Unlike the armies of Rome, the forces who seized control of the American colonies that formed the basis of the Spanish Empire were private soldiers and aristocrats’ sons seeking their fortunes.
The Conqueror’s Inspiration
The tradition of the freelance knight-errant was a popular and romantic image in Early Modern Spain. Legends of El Cid and the heroes-for-hire who helped drive the Muslims from Spain still resonated with the Christian Spanish people. Reconquista images of the Moor-slaying apparitions of Saint James, or Santiago, were adapted to the campaigns in the Americas.
The Cause Celebre
The Caribbean Islands of Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rica and Jamaica were attracting floods of young up-and-comers to settle on plots of land, harness native labour, and spread Christianity. Merchant vessels riding the wind currents north and east from Havana made it possible for sightings and occasional landings to take place, usually on or around the Yucatan Peninsula. Through these, rumor of a powerful, rich kingdom ruled by ‘Montezuma’ began making their way to the Caribbean colonies, where the land wealth was starting to run short. This aroused the ambitions of a young Hernando Cortez, and he organized a group of soldiers of fortune and sailed for Mexico.
Cortez and the Aztecs
Cortez was the original, and in many respects the quintessential conquistador. The chronicle by his junior officer, Bernal Diaz, shows him preaching first and fighting later in some instances. He prioritizes destroying idols, and executes canny politicking, bringing together the cities who resented Aztec rule, winning their loyalty by defeating other, lesser enemies for them. He always prefaced battle with the offer of conversion to Christianity and submission to Spain, and then pursued those who refused with all the fury of a Crusader of legend. Both this example and the sheer wealth his campaign generated secured his position as governor of Mexico.
The Conquistador Phenomenon
With the Aztec Empire’s heartland in Cortez’s clutches, his officers often went forth into other parts of the Americas, following trade routes or rumours of Golden Cities and Fountains of Youth. Cortez himself or the Crown would issue permits for the conquistador leader to organize a fighting force and embark for parts unknown. Merchants of means, enticed by the New World’s wealth would often put up capital to raise forces to conquer new dominions.
The Conquests Southward
Pedro Alvarado, Cortez’s right-hand man and notoriously vicious, was sent South and promptly accomplished the conquest of the Highland Maya. Conversely, with an official charter to conquer the Yucatan, Francisco de Montejo floundered for a decade in the jungle for an ultimately incomplete victory.
The Inca and South America
Mercantile backing also carried Francisco Pizarro south from Panama, which he had traveled to via the Caribbean with Franciso Nunez de Balboa to conquer, south into Peru, and the conquest of the Inca Empire. This success accomplished, other conquistadors, notably Pizarro’s rival Diego Almagro, forged further south into Chile and Argentina, though in the immediate period achieved little.
North America
Other famous expedition, that of Juan Ponce de Leon in 1512, who named Florida and sought the Fountain of Youth there. Cabeza de Vaca followed up his discovery, and in a search for gold, traveled right across Florida, through Texas and to the Pacific before returning overland to Mexico. The two together began the charting of what would eventually become the United States.
The Conquistadors were an unlikely force to build an empire. Whatever else they may have been, they were early vanguards of free enterprise, and opened the Americas up for everything they would someday become.
Bibliography
Michael Wood, Conquistadors, BBC Worldwide Ltd, 2000
George E. Stuart and Gene S. Stuart, The Mysterious Maya, National Geographic Society, 1977.
Loren McIntyre, The Incredible Incas, National Geographic Society, 1975.
