For Machiavelli, though, there was no single model of the republic. In the Discorsi, there are, in essence, two: ‘either a republic that seeks to form an empire like Rome or one for which it suffices to preserve its power. In the first case it has to act precisely as Rome did [entrusting the guarding of freedom to the plebs, at the cost of permanent internal dissent]; in the second, it can imitate Venice or Sparta [entrusting freedom to the nobles, but limiting either population or arms-bearing among the plebs]’ (p. 37). For all the allusions to Venice, Arauco does not fit entirely comfortably into the latter category: there are no limits to the growth of the population or the citizen army, and, despite the mere twenty leagues of its boundaries, the territory is neither ‘located in a strong place and fortified so that no one could believe he could quickly overwhelm it’ nor so small that it could not be seen as a threat (p. 41). Moreover, given Machiavelli’s dictum in the Discorsi that ‘men who are born in a country conform more or less to the same nature for all time’ (p. 370), the hint at the expansionist impulse of the Araucanians at the outset, ‘amigos de domar estrañas gentes’ [keen to subdue foreign peoples] (I. 45), is not incidental.
Indeed, the observation that they live beneath the astrological influence of Mars, ‘donde el punto de la guerra | por uso y ejercicio más se afina’ [where the point of warfare is sharpest through use and practice] (I. 10), echoes a commonplace about the city of Rome. For Ptolemy of Lucca, ‘the Roman regions are situated under Mars, and so they are not as easily subjected as others’, nor is Rome ‘accustomed to be satisfied with its boundaries’ (p. 122). The observation is developed in a more negative light by Las Casas in the
Apologética historia, who asserts that the Romans and the Spaniards were the ancient nations most devoted to Mars, ‘por inclinación natural que de sí cognoscían de infestar y turbar el mundo con guerras y batallas’ [through a natural inclination which they recognised in themselves to plague and trouble the world with wars and battles].
1 Bartolomé de las Casas, Obras completas (Madrid, 1988–95), chapter 148, vol. VII, ed. by Vidal Abril Castelló, and others (1992), p. 989. See also Lupher, Romans in a New World, pp. 262–63. The comparison between Arauco and republican Rome is frequent: in the third canto, for example, when the young Araucanian Lautaro turns his back on the Spanish whom he was serving as auxiliary to rally the flagging Araucanian forces he will shortly come to command, his courage is favourably compared with a catalogue of ‘famosos’, all from the Roman republican period and familiar from Livy (III. 43–44).
2 MacCormack also notes the Araucanians’ parallels with the early Roman republic and its passion for liberty: On the Wings of Time, pp. 215–16. The comparison is paradoxical, for the Araucanians also resemble those peoples the Romans fought, finding ‘in every least part of the world a league of republics very well armed and quite stubborn in defense of their freedom’, such that ‘without rare and extreme
virtù the Roman people would never have been able to conquer them’, such as the Germans described by Tacitus.
3 Machiavelli, Discourses, p. 167. According to this analogy, it is the Spaniards who become the Romans. The slippage of reference is another of the productive tensions maintained across the work, and, as I will argue shortly, provides one means of reading the narrative dynamic of expansion and decline throughout this part of the poem.
Ercilla’s scrutiny of the fall of Pedro de Valdivia, the conquistador of Arauco, may be understood in terms of a radical Machiavellian political pragmatism as well as a moral critique. His failure to act quickly enough on the outbreak of rebellion (I. 72), favouring his private interest above the common good and striking at the rebels too little and too late, deviates from the advice given to rulers in possession of a newly annexed and unstable territory in
Il principe. In this, Valdivia deviates from his customary ‘presteza’, the capacity to act quickly, which with its counterpart ‘industria’ – according to Covarrubias’s dictionary, ‘la maña, diligencia y solercia con que alguno hace qualquier cosa con menos trabajo que otro’ [the knack/cunning, diligence and astuteness with which someone does something with less effort than others] – are the invariable qualities of success throughout the
Primera parte.
