No King Against the Lord
For he that raiseth up a king
against me shall perish, for I, the Lord, the king of heaven, will be their
king. (II Ne. 10:14)
These are given us as the words of
the Lord through Jacob, the son of Lehi. The prophet tells us, that the Jews
will be restored to the land of their fathers, while his descendants and those
of his brethren will inherit America. And then he says that this land shall be
a land of liberty to the gentiles as well, and that he that fighteth against
this land—Zion—shall perish; also that he who raiseth up a king here against
the Lord, shall perish, for the Lord Himself will be the "king" of
this country.
When reading this really
remarkable prediction, one cannot but remember Montezuma II, the head of the
Aztec confederacy at the time of the arrival of Cortez in the Valley of Mexico.
True, he was not a "king" in name, but he was a despot of the worst
kind. His predecessors had succeeded in forming an alliance with Tezcuco and
Tlacopan, for the purpose of plundering and killing the neighbors who refused
to pay tribute. Like the Lamanites of old, his forces sallied forth from their
strongholds, the chief of which was Tenochtitlan, and carried off whatever they
could lay their hands on, and especially human beings needed for sacrifices.
Montezuma was the head of this plunderbund. When the Spaniards came, it had
extended its sway over thirty or more cities and was threatening the outlying
settlements in every direction. But the time had come for the fulfilment of
this prophecy. Montezuma was captured by the Spaniards, deposed by his own
people, and then killed in a battle, probably by being struck down by a stone
thrown by an Aztec soldier. In 1520 his rule of blood came to an ignoble end.
The Aztec version of the death of
this unfortunate ruler is somewhat different. According to this source of
information, Montezuma was a prisoner. He had trusted in the good faith of the
Spaniards. But when the final trial of strength came between the Indians and
the Spaniards, Montezuma was true to his blood. He refused to bend to the
Spaniard's demand. So they killed him. They killed him by a sword thrust that
was so directed as to render his death agonizing beyond comprehension and
degrading to a man of royal blood, and when the king at last was dead the
conqueror threw his naked body into the street.
"There is your king,"
they cried to his royal subjects.
It was then that the fifty Spanish
captives were sacrificed. Their furious comrades saw them led to the summit of
the pyramid that then occupied the center of what is now the plaza in front of
the national palace. On its summit was the altar to the Sun god. The Spaniards,
from the buildings they used as a fort, could see their friends led up the
steps of the pyramid. They saw their naked bodies flash white in the sun. One
after another they were thrust down upon the stone of sacrifice, and the
priests made the ritual slashes in their breast and held the palpitating hearts
up toward the sun.
But even according to this
version, the word of the Lord was wonderfully fulfilled in the tragic end of
Montezuma.
The Incas of Peru were less brutal
in their military operations, than the Aztecs. They made war, not to obtain
human victims for their altars; nor, even, for the sake of plunder. Like the
followers of Mohammed, or the soldiers of the medieval "defenders of the
faith," they went out to fight in the interest of a more humane religion
and a further advanced civilization than their neighbors had. But they were,
nevertheless, despots, and their government soon developed into absolute
despotism. It, naturally, created class distinction of the worst kind, a
condition against which the history of the ancient Americans contains a solemn
warning. (Alma 32:2; IV Nephi 25, 26) For themselves, the Incas claimed
divinity, as the sons of the sun—that is, as they understood it, of God; and
they exacted submission to their word as if it had been a divine decree. They
had not learned—or, if they had, they had put aside and forgotten—the
fundamental principle of true religion which our Lord stated in these words:
"The kings of the gentiles
exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise authority upon them are
called benefactors. But ye shall not be so; but he that is greatest among you,
let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve." Luke
22:25, 26)
Having no regard for this great
law, the Incas created a wide gulf between themselves and the people, no less
impassable because it was imaginary. For themselves they claimed every
privilege that almost unlimited wealth and power could procure; to produce this
wealth was the chief end and purpose for which the people existed. They were
part of the assets of the Incas, just as were the beasts on the hill sides, and
fishes in the brooks, the trees in the valleys, the grain in the fields and the
store houses, and the metals in the mountains. To be sure, under good and wise
rulers, the subjects were well cared for; and so were the beasts of burden and
the birds and other animals; but, though human beings, they were, strictly
speaking, nothing but "property." This was the condition of about
eight million human beings under the Incas in this "land of liberty,"
at the time of the arrival of the Spaniards. It was put to an end with the
assassination of Inca Huascar at Cuzco and the pretender Atahualpa at
Caxamarca, in 1533.
