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History of the Conquest of Mexico/History of the Conquest of Peru
One of America's greatest and most highly regarded historians, William Hickling Prescott set a lofty literary standard for historical writing with his books on Spain's emperors and explorers. Prescott avoided the dry, names-and-dates style of standard histories and instead brought the past alive, telling with drama and vigor the stories of the men who came face to face with the unknown, and the numerous brushes with death they survived as they carved out an empire in the New World. History of the Conquest of Mexico & History of the Conquest of Peru unites in one volume for the first time two of Prescott's best known and most powerful works. The books detail with accuracy and emotional resonance the arrival of Spain's conquerors to Mexico and Peru, and the wars of conquest whose outcomes remain the cause of contention even in the present day. The History of the Conquest of Mexico focuses on Hernan Cortes, a notary from Spain's Extremadura region, arriving at the edge of the Aztec empire with 500 men, determined to spread Christianity and enlarge the domain of Charles V of Spain. Within the space of a few years Cortes found himself fending off rivals from Spain and warring against enraged Aztecs, against whose superior numbers Cortes struggled against the odds to maintain his garrisons. Prescott's biographer Harry Thurston Peck called The History of the Conquest of Mexico "one of the most brilliant examples which the English language possesses of literary art applied to historical narration." Conquistadors Pizarro and Almagro are the protagonists of The History of the Conquest of Peru. Prescott tells of their brutal overthrow of the Incas, and the wars between the two of them afterward. Another of Prescott's biographers, Donald G. Darnell, called the book, "an immensely readable history." Using a wealth of documentation as raw material, Prescott turned this blend of viewpoints into a heroic and tragic epic of Spain's efforts to dominate Central and South America. The Histories
1324 pages, Paperback
Published August 15, 2000
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About the author
William Hickling Prescott
577 books40 followersUnited States historian. Born to a prosperous family, Prescott graduated from Harvard University in 1814 but was prevented by poor health and eyesight from a career in law or business. His friends, including Washington Irving, led him to his life's work: recounting the history of 16th-century Spain and its colonies. He is best known for his History of the Conquest of Mexico (1843) and History of the Conquest of Peru (1847), for which he made rigorous use of original sources, and which earned him a reputation as the first scientific U.S. historian.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
July 7, 2014
Did you know the Conquistadors denuded the Mexican territory of trees to resemble their province in Spain? Did you know the Aztecs had floating islands to grow their vegetables? Did you know that civilization lost the skills of the Aztecs to weave feathers into clothing? These little asides show the depths of research that Prescott unearthed for his histories. The personalities of Cortez and Pizarro as well as their Aztec and Inca counter-parts are so well depicted that that become familiar figures and not just some name memorized in grade school history class. Very absorbing depictions of the wars between natives and the Spaniards. A great book and well worth the time demanded of its length.
October 21, 2020
I read this book on my Nook app. This is one of those very old books that has been transcribed to an e-book format by a community of volunteers and made available for free. As with most of the books that are transformed in this fashion, there are a few places where a punctuation mark or a few characters seems to be garbled, but this version seems to have fewer of these anomalies than some other books of this type that I have read.
The books – there are two separate books in this one volume – are well written and mostly held my interest despite the over 1600 pages. The part I found hardest to get through was the Table of Contents, which in a book of this type you can’t just jump over as in many e-books.
In each case, Prescott begins with a description of the surrounding country before the Spaniards arrived (or at least when they first got there). Mexico sounded beautiful, and I wonder how much of this natural beauty is left now. I think probably the natural beauty of Peru has held up better, but that is mostly because the difficult terrain of the Andes makes it more difficult to get in there and tear it up. Even so, the Spaniards managed to do a lot of damage to the farmland and roads during their wars.