4 Sebastián de Covarrubias Orozco, Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española (Madrid, 1611). Both reflect the quick adaptation to
necessità and
occasione particularly prized in Machiavelli’s ideal commander or prince. ‘Presteza’ is also given a metanarrative twist as the narrator in this part of the poem, quite different from the persona assumed in its sequels, constantly hurries on the narration, abandoning the defeated and chasing after the victors (e.g. IX. 37, 110–11). Ironically enough, for instance, for a work whose licence promised ‘las guerras y descubrimiento de Chile, y otras cosas’ [the wars and discovery of Chile, and other things] Ercilla condenses the whole history of these early explorations, attempted conquests by the Incas and Almagro, and successful conquest by Valdivia to a mere nineteen stanzas (I. 48–66). Valdivia is shown recruiting an army, crossing the Atacama desert, fighting innumerable battles during six years of hardship, overcoming the Araucanian leader Ainauillo, and founding seven prosperous cities in the blink of an eye before the narrative of the conquest is drawn to a close: ‘No quiero detenerme más en esto’, declares the poet wryly, ‘pues no es mi intención dar pesadumbre […] fueron tantas las batallas | que dejo de prolijas de contallas’ [I do not want to be spend any longer on this, since it is not my intention to bore you (…) there were so many battles that they are too lengthy to tell] (I. 63). In their place emerges the surprise ‘industria’ of the Araucanians, as the old virtues of Valdivia pass to Lautaro, ‘industrioso, sabio, presto, | de gran consejo, término y cordura’ [astute, wise, quick-thinking, of great counsel, balance and good sense] (I. 86).
When Lautaro assumes command, his ‘industria’ manifests first in a reform of the Araucanian troops into a tighter and more disciplined unit. His innovations are both subtle –exchanging drums for the more sophisticated bugle to give out military signals, for instance (XII. 55), or instituting a less disorderly repartition of spoils (X. 10) – and far-reaching. To give only a few examples which again correspond with the military treatises mentioned previously, he acts always in total secrecy (XII. 4–5) and rarely reveals his true emotions; he exploits the features of the terrain (III. 80, IV. 93) and seasons (IX. 24); he knows the strengths and weakness of the enemy as he pre-emptively captures their artillery (V. 28); and imposes discipline of the most extreme kind (VII. 35–42). When he feigns precisely the sort of textbook error he has not fallen prey to in his false negotiations with the Spanish on the campaign towards Santiago – ‘gran necesidad de bastimento […] por orden mala y poco regimiento’ [a great shortage of supplies, through poor organisation and lack of discipline] (XII. 26) – the interim commander Pedro de Villagrá is left ‘maravillado del ardid astuto’ [in awe at the clever trick] (XII. 32). Indeed ‘astucia’ and ‘ardides’, while present from the Araucanians’ first battle, become particularly characteristic of Lautaro’s strategy as he exchanges the sudden, massive attack for a carefully orchestrated siege. This change of tactic is perhaps best exemplified in the appeal to his men as they attempt to lure the Spanish out of Santiago:
Amigos, vamos engañados
si con tan poco número de gente
pensamos allanar los levantados
muros de una ciudad así eminente;
la industria tiene aquí más fuerza y parte
que la temeridad del fiero Marte. (XI. 73)
[Friends, we are deceived if with so few men we think to level the high walls of such an eminent city; industria here is more powerful and necessary than the boldness of fierce Mars.]
Taken as a whole, the evolution of the Araucanian army here has much in common not only with classical military wisdom, but also with contemporary calls for reform of the Spanish military around these years. One innovation of the sixteenth century was the role of maestre de campo or commander of a tercio (introduced in 1534), a rank to which even common soldiers of ability could aspire and second only to that of capitán general. Although never described as such (he is said to be capitán and teniente), Lautaro effectively seems to occupy a comparable role below Caupolicán’s supreme command. Fernando González de León among others argues that the reign of Philip II was a period of transition in perceptions of the military career, with increasing calls for technical specialisation and effectiveness in combat. The wars in Flanders from 1567 under the Duke of Alba stimulated a stream of popular works which he terms the ‘ideal officer genre’. While respecting the value of lineage, they call for a more meritocratic selection process for senior officers, including specific skills such as a command of artillery alongside the moral virtues needed for renewal.5 Fernando González de León, ‘“Doctors of the Military Discipline”: Technical Expertise and the Paradigm of the Spanish Soldier in the Early Modern Period’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 27.1 (1996), 61–85 (p. 85). Although most of these works did not appear in print until the 1580s, their composition is contemporaneous with La Araucana and is echoed in other soldiers’ writings of the period. The tactics of the astute Indian captain, then, seem to be one way of addressing these questions while also keeping them at a distance.
