We see the Spanish conquest of Mexico unfold earlier than our eyes within the graphic story of Bernal Díaz
The true story of the conquest of New Spainis among the most annoying books you’ve gotten ever learn. You know the way it ends: the Spanish conquistadors (conquerors) defeat the Aztecs and colonize Mexico. However nobody else within the e book – the Aztecs and the mercenaries who slaughter them – is aware of the consequence as a result of it’s written chronologically, like a journey diary. The author was himself one of many mercenaries – a person named Bernal Díaz del Castillo (1492–1584), who writes within the first individual.
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Brave combat
He participated in most or the entire greater than 100 battles and skirmishes that took the Spanish drive, only some hundred in quantity, to the capital and led to their final victory over the king of the Aztecs, Montezuma. The Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés, a person in his thirties, was capable of win solely because of expertise: the Aztecs fought with arrows, darts, slings and daggers manufactured from obsidian, a form of stone. They wore cotton padded for defense.
The Spaniards carried weapons, cannons, crossbows and metal swords. Additionally they had over a dozen horses, unknown to the New World and delivered to America by Cortés in 1519. As well as, Cortés and his males knew about navy drill and coaching. The Aztecs had no expertise of recent battle.
Consequently, though they have been brave – says Díaz – they may not stop the small group of Spanish troopers from shifting slowly however certainly in the direction of Mexico Metropolis (then referred to as Tenochtitlan) after an expedition which lasted greater than 600 km. and took 9 months.
On the finish of it, they forcibly entered the palace and held the king hostage for months whereas having fun with his hospitality. Montezuma was killed on June 29, 1520, apparently by his personal individuals who have been offended and ashamed of the humiliation their nation had suffered.
Díaz wrote a number of a long time after the beginning of the combating with the goal of correcting what had been written in regards to the expedition earlier than him. Earlier works by Spanish writers had criticized the brutality of the conquistadors. Díaz writes that Cortés (whom Díaz admired) and his males did what they needed to do.
Díaz was in his twenties when he took half within the expedition and wrote the e book 5 a long time later when he was 70 years previous. However he in all probability took some notes as a result of the small print he supplies are fairly vivid. Of the ruler of the Aztecs, Díaz tells us:
“The Tall Montezuma was about 40 years previous, of excellent top, well-proportioned, understated and light-weight, and never very darkish, though he had the standard Indian complexion. He didn’t put on his hair lengthy however simply above his ears, and he had a brief black beard, effectively fashioned and skinny. His face was slightly lengthy and cheerful, he had stunning eyes, and in his look and manners might categorical kindness or, if vital, critical calm. He was very neat and clear and took a shower each afternoon. He had many wives as mistresses, daughters of chiefs, however two authentic wives who have been full Caciques, and only some of his servants knew that. Not like others, Montezuma was “with out sodomy” (one wonders how Díaz knew this).
Held captive
One of many causes the Spaniards have been capable of distance themselves from their actions was that the Aztecs practiced human sacrifice. Díaz describes the scene: “There have been braziers smoking their incense, which they name copal, by which they burned the hearts of three Indians whom they’d sacrificed that day, and all of the partitions of this sanctuary have been so spattered and lined with blood that they and the bottom too have been black. Certainly, the entire place stank abominably… the partitions of this sanctuary have been additionally so lined with blood and the bottom bathed there a lot that the stench was worse than that of any slaughterhouse in Spain. That they had supplied this idol 5 hearts of the sacrifices of the day.
Díaz will not be a scholar, however merely an infantryman, and provides us no concept why the Aztecs did what they did. He merely studies what he sees. There are web page after web page of particulars that put us within the heart of the motion and maintain us captive as all of us – the Conquistadors, the Aztecs, Montezuma and us, the reader – transfer in the direction of that inevitable and unjust finish.
Aakar Patel is a columnist and translator of non-fiction in Urdu and Gujarati.