Short Studies on Great Subjects

J >> James Anthony Froude >> Short Studies on Great Subjects

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Who will not be persuaded (he says) that now at length the great
Judge of the world hath heard the sighs, groans, and lamentations,
hath seen the tears and blood of so many millions of innocent men,
women, and children, afflicted, robbed, reviled, branded with hot
irons, roasted, dismembered, mangled, stabbed, whipped, racked,
scalded with hot oil, put to the strapado, ripped alive, beheaded in
sport, drowned, dashed against the rocks, famished, devoured by
mastiffs, burned, and by infinite cruelties consumed, and purposeth
to scourge and plague that cursed nation, and to take the yoke of
servitude from that distressed people, as free by nature as any
Christian?

Poor Raleigh! if peace and comfort in this world were of much importance
to him, it was in an ill day that he provoked the revenge of Spain. The
strength of England was needed at the moment at its own door; the Armada
came, and there was no means of executing such an enterprise. And
afterwards the throne of Elizabeth was filled by a Stuart, and Guiana
was to be no scene of glory for Raleigh; rather, as later historians are
pleased to think, it was the grave of his reputation.

But the hope burned clear in him through all the weary years of unjust
imprisonment; and when he was a grey-headed old man, the base son of a
bad mother used it to betray him. The success of his last enterprise was
made the condition under which he was to be pardoned for a crime which
he had not committed; and its success depended, as he knew, on its being
kept secret from the Spaniards. James required of Raleigh on his
allegiance a detail of what he proposed, giving him at the same time his
word as a king that the secret should be safe with him. The next day it
was sweeping out of the port of London in the swiftest of the Spanish
ships, with private orders to the Governor of St. Thomas to provoke a
collision when Raleigh should arrive there, which should afterwards cost
him his heart's blood.

We modern readers may run rapidly over the series of epithets under
which Raleigh has catalogued the Indian sufferings, hoping that they
are exaggerated, seeing that they are horrible, and closing our eyes
against them with swiftest haste; but it was not so when every epithet
suggested a hundred familiar facts; and some of these (not resting on
English prejudice, but on sad Spanish evidence, which is too full of
shame and sorrow to be suspected) shall be given in this place, however
old a story it may be thought; because, as we said above, it is
impossible to understand the actions of these men, unless we are
familiar with the feelings of which their hearts were full.

The massacres under Cortez and Pizarro, terrible as they were, were not
the occasion which stirred the deepest indignation. They had the excuse
of what might be called, for want of a better word, necessity, and of
the desperate position of small bands of men in the midst of enemies who
might be counted by millions. And in De Soto, when he burnt his guides
in Florida (it was his practice, when there was danger of treachery,
that those who were left alive might take warning); or in Vasco Nunnez,
praying to the Virgin on the mountains of Darien, and going down from
off them into the valleys to hunt the Indian caciques, and fling them
alive to his bloodhounds; there was, at least, with all this fierceness
and cruelty, a desperate courage which we cannot refuse to admire, and
which mingles with and corrects our horror. It is the refinement of the
Spaniard's cruelty in the settled and conquered provinces, excused by no
danger and provoked by no resistance, the details of which witness to
the infernal coolness with which it was perpetrated; and the great
bearing of the Indians themselves under an oppression which they
despaired of resisting, raises the whole history to the rank of a
world-wide tragedy, in which the nobler but weaker nature was crushed
under a malignant force which was stronger and yet meaner than itself.
Gold hunting and lust were the two passions for which the Spaniards
cared; and the fate of the Indian women was only more dreadful than that
of the men, who were ganged and chained to a labour in the mines which
was only to cease with their lives, in a land where but a little before
they had lived a free contented people, more innocent of crime than
perhaps any people upon earth. If we can conceive what our own feelings
would be--if, in the 'development of the mammalia,' some baser but more
powerful race than man were to appear upon this planet, and we and our
wives and children at our own happy firesides were degraded from our
freedom, and became to them what the lower animals are to us, we can
perhaps realise the feelings of the enslaved nations of Hispaniola.

