Part 34

Atahuallpa, in his answer, objected to taking the proffered position of tributary, but wished to be a friend of the King of Spain; he also declined to receive his kingdom at the hands of the Pope, as the friar had told him the King of Spain had done. On theological points he showed himself a skilled disputant, contrasting the Christian God, who had died, with the sun and moon, who had never died. He also inquired of the friar how he knew that the God of the Christians had created the world. The pious friar gave him his Breviary, explaining that he had learnt of the Creator from that book. Atahuallpa looked at it, opened its pages, first thanked him, then threw it on the ground, saying it told him nothing of the kind. Indignantly the friar picked up the Breviary and rushed to Pizarro, crying out, “The Gospels are on the ground. Vengeance! Christians, at them! they do not wish our friendship nor our law! Kill these dogs who despise God’s law. Go on, and I absolve you.”

At this instant the guns were fired, the trumpets sounded, and the infantry and cavalry came forth from their shelters. The sight of the armed warriors on their horses and the noise of the guns threw the Indians into a panic. In the rush to get out of the square, part of the wall surrounding it, was broken down. The Indians fell on top of one another, closely pursued by the horsemen, who trampled them down without mercy. Those who held their ground inside the inclosure were dealt with by the foot soldiers, and most of them were killed. There was no resistance, for the natives were practically unarmed. Atahuallpa was, as had been agreed, taken alive, many of his nobles giving up their lives to protect his person from attack. As the members of his bodyguard fell, their places were taken with desperate heroism by others of the group.

The massacre was likened by one of the chroniclers to the killing of sheep. The victims numbered more than 10,000, and only 200 escaped. Not a Spaniard perished nor even was wounded except Pizarro, who had a flesh wound in the hand, inflicted accidentally by one of his own men. Pizarro’s act in hewing down this crowd of Peruvians, unarmed and panic-stricken, recalls the worst features of the Mexican conquest, the massacre of Cholula and the attack made by Alvarado on the Mexican chiefs while they were celebrating a religious festival.

The next day was spent in sacking the palace of Atahuallpa, whose rich stores of gold and silver were discovered. Next came the question of the disposition of the captives, 8000 or more. It was actually proposed that the warriors should be killed or have their hands cut off, but Pizarro, who had not been trained in vain to the economic principles of conquest, decided that all should be reduced to slavery. The reduction of Atahuallpa to the status of a prisoner had the desired effect. The subordinate chiefs made their peace. This was a welcome escape from further hostilities, but Pizarro was more interested in arranging terms for the ransom which Atahuallpa was willing to give to receive his liberty. The gold and silver kept coming in; sometimes in one day 70,000 pesos were received.

Pizarro not being satisfied with the industry of the natives in getting treasure, Spanish emissaries were sent to Cuzco. Under their experienced hands the supplies increased; in one day 200 loads of gold and 25 of silver were brought into Caxamalca. Much of the precious metal was made up of strips taken from the walls of the temples, which were tapestried in this way. Some ornaments are mentioned; such as a fountain made entirely of gold and a golden footstool weighing 18,000 pesos. All was melted down except a few objects of small weight, kept and sent to the King of Spain as curiosities.

Despite the paying of this enormous ransom, there was no question of keeping faith with their captive. He was only in the way now that Pizarro had the enormous ransom. His death would remove a dangerous rallying point, and by it his people would be thrown into such confusion that they would submit the more easily to the yoke that was being prepared for them. Like the chief of the Aztecs, Cuauhtemoc, Atahuallpa was charged with disloyalty to the Spanish crown, of which he was assumed to be a dependent. As the zealous representative of his King, Pizarro passed sentence of death on his prisoner, commanding that it be executed by burning. All protests from the victim were unheeded, even when he assured his conquerors that through him they could keep the Indians on terms of good will. “If,” he said, “they wished gold and silver, he was ready to hand over twice the amount they had already received.” As they did not believe he could keep any such engagement, they refused to defer the day of execution. When the pile was ready, Atahuallpa, on finding that if he became a Christian, he would not be burnt, went through the form of conversion. Pizarro ordered that he should be bound to a stake on the square of the pueblo and strangled. (August 29, 1533.)

