prise against so powerful and populous an empire. It was necessary to silence these people, and his mode of doing this reminds one of the solemn artifices of Oliver Cromwell. He held out to the soldiers such prospects of booty as secured them to his interests, and on the discontented remonstrating with him, he appeared to fall in with their views, and gave instant orders for the return home, at the same time sending his emissaries amongst the soldiers to exasperate them against the return. When the order for re-embarkation the next day was therefore issued, the whole army seemed in a fury against it, and Cortez feigning to have believed the order for the return was their own desire, now declared that he was ready to lead them forwards. But this was not sufficient. Knowing that he was a traitor to the trust reposed in him, he resorted to one of those grave farces by which usurpers often attempt to give an appearance of title to their power, though they know well enough the emptiness of it. He laid out the plan of a town,—named it Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz, or the Rich Town of the True Cross, established magistrates and a municipal council, and then appeared before them and resigned his command into their hands, having taken good care that the magistrates were so much his creatures as instantly to re-invest him with it. Assuming now this command, not as flowing from the governor of Cuba, but from the constituted authorities under the crown, and therefore from the crown itself, he immediately seized on the officers who had murmured at his breach of faith, clapped them in chains, and sent them aboard the fleet! So far so good; but the reflection still came, how would all these deeds
