Chapter X: Part 10

Meanwhile reports of Cortes' doings and success had reached Velasquez the Governor of Cuba, who determined to despatch an expedition to conquer or capture him as a traitor. Accordingly eighteen vessels containing nearly a thousand white men were placed under the command of Panfilo de Narvaez, and reached Vera Cruz in April, 1520. When Cortes heard of the arrival of this armament and its object which was to punish him for his supposed rebellion, he marched from Mexico, leaving the little garrison and the person of Montezuma in charge of his comrade Alvarado. Although he had with him but two hundred and fifty men in all, he did not hesitate to hazard a night attack upon Narvaez who was strongly encamped at Cempoalla. It was completely successful; Narvaez was wounded, captured, and sent in chains to Vera Cruz, while the army that had come to conquer him swore allegiance to Cortes as Captain-General and marched with him back to Mexico. Here great events were in progress. Moved to the deed by fear or by the discovery of some real or fancied plot against the Spaniards, Alvarado, the deputy of Cortes, had fallen upon the unarmed Aztec nobles while they were celebrating a feast in the courtyard of the great temple, and butchered some six hundred of them with every circumstance of brutality. Then at last the patient Aztecs rose and until the womanly Montezuma begged them to desist, attacked the palace where the Spaniards were quartered, with fury. At the intervention of their monarch the attack was turned to a blockade and Cortes arrived from his victory over Narvaez to find his companions in desperate straits. Reinforced by fresh soldiers the Spaniards carried on the war with activity. They assaulted and captured the great pyramid, putting to the sword the priests of human sacrifice and burning the blood-stained temples of the gods. Also they made several sallies into the city and repelled onslaughts upon the palace. It was in the course of one of these attacks that Montezuma received the wound that brought about his death. Mounting the central tower of the palace he implored his subjects to cease from attacking his friends the Spaniards, whereupon in their fury they overwhelmed him with a shower of darts and stones, inflicting injuries from which in course of a few days he died. Surrounded as he was on every side by thousands of fierce enemies determined to stretch every Spaniard upon the stone of sacrifice, Cortes saw the impossibility of maintaining the unequal fight and determined on retreat. Accordingly on the night of July 1, 1520, the Spaniards and their native allies sallied from the fortress, and laden with gold from Montezuma's treasury, took the route of Tlacopan. Soon their escape was detected and instantly a fierce attack was made upon them from every quarter. The bridge that they had brought with them to span the gaps in the causeway became fixed in the mud, so that their only path across the canals lay over the bodies of their comrades. At length they won through, but out of their small force there had perished, or been taken captive as victims for sacrifice, some four hundred and fifty Spaniards and four thousand native allies. It is said that when the shattered army reached a place of safety outside the city, Cortes sat down beneath an ancient cedar-tree which is still shown to travellers, and wept. Yet within a week fortune smiled on him again, for he and the few comrades who remained to him fought and won the battle of Otompan against thousands of the Indians, Cortes killing their chief Cihuaca with his own hand.

The Aztecs rejoiced at the departure of the Spaniards from their capital Mexico or Tenoctitlan, but their joy was premature. First the small-pox, introduced into the country by the white men, fell upon the city and swept away thousands, among them Cuitlahua, the emperor who succeeded to Montezuma, and then came the news that the indomitable Cortes was marching upon them with a great army of native allies and large reinforcements of Spaniards from overseas. Guatimozin, the new emperor, made every possible preparation for defence and the siege began, a siege as cruel as that of Jerusalem and perhaps more bloody. First Cortes laid waste the cities about Mexico, then he attacked the Queen of the Valley herself--attacked it again and again till at length it was a ruin and tens of thousands of its inhabitants were dead by starvation, by pestilence, and by the sword. On either side the combat was one of desperate courage, but notwithstanding occasional successes on the part of the Aztecs, such as that when they captured and sacrificed some sixty Spaniards, from the first the genius of Cortes made the end inevitable. When nothing remained of Tenoctitlan and its people save some blackened walls and a few thousand wretches reduced to skeletons by hunger, the capture of Guatimozin while attempting to escape in a canoe, made an end of the fighting in August, 1521. Cortes promised honorable treatment to the fallen king, but before long he put him and some of his companions to the torture in order to force the discovery of hidden treasure. This brutality proved ineffectual, but taken together with the subsequent hanging of Guatimozin upon an unproved charge of conspiracy against the Spaniards, it constitutes the blackest blot upon the fame of Cortes. It is fair to add, however, that he was not by nature a harsh man, and that he was driven to the commission of these cruelties by the clamor of his soldiers who were infuriated at finding so little treasure in the devastated city. With the capture of Mexico the fortunes of Cortes culminated. He was appointed Captain-General of the land of New Spain in October, 1522, and the next few years he occupied in rebuilding the city, and in bringing the surrounding territories under the rule of Spain. Wearying of these comparatively peaceful occupations, in 1524 he undertook an expedition of discovery and conquest to Honduras, upon which he was absent until May, 1526, when he returned after enduring much hardship and suffering, to find that enemies had been plotting against him in Mexico. This discovery and the desire of clearing himself with the emperor, caused him to determine to visit Spain where he arrived in May, 1528. Charles the Fifth received him with much favor creating him Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca and military commander of New Spain, and endowing him with vast estates in the lands that he had conquered. In 1530 he returned to Mexico accompanied by his second wife, a lady of good family whom he had married while in Spain. Very soon he entered on a course of expeditions of discovery and maritime adventures which involved him in great pecuniary losses and a quarrel with the viceroy Mendoza; and in 1540 he sailed a second time for Spain to obtain redress from the emperor. But Cortes was no longer the power that he had been; his youth was gone and his work was done, therefore his prayers and remonstrances were treated with cold neglect. For nearly four years he pressed his suit and in February, 1544, we find him writing a letter to the emperor begging him to direct the Council of the Indies to come to a decision upon it. This letter in which pathetically enough, he speaks of himself as "old and poor and indebted," produced no result and once again, worn out and bitterly disappointed, its writer turned his face toward the land that he had won for Spain. But he was never to behold it more. At Seville he was seized with dysentery and passed away December 2, 1547, being then in his sixty-third year. His body was taken to Mexico for burial.