Overall, however, as the dwelling on Valdivia’s failure rather than his conquests already suggested, Ercilla appears to be more interested in this part of the poem in the decline of leaders and communities than their successes.
6 As Martínez points out, many ‘gunpowder epics’ also focus more on the aftermath of conquest (rebellion, mutiny, loss of possessions) than its achievements: Baltasar del Hierro’s 1560 Destruición de África, for instance, ‘refuses to sing the story of its conquest [of Mahdia] and offers, instead, the story of its self-destruction’, Front Lines, p. 100. The overall narrative arc of these cantos describes the gradual fall of Arauco, from the surprise victors of the opening to the slaughtered mass at the Battle of Mataquito in the final canto. One understanding of this decline might be to see history as represented in a straightforwardly Machiavellian sense, a contingent tussle between the arbitrary power of ‘fortuna’, articulated in the exordium to the second canto and often described, as in Machiavelli, with the image of a torrent of water, and the human will to master her. This is a conflict in which ‘en el fin de la vida está la prueba’ [the proof is in the end of life] (II. 3), a judgement which is not unequivocally eschatological. After the initial conquest, the Spaniards rely too much on their ‘fortuna próspera’, both prior to the rebellion and in Francisco de Villagrá’s impulsive response to it. ‘Dando libre la rienda a su destino’ [giving free reign to his destiny] (IV. 94), he leads his men through the narrow pass of Andalicán at the borders of Arauco into an ambush in a fateful move compared to Lucan’s Caesar crossing the Rubicon, another classical instance of a surrender to (in this case favourable) fortune. When Lautaro first resists Fortune (III. 46), she moves to the side of the Araucanians and ‘dio por justa | la causa y opinión hasta allí injusta’ [declared just the cause and opinion until then unjust] (57), and remains there (VIII. 5–6, X. 1–3) until Villagrá seizes her and the initiative again in the night-time assault on Lautaro’s fortress at Mataquito (XIV. 5). This final reversal is aided by the unaccustomed laxity of the Araucanian troops, who neglect their sentinel duty, and their commander, who has already abandoned ‘su usada presteza’ [his usual speed] as he settles down to bide time in his stronghold (XII. 55). ‘Aquella sola noche’ [that night alone] (XIII. 44), moreover, having sworn to forsake all pleasures until expelling the Spanish (XII. 41), Lautaro is discovered naked and in bed with his beloved Guacolda, complacently trusting for the first time in the constancy of his ‘fortuna’ (XIII. 51).
7 As Mercedes Blanco argues in ‘Fábulas de amores en la épica de guerra. De la Araucana al Arauco domado’, Bulletin Hispanique, 121.1 (2019), 17–54, this turn of events is tragic and does not detract from but rather enhances Lautaro’s heroic stature. In my view, while this is true and the Lautaro-Guacolda episode is treated in a lyric vein with pathos rather than censoriousness, one out of several possible understandings of Lautaro’s fall (see below) is within the overarching narrative of military strategy. Favourable fortune and a constant military alertness and proactivity, then, appear to be closely bound together.
Nevertheless, this explanation is not entirely satisfactory. On the contrary, one of the complexities of
La Araucana is the manner in which Ercilla allows for multiple layers of interpretation of the causes of historical events. In an ambiguous relationship with ‘fortuna’ are ‘hado’ [fate] and, even more removed and mysterious, Providence, which initially favour the Christians (I. 57–58, 69) but then permit the Araucanians to be an instrument of vengeance on the morally corrupt conquerors (I. 69, III. 33), before punishing in turn the offences of the ‘verdugo’ [executioner] (XIII. 44).
