Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1912 edition. Excerpt: ... LORD CLIVE i. We have always thought it strange that, while the history of the Spanish empire in America is familiarly known to all the nations of Europe, the great actions of our countrymen in the East should, even among ourselves, excite little interest. Every schoolboy knows who imprisoned Montezuma, and who s strangled Atahualpa. But we doubt whether one in ten, even among English gentlemen of highly cultivated minds, can tell who won the battle of Buxar, who perpetrated the massacre of Patna, whether Sujah Dowlah ruled in Oude or in Travancore, or whether Holkar was a Hindoo or a Mussulman. Yet 10 the victories of Cortes were gained over savages who had no letters, who were ignorant of the use of metals, who had not y broken in a single animal to labor, who wielded no better / weapons than those which could be made out of sticks, flints, and fishbones, who regarded a horse soldier as a monster, half is man and half beast, who took a harquebusier1 for a sorcerer, able to scatter the thunder and lightning of the skies. The people of India, when we subdued them, were ten times as numerous as the Americans whom the Spaniards vanquished, and were at the same lime quite as highly civilized as the vic- 20 torious Spaniards. They had reared cities larger and fairer than Saragossa or Toledo, and buildings more beautiful and costly than the cathedral of Seville. They could show bankers richer than the richest firms of Barcelona or Cadiz, viceroys whose splendor far surpassed that of Ferdinand the Catholic, 2s myriads of cavalry and long trains of artillery which would have astonished the Great Captain. It might have been ex 1 A soldier armed with a harquebus, an antique "hand-gun with a hook." Clive--1 1 DEGREES f pected, that every Englishman who...
