Imaginary interview with Hernán Cortés
by Charactorium · Hernán Cortés (1485 — 1547) · Military · Exploration · 6 min read
December 1547, at Castilleja de la Cuesta, near Seville. In a room hung with tapestries, an old man with a hard gaze receives his visitor; beyond the window, the light of Andalusia resembles nothing of that white, cruel light of the Mexican plateau. He agrees to speak one last time about the conquest that made him the most admired and most envied man of the New World.
—It is said that you destroyed your own fleet upon reaching the Mexican coast. How did you come to such an extreme act?
It was in 1519, shortly after founding Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz on that marshy coast of the Gulf. Understand my situation: I had set out against the will of Diego Velázquez, the governor of Cuba, and half my men already dreamed of returning to the island to seek forgiveness. As long as my ships floated at anchor, I did not have an army; I had a crowd ready to flee. So I had the ships beached and dismantled, kept the ropes, sails, and iron, and let the sea close the door behind us. From one day to the next, there was no retreat possible, no Cuba, no Velázquez: only the land before us, and an empire whose immensity we still did not know. A captain is obeyed through fear or necessity. I chose necessity.
As long as my ships floated at anchor, I did not have an army; I had a crowd ready to flee.
—In founding Veracruz, you knew you were disobeying the governor of Cuba. Why was this first city so important to you?
Because a city, in Castilian law, is a living thing: it has a cabildo, a council, magistrates, and that council can address the king directly. By laying the first stones of Veracruz, I ceased to be mere lieutenant of Velázquez and became the direct servant of the emperor Charles V. My own captains elected me captain general in His Majesty's name, and suddenly my disobedience was no longer mutiny but an act of loyalty to a higher authority. I was a hidalgo from Medellín, in Extremadura, without great lands; I knew that in the New World fortune does not wait for the prudent man. The entire conquest rests on this legal ruse: before conquering Tenochtitlan, I had to conquer my own legitimacy.
Before conquering Tenochtitlan, I had to conquer my own legitimacy.
—You advanced into a country whose language you did not speak a word of. How did you make yourself understood by the peoples you encountered?
Through a woman. She was given to me among other slaves, on the coast, and we baptized her Doña Marina; the Indians called her Malintzin. She spoke Maya and Nahuatl, the language of Mexico, and soon she learned enough Castilian so that my words passed from one mouth to another without being lost. Without her, I would have known nothing of the lords' intrigues, nothing of the ancient hatreds that divided these peoples. It was through her voice that I understood that the Tlaxcalans, after fighting us fiercely, hated the Aztecs enough to provide me with thousands of warriors. Chroniclers will never say enough how much a single well-placed person can decide the fate of an empire. She was my voice, my ear, and the thread by which I held an entire country.
She was my voice, my ear, and the thread by which I held an entire country.
—That alliance with the Tlaxcalans – some say it changed everything. What place do you give it in your conquest?
The first place, if I am honest, and braggarts lie when they claim that five hundred Castilians brought down an empire with their swords alone. We were a handful: about five hundred soldiers, sixteen horses, a few cannons. Tenochtitlan, for its part, had tens of thousands of warriors. The Tlaxcalans fed us, carried us, cared for us, and above all they marched alongside us by the thousands to the lake. The hatred they bore the Huey Tlatoani of Mexico was worth all our arquebuses. Malintzin sealed the pacts, I gave the crosses and promises, and they gave the blood and numbers. I wrote it plainly to the emperor: without that alliance, we would never have seen the city on the water again except as prisoners or corpses.
Braggarts lie when they claim that five hundred Castilians brought down an empire with their swords alone.
—Do you remember your first sight of Tenochtitlan and the welcome you received there?
One does not forget that. In November 1519, we went down the causeway that crossed the lake, and before us rose a city built on water, with temples, canals, a market larger than any square in Castile. My old soldiers wondered if it was not a dream from books of chivalry. Moctezuma came to meet us carried on a litter, supported by his great lords, walking under a canopy of green feathers laden with gold and silver; no one dared look him in the face. I saw a prince at the height of his glory receiving me as a guest. And I, I was already calculating how fragile that splendor was, and how a single man, well held, could deliver me an entire empire without my drawing my sword.
