Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1.djvu/127

Rh to deceive the Sovereign. The astuteness of Cortes would seem to exclude the adoption of a short-sighted policy, which would have foredoomed him to exposure and failure, and, though the story of his dealings with Diego Velasquez, Panfilo de Narvaez, and the other Spanish officials with whom he came in conflict, is told from his own point of view, the version he gives cannot be essentially untrue in any important particular. His story of the conquest from 151 9 till 1527 is thus told almost in the form of a diary, written at different times and places, under varying circumstances of fortune, and as it was written, so do we now read it.

The other conquerors, and the priests, wrote or supplied material to others several years after the events they chronicled, and under the influence of different motives, either avowed or dissembled. These latter on some points give to their histories the bias of special pleading, besides which, in many instances, their manuscripts reached responsible hands only after many vicissitudes, and, at times, only in copies or translations, which may suggest reasonable doubts of their entire authenticity. Whenever, therefore, a conflict of testimony is found concerning any event described by Cortes, modern historians have almost invariably decided that his statements, on all points of which he had personal knowledge, should be held to outweigh those of other writers unless it conclusively appears that his conscious intention was to mislead the Emperor.

The death of Montezuma is one of the few cases in which it seems the decision should be against Cortes. With great and perfect frankness he admits the murder of Quauhpopoca, the torture and subsequent murder of Quauhtemoczin, and he owns to a somewhat extensive catalogue of indefensible crimes, but for Montezuma's death he refuses responsibility. Yet, whether we consider the unanimous testimony as to the trifling character of the Emperor's wound, the useless embarrassment his presence had become, the imprudence of leaving him free in the capital, or the impossibility of carrying him captive out of it, and finally the contemporary Mexican versions of his death, all the circumstances certainly point to the conclusion that the royal captive died by the will of his conqueror.