As a harsh justification of slavery, it is sometimes urged that men who
do not deserve to be slaves will prefer death to the endurance of it;
and that if they prize their liberty, it is always in their power to
assert it in the old Roman fashion. Tried even by so hard a rule, the
Indians vindicated their right; and, before the close of the sixteenth
century, the entire group of the Western Islands in the hands of the
Spaniards, containing, when Columbus discovered them, many millions of
inhabitants, were left literally desolate from suicide. Of the anecdotes
of this terrible self-immolation, as they were then known in England,
here are a few out of many.

The first is simple, and a specimen of the ordinary method. A Yucatan
cacique, who was forced with his old subjects to labour in the mines, at
last 'calling those miners into an house, to the number of ninety-five,
he thus debateth with them:'--

'My worthy companions and friends, why desire we to live any longer
under so cruel a servitude? Let us now go unto the perpetual seat of
our ancestors, for we shall there have rest from these intolerable
cares and grievances which we endure under the subjection of the
unthankful. Go ye before, I will presently follow you.' Having so
spoken, he held out whole handfuls of those leaves which take away
life, prepared for the purpose, and giving every one part thereof,
being kindled to suck up the fume; who obeyed his command, the king
and his chief kinsmen reserving the last place for themselves.

We speak of the crime of suicide, but few persons will see a crime in
this sad and stately leave-taking of a life which it was no longer
possible to bear with unbroken hearts. We do not envy the Indian, who,
with Spaniards before him as an evidence of the fruits which their creed
brought forth, deliberately exchanged for it the old religion of his
country, which could sustain him in an action of such melancholy
grandeur. But the Indians did not always reply to their oppressors with
escaping passively beyond their hands. Here is a story with matter in it
for as rich a tragedy as OEdipus or Agamemnon; and in its stern and
tremendous features, more nearly resembling them than any which were
conceived even by Shakespeare.

An officer named Orlando had taken the daughter of a Cuban cacique to be
his mistress. She was with child by him, but, suspecting her of being
engaged in some other intrigue, he had her fastened to two wooden spits,
not intending to kill her, but to terrify her; and setting her before
the fire, he ordered that she should be turned by the servants of the
kitchen.

The maiden, stricken with fear through the cruelty thereof, and
strange kind of torment, presently gave up the ghost. The cacique
her father, understanding the matter, took thirty of his men and
went to the house of the captain, who was then absent, and slew his
wife, whom he had married after that wicked act committed, and the
women who were companions of the wife, and her servants every one.
Then shutting the door of the house, and putting fire under it, he
burnt himself and all his companions that assisted him, together
with the captain's dead family and goods.

This is no fiction or poet's romance. It is a tale of wrath and revenge,
which in sober dreadful truth enacted itself upon this earth, and
remains among the eternal records of the doings of mankind upon it. As
some relief to its most terrible features, we follow it with a story
which has a touch in it of diabolical humour.

The slave-owners finding their slaves escaping thus unprosperously out
of their grasp, set themselves to find a remedy for so desperate a
disease, and were swift to avail themselves of any weakness, mental or
bodily, through which to retain them in life. One of these proprietors
being informed that a number of his people intended to kill themselves
on a certain day, at a particular spot, and knowing by experience that
they were too likely to do it, presented himself there at the time which
had been fixed upon, and telling the Indians when they arrived that he
knew their intention, and that it was vain for them to attempt to keep
anything a secret from him, he ended with saying, that he had come there
to kill himself with them; that as he had used them ill in this world,
he might use them worse in the next; 'with which he did dissuade them
presently from their purpose.' With what efficacy such believers in the
immortality of the soul were likely to recommend either their faith or
their God; rather, how terribly all the devotion and all the
earnestness with which the poor priests who followed in the wake of the
conquerors laboured to recommend it were shamed and paralysed, they
themselves too bitterly lament.

