When Hernan Cortes came before God for his particular judgment he, no doubt, would have had many sins to answer for. However, the ending of the Aztec Empire, and the massive human sacrifices that was its core institution, would not have been among them.
What he and his men accomplished was simply astounding from a military point of view against odds so high as to verge on the ridiculous.
Hernan Cortes, one of the most fascinating of the Great Captains of History! I have always thought these words from Lepanto were perfectly applicable to him:
But a noise is in the mountains, in the mountains, and I know
The voice that shook our palaces – four hundred years ago:
It is he that saith not ‘Kismet’; it is he that knows not Fate;
It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey in the gate!
Cortes was a Crusader. Always greedy for gold and lands and titles, he was no less greedy for the conversion of souls to Christ. He pleaded with the Spanish Crown to send out priests who loved not wealth and ease, but who would meekly preach the Gospel and bring the souls of the Indians to Christ. As a ruler he stressed fair treatment of the Indians, and it was noted at the time that although he often came into conflict with Spanish settlers, the Indians usually liked and respected him, and looked to him for protection. Endlessly resourceful and endlessly optimistic, he pulled off the equivalent of a military miracle and helped establish the foundations of a new civilization.
Las Casas, who was ever the foe of Spanish mistreatment of the Indians, had nothing but good to say of Cortes:
“And as to those who murmur against the Marqués del Valle [Cortés], God rest him, and who try to blacken and obscure his deeds, I believe that before God their deeds are not as acceptable as those of the Marqués. Although as a human he was a sinner, he had faith and works of a good Christian, and a great desire to employ his life and property in widening and augmenting the fair of Jesus Christ, and dying for the conversion of these gentiles… Who has loved and defended the Indians of this new world like Cortés?… Through this captain, God opened the door for us to preach his holy gospel and it was he who caused the Indians to revere the holy sacraments and respect the ministers of the church.”
