It is a mistake to pass Cortés off as a pirate. According to his own lights, he was a Christian knight...

>It is a mistake to pass Cortés off as a pirate. According to his own lights, he was a Christian knight, whom God had generously granted an opportunity to become another Alexander the Great. With a tiny army, Hernán Cortés was prepared to conquer any kingdoms that might be encountered in the west, for glory, God, and gold. Not only was he misunderstood by later men; he was far from typical of his own time and place. He was a considerable cut above all other Spanish conquistadores, especially murderous swineherds like Almagro or Pizarro.

>Although ruled by his ambition for personal glory, he was an honest patriot to his country. Determined to conquer a kingdom for himself, he was still entirely loyal to Carlos I, a king he had never seen—more loyal, in fact, than that suspicious Hapsburg ever really understood.

>Cortés could be brutal—no gentle soldier in that age could have long survived—yet he instinctively preferred to avoid bloodshed whenever possible. He was crafty and could be murderously cruel—but his cruelty invariably derived from policy. Cortés would employ any amount of force to succeed, but when he was victorious he was genuinely magnanimous to his enemies. He was pragmatic and coolly accepted the world—and yet few men who ever lived have been so stubbornly single-minded in pursuit of a goal.

>Cortés cannot be weighed against anachronistic values; he can only fairly be measured against his times. His faith must be seen against the fanatic Catholicism of sixteenth-century Spain. His ambition must be put against the bursting vanity of the Renaissance, when fame was everything. His brutality and cruelty must be compared with the treacheries and tortures accepted everywhere in Europe, and his morality balanced against the cesspool of amorality and intrigue that Italianate politics was making from Fernando's Aragon to Tudor England.

APOLOGISE

>t. Spaniard

Who says he was a pirat? anglos? not even in latin america portrait Cortes has a fucking pirat since most of his conquest were in land and not in sea like Fr*ncis Dr*ke.

>killing children is okay beucase it was X amount of yeras ago

Ok.

Ye

>ywn learn about the giant empire covering mexico and the USA ruled by the sons of cortès because, like anyone with great potential and ambition, he stick to his ideals

he came dancing across the water...

Don't talk about based Francis Drake like that fool. Cortes wasn't a pirate, more like a warlord.

Cortes is fast becoming my favorite historical figure. The more he kills the savages the more I love him. I want a movie with glorious realism staring Javier Bardem.

The irony of this post must be lost on you.