In Hernando Cortes died one of the great men of the world, though how much of his greatness was due to chance is difficult to determine. It is certain that again and again fortune stood his friend in a manner that was little short of miraculous, as in the instances of the unexpected victory over Narvaez and of the death of the general at the battle of Otampan. But if chance or fate gave him opportunities it was Cortes' own genius and unconquerable will that enabled him to avail himself of them. These qualities were the most striking characteristics of the man. He showed them when having determined on the conquest of Mexico he burnt his ships that there might be no escape from the decision; when he hit upon the expedient of using rival tribes to accomplish the overthrow of the Aztecs; when, driven from Mexico with the loss of the half of his army he returned to the attack; and in many another time and place. He had great good qualities, he was a true friend, and according to his lights, an honorable and even a religious man, and his faults were those of his time and training, or at worst such as are not inconsistent with a generous nature. His cruelties may be urged against him, but no Spaniard of his age thought it cruel to slaughter enemies of the Faith who practised human sacrifice; also having once embarked upon his colossal undertaking he and his companions must either slay or be slain. There is evidence to show that personally he was not a cruel man. Thus when called upon to sign the death-warrant of a soldier he lamented that he had ever been taught to write, and there are passages in his will which show his conscience to have been troubled by questions as to the right to enslave human beings. With a handful of followers Cortes overthrew the fabric of the Aztec Empire, broke the spirit of its people so effectually that to this day it has not recovered itself, and swept away its religion. Whether for good or evil this was a stupendous achievement and one that must make his name immortal.

[Signature of the author.]

FRANCISCO PIZARRO[18]

By J. T. TROWBRIDGE

(1471-1541)

[Footnote 18: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]

]

The old Spanish province of Estremadura, though distant from the sea, shut in by mountain-chains, furnished numerous adventurers for the expeditions of discovery, conquest, and plunder that followed Columbus to the New World; two of whom achieved astonishing renown. One was the conqueror of Mexico; the other, the conqueror of Peru.

Of the early life of Francisco Pizarro not much is known with certainty. He was born about the year 1471; but even that date is a matter of conjecture, so little care was had of the coming into the world of the actor who was to play so stirring a part in it. The family from which he inherited his name must have been one of some note in its day. His kinsman and great rival in fame, Cortes, was a Pizarro on his mother's side.

Francisco was the second of four brothers, all of whom were men of ability and valor, and all of whom fought in the Peruvian wars. Their father was Colonel Gonzalo Pizarro, concerning whom little is known, save that he was a soldier of Spain, and that he served creditably in Italy and Navarre.

The mother of Francisco was Francisca Gonzales, a woman of low condition, from whom he seems to have received hardly more parental care than from his father, by whom he was utterly neglected. The story told by Gomara, and quoted by Prescott, that, abandoned as a foundling, he was nursed by a sow, though as mythical as that of Romulus and the wolf, which probably suggested it, indicates nevertheless the degradation of his childhood. He grew up in ignorance and vagabondage. Of what the world calls education he had not the first rudiments; to the day of his death he could neither read nor write. The only occupation in which we hear of his being engaged in his boyhood, was that of a swineherd.

At what age he escaped from this mean employment is not known. The claim set up for him by his descendants, that he served with his father in Italy, hardly deserves consideration. He was about twenty-one years old when all Spain began to ring with the discoveries of Columbus and his companions beyond the western seas. Pizarro left his employer and his pigs, ran away to Seville, and embarked in one of the early expeditions that sailed from that port to the New World.

Of his years of apprenticeship in the stern warfare of the times we have no trustworthy details, until at Hispaniola, in 1510, he joined, as second in command, Ojeda's disastrous expedition to Uraba, on the main coast. Sanguinary fights with swarms of savages armed with poisoned arrows, marked the fortunes of the adventurers. And when Ojeda returned to the islands for assistance, which he did not bring, Pizarro remained in command of the starving colony, amid hardships and horrors from which only his resolute daring brought off a remnant alive.

He was with Balboa in his famous march across the mountains to the Pacific, which no European eyes had hitherto beheld; and shared with him the joy of that discovery, which Keats wrongly ascribes to Cortes, when the hardy band, first beholding the unknown ocean outspread before them--

"Looked at each other with a wild surmise,
Silent, upon a peak in Darien."

He remained with Balboa on the isthmus until the death of that valiant commander, when he united his fortunes with those of the governor, Pedrarias, and headed various expeditions along the Pacific coast and to the islands beyond, in quest of pearls and gold. He was occupied in this way, or in cultivating with the aid of Indian slaves a malarious tract of land he had acquired near Panama, when a new career invited him.

