The conquest of Mexico, an extensive empire with a numerous and warlike population, by a mere handful of Spaniards, is one of the romances of history. Indeed, a writer of fiction would scarcely have dared to invent so improbable a story. Even the bravery of the Spaniards, and the advantage of superior arms would not have sufficed to give them the victory, had it not been that Mexico was ripe for disruption."

Describes the life and travels of Cortes who captured the Aztec ruler Montezuma and got a fortune in gold.

In Los Angeles, Jennifer Narody is having a series of disturbing dreams involving eerie images of a lady in blue. She doesn't know that this same spirit appeared to leaders of the Jumano Native American tribe in New Mexico 362 years earlier, linked to a Spanish nun who had the power to be in two places simultaneously. Meanwhile, journalist Carlos Albert stumbles upon a nearly forgotten seventeenth-century convent in Spain founded by this same legendary...

In 1519, Hernán Cortés arrived on the shores of Mexico with a roughshod crew of adventurers and the intent to expand the Spanish empire. Along the way, this brash and roguish conquistador schemed to convert the native inhabitants to Catholicism and carry off a fortune in gold. In Tenochtitlán, the City of Dreams, Cortés met his Aztec counterpart, Montezuma: king, divinity, ruler of a complex and sophisticated civilization with fifteen million...

Tells the stories of Cortes' subjugation of the Aztecs in Mexico and Pizzaro's subjugation of the Incas in Peru.

"For hundreds of years, the history of the conquest of Mexico and the defeat of the Aztecs has been told in the words of the Spanish victors. Miguel León-Portilla has long been at the forefront of expanding that history to include the voices of indigenous peoples. In this new and updated edition of his classic The Broken Spears, León-Portilla has included accounts from native Aztec descendants across the centuries. These texts bear witness to the...

"On November 8, 1519, the Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortés first met Montezuma, the Aztec emperor, at the entrance to the capital city of Tenochtitlan. This introduction--the prelude to the Spanish seizure of Mexico City and to European colonization of the mainland of the Americas--has long been the symbol of Cortés's bold and brilliant military genius. Montezuma, on the other hand, is remembered as a coward who gave away a vast empire and touched...

A biography of Mexico's conqueror.