After the description of the country, he goes on to describe the way of life in the two countries before the conquest. Both appear to have had quite advanced civilizations, but for Prescott, as for the Spaniards he was writing about, any admiration he feels for them is countered by their practices of human sacrifice. In both cases, the people sacrificed were the enemies they had captured in battle, and they kept up a constant state of warfare to find new victims to sacrifice. The Aztecs also practiced cannibalism, eating the people they sacrificed, or at least their priests did. The Inca also indulged in some cannibalism, but not nearly as extensively as the Aztecs. They only ate their victims in special circumstances.
The stories of subduing the two countries were very similar in many ways. At one point, Cortes, the conqueror of
Mexico and Francesco Pizarro, the conqueror of Peru, who seem to be from the same town, got together in Spain after the conquest of Mexico and before the conquest of Peru and talked about how it was done, so it seems Pizarro got his ideas about capturing the enemy leader from Cortes.
Cortes went to Mexico with about 500 men and some cannons, horses, and guns. We were taught in school that the big factor in his success was that he “burned his bridges behind him” so his men could not get cold feet and retreat before they were done. Actually, it seems that he only burned maybe one bridge on his way to Mexico City. What he actually did that made such a difference was to burn most of the boats they came in and send the others away out of range so the soldiers didn’t sail off back to Cuba where they had started from.
Cortes and his men fought with several of the Aztecs’ neighboring tribes on their way to Mexico City. With their guns and cannons they defeated the most formidable of them and finding that this tribe and some of the others were not exactly best friends with the Aztecs, they enlisted their help in bringing them down. So, when they came to fighting the hundreds of thousands of Aztecs, they had not only their cannons and guns (which by that time were beginning to run out of ammunition) but also tens of thousands of these other native people to offset the massive difference in the size of their armies.
Cortes and his followers did not attack the Aztecs at once, however. They went into the capital city fairly peacefully as the guests of Montezuma, their ruler. They stayed in one of his palaces for a while and received presents from him. Finally, they took him prisoner and wouldn’t let him go. In a confusing scenario, it was pretended that he was staying there voluntarily. The Spaniards don’t appear to have mistreated him otherwise, but after several weeks, the people attacked the palace, Montezuma was wounded, and he died.
Shortly after this, the Spaniards escaped the city, fighting their way out, and returned to the coast, where they encountered another group of Spaniards who had come to take over their conquest. They mostly had a tougher time fighting their own people, but once the leaders had been killed, they persuaded the new men to join them. And they got new supplies.
They returned to the capital, taking their native allies with them, and after an extended period of fighting during which much of the capital was destroyed, were finally able to proclaim themselves the ultimate victors and begin converting the Aztecs to Christianity.
The story in Peru was similar, except that it happened a few years later and there were less than two hundred would-be-conquerors who went in initially. They were nearly defeated at first by the contrary winds and tides along the coast of Peru; they were attempting to sail against a strong north-flowing current and had all kinds of trouble just getting to land. Then, to even get to anybody to fight, they had to climb right on up into the Andes (not an easy job). They were very much aided by the recent death of the Inca chief. Two of his sons were contending for the rulership of the empire. Pizarro and his men took advantage of this and captured first the younger of the two sons, who had been having the most military success, and later after they had killed him, his older brother, the rightful heir, who they were going to use to control the people.
As with Cortes, Pizarro had more trouble out of his own countrymen than he did with the natives. There was not just one Pizarro; there was a whole family of brothers (mostly illegitimate – some of them were not full brothers, and some were more honorable and more talented than others) who at various times took leadership in various parts of the conquered country. Even after Francesco Pizarro was killed, successive waves of people were sent by the Spanish government to be sure the conquistadors were kept in order and to be sure they got their cut. Again, some of these were more successful than others.
The books – there are two separate books in this one volume – are well written and mostly held my interest despite the over 1600 pages. The part I found hardest to get through was the Table of Contents, which in a book of this type you can’t just jump over as in many e-books.
In each case, Prescott begins with a description of the surrounding country before the Spaniards arrived (or at least when they first got there). Mexico sounded beautiful, and I wonder how much of this natural beauty is left now. I think probably the natural beauty of Peru has held up better, but that is mostly because the difficult terrain of the Andes makes it more difficult to get in there and tear it up. Even so, the Spaniards managed to do a lot of damage to the farmland and roads during their wars.
