Selivanov V.N. ::: Latin America: from conquistadors to independence

Chapter 1

The Spanish conquest of America, which is usually called the Spanish word “conquista,” began, as we believe, on December 25, 1492, on the day of the celebration of Catholic Christmas. It was on this day that 39 Spaniards, Columbus's companions on his first expedition, voluntarily remained on the island of Hispaniola (now Haiti), not wanting to return to Spain with their admiral. There is no doubt that these early European settlers were caught up in the gold rush. Spanish sailors saw plates and small ingots of gold among the local Indians; The Indians talked about the abundance of gold on the nearest islands and even about one of them - “all gold.” “...Gold was the magic word that drove the Spaniards across the Atlantic Ocean to America,” wrote F. Engels, “gold is what the white man first demanded as soon as he set foot on the newly discovered shore.”

Founded by the first Spanish settlers of the New World, the tiny, but fortified with a palisade and armed with cannons, the village of Navidad (Christmas) lasted only a few weeks, but even in such a short time its owners managed to discover the habits inherent in the detachments of Spanish conquistadors (conquerors) that followed them in all the lands of America . When Columbus returned the next year, he did not find any of the first 39 colonists alive. From the confused stories of the aborigines, a picture of the atrocities of the inhabitants of Navidad vaguely emerged. They robbed the Indians, extorted gold from them, and each took several women as concubines. Endless robberies and violence caused an outburst of justified indignation and led to reprisals against the Spaniards.

Further colonization of the newly discovered lands took place in a more organized manner. The number of those who wanted to take part in their conquest increased after Columbus brought some gold to Spain from his first voyage; news of it quickly spread throughout the country, turning, as usually happens, into a legend about incredible treasures beyond all imagination there, overseas. Many hungry people of all ranks and classes rushed in search of them, primarily bankrupt nobles, former mercenary soldiers, and people of dubious past. In 1496, Columbus was even able to found an entire city on Hispaniola - Santo Domingo. Santo Domingo became a fortified center, from where the Spaniards began the systematic conquest of the island, and then other islands of the Caribbean - Cuba, Puerto Rico, Jamaica. Already the first steps of the conquest on these islands with a large population were characterized by extreme cruelty. As a result of senseless extermination, death from diseases brought by Europeans, and brutal exploitation by the conquerors, within a few years there were almost no Indians left on the fertile islands of the Caribbean Sea. If at the time of their discovery by Columbus's expeditions about 300 thousand Indians lived in Cuba, 250 thousand in Hispaniola, 60 thousand in Puerto Rico, then in the second decade of the 16th century. almost all of them were completely exterminated. The same fate befell the majority of the population of the remaining West Indian Islands. Historians believe that the first stage of the Spanish conquest of America, the scene of which were these islands, brought the death of a million Indians.

However, in the first years of the Conquest, when Spanish captains scoured the waters of the Caribbean Sea and discovered numerous islands one after another, only sometimes approaching the shores of the American mainland, but not yet knowing about the very existence of a huge continent, the conquerors dealt with Indian tribes located on primitive communal stages of development. The Spaniards did not yet know that they would soon have to face huge Indian states with a clear social organization, a large army, and a developed economy. True, sometimes the conquistadors received vague information about the proximity of a certain country in which they do not know the account of gold, as well as about another mysterious country, immensely rich in silver, where the White, or Silver, king rules.

The first conqueror of a large Indian state - the Aztec State, located where Mexico is now located - happened to be Hernan Cortes. At first glance, this impoverished hidalgo did not stand out in any way in the crowd of conquistadors who rushed overseas in pursuit of luck and gold. Perhaps he only had more audacity, cunning, and cunning. However, later the qualities of an extraordinary military leader, a clever politician, and a skillful ruler of the country he conquered were revealed in him.

In February 1519, a flotilla of 11 caravels under the command of Cortes sailed from the coast of Cuba. There were not even a thousand people on board the flotilla, but they were armed with arquebuses and falconets spewing fiery death, still unknown to the inhabitants of the country where the conquistadors were heading, they had steel swords and armor, as well as 16 monsters never seen by the Indians - war horses.