8 See Arnold Chapman, ‘Ercilla y el “Furor de Marte”’, Cuadernos Americanos, 37.6 (1978), 87–97. Thus, it is arguable that the decline and fall of both the Spanish and Araucanian armies happen on a moral as well as a strategic level and are susceptible to articulation in the juridical terms of Just War Theory. In the understated claim that the Araucanian military machine is geared towards ‘lícitas guerras y batallas’ [licit wars and battles] (I. 18), in fact, the question of the legitimacy of violence has been present from the outset. As we saw in Chapter 1, disputes over the justice of the Chilean wars continued in this period and were not without material and spiritual consequence for those involved. In this light, it is evident that while Ercilla does not go so far as to claim that justice was on the side of the indigenous rebels, his attacks on the Spanish settlers are unsparing. The Araucanians commit none of the ‘crimes against nature’ attributed to them by Vivar; the conquistadors’ intention to spread the faith is given short shrift, and the initial Araucanian surrender to Valdivia is motivated by fear (I. 64) and ignorance (I. 65), neither legitimate criteria in scholastic terms for true conversion or voluntary submission. Even Sepúlveda had suggested that were it not for their crimes against nature, idolatry and stubborn rebellion, the peoples of America would have a right to resist conquest (p. 118).
A series of moral turning points follow, however. In the sixth canto, the Araucanians commit the first atrocity of the war, as they massacre the unarmed servants and camp-followers at Andalicán, including women and children (VI. 17–35). Their subsequent sack and destruction of the deserted city of Concepción is hardly commendable either, with its undisciplined greed and wanton violence. The mock-epic similes comparing the plunderers to the Greek destroyers of Troy so horrifically presented in the second book of the
Aeneid (VII. 48), to Nero watching Rome burn (VII. 62) and to bees collecting honey (VII. 50) (ironically reversing an image associated from Aristotle onwards with the harmonious construction of a political community), emphasise the transition. The Araucanians’ actions also evoke explicitly the catalogue of atrocities recorded in Las Casas’s polemical 1552
Brevísima relación de la destruición de las Indias [
Very Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies],
except, of course, that it is the colonists who now find themselves the victims of Indians who are anything but innocent.
9 Bartolomé de las Casas, Brevísima relación de la destruición de las Indias, ed. by Consuelo Varela (Madrid, 1999). The allusions are specific: Las Casas frequently uses the simile of a beehive to represent the abundant and contented populations of the New World prior to their destruction (e.g. pp. 74, 89) and alleges that during the massacre of Cholula the Spanish captain sang the well-known romance ‘Mira Nero de Tarpeya’ [Nero looks out from the Tarpeian rock] (p. 107). There is a more definitive turning point in canto IX, in which an attack on the city of La Imperial is thwarted by a Marian apparition. Both Vitoria and Sepúlveda argued that, in the case of an evident miracle, there was a moral obligation to convert without the usual need for a lapse of time and persuasive arguments to be made. It is following this – although the incident is never developed – that the Araucanians resort to the archetypal crime against nature of cannibalism when the land is struck by famine, apparently as a consequence of the vision. When they reconvene for a second, this time ultimately futile, campaign, the narrator takes on an unaccustomed tone of censoriousness as he describes the ‘borrachera’ [drinking binge] which precedes the political assembly as a ‘detestable vicio’ [detestable vice] (IX. 26). Finally, their uprising seems to be condemned by association, as the new viceroy of Peru, Andrés Hurtado de Mendoza, arrives in Lima in canto XII and crushes the Peruvian rebels who had backed Hernández Girón; after this, the Araucanians are described in new terms, as a ‘rebelde pueblo libertado’ [restive rebel people] now opposing not settlers, but Crown (XIII. 24). As the book closes there is a sense that a new kind of war is beginning, one of more clearly delineated ethics, as a group of theologians (we recall Fray Gil González again) embarks with the narrator and royal forces, ‘necesarios […] para evitar insultos de la guerra, | usados más allí que en otra tierra’ [necessary to avoid abuses of the war, more common there than in other lands] (XIII. 31).
