Name: Fernando Cortez de Monroy and Pizarro Altamirano (Hernan Cortez)
Years of life: c. 1485 - c. 1547
State: Spain
Field of activity: Traveler
Greatest achievement: He was one of the first conquistadors. Under his leadership, Spain conquered Mexico
Latin America is a long-suffering continent. The locals were unlucky in the sense that as soon as the Europeans discovered American lands, a stream of conquerors immediately rushed there, and not with the most rosy intentions. The Spaniards and the Portuguese especially tried in the southern part of the continent. Thanks to them, all of Central and South America speaks Spanish and Portuguese, and also professes Catholicism, the population can be considered educated, to match the European.
But behind this seemingly peaceful facade hid an unsightly truth - the destruction of indigenous peoples, the eradication of culture, local language, traditions and customs. The conquerors of these lands have seen many over several centuries, but only a few names have remained in history. Not only thanks to their discoveries of unexplored lands, but also to exorbitant and often unjustified cruelty towards local tribes, which, as a result of the barbaric actions of the conquerors, disappeared from the face of the earth. One of these illustrious names is the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortez. Who was this proud Spaniard? More on this below.
Biography
It is very difficult to accurately indicate the date of birth of Hernan - for some personal reasons, he preferred not to dwell on this topic. Most of the information can be gleaned from the notes of Hernan's biographer - his spiritual father Francisco de Gomard. It is known that he was born in 1485 in Spain. Cortez was the only son of Martin Cortez de Monroe and dona Catalina Pizarro Altamarino - both parents came from ancient respected families, the so-called Hidalgo. “They had little wealth, but a lot of honor,” de Gomard described the Cortes family.
His father's fortune was indeed modest, which, however, did not prevent him from sending his son at the age of 14 to study in Salamanca, in the western part of Spain. Gomara described the teenager as ruthless, arrogant, disobedient and quarrelsome (all these qualities will then be felt in their own skin by the local American tribes). Studying at the university did not attract the young man. In those years, the glory of Christopher Columbus thundered, about the long voyages that he made, and about the discoveries of new lands. Hernan was inspired and wanted to serve his homeland as well. He went to the port of Valencia on the east coast with the idea of \u200b\u200bserving in the Italian Wars, but changed his mind and put his dream on hold for almost a year. Obviously, the southern ports of Spain, with ships full of wealth from India, turned out to be more attractive. He finally sailed to the island of Hispaniola (now Santo Domingo) in 1504. He wanted independence and wealth.
In Hispaniola, he became a farmer and a notary in the city council; for the first six years, Hernan tried to make a fortune for himself, but he could not - he had more debt than income. In addition, the long-awaited dream of American lands had to be postponed due to the fact that he contracted syphilis and missed the expedition of Diego de Nicueza and Alonso de Ojeda, who went to the South American mainland in 1509. By 1511, he recovered and, together with Diego Velazquez, set out to conquer Cuba. There Velazquez was appointed governor, and Cortez was appointed treasurer's official. Cortez received repartimiento (land and Indian slaves) and the first house in the new capital of Santiago. He also became the first mayor of the capital and a close associate of Velazquez (also because he married his sister Catalina to his advantage).
Cortez was twice elected mayor of the city of Santiago. He set himself up as the true vicar of God in these lands. Therefore, it was to Cortes that Velazquez turned to when, after it became known about the progress of Juan de Grijalba in creating a colony on the mainland, it was decided to send him help. In October 1518, an agreement was signed on the appointment of Cortez as the captain of a new expedition. But for this it was necessary to collect the required number of ships and finances. His ability as an orator brought him six ships and 300 men in less than a month. Velazquez's reaction was predictable, his jealousy awakened, he decided to transfer the leadership of the expedition to other hands. Cortez, however, hastily set out to sea to lift more men and ships in other Cuban ports.
Expedition to Mexico. Hernan Cortez's discovery
When Cortez finally sailed for the Yucatan coast on February 18, 1519, he had 11 ships, 508 soldiers, about 100 sailors and 16 horses. In March 1519, he landed in the city of Tabasco (now a state in Mexico), where he was for some time to receive information from the local Indians. Cortez also received gifts from them, including about 20 women, one of whom, Marina (Malinche), became his concubine and translator and bore him a son, Martin.
Cortez sailed to another place just above Tabasco on the southeastern coast of Mexico and founded the city of Veracruz (which is now also a state), mainly so that his soldiers obey only him, thus destroying the power of Velazquez. On the mainland, Cortez did what no other expedition leader did: he trained and disciplined his army, creating a cohesive force. So that the soldiers would not even think about escaping, Hernan ordered all the ships to be burned. Now the Spaniards were left alone with the local peoples.
Cortez often went on exploration in the Mexican hinterland, sometimes relying on strength, sometimes on friendship with the local Indian peoples, but always trying to keep conflict with them to a minimum. The key to Cortés' subsequent conquests lay in the political crisis in the Aztec empire. For example, the people of Tlaxcala, who were in a state of chronic war with Montezuma II, the ruler of the Mexican Aztec empire, initially resisted Cortez, but became his most loyal ally.
Rejecting all of Montezuma's threats and persuasions to keep him away from Tenochtitlan or Mexico, the capital (rebuilt as Mexico City after 1521), Cortez entered the city on November 8, 1519, with his small troops. In accordance with the diplomatic customs of Mexico, Montezuma received him with great honor. Cortez soon decided to capture Montezuma in order to keep the country through his monarch and achieve not only political conquest, but also a change of religion. The success of Cortez was obvious not only because the Spaniards, with their appearance on horseback, shocked the Aztecs (they never saw these animals, therefore they were afraid), but also because he was ideally suited for the role of the local deity Quetzalcoatl, who wore a beard and had white skin, and who taught the Aztecs the intricacies of agriculture.
After the capture of Montezuma, the Spaniards were surprised to find that the Aztecs are an incredibly wealthy people (Europeans have never seen so much gold and jewelry). And the robbery began - many valuable figurines and objects were melted into ordinary ingots. Naturally, Cortez kept most of the loot for himself. The Aztecs defended their city - Tenochtitlan to the last. Cortez tried several times to take it, subjugating neighboring territories. So far he has not succeeded. He laid siege to the city itself, conquering it street after street until Tenochtitlan fell on August 13, 1521. This victory marked the fall of the Aztec empire. Cortez became the sole ruler of a vast territory stretching from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific Ocean.
Further years
In 1524, his relentless desire to explore and conquer led him south into the jungles of Honduras. The two difficult years he spent on this disastrous expedition caused damage to his health and condition. Intrigues began to weave against him - the main one was Velasquez, who did not forgive Cortez for his popularity among the locals and his success in conquering.
In 1528, Cortez went to Spain to personally address the king. He brought with him a huge amount of treasure. He was received by Charles at his court in Toledo. He also married again, this time to the daughter of a duke. But Hernan's success was short-lived. Very soon he fell out of favor with the king. Karl removed him from his post as governor of Mexico. He returned to New Spain in 1530 to find the country in a state of anarchy.
He was charged with the murder of his first wife, Catalina (using poison). Trying to somehow regain his former position, in 1536 Cortez went on another expedition to the shores of California in search of gold. Hernan tried to persuade the king to finance the entire peninsula, but the king rejected this offer. Cortez retired to his estate in Cuernavaca, about 30 miles (48 km) south of Mexico City. There he focused on the construction of his palace and on the development of the Pacific Ocean.
In 1540, Cortez returned to Spain. By the time he was completely disillusioned, his life became miserable due to the litigation. In addition, the health of the 62-year-old conquistador was undermined. In 1547, the legendary conqueror of the Aztecs, Hernán Cortez, died of dysentery on an estate in Seville.
The jungles of Central America were stiflingly hot. Two Christian missionary monks, brothers Juan de Orbita and Bartholomew de Fuensalida, and several natives made their way through endless, unexplored forests. The crowns of trees and lianas were so thick that nothing could be seen beyond the nose. And even the sky did not open to the eyes in this thicket. The monks were at their limit. They suffered from insomnia and voracious mosquitoes. Every hundred meters they met one or another insurmountable obstacle: a lake, a swamp with crocodiles, a river with treacherous currents, mangroves. The forest swallowed them, and there was not a soul around. Only occasionally did flocks of screeching monkeys appear.
The suffering of the monks ended only when they reached the village of Tayasal, in which the Mayan Indians lived. The monks washed, washed and dried their clothes, healed their wounds. The local cacique (chief) invited them to the main temple of the village.
Imagine the surprise of the holy brothers when they found among the Indian idols a statue of a horse, an animal that was not known to the indigenous population before the arrival of Europeans! It turned out that they were not pioneers! Before them, some of the inhabitants of the Old World had already visited these forests.
Kasik told the monks that once, more than ninety years ago, a great leader from the north, the ruler of white-skinned people and Indians, passed through the village. His black stallion limped, and he left it as a gift to the main leader of Tayasal. So this outlandish animal entered the local pantheon.
The Spanish monks perfectly understood what kind of person they were talking about. The name of this man was outlawed in Spain, his works were forbidden to print, his family became impoverished and disappeared from the pages of history forever. He, the conqueror of Mexico, the founder of a huge colony, traveler and reformer who did a lot for the Spanish crown, was forgotten in his homeland. And the Indians whom he doomed to a slave lot, whose blood he shed in rivers, the Indians remembered him. This man was Fernando Cortes de Monroy ...
Descendant of the knightsThe ORIGIN of Cortez is shrouded in mystery. According to the unreliable, but ingrained opinion of his confessor, Padre Francisco López de Gamarra, Fernando was born around 1485 in the Spanish province of Extremadura in the town of Medellin.
Fernando Cortes de Monroy Pizarro Altamirano (Spanish: Hernan Cortes)
The great conqueror did not like to talk about his ancestry. Therefore, at the suggestion of Cortez, among many historians, the opinion took root that his family was poor, albeit noble. According to contemporaries, the conquistador did not like it when his subordinates called him "Don Hernando." He believed that authority cannot be inherited or received along with the title, that everything that he achieved, he owed only to himself.
Meanwhile, such an opinion about the conquistador's family is erroneous. The Monroes were considered a noble and influential clan in Extremadura. Hernando's grandfather, Alonso, held one of the key positions of the Spanish kingdom - the position of the Supreme Master of the spiritual-knightly order of Alcantara. The father of the famous conquistador was a royal notary and often handled the affairs of His Majesty. So early in his career, Hernan enjoyed the support of a privileged family environment. The father was a reliable intermediary in the affairs of his son and always used his connections at the royal court, taking advantage of the location and trust of dignitaries.