Rumors of a rich empire far to the south, where gold was as common with the natives as iron was with the Spaniards, had long inflamed the imaginations of the colonists; then news came of the prodigious exploits of Cortes in Mexico. Pizarro burned to emulate his kinsman. Having formed a partnership with Diego de Almagro, a soldier of experience, and Hernando de Luque, a priest supplied with worldly means, he secured an old vessel that had been designed by Balboa for a similar expedition, refitted it with Luque's money, and with a hundred adventurers sailed from the port of Panama in November, 1524; leaving Almagro to follow in a smaller vessel.

Pizarro was then more than fifty years old, but still in possession of all his masterful qualities. And he had need of all, amid the perils of sea and land, the tempests, swamps, battles, sickness, and famine, which rendered his first voyage down the coast a deplorable failure. Almagro met with no better success. Both returned to the isthmus buffeted, baffled, humiliated, but too stout of heart to be cast down. They brought back but little gold, but with that little they had gathered evidence of the indubitable existence of the opulent empire they sought.

The governor was hugely dissatisfied with the results of the expedition, of which he had expected to share some of the profits; and his consent to another could hardly have been obtained, but for the persuasive eloquence of the priest, backed by the offer of a sum in ready cash. For a thousand pesos de oro Pedrarias gave his consent, and signed away his right to the spoils of an empire.

A new contract was entered into by the three partners, and an elaborate and solemn document was drawn up, in sonorous Spanish, which is curious reading at this day. Father Luque signed it with his own hand, and the two soldiers by the hands of witnesses, since neither Pizarro nor Almagro could write his name. About one hundred and sixty men were enlisted, and again the two chiefs set sail from Panama in separate ships.

They made their first landing at the mouth of the Rio San Juan, where by the plunder of a small village, they secured some ornaments of gold and a few prisoners. Almagro hastened to carry the treasure back to Panama, as a bait to other followers, while Pizarro and his pilot Ruiz remained to explore the interior and the coast. Ruiz sailed as far south as the equator, and after a memorable voyage of some weeks, returned to his chief with a cheering report. He had fallen in with what seemed at first a ship at sea, where no European ship had ever been, and found it to be an Indian _balsa_, a huge raft across which was stretched a sail of cotton-cloth. It had a rudder and a keel. On board were men and women clad in a curious sort of woollen stuff, skilfully woven, and beautifully dyed and embroidered. They were making a voyage of traffic along the coast. They wore ornaments of gold, and had with them, besides vessels and mirrors of burnished silver, balances for weighing the precious metals, which by signs they assured Ruiz were common in their country.

Pizarro in the meanwhile vainly endeavored to pass the yawning gorges, bottomless swamps, and dense dark forests that lay between him and the snow-covered peaks of the Cordilleras. Entangled vines and trees of a luxuriant tropical vegetation, huge boas coiling in the branches, ready to spring upon their prey, screaming parrots, chattering and grimacing monkeys, mosquitoes, alligators, prowling savages,--amid such scenes as these he and his band had once more confronted famine and death in the absence of Almagro and Ruiz.

Ruiz came opportunely with his good news, and Almagro returned with eighty recruits. The expedition re-embarked and proceeded southward. The aspect of the coast became more inviting as they advanced. There were signs of an extensive civilization; fields cultivated with maize, cacao, and potatoes; many villages; and at length a town of more than two thousand houses, laid out with streets, and thronging with inhabitants. Among the Spaniards wild enthusiasm prevailed. But it was quickly checked by the hostile demonstrations with which they were met, when they attempted to gain a foothold on the soil of the Incas. It was useless to make front against such numbers as opposed them. Divided counsels and a violent quarrel between the two captains ensued, and the expedition sailed back northward. Once more Almagro returned to Panama for more men, while Pizarro and his followers remained to starve on the barren isle of Gallo.

Instead of permitting any more of his people to depart on what seemed so foolhardy and fatal a business, Rios, the new governor of Panama, despatched to the island two vessels, under a commander named Tafur, with orders to bring away every Spaniard left alive there. Then occurred the famous episode that decided so dramatically the fortunes of Pizarro and the fate of Peru. Tafur had brought supplies of provisions to the famished and emaciated, but now jubilant soldiers; and all except Pizarro appeared eager to abandon their barren adventure and return in the ships. Pizarro alone refused obedience to the governor's agent. Drawing a line on the sand with his sword, he cried: "Comrades! on that side lie hunger and hardship; on this side, ease and safety. There lies Peru with its riches; here, Panama and poverty. Choose, every man for himself, like brave Castilians. For me, I go to the south."

He stepped across the line. There was a minute of dismay and silence. Then Ruiz followed, and after him twelve others went over, an act of as desperate and resolute courage as ever inspired a forlorn band.

They saw the ships containing their comrades sail away without them; Ruiz also returned, pledged to bring assistance to his companions left behind; while Pizarro remained with his twelve Spaniards, and three or four Indian captives whom he had made friends, on the desolate island.

Not even a ship was left them, and they had to build a raft to convey them to a less inhospitable island, that of Gorgona, farther north. There they lived seven months, subsisting on small game brought down by their cross-bows, and shell-fish found on the shores, until Ruiz, after weary delays, returned in a small vessel, bringing supplies, but not the expected reinforcement of troops.

