Survivors in Mexico by Rebecca West

Author:Rebecca West
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2008-05-31T00:00:00+00:00

Hernán Cortés

MEXICO WAS DEEP in bad dreams; and that was why Cortés had a value for it. We know very well what sort of man he was, for there are many contemporary accounts of him, of which the most notable were written by his chaplain and secretary, Gómara, a self-conscious literate, and one of his captains, a Spanish Harry Hotspur, Bernal Díaz, who, such is the injustice of this earth, was by far the better writer of the two. These make easy reading today, and they and the supporting testimony were magnificently used a quarter of a century ago by a Spanish writer, Salvador de Madariaga, a civil engineer turned man of letters and diplomat, who was Spanish ambassador to Washington in the early thirties and worked for disarmament between the two World Wars with a magnificent voluntary renunciation of perfect historical understanding. In the most gentlemanly way he gave Providence its chance; a gentleman is always bound to give the hypothesis that his adversary is a gentleman too a chance. Cortés’s contemporaries and Madariaga both convey his valuable quality: his freedom from bad dreams. It is delightful to think of him; though he was physically undistinguished, unremarkable in feature, and though better in body, being tall and well built, with broad shoulders, he had the bowed legs of the cavalryman. A faithful visualisation of the conquest must allow for the fact that many of the conquistadores were bow-legged; they lived on horseback and the widespread disease of rickets made leg bones flimsy.

But Cortés possessed what seemed to his followers a great attraction, for it was rare: restraint, a man with no abstract passion for he practised it when it was necessary. It was not natural to him, he was contentious by nature, as he showed by his readiness to engage in lawsuits. But in the trials of every day, he abstained from blasphemy and bit back his violent temper, though his veins on his forehead were swelling, and at the peak of his anger he used to choke. In his youth he had squandered large sums on gorgeous clothing for himself and his wife, but latterly he dressed with a simple elegance. When other men of his rank wore massive and many gold chains and large brooches and badges, he wore one slender gold chain and a small pendant holding a picture of the Virgin Mary; for he was fervently religious. His hands were bare but for one fine diamond ring. He liked a large meal at midday, but the food had to be simple, and he drank little wine and could starve when he was on the field. Yet it was very important to him that when he dined he should be waited on by four butlers and a full complement of pages, and that there should be splendid gold and silver plate on the table. He liked, as he put it, “to eat by trumpets.” For recreation he liked good-tempered gambling with dice, reading (for he was

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