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Title: The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Vol 1 (of 2)
Author: Bernal Díaz del Castillo
Translator: John Ingram Lockhart
Release date: May 21, 2010 [eBook #32474]
Most recently updated: January 6, 2021
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32474
Credits: Produced by Julia Miller, Jane Hyland and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MEMOIRS OF THE CONQUISTADOR BERNAL DIAZ DEL CASTILLO, VOL 1 (OF 2) ***
Produced by Julia Miller, Jane Hyland and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
THE MEMOIRS
OF THE
CONQUISTADOR BERNAL DIAZ DEL CASTILLO
WRITTEN BY HIMSELF
CONTAINING A TRUE AND FULL ACCOUNT
OF THE
DISCOVERY AND CONQUEST
OF
MEXICO AND NEW SPAIN
TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL SPANISH BY
JOHN INGRAM LOCKHART, F.R.A.S.
AUTHOR OF "ATTICA AND ATHENS"
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I
LONDON
J. HATCHARD AND SON, 187, PICCADILLY
MDCCCXLIV.
C. AND J. ADLARD, PRINTERS, BATHOLOMEW CLOSE.
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
The History of the Conquest of New Spain is a subject in which great
interest is felt at the present day, and the English public will hail
these memoirs, which contain the only true and complete account of that
important transaction.
The author of this original and charming production, to which he justly
gives the title of 'The True History of the Conquest of New Spain,' was
himself one of the Conquistadores; one who not only witnessed the
transactions which he relates, but who also performed a glorious part in
them; a soldier who, for impartiality and veracity, perhaps never had
his equal. His account is acknowledged to be the only one on which we
can place reliance, and it has been the magazine from which the most
eloquent of the Spanish writers on the same subject, as well as those of
other countries, have borrowed their best materials. Some historians
have even transcribed whole pages, but have not had sufficient honesty
to acknowledge it.
The author, while living, was never rewarded for the great services he
had rendered his country, and it is remarkable that, after his death,
his very memoirs were pillaged by court historians, to raise a literary
monument to themselves.
Most of the other writers on the conquest, particularly the Spanish,
have filled their works with exaggerations, to create astonishment and
false interest; pages are filled with so termed philosophical remarks,
which but ill supply the place of the intelligent reader's own
reflections. Bernal Diaz differs widely from those writers, for he only
states what he knows to be true. The British public, fond above all
others of original productions, will peruse with interest and delight a
work which has so long been the secret fountain from which all other
accounts of the conquest, with the exception of those which are least
faithful, have taken life.
In respect of its originality, it may vie with any work of modern times,
not excepting 'Don Quixote.' The author seems to have been born to show
forth truth in all its beauty, and he raises it to a divinity in his
mind. Can anything be more expressive of an honest conscience than what
he says in his own preface: "You have only to read my history, and you
see it is true."
The reader may form a general idea of this work from the following
critique, which Dr. Robertson, the historian, passes upon it: "Bernal
Diaz's account bears all the marks of authenticity, and is accompanied
with such pleasant naïveté, with such interesting details, with such
amusing vanity, and yet so pardonable in an old soldier, who had been,
as he boasts, in a hundred and nineteen battles, as renders his book one
of the most singular that is to be found in any language."
One circumstance, and that very justly, he is most anxious to impress on
your mind, namely, that all the merit of the conquest is not due to
Cortes alone; for which reason he generally uses the expression "Cortes
and all of us."
This is an allowable feeling in our old soldier, and it must be
remembered that the greater part of the men who joined Cortes were of
good families, who, as usual on such expeditions, equipped themselves at
their own expense, and went out as adventurers of their own free choice.
With respect to our author's style of writing, it is chiefly
characterized by plainness and simplicity, and yet there are numerous
passages which are written with great force and eloquence, and which, as
the Spanish editor says, "could not have been more forcibly expressed,
nor with greater elegance." Some readers may at first feel inclined to
censure our author for going into minute particulars in describing the
fitting out of the expedition under Cortes; for instance, his describing
the qualities and colours of the horses; but all this, it will be seen,
was of the utmost importance to his history, and of the horses he was
bound to take special notice, for they performed a conspicuous part in
the conquest. The honest old soldier even devotes a couple of his last
chapters to the whole of his companions in arms, in which he mentions
them all by name, describes their persons, their bravery, and the manner
in which they died.
To conclude these few remarks on this work, I must observe, that it not
only surpasses Cortes' despatches in completeness, but also in truth and
naïveté. He represents the whole to you with a simplicity truly sublime;
at times he astonishes with a power of expressing his sentiments
peculiar to himself, and with a pathos that goes to the very heart.
Bernal Diaz was of a respectable family, and born in Medina del Campo, a
small town in the province of Leon. He was what in Spain is termed an
hidalgo--though by this little more was signified than a descent from
Christian forefathers, without any mixture of Jewish or Moorish blood.
With respect to the precise year of his birth he has left us in the
dark, but, according to his own account, he first left Castile, for the
New World, in the year 1514; and as, on his first arrival in Mexico, in
the year 1519, he still calls himself a young man, we may safely
conclude that he was born between 1495 and 1500. In the year 1568 he
completed his work, Next |