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.”
To those who talk about the “technological advantage:” How many rounds of ammo did a Spanish soldier carry? I’m guessing it was a bit less than 25,000…;)
In some ways the Aztecs had better tech than the Spaniards had. The Spanish quickly adopted the quilted cotton armor of the Aztecs, which provided better protection than their metal armor, wasn’t as hot as the metal armor in tropic conditions and didn’t rust. As to firearms, after the initial shock wore off they provided little utility in man to man fighting, with pikes and swords being much more effective.
When reading Bernal Diaz de Castillo’s accounts, one thing that is striking is how widespread the practice of human sacrifice was, complete with cannibalism (eating the hearts of your foes.) Indeed he describes so many being killed that historians initially dismissed this an exaggeration or outright falsehood meant to justify the Spanish conquest. But later archaeology made it clear that the Aztecs themselves bragged of their sacrifices, and rooms full to the brim of the remains of the sacrificed have been found. Thus in recent years the woke narrative has shifted from “they probably didn’t sacrifice anyone, or if they did it was very limited” to “who are we to say that the proud natives must our colonial western ideals of human sacrifice being wrong?”
As for technological advances, while guns were good, what really helped the Spanish were horses. While the natives of Central America may not have understood how guns worked, they could understand that they were ultimately just a more effective bow in terms of killing, and ammo was limited. But they had never seen anything like men fighting on horseback. This often caused havoc to their morale. Even after they became used to the sight of cavalry, the Spanish were still able to use high mobility tactics that were impossible without horses, meaning that not only were the natives not able to respond in kind but they could not expect that these tactics would be used in the first place.
Of course, the real decisive factor was Cortes’s tremendous abilities in negotiation and statecraft.
Cortes: not the kind of man you wanted to see on the other side of the battlefield.
He simply refused to admit he was beaten…so he won.
Another excellent, stirring article! The words of Chesterton in particular. I get the same kind of spiritual thrill from them as from the last little scene of Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto: Christ coming in judgment, by way of His ministers, bringing the long night of paganism to an eternal end.