Person
Hernán Cortés
Spanish captain who led the expedition from Cuba to Mexico in 1519 and wrote letters to Charles V about it.
- Also known as
- Hernando Cortés, Cortes
- Wikidata
- Q7326
According to Bernal Díaz del Castillo
- involved in Tlaxcala takes Cortés as an ally
- involved in Cuauhtémoc tortured over the hidden gold
According to Francis Augustus MacNutt
- involved in Cuauhtémoc hanged
According to Hernán Cortés
- involved in Retreat from Tenochtitlan, 1520
- involved in Moctezuma taken into the Spanish quarters
Cortés wrote his Letters of relation of Hernán Cortés to Charles V, so what they say about him is his own account. He reached Tenochtitlan in November 1519.
Connections 9
intervened in
- Cortés enters Tenochtitlan 8 Nov 1519 led the Spanish party Primary record 1
involved in
- Tlaxcala takes Cortés as an ally According to Bernal Díaz del Castillo Primary record 2
- Cortés enters Tenochtitlan Primary record 1
- Fall of Tenochtitlan Primary record 3
-
Cuauhtémoc hanged
According to Francis Augustus MacNutt
Scholarship & press
4
MacNutt reports the version in Torquemada, who copied a Mexican manuscript, and Bernal Díaz's statement that both men protested their innocence and the Spaniards disapproved.
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Retreat from Tenochtitlan, 1520
According to Hernán Cortés
Primary record
1
The figures and the loss of the gold are Cortés's account.
- Moctezuma taken into the Spanish quarters According to Hernán Cortés Primary record 1
- Cuauhtémoc tortured over the hidden gold According to Bernal Díaz del Castillo Primary record 5
authored
-
Letters of relation of Hernán Cortés
Primary record
1
The introduction of MacNutt's edition dates the Second Letter.
Timeline 1 date
- 8 Nov 1519 Hernán Cortés intervened in Cortés enters Tenochtitlan
Proof 5 sources
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Letters of Cortés: the five letters of relation to the Emperor Charles V, volume 1 (English translation by Francis Augustus MacNutt, 1908; the Second Letter is dated 30 October 1520), G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London (scan on the Internet Archive), 1908.
Primary record
I spent from the eighth of November, 1519, to the beginning of May this present year.
We found that over one hundred and fifty Spaniards were killed in this fight, forty-five mares and horses, and more than two thousand of the Indians who had aided the Spaniards
many of the Spaniards and horses were killed, likewise, and all the gold, and jewels, and many other things which we carried, and all the artillery, were lost
and thus all was as completely quiet as though nothing had happened; and this continued all the time I kept Montezuma prisoner
The Second Letter was dated from Segura de la Frontera, October 30, 1520.
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The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo, volume 1 (English translation by John Ingram Lockhart, 1844; text via Project Gutenberg #32474), Project Gutenberg (from the translation published in London, 1844), 1844.
Primary record
they believed we had been sent by their enemy Motecusuma, who had often before used fraud and treachery to enter their country for the sake of plunder
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Letters of Cortés: the five letters of relation to the Emperor Charles V, volume 2 (English translation by Francis Augustus MacNutt, 1908; the Third Letter is dated 15 May 1522), G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London (scan on the Internet Archive), 1908.
Primary record
from the day when we laid the siege to the city, which was the 30th of May of the said year, until it was taken, seventy-five days passed
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Letters of Cortés, volume 2: MacNutt's notes and appendices (1908), G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London (scan on the Internet Archive), 1908.
Scholarship & press
who, without more ado hanged the three Princes that night on a Ceiba tree
Bernal Diaz states that both Quauhtemotzin and Tetepanquezatl protested their entire innocence, and that all the Spaniards disapproved of the execution
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The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo, volume 2 (English translation by John Ingram Lockhart, 1844; text via Project Gutenberg #32475), Project Gutenberg (from the translation published in London, 1844), 1844.
Primary record
Cortes, not willing that such a suspicion should any longer lie upon him, or that he should afterwards be called to an account on this score, at last consented that both should be put to the torture. Boiling hot oil was then applied to their feet
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