One of Atahuallpa’s brothers was then proclaimed chief by the Spaniards, and with this “roi fainéant” in tow Pizarro set out on the two months’ march to the capital, Cuzco. Before he came to the neighborhood of the leading pueblo, Inca warriors disputed with some obstinacy his further progress; but the presence of their chieftain with Pizarro prevented anything like a serious rising of the people. Disgusted with this most untoward event, Pizarro blamed an Inca general, who had been made a prisoner at Xauxa, for the resistance made on the march. This was enough to prove his guilt; the prisoner was condemned to death and burnt alive a short distance from Cuzco. Even this flagrant outrage failed to move the Incas to any organized effort to stay the European advance; instead of moving aggressively, Manco, the brother of Huascar, came voluntarily to Pizarro asking his protection, hoping by his aid to become the chieftain of the Incas. This alliance made it easy for the Spaniards, posing as the supporters of the regular line, to get within the walls of Cuzco without opposition, on November 15, 1533. The great massive pueblo with the fortress and temple of the sun, and with its extensive population, was a rich prize. Everything in the way of gold was quickly removed, and the humble followers of the modest commercial undertaking so recently organized at Panama found themselves in the possession of wealth. But the great drawback was the high price of provisions by which the adventurers lost some of the treasure that had fallen to their share. Under such conditions of forced hospitality Pizarro arranged for the elevation of Manco as Ccapac-Inca or overlord. At the same time Cuzco received the gift of municipal government, March 24, 1534. Pizarro, not forgetful of his own services, took the title of governor, and everything was speedily changed. Cuzco now had a bishop, a cathedral was built, monasteries and convents arose as if by magic, and all the famous temples were transformed into churches.

Things were moving expeditiously and smoothly in Pizarro’s favor, until he learnt of the arrival at a place not far from Quito of an officer of Cortez, Pedro de Alvarado, the governor of Guatemala, with an expedition of 500 Europeans and more than 2000 Indian allies. This interference seemed likely to cause trouble, until Alvarado was persuaded to sell his army and everything in it to Pizarro. The sum handed over to avoid a competitive conquest, which would have meant loss of life and, more important still, from the point of view of these experts in exploitation of subject races, loss of time, was considerable. Alvarado withdrew with something like $2,000,000; gauged by the standards of butchery, rapacity, and knavery in the West Indies and in Mexico, this was a splendid bargain. But, as Alvarado had only set his foot on Peruvian soil, he had not yet begun to reckon imperially; he was certainly far removed still from Pizarro’s poetic fancy in finance. Now that there was no longer a chance for such awkward interruptions, Pizarro set about the foundation of a new capital for Peru. Cuzco, being far distant from the seacoast, was manifestly unsuitable, and accordingly Lima was founded on the 6th of January, 1535, to be the center of this new colonial possession. Preparations were already under way for a regular administration with Pizarro at the head, after the model of the rule established by Cortez in Mexico.

The royal fifth of the treasure taken was so large that it removed all obstacles at Madrid. Detailed confirmation was given to the general concessions made to Pizarro, and their territorial extent was amplified by adding seventy leagues of land to the south. Almagro received a concession extending from the southern limit of Pizarro’s province 200 leagues. To the northern territory was given the name New Castile, to the southern, New Toledo; but the Indian names, Peru and Chili, were too strongly imbedded in native usage to be forced out of existence.

When Almagro was sent by Pizarro to Cuzco with orders to use it as a starting-point for the southern territory that had been assigned to him, the lieutenant took the opportunity of claiming that the Inca capital was situated south of Pizarro’s concession, and, therefore, was a part of his own land. This difficulty being patched up on June 12, 1535, Almagro set out for the conquest of Chili, while Pizarro began the establishment of a new seacoast town, Trujillo, and pushed forward the building of Lima.

The native population was dealt with after the “repartimiento” plan. Under the burden of their new oppressors, the Indians, who had for so long submitted to the cruder tyranny of the Inca chiefs, rose in revolt. Manco, a scion of the old house, placed himself at the head of the anti-Spanish movement, and the first success of the natives was the capture of the citadel of Cuzco, February, 1536. In the meantime the Spaniards who lived in isolated plantations had been massacred. Both the new towns, Lima and Trujillo, were invested. After a time the citadel of Cuzco was retaken from the natives, but Juan, one of Pizarro’s brothers, met his death in the fighting. As a relief expedition Pizarro sent to Cuzco more than 400 men, of whom 200 were cavalry, but they never succeeded in crossing the Sierra. Aid was then asked from the neighboring colonies of Panama, Guatemala, and Mexico. With the help of abundant reinforcements, Cuzco was retaken, and the obstinacy of the Spaniards in holding their ground for six months discouraged the Indians from further efforts to cut off the old capital.