After the description of the country, he goes on to describe the way of life in the two countries before the conquest. Both appear to have had quite advanced civilizations, but for Prescott, as for the Spaniards he was writing about, any admiration he feels for them is countered by their practices of human sacrifice. In both cases, the people sacrificed were the enemies they had captured in battle, and they kept up a constant state of warfare to find new victims to sacrifice. The Aztecs also practiced cannibalism, eating the people they sacrificed, or at least their priests did. The Inca also indulged in some cannibalism, but not nearly as extensively as the Aztecs. They only ate their victims in special circumstances.
The stories of subduing the two countries were very similar in many ways. At one point, Cortes, the conqueror of
Mexico and Francesco Pizarro, the conqueror of Peru, who seem to be from the same town, got together in Spain after the conquest of Mexico and before the conquest of Peru and talked about how it was done, so it seems Pizarro got his ideas about capturing the enemy leader from Cortes.
Cortes went to Mexico with about 500 men and some cannons, horses, and guns. We were taught in school that the big factor in his success was that he “burned his bridges behind him” so his men could not get cold feet and retreat before they were done. Actually, it seems that he only burned maybe one bridge on his way to Mexico City. What he actually did that made such a difference was to burn most of the boats they came in and send the others away out of range so the soldiers didn’t sail off back to Cuba where they had started from.
Cortes and his men fought with several of the Aztecs’ neighboring tribes on their way to Mexico City. With their guns and cannons they defeated the most formidable of them and finding that this tribe and some of the others were not exactly best friends with the Aztecs, they enlisted their help in bringing them down. So, when they came to fighting the hundreds of thousands of Aztecs, they had not only their cannons and guns (which by that time were beginning to run out of ammunition) but also tens of thousands of these other native people to offset the massive difference in the size of their armies.
Cortes and his followers did not attack the Aztecs at once, however. They went into the capital city fairly peacefully as the guests of Montezuma, their ruler. They stayed in one of his palaces for a while and received presents from him. Finally, they took him prisoner and wouldn’t let him go. In a confusing scenario, it was pretended that he was staying there voluntarily. The Spaniards don’t appear to have mistreated him otherwise, but after several weeks, the people attacked the palace, Montezuma was wounded, and he died.
Shortly after this, the Spaniards escaped the city, fighting their way out, and returned to the coast, where they encountered another group of Spaniards who had come to take over their conquest. They mostly had a tougher time fighting their own people, but once the leaders had been killed, they persuaded the new men to join them. And they got new supplies.
They returned to the capital, taking their native allies with them, and after an extended period of fighting during which much of the capital was destroyed, were finally able to proclaim themselves the ultimate victors and begin converting the Aztecs to Christianity.
The story in Peru was similar, except that it happened a few years later and there were less than two hundred would-be-conquerors who went in initially. They were nearly defeated at first by the contrary winds and tides along the coast of Peru; they were attempting to sail against a strong north-flowing current and had all kinds of trouble just getting to land. Then, to even get to anybody to fight, they had to climb right on up into the Andes (not an easy job). They were very much aided by the recent death of the Inca chief. Two of his sons were contending for the rulership of the empire. Pizarro and his men took advantage of this and captured first the younger of the two sons, who had been having the most military success, and later after they had killed him, his older brother, the rightful heir, who they were going to use to control the people.
As with Cortes, Pizarro had more trouble out of his own countrymen than he did with the natives. There was not just one Pizarro; there was a whole family of brothers (mostly illegitimate – some of them were not full brothers, and some were more honorable and more talented than others) who at various times took leadership in various parts of the conquered country. Even after Francesco Pizarro was killed, successive waves of people were sent by the Spanish government to be sure the conquistadors were kept in order and to be sure they got their cut. Again, some of these were more successful than others.
