Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1.djvu/47

Rh of legal form was never once relaxed. They were first invited to renounce idolatry and embrace Christianity; and they were "required"—just as solemnly as Cortes was by the Vera Cruz magistrates—to acknowledge the supremacy of the Spanish crown. A notary public performed this function of his office as gravely as a sheriff in our own day reads the riot act, and calls on a mob to disperse before resorting to force. That the "requirement" was unintelligible to the Indians did not invalidate the act of promulgation. The strength, also, of Cortes's position invariably lay in the identity of his ambitions with the interests of the crown; he was always right. By no other conceivable policy could he have accomplished what he did. The men whom Velasquez, in his helpless rage, sent to supersede or overthrow him, were mere playthings for his far-seeing statecraft and his overpowering will. The story of these events appears in all its wonderful simplicity and astounding significance, told in Cortes's own words in these letters, which have been compared with the Commentaries of Cæsar on his campaigns in Gaul, without suffering by the comparison.

Gaul, when overrun and conquered by Julius Cæsar, possessed no such political organisation as did the Aztec Empire when it was subdued by Cortes. There were neither cities comparable with Tlascala and Cholula, nor was there any central military organisation corresponding to the triple alliance of Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan, with their vast dependencies, from which countless hordes of warriors were drawn. On the other hand while Cæsar led the flower of the Roman legions, Cortes captained a mixed band of a few hundred men, ill-trained, undisciplined, indifferent to schemes of conquest, and bent only on their own individual aggrandisement; of whom many were also disaffected towards the commanders, and required alternate cajoling and threats to hold them in hand. The very men who were sent under Narvaez