system, there still remains a great and interesting people, fully organised, rich, warlike, and highly skilled in their own arts. In architecture, weaving, gold and silver work, and pottery, they achieved artistic wonders. Their instinct for the decorative produced results which justified the admiration of their conquerors. Their capital, though it was not the immense city which the Spaniards saw, teeming with a vast population, was, nevertheless, an imposing collection of mansions, great and small, whose snowy whiteness, standing out against the greenery and diversified by glimpses of water, might well impress the imagination of European strangers. If the communal-houses lacked the "golden cupolas" of Disraeli's Oriental fancy, neither were they the "mud huts" which Wilson tells of. If Montezuma was not precisely an occidental Charles the Fifth, neither is he to be regarded as an earlier Sitting Bull.
So far, then, as we have to modify Prescott's chapters which describe the Mexico of Cortés, this modification consists largely in a mere change of terminology. Following the Spanish records, he has accurately reproduced just what the Spaniards saw, or thought they saw, in old Tenochtitlan. He has looked at all things through their eyes; and such errors as he made were the same errors which they had made while they were standing in the great pueblo which was to them the scene of so much suffering and of so great a final triumph. When Prescott wrote, there lived no man who could have gainsaid him. His story represents the most accurate information which was then attainable. As Mr. Thorpe has well expressed it: "No historian is responsible for not using undiscovered evidence. Prescott wrote from the archives of Europe ... from the European side. If one cares to know how the Old World first understood the New, he will read Prescott." Even Morgan, who goes further in his destructive criticism than any other authoritative writer, admits that Prescott and his sources "may be trusted in whatever relates to the acts of the Spaniards, and to the acts and personal characteristics of the Indians; in whatever relates to their weapons, implements and utensils, fabrics, food and raiment, and things of a similar character." Only in what relates to their government, social relations, and plan of life does the narrative need to be in part rewritten. It is but fair to note that Prescott himself, in his preliminary chapters on the Aztecs, is far from dogmatising. His statements are made with a distinct reserve, and he acknowledges alike the difficulty of the subject and his doubts as to the finality of what he tells. Even in his descriptive passages, he is solicitous lest the warm imagination of the Spanish chroniclers may have led them to throw too high a light on what they saw. Thus, after ending his account of Montezuma's household and the Aztec "court," drawn from the pages of Bernal Diaz, Toribio, and Oviedo, he qualifies its gorgeousness in the following sentence:[47]
"Such is the picture of Montezuma's domestic establishment and way of living as delineated by the Conquerors and their immediate followers, who had the best means of information; too highly coloured, it may be, by the proneness to exaggerate which was natural to those who first witnessed a spectacle so striking to the imagination, so new and unexpected."
And in a foot-note on the same page he expressly warns the student of history against the fanciful chapters of the Spaniards who wrote a generation later, comparing their accounts with the stories in the Arabian Nights.
Putting aside, then, the single topic of Aztec ethnology and tribal organisation, it remains to see how far the rest of Prescott's history of the Conquest has stood the test of recent criticism. Here one finds himself on firmer ground, and it may be asserted with entire confidence that Prescott's accuracy cannot be impeached in aught that is essential to the truth of history. His careful use of his authorities, and his excellent judgment in checking the evidence of one by the evidence of another, remain unquestioned. In one respect alone has fault been found with him. His desire to avail himself of every possible aid caused him to procure, often with great difficulty and at great expense, documents, or copies of documents, which had hitherto been inaccessible to the investigator. So far he was acting in the spirit of the truly scientific scholar. But sometimes the very rarity of these new sources led him to attach an undue value to them. Here and there he has followed them as against the more accessible authorities, even when the latter were altogether trustworthy. In this we find something of the passion of the collector; and now and then in minor matters it has led him into error.[48] Thus, in certain passages relating to the voyage of Cortés from Havana, Prescott has misstated the course followed by the pilot, as again with regard to the expedition from Santiago de Cuba[49]; and he errs because he has followed a manuscript copy of Juan Diaz, overlooking the obviously correct and consistent accounts of Bernal Diaz and other standard chroniclers. There are similar though equally unimportant slips elsewhere in his narrative, arising from the same cause. None of them, however, affects the essential accuracy of his text. His masterpiece stands to-day still fundamentally unshaken, a faithful and brilliant panorama of a wonderful episode in history. Those who are inclined to question its veracity do so, not because they can give substantial reasons for their doubt, but because, perhaps, of the romantic colouring which Prescott has infused into his whole narrative, because it is as entertaining as a novel, and because he had the art to transmute the acquisitions of laborious research into an enduring monument of pure literature.
CHAPTER IX
"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 Cortés, 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 Cortés 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 Cortés. 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 Cortés, the likeness is but superficial. His soul is the soul of Cortés 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 preëminence 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 archæology, 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 à 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 archæological 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 Cortés. 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 manœuvres 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]
CHAPTER X
PRESCOTT'S RANK AS AN HISTORIAN
IN forming an estimate of Prescott's rank among American writers of history, one's thought inevitably associates him with certain of his contemporaries. The Spanish subjects which he made his own invite a direct comparison with Irving. His study of the sombre Philip compels us to think at once of Motley. The broadly general theme of his first three books—the extension of European domination over the New World—brings him into a direct relation to Francis Parkman.