Atahualpa, as is well known, was
promised his liberty, if he would pay a large ransom. He did pay, but the
Spaniards, fearing to set him free, decided to take his life as well as the
ransom. They proposed to strangle him instead of burning him to death, if he
would let them baptize him first. Having obtained his consent to this, they
"baptized" him and then choked him to death.
"The treatment of
Atahualpa," says Prescott, "forms undoubtedly one of the darkest
chapters in Spanish colonial history. There may have been massacres on a more
extended scale, and executions accompanied with greater refinement of cruelty.
But the blood-stained annals of the Conquest affords us no such example of
cold-hearted and systematic presentation, not of an enemy, but of one whose
whole deportment had been that of a friend and a benefactor."
For the murderous, perfidious
conduct of the Spaniards both in Mexico and in Peru, there can be nothing but
condemnation. At the same time, the history of their exploits is the record of
the fulfilment of a remarkable prophetic utterance in the Book of Mormon.
This prediction has also been
verified in later times.
In May, 1822, Augustus Iturbide
proclaimed himself emperor of Mexico, and was crowned the following July under
the name of Augustin I. His empire included, in addition to the Mexico of
today, large portions of the United States and the Central American countries.
But the Mexicans soon drove him from the throne into exile. The country treated
him liberally, in recognition of former patriotic service. An allowance of
$25,000 a year was voted for him, provided he would remain abroad. But some
power seemed to prompt him to return. He arrived in Mexico in 1824, and was
killed as an enemy of the country on July 19, that year.
Those who were engaged in the
efforts to establish Archduke Maximilian, or Hapsburg, a brother of the late
Emperor Francis Joseph, of Austria-Hungary, on a Mexican imperial throne, fared
no better. The proposition, in all probability, came, with the consent of the
pope, from Napoleon III, who, at any rate, furnished the military force for the
enterprise. Marshal Bazaine was the commander of those troops. The outcome of
it was one of the great tragedies of history. Maximilian, abandoned by Napoleon
and betrayed by some of his generals, was captured and shot to death, June,
1867. His wife, Princess Carlotte, a sister of King Leopold, of Belgium, became
insane. Napoleon early in the war with Germany, 1870-71, was captured at Sedan
and died in exile. Bazaine was captured with a force of 173,000 men, and he
was, subsequently, tried by a court martial and condemned to degradation and
death, although the death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Verily,
"he that raiseth up a king against me"—in this land of
liberty—"shall perish."
There is, perhaps, no more tragic
experience in all history than that of Maximilian and Carlotte. When Louis
Napoleon 3 of France in 1863, decided to step into the imbroglio in Mexico, a
committee of Mexican nobles went to Miramir and asked Maximilian to become
their emperor. He hesitated, and Carlotte is said to have made the decision for
him. They entered Vera Cruz harbor in 1864 on a French cruiser and were well
received. The United States, having emerged from its Civil War troubles, made a
vigorous restatement of the Monroe Doctrine, and Louis Napoleon hurriedly
withdrew his troops. Bereft of his patron's support, Maximilian saw the
scattered bands of guerillas become a united army, directed against his throne.
Carlotte, foreseeing doom, fled to France to plead with Napoleon to return his
troops and support her husband.
How she humbled her pride before
the French sovereign and subsequently pleaded in vain for aid from the Vatican
form the most dramatic episodes of her long life. Her interview with Napoleon
was held secret, but at its close an attendant heard her shriek: "I ought
never to have forgotten what I am and what you are! I ought not to have
forgotten that there is Bourbon blood in my veins! I should not have disgraced
my descent by lowering myself before a Bonaparte and being led away by an
adventurer!"
Louis Napoleon left in the midst
of her tirade, and attendants found her swooning on the floor. Some accounts
have it that her mind failed her then, but the fact remains that her will drove
her to the Vatican, where she also created a scene.
After this fruitless appeal in her
husband's behalf, she is said to have been found wandering the streets of Rome,
washing her hands in the fountains and babbling incoherently. Accounts differ
as to whether Carlotte ever knew that Maximilian was betrayed and captured, or
that he died with her name on his lips before a firing squad at Queretaro, on
June 19, 1867.
Such is some of the testimony of
secular history to the truth of the Book of Mormon. (George Reynolds and Janne
M. Sjodahl, Commentary on the Book of Mormon, 7 vols. [Salt Lake City:
Deseret Book Company, 1977], 4:268-72)
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