Ambition, a History by William Casey King

Author:William Casey King
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2013-11-07T16:00:00+00:00

The Emperour received Cortes magnificially, and to give him the greater honour he went & visited him at his owne lodging. The Emperour being in a readines to passe into Italy, to be ther crowned with the Emperiall crowne, Cortes went in his maiesties company vnto the Citie of Saragoza, whereas his Maiestie calling to remembrance his worthie service, and valor of his person, made him Marques del Valle de Huaracac, according to his desire … and Captaine general of the newe Spaine, with all the provinces and coast of the south sea, chiefe discoverer and inhabiter of the same coaste and landes, with the twelfth parte of all that after that time shoulde be discovered, for a sure inhabitance to him and his discendentes, he offered unto him also the habite of the order of knighthoode of Saint Iames, which Cortes refused, because there was no rent giuen with the habite…. He likewise gave unto Cortez all the kingdome of Michuacan but hee had rather had divers other townes which he demanded, many other great favours and rewards he received at the Emperours hands.50

In this remarkable passage, Cortés accompanies his king on his journey to Rome to be crowned Holy Roman Emperor. The implication is clear that the king of Spain is making this journey largely because of Cortés’s discoveries. Remarkably, this failed law student from a poor, though hidalgo family, not only receives the favor of the king but refuses honors bestowed and makes demands of his sovereign, demands that are then granted. Cortés’s discoveries have legitimated his ambition.

The question remains, given his rise, was Cortés ambitious or simply the passive recipient of God’s favor? If rising to a higher station than “God hath geven or appoynted” was the sixteenth-century English definition of ambition, what can one make of the rise of a sixteenth-century Spanish captain?

We are unsure of the English view of Cortés’s rise (though we might suspect that if God did not like Catholics much, God was unlikely to favor them, unless, perhaps, to serve as a model for English emulation). The Spanish sources written by those who were not in the employ of Cortés make it clear that he was a profoundly ambitious man with all the negative associations that one finds in English sources.51 In his Conquest of New Spain, Bernal Díaz del Castillo denounces Cortés’s assumption of noble rights that were not his due.52

The criticism of Cortés’s ambition begins early in Díaz’s account. Díaz marvels at the ways in which, almost simply through the act of coming to the New World, Cortés was transformed. He writes, “It was here in Havana that Cortes began to form a household and assume the manners of a lord.”53 Throughout Díaz’s work there are numerous accounts of Cortés’s inappropriate assumption of noble rights with the imputation that his rank was substantiated neither by wealth nor by birth, pretense without substance, self-made and unnatural. For example, when Cortés is made a general, Diaz writes: “He began to adorn himself and to take much more care of his appearance than before.

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