The comparison with Irving is more immediately suggested by the fact that had Prescott not entered the field precisely when he did, the story of Cortés and of the Mexican conquest would have been written by Irving. How fortunate was the chance which gave the task to Prescott must be obvious to all who are familiar with the writings of both men. It has been said that in Irving's hands literature would have profited at the expense of history; but even this is too much of a concession, Irving, even as a stylist, was never at his best in serious historical composition. His was not the spirit which gladly undertakes a work de longue haleine, nor was his genial, humorous nature suited to the gravity of such an undertaking. His fame had been won, and fairly won, in quite another field,—a field in which his personal charm, his mellow though far from deep philosophy of life, and his often whimsical enjoyment of his own world could find spontaneous and individual expression. The labour of research, the comparison of authorities, the long months of hard reading and steady note-taking, were not congenial to his nature. He moved less freely in the heavy armour of the historian than in the easy-fitting modern garb of the essayist and story-teller. The best that one can say of the style of his Granada, his Columbus, and his Washington is that it is smooth, well-worded, and correct. It shows little of the real distinction which we find in many of his shorter papers,—in that on Westminster Abbey, for example, and on English opinion of America; while the peculiar flavour which makes his account of Little Britain so delightful is wholly absent.
On the purely historical side, the two men are in wholly different classes. Irving resembled Livy in his use of the authorities. Such sources as were ready to his hand and easy to consult, he used with conscientious care; but those that were farther afield, and for the mastery of which both time and labour were demanded, he let alone. Thus, his history of Columbus was prepared in something less than two years, in which period both his preliminary studies and the actual composition were completed. Yet this book was the one over which he took the greatest pains, and for which he made his only serious attempt at something like original investigation. His Mahomet was confessedly written at second hand; while in his Washington he followed in the main such records and already published works as were convenient. In the Granada he only plays with history, and ascribes the main portion of the narrative to a mythical ecclesiastic, "the worthy Fray Antonio Agapida," in whose lineaments we may not infrequently detect a strong family resemblance to the no less worthy Diedrich Knickerbocker. In the letter which Irving wrote to Prescott, relinquishing to him the subject of Cortés, he lets us see quite plainly the very moderate amount of reading which he had been doing.[55] He had dipped into Solis, Bernal Diaz, and Herrera, using them, so he said, "as guide-books." Upon the basis of this reading he had sketched out the entire narrative, and had fallen to work upon the actual history with the intention of "working up" other material as he went along. When we compare these easy-going methods with the scientific thoroughness of Prescott, his ransacking, by agents, of every important library in Europe, his great collection of original documents, the many years which he gave to the study of them, and the conscientious judgment with which he weighed and balanced them, we cannot fail to see how much the world has gained by Irving's act of generous self-abnegation. It is only fair to add that he himself, at the time when Prescott wrote to him, was beginning to doubt whether he had not undertaken a task unsuited to his inclinations and beyond his powers. "Ever since I have been meddling with the theme," he said, "its grandeur and magnificence had been growing upon me, and I had felt more and more doubtful whether I should be able to treat it conscientiously,—that is to say, with the extensive research and thorough investigation which it merited."
Professor Jameson hazards the conjecture[56] that Irving's real importance in the development of American historiography is not at all to be discerned in the serious works which have just been mentioned, but rather in his quaintly humorous picture of New York under the Dutch, contained in the pretended narration of Diedrich Knickerbocker, and published as early as 1809. There can be no doubt that, as Professor Jameson says, this book did much to excite both interest and curiosity concerning the Dutch régime. "Very likely the great amount of work which the state government did for the historical illustration of the Dutch period, through the researches of Mr. Brodhead in foreign archives, had this unhistorical little book as one of its principal causes." Here, indeed, is only one more illustration of the fact that the work which one does in his natural vein and in his own way is certain not only to be his best, but to exercise a genuine influence in spheres which at the time were quite beyond the writer's consciousness.
Something has already been said concerning Prescott in his relationship to Motley as an historian. A brief but more explicit comparison may be added here. The diligence and zeal of the investigator both men shared on even terms. The only advantage which Motley possessed was the opportunity, denied to Prescott, of prosecuting his own researches, of discovering his own materials, and of visiting and living in the very places of which he had to write, instead of working largely through the eyes and brains of other men. This was a very real advantage; for the inspiration of the search and of the scenes themselves gave a keen stimulus to the ambition of the scholar and a glow to the imagination of the writer. One attaches less importance to Motley's academic training; for while it was broader than that of Prescott, and comprised the valuable teaching which was given him in the two great universities of Berlin and Göttingen, we cannot truthfully assert that Prescott's equipment was inferior to that of his contemporary. Indeed, Ferdinand and Isabella and Philip II. can better stand the test of searching criticism than Motley's Dutch Republic.