Cortez's childhood, however, was not cloudless. The end of the fifteenth century in Spain turned out to be difficult. Wars were fought between the Pyrenean states.
The Monroe family also often waged internecine wars with other clans, rebelled against the royal power. Childhood impressions of these troubles remained in the boy's memory and, probably, only they can explain the subsequent conflict between the crown and Cortez.
In 1499, fourteen-year-old Hernan, having heard stories about the mysterious "paradise" islands of the Caribbean Sea, about their no less strange inhabitants - Indians, whose gold was less valuable than shells, entered the University of Salamanca. He studied for two years and successfully passed his bachelor's exams. Studying was easy for him. Everyone who knew Cortez confirms that he was fluent in Latin, like all erudites of that time, was slightly fond of writing poetry, was strong in jurisprudence. The latter was especially useful to him in the future: throughout his life, the great conqueror, with undeniable skill, maneuvered between the underwater reefs of the administration, manipulated legal procedures, with equal dexterity acting as a defendant and a plaintiff.
However, a career as a scientist or a lawyer did not attract a lively, energetic boy. The restless teenager lacked will, tenacity and devotion to science. Sixteen-year-old Hernan preferred the fresh air of the book dust of libraries, fencing to philosophy. Nor was Cortez a man who humbly followed the path that his parents had chosen for him. There was one more reason that predetermined his life choice. In September 1501, Nicholas de Ovando, one of the former subordinates of his grandfather and a friend of Cortez's father, became Governor-General of the Indies (several islands in the Caribbean Sea, taken by Columbus on the eve of the "fabulous" real India).
Therefore, in 1503, Hernando, having secured the consent of his parents, who were dissatisfied with the adventurous, from their point of view, decision of the son to go to the New World, sailed out of Cadiz. His path lay on the island of Hispaniolu (now Haiti).
SEVERE DAYS OF A NEW WORLD
The JOURNEY turned out to be full of dangers and hardships and spoke eloquently about the atmosphere of that era. The navigator and the captain of the ship did not get along, the ships of the merchant flotilla competed. Each vessel sought to reach Hispaniola first. This unhealthy competition led to the fact that an unknown sailor at night cut the mast on the ship on which Cortez was sailing, as a result of which this ship became a toy of the winds in the vast Atlantic Ocean.
The storm-battered caravel eventually reached the Haitian coast, but far from Santo Domingo. The supplies were running out, and the crew and passengers risked starving to death or falling prey to cannibals from the neighboring islands. Still, the ship reached Santo Domingo, although much later than the rest of the ships. On April 6, 1504, Hernando descended on the marina of Santo Domingo, the residence of the Governor-General of Ovando.
Along the way, Cortez plunged into the fetid atmosphere of the New World. Lack of elementary laws, excessive appetite, envy, slander, corruption, betrayal, deceit, lust for power and, of course, the "gold rush" were common occurrences of colonial life. And the island itself, on which Hernando stepped, has long ceased to be the “earthly paradise” that Columbus described it. With fire and sword, the conquerors marched across the island in search of gold, enslaved or exterminated the rebellious Indians who had once joyfully met the discoverer of America.
The first years of the life of the Spanish colonies on the islands were difficult and bleak. Crops of European crops did not take root. The cattle brought by the governor-general scattered across the island, ravaging the gardens and vegetable gardens of the Indians, since the aborigines did not know the hedges. Dysentery, malaria, fever and malnutrition claimed the lives of the colonists.
However, Hernan, expecting fabulous mirages and faced with the bitter reality, did not give up and went back home. He took an active part in the social life of Hispaniola. Constant uprisings of the indigenous population allowed him to show his leadership qualities. Without knowing military affairs and having no experience, Cortez showed great skill in a number of operations against the Indians and won the respect of the Governor-General. At the same time, he did not blindly copy the usual tactics of the Spaniards, which consisted in the total massacre of the Indians or the conversion of prisoners into slaves. Hernando willingly negotiated with rebel groups, used persuasion, sometimes pressure, so as not to resort to unnecessary bloody violence. In addition, he knew how to lead his soldiers into battle and tried to protect their lives.
Cortez's policy of appeasement has borne fruit. The Indians stopped raising major uprisings. At the same time, references to the mass slaughter of the native population disappeared. The authority of Cortez, earned in the course of military operations, allowed him to enter the inner circle of the Governor-General. Gradually, Hernando's life on Hispaniola improved and even began to bother him.
The situation changed dramatically in 1509, when Diego Columbus, the son and heir of the great navigator, and Ovando's longtime rival, became governor of the western colonies. Cortez, entrenched in the previous administration, was a stranger to the environment of the new governor and did not expect anything for himself from the new owner of the island.
The new, expansionist approach of Diego Columbus, aimed at carrying out adventurous, poorly prepared operations to seize new undeveloped lands and islands, did not approve of Cortez. He stayed away from many expeditions, and did the right thing. After all, these enterprises usually ended unsuccessfully - either shipwrecks or defeats from the Indians.
Diego Velazquez
Only in 1511 Hernan ventured to take part in the conquest of Cuba. The fact is that Diego Velazquez, a man from the Columbian clan, needed an energetic assistant. Velazquez was a veteran of the Spanish Indies. Since 1493, he did not leave Hispaniola, made a huge fortune and shed rivers of Indian blood. Diego Velazquez's assistant was Fernando Cortez, who cleverly asked for the role of treasurer, not military commander. The operation was successful. The Indians, led by the Cacique Hatuey, could not drop the landing force led by Hernan into the sea, and were completely defeated ...
It took about three more years for Cuba to be finally "pacified" by the Spaniards. During this time, Cortez managed to make good friends, and then fell out with Velazquez. Columbus's assistant in 1513 had every reason to suspect a conspiracy against his power, which, as it turned out, was headed by his close comrade-in-arms. So Cortez found himself in the dungeon of Asuncion de Baracoa, the residence of Velazquez. The public on the island, however, rebelled against such an attack on the honor of "Don Fernando." The conflict was resolved ... by the forced marriage of Cortes to Catalina Juarez from the once noble, but then impoverished Castilian family.
MYSTERIOUS WESTERN COUNTRY
In 1515, shortly before his death, King Ferdinand of Aragon recalled Diego Columbus to Castile. The complaints of the Spanish monks about the inhuman treatment of this ruler with the Indians and their extermination for profit, even without trying to convert them to the Christian faith, did their job. Cardinal de Cisneros, regent of Castile during the infancy of the future emperor Charles V, entrusted the administration of the western colonies to a monastic college that had little understanding of the geography of the New World. So Velazquez got his hands free. And this was very helpful, since for several years he had cherished the dream of landing on the American continent.
Cortez in Mexico
Diego Velazquez already knew from the mouth of the Spanish pioneers about the existence of a highly developed Indian culture of the Maya on the Yucatan Peninsula and now intended to colonize their lands. For this, in 1517-1518, he sent several expeditions, which ended, however, unsuccessfully. The Maya put up a worthy resistance to the invaders who landed on their lands. Moreover, in response to the offer of the Spaniards to trade with them, the Indians went into the impenetrable jungle, where small detachments of conquistadors were afraid to meddle. Travels to Yucatan nevertheless made it possible to find out the existence of another powerful civilization, the Aztec, in the north-west of this peninsula.
Apparently, the idea of \u200b\u200bcolonizing Mexico was suggested to Cortez by Velazquez. The governor himself was afraid of intrigue and did not dare to leave Hispaniola for an adventurous expedition. Its captains, who broke their teeth on the recalcitrant Maya tribes, did not have such authority and luck, which, as it was believed, accompanied "Don Fernando". Velazquez, under pressure from the public, was forced to appoint Hernan Cortez as commander-in-chief of the expedition.
With his expedition, Cortes violated the decree of Cardinal Cisneros, which limited the governor's possessions only to the islands of the Caribbean. Hernan's resourcefulness and legal literacy played a role in overcoming this prohibition. The official goal of the expedition was to explore the island of Santa Maria de los Remedios (meaning the Yucatan Peninsula) and the island of Santa Maria de los Nieves (Central Mexico). The monastic collegium, completely unaware of what lands in question, innocently approved the conquistador's petition. Thus, Cortez's hands were untied, and he gave the order to raise the sails and move to the village of Villa de la Santisima Trinidad, the gathering place for the expedition participants.
One after another, ships from Cuba arrived in the bay of Trinidad. They brought with them supplies of food, people, horses, weapons. In total, more than five hundred Spaniards gathered, two hundred Indians - slaves from the estates of Cortez. The commander also had ten bronze cannons and four falconets (light weapons), from his personal firearms - thirteen squeaks. Cortez attached importance to them rather as a psychological weapon. Unfamiliar with gunpowder, as well as with horses, the Indians should have been frightened by these strange, "magical" devices. However, it was not horses or firearms that played the main role in the conquest of Mexico. It is safe to say that the Aztec Empire was conquered with a sword.
Here it is necessary to mention the specifics of the warfare of the Aztecs. The fact is that traditional ideas about war in Central America were very different from European ones. The war among the Aztecs was not fought for the sake of exterminating the enemy, but was rather a ritual. The main goal was to capture living prisoners in hand-to-hand combat, which broke up into many one-on-one fights. The Europeans, on the other hand, waged a completely different war, where means of mass destruction gradually came to replace hand-to-hand combat.
Artillery and cavalry by themselves overturned all native principles of warfare. Therefore, the tactical organization and weapons, defensive and offensive, were at a much lower level among the Aztecs than among the Spaniards. What could an Aztec warrior in a loincloth and a jaguar skin do, with a club, at best equipped with an obsidian tip, against a Spanish infantryman, clad in iron armor, armed with a sword and a long spear? In the same way, the arrows of the aborigines from weak, short bows did not pierce the armor of the aliens, while their crossbow bolts and bullets mowed down on the spot ...
FABULOUS TREASURES OF BEACH
On February 10, 1519, Cortez's ships set sail and set sail. The north winds scattered Cortez's flotilla. She gathered only off the west coast of the Yucatan. The Maya Indians, with whom Cortez tried to negotiate, refused any offers, remembering the bitter experience of relationships with ruthless conquerors.