February 11, 2013
The book, is itself divided into two, one Mexico and the other for Peru. I pushed myself to read the conquest of Peru, that being i do not enjoy history of the Incas demise. for the beginning of both story, Prescott makes sure, the reader understand the society and landscape. Starting each story with detailed writing of the cultures, geography and society during the Conquest. this generally take up about a third of all the story but gives the value to the whole of story.
The book thereafter is generally describes as a narrative, each page a story coming to life as if you breathed and moved in that world, you can believed the temples and livelihood of activity sprawling in the city, sacrifices and are so often. It captivated me. I was entertained for every page and word read, the poems and the description had a fantasizing effect. i deeply enjoy the history and the drama that played out,, through the gruesome acts and the valor displayed by "savages and Spanish alike"
The book thereafter is generally describes as a narrative, each page a story coming to life as if you breathed and moved in that world, you can believed the temples and livelihood of activity sprawling in the city, sacrifices and are so often. It captivated me. I was entertained for every page and word read, the poems and the description had a fantasizing effect. i deeply enjoy the history and the drama that played out,, through the gruesome acts and the valor displayed by "savages and Spanish alike"
November 22, 2020
The author, sustaining serious eye damage, can barely see. Yet when we read his work, he clearly does see.
gone-gave-away
February 25, 2024Did you read Discovery & Conquest of Mexico by Bernal Diaz? He rode with Cortez.
One of the best books I have ever read.
Have not read this one.
Would be interested in comparisons by people that have read both.
One of the best books I have ever read.
Have not read this one.
Would be interested in comparisons by people that have read both.
Read
November 18, 2024DNF. Not useful to me.
June 18, 2011
The delight in these two histories is their storylines -- Cortes' victory over the Aztecs reads like Star Wars. The Castilians are amazed by the great floating city, horrified by human sacrifice, and dazzled by the displays of flowers and feather garments. The Aztecs, on their part, gaze in wonder on the horses and the knights' steel armor, while secretly dreading the return of their divinity, Quetzlcoatl. The Pizarros seem as if they are reenacting The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,: greed, deceit, murder, and revenge. While these are available in many other books -- Bernal Diaz was my favorite -- Prescott's emphatically 19th-century style is perfect for all of this:
"The water was darkened by swarms of canoes filled with Indians, who clambered up the sides of the causeway and gazed with curious astonishment on the strangers. And here, also, they beheld those fairy islands of flowers, overshadowed occasionally by trees of considerable size, rising and falling with the gentle undulation of the billows. At the distance of half a league from the capital, they encountered a solid work or curtain of stone, which traversed the dike. It was twelve feet high, was strengthened by towers at the extremities, and in the centre was a battlemented gate-way, which opened a passage to the troops. It was called the Fort of Xoloc, and became memorable in aftertimes as the position occupied by Cortes in the famous siege of Mexico." (p. 296)
The histories are disturbing reflections of their times. Prescott viewed both war and slavery with horror: "The laurel of the hero -- alas for humanity that it should be so! -- grows best on the battlefield." (p. 1093) and his sharpest criticisms of both Cortes and the Pizarros comes from their failure to prevent the natives from falling from the oppressive regimes of the Aztec and Incas to the serfdom under the Spanish repartamientos. Yet the books were finished in 1843 and 1847, while slavery polarized United States politics and the Mexican War, which shocked U.S. Grant, was just one year away.
The primary sections of the histories end with brief and interesting biographical portraits of the men whose writings constitute Prescott's chief sources, and the footnotes offer (in Spanish) lots of quotations from eye-witnesses.
"The water was darkened by swarms of canoes filled with Indians, who clambered up the sides of the causeway and gazed with curious astonishment on the strangers. And here, also, they beheld those fairy islands of flowers, overshadowed occasionally by trees of considerable size, rising and falling with the gentle undulation of the billows. At the distance of half a league from the capital, they encountered a solid work or curtain of stone, which traversed the dike. It was twelve feet high, was strengthened by towers at the extremities, and in the centre was a battlemented gate-way, which opened a passage to the troops. It was called the Fort of Xoloc, and became memorable in aftertimes as the position occupied by Cortes in the famous siege of Mexico." (p. 296)
The histories are disturbing reflections of their times. Prescott viewed both war and slavery with horror: "The laurel of the hero -- alas for humanity that it should be so! -- grows best on the battlefield." (p. 1093) and his sharpest criticisms of both Cortes and the Pizarros comes from their failure to prevent the natives from falling from the oppressive regimes of the Aztec and Incas to the serfdom under the Spanish repartamientos. Yet the books were finished in 1843 and 1847, while slavery polarized United States politics and the Mexican War, which shocked U.S. Grant, was just one year away.
