Legacy and Impact of Hernan Cortes, Essay Example

Introduction

In response to the question on whether the historical legacy and impact of Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes was positive or negative, it appears that after conducting extensive research that the answer is in the negative for several important reasons. First of all, as the undisputed leader of the Spanish conquistadors in 1521, Cortes was directly responsible for introducing highly contagious diseases like smallpox and measles into the Aztec population of which the indigenous natives had no resistance or immunity; second, Cortes was responsible for the total destruction of a civilization of which he “carelessly destroyed in the conquest of the Aztec Empire” (Koeller, The Conquest of the Aztecs, 1521); and third, the actions of Cortes and his fellow conquistadors opened the door for another catastrophe in the land of the Incas.

The Impact of Disease on the Aztecs

Although Cortes and his men were greatly outnumbered by the tens of thousands of Aztec Indians living in the area of the Yucatan Peninsula, he did have a huge advantage which at first may not even have crossed his mind as a way to “thin out the herd.” This advantage was human contagious diseases that the Spaniards had unknowingly brought with them from Europe. As Buddy Levy points out in his monumental book Conquistador: Hernan Cortes, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs, prior to the arrival of the conquistadors in Mexico, circa 1519, the land of the Aztecs was free of contagious diseases like smallpox, measles, and diphtheria, but once the Spaniards came into physical contact with the Aztecs, these and other diseases ran rampant and infected the entire Aztec population (290). Of course, the Spaniards were relatively immune to these diseases, due to building up a resistance over the course of their lives in Europe.

For example, in the major city of Tenochtitlan, smallpox killed as estimated 200,000 Aztecs and in succeeding years spread into other parts of what is now Mexico, thus eliminating millions of indigenous native Indians. Thus, Cortes was responsible for one of the first cultural holocausts in Western history via the spread of contagious diseases in the New World.

The End of the Aztec Empire

With the help of these diseases, Cortes and his band of some six hundred Spaniards managed to conquer (or better yet utterly destroy) an entire empire that came into being some one hundred years before the arrival of the conquistadors. As John P. Schmal notes, within a span of about two years, Cortes and his fifteen hundred Spanish soldiers, many of whom were well-armed with superior weaponry (the Aztecs did not possess firearms nor gunpowder) and were trained in European military tactics, “triumphed over the great empire against insurmountable odds” (The Destruction of the Aztec Empire).

As a military leader, Cortes, a “master of observation, manipulation and strategy,” gradually built an army “of indigenous resistance against the Aztecs, while professing his good intentions toward Montezuma” (Schmal, The Destruction of the Aztec Empire),

the king and absolute ruler of the Aztec empire who like all of his subjects were fooled into believing that the original intentions of Cortes were for the good of the Aztecs. The apex of the destruction of the Aztecs occurred in May of 1521 when Cortes with “nine hundred Spaniards, one hundred and eighteen crossbows and harquebuses (i.e., muskets), fifteen bronze cannon, thirteen brigantines (i.e., square-rigged sailing ships), and as many as 150,000 Indian warriors” recruited from other native tribes, laid siege against the great city of Tenochtitlán which endured from May 26 to August 13, 1521. Of course, the Spaniards were aided by rampant diseases and the lack of food and water among the Aztecs (Schmal, The Destruction of the Aztec Empire).

Finally, after intense and bloody fighting among Cortes and his men and the Aztec warriors, the city of Tenochtitlán was conquered by the Spaniards. Some historians have estimated that more than 250,000 Aztecs were killed during this assault on the great city with an untold number of women and children perishing from a lack of food and water and the effects of smallpox and measles (Schmal, The Destruction of the Aztec Empire).

One other reason for the destruction of the Aztecs was their belief that the Spaniards were white gods, for “according to legend, the god Quetzalcoatl, characterized by light skin, red hair, and light eyes, was supposed to return to earth,” and when the Spaniards arrived, the Aztecs greeted them as their heaven-sent superiors which helps to explain why they did not fight back in the beginning. Thus, when the Aztecs refused to be converted to Christianity, the Spaniards “assumed they were rejecting the word of God and killed or enslaved them” (Koeller, The Conquest of the Aztecs, 1521) by the tens of thousands.

Future Catastrophes

Within a decade of the fall of the Aztec empire in 1521, the King of Spain and the Roman Catholic Church gave their blessings to other explorers and conquistadors to travel to the New World in search of gold, silver, and other precious materials to help fill the treasury of the Spanish monarchy. The next important Spanish explorer to do so was Francisco Pizarro who took his men into the very heart of the Incan empire which existed in what is now the nation of Peru in South America and came into prominence some one hundred years before the Aztecs. Much like the Aztecs, the Incans were master builders, artists, and craftsmen, and constructed massive cities that served mostly as religious centers for their polytheistic beliefs in many gods.

In 1532, Pizarro and his conquistadors utterly destroyed the great Incan empire, due in part to believing much like the Aztecs that the Spaniards were gods from heaven. But compared to Cortes, Pizarro was a ruthless and cold-hearted conquistador whose only true goal was to sack the Incan empire of its treasures and send them back to Spain to make his country one of the wealthiest in Europe during the early years of the sixteenth century.

One example of Pizarro’s ruthlessness is when he captured Atahualpa, the king of the Incans, and held him for ransom with the promise to free him once he handed over the Incan treasure. However, after doing so, Atahualpa was killed on the orders of Pizarro who then proceeded to sack the Incan empire and leave behind tens of thousands of dead and dying Incans. After this cultural catastrophe, more Spanish explorers arrived in South America and what is now Mexico to establish the Spanish Empire which grew in size until about the middle of the nineteenth century by seizing lands to the north (now known as Texas and California). Of course, as a result of the growth of the Spanish Empire in North America, numerous wars broke out which plunged Mexico and its people into two centuries of conflict.

 Conclusion

Thus, the impact of Hernan Cortes is heavily in the negative. As Levy notes, the “clash of empires,” being the Spanish Empire and that of the Aztecs, “culminated in the bloody siege of Tenochtitlan” which to this very day is considered by most historians as the “longest and costliest continuous single battle in history with estimated casualties of 200,000 human lives” (6). Overall then, Hernan Cortes “left behind a considerable legacy” after his death in 1547, based on cruelty, deception, and murder, and as Levy reminds us, Cortes “remains, like his arch-enemy Montezuma, enigmatic and misunderstood, sometimes revered, sometimes reviled, but always controversial” (328).

Works Cited

Koeller, David. “The Conquest of the Aztecs, 1521.” Web. 1998. <http://www.thenagain.info/webchron/americas/cortes.cp.html>.

Levy, Buddy. Conquistador: Hernan Cortes, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs. New York: Bantam Books, 2009. Print.

Schmal, John P. “The Destruction of the Aztec Empire.” Web. 2013. <http://www.hispanicvista.com/hvc/Opinion/Guest_Columns/112204schmal.htm>.