The Maya, nevertheless, at the request of the commander, gave out one of the Spaniards, who later served Hernan in good service. Geronimo de Aguilar was a soldier from a shipwrecked pioneer ship, handpicked by the Indians. His excellent knowledge of the Mayan language helped Cortez in Mexico. But the conquistador himself was not going to settle the Yucatan. His goal was the empire of the Aztecs. However, he also had to face the Maya in battle.
In March 1519, Cortez landed near the border of the possessions of Montezuma, the emperor of the Aztec Nahua tribe, and the Mayan tribes. And he was immediately attacked by the natives, who were not inclined to conclude any agreements and demanded that the Spaniards immediately withdraw back. Thirty thousand Indians attacked the tiny Spanish army. All of Cortez's men were forced to take up arms. In the end, the aliens won thanks to the horses. These unknown animals, as predicted by the Spanish commander-in-chief, sowed fear and confusion among the Indians. They thought they were fighting deities.
Directing embassy after embassy, \u200b\u200bCortes nevertheless achieved the favor of the ambassadors of Tabasco - that was the name of the city of this Mayan tribe. Demonstrating power over fire and horses, interspersing threats with courtesies, Hernan managed to strike up a dialogue. In addition to magnificent items made of gold, silver, jade, emerald, plumage of wild birds that surpassed any imagination of the conquerors, the leaders of Tabasco, amazed by the absence of women from the "supreme leader of white people", presented him with twenty slaves.
Such a “concern” for the fate of women, strange for Europeans, could be explained very simply. The Aztecs and Maya considered the Spaniards one of the nomadic peoples, like the uncivilized Indian tribes who often invaded from the north into their territory. Through marriages, they sought to establish relationships with aliens, establish allied relationships, “tie” them to their territory, in order to subjugate them.
Among the slaves was young Malinche (baptized - Marina), a girl from the Aztec tribe, future friend and translator of the conquistador. Now Hernan could freely communicate with the Aztecs through her and Aguilar, who also knew the Mayan language.
In April 1519, Cortes met with the officials of Montezuma. The parties exchanged gifts. The conquistador expressed a desire to personally see the emperor, but was refused and ... again luxurious gifts.
But again, luck did not disappoint the conquistador. Two days after the departure of Montezuma's ambassadors, representatives of the Totonac tribe, who suffered from the oppression of the Nahua, came to him. The ruler of Sempoala, the capital of the Totonacs, offered Cortez an alliance. Hernando immediately realized what benefits he could derive from the centuries-old feud between the two tribes. With the support of the Indians, the Spaniards could now stay in Mexico and even hike to Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Nahua.
Therefore, Cortez decides to turn his camp into a city. It was named Veracruz. The city was founded for political and military-strategic reasons. It gave strong power over people. From now on, the Spaniards were not just explorers and conquerors of Mexico, but also settlers with their own central authority, independent of the whims of the governor-general and the king.
Shortly thereafter, Hernando traveled to Sempoala, in which the conquistador performed a cunning political trick. The belated embassy of Montezuma, at the instigation of Cortes, was thrown into jail. Secretly at night, he ordered two prisoners to be brought and instructed them to convey a friendly message to their emperor. In the morning, the Totonaki, still hesitant and fearful of the Nahua's wrath, discovered that they were missing. From now on, they had no choice but to act as loyal allies of the conquerors.
In the early summer of 1519, Hernan received a royal letter, forcing him to intensify his campaign of conquest. Charles V, the Spanish king and German emperor, informed him that all lands, including Yucatan and Mexico, rightfully belonged to the governor Diego Velazquez. Cortez's position was desperate, and he dared to take the last step - he sank ten of his ships in the roadstead of Veracruz. Later, the chroniclers preferred to embellish the actual picture and replaced water with fire. This is how the catch phrase "to burn ships" was born ...
Cortez left the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and moved into the interior of a vast, unexplored country, which surpassed his native Spain four times in territory and ten times in population. His path lay on Tlaxcalo, the capital of another tribe hostile to Tenochtitlan.
... Contrary to the strategic plans of the Aztecs, Hernando with his army did not go to the valley of Mexico City using the traditional, much longer road along the valley around the volcanoes, but went through the pass separating Popocatepetl and Itztacchihuatl. This pass is now called Paso de Cortes. With this maneuver, the Spaniards avoided the traps set in their path - camouflaged "wolf pits" and sharp stakes.
On November 2, 1519, the aliens finally saw Tenochtitlan, the city of dreams. The conquistadors were struck by the gigantic size of the city, according to Cortes, only in the central square of which two large, by the standards of Spain, ten thousandth cities would fit. Tenochtitlan, on the other hand, had about half a million inhabitants. The wide streets, the abundance of vegetation inside the city itself, which gardens and flower gardens on the terraces of houses gave a cozy look, shocked the imagination of the conquerors no less. Mexico began to seem to Europeans greater, more beautiful and developed than the dilapidated medieval Europe.
The Spanish army entered Tenochtitlan unopposed. However, Cortez was well aware that several hundred Spaniards would not stand up to many hundreds of thousands of Aztecs. Therefore, it was so necessary for him to meet with Montezuma. Only he could guarantee the safety of the aliens. This meeting took place, and Montezuma, confident that the Spaniards were now reliably controlled by him, often visited Cortez.
This confidence turned out to be imaginary and cost the Emperor of the Aztecs his life. It all started with the news of the Nahua uprising in Veracruz reached Cortez. The conquistador was seized with anger, he saw a conspiracy in this uprising. Without thinking twice, he took the emperor into custody. The royal hostage was henceforth forced to guarantee Hernan's personal safety. The captivity of Montezuma lasted seven months, until Cortez decided to return to Veracruz. To this he was prompted by the need to bring to the attention of Velazquez and Emperor Charles V the news of the conquest of Mexico.
WALK FOR THE VICTORY!
The arrival of Cortes in Veracruz allowed the commander to add to his army the troops sent by the governor to capture the obstinate subordinate. However, in the absence of the commander-in-chief, Pedro de Alvarado, the head of the Spanish garrison in Tenochtitlan, lost his nerve. The massacre in the main temple of the Aztec capital in May 1520, carried out by his order, left a dirty mark on the history of the conquest.
Six hundred unarmed Indians were killed during a religious ceremony. And this massacre was the last straw that overflowed the patience of the Aztecs. Cortez, who returned to Tenochtitlan, was unable to restore the confidence of the Nahua. Even the intercession of Montezuma did not help the aliens: the emperor was killed by a well-aimed throw of a compatriot's spear during another speech in favor of the bloodthirsty conquerors.
Cortez, besieged by the rebels in the palace of Montezuma, decided to break through to Veracruz. The Spaniards tried many times to find a loophole and slip out of the ring of Aztec warriors. But the problem was that Tenochtitlan was an island, and you could only get out of it by dams that the enemy controlled.
The retreat was scheduled for the night of June 30th. Cortez hoped that the Aztecs, who traditionally fought only during the day, would release him from Tenochtitlan without hindrance. His hopes were not destined to be justified. The Aztecs did not even think to observe any rules of war in relation to the treacherous invaders. The break through the dam was almost suicidal for the Spaniards. And their own greed played an important role in the defeat suffered. Many witnesses of this event, called the "Night of Sorrow", confirm that some of Cortez's soldiers were so loaded with gold bars that, falling into the water, they sank like a stone. As a result, of the one thousand three hundred Spaniards who made up the detachment in Tenochtitlan, more than half were missing. Only six hundred fugitives survived the "Night of Sorrow". Cortez lost all the horses, all the guns, all the booty that was destined for Emperor Charles.
But in moments of mortal danger and the most difficult trials, which became the "Night of Sorrow" for the conquistador, he did not despair. Hernan knew how to win hopeless games, deal with setbacks and overcome adversity. He seemed to find in himself inexhaustible sources of energy, and his confidence was transmitted to those around him.
After speaking with each soldier, he raised the morale of his warriors again. In battle formation, the Spaniards who escaped from the encirclement began to retreat to Tlaxcala. Every day this rearguard march was accompanied by constant Nahua attacks. The Spaniards were tormented by hunger, they were forced to feed on their horses, which recently delighted the natives.
The last battle of this campaign took place near the Allied capital. Two hundred Spaniards and two thousand Tlaxcalians opposed the one hundred thousandth Nahua army. For Cortez, who was on the verge of exhaustion, with a wounded left arm and an open wound in his temple, this fight was the last chance. Hernando led five or six cavalry and with a dashing attack put the Nahua leader to flight. With him, the whole army of the Aztecs fled shamefully.
The army of the Spaniards freely entered Tlaxcala, and then, under the escort of the allies, set off for Veracruz. There the conquerors took up winter quarters and rested. Cortes, however, wrote and sent two letters to Emperor Charles, in which he explained his arbitrariness and independence from Velazquez, and also described the new territories. In his letters, Hernan proposed to name the lands he had conquered and explored as New Spain, which was favorably accepted by His Majesty.
Meanwhile, smallpox, brought by the conquerors, raged in Tenochtitlan. Not too dangerous for Europeans, this epidemic was completely unknown in Central America and brought death to the natives. The disease spread to all the cities of the Aztecs, and soon there were no longer enough healthy people left to bury the dead. The deaths numbered tens, if not hundreds of thousands. So smallpox became an unexpected ally of the Spaniards.
While smallpox raged in Mexico, Cortez was preparing for a new campaign - the capture of Tenochtitlan. He replenished his army with reinforcements from Cuba and Hispaniola, and by the spring of 1521 his army numbered just over seven hundred Spaniards. There were eighty horses, one hundred and ten crossbows and squeaks, fifteen cannons. In addition, the conqueror mobilized from fifty to one hundred and fifty thousand Allied Indians and six thousand pies needed to storm the island.
On May 30, 1521, the siege of the Nahu capital began. Three times the Spaniards broke into the city and reached the central square, but the Aztecs courageously threw back the invaders. The negotiations did not lead to anything: the Nahua refused to believe in the nobility of the Spaniards and preferred to die in arms, along with their wives and children. Realizing the impossibility of the immediate capture of Tenochtitlan, Cortez abandoned active hostilities. He closed off all dams and aqueducts and thus cut off the supply of the Aztecs. Famine began in the city. But even earlier, the Aztecs began to die of thirst. Deprived of fresh water, they drank the salty, useless water of the lagoon, in which decaying corpses floated. Fever and dysentery reaped their terrible harvest. By the end of July, the days of Montezuma's heirs were numbered. The clutches of the invaders tightened more and more, and in the end the Aztecs controlled only the marketplace, which once delighted the conquistadors.