At the end of March, the Spanish ships approached the mouth of the Tabasco River. Having gone ashore, Cortes, according to the already established ritual, i.e., hoisting a cross and the royal banner and performing a divine service, declared this land the possession of the Spanish crown. And here the Spaniards were attacked by numerous Indian detachments. It was truly a clash of two civilizations: Indian arrows and stone-tipped spears against the steel and firearms of Europeans. The notes of Bernal Diaz del Castillo, a participant in this campaign, testify that the decisive factor in this battle, as indeed in many armed clashes of the first Spanish conquistadors with the Indians, was the attack of a small cavalry detachment of the Spaniards: “The Indians had never seen horses before, and it seemed to them that horse and rider are one creature, powerful and merciless. It was then that they faltered, but they did not run, but retreated to the distant hills.”

Right there, on the shore, the Spaniards founded their first city on the mainland, which received the magnificent name, as was then customary: Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz (Rich City of the Holy Cross). Bernal Diaz wrote on this occasion: “We elected governors of the city... we erected a pillory in the market, and built a gallows outside the city. This was the beginning of the first new city.”

Meanwhile, news of the invasion of the country by formidable foreigners reached the capital of the vast Aztec state - the large and rich city of Tenochtitlan. The Aztec ruler Montezuma II, in order to appease the newcomers, sent them rich gifts. Among them were two large disks, the size of a cart wheel, one entirely of gold, the other of silver, symbolizing the sun and the moon, feather cloaks, many golden figurines of birds and animals, and golden sand. Now the conquistadors were convinced of the proximity of the fairyland. Montezuma himself hastened his death, the death of the Aztec state. Cortez's detachment began to prepare for the campaign against Tenochtitlan.

Making their way through tropical thickets, overcoming fierce resistance from Indian tribes, the Spaniards approached the capital of the Aztecs in November 1519. Bernal Diaz says that the conquistadors, seeing ancient Tenochtitlan for the first time, exclaimed: “Yes, this is a magical vision... Isn’t everything we see a dream?” Indeed, Tenochtitlan, with its green gardens, many white buildings rising among blue lakes and canals, surrounded by high mountains, should have seemed like a promised land to them - to them, accustomed from childhood to the sun-scorched Pyrenees plateaus of Spain, its cramped and gloomy cities .

There were not even 400 soldiers in Cortez’s detachment, but with them he expected to capture the Indian capital with tens of thousands of inhabitants, with thousands of troops ready to defend it. Less than a week had passed when, by cunning and deceit, Cortes not only brought his detachment into Tenochtitlan without losses, but, having made Montezuma his prisoner, began to rule the country on his behalf. He also captured the rulers of Texcoco, Tlacopan, Coyoacan, Izlapalan and other Indian lands, subject to the Aztecs, forced them to swear allegiance to the Spanish crown and began to demand gold, gold, gold from them...

The greed of the conquistadors and the excesses of the Spanish soldiers brought the Indian population of the capital to extreme indignation. An uprising broke out, led by Montezuma's nephew Cuauhtemoc - the first uprising of the Indians against the Spanish conquerors, which was followed by dozens of armed uprisings of the Indian masses during three centuries of colonial rule.

Cortes was lucky - at the most critical moment, help arrived to him: a large detachment of Spaniards arrived on 13 brigantines with horses, cannons, and gunpowder.

The conquest of the Aztec state was accomplished not only by the force of Spanish arms. Cortes, not without success, set some local tribes against others, incited discord between them - in a word, he acted on the principle of “divide and conquer.” Having created their colony on the territory of the Aztec state and the vast lands adjacent to it - the Viceroyalty of New Spain, the conquistadors established a system of plundering the natural resources of Mexico, mercilessly exploiting the masses, brutally suppressing manifestations of discontent. Speaking about the era of the Spanish colonization of the New World, K. Marx wrote about Mexico as one of the “rich and densely populated countries doomed to plunder,” where “the treatment of the natives was... most terrible.” The results of the Spanish colonization of this country are eloquently evidenced by the figures showing the catastrophic decrease in the Indian population. In fact, if the Indian population of Central Mexico by 1519 was about 25 million people, then by 1548 it decreased to 6.4 million, and by the end of the 60s of the 16th century - to 2.6 million. , and at the beginning of the 17th century. Little more than one million Indians remained here.

