er of Cortes arrived in Spain Charles was at close grips
with his outraged people, for he had broken all his promises to them.
Hurrying across the country to embark and claim the imperial crown of
Germany, vacant by the death of his grandfather Maximilian, eager for
the large sums of money he needed for his purpose, which Spain of all
his realms alone could provide, the sovereign was trampling upon the
dearly prized charters of his people. The great rising of the Castilian
commoners was finally crushed, thanks to class dissensions and the
diplomacy of the sovereign. Thenceforward the revenues of Castile were
at the mercy of the Emperor, whose needs for his world-wide
responsibilities were insatiable; and the Indies of the West, being the
appanage of the crown of Castile, were drained to uphold the claim of
Spain and its Emperor-King to dictate to Christendom the form and
doctrines of its religious faith. It is no wonder, therefore, that the
despatches of the obscure adventurer who announced to his sovereign
that, in spite of obstacles thrown in his way by highly placed royal
officials, he had conquered a vast civilised empire with a mere handful
of followers, were received sympathetically by the potentate to whom
the possession of fresh sources of revenue was so important. Cortes in
his various letters again and again claims the Emperor's patronage of
his bold defiance of the Emperor's officers on the ground that the
latter in their action were moved solely by considerations of their
personal gain, whereas he, Cortes, was striving to endow his sovereign
with a rich new empire and boundless treasure whilst carrying into the
dark pagan land, at the sword's point, the gentle creed of the
Christian God.

Of this religious element of his expedition Cortes never lost sight; he
was licentious in his life, unscrupulous in his methods, and regardless
of the suffering he inflicted to attain his ends; but in this he was
only a son of his country and his time; such qualities might, and in
fact did, accompany the most devout personal piety and an exalted
religious ideal. That the imposition of Christian civilisation upon
Mexico meant the sacrifice in cold blood of countless thousands of
inoffensive human creatures was as nothing when once the legal forms
had been complied with and the people could be assumed to be
recalcitrant or rebellious to a decree of which they understood not a
word. The awful holocaust of natives which followe