In this frail craft the dauntless rovers put to sea. Pizarro pursued his explorations southward, beyond the point where he afterward founded Truxillo, named after his native town; visited several Peruvian ports, and learned much of the country he proposed to subjugate. He then returned to Panama, which he reached after an absence of eighteen months. The reappearance of the little group of wanderers bringing news of their discoveries, was the cause of great astonishment in the colony, and of joyful enthusiasm among their friends, who had long given them up for dead.

The governor, however, resenting Pizarro's disobedience of his orders at the isle of Gallo, refused to sanction another expedition; and Pizarro resolved upon the bold course of returning to Spain and appealing to the Crown. This was in the spring of 1528.

Arriving at Seville, he was immediately thrown into prison for a debt incurred at Darien. But he was released by order of the emperor, Charles V., who received him graciously at Toledo, heard the wondrous story of his wanderings, which Pizarro knew how to tell, and saw the vessels of gold and silver, the fine fabrics, the llamas, and other evidences of the Peruvian civilization, which were displayed before his royal eyes. He was also, no doubt influenced by the recent achievements of Cortes, who was then at court, and who perhaps spoke for his kinsman a friendly word.

The monarch turned over Pizarro and his enterprise, with his recommendation, to the Council of the Indies. Yet a year passed, and nothing was done. Pizarro was fast sinking into obscurity, and he would likewise have sunk into despair, if he had been less stout of heart. Then, as Queen Isabella had aided Columbus, so the queen of Charles V. came to the assistance of Pizarro, and caused to be executed the extraordinary instrument which bestowed on him, with the rights of discovery and conquest, the titles of Governor and Captain-General of New Castile, as Peru was then called, and a salary of 725,000 maravedis, to be drawn however from the conquered country. Almagro and Luque were also provided for, but in a more modest way, which proved the beginning of a long, bitter, and deadly feud between Almagro and his chief. Nor did the instrument fail to make the usual provision for the conversion to Christianity of the nations to be subjugated and plundered.

In mustering his recruits Pizarro had the satisfaction of revisiting his native town of Truxillo, where he had lived in degradation, and to which he now returned a renowned discoverer and soldier, and a titled magnate. There he found his three brothers, the Pizarros, all poor and proud and eager for adventure; and a fourth brother, on his mother's side. With these and other followers, hardly exceeding one hundred, he sailed from Seville, in January, 1530; and a year later, namely, in January, 1531, after a solemn consecration of his enterprise in the cathedral of Panama, he put forth from that port with one hundred and eighty men and twenty-seven horses, on his fourth, last, and finally successful expedition, to overthrow a populous empire.

That empire lay in the bosom and on both sides of the mighty ranges of the Andes, occupying thirty-seven degrees of the coast south of the equator, and extending eastward far over the valleys of the Amazon and its numerous tributaries. It was under the rule of the Incas, a parental despotism, which spread an iron network of laws over millions of subjects of different races and languages. Its mountain slopes, table-lands, sea-coasts, and plains comprised every variety of climate and almost every diversity of physical features. Its capital was Cuzco, where dwelt the adored Incas; there also was the famous Temple of the Sun, with its gorgeous decorations of gold and gems. Canals, aqueducts, complete systems of irrigation for the rainless regions; magnificent mountain roads, built to endure for centuries; fine textile fabrics, utensils of clay and copper, vessels and ornaments of silver and gold; bridges, fortresses, and edifices of a rude but massy and symmetrical architecture, well adapted to the climate and the needs of the inhabitants; armies, magistrates, courts of justice,--such were some of the tokens of a wide semi-civilized prosperity, which less than two hundred Spanish adventurers were proceeding ruthlessly to destroy.

With incredible difficulties still to overcome, Pizarro had in his favor a circumstance of immense importance. The country was at that time distracted by civil war. Two brothers, Huascar and Atahualpa, sons of the last Inca, were engaged in a fratricidal strife for the imperial power, and their armies were turned against each other.

Pizarro resolved to strike his first blow at Tumbez; but was constrained by baffling winds to put into the Bay St. Matthew. There he landed his force, and soon fell upon a peaceful village, putting the inhabitants to flight and pillaging their dwellings. A considerable treasure thus obtained was sent back to Panama, where it had the desired effect of rallying new recruits for the conquest. A most welcome reinforcement was headed by Hernando de Soto, afterwards famed as the discoverer of the Mississippi, who sailed to join Pizarro with one hundred men and a number of horses.

De Soto arrived in time to aid in extricating him from a harassing situation on the island of Puna. Pizarro had been so indiscreet as to get into a quarrel with the inhabitants, whom he had defeated in battle and slaughtered in large numbers, and from whose incessant attacks he was suffering great annoyance.

He now felt himself strong enough to invade the interior. The story of that invasion is one of the most astonishing in history. It has been many times told, but nowhere else so effectively as in the full, flowing, and lucid narrative of Prescott. It can be but briefly sketched here.

Having established near the sea-coast a settlement which he named San Miguel, to serve as a key of communication between him and his ships, Pizarro set out boldly on his march, having with him but one hundred and seventy-seven men, nine of whom showing signs of sinking courage, were soon sent back to the settlement. By pretences of a friendly mission to their Inca, he won his way among such of the surprised inhabitants as were not frightened from their villages by his approach; and penetrated the wild defiles of the Cordilleras, behind which, near Caxamalca--now Caxamarca--the Inca Atahualpa, with an immense army lay encamped. He was fresh from a great and decisive victory over his elder brother, and was resting, and enjoying the warm baths near the city,--the "baths of the Incas," as they are called to this day.

