Book Review of the Conquest of New Spain

Review

Well this isn't exactly a novel, or even a book of fiction, although I am certain that parts of it are fictionalised. It is, however a fascinating account of the Spanish conquest of the Americas through the eyes of a footsoldier.

The fact that it is a footsoldier telling the tale is what makes this precious. Del Castillo has little need to embellish the story, he isn't writing for glory or political gain, he is an old man writing what he remembers. He has fiddling to gain from information technology, he has little education and it shows. The text is plain, but the story is fascinating, he is not above reproaching his sometime military leaders and pointing out mistakes.

The fact that he seems to have little reason to lie kind of gets you lot on the side of the Spanish throughout, yes the decimated a civilization, and in this book it is the Aztecs who are killed, merely the Aztecs are bloodthirsty bastards, the gruesome human being sacrifices are depicted vividly, and at that place was no manner that the Spanish could conquer them by themselves coming beyond the ocean on crappy boats. The Aztecs are decimated because the Spanish rally all the other people of the area who positively hate the Aztecs, who regularly invade them, cede their people to their gods and make them pay tribute, merely a small amount of the Spanish army consists of bodily Spaniards. Information technology is a fascinating antidote to the Leyenda Niegra that later colonising powers created around the Spanish conquest of America as a mode to say "hey nosotros just sit down in the plantation and watch y'all piece of work while we have a Gin and Tonic, the Castilian were worse". Yeah but the Aztecs weren't nice.

Concluding Form

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Written at eighty-four years of age on his encomienda estates in Guatemala, Díaz wrote his work to defend the common conquistador history of the conquest. He wanted to provide an alternative to the disquisitional writings of Bartolomé de Las Casas who emphasized the cruelty of the conquest and besides the hagiographic biographers of Hernán Cortés, among them Francisco López de Gómara, who he believed to be downplaying the role of the 700 common footmen who were instrumental in bringing downwards the Aztec empire. Accusing these chroniclers of speaking the truth "neither in the first, nor the middle, nor the terminate", Díaz vociferously defended the actions of the conquistadors, while at the same fourth dimension bringing the elements of humanism and honesty to his eyewitness narrative, famously summarised in his famous throwaway line; "we went there to serve God, and besides to become rich".

Díaz is non always charitable to Cortés. As with many of the other soldiers involved in the conquest, Díaz plant himself among the ruins of Tenochtitlan little richer than when he had arrived, a state for which many of his comrades blamed Cortés, accused by some of taking far more than his previously-agreed 'fifth' of the Aztec treasury as boodle. Certainly, the compensation many conquistadors received, both in land and gold, was a poor return for the months of marching and difficult fighting across United mexican states and Anahuac. Other readings of The Conquest of New Espana have noted that Díaz was one of a number of relatives serving with Cortés of Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, governor of Cuba and mortal enemy of Cortés, many of whom ended upwardly plotting against the conquistador. Díaz may have deliberately played down this human relationship because it played a more than prominent role than he pretends in the text; his involved relationship with Cortés and his captains suggests that he may accept been the representative of the Velázquez faction, and was 1 of the few who remained loyal to Cortés to the terminate. There has fifty-fifty been speculation among historical sources that Díaz's business relationship was entirely fictional. But disregarding some of his possible omissions, Díaz's narrative is widely acknowledged to be a true ane, and that his attitude to Cortés expresses no more ambiguity towards the conquistador's legacy than information technology has since inspired among many others.

The Conquest of New Spain is a bright account of i of the well-nigh startling episodes in colonial history, and Díaz stands "among chroniclers what Daniel Defoe is amidst novelists".

A little bit on Human Sacrifice:

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Source: https://1001reads.blogspot.com/2008/08/18-bernal-diaz-del-castillo-conquest-of.html

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