Unlock The Secrets Of Historia Verdadera De La Conquista De La Nueva Espana 2 (Cronicas De America) Outlined By Bernal Díaz Del Castillo Provided As Publication Copy
was amazing to read a first hand account of events that took placeyears ago, Maudslay included translations of some of Cortez's letters to provide different perspectives of some battles, Those sections did not read as well as Castillo's narrative,
It would seem that "the Discovery and Conquest of Mexico" by Bernal Diaz Del Castillo, was the main source for Hancock's War God trilogy.
There was sufficient material that there could have been two more books in the series but perhaps with dwindling sales despite improved ratings the sequels have yet to emerge.
The passages on battles and killings went on at such length and even Castillo mentions tiring of telling it as the final fighting went on ninety days and nights.
For all the cultural differences between the natives and the Spaniards there were notable similarties in use of war, deceit, recognition for doing well, and treating women as chattel.
The Spaniards found it reprehensible that humans should be sacrificed but accepted females as spoils of war,
One can't totally blame attitudes in the European continent as my recent reading of "Istanbul" revealed advances made of treatment of women in thes.
One of the greatest stories in the history of the world! Anthony read this book in college and recommended it to me.
I read it during our flights to and from Iceland and loved it! It gives a first hand account of Cortes and his conquest over the Aztec empire and the defeat of Montezuma.
Translated from the diary of Bernal Diaz a solider who accompanied Cortes it creates vivid pictures and insight of the trials and successes of the Spanish.
This might be the most remarkable primary source there is,
Bernal Diaz was a conquistador who was present for the entirety of Spain's conquest of Mexico, Uniquely, he left us with a meticulous memoir detailing the experience, It was, to put it mildly, an utterly insane event,
The meeting of two great empires from two sides of the world is noteworthy, The fact that it occurred via a handful of greedy, crazy, bloodthirsty, utterly tenacious adventurers is maybe not surprising, The fact that a handful of these maniacs with limited information, resources, or even support from Spain set out to conquer the millionsstrong Aztec Empire is pretty wild.
That they then successfully did so is almost beyond belief a fact that was not lost on either the conquistadors or the Aztecs at the time.
This book is a captivating, strangerthanfiction story, a psychological study in greed and politics, and an anthropological treasure all in one.
It is a must read, Escrito varias décadas después de la conquista, siempre ha suscitado la admiración de quienes estiman notable que un Bernal Díaz ya anciano, recuerde tantos detalles con tantos colores.
Quizás no lo sea demasiado, pues la gesta que rememora fue lo máximo que logró en su larga vida, y en medio de tantas vicisitudes pudo forjar amistades con los compañeros que lo acompañaron a sus tres incursiones a la conquista de nuestro país, haciéndolos inolvidables, recordando los nombres, patrias, habilidades y fisonomías de algunos cientos de ellos.
Hernán Cortés, personaje vilipendiado, no sé si injustamente, por las mayorías, es aquí reconocido y admirado, como un Capitán de enorme valor, en quien reconozco como principales fortalezas la capacidad de leer y aprovechar las circunstancias de una civilización seguramente incomprensible para el común de los europeos, y por el empuje que tuvo, tal que “en todo trataba de imitar a Alejandro el Macedonio” y aún logró convencer a las voces de la prudencia de seguir adelante.
Pese a ello, era pésimo repartiendo botines y Bernal Díaz no deja de recriminárselo,
Alrededor de la mitad del libro, Tenochtitlán cae, luego de tres meses de sitio, en el que los sitiadores eran en realidad los sitiados, superados siempre, quizása, alimentados con no más que quelites, tortillas y chile, y en un terreno que les dificultaba cualquier movimiento.
Caída la metrópoli, se desploma también la suerte de Cortés, que en posteriores intentos no logra más que el desastre.
Tampoco pudo nunca gobernar el imperio que conquistó, a pesar de asumirse con tal derecho,
Un libro muy ameno, siempre que se trata de expediciones y conquistas, y no de actas, juicios, litigios y testimonios, narrado con la sencillez de un abuelo narrando anécdotas de su juventud.
No se permite divagar nunca más de unas pocas líneas, y eso se agradece, La belleza natural de ese territorio prístino no le merece la menor atención, y eso se extraña.
Minimiza dolorosamente las masacres de Cholula y del Templo Mayor, y eso se le puede reprochar, Like reading a novel, from the victors perspective, of course,
Author Bernal Díaz del Castillo was a soldier under Cortes, and he provides a vivid description of the Spanish landing in Mexico in.
Díaz was involved in various expeditions and skirmishes under other captains before joining Cortes for the long march and the big confrontation with Montezuma, which the author describes beginning about halfway through the book.
