Granada"; "the porters such as in Castile do carry
burdens"; the great temple, of which "no human tongue is able to
describe the greatness and beauty ... the principal tower of which is
higher than the great tower of Seville Cathedral"--all reminded Cortes
of his native Spain. "I will only say of this city," he concludes,
"that in the service and manners of its people their fashion of living
is almost the same as in Spain, with just as much harmony and order;
and considering that these people were barbarous, so cut off from the
knowledge of God and of other civilised people, it is marvellous to see
to what they have attained in every respect." Thus New Spain was marked
out of all the dominions of Spanish Indies as that which was in closest
relationship with the mother country.

The conquest and subjection of New Spain synchronised curiously with
the profound crisis in, and the conquest and domination of, Old Spain
by its own king, a governing genius and leader of men almost as great
as was the obscure Estramaduran squireling who was adding to the newly
unified crown of Spain that which was to be its richest jewel in the
West. When Cortes penned his first letter to the future Emperor and his
mad mother in July, 1519, telling them of the new found land, Spain was
in the throes of a great convulsion. The young Flemish prince had been
called to his great inheritance by the death of his grandfather,
Ferdinand the Catholic, and the incapacity of his Spanish mother, Queen
Juana. Charles had come to the country upon which, in a financial
sense, the burden of his future widespread empire was to depend, with
little understanding of the proud and ardent people over whom he was to
rule. He spoke no Spanish, and he was surrounded by greedy Flemish
courtiers dressed in outlandish garb, speaking in a strange tongue, and
looking upon the realm of their prince as a fat pasture upon which,
locust like, they might batten with impunity. The Spaniards had frowned
to see the great Cardinal Jimenez curtly dismissed by the boy sovereign
whose crown he had saved; they clamoured indignantly when the Flemings
cast themselves upon the resources of Castile and claimed the best
offices civil and ecclesiastical; they sternly insisted upon the young
king taking a solemn oath that Spain in future should be for the
Spaniards; and when tardily and sulkily they voted supplies of money
the grant was saddled with many irritating conditions.

When the lett