On August 13, 1521, after the capture of the last Nahua emperor of Cuautemoca, Cortes proclaimed victory. Tenochtitlan was handed over to plunder by a ferocious Spanish soldier, obsessed with only one goal: to find the gold lost during the "Night of Sorrow". However, the legendary treasures of Montezuma disappeared, further enraging the Spaniards.
The losses of the Aztecs were catastrophic. Many descriptions give a figure of one hundred thousand killed, missing and died from hunger and epidemics. The remaining two hundred thousand were taken captive and enslaved.
On October 15, 1522, Charles V signed a decree appointing Hernan Cortes as governor, commander-in-chief and supreme bailiff. So the conquistador became the sovereign master of Mexico.
HOUR OF PAYMENT
BUT THE TRIUMPH OF Cortes did not last long, only four years. The discontent of the authorities of the metropolis was caused by the obvious independence of the new ruler and ... his too humane, from their point of view, treatment of the Indians.
The willfulness of the governor of New Spain was manifested in the fact that he dared to promote the idea of \u200b\u200bcreolization, mixing of the local population with the Spaniards. Marriages with the daughters of the Caciques, as Cortes counted, should have contributed to the reconciliation of Indians and Spaniards. Moreover, he declared Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, official. By his decision, teaching in schools was also conducted in Latin.
Cortez tried to limit the exploitation of the Indians who became slaves to the Spaniards. Hernan himself did not see anything reprehensible at the institution of slavery. It has been widespread for thousands of years in both Europe and Central America. Therefore, the laws of the governor were aimed only at mitigating the fate of the slaves. Hernan established a ten-hour working day, banned the labor of women and children under twelve years of age. According to the laws of Cortez, the working week of an Indian slave should not exceed sixty hours. Preserved the conquistador and the system of Indian self-government.
However, Cortez did not stay in Mexico for long. One after another, denunciations of him went to Spain. Cortes de “does not comply with the orders of His Imperial Majesty”, “keeps huge sums of money in his hands and does not transfer to the royal auditors” (representatives of the tax service), “does not want to establish the Inquisition”, “shows himself to be an inveterate atheist”.
There was indeed a lot of truth in the denunciations. The power of the ruler of New Spain caused fear among the advisers of Charles V. They were afraid that Cortes would think of himself as the new Montezuma and wish to become a sovereign ruler.
The arbitrariness of Cortes, secret contempt for the supreme power, nurtured in childhood, ignoring royal instructions made his figure too uncomfortable for Charles V. That is why the great conqueror was recalled to Castile in 1528.
Charles V greeted the Mexican hero kindly but coldly. Despite the intercession of Cortez's father Martin de Monroe and the patronage of noble friends, he did not change his attitude towards the popular conquistador and confined himself to granting him the title of Marquis de Vallee. In fact, it was an empty phrase that meant nothing compared to the supreme power over New Spain.
Royal "favors" did not cool the ardor of Cortez. Having fallen into a web of intrigue, he did not give up and did not stay in Castile, but returned to Mexico. For five years, from 1530 to 1535, he ruled over his vast private estates, which were gradually diminished by court decisions in favor of the crown. Cortez explored the Pacific Ocean and California, built a fleet.
Fate smiled at him again when Antonio de Mendoza became Viceroy of Spain. The latter first obeyed the valuable advice of the conquistador and for a time stopped the predatory exploitation of the Indians. But the authority of Cortez, suppressing the will of Mendoza, aroused mortal envy in that. Mendoza, in the spirit of his predecessors, began to take possession after possession from the hero of Mexico. The prisons began to be filled with Hernan's associates, the "old" conquistadors. Now it was their turn to endure torture from the executioners of the Inquisition, which they themselves applied to the captive Indian leaders in search of gold.
Hernan felt immensely disappointed. What he and his comrades had won with his own blood was now becoming the prey of the courtiers and shameless crooks. He tried to turn fate, to meet with the emperor again, to beg his forgiveness, to return as viceroy to Spain.
But the emperor remained deaf to the conquistador's petitions. Charles V himself was already old, tired of running the state, his huge empire, in which, also thanks to Cortes, "the sun never set." Hernando spent seven unsuccessful years in Spain, participated in the campaign of Charles V in Algeria, volunteered to go on the most dangerous missions ...
GOLDEN TABLES
Fortune at the end of her life finally turned her back on the Marquis de Vallee. Feeling the approach of death, he wrote a will, in which, among other things, he asked to be buried in New Spain. He also ordered to release his Indian slaves, to repay friends, servants, confidants.
On the night of Friday, December 2, 1547, Cortez died of exhaustion.
Already in the memoirs of his contemporaries, he was presented as a legendary person, both the "white" and "black" sides of his character were noted. Endowed with a rare charm and strong character, Cortez led his companions into fire and water. Possessing great courage, he entered into battles with immeasurably more numerous opponents and won victories.
There was another side to his fiery nature. He shamelessly betrayed people who believed him, both subordinates and leaders. More than once he inspired one thing and did another. More than once he had to arrange a bloody massacre. When dividing the spoils, he also did not differ in particular scrupulousness, too often giving rise to suspicion of deception. It is highly doubtful that he ever felt regret for what he had done, considering, like other Spaniards, his religion and civilization above everything else in the world. Therefore, until now, modern Mexicans do not consider it possible to forgive Cortez.
Hernan was perhaps the brightest of the galaxy of conquistadors, on the one hand, thirsty for gold, treacherous and bloodthirsty conquerors, on the other hand, courageous, fearless people looking for unknown lands. He turned out to be one of the few Spaniards who, thanks to his own courage and intelligence, achieved everything that every nobleman dreamed of - wealth, fame, power. In gold letters, stained with Indian blood, Cortez forever inscribed his name in the tablets of history.
Evgeny PRONIN
Let's remember another large-scale and sometimes mysterious phenomenon of distant history: The original article is on the site InfoGlaz.rf The link to the article this copy was made from is
Biography, discoveries of Hernan Cortez
Hernan (Hernando, Fernando) Cortes de Monroy (born 1485 - death December 2, 1547) Spanish conquistador, that is, the conqueror. In his younger years he served in the Spanish troops in Cuba. He led a campaign to Mexico, which led to the conquest of vast territories and the establishment of Spanish rule there. For a time he was essentially the ruler of Mexico.
Origin. Key dates
Origin - from a family of poor, but noble hidalgo. He studied for two years at the University of Salamanca, but preferred a military career. 1504 - moved to Hispaniola, 1510-1514. took part in the expedition to conquer Cuba led by Diego de Velazquez. 1519-1521 on his own initiative, undertook the conquest of Mexico. 1522-1526 served as captain-general of the newly formed colony of New Spain, but due to a fierce struggle for power in 1528 he returned to Europe. the title of Marquis of Oaxaca was granted to him by King Charles V in 1529 1530 - Cortes returned to Mexico with the rank of military governor, but no longer having real power. 1540 - he returned to Europe forever, took part in an unsuccessful campaign against Algeria in 1541. He died and was buried in Spain, in 1566 the ashes were transferred to Mexico.
How it all began
1518 - a Spanish detachment under the command of Juan Grijalva, sailing from Cuba, after several unsuccessful attempts to land on the shores of the Yucatan Peninsula, heard from the local Indians about "Mexico City" - a country in which there is a lot of gold. Soon the Spaniards were able to make sure that they were not deceived: the emissaries of the supreme leader who inhabited Mexico offered them a lot of gold products in exchange for their goods. The Spanish soldiers took advantage of the gullibility of the natives and gathered rich booty in a short time.
Continuing sailing in the waters of Central America, the Grihalva expedition discovered a small archipelago. On one of the islands, the Spaniards saw how the priests with stone knives cut the victims' breasts and pulled out hearts as a gift to their deities. This is how the first meetings with a previously unknown civilization took place. A short expedition by Juan Grijalva discovered Mexico. However, another adventurer had to conquer it ...
Marine Expedition of Cortez
Upon the return of Grijalva's detachment, the Governor of Cuba, Diego de Velazquez, decided to conquer Mexico. Equipping a whole fleet for this, he appointed the head of the expedition hidalgo Hernan Cortez. Describing it, the historian of the conquest of "New Spain" Bernal Diaz wrote: "He had little money, but a lot of debts." But this is a very subjective characteristic. According to the biographers of Cortez, Hernán Fernando, Cortez was the son of a landowner. He was born in the city of Medellin (province of Extremadura, in southern Spain). He studied at the Faculty of Law of the famous University of Salamanca and, although he did not complete the full course, received an education rare for the Spanish conquistadors of that era.
The young, ambitious hidalgo did not see opportunities for realizing his abilities at home. At the age of 19, Cortez set out on a ship across the Atlantic to seek wealth and fame in the New World. 1504 - He ended up in the West Indies. Things were going well for Cortez at first: he became a landowner and, possessing the exquisite manners of a Spanish grandee, won the favor of the governor of the island of Cuba, Diego de Velazquez.
Having gained confidence in him, Hernan Cortez was able to get the position of Velazquez's secretary, and soon he married his sister. Contemporaries considered Cortez to be a dandy and a bastard, paying tribute to his attractive appearance, subtle knowledge of etiquette and great personal charm. Sincere religiosity was combined with these qualities, as well as a sharp mind, audacity, courage, cunning and cruelty, contempt for danger and disregard for the cultural values \u200b\u200bof indigenous peoples.
By the time of his first campaign, Cortez was acting as mayor of the city of Santiago. If he had financial difficulties, they did not embarrass the hidalgo, who turned out to be a true passionary: dreams of feats and glory made him easily solve material problems. For example, when it came time to recruit a team for the expedition, Cortez mortgaged his estate and began recruiting soldiers with the money received from the usurers. He promised the newly minted conquerors heaps of gold, rich estates and native slaves.
With a detachment of 500 soldiers armed with muskets and over 100 sailors, even with a few guns, Cortez set about loading supplies and crew. On his ships, in addition to soldiers and sailors, 16 horses were accommodated. Horses were necessary for the conquistadors not only as a means of transport, but also to intimidate the natives, who did not know cattle breeding and had never seen armed four-legged people, as the Spanish horsemen seemed to them.
Meeting of Cortez and Moctezuma
Seeing the successful preparations of Cortez for the campaign and knowing his adventurous nature, vigilant officials informed the governor that Cortez intended to conquer Mexico not for the Spanish crown, but for himself. Velazquez tried to dislodge Cortez and hold back the fleet, but the daring hidalgo raised the sails and went out to sea. The pilot was an experienced sailor Anton Alaminos, a sailor.