What is interesting here is the way in which this more straightforward ethical dimension interacts with the ongoing dialogue with Machiavelli, for it is arguable that Arauco also undergoes a full evolution to Machiavelli’s second model of republicanism, the expansionist model, in the course of these cantos. The question of imperial expansion remained problematic for republican thinkers throughout the early modern period. Often associated with a cultivation of military virtue among the citizens, it also posed dangers of tyranny and corruption, the ills that had afflicted the Roman republic. Venetian contemporaries, even eulogists such as Contarini, expressed similar reservations about their state’s
terraferma expansion.
10 See Lester J. Libby, ‘Venetian History and Political Thought after 1509’, Studies in the Renaissance, 20 (1973), 7–45. The dilemma of deciding between a policy of pure self-defence or pre-emptive attack presents itself frequently in the Araucanian councils of war.
11 One of the central points of disagreement between the scholastic and humanist traditions of Just War Theory, according to Tuck, The Rights of War and Peace. After their first victory, there is a popular proposal to push their advantage as far as Europe, ‘pasar la vuelta de España […] que fuesen cultivadas las iberas | tierras de las naciones estranjeras’ [journey back to Spain, that the lands of Iberia might be cultivated by foreign nations]. This is immediately perceived by Caupolicán to be a ‘vano intento’ [vain endeavour] (III. 73–76), and successfully thwarted. After a second victory, however, Caupolicán too is arguing for a European campaign (VIII. 16–20), and is with difficulty turned aside by Colocolo and Lautaro, who return the focus to immediate strategic needs. Encamped near Santiago, Lautaro also seems to have succumbed to the delusion of conquering Spain (XII. 13); although at this point he may simply be demonstrating bravado in an address to his Spanish listener, his regretful soliloquy in XII. 37 suggests that the promise of global domination was one made to his own people too.
It goes without saying that the foolishness of such a proposal is in every case evident.
12 Several critics, from Quint to Martínez, have pointed out that this ambition does highlight the fragility of empire and the possibility that Chile might be lost, but the plan of driving back the conquest all the way to Spain is clearly hyperbolic. It is one promoted by the impetuous younger warriors, and opposed in the eighth canto by the wise reasoning of the elderly and dignified Peteguelén and Colocolo. There is also a sense of fatal hubris about the Araucanians’ intent: it is at the very moment when the hot-tempered Tucapel boasts that ‘a guerra incitaré al supremo cielo’ [I will incite the supreme heavens to war] (VIII. 29) that the seer Puchecalco intervenes with a doom-laden prophecy. The
hechicero [sorceror] is, admittedly, treated with mild irony by Ercilla, but when he is murdered by Tucapel, who turns against the whole ‘senado religioso’ as they try and fail to avenge the crime, there is the clearest indication yet of serious discord within the community. It is the second time that Caupolicán’s authority as leader has failed to prevail against abuse by influential nobles (the first being the killing of Valdivia), and although his dignity is preserved by
disimulación (VIII. 59) in both instances, certain flaws in the elective model of leadership are apparent. His ultimate dependence for authority on the assembly that elected him means that even when his decisions are wise, the competing claims of important families and the army’s favour frequently leave him impotent to enforce them. Both failures to assert his authority also turn aside the two most significant moments of potential for a fair peace with the Spaniards. There is a suggestion, then, that this model of republicanism, with its inherent tendencies towards factionalism and aggression, is not only internally unstable but also prone to a destructive prolongation of warfare beyond what might be considered just and proper.
One significant point, moreover, and one that has not to my knowledge been recognised by critics, is that there is a fundamental change around the mid-point of this book in Araucanian strategy from defensive to offensive and expansionist warfare. After the failed attack on La Imperial, the Araucanians are invited by the ‘pueblos comarcanos’ [neighbouring peoples] to expel the Spanish from their territories in return for a sum of money. Their action is described not in the language of patriotic self-defence, nor even of legitimate alliance, but that of a rather shady business deal, a ‘doble y solícito contrato’ [two-faced and solicitous contract] (IX. 36). The victory games that follow the second assault on Penco/Concepción show an expansion in Arauco’s sphere of influence, as they attract ‘naturales, vecinos y estranjeros’ [natives, neighbours and foreigners] (X. 13). On Lautaro’s next campaign, his 500 troops are motivated by gain rather than patriotism, and picked with no regard for their moral character or even, necessarily, skill: ‘mozos gallardos, de la vida airada | por más bravos que pláticos tenidos’ [gallant young men and outlaws, reputed to be more hot-headed than they were experienced] (XI. 34). They behave, in fact, precisely as the sort of reckless professional mercenaries whose use Machiavelli consistently condemns:
Perdidos por bullicio y disensiones,
en el duro trabajo ejercitados,
diabólicos, rufianes, desgarrones,
a cualquiera maldad determinados,
amigos de mudanzas y cuestiones,
homicidas, sangrientos, temerarios,
grandísimos ladrones y cosarios.