However, the conquest of Mexico, as well as other Indian lands in America, which brought such disastrous consequences for its people, had another meaning from the point of view of the historical development of this country. As the Soviet historian M. S. Alperovich writes, the colonization of Mexico by the Spaniards objectively contributed to “the formation in this country, where pre-feudal relations previously reigned supreme, of a historically more progressive socio-economic formation. The prerequisites arose for the involvement of North and Central America in the orbit of capitalist development and their inclusion in the system of the emerging world market.”

In addition, the landing of the conquistadors of Hernan Cortes at the mouth of the Tabasco River and the subsequent rapid conquest of the ancient states located on the territory of modern Mexico meant a clash of the original Indian civilization with one of the variants of European culture of the 16th century - Spanish culture, colored by religious mysticism. “The amazing spectacle of a thriving culture... previously unknown and so different from the usual Western European culture, turned out to be beyond the understanding of the Spanish conquistador... Both the conquistador and the missionary saw in the miracles that appeared to them an undoubted manifestation of the evil will of a certain supernatural creature, a demon, a sworn enemy of the human race . The destruction of the fruits of the devil's craft was the logical result of such ideas: the people of the cross and the sword began to destroy everything and everyone with a zeal worthy of better use. Indian civilizations were destroyed. When the most sensible people thought about what they had done and realized the mistake they had made, the damage turned out to be irreparable. Then they tried to save at least something that was left of knowledge, skills, treasures of the spirit, in order to use these fragments in organizing a new society, which was supposed to take root in the ancient lands, but adjacent to the Christian world.”

As a result of the conquest in the kingdom of New Spain, a new, ethnically and culturally specific colonial society was gradually formed, incorporating both the features of Western European culture imposed by the Spaniards and the unexterminated, most persistent features of the aboriginal culture. As a result of interpenetration and assimilation, a fundamentally new - Mexican - culture is emerging, in which elements of the rich and original Indian tradition determine its uniqueness. To some extent, the preservation of the Indian tradition was facilitated, paradoxically as it may seem, by the Catholic missionaries who accompanied the conquistadors. The fact is that in order to succeed in their business, they were forced, willy-nilly, to adapt to local conditions. It was necessary to overcome the language barrier - and the missionaries diligently studied Indian languages ​​in order to then preach Christian doctrine in these languages. It was necessary to overcome the barrier of ideas about the universe - and the missionaries adapted to the Indian pantheon, to the concepts established in the Indian environment. To this day, those compiled in the 16th century are preserved. grammars and dictionaries of Indian languages, Catholic rites in Mexico still retain the bright features of ancient Indian pantheism. As the Soviet researcher V.N. Kuteishchikova writes, “there is hardly another country on the entire continent where the participation of indigenous inhabitants in the formation of the nation would begin so early and would play such a huge, steadily increasing role as in Mexico.”

The next important act of the conquest after the conquest of the Indians on the lands of modern Mexico was the conquest of Peru, which took place in 1531-1533. Following from the Isthmus of Panama along the Pacific coast of South America, the conquistadors received information about the existence of another rich Indian power in the south. This was the state of Tawantinsuyu, or, as it is often called by the name of the tribe that inhabited it, the state of the Incas.

The organizer and leader of the new expedition of the Spanish conquistadors was Francisco Pizarro, a formerly illiterate swineherd. When his detachment landed on the coast of the Inca state, it numbered only about 200 people. But in the state where the conquistadors arrived, just at that moment there was a fierce internecine struggle between contenders for the place of the supreme ruler of the Incas. Pizarro, like Cortes in Mexico, immediately used this circumstance for his own purposes, which greatly contributed to the incredible speed and success of the conquest. Having seized power, the conquistadors began unbridled plunder of the country's enormous wealth. All gold jewelry and utensils were stolen from the Inca sanctuaries, and the temples themselves were destroyed to the ground. “Pizarro handed over the conquered peoples to his unbridled soldiers, who satisfied their lust in sacred monasteries; cities and villages were given over to her for plunder; the conquerors divided the unfortunate natives among themselves as slaves and forced them to work in the mines, dispersed and senselessly destroyed herds, emptied granaries, destroyed beautiful structures that increased the fertility of the soil; paradise was turned into desert."