It was idle to send out governor after governor with orders to stay such
practices. They had but to arrive on the scene to become infected with
the same fever; or if any remnant of Castilian honour, or any faintest
echoes of the faith which they professed, still flickered in a few of
the best and noblest, they could but look on with folded hands in
ineffectual mourning; they could do nothing without soldiers, and the
soldiers were the worst offenders. Hispaniola became a desert; the gold
was in the mines, and there were no slaves left remaining to extract it.
One means which the Spaniards dared to employ to supply the vacancy,
brought about an incident which in its piteous pathos exceeds any story
we have ever heard. Crimes and criminals are swept away by time, nature
finds an antidote for their poison, and they and their ill consequences
alike are blotted out and perish. If we do not for give the villain, at
least we cease to hate him, as it grows more clear to us that he injures
none so deeply as himself. But the [Greek: theriodes kakia], the
enormous wickedness by which humanity itself has been outraged and
disgraced, we cannot forgive; we cannot cease to hate that; the years
roll away, but the tints of it remain on the pages of history, deep and
horrible as the day on which they were entered there.

When the Spaniards understood the simple opinion of the Yucatan
islanders concerning the souls of their departed, which, after their
sins purged in the cold northern mountains should pass into the
south, to the intent that, leaving their own country of their own
accord, they might suffer themselves to be brought to Hispaniola,
they did persuade those poor wretches, that they came from those
places where they should see their parents and children, and all
their kindred and friends that were dead, and should enjoy all kinds
of delights with the embracements and fruition of all beloved
beings. And they, being infected and possessed with these crafty and
subtle imaginations, singing and rejoicing left their country, and
followed vain and idle hope. But when they saw that they were
deceived, and neither met their parents nor any that they desired,
but were compelled to undergo grievous sovereignty and command, and
to endure cruel and extreme labour, they either slew themselves, or,
choosing to famish, gave up their fair spirits, being persuaded by
no reason or violence to take food. So these miserable Yucatans came
to their end.

It was once more as it was in the days of the Apostles. The New World
was first offered to the holders of the old traditions. They were the
husbandmen first chosen for the new vineyard, and blood and desolation
were the only fruits which they reared upon it. In their hands it was
becoming a kingdom, not of God, but of the devil, and a sentence of
blight went out against them and against their works. How fatally it has
worked, let modern Spain and Spanish America bear witness. We need not
follow further the history of their dealings with the Indians. For their
colonies, a fatality appears to have followed all attempts at Catholic
colonisation. Like shoots from an old decaying tree which no skill and
no care can rear, they were planted, and for a while they might seem to
grow; but their life was never more than a lingering death, a failure,
which to a thinking person would outweigh in the arguments against
Catholicism whole libraries of faultless _catenas_, and a _consensus
patrum_ unbroken through fifteen centuries for the supremacy of St.
Peter.

There is no occasion to look for superstitious causes to explain the
phenomenon. The Catholic faith had ceased to be the faith of the large
mass of earnest thinking capable persons; and to those who can best do
the work, all work in this world sooner or later is committed. America
was the natural home for Protestants; persecuted at home, they sought a
place where they might worship God in their own way, without danger of
stake or gibbet, and the French Huguenots, as afterwards the English
Puritans, early found their way there. The fate of a party of Coligny's
people, who had gone out as settlers, shall be the last of these
stories, illustrating, as it does in the highest degree, the wrath and
fury with which the passions on both sides were boiling. A certain John
Ribault, with about 400 companions, had emigrated to Florida. They were
quiet inoffensive people, and lived in peace there several years,
cultivating the soil, building villages, and on the best possible terms
with the natives. Spain was at the time at peace with France; we are,
therefore, to suppose that it was in pursuance of the great crusade, in
which they might feel secure of the secret, if not the confessed,
sympathy of the Guises, that a powerful Spanish fleet bore down upon
this settlement. The French made no resistance, and they were seized and
flayed alive, and their bodies hung out upon the trees, with an
inscription suspended over them, 'Not as Frenchmen, but as heretics.' At
Paris all was sweetness and silence. The settlement was tranquilly
surrendered to the same men who had made it the scene of their atrocity;
and two years later, 500 of the very Spaniards who had been most active
in the murder were living there in peaceable possession, in two forts
which their relation with the natives had obliged them to build. It was
well that there were other Frenchmen living, of whose consciences the
Court had not the keeping, and who were able on emergencies to do what
was right without consulting it. A certain privateer, named Dominique de
Gourges, secretly armed and equipped a vessel at Rochelle, and, stealing
across the Atlantic and in two days collecting a strong party of
Indians, he came down suddenly upon the forts, and, taking them by
storm, slew or afterwards hanged every man he found there, leaving their
bodies on the trees on which they had hanged the Huguenots, with their
own inscription reversed against them--'Not as Spaniards, but as
murderers.' For which exploit, well deserving of all honest men's
praise, Dominique de Gourges had to fly his country for his life; and,
coming to England, was received with honourable welcome by Elizabeth.