Instead of disputing the passage of the strangers in the mountain fortresses, and hurling destruction upon them from a thousand crags, the monarch sent to exchange gifts with them, and assurances of friendship; and awaited them in his camp, the pavilions of which whitened the wide hillsides for miles.

On a dull afternoon in November, 1532, Pizarro entered Caxamalca, and undismayed by the innumerable host that confronted him, went to pay a visit of courtesy to the Inca. He was gloomily received by Atahualpa, who chanced to be observing a fast, but who promised to return his visit on the following day.

Pizarro felt that a crisis in his audacious business was close at hand; and endured the deepest anxiety until late the next afternoon, that of November 16th, when, after long delays and apparent waverings on the part of the Inca, which severely tried the patience of the Spaniards lying in wait with their heavy armor on, he at length appeared, borne in a gorgeous palanquin, and accompanied by an immense and magnificent procession.

With ferocious satisfaction Pizarro beheld his august victim advancing to his doom. The procession entered the grand plaza of Caxamalca, on three sides of which, under cover of low buildings opening into it, spearmen and horsemen stood to their arms. Not a Spaniard was to be seen, until a priest with interpreters advanced to meet the monarch, and to confuse him with an astonishing harangue concerning the true faith and the supremacy of Spain. Pizarro saw that his opportunity had come. He waved his scarf; from the fortress sounded a signal-gun; and with fierce battle-cries the Spaniards rushed from all sides upon the Peruvians.

The shouts, the blaze and smoke of fire-arms, the terrible detonations, the sight of plunging horses and their riders, with the sudden fury of the onset, paralyzed with terror the multitude of unarmed attendants, who fell the victims of a horrible massacre. The Inca was seized and borne off a captive. And yet the pursuit and slaughter did not cease until thousands of the panic-stricken and defenceless Peruvians had been slain, and more prisoners had been taken than were required to provide every Spaniard with a retinue of servants.

Pizarro treated his captive with the consideration due to a great but fallen potentate; he granted him ample apartments, and the society of his favorite wives and nobles. He at the same time endeavored to save his soul, by enforcing upon his mind the truths of the Catholic faith. Atahualpa accepted with dignity the fortunes of war; and as a ransom offered to fill a large room in which he one day was, with vessels of gold, as high as he could reach. Pizarro agreed to the proposal, and by the Inca's orders messengers were despatched to Cuzco and other important cities of the empire, for the required booty.

This arrangement reached the ears of Huascar, then a prisoner in the hands of his younger brother's adherents; he thereupon sent word to the Spaniards that he would pay a much larger reward if they would espouse his cause and set him free. Unfortunately for both him and Pizarro, the offer reached the ears of Atahualpa, who secretly caused Huascar to be put to death.

The golden treasure soon began to come in, borne on the backs of Indians,--goblets, vases, salvers, massy plates and tiles from the walls of palaces and temples, and images of plants and animals. Some of these objects weighed individually several pounds; and the art displayed in their manufacture was often admirable. But they were all ruthlessly melted down into ingots, to be divided among the conquerors. Gold to the value of more than seventeen million dollars, measured by our modern standard, was thus secured, besides a vast amount of silver. Certainly no prince in all the world's history had ever paid such a ransom.

The treasure was a long while coming in; and Pizarro had ample time to consider how he should keep his part of the contract. He could never have had any intention of giving the Inca his liberty; nor was he deep enough in his craft to perceive the immense advantage he might gain by holding him a captive. He resolved upon his death. The unhappy prince was tried by a military court of his enemies, charged with the usurpation of the empire, with the murder of his brother, and with attempts to incite an insurrection against the Spaniards. He was condemned, received as a convert to the Catholic faith, baptized, and executed. This event occurred August 29, 1533.

Meanwhile Almagro had arrived with a much-needed reinforcement; and adventurers of all sorts, from Spain and her western colonies, soon began to flock to the newly opened land of gold. Pizarro marched upon Cuzco, which he took after a fierce battle, and pillaged of what gold had not been already removed for Atahualpa's ransom. He caused Manco Capae, a young prince of the royal blood, to be proclaimed Inca; drove him by his oppressions to revolt; and was besieged by him in Cuzco. The Peruvians assaulted the city in countless numbers, set fire to the houses with flaming arrows and red-hot stones, and might have starved or destroyed the Spaniards, had not they themselves been forced by starvation to raise the siege.

In June, 1538, the old feud between Pizarro and Almagro culminated in a battle between their two factions, and Almagro was defeated and killed. Pizarro now ruled the country with red-handed despotism. The benignant laws of the Incas were replaced by the rapine of the conquerors. Not only gold and silver, but the land itself and its former peaceful occupants, were apportioned among them; and slavery and concubinage prevailed in their most revolting forms. The rumors of these wrongs reached Spain, and a commissioner was sent out to inquire into them; but before his arrival Pizarro died by violence in his own Ciudad de los Reyes, "City of the Kings,"--now Lima,--which he had founded in 1535.