On the vast territory conquered, another colony of Spain was formed, called the Viceroyalty of Peru. It became a springboard for the further advance of the conquistadors. In 1535 and 1540 Along the Pacific coast further to the south, Pizarro's associates Diego de Almagro and Pedro de Valdivia made campaigns, but in the south of modern Chile the Spaniards encountered serious resistance from the Araucan Indians, which delayed the conquistadors' advance in this direction for a long time. In 1536-1538 Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada equipped another expedition to search for the legendary country of gold. As a result of the campaign, the conquistadors established their power over numerous settlements of the Chibcha-Muisca Indian tribes, who had a high culture.

Thus, Spain became the mistress of huge colonies, which had no equal either in Ancient Rome or in the despotism of the ancient or medieval East. In the domains of the Spanish kings, the only monarchs in the world, as they said then, the sun never set. However, the Spanish colonial system that gradually developed in America had, on the whole, a primitive predatory character of robbery of conquered countries and peoples. According to the French researcher J. Lambert, “the metropolis saw in its colonies only a source of enrichment through the export of precious metals and products of colonial agriculture, as well as a market for the sale of industrial goods of the metropolis. All activities in the conquered countries were organized to satisfy the immediate needs of the mother country, without taking into account the needs of the internal development of these countries." The entire economic life of Spain's American colonies was determined by the interests of the crown. The colonial authorities artificially slowed down the development of industry in order to maintain Spain's monopoly on the import of finished goods into the colonies. The sale of salt, alcoholic beverages, tobacco products, playing cards, stamp paper and many other popular goods was considered a monopoly of the Spanish crown.

So, the Spanish crown considered the most important achievement of the conquest of America, which was so quickly and successfully accomplished, to be the acquisition of rich sources of precious metals. It must be said that the Spaniards were quite successful in this regard. According to rough estimates, the silver mines of only the Viceroyalty of New Spain in 1521-1548. gave about 40.5 million pesos, and in 1548-1561 - 24 million; most of the spoils were sent to the metropolis.

Carrying out the enslavement of the Indians, the conquistadors used methods of enslaving the peasants, which had already been successfully used by the feudal lords in Spain itself during the Reconquista. The main form was encomienda - the transfer of certain possessions and settlements “under the protection of persons” with sufficient power - the king, military-religious orders, individual feudal lords. The feudal lord who provided such patronage was called a “comender” in Spain; he received a set fee from his “wards,” and some labor duties were performed in his favor. The encomienda appeared in Spain back in the 9th century, and reached its greatest development in the 14th century, when the comenderos openly began to transform the lands under their protection into their fiefdoms. The feudal institution of the encomienda turned out to be very convenient for the Spanish conquerors in America. Here, “under the guardianship and protection” of one or another conquistador, or in other words, to his encomienda, several Indian villages with large populations were transferred at once. The holder of the encomienda (in America he was called an “encomendero”) had to not only protect his “wards,” but also take care of introducing them to “true Christian customs and virtues.” In reality, this almost always resulted in the actual enslavement of the Indians and led to their merciless exploitation by the encomendero, who turned into a feudal lord. The Indians were taxed in favor of their encomendero, who was obliged to contribute a quarter of it to the royal treasury. The institution of encomienda also had military significance. Already in 1536, a royal decree obliged each encomendero to have at all times “a horse, a sword and other offensive and defensive weapons, which the local governor considers necessary, according to ... the nature of military operations, so that they are suitable at all times.” In the event of military operations provided for by this decree - as a rule, to suppress Indian uprisings - each encomendero acted accompanied by a group of his “wards”, for whom this was compulsory service. It must be said that such militias, composed of encomenderos and their “wards,” existed in the 16th-17th centuries. the main military force of the colonial authorities, because sending any significant detachments of professional soldiers to the American colonies was fraught with considerable difficulties. These types of militias, convened by the authorities in cases of emergency, having completed their task, were disbanded, and the encomenderos who composed them returned to their usual affairs.

