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Conquest of the Incas

I wrote about the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs five years ago during the early days of this blog. The conquistadors have since remained a fascination of mine, but I haven’t had a chance to go bac…

Ultimate authority over Spanish citizens in the New World technically lay with King Charles V back in Spain, but the de facto control over his people was limited by distance, communication time, the general Wild West frontier nature of the region, and the fluid relationships between crown and subject often mediated by potential gains for both. Like the rest of these guys, he had a crazy and checkered past: he was the son of Jews who converted during the Spanish Inquisition, fled his hometown because there was a warrant for his arrest due to a brawl, fought in the Italian Wars and personally helped capture a French King, completely stole his last name from a local aristocrat to make himself sound noble, and, of course, went to the New World for a shot at unfathomable fame and fortune. If we evaluate President FDR, we have to consider how many of his administration’s policies were determined and enacted by cabinet members and assistant secretaries, etc., but Cortes and the Pizarros were on the ground, in the thick of things, surrounded by mere hundreds of questionably loyal men, and they were more often than not the ones making the decisions that resulted in success or failure, in life or death.

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