Part 23
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)
[Illustration: Burning of a house. [TN]]
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.