splendour of their state. On a slight suspicion, confirmed by a very imperfect evidence, that Guatimotzin had formed a scheme to shake off the yoke, and to excite his former subjects to take arms, Cortez, without the formality of a trial, ordered the unhappy monarch, together with the caziques of Tezcuco and Tacuba, the two persons of the greatest eminence in the empire, to be hanged; and the Mexicans, with astonishment and horror, beheld this disgraceful punishment inflicted upon persons to whom they were accustomed to look up with reverence hardly inferior to that which they paid to the gods themselves. The example of Cortez and his principal officers, encouraged and justified persons of subordinate rank to venture upon committing greater excesses."
It is not easy to see how Cortez and his men "sullied the glory of their repeated victories," by these actions—for these very victories were gained over a people who had no chance against European arms,—and were infamous in themselves, being violations of every sacred right of humanity. What, indeed, could sully the reputation of the man after the butchery of six thousand Cholulas in cold blood? The notions of glory with which Robertson, in common with many other historians, was infected, are mere remnants of that corrupted morality which Popery disseminated, and which created the Cortezes and Pizarros of those days, and the Napoleons of our own. No truth can be plainer to the sound sense of a real Christian, than that true glory can only be the result of great deeds done in a just cause. But Cortez's whole career was one perpetual union of perfidy and blood. His words were not to be relied on for a moment. His