Cortez's contacts with the local population began even before arriving in Mexico, during a stop on the island of Cozumel.
The first clashes with the Indians showed that the Spaniards were dealing with brave warriors, who, moreover, had a large numerical superiority. This is where Cortez needed horses. When the Spaniards landed on the southern coast of the Campeche Gulf, in the Tabasco country, Cortez met with serious resistance from the native troops. Even artillery could not frighten them. But the fate of the battle was decided by the "centaurs": the attack of 16 Spanish cavalry sowed panic horror in the ranks of the Indians. The local leaders, the Caciques, sent the conquerors the supplies they required and several young women. One of them, named Malinal, became a friend of Cortez and a translator. In the chronicles, she appears as dona Marina. She also found a place in works of art (for example, in the novel by R. Haggard "The Daughter of Montezuma").
The first successes did not turn the head of the cunning hidalgo. Cortez was well aware that the fear of firearms and mounted warriors is a temporary phenomenon, and the armed forces of the Aztecs are too large. It was necessary to gain a foothold and attract the natives to their side. On the coast of the mainland, the Spaniards built the city of Veracruz. With the help of dona Marina, Cortes was able to win over to his side the leaders of the local tribes, oppressed by the Aztecs. The Tlaxcalans, Indians from the country of Tlaxcala, rendered the greatest support to the Spaniards. Acting on the principle "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", they provided the conquerors with tens of thousands of soldiers, guides and porters. Now the army of Cortez was at least commensurate with the army of Montezuma - the supreme leader of Mexico.
Spaniards in Tenochitlan
Montezuma, the supreme leader of the Aztecs (some of the authors called him emperor), not daring to enter into armed conflict with the conquerors, tried to buy them off with gold and jewelry. But, not knowing the nature of the Europeans, by this he only whetted the appetites of the Spaniards. Seeing that the conquistadors are even more striving to seize his capital Tenochtitlan, Montezuma was confused and lost the will to resist: he called on the soldiers to repulse the enemy, and in case of failure, he simply renounced them. It ended with the fact that, with his consent, the Spaniards entered Tenochtitlan.
What he saw amazed the conquistadors. If they were more educated, they would have taken the city for the capital. Tenochtitlan was on an island in the middle of an artificial salt lake. Montezuma and his retinue gave the Spaniards a solemn welcome. Bernal Diaz wrote: “... we could not believe our eyes. On the one hand, there are a number of big cities on land, and a number of others on the lake ... and we have the great city of Mexico City in front of us, and we are only 400 soldiers! Were there such men in the world who would show such daring courage? "
The soldier was housed in a luxurious palace. Searching the interior, the Spaniards discovered a walled-up storeroom full of precious stones and gold. But the cunning hidalgo, accustomed to not trusting anyone, and especially yesterday's adversary, understood the current situation well: he was isolated with people and surrounded in a strange city. Cortez had a bold plan: when he invited the emperor to his residence, he was taken hostage and chained. After which Cortez became the de facto ruler of the Aztec state. He renamed Tenochtitlan Mexico City and began issuing orders on behalf of Montezuma. By forcing the leaders of the Aztecs to swear allegiance to the Spanish king, he made them tributaries to the crown.
But the discovered wealth haunted the Spaniards. All the gold items were melted down into ingots, resulting in three large heaps, which melted quickly. The officers and soldiers demanded a division, which ended, of course, in favor of Cortez.
At that time, Governor Velazquez sent a squadron of Panfilo Narvaez on the trail of Cortez, who was ordered to capture Cortez and his soldiers "alive or dead". Upon learning that the pursuers were already in Veracruz, Cortez left a group in Mexico City to guard Montezuma, and set out to meet Narvaez. Ahead of him, he sent envoys, whose outfits were hung with gold. This "psychic attack" worked. When Cortez's squadron attacked the enemy positions, Narvaez's men began to cross over to his side in droves. Narvaes was taken prisoner, officers and soldiers surrendered voluntarily.
Cortes sent several ships of Narvaeza to the north to survey the Mexican coast, returned weapons, horses and property to those who surrendered, significantly increasing his army. He did this in a timely manner, since in 1520 almost all of Mexico rebelled. Cortez's detachment (1,300 soldiers, 100 horsemen and 150 riflemen), which was supplemented by 2,000 Tlaxcalans, entered the capital without hindrance. But the Mexicans every day attacked the Spaniards, among whom hunger, strife and despondency began. When Cortez ordered Montezuma to go to the roof of the palace and by his order to stop the assault so that the Spaniards could leave the city, the Mexicans threw stones at both the enemies and the royal traitor. The supreme leader of the Aztecs, Montezuma, was killed with a well-aimed arrow. It is possible that his relative, Prince Kuautemok, did it.
1520, July - the Spaniards, left virtually without supplies and water, decided to leave the capital at night. But the Mexicans were well prepared and attacked the enemy on a portable bridge thrown over the canal. The bridge collapsed ... The Aztec gods received an abundant sacrifice of 900 Spaniards and 1300 Tlascalans. The surviving Spaniards, having got out to the shore of the lake, were forced to retreat to Tlaxcalo.
Fall of Tenochtitlan
1521 - Cortez, with an army from the Spanish "guard" and 10,000 allied Indians, again approached the walls of Tenochtitlan. Skillfully using the enmity between the tribes, he defended the Mexican tributaries from the Aztec troops, allowed the Tlaxcalans to plunder the Aztec villages, and with this kind of methods won a reputation as a wise and just ruler. Having built the simplest ships, the people of Cortez took possession of the lake. Tenochtitlan became a besieged fortress.
After the death of Montezuma, his young relative Cuautemoc, a brave warrior and talented military leader, was elected the supreme leader of the Aztecs. But even his outstanding abilities and the resilience of the besieged Mexicans could not withstand the cunning and cunning of Cortez. The Spaniards cut off the capital from the outskirts, destroyed the city water supply, and set fire to buildings with burning arrows. The city was desperately defending itself for more than 3 months. But the landing of the Spaniards poisoned the wells, and the situation of the besieged became hopeless.
When the city fell, only women and children remained alive in it, since, according to B. Diaz, “… almost the entire adult male population, not only of Mexico City, but also of the surrounding area, died here”. The last emperor of the Aztecs, Kuautemok, was taken prisoner. He was persuaded for a long time to accept Spanish citizenship, promised estates and titles, severely tortured and blackmailed, but he remained adamant and in 1525 he was executed secretly from the Indians.
So Mexico was conquered. The Spaniards captured all the treasures of the Aztecs. The indigenous population was enslaved. The territory was covered with the estates of the Spanish colonialists. The country's population has declined sharply due to wars and infectious diseases previously unknown to the Indians, introduced by the Spaniards - measles, mumps, chickenpox and others, relatively safe for Europeans, but fatal for the aborigines of America, who did not have immunity ...
After the fall of Mexico City, Cortez continued to expand the borders of New Spain, for which troops were sent out in all directions. He himself went to the northeast and finally conquered the country of the Aztecs, capturing the basin of the Panuco River, where he built a fortress and left a strong garrison.
Discovery of Guatemala and hike to Honduras
To the southeast of the capital, Hernán Cortes sent a detachment of Gonzalo Sandoval, who during the expedition discovered the mountainous region of Oaxaca, inhabited by the Zapotecs, and reached the Pacific Ocean west of the Tehuantepec Bay. There the Spaniards faced unforeseen difficulties. If it was easy to conquer the low-lying areas, then the Zapotec mountaineers stubbornly resisted. The Spanish cavalry could not climb high in the mountains (South Sierra Madre), and these places were almost inaccessible for the infantry. But the conquistador Pedro Alvarado discovered the Tehuantepec Isthmus, after which his detachment discovered and formally subjugated the Chiapas region in the basin of the Grijalva and Usumacinta rivers to Spain, as well as South Guatemala, the highest mountainous country in Central America. In total, by the end of 1524, the Spaniards passed the Pacific coast of Central America with a length of about 4,000 km.
Cortez more than once heard from sailors that Honduras is rich in gold and silver, and sent a detachment of Cristobal Olida on 5 ships there for reconnaissance. Six months later, denunciations began to arrive in Mexico City that Olid took possession of Honduras for his own personal interests. Cortez sent a second flotilla there, but all of its ships sank during the storm, and the surviving part of the crew, led by Francisco Las Casas, surrendered to Olida. But that was a trick. To carry out Cortez's order, Las Casas and Gil Avila conspired, arrested Olida, tried and executed the separatist. The people of Olida recognized the power of Cortez.
The general scheme of Cortez's campaign in 1519. The sea part is highlighted in red
Lacking information from Honduras, Cortez went there by dry route. Leaving Mexico City in October 1524 with a detachment of 250 veterans and several thousand Mexicans, Cortez decided to go to Honduras by the shortest route, leaving Yucatan to the north. But for this the detachment took more than half a year. The supplies were out, the people were feeding on the roots. Building bridges to the waist in water, they felled wood and drove in piles. People suffered from tropical rainstorms, humid heat and malaria. By the beginning of May 1525, the thinned detachment reached the coast of the Gulf of Honduras. In the city of Trujillo, founded by F. Las Casas, a malaria patient, Cortez got barely alive. He was able to return to Mexico City only in June 1526.
During his absence, many denunciations were received in Spain, and the king appointed a new governor, who in 1527 exiled Cortez to Spain. Considering the merits of the hidalgo to the crown, the king forgave him for real and fictitious misdeeds, awarded him with rich estates, gave him the title of Marquis del Valle de Oaxaca and the post of captain-general of New Spain and the South Sea. But to govern the country, the king established a college headed by Nuno Guzman. This official was the most ferocious ruler of the occupied lands. Under him, the conversion of Indians into slavery reached an unprecedented scale, and the province of Panuco was almost depopulated, for which Guzman was removed from power.
Discovery of the California Peninsula
1527 Hernán Cortes sent the first expedition to the South Sea (Pacific Ocean) on three small ships. It was headed by Cortés' cousin lvaro Saavedra. He received the assignment "to go to Moluccas or China to find out the direct route to the homeland of ... spices." Saavedra set out on October 31, 1527. He did not return to Mexico, but made a number of discoveries in a completely different region of the Earth - Oceania. Cortez learned about his fate only in the mid-1530s.
