Hernán Cortés
(Medellín, Badajoz, 1485-Castilleja de la Cuesta, Seville, 1547) Spanish conqueror of Mexico.Few times has history attributed the conquest of a vast territory to the determination and determination of one man; In this reduced list is Hernán Cortés, who always preferred to burn his ships to retreat.With little means, with little more support than his intelligence and his military and diplomatic intuition, he managed in just two years to reduce the splendid Aztec Empire to Spanish rule, populated, according to estimates, by some fifteen million inhabitants.
Hernán Cortés
It is true that various favorable circumstances accompanied him, and that, driven by ambition and the thirst for honors and riches, he committed abuses and violence, like other conquerors.But, of all of them, Cortés was the most cultured and capable captain, and although this does not serve as a mitigating factor, he was also impelled by a great religious fervor; his moral conscience came to ask him whether it was lawful to enslave the Indians, an unusual question at the dawn of the colonization process that followed the discovery of America.
Biography
Coming from a family of noblemen from Extremadura, Hernán Cortés studied briefly at the University of Salamanca.In 1504 he went to the Indies, recently discovered by Christopher Columbus, and established himself as a clerk and landowner in Hispaniola (Santo Domingo).In 1511 he participated in the expedition to Cuba as secretary to Governor Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, with whom he became related when he married his sister-in-law; Velázquez appointed him mayor of the new city of Santiago.In 1518 Diego Velázquez put Hernán Cortés in command of an expedition to Yucatán; However, the governor distrusted Cortés, whom he had already imprisoned on one occasion on charges of conspiracy, and decided to relieve him of the task before leaving.
Cortés's expedition
Cortés warned, he accelerated his march and put to sea in 1519, before receiving the notification.With eleven ships, about six hundred men, sixteen horses, and fourteen pieces of artillery, Hernán Cortés sailed from Santiago de Cuba to Cozumel and Tabasco; He defeated the Mayas established there and received (among other gifts) the Indian Dona Marina, also called Malinche, who would serve as a lover, counselor and interpreter throughout the campaign.Disobeying express orders from Governor Velázquez, he founded the city of Veracruz on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, then called Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz.
The conquest of the Aztec Empire
There he had news of the existence of the Aztec Empire in the interior, whose capital was said to hold great treasures, and prepared for its conquest.To avoid the temptation to return that threatened many of his men in the face of evident numerical inferiority, Hernán Cortés sank his ships in Veracruz; from this episode comes the phrase burn the ships , an expression of an irrevocable determination.He soon achieved the alliance of some indigenous peoples subjected to the Aztecs, such as the Toltecs and Tlaxcalans.
After sacking Cholula, Cortés arrived at the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán, where he was received peacefully by Emperor Moctezuma II, who declared himself a vassal of the King of Castile.The possible identification of the Spaniards with divine beings and of Cortés with the announced return of the god Quetzalcoátl perhaps favored this welcome to foreigners who, however, immediately began to behave like ambitious and violent invaders.
The assault on Tenochtitlán (oil by Emanuel Leutze)
Meanwhile, to punish Cortés's rebellion and force him to return to Cuba, Governor Diego Velázquez sent against him an expedition under the command of Pánfilo de Narváez.Cortés had to leave the city to his lieutenant Pedro de Alvarado to face the troops of Narváez, whom he defeated at Cempoala in 1520, also getting most of the contingent to join him.
When he returned to Tenochtitlán, Cortés encountered a great indigenous agitation against the Spaniards, caused by the attacks made on their religious beliefs and symbols and by the massacre that Pedro de Alvarado had unleashed to thwart an alleged conspiracy.Cuts he took Moctezuma II prisoner and tried to get him to mediate to calm his people, without achieving anything other than the death of the emperor.
Hernán Cortés was then forced to leave Tenochtitlán in the so-called "Noche Triste" (June 30, 1520), in which his small army was decimated.Refugee in Tlaxcala, he continued fighting against the Aztecs (now under the command of the emperor Cuauhtémoc), whom he defeated in the battle of Otumba; and, finally, he surrounded and took Tenochtitlán (1521).Destroyed the Aztec capital, built in the same place (an island in the center of a lake) the Spanish city of Mexico.
Governor of New Spain
Already dominated by the ancient Aztec Empire, Cortés launched expeditions south to annex the territories of Yucatán, Honduras and Guatemala.The details of the conquest of Mexico, as well as the arguments that justified the decisions of Hernán Cortés, were exposed in the four Letters of relation that he sent to the king.In 1522 he was appointed governor and captain general of New Spain, the name given to the Mexican territory by the conquerors.
However, the Spanish Crown (already in the hands of Carlos V) practiced a policy of curtailing the powers of the conquerors to control the Indies more directly; Royal officials appeared in Mexico sent to share the authority of Cortés, until, in 1528, he was dismissed and sent to the Peninsula.
In Spain he was acquitted of all accusations and was even appointed Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca, in addition to retaining the honorary position of captain general, although without governmental functions.Back in Mexico in 1530, he still organized some expeditions of conquest, such as those that incorporated Baja California into Mexico (1533 and 1539).
He returned to Spain again to try to obtain grants from the Crown for the services rendered, for which he participated in an expedition against Algiers in 1541, but his claims were never fully satisfied; While waiting for an answer, he settled in a town near Seville, where he gathered a literary and humanistic gathering and spent the last six years of his life.
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