Of the authors reportage, the translator writes,
“Díaz introduces us into the heart of the camp, we huddle round the bivouac with the soldiers, loiter with them on their wearisome marches, listen to their stories, their murmurs of discontent, their plans of conquest, their hopes, their triumphs, their disappointments.
All the picturesque scenes and romantic incidents of the campaign are reflected in his page as in a mirror
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The lapse of fifty years before writing this account has no power over the spirit of the veteran, The fire of youth glows in every line of his rude history and, as he calls up the scenes of the past, the remembrance of the brave companions who are gone gives, it may be, a warmer coloring to the picture than if it had been made at an earlier period.
Time, and reflection, and the apprehensions for the future which might steal over the evening of life, have no power over the settled opinions of his earlier days.
”
Example one of Bernal Diazs most vivid descriptions,
“The great Montezuma descended from his litter, and these other great Caciques supported him beneath a marvelously rich canopy of green feathers, decorated with gold work, silver, pearls, and chalchihuites, which hung from a sort of border.
It was a marvelous sight, The great Montezuma was magnificently clad, in their fashion, and wore sandals of a kind for which their name is cotaras, the soles of which are of gold and the upper parts ornamented with precious stones.
”
In the end, its pagan idolatry, with human sacrifice, versus Roman Catholic mythology, with the imagined sacrifice of the Eucharist: a battle of religions, with the bonus of who gets to keep the gold.
I read this in college, We must just have been assigned the parts about Aztec ritual, . . I know we had a discussion about how much you can glean through the eyes of another nowhere near enough, but not nothing, and how to do our best to read through the cultural filters.
However, the later parts of the book I don't remember at all and suspect I never read,
If you're a writer and ever try to describe battle at all, you'd better read about the battle of Mexico.
I've never read ANYTHING that compares, from any era, any culture, The Mixteca put up one hell of a fight, It was no easy deal for Cortez, even with his,backup Indian army who were well experienced in fighting the Aztecs.
The author started writing this when he was over, made his fair copy of it at age, and wrote a preliminary note for it at age.
Five years later, he was dead,
Arguedas's "Deep Rivers" and Galeano's "Genesis Memory of Fire", which I recently read, both have an unmistakable bias against the Spanish conquistadores of the Americas during theth andth centuries.
Here, for a change, I listen to one of these conquistadores, for the author Bernal Diaz del Castillo was a Spanish soldier who served under
Hernando Cortes, conqueror of the Aztec empire based then in Mexico.
The events narrated here happened betweentowhen the author was in his mids,
For ayearold guy you will be amazed not by how much Diaz had forgotten noted in the translator's footnotes but how much he remembered of events which took place half a century before.
He was a wonderful storyteller, Some things I learned about life in that part of the world almostyears ago:
, the Indians/Aztecs practiced sodomy, human sacrifice and cannibalism, They open up the body while the poor victim is very much alive, scoop out his/her heart, and offer his/her stillbeating heart to their gods/idols in their temple.
The limbs they eat, the rest they throw away
, their own kind whom they intend to sacrifice and turn into their favorite dishes they first fatten up inside cages like they're domesticated pigs or cattle being prepared for slaughter
.
a patriarchal society, it seemed that women among the Indians had no role except do menial jobs, bear children and be given by their fathers as gifts to other men.
There was only one Indian woman here who sort of stood out from Diaz's entire narrative, She was given as a gift to Cortes who, in turn, gave her to his favorite officer, and who later acted as their interpreter in dealing with the Indians.
Fond of juicy gossips, Diaz didn't fail to mention that Cortes had a child by her later
, for the Spaniards, the way to get rich then was to go out there, discover new lands, conquer their people and get their gold in the name of the Spanish monarch.
Whatever they get the latter is automatically entitled to onefifth thereof, the socalled "Royal Fifth" and
, these Spanish adventurers would first try to befriend the native Indians, try to convert them to Catholicism and to make them vassals of Spain.
If friendly persuasion doesn't work, they subdue them by force of arms and take everything they want,
In the Historia verdadera de la conquista de la nueva Espana 2's blurb there is the claim that "the defeat of the Aztecs by Hernan Cortes and his small bad of adventurers is one of the most startling military feats in history.
" This could mislead. As if Cortes'or so Spanish soldiers were, by themselves, able to defeat the Aztecs numbering tens of thousands, Actually, several Indian tribes fought along Cortes andalthough Diaz was silent about thisdid most of the dying, I agree, however, that Cortes was a brilliant military leader: BRAVE he fought with his soldiers, got wounded and almost died several times, CUNNING he made Indians fight fellow Indians, outmaneuvered not only his Indian enemies but his Spanish enemies as well and LUCKY maybe because he was so damn brilliant that he became a living demonstration of the chess players' wellknown adage: "A good player is always lucky.