His death was worthy of his life. Attacked in his own house by the avengers of Almagro, he fought furiously, and cut down three of his assailants; but fell, overcome by numbers, and pierced by as many blades as met in the body of Caesar. His last word was "Jesu!" and his last act, to stoop and kiss the symbol of a cross which he traced with his finger on the bloody floor.

Thus lived and died one of the most extraordinary men of his time, indeed of all times. It is hard to sum up briefly the good and evil of such a character. He was said to be of a pleasing and dignified presence, simple and self-reliant. We know that he was possessed of indomitable courage, endurance, and persistency of purpose; avaricious, perfidious, devout; and conspicuous for his cruelty even in a cruel age. Greedy as he was of gold, he spent little of it upon himself, and seemed to desire it chiefly for the power and honor it would command. He founded settlements and cities, and was lavish in his expenditures upon public works; no doubt ambitious of building up a new empire on the ruins of the one he had destroyed. But he exhibited none of the great qualities of a born ruler and lawgiver; in the coarseness of his moral nature, a swineherd to the last. He never married, but by a daughter of Atahualpa he had a daughter, who survived him. In his native town of Truxillo her descendants are still to be found, with the mingled blood of the conqueror and of the last of the Incas in their veins.

[Signature of the author.]

GASPARD DE COLIGNI

By PROFESSOR CREASY

(1517-1572)

]

There was a time, when the doctrines of the Reformation seemed destined to achieve far ampler conquests over the dominion of Papal Rome than they have ultimately realized. France, in particular, at the commencement of the second half of the sixteenth century, appeared to be almost won over to Protestantism. The Huguenots (as the followers of the Reformed Faith in that country were termed) formed the most influential, if not the largest part of the population of many of the principal provinces, and of nearly all the provincial capitals; they were numerous in Paris; nor was there a single district or town in France in which they had not obtained converts and power, before the war of 1562.

The history of the Reformation in France is a mournful one; but it presents names to our notice which every good heart must delight to honor; and foremost of these is the name of Gaspard de Coligni, the statesman, the soldier, and the saint; who long was the stoutest champion of the Protestant cause, and finally became the most glorious of its many martyrs. Unlike his comrade Conde, he was proof against the vicious blandishments of the enemy's court, as well as against the terrors of their camps. Familiar with defeat, he never learned despair. Hallam has well compared his indomitable energy to the

"Atrocem animam Catonis;"

but the Huguenot chief, while fully equal to the ancient Roman in probity, in self-reliance, and in unflinching fortitude, was far superior to him in comprehensiveness of judgment and in fertility of resources; and moreover, the affectionate gentleness which marked the private life of Coligni, contrasts favorably with the stoic coarseness by which the character of Cato was deformed.

The father of Coligni was head of an ancient and noble house, and was the seigneur of Chatillon-sur-Lion. At his death, in 1522, he left three sons, then of tender years, all of whom became eminent in French history, and all of whom embraced the Protestant doctrines, though trained up in the Romish Church. The elder brother, who is known as the Cardinal de Chatillon, was raised to that high ecclesiastical dignity by Clement VII., in 1533. Chiefly through the influence which his younger brother exerted over him, he became a convert to the tenets of the Reformers in his middle age, and took part in the early scenes of the civil wars. After the reverse which his party sustained at the battle of St. Denys, he fled to England, where he died in 1571. The younger brother, Dandelot, was the first of the three who became a Protestant. He was a skilful and gallant soldier, and signalized himself repeatedly by his enterprise, his inexhaustible resources, and undaunted spirit, as a commander of the Huguenot forces from the first outbreak of the religious wars until his death soon after the battle of Jarnac, in 1569. Gaspard, the great Coligni, or the Admiral (as he is often termed, from having held the titular office of Admiral of France), was the middle one of the three brothers, and was born at Chatillon-sur-Lion, February 16, 1517. He served with distinction in the later wars of Francis I. against Spain; and with his brother Dandelot received knighthood on the field of battle at Cerisoles. He was afterward raised to the important post of colonel-general of the French infantry, and in 1552 was nominated by Henry II. Admiral of France. He was taken prisoner at St. Quentin by the Spaniards, and underwent a long captivity in Spain before he regained his liberty by payment of a heavy ransom.

During the long hours of solitude and compulsory inaction which he passed in his Spanish prison, he meditated deeply and earnestly on religious subjects; and after his return to France, the conversation of his brother Dandelot, who had already joined the Huguenots, confirmed the bias to the Protestant doctrines, which his own studies and deliberations had created. Coligni now resigned all his appointments and preferments, except the nominal rank of admiral, and retired to his estates, where he passed his time in fervent devotion, and in the enjoyment of the calm happiness of domestic life. But the cry of suffering which rose from his fellow-Protestants, against whom the pernicious influence of the Princes of Lorraine in the French court kindled the fires of persecution throughout France, soon drew him from his blameless and cherished repose. He at first sought to provide for them a refuge from oppression, by founding colonies of French Protestants in America; but his projects proved unsuccessful; and as the tyranny of the violent party among the French Catholics grew more and more alarming, Coligni deemed that both honor and conscience required him to stand openly forward in behalf of his co-religionists.