13 Alonso de Ercilla y Zuñuga, La Araucana (Madrid, 1569), p. 274. (XI. 35)
[Sunken in rowdiness and arguments, experienced in the hard labour [of war], diabolical ruffians, braggarts, ready for any kind of wickedness, partial to fickleness and fights, blood-soaked, reckless murderers, great thieves and pirates.]
As they march through neighbouring territories, they behave as aggressors rather than allies, demanding the submission of their caciques, tribute, weapons and recruits, as well as the requisite sustenance:
La comarca arruinan y destruyen,
talan comidas, casas y heredades,
que los indios de miedo al pueblo huyen
stupros, adulterios, y maldades
por violencia sin término concluyen,
no reservando edad, estado y tierra,
que a fuego y sangre rota era la guerra. (XI. 37)
[They ruin and destroy the region, wrecking crops, houses and property as the Indians flee in fear to the towns, committing rapes, adulteries and evils with uninhibited violence, sparing no one of any age, condition or land, since the war was one with no holds barred.]
The mention of a ‘guerra a sangre y fuego’ (literally, war of blood and fire), which is mentioned twice in this passage, is particularly shocking. The expression was usually used for a ‘total’ war against inveterate enemies, one that took no hostages and observed no codes, but it is here employed against peaceful indigenous neighbours who put up no resistance to the Araucanian advance, albeit in the overarching cause of a campaign against the Spanish. The error is clearly strategic as well as moral, as Lautaro will later lament: after three months of campaigning, his ‘campo mal regido’ [undisciplined army] turns back having sustained nothing but losses (XII. 38), to a large extent through its own failure to observe orders. This context should also be borne in mind when considering Lautaro’s final downfall. There are, clearly, anomalous errors at Mataquito, as indicated above, and the peripeteia is, in literary terms, tragic. Contemporaries also made similar criticisms, however, regarding the corrupting effects of landward expansion on the Venetian youth: as Andrea Mocenigo put it in his history of the Italian wars, ‘weakened and enamoured of the land, they easily turned from labours to delights’.
14 Andrea Mocenigo, La guerra di Cambrai fatta a tempi nostri in Italia [The War of the League of Cambrai Waged in our own Times in Italy], trans. by Andrea Arrivabene (Venice, 1544), p. 31 (my translation).The crucial factor in the outcome of the battle is the treachery of ‘un comarcano bárbaro’ [a local barbarian], who does not feature in earlier sources, and who leads Villagrá through the mountains to Lautaro’s otherwise impregnable fort. Davis has interpreted this and other acts of disloyalty in
La Araucana as an attempt to present Amerindians as inherently treacherous and deceitful (pp. 46–51). It is necessary, however, to read this incident, and the subsequent abandonment of the Araucanians by their allies (XIV. 20–22) against what has gone before. On one level, there is an evident social as well as political contrast between the indomitable Araucanians, who continue to resist to the point of annihilation, and the ‘baja y vil canalla’ [lowly and common rabble] who immediately abandon the fort. On another, though, in terms of the military strategists referenced above, Lautaro made a fundamental error in receiving so many auxiliary troops in the first place into what should be a predominantly citizen militia – again a consequence of rapid expansion. According to Machiavelli, there is perhaps a deeper error at stake too: in trusting that those whom he had injured in his earlier actions could be relied upon. The mistaken imperialism of Lautaro, read alongside his ethical errors, implicitly questions the sustainability of the republican militia eulogised at the outset of the poem. There is perhaps a suggestion, as in Machiavelli, that the self-contained republican state can exist only in the realm of ideas; in the real world, it is inherently prone to a cycle of expansion and instability, for ‘necessity leads you to do many things that reason does not’.
