Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1.djvu/50

30 cautious calculations which seemed to take cognisance of every emergency, to forestall every risk. In the execution of his designs, he was as relentless as he was daring. Both his resolution and his perseverance were implacable, and those who did not choose to bend to his will were made to break; but if his hand was iron, soft was the velvet of his glove. Sois mon frère ou je te tue, describes his dealings with all about him. Equanimity and resolution were the chief characteristics of his conduct. His self-possession was never disturbed by misfortune, and as he sustained success without undue elation, so did he support reverses with fortitude, recognising defeat as a momentary check, but never accepting it as final.

Besides being compared with Julius Caesar as a general, he has been ranked with Augustus and Charles V. as a statesman, and he unquestionably possessed many of the qualities essential to greatness in common with them. He ruled his motley band with a happy mixture of genial comradeship and inflexible discipline, and hence succeeded, where an excess of either the one or the other would have brought failure. He knew whom and when to trust, giving his friendship he avoided favouritism, with the consequence that his men were united by the bond of a common trust in their commander. He shared their hardships, sympathised with their sufferings, and joined in their pleasures, but he hanged a soldier who robbed an Indian, he cut off the feet of another who plotted desertion, while, in the supreme moment when the conspiracy to kill him was discovered in Texcoco, he hanged the leader before his own door, but wisely ignored the trembling accomplices, though he had the list of their names in his pocket at the time.

From the moment Cortes learned from the Indian chief of Cempoal that the Aztec rule was heavy on the subject tribes, and that disloyalty seethed throughout the Empire only waiting the propitious moment to throw