When Almagro discovered the unattractive character of his newly assigned province, where the population was hostile and the land largely a desert, he returned along the western declivities of the Andes to reassert his claims on Cuzco. Arriving there in April, 1537, he made a successful night attack on the place, and took Pizarro’s brother, Fernando, prisoner. Near Cuzco Alvarado was stationed with 500 men at Xanca, and here a battle took place on July 12, 1537, in which Alvarado was beaten and taken prisoner. Almagro then set out for Lima. He and Pizarro, after a meeting at Mala on November 13, 1537, agreed to submit the question of the limits of their provinces to arbitration, arranging in the meantime that Almagro should hold Cuzco and Ferdinand Pizarro should have Caxamalca. But this arrangement was not carried out. Ferdinand soon after organized an expedition to recapture Cuzco, and another battle was fought with Almagro in April, which resulted in the latter being taken prisoner. After being given the semblance of a trial, he was put to death on July 8, 1538, by Fernando. Francis Pizarro, who denied complicity in Almagro’s death, treated the latter’s son kindly, but he did not forget to reward his own brothers, after he had made his triumphal entrance into Cuzco, with large landed estates. To Gonzalo he gave the district of Lake Titicaca, which included the mines of Potosi.

The assassination of Almagro stirred up indignation among his friends, who determined, that when the official explanations were presented in Spain by Pizarro’s emissaries, their side should be given a hearing. In the mother country, the authorities refused to distinguish between the claims of the two factions. What was plain was that dissensions in the colony could only damage Spanish control, and might lead to a restoration of Indian rule there. Accordingly a royal commissioner was sent out with ample powers.

Before the new official arrived, Pizarro showed his characteristic industry in expanding the sphere of Spanish influence. Groups of adventurers were sent out in different directions, and plans were made which ended in the foundation of Santiago in Chili. One of Pizarro’s brothers was sent off with an army of 340 Europeans and 4000 Indians to conquer the country east of the Andes. Led by the usual stories of the existence of gold and precious stones in far-distant regions, the Spaniards in this expedition, overcoming the most extraordinary natural difficulties in their march, succeeded in reaching one of the tributaries of the Amazon. A boat was then built by means of which one of the members of the party, Orellana, with a few companions, made the long trip to the ocean, and finally succeeded in reaching a Spanish colony on one of the islands of the Antilles. This was a unique achievement, for the vessel in which he sailed was constructed of green timber, there was no compass, no pilot was to be had, and provisions had to be collected from the natives along the bank of the river, who sometimes received the strangers with no friendly welcome. Orellana, in relating his achievements, demonstrated the creative power of his imagination as well as his heroism. He told of seeing nations so rich that the roofs of their temples were covered with plates of gold, and also related how he had passed through a republic controlled by women, who by the force of their arms had acquired the rule over a considerable tract of country. From these fictions of Orellana originated the belief in the existence of a region called El Dorado, and the conviction that somewhere in the center of South America there existed a community of Amazons.

In 1545 the silver mines of Potosi were discovered, an event which played an enormous rôle in the colonization of the country, because its wealth realized the most sanguine hopes of the adventurers. Upper Peru--or as it is now called, Bolivia--became the greatest silver mining country in the known world. Meanwhile the success of Pizarro’s administration stirred up among Almagro’s friends increasing bitterness, for they saw no chance of receiving a share of the good fortune which was being showered upon the governor, his brothers, and his favorites. Almagro’s son, who was in Lima, made that town the central point of the faction that was bent on Pizarro’s ruin. The governor, though aware of the existence of these intrigues, affected to treat them with disdain. He relied on the possession of absolute power as the complete protection against any plot. This foolhardy attitude was taken advantage of by the conspirators, who, without much difficulty, penetrated into his house and put him to death June 26, 1541. Even Pizarro’s own followers, the men who had shared with him the dangers of the conquest and the spoils of victory, raised no hand to avenge his murder. His Borgia-like character had alienated all, except his immediate relatives whom, as has been said, he had elevated to high positions.

When the governor from Spain, Vaca de Castro, reached the country, he proceeded to inflict strict justice on the conspirators. After an armed conflict near Cuzco, between the partisans of Almagro and the upholders of the authority of the home government, most of those who were guilty of the murder of Pizarro fell into the governor’s hands, who promptly executed them as rebels (1542). But the country was not destined to enjoy tranquillity long. Gonzalo Pizarro, the brother of the “conquistador,” acquired by force the possession of the colony, and succeeded in extending his rule over Peru and its various dependencies. He even sent north a fleet which captured Panama and so got command of the western ocean. But the usurper’s rule did not last long, for, when he was disowned by the home government, he found himself unable to maintain his authority over the colonists. Like his more famous brother, Gonzalo died the death of a malefactor, and the vast possessions acquired on the west coast of South America by the adventurers of the earlier period of Spanish conquest came under the systematic and regular control of the Spanish bureaucratic machinery.

