"Montezuma's Daughter"
This is the Aztec equivalent of Inca-based "The Virgin of the Sun". As such it is set in the sixteenth century, rather than the fourteenth century. The significance of this is that whereas Hubert of Hastings is the sole European in the Inca empire, "Montezuma's Daughter" is set at a time of European encroachment - though initially there is but one European. This encroachment is central to the story.
Here the main character, Thomas Wingfield, sets off in search of revenge against a dastardly Spaniard, who has killed his mother, his cousin, who once refused his suit and fled with her lover, later husband, to England.
He stays in Spain, where he is befriended by a physician, who eventually leaves him his substantial fortune.
The hero eventually discovers that his enemy has fled to Cuba, after seducing and betraying a nun, who is innured alive in a monastery with her new-born baby.
He gets washed ashore in Mexico. He falls into the hands of the Aztec, and is chosen as sacrificial god (under the name Tezcat, with the personal name of Teule, which is rather the name for foreigner). He is saved from being de-hearted by the arrival of Cortes, and by the protection accorded by the Princess Otomie, the daughter of Montezuma, who is attracted to him.
He then marries Montezuma's daughter, helps the Aztecs resist the Spaniards, flees to his wife's own kingdom, and helps it remain independent for a dozen years before they come under attack from the rapacious Spanish conquestadors.
After their city falls and the last of the Incas are dead (such as Guatemoc), prisoners, or scattered, he heads back to England, where the gold he had inherited in Spain has preceded him.
There are lots of killings - in battle, and on the blood-soaked altars of the priests. There are also some torture highlights (by the Inquisition, and by the Spaniards in Mexico), cannibalism, etc. Haggard once defended himself against a charge of being the "novelist of blood" (admittedly in the context of his African romances, rather than this novel) with the reply that he was simply describing events as he imagined them.
There can be little doubt of the scale of the deaths which came in the wake of the conquest of Mexico, or of where Haggard's sympathies lie. Haggard was a keen imperialist, appreciating the force for good which the British empire represented. But he was not uncritical of European contact with alien civilisations and peoples. In contrast to his general support for British emperialism, which he saw an beneficial, he was not enarmoured of the Spanish, who he saw as mere plunderers. It is useful to compare the attitude of the English hero in "Montezuma's Daughter" with that of the explorers in "Allan Quartermain". Like Thomas Wingfield, in the latter story the European characters resolved to exclude European incursions and influence as far as possible, to preserve the untainted native civilisation.
Doubtless in this post-colonial era Haggard would be condemned for upholding - and indeed for having played a large part in creating - the myth of the "noble savage", and for extolling the glories of exploration in unexplored regions. He might have dwelt purely on the technical superiority of Western civilisation, and cast the negro and other non-European races as backward and uncivilised. He did not because he was not a racialist as the term is so often (mis)-understood today. He saw that European and non-European were distinct, and that while Europeans (by which he included Americans, and colonials from Australasia etc) were technically more advanced, and civilised in some aspects of their culture, they were not necessarily "racially superior" as some nineteenth century - and later - theorists thought. His attitude can be seen in many of his works, and particularly in the theme of one of his lesser know works, the short story "Black Heart and White Heart". In that Philip Hadden, the supposedly civilised European, was a scoundrel, and the black, Nahoon, was a gentleman. More might be expected of the European, because of his education, civilisation, and Christian beliefs. This included an obligation to the less advanced peoples of the world, the black brethren the Rev'd Thomas Owen sought to serve, and was martyered for, in "The Wizard".
The book is technically and dramatically much superior to "The Virgin of the Sun", and I would have to say one of Haggard's best novels. But it is an unremittingly grim story, with few light touches. While many of Haggard's lesser books have an exotic setting which adds comparatively little to the stories, which remain romances and adventures of a standard form, in his better works he has gone to great lengths to ensure that they are as authentic as a romance can be; the verisimilitude is impressive.