A considerable part of the Indian villages belonged directly to the Spanish crown and were governed by royal officials. A poll tax was collected from the Indians living in these villages, the collection of which was often abused by royal tax collectors. The Indians assigned to the crown's possessions had no right to leave their village without special permission from royal officials. In addition, the Indian population was obliged to allocate a certain number of men to perform labor duties - the construction of bridges, roads, new cities, fortifications. The most terrible, almost tantamount to a death sentence, was forced labor in the silver and mercury mines. All these types of compulsory labor service in New Spain (Mexico) were united by the word “repartimiento”, and in Peru - by the word “mita”.

The sharp decline in the Indian population as a result of its mass extermination by the conquistadors and grueling exploitation led to an acute shortage of workers, primarily on plantations owned by the feudal lords and the crown. To make up for the loss of manpower, black slaves were imported from Africa. The first agreement of the Spanish crown with private slave traders on a monopoly on the import of black slaves into the American colonies of Spain was concluded in 1528, and then for many decades until 1580, when preference was again given to private enterprise in this area , - the crown itself was engaged in the supply of slaves. This layer of colonial society was especially numerous in the areas of the most developed plantation economy - on the islands of the Antilles archipelago (Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, etc.), on the coast of Peru, New Granada (now Colombia) and Venezuela.

At the highest levels of the social ladder of colonial society were natives of the metropolis. Only they had the right to occupy the highest administrative, church and military positions; They also owned the largest estates, the most profitable mines.

Below were the Creoles - “purebred” descendants of Europeans born in the colonies. It was the Creoles who made up the most significant part of the large and medium-sized landowners who exploited the labor of Indian communal peasants. Creoles also made up the majority of the lower clergy and minor officials of the colonial administration, among them there were many owners of mines and factories, and artisans.

A special and very numerous group of the population of Spanish America were mestizo, mulatto and sambo, who arose from a mixture of European, Indian and African blood. They could not apply for any significant official positions and were engaged in crafts, trading in retail trade, and served as managers, clerks or overseers on the plantations of large landowners.

Maintaining the power of the Spanish crown in the vast colonial empire required the creation of a large administrative apparatus. The highest institution that supervised political, military affairs and urban planning in the colonies, regulated relations with the local population, and also resolved many other issues was the Royal Council and the Military Committee for Indian Affairs, or the Council for Indian Affairs, located in Madrid. The royal decree on the founding of the Council dates back to 1524, but it was finally formalized in 1542. The Council for the Indies consisted of a president, who was nominally considered to be the Spanish king, his assistant - the great chancellor, eight advisers, a prosecutor general, two secretaries, a cosmographer , mathematician and historian. In addition to them, many secondary secretaries and other officials of minor ranks worked as part of the Council for Indian Affairs. The powers of the Council were enormous - it had all the legislative, executive and judicial powers in the colonies. He appointed all officials of the highest and middle rank, both civil, ecclesiastical and military, prepared all sea and land expeditions and directed all other enterprises connected with the expansion of colonization. The laws and regulations adopted by the Council of Indian Affairs amount to five impressive volumes, the contents of which affect literally every aspect of the life of the Spanish colonies in America. In 1680 they were first published under the title Codes of the Laws of the Indies.

The administrative body in charge of the economic affairs of the colonies was the Chamber of Commerce, created back in 1503 and located in Seville. Subsequently, with the formation of the Council for Indian Affairs, it was subordinated to this supreme body. The main functions of the Chamber of Commerce were to carefully control all trade that went between the metropolis and its colonies; she also regulated the navigation of merchant and military ships, and also dealt with a wide range of issues related to navigation. In particular, the Chamber of Commerce collected all kinds of geographical and meteorological data concerning the New World, and supervised the compilation of geographical and special nautical maps.

The supreme authority of the King of Spain in his American possessions was represented by the viceroys. Let us note that this is not the first time that the idea of ​​giving Spain’s possessions the form of viceroyalties has been implemented. Back at the beginning of the 15th century. The viceroyalties under Spanish rule were Sicily and Sardinia. In 1503, the Kingdom of Naples, conquered by the Spaniards, was named a viceroyalty. In America, the first viceroyalty - Santo Domingo - was founded in 1509, its first and only viceroy was Diego Columbus, the son of Christopher Columbus. However, the establishment of the Viceroyalty of Santo Domingo had a rather symbolic meaning, and in 1525 it was abolished.