No class of men ever were more long-suffering, or showed more unwillingness to rise in arms against their domestic tyrants, than the much-calumniated Huguenots of France. When we read the hideous edicts that were promulgated against them, and which were not mere empty threats, but were carried into execution throughout the land with unrelenting and strenuous ferocity, we feel that if ever the right of self-defence can make an appeal to arms justifiable, it was so in their instance. Extermination or apostasy formed the only choice that their rulers offered them. Mackintosh, in his "History of the English Revolution of 1688," has truly termed the question of when subjects are justified in making war on their sovereign, "a tremendous problem." But the same admirable writer has bequeathed to us a full and luminous code of the rules and principles of immutable morality, by which this awful issue must be tried, and no one who is familiar with these principles can hesitate in pronouncing that the war on the part of the French Huguenots was lawful and laudable before God and man.

Coligni is peculiarly free from the heavy imputation, which insurrectionary leaders incur, however great their provocation, who introduce the appeal of battle in civil controversy, and, to use the emphatic language of Milton, "let loose the sword of intestine war, soaking the land in her own gore," before every other possible mode of obtaining protection from further enormous wrong has been attempted, and attempted in vain. He was wholly unconnected with the enterprise (known in French history as the conspiracy of Amboise) by which some of the Protestant chiefs designed to withdraw the young king, Francis II., forcibly from the influence of the Guises, and which may be considered the first overt act of insurrection. Not that Conde is to be condemned for that effort, but the Admiral's exceeding loyalty is proved by his having kept aloof from it. Coligni continued to seek security for his co-religionists by peaceable means, for two years after that unsuccessful enterprise, from the savage reprisals of the Court upon its authors. He seemed at one time to be successful in his blameless exertions; and in the Assembly of Notables, held in January, 1562, an edict was issued, called the "Edict of Pacification," giving a partial toleration of the Protestant creed, and suspending all penal proceedings on the ground of religion.

This was all that Coligni strove for. He said at the time to some of his adherents: "If we have our religion, what do we want more?" But those who had made this concession were treacherous as they were cruel, and the fair promise which France seemed to have acquired of tranquillity was destined to be soon destroyed.

Two powerful parties were arrayed against the Huguenots, one of which consisted of their avowed and implacable enemies. This was headed by the Guises, with whom the Constable Montmorenci, and the Marechal St. Andre had been induced to enter into league. Less fanatically violent, but far more formidable, through its false show of moderation and favor, was the party of the Queen-mother, Catherine de Medici. Catherine dreaded the power of the house of Guise; and was often glad to avail herself of the Protestant interest as a counterpoise against them. But though the jealousy which animated herself and her sons against the Princes of Lorraine was great, their hatred of the Huguenots was greater; and their occasional simulation of friendship enabled them to wreak it more malignantly and more completely.

They had sided with Coligni and Conde and the other Protestant chiefs in enacting the Edict of Pacification, and had thereby given a check to the power of the Duke of Guise and his confederates. But when their temporary purpose was served, the wise provisions of that edict were set at naught; the Protestants were again exposed to outrage and slaughter at the hands of their foes, nor could any redress be obtained from the royal tribunals. At length occurred the massacre of Vassi, where the armed followers of the Duke of Guise attacked a defenceless body of Protestants, while engaged in the services of their church, and slaughtered several hundreds of them under the eye of Guise, if not by his orders. Reeking from this carnage, the bands of the Lorraines entered Paris, where they were enthusiastically received by the fanatic populace, which was devoted to the Catholic cause.

Conde now left the capital, and summoned the Protestant nobility and gentry to rally round him in defence of their lives and their creed. Coligni long delayed joining him, and evinced a hesitation and a reluctance to embark in civil war, which emphatically attest the goodness while they in no degree detract from the greatness of his character. His wife, who naturally thought that anxiety on her account aided in restraining him, exhorted him in words of more than Roman magnanimity to arm in defence of the thousand destined victims, who looked up to him for guidance and protection. Coligni urged on her and on the friends who thronged round him, the fearful risks of the enterprise, and his earnest desire to wait in patience for better times, and rest upon the public faith rather than justify persecution by having recourse to violence. Unconvinced and undaunted, the heroine renewed her entreaties to the lingering hero. She told him that such prudence was not wisdom toward God. D'Aubigne professes to report this remarkable conversation from the lips of those who were present; and he states that she proceeded to urge on him these words:--

"God has bestowed on you the genius of a great captain--will you refuse the use of it to his children? You have confessed to the justice of their cause--is not the knightly sword you bear pledged to the defence of the oppressed? Sir, my heart bleeds for our slaughtered brethren--and their blood cries out to God and Heaven against you as the murderer of those whom you might have saved."

"Since," replied the Admiral, "the reasons which I have this evening alleged against an ineffectual resistance have made so little impression upon your mind, lay your hand upon your heart and answer me this question, Could you, without murmuring against Providence and the husband to whom Heaven has united you, receive the news of a general defeat? Are you prepared to endure the opprobrium of your enemies--the reproaches of your friends--the treachery of partisans--the curses of the people--confiscation, flight, exile--the insolence of the English, the quarrels of the Germans--shame, nakedness, hunger--and, what is worse, to suffer all this in your children? Are you prepared to see your husband branded as a rebel and dragged to a scaffold; while your children, disgraced and ruined, are begging their bread at the hands of their enemies? I give you eight days to reflect upon it, and when you shall be well prepared for such reverses, I will be ready to set forward, and perish with you and our mutual friends."

