Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1/Preface
PREFACE
THE narrative contained in the Letters of Fernando Cortes is the first description ever written of the most highly developed civilisation on the continent of North America at the date of its discovery. Astronomical science has brought the existence of planets within common knowledge, and our imagination is already so familiar with the possibility of a Martian population, that a discovery positively demonstrating such a fact would be received as confirmatory rather than surprising. By the discoveries of Christopher Columbus, the civilisations of two worlds as absolutely strange to one another as different planets were brought into sudden contact productive of conflict and that conflict was naturally fiercest where the alien invaders were confronted by the best organised effort to contest their advance; hence the period of the Spanish conquest of Mexico, which is depicted by Cortes in these letters to Charles V. was prolific in deeds the most striking to the imagination of any that modern history records. No element of drama was absent, for the most heroic qualities, as well as the blackest passions of the human heart, were engaged on both sides in a life-and-death struggle, which culminated in an appalling race-tragedy, replete with epic horror. The piratical complexion of the Conqueror's initial movements forced him to wrest justification from success, and this was only made possible by the exercise of his indomitable courage, his relentless and unscrupulous diplomacy, and by that strange favour, which capricious Fortune sometimes destines as a reward for sheer audacity.
Fortunate for posterity was the anxious need of Cortes to win royal approval for his lawless courses, for from it sprang the inspiration which prompted him to pen his descriptions of the Aztec civilisation at the zenith of its splendour and to report in detail to his sovereign the progress of his conquest.
Although historians have from the beginning recognised the superlative value of these letters and several editions of them are accessible to students familiar with the Spanish language, it has been left to my modest labours to provide an English translation of the complete series of Relaciones, The translation of sixteenth century Spanish into readable, modern English is not devoid of difficulty, though greater demands are made on the translator's patience and ingenuity than on his erudition.
Cortes wrote with soldier-like terseness, but his powers of observation were acute and accurate; hence his descriptions are both lucid and striking. His vocabulary was very limited, and as he was unfamiliar with the classical and scholastic styles of composition then in vogue amongst men of letters, his plain tale is ungarnished with the digressions into philosophy and theology and the lengthy citations from scripture and the classics, which abound in the more polished writings of his times. I suspect, moreover, that he had in mind to capture the fancy of the royal youth to whom he wrote, and, in days when novels were not, and court life must have weighed on a monarch of seventeen, still too young to be engrossed either in the delusive pleasures of private dissipation or in the absorbing intrigues of public ambition, many of his pages may have furnished the youthful sovereign with diverting reading in his leisure hours
I have aimed rather to preserve accuracy and the characteristics of Cortes 's original style than to produce a more finished piece of English literature, by excessive rearrangement and the employment of a richer vocabulary than he commanded. The subjects touched upon in the Letters are so little known to the general reader (though they constantly engage the attention of able specialists) that I have supplied notes to accompany the text, which are intended to explain and complete the narrative of Cortes. These notes deal with various and very large subjects, on some of which historical authorities are not in agreement, while on many others of the greatest interest and importance the last word has not yet been spoken. The statements I have made and the opinions I have expressed on these debatable questions are based upon the results of my researches in the works cited in the Bibliographical Note preceding the Letters: their scope is explanatory and complementary—not controversial.
The portrait of Cortes which appears as a frontispiece is after the alleged Titian, now in the possession of the Duque de Plasencia.
The portrait of Charles V. represents that monarch in his early youth, at the time when Cortes first began his correspondence; it is reproduced from a print in the British Museum.
The plan of the City of Mexico is taken from the Historia Antigua of Señor Manuel Orozco y Berra and the several maps are from the editions in which they originally appeared of the Storia Antica del Messico of Clavigero, 1780, Lorenzana's Historia de Nueva Espana, 1770, and of C. St. John Fancourt's History of Yucatan from its Discovery to the Close of the Seventeenth Century.
Since the days when those illustrious pioneers in this particular field of historical research, Washington Irving and William H. Prescott laboured with results that have won them enduring fame, the classification of the vast and scattered archives of Spain has gone steadily forward, with the result that the worker of to-day finds a mass of valuable material easily accessible that had formerly to be sought at great cost of time, labour, and expense in the collections of state papers and correspondence which were not infrequently in a condition of disheartening and baffling confusion. The collections of inedited documents published by Rivadeneira under the title of Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, that of Navarrete published in Madrid in 1842, the Biblioteca Occidental of Barcia, the voluminous French translations of Temaux-Compans, and finally the indefatigable labours of Señor Garcia Icazbalceta and Don Pascual Gayangos have cleared the modern student's path of formidable difficulties.
Although I am the fortunate possessor of a number of these valuable collections, I have likewise had to make researches in libraries and collections, both public and private, in Mexico, Spain, Italy, and England, in the course of which I have met with courteous and helpful encouragement from many to whom my sense of obligation is profound; but primarily I owe the pleasure and interest which the preparation of this work has afforded me to the late Abbé Augustin Fischer, sometime chaplain to the ill-fated Emperor Maximilian of Mexico, under whose cultured guidance it was my privilege to begin my studies in Spanish-American history. The death of my delightful and accomplished mentor, after a life of great vicissitudes, deprives me of one of the chief satisfactions which the publication of this work would otherwise have afforded me, but it does not lessen my obligation to pay a tribute of grateful thanks to his memory.