The primary sections of the histories end with brief and interesting biographical portraits of the men whose writings constitute Prescott's chief sources, and the footnotes offer (in Spanish) lots of quotations from eye-witnesses.
January 9, 2008
I can't say that I have 100% faith in the accuracy of the accounts of this book. It's likely been improved upon and I am hoping that the marketing functions of this website introduce me to such a text. What I found the most interesting was that according to this book, the things the Spaniard clerics found most offensive were the apparent similarities between the Mayan religion and Christianity. For example the Mayan water god was (and still is, I've heard) represented by a cross, quetzelcoatl was a virgin birth and that the Mayans practiced baptism of a sort. These were taken as proof of the insidiousness of the Mayan belief system. Otherwise, I never knew that the Mayans published codex format books using fibers of the aloe plant as pulp and leaves as covers. Nearly all of these codices (known as "maps")were destroyed by the Spaniards. It made me consider reading The Popol Vuh, which is currently still in the cue.
February 24, 2008
No cover but imagine a beige hardback somewhat disintegrating around the edges - this is because it's the original edition of two books.
It's fascinating to read this account, made even more interesting by little facts such as the idea of malaria being caused by "bad air" (mal - air - ia)
I also have a much more recent Mexico history, "Fire And Blood" which provides a more modern view, but Prescott's account is rich in detail of the fighting between the Aztecs and the invading Conquistadores and I'm glad to have it as a reference.
It's fascinating to read this account, made even more interesting by little facts such as the idea of malaria being caused by "bad air" (mal - air - ia)
I also have a much more recent Mexico history, "Fire And Blood" which provides a more modern view, but Prescott's account is rich in detail of the fighting between the Aztecs and the invading Conquistadores and I'm glad to have it as a reference.
March 19, 2018
I've been reading this book since 1970 - longer than the actual conquest.
My goal is to someday get it finished. I used to enjoy reading the 16th century Spanish footnotes but I doubt that I can do that anymore.
Now where did I put that book?
Update - November 2011: I found the book and looked at it.
Dang...lost it again when I moved...in a box somewhere.
Still on my list to read - 2018
My goal is to someday get it finished. I used to enjoy reading the 16th century Spanish footnotes but I doubt that I can do that anymore.
Now where did I put that book?
Update - November 2011: I found the book and looked at it.
Dang...lost it again when I moved...in a box somewhere.
Still on my list to read - 2018
April 16, 2012
This book changed my Life. iwas nine years old, and precocious. My Uncle Al and my Aunt Carol gave me this for Chrsitmas. Prescotts magnificent chronicles of the conquest of Mexico and the ( less interesting " Conquest of Peru, filled me with asene of what good history could be. ( A year later, the ygave me a one-volume abridgemment of Gibbon. Thank you both so much.
July 26, 2013
Prescott was a true historian and explorer. This work is about as full as a history of the conquest of Mexico and Peru could be. Thankfully it is not just facts and dates, but a story of conquest, murder, betrayal, and gold. It makes for a great read.
December 15, 2009
The history of Peru is fascinating, but good luck powering through; it's quite dense. Prescott's research and clear sightedness astounds on every page.
July 27, 2011
Great read on Hernando Cortez and the conquest and eventual destruction of the Aztecs.
May 19, 2012
Conquest of Mexico is one of my all-time favorites
May 27, 2018
I just finished Conquest of Mexico and loved it. I am ready to read it again and take notes of people and dates through out this fascinating book!
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews