475 



descendants of the Conquistador es, that is to 

 say, of the Spaniards who served in the army 

 at the time of the first conquest. Among the 

 warriors who fought with Cortez, Losada, and 

 Pizarro, several belonged to the most distin- 

 guished families of the peninsula ; others, born 

 in the inferior classes of the people, have illus- 

 trated their names by that chivalrous spirit, 

 which prevailed at the beginning of the sixteenth 

 century. I have elsewhere observed *, that in 

 the records of those times of religious and mili- 

 tary enthusiasm, we find, among the followers 

 of the great captains, many simple, virtuous, 

 and generous characters, who reprobated the 

 cruelties that stained the glory of the Spanish 

 name, but who, confounded in the mass, have 

 not escaped the general proscription. The name 

 of Conquistadores remains the more odious, as 

 the greater number of them, after having out- 

 raged peaceful nations, and lived in the midst of 

 opulence, did not experience toward the end of 

 their career those long misfortunes, which ap- 

 pease the hatred of mankind, and sometimes 

 soften the severity of the historian. 



But it is not only the progress of ideas, and 

 the conflict between two classes of different 

 origin, which have induced the privileged casts 

 to abandon their pretensions, or at least to 



* See chap, v, vol. ii, p. 299. 