".
Bernal Diaz praised Cortes to high heavens but he likewise didn't mince words in implying that this great leader was also a thief or maybe Diaz was also praising Cortes as a good BUSINESSMAN.
An amusing anecdote he related towards the end of this book where, after the conquest of Mexico, the common soldiers like Diaz were grumbling about the very little share they will get of the booty:
"While Cortes was at Coyoacan, he lodged in a palace with whitewashed walls on which it was easy to write with charcoal and ink and every morning malicious remarks appeared, some in verse and some in prose, in the manner of lampoons.
One said the sun, moon, and, and earth and sea followed their courses, and if they ever deviated from the plane for which they were created, soon reverted to their original place.
So it would be with Cortes' ambition for command, He would soon return to his original humble condition, Another said that he had dealt us a worse defeat than he had given to Mexico, and that we ought to call ourselves not the victors of New Spain but the victims of Hernando Cortes.
Another said he had not been content with a general's share but had taken a king's, not counting other profits and yet another: 'My soul is very sad and will be till that day when Cortes gives us back the gold he's hidden away.
' It was also remarked that Cortes' fellow adventurer Diego Velazquez had spent his whole fortune and discovered all the northern coast as far as Panuco, and then Cortes had come to enjoy the benefit and rebelliously taken both the land and the treasure.
And other words were written up too, unfit to record in this story,
"When Cortes came out of his quarters of a morning he would read these lampoons, Their style was elegant, the verses well rhymed, and each couplet not only had point but ended with a sharp reproof that was not so naive as I may have suggested.
As Cortes himself was something of a poet, he prided himself on composing answers, which tended to praise his own great deeds and belittle those of Diego Velazquez, Grijalva, and Francisco Hernandez de Cordova.
In fact, he too wrote some good verses which were much to the point, But the couplets and sentences they scrawled up became every day more scurrilous, until in the end Cortes wrote: 'A blank wall is a fool's writing paper.
' And next morning someone added: 'A wise man's too, who knows the truth, as His Majesty will do very soon!' Knowing who was responsible for this a certain Tirado, a friend of Diego Velazquez and some others who wished to make their defiance clear Cortes flew into a rage and publicly proclaimed that they must write up no more libels or he would punish the shameless villanins.
"Many of us were in debt to one another, Some owed fifty or sixty pesos for crossbows, and others fifty for a sword, Everything we had bought was equally dear, "
For God, Country and King No, Then, and as always, it has always been about the gold, stupid, The Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Diaz Del Castillo was first published in, but was written overdecades following the events it describes, which begin in thes.
Diaz Del Castillo died in,
It is claimed to be a true history, written from the perspective of one who was there, part of the action, as Cortes and the Spanish Conquistadors ravaged New Spain, what is now Mexico and parts of South America.
It has been written with incredible attention to detail, although the author admits on several occasions that he can't remember the names of certain people or places.
But it is remarkable more for what he remembers than for what he can't quite recall,
He also claims frequently that records and accounts of events published by others are incorrect, driven by selfinterest, or deliberately misrepresentative, and that his records of events is a truth that can be relied on.
While this is indeed a fascinating record of historical events, it does become tedious and repetitious, and I admit that I skipped or skim read some of the final chapters because I was getting tired of it.
For this is a record of continuous fighting, of battles between the Spanish invaders, driven by a lust for more gold and other treasures, and the local Indian natives determined to protect their lands and cultures.
Battle after battle is described in fine detail, including numbers killed and wounded, detailing the tactics and brutal practices employed by both sides as they endeavoured to kill each other.
There was also plenty of political conniving by Cortes, trying to woo local Indian chiefs into more peaceful and cooperative and profitable arrangements, but negotiations were constantly marred by duplicitous behaviours.
This is a typical tale of colonial conquest, repeated so many times by expansionist nations, mostly Europeans, seeking to expand their empires and their coffers by venturing into the New World to exploit untapped natural and human resources.
The Spanish, driven by greed and a fierce passion for their Catholic monarch, did not respect the peoples of the lands they sought to conquer, mostly brown people, and were only interested in subjugation, exploitation and increasing their personal wealth.
They demeaned local religions and customs, deeming them to be the actions of heathens, and tried to impose their own brand of Christianity onto people they saw as clearly inferior.
They killed without compunction or mercy, took slaves for forced labour, including local women as virtual sex slaves,
Diaz Del Castillo presents this record from his perspective as a record of glory on behalf of the Spanish Empire, written with pride about the bravery and successes of the Spanish Conquistadors, but through any modern lens, there is no honour or glory here, only a record of brutality , lust and greed, and shame.
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