Motley is, indeed, the most "literary" of all the so-called "literary historians". In the glow and fervour of his narrative he is unsurpassed. He feels all the passion of the times whereof he writes, and he makes the reader feel it too. He has, moreover, a power of drawing character which Prescott seldom shows and which, when he shows it, he shows in less degree. Motley writes with the magnetism of a great pleader and with something also of the imagination of a poet. Unlike Prescott, he understands the philosophy of history and delves beneath the surface to search out and reveal the hidden causes of events. Yet first and last and all the time, he is a partisan. He is pleading for a cause far more than he is seeking for impartial truth. In this respect he resembles Mommsen, whose Römische Geschichte is likewise in its later books a splendid piece of partisanship. Motley is an American and a Protestant, and therefore he is eloquent for liberty and harsh toward what he views as superstition. William the Silent is his hero just as Cæsar is Mommsen's, and he hates tyranny as Mommsen hated the insolence of the Roman Junkerthum. This vivid feeling springing from intensity of conviction makes both books true masterpieces, nor to the critical scholar does it greatly lessen their value as historical compositions. Yet in each, one has continually to check the writer, to modify his statements, and to make allowance for his very individual point of view. In reading Prescott, on the other hand, nothing of the sort is necessary. He is free from the passion of politics, his judgment is impartial, and those who read him feel, as an eminent scholar has remarked, that they are listening to a wise and learned judge rather than to a skilful advocate. Even in the sphere of characterisation, Prescott is more sound than Motley, even though he be not half so forceful. Re-reading many of the portraits which the latter has drawn for us in glowing colours, the student of human nature will perceive that they are quite impossible. Take, for instance Motley's Philip and compare it with the Philip whom Prescott has described for us. The former is not a man at all. He is either a devil, or a lunatic, or it may be a blend of each. Indeed, Motley himself in conversation used to describe him as a devil, though he once remarked, "He is not my head devil." Everywhere Philip is depicted in the same sable hues, without a touch of light to relieve the blackness of his character. On the other hand, Prescott shows us one who, with all his cruelty, his hypocrisy, and his superstition, is still quite comprehensible because, after all, he remains a human being. Prescott discovers and records in him some qualities of which Motley in his sweeping condemnation takes no heed. We see a Philip scrupulously faithful to his duty as he understands it, bearing toil and loneliness, patient to his secretaries, gracious to his petitioners, whom he tries to set at ease, generous in his patronage of art, and putting aside all his coldness and reserve while watching the progress of his favourite architects and builders. These things and others like them count perhaps for very little in one sense; yet in another they bring out the fact that Prescott viewed his subject in the clear light of historic truth rather than in the glare of fiery prejudice.
There are some who would rate Parkman above Prescott. They speak of him as more truly an American historian because the topic which he chose—the development of New France—has a direct bearing upon the national history of the United States. This, however, is at once to limit the word "American" in a thoroughly unreasonable way, and also to allow the choice of theme to prejudice one's judgment of the manner in which that theme is treated. Parkman, to be sure, has merits of his own, some of which are less discernible in Prescott. For picturesqueness, as for accuracy, both men are on a level. There is a greater freshness of feeling in Parkman, a sort of open air effect, which is redolent of his actual experience of the great plains and the far Western mountains in the days which he passed among the Indian tribes. This cannot be expected of one whose physical infirmities confined him to the limits of his library. But, on the other hand, Prescott chose a broader field, and he made that field more thoroughly his own. These two—Prescott and Parkman—must take rank not far apart. Between them, they have divided, so to speak, the early history of the American Continent in the sphere which lies beyond the bounds of purely Anglo-Saxon conquest.
Disciples of the dismal school of history often yield a very grudging tribute to the enduring merit of what Prescott patiently achieved. Yet in their own field he met them upon equal terms and need not fear comparison. Though self-trained as an historical investigator, his mastery of his authorities has hardly been excelled by those whose merit is found solely in their gift for delving. The evidence of his thoroughness, his judgment, and his critical faculty is to be seen in the documentary treasures of his foot-notes. He did not, like Mommsen, write a brilliant narrative and leave the reader without the ready means of verifying what he wrote. He has, to use his own words, "suffered the scaffolding to remain after the building has been completed." Those who sneer at his array of testimony are none the less unable to impeach it. Though historical science has in many respects made great advances since his death, his work still stands essentially unshaken. He had the historical conscience in a rare degree; one feels his fairness and is willing to accept his judgment. If he seems to lack a special gift for philosophical analysis, the plan and scope of his histories did not contemplate a subjective treatment. What he meant to do, he did, and he did it with a combination of historical exactness and literary artistry such as no other American at least, has yet exhibited. Without the humour of Irving, or the fire of Motley, or the intimate touch of Parkman, he is superior to all three in poise and judgment and distinction; so that on the whole one may accept the dictum of a distinguished scholar[57] who, in summing up the merits which we recognise in Prescott, declares them to be so conspicuous and so abounding as to place him at the head of all American historians.
INDEX
A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, V, W, X,