Hernán Cortés
Hernán Cortés destroyed the Aztec empire with a few hundred Spaniards and tens of thousands of indigenous allies. Born in Medellín in Extremadura in 1485 into a family of minor gentry, he studied law briefly at Salamanca, abandoned it, and sailed for Hispaniola in 1504. He took part in the conquest of Cuba under Diego Velázquez and became a wealthy landowner and municipal official. Velázquez appointed him to lead an expedition to the mainland in 1519 and then revoked it; Cortés sailed anyway with about six hundred men, eleven ships and sixteen horses. He founded Veracruz and had its council appoint him, which gave him a legal position independent of Velázquez, and he beached his ships to prevent retreat. His decisive asset was politics rather than arms. He acquired an interpreter, La Malinche, a Nahua woman given to him as a slave, and used her to negotiate with peoples the Aztecs had subjugated. The Tlaxcalans, after fighting him, allied with him against Tenochtitlan and supplied the great majority of his army. He entered the city in November 1519, seized Moctezuma, and ruled through him for months. While he was away confronting a force sent to arrest him, Pedro de Alvarado massacred nobles at a festival, and the city rose; the Spanish were driven out with heavy losses on the Noche Triste in 1520. He returned, besieged Tenochtitlan for ninety-three days with smallpox raging inside it, and destroyed it in August 1521. He was progressively stripped of authority and died in Spain in 1547, litigating.
- Lived: 1485 CE – 1547 CE
- Nationality: Spanish
- Roles: conquistador, military_leader, governor
