Dezertmagazine

Cortes Conquers Mexico

The Wealth of the New World Enriches the Old

Columbus’s feat, in 1492, of joining two worlds, though one was not Asia as he claimed, had rung down the curtain on the middle Ages. Behind it the stage was being set for the new era of modern history.

The year, a momentous one for all Europe, was particularly so for Spain, whose centuries-long struggle with the Moorish invaders had triumphantly ended with the fall of Granada, shortly before the three Spanish caravels had sailed from Cadiz. Flushed with victory, Spain felt itself the elect among nations.

Less than a score of years earlier the turbulence of rebellious barons had brought disorder and anarchy. From their castles they had waged private war against each other, preyed on trade, made the highways unsafe and defied the authority of the Crown. But when in 1478 Isabella of Castile ascended her throne, these recalci­trant subjects quickly learned that they had met their match in the mild but strong-willed woman, who with her husband, Ferdinand, King of Aragon, held sways over all Spain.

By strategy, guile and force of character she began to bring order out of chaos. Bribery, flattery, political bargains and a religious war against the remaining Moslems were the means she used to stimulate patriotism and national unity, and the discovery of America was most opportune in this process of consolidating her authority. Now, with comparative peace reigning throughout her realms, the New World offered an outlet for the tireless energy of leaders long accustomed to war, and for the restless ambition of second sons.

Thus it came about that many military expeditions, subsidized for the most part by their leaders, poured out of Spain. From the bridgeheads of Cuba and San Domingo, in the West Indies, they overran with their few thousands the vast territories of a continent.

Like most entrepreneurs then and since, these men, who were investing their fortunes and their lives in risky ventures, looked for quick returns and large dividends. Certainly they wanted gold, but they were equally keen to acquire social prestige which was symbolized by landed estates amply supplied with serfs bound to them to extract the fruits of the earth for them.

The rapid emergence of Spain as one of the first modern nations had coincided with the realization that the inhabited world was a vaster space than ever dreamed of before. This sudden expansion of horizons to unbelievable dimensions, intellectual as well as physical, was now coupled for Spain with a sense of destiny as the appointed agent of God for the tremendous task of converting the whole world to Christianity. The final crushing of the Moors and the discovery of the New World were clear indications, in the Spanish view, of the special approval of Providence, and this conviction released a prodigious national energy and powerfully stimulated the imagination of youth.

An enormously enlarged world was crammed full with the possibilities for adventure, riches and romance, in which the wildest dreams and the fondest hopes of fame and fortune might be fulfilled. Life had a zest and an irresistible allure in the bright renaissance light that was swiftly shedding the medieval gloom. And as if the promises of reality were not enough, there was the additional stimulant of the ”romances of literature” coming from the newly invented printing press.

These novels, under whose hypnotic influences all seemed to fall, from the lowliest clerks to the monarchs, resembled authentic chronicles of the exploits of knightly heroes in strange and enchanted lands. They presented a highly idealized concept of life in which strength, virtue and passion were all of a translucent and unnatural character, and they brought to over-receptive minds plausible accounts of fantastic places, riches and wonders that, so it seemed if the tales of travellers coming back from the farthest corners of the New World were to be credited, had their counterparts in reality. Young men burned to see and possess for themselves the marvels portrayed in these wonderful tales.

Scarcely did they disembark in the New World than they rushed inland in search of the elusive El Dorado, the Amazons with their golden tools, the Fountains of Youth, the Seven Enchanted Cities and other equally fabulous inventions of the literary mind. Many of them did not come back, and most of those who did had to confess that they had not found what they had been looking for. Yet, so strong was the desire that the failure merely encouraged others to try their fortune.

Among the Conquistadores, however, there was one who had more success than the rest. Born a younger son in a noble family in 1485, after two years at the University of Salamanca, Hernando Cortes set out in 1504, at the age of nineteen, to seek adventure in the West Indies. For the next fourteen years adventures in plenty came his way, but he was no nearer to making his fortune at the end of them than he had been at the beginning.

At this time the Governor of Cuba was Don Diego Velasquez, a greedy and rapacious man, who was jealous of the wealth which some of the explorers of the Mexico coasts brought back from their expeditions. None, however, had excited him so much as the treasure acquired by a certain Juan de Grijalva, who set out with two hundred and forty men in 1518, and returned within a few months with more than “sixteen thousand pesos in jewels and low grade gold” which he had obtained by bartering knives and swords with the natives.

Since the risks had apparently been comparatively small and the rewards so great, Velasquez decided at once to despatch an expedition on his own account, and to lead it he appointed Hernando Cortes. By this time, Cortes had settled down in Cuba, was married to a beautiful wife, the daughter of a Spanish immigrant, and had become one of the wealthiest ranchers in the island. He seemed to have shed the urge for excitement in the many ventures in which he had been involved during his early twenties, and was content to live the quiet life of a comfortably well off don.

Nevertheless, when he heard Grijalva’s account of the strange country to which he had come, of the stone statues which towered thirty or forty feet high, and the great white road he had seen disappearing into the far distance inland, it was this, rather than the gold, which excited his curiosity. It seemed clear to him that Grijalva had discovered some great new territory which should be explored for Spain without delay.