Conquest of Mexico
Page 48 (2).—Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva España, lib. 2, cap. 10, 29.—Gomara, Crón., cap. 219, ap. Barcia, tom. ii.—Toribio, Hist. de los Indios, MS., Parte 1, cap. 6-11. The reader will find a tolerably exact picture of the nature of these tortures in the twenty-first canto of the Inferno. The fantastic creations of the Florentine poet were nearly realised, at the very time he was writing, by the barbarians of an unknown world. One sacrifice of a less revolting character deserves to be mentioned. The Spaniards called it the "gladiatorial sacrifice," and it may remind one of the bloody games of antiquity. A captive of distinction was sometimes furnished with arms, and brought against a number of Mexicans in succession. If he defeated them all, as did occasionally happen, he was allowed to escape. If vanquished, he was dragged to the block and sacrificed in the usual manner. The combat was fought on a huge circular stone, before the assembled capital.—Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva España, lib. i, cap. 21.—Rel. d'un gent., ap. Ramusio, tom. iii. fol. 305.
Page 49 (1).—To say nothing of Egypt, where, notwithstanding the indications on the monuments, there is strong reason for doubting it.—(Comp. Herodotus, Euterpe, sec. 45.) It was of frequent occurrence among the Greeks, as every schoolboy knows. In Rome, it was so common as to require to be interdicted by an express law, less than a hundred years before the Christian era,—a law recorded in a very honest strain of exultation by Pliny (Hist. Nat., lib. 30, sec. 3, 4); notwithstanding which, traces of the existence of the practice may be discerned to a much later period. See, among others, Horace, Epod., In Canidiam.
Page 49 (2).—See Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. p. 49. Bishop Zumarraga, in a letter written a few years after the Conquest, states that 20,000 victims were yearly slaughtered in the capital. Torquemada turns this into 20,000 infants.—(Monarch. Ind., lib. 7, cap. 21.) Herrera, following Acosta, says 20,000 victims on a specified day of the year, throughout the kingdom.— (Hist. General, dec. 2, lib. 2, cap. 16). Clavigero, more cautious, infers that this number may have been sacrificed annually throughout Anahuac.—(Ubi supra). Las Casas, however, in his reply to Sepulveda's assertion, that no one who had visited the New World put the number of yearly sacrifices at less than 20,000, declares that "this is the estimate of brigands, who with to find an apology for their own atrocities, and that the real number was not above 50!"—((Euvres, ed. Llorente [Paris, 1821], tom. i. pp. 365, 386.) Probably the good Bishop's arithmetic, here, as in most other instances, came more from his heart than his head. With such loose and contradictory data, it is clear that any specific number is mere conjecture, undeserving the name of calculation.
Page 49 (3).—I am within bounds. Torquemada states the number, more precisely, at 72,344.—(Monarch. Ind., lib. 2, cap. 63.) Ixtlilxochitl, with equal precision, at 80,400.—(Hist. Chich. MS.) Quien sabe? The latter adds, that the captives massacred in the capital, in the course of that memorable year, exceeded 100,000!—(Loc. cit.) One, however, has to read but a little way, to find out that the science of numbers—at least, where the party was not an eyewitness is anything but an exact science with these ancient chroniclers. The Codex Tel.-Remensis, written some fifty years after the Conquest, reduces the amount to 20,000.—(Antiq. of Mexico, vol. i. Plate 19; vol. vi. p. 141, Eng. note.) Even this hardly warrants the Spanish interpreter, in calling king Ahuitzotl a man "of a mild and moderate disposition," templada y benigna condicion! —Ibid. vol. v. p. 49.
Page 49 (4).—Gomara states the number on the authority of two soldiers, whose names he gives, who took the trouble to count the grinning horrors in one of these Golgothas, where they were so arranged as to produce the most hideous effect. The existence of these conservatories is attested by every writer of the time.
Page 49 (5).—The "Anonymous Conqueror" assures us, as a fact beyond dispute, that the devil introduced himself into the bodies of the idols, and persuaded the silly priests that his only diet was human hearts! It furnishes a very satisfactory solution, to his mind, of the frequency of sacrifices in Mexico.—Rel. d'un gent., ap. Ramusio, tom. iii. fol. 307.430