By the middle of the sixteenth century the spectacular features of the conquest of Spanish America vanished away. Large and unexplored territories were indeed added to the monarchy of Spain, but as the lands so annexed were populated by Indian tribes in no higher state of culture than those found in the lesser Antilles, the methods of conquest were but a repetition of those employed by the adventurers of an earlier period. On the whole it may be said that the treatment of the natives improved, especially in those districts where there was no mining or where gold could be discovered near the surface. Long after the complete administrative organization of the conquered lands in Mexico, of Central America, of the northern portions of South America, and of the Pacific slope of that continent, the colonies on the Atlantic side, even if they were founded earlier, were less attractive to the colonist. The Jesuits first appeared in Paraguay in 1586, though Uruguay was opened up for settlement some time before. The town of Buenos Ayres was established in 1538 amid surroundings which gave little hope to colonial settlement. The original group of 3000 Europeans who entered the new Province of La Plata were almost exterminated by disease and by the fatiguing and incessant warfare with the savage races about them.

From the point of view of the old mercantile system of political economy, Spain’s colonial policy was advantageous to the home government. It is usual to expose the failure of the government of Madrid to manage its vast empire under any other ideals than those of absolutism, but when one considers the size and novelty of the experiment that Spain was making in these Western lands, and when one estimates broadly the stage of civilization so soon reached in a large number of new communities, it must be allowed that to the government of the peninsula is to be ascribed the credit of accomplishing a task practically unparalleled in modern history. The work was not thoroughly done; there were grave and deplorable defects. Yet without accepting at all the truth of the dictum that whatever is, is right, it can be said that no colonial possessions of other powers during the same century offered the same problems as those confronted by Spain, and nowhere in North America was the progress of extensive occupation and intensive civilization so definitely marked.

The Spanish colonial empire has had the misfortune of being exposed to much the same sort of depreciation as the Byzantine Empire; in both cases investigation has diminished the weight of conventional hostile criticism. Doctrinaire theories of government, and unfounded social contrasts, are apt to produce false standards. It is easy to detect faults in Spain’s management of her colonies, but it is not easy to reconstruct for her a policy that might have produced on Spanish soil the sturdy independence of the New England town meeting, or the collective wisdom of the founders of the American Constitution.

* * * * *

NAPOLEON

I EARLY YEARS

Corsica, during a large part of the eighteenth century, had drawn upon itself the attention of Europe, on account of its heroic struggle for independence. Its champion was Pasquale Paoli, whose character and patriotism provoked the same sort of enthusiastic attention from his contemporaries that centered upon Garibaldi 100 years later. The cause of the islanders against the city of Genoa, which exercised the right of overlordship over them, was so successfully defended that had not the kingdom of France interfered as the ally of Genoa, the establishment of an independent Corsican republic would have been assured. But unfortunately the Genoese surrendered the sovereignty of the island to France. The French occupied the harbors, the Corsicans were defeated in a pitched battle, and Paoli retired as a fugitive to England. All further resistance was abandoned, and the island was annexed to France.

[Illustration: NAPOLEON I.

(From the portrait by P. Delaroche.)]

In the Corsican deputation sent to Paris to arrange terms with the conquerors was Carlo Bonaparte, a member of a noble Tuscan family, whose ancestors had established themselves in Ajaccio 200 years before. Some time before this visit to Paris his wife, Maria Letitia, had given birth to a son, Napoleon. There has recently been a question raised whether the traditionally accepted date, August 15, 1769, is correct, and some French investigators are in favor of antedating it by one year. There were eight surviving children, five of them boys, out of a family of thirteen. Napoleon describes himself as an unruly child despite the iron discipline exercised in the home by his mother. “I was,” he says, “self-willed and obstinate, nothing awed me; nothing disconcerted me. I was quarrelsome, exasperating; I feared no one, I gave a blow here and a scratch there. Everyone was afraid of me. My brother Joseph was the one with whom I had most to do. He was beaten about and scolded; I complained that he did not get over it soon enough.”

The father, a lawyer by profession, was engaged in unending litigation in his own behalf, which required frequent trips to Paris, where he was well known on account of his efforts to recover an estate, deeded by some relative to the Jesuit order, and also as a representative deputy of the Corsican nobility. On one of these trips the head of the house died in 1785; seven years before that date he had been successful in getting a scholarship for Napoleon at the military school of Brienne, where the young soldier had just completed his course and received his commission as lieutenant at the time of his father’s death. At school Napoleon had made little reputation as a scholar; he stated himself later on that it was the general opinion that he “was fit for nothing except geometry.” He was unsociable, with an imperious temperament that parted everyone from him. One of his schoolfellows writes of his characteristics as follows: “Gloomy and even savage, almost always self-absorbed, one would have supposed that he had just come from some forest, and unmindful, until then, of the notice of his fellows, experienced for the first time the sensations of surprise and distrust; he detested games and all manner of boyish amusements. One part of the garden was allotted to him and there he studied and brooded, and woe to him who ventured to disturb him. One evening the boys were setting off fireworks and a small powder-chest exploded. In their fright the troop scattered in all directions, and some of them took refuge in Napoleon’s domain, whereat he rushed upon the fugitives in a passion and attacked them with a spade.”