Two huge viceroyalties established by the Spanish crown in its American possessions - New Spain and Peru - generally coincided territorially with the large Indian states conquered by the conquistadors - the Aztecs and the Mayans and the Incas. Therefore, the first viceroys appointed there could, to a certain extent, use the trade, economic and other ties between various parts of these vast lands that began to take shape in these states even before the conquest.

The powers of the viceroys - civil, military, in the field of economic and trade policy - were enormous. On arrival in Mexico City or Lima they were greeted with a ceremony so magnificent that it would have befitted the supreme monarch himself. The splendor of the courts of the viceroys in Spanish America surpassed many in Europe. Both in Mexico City and in Lima, the person of the Viceroy had a staff of bodyguards - halberdiers and horse guards; To serve in these units was considered a great honor for young men from the most noble Spanish or Creole families.

Over the years, when, due to the size of the territory subject to the authority of one viceroy, great difficulties were discovered in the administration of remote areas, captaincy generals were formed. Thus, the captaincy generals of Chile and New Granada appeared within the viceroyalty of Peru. The captains-general who headed them maintained relations directly with the central government in Madrid, had powers almost identical to those of the viceroy and were, in essence, independent of him. The provinces, into which viceroyalties or captaincy generals were divided, were governed by governors.

Despite the enormous distances that separated the metropolis from its overseas possessions, despite the vastness of these possessions, every step of all the highest ranks of the colonial administration was subject to the strictest control of the crown. For this purpose, in all the viceroyalties and captaincy generals there was, as it were, a second, parallel power that vigilantly monitored the first. These were bodies called "audiencia". At the end of the colonial period in the history of Latin America, there were 14 of them. The Audiencia, as prescribed by royal instructions, in addition to the legal functions of overseeing compliance with the laws, were obliged to “provide protection to the Indians” and monitor the discipline of the clergy; they also performed fiscal functions. The importance of the audiencia was emphasized by the fact that all their members had to be natives of Spain - "peninsulares" ("people from the peninsula"), as they said in Spanish America.

The special importance of the audience as a body of royal control is revealed by another of its functions, which placed this body above all other authorities of the Spanish administration in the colonies: at the end of the term of office of senior officials, the audience conducted a survey of their activities.

Another form of crown control over the day-to-day activities of colonial administration officials was the "residencia", that is, the constant review of the official conduct of viceroys, captains general, governors and other senior officials throughout their tenure in office. The judges who carried out this check also had to be peninsulares.

This pyramid of surveillance and monitoring of the state of affairs in the colonies was crowned with a “hanging” (general inspection). The idea was that the Council for Indian Affairs periodically and without any notice sent especially trusted persons to the colonies. They had to provide completely reliable information about the state of affairs in a particular viceroyalty or captaincy general, and collect information about the behavior of the highest administration. Sometimes such a representative was sent to study on the spot some important problem concerning the military capabilities of certain regions and ports, or economic issues. His powers were so broad that during his stay in any of the viceroyalties where an inspection was carried out, he occupied the place of viceroy.

A carefully thought-out system of strictly centralized management of the Spanish colonies in America and multi-level control over this management seemed to be very effective. But in reality everything was different. The Spanish crown counted on the absolute diligence of senior officials in the colonies, on the incorruptible honesty of judges in control bodies. But, being thousands of kilometers from Madrid, viceroys and captains-general very often carried out administrative affairs according to their own arbitrariness, as evidenced by numerous facts of their premature removal from posts. Official judges often took bribes - after all, it was so difficult to resist numerous temptations in the context of the general “gold rush” that did not stop in Spanish America throughout the three centuries of the colonial regime. The Spanish crown counted on the loyalty of the Creoles, blood brothers of the natives of Spain. But among the Creoles, deprived of many rights and privileges, dissatisfaction with the colonial policy of Spain grew year by year, and hatred arose towards the peninsulares, who exercised power in the countries of which they, the Creoles, were natives. The Spanish crown counted on the uncomplaining obedience of the millions of Indians, black slaves and other oppressed people, who created enormous wealth with their labor. But the uprisings of the masses, becoming more frequent and taking on an increasingly menacing scale, undermined the foundations of the Spanish colonial empire.