I saw a prince at the height of his glory, and I was already calculating how fragile that splendor was.
—A few days later, you made that emperor your prisoner. How do you justify such audacity?
We were a few hundred men in the heart of a city of two hundred thousand souls, on an island connected to the mainland by causeways that could be cut off with a single order. If I waited, we would be slaughtered in our quarters. So I took Moctezuma in his own palace, under the pretext of honoring him, and kept him with me. As long as he remained in my hand, his orders became mine, and the immense machine of his empire continued to turn for me without my touching a single one of its springs. It was paralyzing a body through its head. Many since have reproached me for this treachery toward a prince who had received me as a friend. But I had neither numbers nor walls; I had only audacity, and audacity does not forgive hesitation.
I had neither numbers nor walls; I had only audacity, and audacity does not forgive hesitation.
—Then came the night when everything nearly collapsed. What remains in you of that retreat from Mexico?
We call it the Noche Triste, the night of June 30, 1520, and the name suffices. The city had risen, Moctezuma was dead, and we had to flee along the causeways in the dark, under a hail of stones and arrows launched from canoes. The bridges were broken. My men, weighed down by the gold they had refused to abandon, fell into the water and drowned under the weight of their own greed. That night I lost nearly two-thirds of my men and almost all the treasure. It is said that in the morning, having reached the other side, I stopped under a great ahuehuete and wept. I will not deny it. But a captain weeps one night and counts his living in the morning; by dawn, I was already thinking of the return.
My men fell into the water and drowned under the weight of their own greed.
—How does one go from such a rout to the final capture of the city?
Through patience, which hardly matches my reputation. After the Noche Triste, I retreated to Tlaxcala, bandaged my wounded, renewed my alliances, and I understood that on that lake victory would be naval. I had brigantines built, thirteen ships dismantled and then reassembled at the water's edge, to cut Tenochtitlan off from its causeways and starve it. The siege lasted more than seventy days. Quarter by quarter, we advanced over the rubble, and the most beautiful city I had ever seen came apart before my eyes. On August 13, 1521, Cuauhtémoc, the last lord, was captured, and all was consummated. I did not conquer Mexico in a single stroke: I conquered it stone by stone, by destroying it.
I did not conquer Mexico in a single stroke: I conquered it stone by stone, by destroying it.
—Throughout those years, you wrote to the emperor. What were you seeking in those long letters?
To be believed, and to be protected. In the evening, under the tent or in the palace, I dictated to my secretaries those Cartas de Relación, my letters of relation to Charles V, between 1519 and 1526. I described the city on the water, its markets, its temples, and I exaggerated nothing: I wrote that it was the greatest and most beautiful city ever seen, and that the things done there seemed almost unbelievable. But these letters were not merely the account of a journey. They pleaded my case against Velázquez and my envious ones at court, who painted me as a rebel and a thief. Each page said: see what I give to the Crown, and make me king of what I have conquered, at least by a royal decree.
These letters were not the account of a journey: they pleaded my case against my envious ones at court.
—Here you are today back in Spain, far from the lands you conquered. What is your view of the fate that has befallen you?
A bitter one, I confess. I gave Charles V an empire larger than all of Castile, New Spain, and I built on the ruins of Tenochtitlan a new city, Mexico, with the very stones of the fallen temples. I was made governor, then gradually stripped of that power in favor of a viceroyalty and officials who had never seen the lake. I spent my last strength on thankless expeditions, Honduras, Baja California which I took for an island. And here I am at Castilleja de la Cuesta, near Seville, waiting for audiences that are grudgingly granted. If I could imagine being read a century from now, I would want at least this said: that everything I took, I first risked.
Everything I took, I first risked.
This imaginary interview was generated by artificial intelligence from sources documented in Hernán Cortés's profile. It dramatises what the figure might have said based on what we know about them, but does not constitute attested historical testimony. For primary sources and factual documentation, refer to the full profile.