15 Machiavelli, Discourses, p. 42. In this case, the process appears to lead inevitably to decline, as Machiavelli predicted for a republic whose freedom was entrusted to the aristocracy rather than the plebs.
There are, however, reasons to prevent the reader from understanding the narrative as a critique of republicanism alone. The notion of ‘vanidad’ occurs frequently in the poem, and poetically associates the imperialist impulse of the Araucanians, ‘vano intento’ (III. 76), with the ‘gloria vana y vanas pretensiones’ [vainglory and vain pretensions] of the conquering Spaniards (I. 67), and with the ‘vano intento de los Ingas vanos’ [vain endeavour of the vain Incas] (I. 51), who with their ‘fueros’ and standards in turn bear some resemblance to the Spanish: it is systematically applied, then, to no less than three would-be imperial powers in Arauco. For Quint, when the Araucanians parade in Spanish clothing (which was in fact a common practice) and threaten to conquer Spain, they are a source of humour, but also a mirror image and implicit interrogation of Spain’s own claims to lordship of the other pole (pp. 16–18). It is possible to develop, and nuance, this observation. To begin with, it is not the only point at which the Araucanians mimic Spanish colonial practice. The pseudo-encomienda system already discussed is another parody of this kind, and as Arauco’s military evolves, it adopts more and more elements of Spanish military culture. Lautaro trains his men to perform cavalry manoeuvres with the horses they have captured, for example (XII. 19), and begins to don European armour (XII. 8). In the diplomatic exchange with Marcos Veaz, he also makes a number of (false) demands which set out a tributary arrangement with the Spanish forces, rather than their complete withdrawal:
mas si queréis en tiempo reduciros
haciendo lo que aquí os será mandado,
saldré de la promesa y juramento
y vosotros saldréis del perdimiento
[…]
Treinta mujeres vírgines apuestas
por tal concierto habéis de dar cada año
[…]
También doce caballos poderosos
[…]
y seis diestros lebreles animosos
en la caza me habéis de dar cebados:
este solo tributo estorbaría
lo que estorbar el mundo no podría. (XII. 13–15)
[but if you wish to submit now, doing what will be asked of you, I will be free from my promise and vow, and you will be free from damnation (…) through the said agreement, you are to give thirty comely virgins every year (…) also twelve powerful horses (…) and six skilled and spirited hounds trained for hunting: this tribute alone would stop what the whole world could not.]
This is, of course, a carefully staged performance. Nevertheless, the mockery of Spanish colonial practice is explicit, complete with the same legalistic jargon and cultural preferences, albeit noticeably lacking in any demand for monetary tribute. The Spaniards’ surprise that such a small indigenous force should promise to achieve so much, against such superior numbers, and so far from home (XI. 39), is a further reminder of the reversed dynamic of conquest. Although Ercilla does not elaborate the point, there is an uncomfortable suggestion that the Spanish have to some extent given birth to the force that is now turned against them – and also experience here the negative side of the employment of auxiliaries such as Lautaro.
16 For an analogous argument regarding Shakespeare’s Caliban, cf. Stephen Greenblatt, Learning to Curse (London, 1990), pp. 16–39. The greed, cruelty and vainglory that emerge to plague the Araucanian army are as much a product of their imperial encounter, and their imperial ambitions, as of the nature of republicanism itself.
The Araucanian political community thus represented is both the antithesis and the mirror of the Spanish. It must be remembered that in one sense the New World colonisers are also a people without a king, adrift and uncaptained rather like the storm-tossed ship that symbolically figures in the final canto. Time and again, they, rather than the Indians of Las Casas, are compared to sheep without a shepherd (e.g. VI. 4, VII. 15, IX. 109), abandoned by the ‘hired hands’ in charge and at the mercy of the Araucanian wolves. When the new viceroy reasserts royal authority in Lima, it is in a distinctly contingent and questionable sense. His methods might legitimately be described as Machiavellian: ‘sagaz y receloso’ [savvy and suspicious], he enters with a show of benevolence, but once his position is secured, he fills the tribunals with new occupants and ruthlessly eliminates the rebels, even those whose crimes had been pardoned (XII. 80–81), leaving the province in suspense, confusion and terror (XII. 83). Although Hurtado communicates ‘la voz del rey’ [the king’s voice] (XII. 93), this seems to extend only so far as the awe that the monarch inspires; Ercilla remits moral judgement to Philip alone.
