The Conquest of New Spain Book

An absolutely astonishing first-hand account of the conquest of Mexico, written some decades after the conquest took place.

It's fair to say that Díaz del Castillo portrays the conquistadores in a more favourable light than they generally receive. Some of the worst excesses during the conquest are either played down or not mentioned at all. He clearly resents some of the criticisms levelled by Bartolomé de las Casas. Díaz does though portray the conquistadores' unbridled greed, often in strongly critical terms, and several times describes how local caciques were variously bullied, tortured and even hanged by conquistadores seeking to extort gold. Elsewhere, he describes how people who rebelled against Spanish rule were enslaved, and were branded on the face to show their status to all.

Not that pre-Columbian Mexico was exactly Utopia, and through Díaz's eyes we can catch a few glimpses of this unique culture. He describes his shock and revulsion at the heaps of skulls collected from human sacrifices, and of how, as is well-documented, the various city-states of Mesoamerica were probably the only highly organised societies ever to have institutionalised cannibalism.

"The Indians ate human flesh in the same way as we do that of oxen, and there were large wooden cages in every town in which men, women and children were fattened for their sacrifices and feasts."

Both the Spanish invaders, and the Mesoamericans, seem to have treated women appallingly, and caciques who wanted to curry favour with the Spaniards frequently gave them women as presents. Interestingly, homosexuality and transgenderism seem to have been accepted. Díaz was outraged:

"Most of the Indians…were given to unnatural lusts. To such a dreadful degree was this practised, that men went about in female garments, and made a livelihood by their diabolical and cursed lewdness".

Clearly, in this aspect of Mesoamerican society, most modern readers would be less judgemental than Díaz!

The most dramatic sections of the book are those which feature the conquistadores' arrival in Mexico, and after their initial expulsion, the titanic 93-day battle for the city. Díaz memorably describes his astonishment at his first sight of the great city of Mexico, "…it is impossible to speak coolly of things which we had never seen nor heard of, nor even could have dreamt of…", "…everything was so charming and beautiful that we could find no words to express our astonishment.", but he continues, "…there is not a vestige of this remaining, and not a stone of this beautiful city is now standing." A hint of regret perhaps, from Díaz, for the destruction he helped bring about?

The 93-day siege of the city, and its grim outcome, is told in compelling form. No-one knows how many Mexicans perished during their ferocious resistance, despite their having weapons of only very limited effectiveness. Some historians estimate the number in six figures. Díaz describes the aftermath in sobering terms. Not that the Spaniards always had things their own way, and one incident, in which 62 captured Spaniards were sacrificed at the top of the Mexicans' main temple - a sight clearly visible to their comrades - seems to have left Díaz with what we would now recognise as a form of PTSD. Cortés comes over as a truly remarkable figure; repulsively greedy and cruel, utterly ruthless, determined and single minded; a risk taker to the point of recklessness; and a skilled dissembler who cleverly exploited rivalries between the Mesoamericans to add native allies to his army.

Really there is so much I could quote from this account, but my review would go on for ever. The book has its weaknesses. It is at times repetitive, and the last quarter meanders into political machinations at the Spanish court, but the conquest itself was one of the most amazing, and momentous, events in history. Reading this you get the impression that, looking back, Díaz himself could scarcely believe that they pulled it off.