CHAPTER XXXIV. THE CONQUEST ACHIEVED. July-August, 1521.

personal knowledge. The Tezcucan writer Ixtlilxochitl also follows him pretty closely for the Spanish side, while the archives left him by his royal ancestors and different narratives furnish the other side, frequently absurd and highly colored. Camargo gives a rather brief Tlascaltec version. Gomara’s coloring, which, in accordance with the method of most historians, leaves the credit for achievements with the leader, roused the feelings of more than one of the soldiers who had shared in the glories of that period, and Bernal Diaz promptly began to write his celebrated Historia Verdadera, which professes to tell the true story and rectify in particular the so-called blunders of Gomara. Although this profession is not always to be relied on, the story is most valuable from its exceeding completeness, its many new facts, and its varied version. Not long after, Herrera, the official historiographer, began his decades, wherein for the conquest he uses the material already printed, with a leaning toward Gomara, yet with several additional narratives to perfect his own revised version, notably that of Ojeda, a leading officer under Cortés, and also no small mass of material from the archives of Spain. Torquemada copies him for the most part, though he adds much native testimony from Sahagun, from a Tezcucan writer, and others, making his account of the conquest the most complete up to that time. Solis elaborates with little critique, and with a verboseness and grandiloquence that tire. Vetancurt’s version is comparatively brief, with few additions, and Robertson’s is a brilliant summary; but Clavigero, while adding not much to Torquemada’s bulky account, presents it in quite a new form, pruned of verboseness, re-arranged in a masterly manner, and invested with a philosophic spirit altogether superior to anything presented till Prescott’s time. On the above historians and some of Cortés’ letters are founded the immense array of minor accounts and summaries on the conquest, both in