The Conquistadores of Mexico Bernal Diaz del Castillo : The
Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, 1517-21. Translated from the Spanish by A. P. Mandalay. (Routledge. 15s.) The True History of the Conquest of Mexico. Written in 1568 by Captain Bernal Diaz del Castillo. Edited by A. D. Howden Smith. (Harrap. 2 vols. 308.) THIS is not the place to enter on any critical examination of the two texts which bear the name of Bernal Diaz as the
author of the Verdadera Historia, but a few words must be said about them in order to explain the appearance of the two books under notice, each of them (as examination reveals) differing very materially in the text. The first story, which Professor Maudslay has translated from a Spanish version based on the original MS., is the only genuine version. The Keatinge translation of 1800, which Mr. Howden Smith edits, was made from a spurious edition of Diaz's work, which Friar Alonzo Remon published in 1632, corrupting Diaz's text and garbling and altering his facts. The original MS. lies to-day in Guatemala where Diaz left it, and was not revealed to the world till 1904, after Senor Don Genaro Garcia had procured a transcript of it from the then President of Guatemala. It is from this transcript that the present Broadway translation (which however, only comprises part of the History down to the fall of Mexico City) has been made, and it is therefore through this
transcript that the world has first been put in possession of Diaz's real work. The other volume, Mr. Howden Smith's, contains the whole of the story including the Spanish march to Honduras. It need not perhaps be added that it was the garbled, the Rena% version, that America's blind historian (how curious that two of America's greatest historians, Prescott and Parkman, should both have been blind) used in writing his majestic History of the Conquest of Mexico and Peru. Despite illegitimate additions and alterations it is a magnifi- cent story.
Prescott's account—of the burning alive of seventeen Aztec nobles, of the pitiful captivity of Montezuma, of La Noche Triste on the Causeway, of Cortes's profitable connexion with the beautiful Indian woman Marina, of the death of the hero. King, Guatemoc—is so well known that no attempt will be made here even to indicate the run of the story of the downfall of the Aztec Empire. To attempt that in a column or so would be absurd, but one may, by citing a few extracts from the most attractive historical document of its kind in any European language, try to give some taste of the quality of the author, who wrote of the battles and the land he fought in and knew, and of his companion in anus. Diaz's book is a vindication of '" the man that carries the gun "—not indeed that there were
many of him, for it was on pike and sword that Cortes chiefly relied, and of his 508 soldiers but thirteen owned arquebuses. Diaz 's History, then, conveys the psychology of the men in the ranks, whereas Cortes, an absorbed egotist, strove in his 'famous five despatches to Charles V. merely to emphasize his own importance, and enviously enough suppressed any particular mention of the individual deeds of his followers. Bernal sets himself to put this right : " What Bernal Diaz del Castillo thinks upon the subject is this ; that if what Cortes afterwards said in their favour, he had written at first to his Majesty, he would have done right ; but at that time he made no mention of our valiant actions, nor even our names ; but only said, ' This I did, this I ordered to be done ' ; whereas I think the least he should have done was to make mention of us."
Then, in a few imperishable strokes Bernal (who was no illiterate soldier) proceeds to sketch the character of some of his comrades who shared with him the glories and at times the cruelties of the Spanish Conquest. There was " Captain P. de Ircio of middle stature, cheerful countenance and duck- legged, a great boaster of his exploits, but by what we could perceive in him good for very little." De Solis, nicknamed De atras la Puerta, " because he always sat behind the door of his house, observing the passengers in the street." There was Cervantes, " a buffoon " (as like as not an ancestor of a greater of the same name) ; Juan Alvarez Chico, " a good soldier who had lost one hand in Castille by the course of justice ; Alonzo Luis, who being a very tall 'man was called " the Infant " ; Ortiz, " he played on the fiddle and taught dancing " ; " an old crossbow-man, a great card-player (as was Cortes himself) whose name I forget " ; and amongst genres of others, the bow-legged Captain de Sandoval who owned • " the best horse that ever was seen ; he was a chestnut, with
a star in his forehead, and his near foot .white ; his name was Motilla ; he became a proverb, so that when any horse was extraordinarily good, we used to say he was as good as Motilla." This captain was " a native of Medellin and an hidalgo," as was Bernal himself—also a hijo d'algo, a man of lineage. But in this eager fiercely _thrusting little army all social ranks were mingled—friars frocked and unfrocked, innkeepers, Cutthroats, peasants, hidalgos, though all were there on terms of perfect equality with each other and with their leader, for Cortes's Conquistadores were, like the buccaneers later, a true democracy. A leader there had to be, and as long as he ap- proved himself by his leadership, the troops followed implicitly ; but had he failed, he would have been deposed at once. As it was, " the soldiers were at times very rude and abusive with him," but in the actual moment of battle Cortes never let discipline slacken and never failed his men----" when we had to erect a fortress, Cortes was the hardest labourer in the trench es ; when we were going into battle, he was as forward as any."
What perhaps is most delightful in all Bernal's vivid story of misery, pathos, and blood is his drawing of himself—" simple, enduring, splendidly courageous, and unaffectedly vain," as -Professor Maudslay writes. Diaz prides himself on his dress-7. his comrades called him Castillo el Galan, the Elegant—and still more on his courage : " I declare I never knew what fear was," till he saw seventy-two of his countrymen stretched on the sacrificial stone of the War god and their hearts, torn from their quivering bodies. That kind of sight explains, if it does not entirely discount, the accusations of some of the cruelty that have been brought against the Spaniards ; neither in the sixteenth century in Mexico nor in the twentieth in Ireland would troops, who had seen their comrades inhumanly butchered, be likely to show much consideration to the butchers.
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