17 There is some ambiguity in the expression, which might refer either to the public cry or ‘voz’ ‘¡viva el rey!’ [long live the king!], which acts as a rallying point for the dissolution of the revolt, or to the symbolic embodiment of the king’s voice and presence by the newly arrived viceroy; the latter reading is perhaps more likely given that the phrase appears some time after the rebellion has died down. The appeal to the citizens’ inborn loyalty to their natural lord and king (XII. 97), too, is something of an afterthought; the analysis of human motivations overall is more cynical. The implication here seems to be that, far removed from the practical reach of the Crown, even its legitimate ministers are obliged to make use of cunning, ruthlessness and even immorality before ordered government can be re-established.
Such questions would be both recognisable and uncomfortable for the poem’s early readers. Beset by the Morisco rebellion that by 1570 ‘had been the most brutal war to be fought on European soil that century’, struggling with English hostility in the Atlantic, at odds with France over religious policy and the destruction of the Huguenot colony in Florida, shaken by the Vilcabamba Inca rebellion in Peru and the alleged conspiracy of Martín Cortés in Mexico, increasingly threatened by Turkish belligerence, and facing a new escalation of violence in Flanders, military resistance to the Spanish Crown by independent and radically different categories of political community appeared to pose an increasingly unavoidable dilemma. According to Henry Kamen, ‘at the time Philip must have seen 1568–1569 as possibly the worst year of his reign’.
18 Henry Kamen, Philip of Spain (New Haven, CT, 1997), pp. 131, 129. There seems to have been a sense of an almost ubiquitous threat to the stability of Europe and of the empire, both urgent and extremely hard to address or define. The courtier and captain Juan de Zúñiga observed in a letter to Philip II on 14 October 1569 that ‘parece que anda un clima de rebeliones en el mundo’ [it seems that there is a climate of rebellion at work in the world]; contemplating France in 1567, Philip himself wrote that ‘por todas partes cresce el fuego’ [the fire rages on every side].
19 Luciano Serrano, Correspondencia diplomática entre España y la Santa Sede durante el pontificado de S. Pio V (Madrid, 1914), III, p. 165; Pedro Rodríguez and Justina Rodríguez, Correspondencia inédita de Felipe II con su embajador en París (1564–1570) (San Sebastián, 1991), doc. 70. As Spain continued to stretch its already overburdened finances and population to fund an increase in its military capabilities, new circumstances posed new questions. This context perhaps adds something to our understanding of Ercilla’s claim that the poem’s dedication to the monarch, whom he wishes ‘acrescentamiento de mayores reynos y señoríos’ [the growth of greater kingdoms and estates], holds ‘algo escondido’ [something hidden]. We recall that Ercilla’s departure to the Americas was motivated by one rebellion (of Hernández Girón), and his return by another (of Lope de Aguirre), and in reminding the king of his service he speaks primarily in terms of the subjugation of rebellions. The sensitivity of this topic might illuminate the testiness of the enigmatic assertion in IV. 5 that
no quiero meterme en tal hondura,
que es cosa no importante y peligrosa;
el tiempo lo dirá y no mi escritura,
que quizás la tendrán por sospechosa;
sólo diré que es opinión de sabios
que adonde falta el rey sobran agravios.
[I do not want to get out of my depth, since the subject is dangerous and not to the point, time will tell it and not my writing, which perhaps will be held to be suspect; I will only say that it is the opinion of wise men that where the king is absent harms abound.]
It is not until the Segunda parte of 1578 that the problem suggested here – the extent to which the king can be present in the distant reaches of empire, and of whether different moral standards must come into play in such circumstances – is directly addressed, then by a more established aristocrat and poet, and, I suggest, with one particular analogy in mind, the rebellion in Flanders.