In 1532-1533. Hernan Cortez organized two expeditions to search for a strait supposedly connecting two oceans, but they ended in the loss of ships and the death of crews.
1535, spring - despite all the setbacks, Cortes equipped and led a new expedition on three ships in order to search for pearls and organize a colony. Having landed in the "pearl" bay of La Paz, he called this land "Island of the Holy Cross" and from here sent ships for colonists and supplies, since the aborigines lived only by fishing and gathering. But it took a long time to wait for their return.
Most of the colonists were sick from heat and infections, including Cortez himself. After leaving the new colony, in the spring of 1537 he again organized an expedition on three ships under the command of Andres Tapia, who was able to explore the mainland coast of the Gulf of California for another 500 km.
More successful was the last expedition of Hernan Cortés, led by Francisco Ulloa, who went along the entire mainland coast and reached the top of the bay, which he called the Crimson Sea because of the red runoff of the Colorado river that he discovered, which flows into the bay. Ulloa climbed several kilometers up it and found a huge herd of sea lions at the mouth of the river. Then he passed 1200 km of the western coast of the Gulf of California, rounded the southern tip of the peninsula and moved along the western Pacific coast.
What is the result of Cortez's activities in the New World?
Starting in 1518, Hernan Fernando Cortez, leading detachments numbering from two hundred to several thousand people, was able to conquer Mexico and Guatemala, organized 7 expeditions that discovered the western shores of New Guinea, the Marshall Islands, the Admiralty and part of the Carolina, explored 2000 km of the Pacific coast Central America, the Revilla-Jihedo archipelago was discovered, the Western Sierra Madre mountains and the Colorado River were discovered, 1000 km of the coast of the California Peninsula were traced and the Pacific Ocean was crossed along the equator.
Cortez's literary legacy consists of his letters to the king, which are highly regarded by experts in the fine literature of the era of the great geographical discoveries. After returning to Spain (1540), Cortes commanded a squadron for some time, and then settled on his estate near Seville. The great conquistador died in 1547 and 15 years later he was reburied in Mexico City, at the place of the first meeting with Montezuma. In honor of Hernan Cortés, 7 cities, a bay and a seashore are named.
Hernando Cortez
Hernando Cortez, Captain General of Mexico
Cortes (Cortes) Hernando (1485-1547), Spanish conquistador. In 1504-1519 he served in Cuba. In 1519-1521, he led a campaign of conquest in Mexico, which led to the establishment of Spanish rule there. In 1522-1528, the governor and captain-general of the regions of New Spain (Mexico) conquered by him. In 1524, in search of a sea passage from the Pacific to the Atlantic, he crossed Central America.
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Cortés, Hernan (1485 - 2.XII.1547) - Spanish conquistador, conqueror of Mexico. Born into a poor noble family, he studied at the University of Salamanca. In 1504-1519 he served as an official and owned encomienda in the West Indies (Santo Domingo, Cuba). In 1519-1521, he led a campaign of conquest in Mexico, during which Spanish rule was established in the central part of the country. During the conquest of Mexico, Cortez displayed great military and political ability, combined with extreme cruelty and treachery towards the Indians. The Spanish government appointed Cortés governor and captain-general of New Spain (Mexico). Died Cortez in Spain.
Soviet Historical Encyclopedia. In 16 volumes. - M .: Soviet encyclopedia. 1973-1982. Volume 7. KARAKEYEV - KOSHAKER. 1965.
Cortes Hernando (1485-1547), Spanish conquistador, one of the discoverers of North and Central America. In 1504 he arrived on the island of Haiti, participated in the conquest of Cuba (1511); led two campaigns in the capital of Mexico (1519-1521), the result of which was the conquest of the Aztec empire by the Spaniards led by Montezuma. In the rank of captain-general of Mexico in 1522-1528 he made two more campaigns - to the basin of the Santa Maria River (1523) and to Honduras (1524-25). The detachments sent by him in 1523-1524 for the first time traced almost 2,000 km of the Pacific Ocean strip of Central America, discovered Southern Guatemala, the highest mountainous country in the region. Cortez himself in 1535 identified a small stretch of the coast of the California Peninsula, considering it an island. Seven cities, a bay and a shallow are named in honor of Cortes.
Quoted from: Modern Illustrated Encyclopedia. Geography. Rosman-Press, M., 2006.
Hernan Cortez ... a number of conquistadors also wrote memoirs about what they had to experience in New Spain ... Among them was Hernan Cortes, the leader of the Conquista, who led the troops to Tenochtitlan and attracted the Indians on the way to his side. Cortez's "Letters from Mexico" is an epistolary collection of five letters sent to Spain to the Emperor Charles V and describing his life in New Spain. Cortes informs Charles that, having landed on the Mexican coast on April 22, 1519, he learned about the existence of a kingdom in the interior of the mainland, which is ruled by a powerful Motecusoma (Montezuma, Moctezuma). He decides to get to him and convince his ruler to recognize the seniority of Queen Juana and her son Charles, rulers of Castile.
Despite messages from Moctezuma, insisting that the uninvited guest leave his lands, Cortez with his army continues to move towards the Mexican Valley and on November 8, 1519, finally enters Tenochtitlan. Motekusoma greeted Cortez and his soldiers, invited them to settle in the palace; Cortez responded by arresting Montecusoma. This betrayal was the starting point for the defeat of the Aztecs, although they fiercely resisted.
Aguilar-Moreno M. Aztecs. Encyclopedic Reference / Manuel Aguilar-Moreno. - M., 2011, p. 51-52.
Cortez Hernan (1485-1547). Born in Medellin (Extremadura province) in a not very noble family. Studied law in Salamanca. In 1504 he went to America and reached Hispaniola (Santo Domingo), where he entered the service of Diego Velazquez and participated in the conquest of Cuba in 1511. Velazquez, who at one time did not trust Cortes and even imprisoned him, in 1514 appointed Cortez as mayor of Santiago (in Cuba) and granted him lands and "encomienda". In 1514-1515. Cortez married Catalina Juarez.
The exploratory travels of Francisco Hernandez de Cordoba (1517) and Juan de Grihalva (1518), for lack of better, brought information about the coast of Mexico and such stories that Diego Velazquez decided to send there a much larger expedition led by Cortez; then, fearing the ambitions of Cortez, he tried to replace him. However, Cortez got ahead of him and on February 18, 1519 set off on a journey. Moving along the coast of the Yucatan, then Tabasco, he acquired two valuable allies of his campaign of conquest: the Spaniard Jeronimo de Aguilar, shipwrecked and living for many years among the Maya and speaking their language; and a young captive of Mexican descent, speaking the Mayan and Nahuatl languages, known in history as dona Marina, or Malinche / Malintsin. These two mediators subsequently attended all meetings and discussions with the Mexican emissaries.
In April 1519, Cortes entered Sempoala and tried to negotiate with the tribes recently conquered by the Aztecs and wanting to free themselves from their yoke. In addition, in an effort to show the irreversibility of his enterprise and to warn possible deserters, he burned his ships. In the same month, Cortes founded Veracruz; from the elected municipality, he received legal powers and the rank of captain-general of New Spain (July 1519), that is, he was directly subordinate to the Spanish crown. Refusing the proposals of the ambassadors of Montezuma II not to meet with the ruler of the Aztecs, Cortez entered the Central Highland Plateau. He found a strong ally in Tlaxcala, a decisive opponent of the Triple Alliance.
Cortez entered Tenochtitlan on November 8, 1519, after a bloody episode in Cholula. However, he had to return soon to repulse the detachment of Panfilo de Navaez, sent by the governor of Cuba, with orders to arrest him. Despite the unequal forces, Cortez defeats his opponent and gains the opportunity to recruit the reinforcements of his squad.
On his return to Mexico City, he found a rebellion in the city, caused by the massacre of the Aztec aristocracy in the Main Temple on the orders of his lieutenant Pedro de Alvarado. The arrival of Cortez did not resolve the situation: Montezuma was killed by his own subjects when he addressed them with a speech. The new ruler Cuitlahuac raised the population against the Spaniards, who were forced to leave Tenochtitlan after the "Night of Sorrow" (June 30, 1520), during which hundreds of Spaniards were killed or drowned, becoming "victims" of their own greed. The unexpected victory at Otumba * allowed Cortes to retreat to Tlaxcala, which remained loyal to him, to reorganize his forces and continue the siege of Tenochtitlan from land and from the lagoon, thanks to the brigantines he built and armed. The siege lasted 75 days, from May 30 to August 13, 1521, the date of the surrender of the last ruler, the heroic Kuautemok.
1522: Cortes is appointed governor-general of New Spain, which he successfully ruled for two years.
1522-1524: Unsuccessful expedition to Honduras to suppress the rebellion of Cristobal de Olida.
1525: Execution of Cuautemoc and the rulers of Texcoco and Tlacopan.
In 1527, Cortes was removed by the government from the post of head of New Spain and in 1528 he returned to Spain to address the Council of the Indies. Although he ceased to be the governor of Mexico, he was left with rich lands in the province of Oaxaca, the title of Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca and the rank of captain-general.
He married a second marriage to dona Juan de Zúñiga from the family of a large aristocrat.
In 1530 he returned to New Spain, where he tried to expand his marquisate and undertook several unsuccessful expeditions. In one of them, he discovered the bay, which would later be called California, and the peninsula of the same name.
In 1535 New Spain became a viceroyalty. Numerous legal strife forced Cortez to return to Spain in 1540. In 1541 he took part in the Algerian campaign of Charles V. Cortes died in 1547, almost forgotten by everyone. According to his last will, his remains were buried in New Spain in the church of the hospital he founded.
Between 1519 and 1526 Cortes sent five Letters of Reports to Emperor Charles V, in which he justified the legitimacy of his conquests and his behavior.
The first letter was not found, and in the complete 1868 edition it was replaced by the Report on Justice and the Municipality of Villa Rica in Veracruz (1519).
The most famous in terms of history and literature is his second letter dated October 30, 1520, in which he describes the founding of Veracruz, then his difficult advance to Tlaxcala, the massacre at Cholula, his stay in Tenochtitlan and his meeting with Montezuma, and finally gives a description of the still intact Aztec capital. The letter was widely disseminated at that time and translated into many languages, including French and German.
The third letter, dated May 15, 1522, written from Kouoacan, tells of the conquest of the Aztec capital and the subordination of the provinces to the Empire. It did not have the slightest success, in contrast to the fourth letter of October 15, 1524, in which Cortes specifically mentions the structure of the conquered lands.