"The eight days are already expired!" she cried. "Go, sir, where your duty calls you. Heaven will not give the victory to our enemies. In the name of God, I call upon you to resist no longer, but to save our brethren, or die in the attempt."

On the next morning Coligni was on horseback, with all his retainers round him; and with a heavy heart but a clear conscience, he rode on his way to join Conde at Meaux, which was now, in the early spring of 1562, the head-quarters of the insurgent Huguenots.

The high rank of the Prince of Conde, as well as his brilliant abilities and chivalrous courage, caused him to be acknowledged as chief of the Protestant party; but Coligni was looked on by friends and foes as the main pillar of their cause; and it was he that gave organization to the volunteers who flocked around himself and the prince, first at Meaux, and afterward in greater numbers at Orleans, when toward the end of March they succeeded in occupying that important city, and making it a centre of operations for the Huguenot confederacy. Like Cromwell in after times, Coligni relied on the religious enthusiasm as well as the natural bravery of his troops. He exercised them by preaching and prayer as well as by drilling and manoeuvring. He inspired them with his own spirit of austere devotion to their cause; and the Huguenot army was in its first campaigns as conspicuous for good order and morality as for valor; though by degrees it became tainted with a tendency to marauding and to brutal violence.

The Roman Catholic party now sought support from Philip II. of Spain, from the Duke of Savoy, the emperor and other foreign princes of their creed, and the Huguenots, to the deep regret of Coligni, were compelled to strengthen themselves by similar negotiations. The English queen, Elizabeth, promised succors in men and money, on condition of Havre (which city, like most of the other strong places in Normandy, was devoted to the Protestant cause) being placed in her power as a security for repayment. The German Lutheran princes permitted a large auxiliary force of lansquenets and heavy-armed cavalry to be raised among their subjects in behalf of the French Protestants; and Dandelot was despatched into Germany to place himself at their head, and lead them across the Rhine; a difficult operation, which he accomplished with great skill, and joined his brothers and Conde at Pluviers, near Orleans, late in the year, and at a crisis when the fortunes of the Protestant party appeared reduced to a very low ebb, as in the interval which had elapsed since the commencement of the war, though there had been no engagement between the main armies, the Royalists had gained numerous advantages, and had captured many towns, both in the South and in Normandy, which had originally declared for the insurgents.

Coligni and Conde with their own troops and their German allies now (December, 1562) marched upon Paris; but finding it hopeless to attempt the storm or siege of the capital, they led their army toward Normandy, desiring to form a junction with the English troops at Havre. The Royal forces, commanded nominally by the Constable Montmorenci and the Marechal de St. Andre, but in which the Duke of Guise was also present, marched for some days on their flank, till the two armies came into collision on December 19th at Dreux, where the first battle of the civil wars was fought. In this action, after many vicissitudes of fortune, the Duke of Guise secured the victory for the Roman Catholics, and Conde was taken prisoner. Coligni led the remains of the Protestant army back to Orleans; whither the Duke of Guise, at the head of a largely recruited army, flushed by their recent victory, soon advanced, with the intention of crushing insurrection and Protestantism, by the capture of their stronghold.

Coligni's situation now seemed desperate. His German mercenaries in arrear of pay, threatened to desert him; the funds which he had been able to collect for the conduct of the war were exhausted; and he was utterly unable to encounter the numerous and well-appointed forces of Guise. In this emergency he formed the bold plan of leaving his brother, Dandelot, with the bulk of the infantry to defend Orleans, while he himself led the cavalry and a few companies of foot again to Normandy, and again attempted to avail himself of the English supplies of money and troops. In spite of the mutinous murmurings of the German reisters, in spite of the attempts which the Roman Catholic commanders made to intercept him, Coligni executed his daring scheme. Havre was reached. The English subsidies were secured, and the rich and powerful city of Caen voluntarily placed itself in Coligni's power. Meanwhile Orleans had been well defended by Dandelot; and the great chief of the Roman Catholics, the Duke of Guise, had died by the hand of an assassin. Some attempts were made to implicate Coligni in the guilt of this murder, but the Admiral indignantly denied the charge; nor is there any ground for believing him to have had the least cognizance of Poltrot's crime.

The death of Guise made a temporary pacification easy; and the edict of Amboise, on March 19, 1563, by which a narrow and restricted permission for the exercise of the Protestant religion was allowed, closed the first war.

This peace on the part of the Royalists was only a hollow and a treacherous truce. Fresh communications with Philip II. were opened; and an interview took place in 1564 at Bayonne, between Catherine, her son Charles IX., and the Duke of Alva. There is every reason to believe that at that meeting the destruction of the Protestants by craft or by force was concerted. The treaty of Amboise was now openly and repeatedly violated by the fanatic party of the French Roman Catholics; and the Huguenots were again driven to take up arms in self-defence. Conde and Coligni advanced upon Paris, and fought on November 10, 1567, the sanguinary battle of St. Denys against the Royalist forces. The Huguenots were beaten, but Coligni rallied them, and marching toward the Meuse, effected a junction with fresh bands of German auxiliaries. The war now raged with redoubled horror in every district of France. Alarmed at the strength of the Huguenot army, Catherine tried and successfully exerted her powers of persuasion and deceit over Conde, and a second faithless peace, called the treaty of Longjumeau, was concluded; but when the Huguenot forces were disbanded, and their German auxiliaries dismissed, the Royalists renewed the war.