It was at such a time, and to take their part amidst such scenes as
these, that the English navigators appeared along the shores of South
America, as the armed soldiers of the Reformation, and as the avengers
of humanity. As their enterprise was grand and lofty, so for the most
part was the manner in which they bore themselves worthy of it. They
were no nation of saints, in the modern sentimental sense of that word;
they were prompt, stern men--more ready ever to strike an enemy than to
parley with him; and, private adventurers as they all were, it was
natural enough that private rapacity and private badness should be found
among them as among other mortals. Every Englishman who had the means
was at liberty to fit out a ship or ships, and if he could produce
tolerable vouchers for himself, received at once a commission from the
Court. The battles of England were fought by her children, at their own
risk and cost, and they were at liberty to repay themselves the expense
of their expeditions by plundering at the cost of the national enemy.
Thus, of course, in a mixed world, there were found mixed marauding
crews of scoundrels, who played the game which a century later was
played with such effect by the pirates of the Tortugas. Negro hunters
too, there were, and a bad black slave trade--in which Elizabeth
herself, being hard driven for money, did not disdain to invest her
capital--but on the whole, and in the war with the Spaniards, as in the
war with the elements, the conduct and character of the English sailors,
considering what they were and the work which they were sent to do,
present us all through that age with such a picture of gallantry,
disinterestedness, and high heroic energy, as has never been
overmatched; the more remarkable, as it was the fruit of no drill or
discipline, no tradition, no system, no organised training, but was the
free native growth of a noble virgin soil.

Before starting on an expedition, it was usual for the crew and the
officers to meet and arrange among themselves a series of articles of
conduct, to which they bound themselves by a formal agreement, the
entire body itself undertaking to see to their observance. It is quite
possible that strong religious profession, and even sincere profession,
might be accompanied, as it was in the Spaniards, with everything most
detestable. It is not sufficient of itself to prove that their actions
would correspond with it, but it is one among a number of evidences; and
coming as most of these men come before us, with hands clear of any
blood but of fair and open enemies, their articles may pass at least as
indications of what they were.

Here we have a few instances:--

Richard Hawkins's ship's company was, as he himself informs us, an
unusually loose one. Nevertheless, we find them 'gathered together every
morning and evening to serve God;' and a fire on board, which only
Hawkins's presence of mind prevented from destroying ship and crew
together, was made use of by the men as an occasion to banish swearing
out of the ship.

With a general consent of all our company, it was ordained that
there should be a palmer or ferula which should be in the keeping of
him who was taken with an oath; and that he who had the palmer
should give to every one that he took swearing, a palmada with it
and the ferula; and whosoever at the time of evening or morning
prayer was found to have the palmer, should have three blows given
him by the captain or the master; and that he should still be bound
to free himself by taking another, or else to run in danger of
continuing the penalty, which, being executed a few days, reformed
the vice, so that in three days together was not one oath heard to
be sworn.

The regulations for Luke Fox's voyage commenced thus:--

For as much as the good success and prosperity of every action doth
consist in the due service and glorifying of God, knowing that not
only our being and preservation, but the prosperity of all our
actions and enterprises do immediately depend on His Almighty
goodness and mercy; it is provided--

First, that all the company, as well officers as others, shall duly
repair every day twice at the call of the bell to hear public
prayers to be read, such as are authorised by the church, and that
in a godly and devout manner, as good Christians ought.