As for the fifth letter, dated September 3, 1526, it was found and published only in the 19th century, and it tells about the expedition of Cortes to Honduras.
Notes (edit)
* The so-called "Battle of Otumba" on July 7, 1520 is a very dubious episode, modern historians tend to attribute it to the mythology of the Conquest. According to the official version, the Aztecs organized a chase, but the Spaniards defeated the Indian army.
Durand-Foret Jacqueline de. Aztecs / Jacqueline de Durand-Foret. - M., Veche, 2013, p. 274-278.
Hernan Cortez. Drawing by Weiditz.
It is considered the most reliable portrait of the conquistador.
Hernan Cortez (c. 1485-1547). Born in Medellin, Extremadura, into a noble but poor family. Studied humanities at the University of Salamanca. Not experiencing a tendency to a sedentary lifestyle, in 1504 he went to India. On Hispaniola, and later Cuba (1511), he participated in campaigns against the rebellious Indians and received an encomienda. He was engaged in cattle breeding and, on occasion, served as a notary (escribano). Thanks to his initiative and outstanding leadership qualities, he was noticed by the governor of Cuba, Diego Velazquez, who entrusted him to lead an expedition to the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. Cortez had 11 ships, a hundred sailors, 508 soldiers, 16 horses and 14 cannons at his disposal. The expedition set off on February 18, 1519, despite the ban of Velazquez, who with some delay saw the excessive ambition of his protégé and wanted to remove him from command. Since 1519, the name of Cortes is inextricably linked with the history of the conquest of the Aztec empire. His strategy for dealing with the Maya Indians from the Yucatan Peninsula was simple: negotiate, not loot, avoid combat. It was here that he met his fate and good fortune - among the captives given to him by the cacique, there was an Indian woman who spoke the Meshic language, the famous dona Marina, or Malinche, who became his mistress, translator and adviser. Having landed on the banks of Sempoala, Cortez proceeded to take decisive action. He realized that the peoples, conquered by Montezuma, but not reconciled, only dreamed about getting rid of the yoke of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, and decided to conclude an alliance with them and conquer the whole country. With the help of a dexterous maneuver, he got rid of the tutelage of Velazquez: he convinced his people to found the city of Villa Rica de Veracruz. According to Castilian traditions, the ruler of the city was awarded the title of captain-general and the right to administer justice. After a year of war, in 1521, Cortez began a siege of the Aztec capital. It took him three months of continuous attacks to take the city by storm. The Aztecs, led by Cuautemoc, Montezuma's nephew, put up fierce resistance, which neither hunger nor smallpox epidemics broke. Finally, on August 13, 1521, the city fell. Cortes' unsuccessful campaign in Honduras against one of the mutinous lieutenants - during which he executed Cuautemoc - untied the hands of his enemies. Having restored order in Mexico City, he went to Spain, to report on his actions to the Crown. Charles V bestowed upon him the marquisate of the "Oaxaca Valley" and seigneurial rights to the richest provinces of New Spain. Marrying again, Cortez became related to the highest Spanish aristocracy. In 1530 he returned to India and began to develop his possessions. Attempts to explore the Pacific Ocean were not crowned with much success, but it is to him that we owe the discovery of California (1534-1535). The numerous trials in which he became involved forced him to return to Spain (1540). He died in the city of Castilleja de la Cuesta, near Seville, preparing to sail to New Spain.
Mazen O. Spanish America of the 16th - 18th centuries / Oscar Mazen. - M., Veche, 2015, p. 306-307.
Meeting of Cortez and Montezuma.
Florentine Codex. XVI century.
Dona Marina translates the conversation.
Cortez Hernan Fernando. Hernán Fernando Cortez was born into a poor family of a minor nobleman in southern Spain. He studied law in Salamanca and received an education rare for the Spanish conquistadors of that era. However, in his homeland, he did not see the opportunity to realize his abilities and at the age of 19 went on a ship across the Atlantic Ocean to seek wealth and fame in the New World.
In 1504 he ended up in the West Indies. Things were going well for Cortez: he became a landowner and soon received the post of secretary to the governor of the island of Cuba, Diego de Velazquez, winning his favor and trust. Hernán Cortez married his sister and was at one time acting mayor of the city of Santiago. It was a time when the Spanish Hispaniola dreamed of only one thing - the untold riches that the land of the Indians on the other side of the Caribbean contained. But to get to their gold, you first had to conquer these lands.
Diego de Velazquez has already tried twice to conquer the Aztec Empire, but each time military campaigns for various reasons ended in failure. Velazquez began to equip a new, third military expedition to the mainland, where the Spaniards managed to visit a year before.
Initially, he put his sister's husband at the head of the expedition, but then canceled his decision, because he became seriously afraid of the ambitious intentions of Hernan Cortez, who did not hide them. If the expedition under his command was successful, the governor could lose his position at the royal court.
Cortez did not obey Velasquez's new decision. In February 1519, on eleven small ships, he sailed into the Caribbean and headed west for sunset.
The flotilla rounded the Yucatan Peninsula and entered the mouth of the Rio Tabasco. Having landed on the coast, the Spaniards easily captured the city of Tabasco. Local Indians expressed complete obedience to the king of Spain and paid tribute. But they did not possess great wealth.
From local Indians, Hernan Cortes learned about the fabulously rich Aztec empire, located inland.
Local Indians provided the Spaniards with food and guides. To prevent the possible flight of his soldiers, many of whom were afraid to go to an unknown country, Cortez ordered the ships to be burned.
On the way to the Aztec capital, Cortez easily defeated several local Indian tribes, including numerous Tlaxcalans. The defeated Indian tribes, dissatisfied with the rule of the Aztecs, willingly joined the conquistador.
However, the inhabitants of the city of Cholulu put up strong resistance to the conquerors, and Cortes ordered a bloody massacre over them.
Solemn procession of Emperor Montezuma.
Hernan Cortez entered the Mexican capital Tenochtitlan and took into custody the high priest of the Aztecs Montezuma. He too late realized the danger that the Spaniards posed for his fatherland. Montezuma tried to prevent the conquerors from entering Tenochtitlan, but his actions were distinguished by surprising inconsistency for the ruler. In addition, the warriors of the Aztecs, as well as other Indian tribes, were terrified of the firearms and horses of the conquerors, about which they had no idea before.
The storming of Tenochtitlan by the Spaniards.
Montezuma acknowledged the authority of the Spanish king and agreed to pay a huge tribute every year, mostly in gold.
Meanwhile, the royal governor of Cuba, de Velazquez, sent a punitive expedition to the Mexican shores under the command of Panfilo de Narvaez to deal with the rebellious Cortez, who violated the chain of command and exceeded his authority.
Hernan Cortez was prepared for this turn of events. He left 150 Spanish soldiers in Tenochtitlan under the command of one of his officers, de Alvarado, and with the remaining 250 soldiers marched hastily to Veracruz to forestall the offensive actions of the troops of the governor of Hispaniola.
At night, the conquistadors attacked the marching camp of Panfilo de Narvaez and defeated the enemy. Narvaez and most of his warriors were captured. It did not take much for Cortez to convince the captives to enter his service.
Meanwhile, in the country of the Aztecs, under the leadership of the leader of Cuautemoc, a rebellion broke out against the Spanish conquerors.
At the village of Otumba, the Aztecs blocked the Spaniards, exhausted after a long retreat, the way to the sea coast, to Veracruz. On July 8, 1520, a battle between the troops of Cortez and the army of the rebellious Aztecs took place here. Only about 200 Spanish soldiers and several thousand Tlaxcalan warriors remained under the command of Cortés. The Aztec army numbered (according to clearly exaggerated data from Spanish sources) 200 thousand people. After many hours of battle, the Spanish detachment was on the verge of annihilation.
The fate of the Battle of Otumba was decided by the conquistador himself. Cortes, at the head of a small detachment of cavalry, attacked the core of the enemy army, where the Aztec military leaders were. The Aztecs, from the mere sight of horses galloping on them, were confused and fled in disorder. The victory of the Spaniards was complete, and after that they continued their journey unhindered to the coast of the Caribbean Sea.
A year later, Cortez made a second trip to the capital of the Aztec state.
On his second campaign, Cortez made already significant military forces. Cortez learned from his recent defeat at the hands of the Aztecs. Their capital stood on the shores of Lake Texcoco, on which there was a large flotilla of pirogues. During the uprising and fighting in Tenochtitlan, they quickly moved large detachments of Indian warriors in the right direction. Cortez ordered the construction of several small galleys and armed them with cannons. These galleys in disassembled form were carried by Indian porters after the Spanish detachment.
Having approached Tenochtitlan, which was being prepared for defense, the Spanish troops began bombarding the city with artillery pieces. Numerous defenders of the city successfully repulsed the first assault, unleashing spears, javelins and stones on the heads of the attackers. The siege of the Aztec capital lasted three months. Only after destroying most of it, the Spaniards took possession of the city. A large number of Indian warriors and townspeople died during the siege of Tenochtitlan.
The galleys delivered by the porters were collected on the shore of Lake Teskoye and launched. With the help of cannons mounted on galleys, the Spaniards defeated the Aztec pirogue flotilla and finally blockaded Tenochtitlan. Now it became difficult for the besieged to destroy the bridges over the canals and prevent the Spanish troops from moving along the dams.
Soon, famine and epidemics began in the besieged city. Cortez knew about this and therefore was in no hurry to storm the capital of the Aztecs. In August 1521 Cuautemok with their family and other chiefs tried to escape from Tenochtitlan on pirogues, but were overtaken and captured by the Spanish galley flotilla. Cuautemoc was severely tortured, but the Spaniards did not manage to find out from him where the treasures of the Aztecs were kept. The leader was thrown into prison and soon killed. In modern Mexico, the military leader of the Aztecs, Cuautemoc, is a national hero.
The besieged, left without their military leaders, ceased resistance. Tenochtitlan was badly destroyed and completely plundered by the conquerors.
Cortez renamed Tenochtitlan Mexico City. He sent the captured Aztec treasures to Spain. The Spanish monarch Charles V responded by appointing Cortez, a former state criminal, as captain-general and governor of New Spain. The first, with which the governor-general of the new colony began his reign, was the imposition of Christianity by force of arms among the Indian tribes.
In 1526, the great conqueror arrived in Spain in triumph. There he received from the king the title of Marquis del Valle de Oaxaca. At the royal court, he already had many ill-wishers who did not like the proud and ambitious marquis. As a result of court intrigues, the king deprived Cortes of the governorship in New Spain.
