rds, from the first the
genius of Cortes made the end inevitable. When nothing remained of
Tenoctitlan and its people save some blackened walls and a few
thousand wretches reduced to skeletons by hunger, the capture of
Guatimozin while attempting to escape in a canoe, made an end of the
fighting in August, 1521. Cortes promised honorable treatment to the
fallen king, but before long he put him and some of his companions to
the torture in order to force the discovery of hidden treasure. This
brutality proved ineffectual, but taken together with the subsequent
hanging of Guatimozin upon an unproved charge of conspiracy against
the Spaniards, it constitutes the blackest blot upon the fame of
Cortes. It is fair to add, however, that he was not by nature a harsh
man, and that he was driven to the commission of these cruelties by
the clamor of his soldiers who were infuriated at finding so little
treasure in the devastated city. With the capture of Mexico the
fortunes of Cortes culminated. He was appointed Captain-General of the
land of New Spain in October, 1522, and the next few years he occupied
in rebuilding the city, and in bringing the surrounding territories
under the rule of Spain. Wearying of these comparatively peaceful
occupations, in 1524 he undertook an expedition of discovery and
conquest to Honduras, upon which he was absent until May, 1526, when
he returned after enduring much hardship and suffering, to find that
enemies had been plotting against him in Mexico. This discovery and
the desire of clearing himself with the emperor, caused him to
determine to visit Spain where he arrived in May, 1528. Charles the
Fifth received him with much favor creating him Marquis of the Valley
of Oaxaca and military commander of New Spain, and endowing him with
vast estates in the lands that he had conquered. In 1530 he returned
to Mexico accompanied by his second wife, a lady of good family whom
he had married while in Spain. Very soon he entered on a course of
expeditions of discovery and maritime adventures which involved him in
great pecuniary losses and a quarrel with the viceroy Mendoza; and in
1540 he sailed a second time for Spain to obtain redress from the
emperor. But Cortes was no longer the power that he had been; his
youth was gone and his work was done, therefore his prayers and
remonstrances were treated with cold neglect. For nearly four years he
pressed his suit and in February, 1544, we find him writing a lett