Secondly, that no man shall swear by the name of God, or use any
profane oath, or blaspheme His holy name.

To symptoms such as these, we cannot but assign a very different value
when they are the spontaneous growth of common minds, unstimulated by
sense of propriety or rules of the service, or other official influence
lay or ecclesiastic, from what attaches to the somewhat similar
ceremonials in which, among persons whose position is conspicuous,
important enterprises are now and then inaugurated.

We have said as much as we intend to say of the treatment by the
Spaniards of the Indian women. Sir Walter Raleigh is commonly
represented by historians as rather defective, if he was remarkable at
all, on the moral side of his character. Yet Raleigh can declare
proudly, that all the time he was on the Oronoko, 'neither by force nor
other means had any of his men intercourse with any woman there;' and
the narrator of the incidents of Raleigh's last voyage acquaints his
correspondent 'with some particulars touching the government of the
fleet, which, although other men in their voyages doubtless in some
measure observed, yet in all the great volumes which have been written
touching voyages, there is no precedent of so godly severe and martial
government, which not only in itself is laudable and worthy of
imitation, but is also fit to be written and engraven on every man's
soul that coveteth to do honour to his country.'

Once more, the modern theory of Drake is, as we said above, that he was
a gentleman-like pirate on a large scale, who is indebted for the place
which he fills in history to the indistinct ideas of right and wrong
prevailing in the unenlightened age in which he lived, and who
therefore demands all the toleration of our own enlarged humanity to
allow him to remain there. Let us see how the following incident can be
made to coincide with this hypothesis:--

A few days after clearing the Channel on his first great voyage, he fell
in with a small Spanish ship, which he took for a prize. He committed
the care of it to a certain Mr. Doughtie, a person much trusted by, and
personally very dear to him, and this second vessel was to follow him as
a tender.

In dangerous expeditions into unknown seas, a second smaller ship was
often indispensable to success; but many finely intended enterprises
were ruined by the cowardice of the officers to whom such ships were
entrusted; who shrank as danger thickened, and again and again took
advantage of darkness or heavy weather to make sail for England and
forsake their commander. Hawkins twice suffered in this way; so did Sir
Humfrey Gilbert; and, although Drake's own kind feeling for his old
friend has prevented him from leaving an exact account of his offence,
we gather from the scattered hints which are let fall, that he, too, was
meditating a similar piece of treason. However, it may or may not have
been thus. But when at Port St. Julien, 'our General,' says one of the
crew,--

Began to inquire diligently of the actions of Mr. Thomas Doughtie,
and found them not to be such as he looked for, but tending rather
to contention or mutiny, or some other disorder, whereby, without
redresse, the success of the voyage might greatly have been
hazarded. Whereupon the company was called together and made
acquainted with the particulars of the cause, which were found,
partly by Mr. Doughtie's own confession, and partly by the evidence
of the fact, to be true, which, when our General saw, although his
private affection to Mr. Doughtie (as he then, in the presence of us
all, sacredly protested) was great, yet the care which he had of the
state of the voyage, of the expectation of Her Majesty, and of the
honour of his country, did more touch him, as indeed it ought, than
the private respect of one man; so that the cause being throughly
heard, and all things done in good order as near as might be to the
course of our law in England, it was concluded that Mr. Doughtie
should receive punishment according to the quality of the offence.
And he, seeing no remedy but patience for himself, desired before
his death to receive the communion, which he did at the hands of Mr.
Fletcher, our minister, and our General himself accompanied him in
that holy action, which, being done, and the place of execution made
ready, he, having embraced our General, and taken leave of all the
company, with prayers for the Queen's Majesty and our realm, in
quiet sort laid his head to the block, where he ended his life. This
being done, our General made divers speeches to the whole company,
persuading us to unity, obedience, love, and regard of our voyage,
and for the better confirmation thereof, willed every man the next
Sunday following to prepare himself to receive the communion, as
Christian brethren and friends ought to do, which was done in very
reverent sort, and so with good contentment every man went about his
business.

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