The conquistador returned to Mexico City without any credentials. In 1536, he led a new military expedition, discovering the Mexican Pacific coast and California. Three years later, he tried to obtain royal permission to lead a detachment to search for the legendary Seven Cities of Cibola. But the king rejected this request, focusing on the candidacy of Francisco Vasquez de Coronado. Offended, Cortez left New Spain for good and returned to Europe.
He settled in an estate near Seville and until the end of his days lived there in luxury thanks to the treasures plundered in the Aztec country. In 1541, Cortez participated in the Algerian military expedition of the Spanish troops, but did not gain fame in North Africa. In 1547 he fell ill with dysentery and died soon after. After 15 years, his remains were transported to Mexico, where they were reburied several times to save them from destruction. They finally found their peace only in 1823 in Naples, in the crypt of the dukes of Terrantzov-Montemone.
Used material from the site http://100top.ru/encyclopedia/
Read on:
Literature:
Madariaga S. de, Hernân Cortés, (6th ed.), Mexico - B. Aires, 1955;
Bernai Diaz del Castillo, Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España, v. 1-2, Mexico, 1943.
The discovery of the Pacific Ocean in 1513 was the second, after the voyage of Columbus, a powerful impetus to the exploration of the New World. In search of an outlet to the South Sea, European ships bypassed the entire Atlantic coast of South America, until Magellan's expedition finally managed to find the strait. Through this narrow loophole, the ships entered the Pacific Ocean. One should not think that America for Europeans was only a barrier on the way to India. If you remember how slowly the study of other regions of the planet proceeded, one can only marvel at the pace of development of the New World in the 16th century. Already in 1519, the governor of Golden Castile, Pedro Arias de Avila, founded the village of Panama on the Pacific coast, where ships were built for sailing in the South Sea.
In the same 1519, the conquest of Mexico by Hernan Cortez began, which was extremely cruel from the standpoint of universal human morality. But are there any other wars? The conquistadors, of course, did not behave like an angel, but the same can be said about the Aztecs: what are even the mass sacrifices so beloved by them worth! One thing is certain: the Indians did not invite the Spaniards to their place, and there is no way to justify the war by the desire to convert the infidels to Christianity.
But back to Mexico. Cortes skillfully used intertribal discord among the Indians and the hatred of most tribes for the Aztecs: he managed to win over the Tlaxcalans, Totonacs and others to his side. In August 1521, the Spaniards and their allied Indians took the capital of the Aztecs, Tenochtitlan. The city was almost completely destroyed, and in its place arose Mexico City, the capital of New Spain.
On this, Cortez did not stop, but sent detachments of conquistadors to all parts of the country to push the borders of New Spain and seek wealth. He himself moved northeast and captured the Panuco River basin. Cristobal Olid went west and discovered a coastal strip with a length of about 1000 km, and in addition, subdued the Indian state of Tarascan (now the state of Michoacan). Gonzalo Sandoval headed southeast and reached the Pacific coast, where he founded several cities. The farthest was Pedro Alvarado's campaign. At the end of 1523, his detachment reached the isthmus of Tehuantepec and, breaking the resistance of the Indians, captured a huge booty. Following the hollow between the Volcanic Range and the Sierra Madre de Chiapas, Alvarado occupied the territory of modern Guatemala and founded the city of the same name.
Hearing that there is no less gold in Honduras than in Mexico, Cortez in 1523 equipped a naval expedition there, led by Olid. However, the main goal of the expedition was to find a passage from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. However, after a while, rumors began to reach Cortez that Olid, having discovered enormous wealth in the country, decided to rule it alone. Cortes sent another flotilla there, but the ships crashed on the rocks during a storm, and the surviving sailors were captured by Olida. Then Cortez himself went to Honduras, but for some reason through the impenetrable jungle. When, after a difficult campaign, he reached the city of Trujillo, he learned that his supporters, having organized a conspiracy against Olida, had already executed the traitor. As for the waterway from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, it was not possible to find it here.
In 1526, Cortez returned to Mexico City, but not for long. The enemies, taking advantage of his long absence, prepared the ground for the removal of Cortez from the post of governor and depriving him of the rank of captain-general. In addition, Charles V, who received many denunciations of Cortez, demanded his arrival in Spain, where the Aztec victor was awaiting trial: he was accused of hiding a significant share of the income from the crown. However, the conquistador managed to justify himself; moreover, the king awarded Cortez with numerous estates and gave the title of marquis. But he was finally removed from the management of Mexico. Now everything was ruled by the Royal Audience, led by Nuno Guzman, the enemy of Cortez. Under Guzman, the enslavement of the Indians reached unprecedented proportions: they were sold in large quantities to slave traders from the Antilles, and some provinces were literally depopulated. Less than two years later, the compromised audience was dissolved. Having lost his legitimate power, but retaining his influence, Guzmán undertook a campaign in the country of Jalisco. His troops devastated areas to the west of Panuco province.
And on his return to Mexico, Cortez took up purely peaceful affairs - the recent conqueror of the Aztecs focused on entrepreneurship. His main business was sea expeditions (although he was also engaged in agriculture). The very first, to the Moluccas, he equipped even before leaving for Spain, and entrusted Alvaro Saavedra, his cousin, to lead it. In 1527, three ships left the harbor of Sakatula on the Pacific coast of Mexico, and for some time nothing was known about their fate. Then it turned out that only one ship, led by Saavedra himself, managed to cross the Pacific Ocean; the other two apparently perished in the violent storm. During the voyage, Saavedra discovered the Marshall Islands, the northwestern salient of New Guinea, the Admiralty Islands and part of the Caroline Islands. Twice the navigator tried to return to Mexico, but both times headwinds became an insurmountable obstacle on his way. In 1529 Saavedra died and his team was captured by the Portuguese.
Meanwhile, Cortez, unable to find a passage from the Pacific to the Atlantic in the south, decided to try his luck in the north. The Europeans were convinced that North America and Asia were close enough to each other, and the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic were connected by a strait at about 42 ° latitude. In 1532, two ships left Acapulco under the command of a relative of Cortez, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza. The expedition followed along the coast to the north, but after passing the islands of Las Tres Marias, the ships split: the first, with Mendoza at the head, continued to sail north, and on the second, a riot broke out - the team refused to follow further, and the ship lay on the opposite course. The rebels left not far: in the Gulf of Puerto Vallarta, they were wrecked. Almost the entire team was massacred by the Indians, several were taken prisoner by the soldiers of Guzman. And the ship Hurtado was gone.
In 1533, Cortes equipped the next expedition. One ship, commanded by Diego Becerra de Mendoza, went north to continue exploring the coast, and at the same time to look for Hurtado and his crew. The second ship, commanded by Hernando Grijalva, headed west in search of the pearl islands that the Indians told about. Grijalva discovered the Revilla-Jihedo archipelago, did not find any pearls and returned to Tehuantepec, where Cortez was now based and his ships were being built. Mendoza was less fortunate. A riot began on the ship, the rebels, having killed the captain, continued their voyage and reached the southeastern tip of the California Peninsula, where they managed to collect a rich harvest of pearls in La Paz Bay. But most of the team died from Indian arrows. The survivors managed to reach the mainland, where the ship was captured by Guzman. But rumors of Pearl Bay reached Cortez.
The next expedition (1535) he led himself. His goal was to establish a colony on the shores of La Paz Bay. Three ships sailed north from Tehuantepec, and at the same time a land detachment under the command of Cortez left. For the construction of the colony, its settlement and defense from the Indians, a sufficient number of people were required, as well as horses, equipment and guns. There were not enough ships for transportation. Then they decided to carry out the crossing in several stages, while reducing the duration of shuttle flights to a minimum. Cortez's detachment safely passed the territory occupied by Guzman, and went to the agreed place, just opposite the southern tip of California. The ships also arrived on time.
Some of the people, together with Cortez, went to the pearl bay, the rest set up camp under the command of Andres Tapia. But the ships did not come for them: on the way back the ships were swept away by the strongest storm. When the only surviving ship returned to La Paz Bay, Cortez went out in search of the other two. One of them had to be flooded, the second was repaired. Meanwhile, in the desert California, which Cortez called the island of Santa Cruz (the fact that this is a peninsula became known later), the colonists were dying of hunger and disease, although food was plentiful nearby - whales frolicked in the sea nearby.
Back home, Cortez received a letter from Francisco Pizarro asking for help. In Peru, two ships moved under the command of Hernando Grihalva, carrying Pizarro soldiers, horses, cannons and provisions. One ship returned to Mexico, and the second, commanded by Grihalva, sailed west to the Moluccas. On the way, the captain and his men were killed by the mutinous crew, and the ship reached the spice islands, albeit without Grihalva.
Cortez decided to establish a permanent link between Mexico and Peru. The commercial route, organized by him in 1537, began on the coast of Oaxaca, then the ships made a stop in Panama, and from there went to the port of Callao near Lima. Gold, silver and copper were exported from Peru, and ropes, incense, dressed animal skins and dried fruits were transported in the opposite direction.
In 1536 Guzman was arrested. Now there was no need to fear the capture of ships. Cortes again turned his gaze to the north: in 1537 he organized an expedition under the command of Andres Tapia, which managed to pass along the mainland coast of the Gulf of California to 29 ° N. sh. and discover the island of Tiburon.
In 1539, Cortes sent another expedition to California: three ships under the command of Francisco Ulloa left Acapulco. One ship, damaged by the storm, turned back, two others explored the entire Gulf of California to the mouth of Colorado. Ulloa climbed several kilometers upstream and saw mountains in the distance. Then he walked along the eastern coast of California to La Paz Bay, thereby proving that this land is a peninsula, rounded its southern tip and went along the Pacific coast to 28 ° N. sh. A huge bay jutting into the land between the mainland and California, Ulloa called the Sea of \u200b\u200bCortez.
FIGURES AND FACTS
Main character: Hernan Cortez, Spanish conquistador
Other characters: Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain; Nuño Beltran de Guzman, President of the Royal Audience; expedition chiefs Alvaro Saavedra, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, Hernando Grihalva, Francisco Ulloa and others.
Time of action: 1524-1539
Route: To the Spice Islands, along the coast of North America, to Peru
Purpose: Search for the Northwest Passage, entrepreneurship
Meaning: The discovery of California and a number of island groups in the Pacific Ocean