CONQISTA (from Spanish conquistar - to fight) - the period of war and the number of islands of the Caribbean Bas-sey-na, Central, Southern and parts of North America is-pan-tsa-mi and port-tu-gal-tsa-mi; closely connected with Ve-li-ki-mi geo-gra-fi-che-ski-mi from-openings.

In the initial period of the conquest (1492-1519), the Spanish os-vai-va-li were mainly the Antil-islands, the villages of dey-ski-mi ple-me-na-mi ara-va-kov. In 1508, H. Pont-se de Le-on began to re-establish Fr. San Hu-an (now not Pu-er-to-Ri-ko), in 1509 H. de Es-ki-vel you-sa-dil-xia on the island. Jamaica, in 1511 D. Ve-la-skes de Ku-el-yar came to the war about. Cuba. Is-pan-tsy is-trace-to-va-li St. 7 thousand km of ma-te-ri-ko-vo-go along the coast of South and Central America - from the es-tua-ria river. Rio de la Plata to the Yuca Tan Peninsula. For the use of the key V. Nun-e-sa de Bal-boa, re-sec-she-go in 1513 Pa-nam-sky per-re-she-ek and opened the South Sea (Pacific Ocean), the Spanish did not attempt to move into depth of kon-ti-nen-ta.

For the war of Central America, the 4th ex-pe-di-tion of H. Ko-lum-ba (1502-1504). In 1523-1526 P. de Al-va-ra-do po-ko-ril Gwa-te-ma-lu; in 1524-1525, C. de Olida and E. Cor-tes is-sle-do-va-li ter-ri-to-riu Gon-du-ra-sa; in 1524, F. Er-nan-des de Cor-do-va founded the first hundred-year-old villages in Ni-ka-ra-gua.

In 1521, E. Kor-tes captured the hundred-li-tsu state of the ats-te-kov Te-noch-tit-lan. In subsequent years, as a result of several local ex-pe-di-tions, headed by ca-pi-ta- na-mi Kor-te-sa, the is-pan-tsy for the war of Central Mexico. N. de Gus-man us-ta-no-vil sev. for-post Spanish dominion at the entrance to the Gulf of California F. de Mont-te-ho began the re-establishment of Mayan cities on Yuka-ta-ne (his son continued to live for the war).

In 1528, P. de Nar-va-es took ex-pe-di-tion to Flori-do. Four of her students, led by A.N., remained alive. Ka-be-sa de Va-koy in the years 1529-1536 crossed the southwestern regions of North America and reached the Spanish possessions in Mexico ke. In 1539-1543, the expedition of E. de So-to covered 4 thousand km from Tampa Bay to the eastern horns of the Rocky Mountains. In 1533, O. Khi-me-nes discovered the Ka-li-for-niya Peninsula. Subsequently, a large-scale headquarters military ex-pe-di-tsi-e ru-co-vo-dil F.V. de Ko-ro-na-do. In 1540-1542, he conquered the north of Mexico, opened the Grand Canyon of the river. Ko-lo-ra-do, walked through the territory of modern times. states of Ari-zo-na, New Mexico, Te-has, per-re-sec Great Equals.

The first ex-pe-di-tions for the conquest of the territory of South America were or-ga-ni-zo-va-ny German-tsa-mi at the end of the 1520s from the coastal Caribbean (Emperor Charles V gave the northern coast of South America to the German banks Fug-ge-ram and Vel-ze-ram as security for loans). In 1529-1531, A. de Alfinger surveyed the bank of the lake. Ma-rakai-bo and from-ro-gi of the Sierra-ra-Ne-va-da mountains. In 1531, N. Federman discovered the ve-ne-su-el-lya-nos. Study of the territory of Ve-ne-su-ela about how long the Germans lived G.Kh. von Speyer (1535-1539) and F. von Gutten (1541-1546). At one time, in 1531-1532, the Is-pa-nets D. de Or-das rose along the river. Ori-no-ko from the mouth up along its current for a thousand miles. In 1536-1538, G. Khi-me-nes de Ke-sa-da fought the godly country of the Chib-cha-mui-skovs (before the river Bo-go- ta). In 1541-1542, F. de Orel-ya-na sailed along the river. Ama-zon-ka from the top to the mouth. In 1540, P. de Valdi-via began the war of Chi-li, where he met the stubborn co-op- tance of the Indians-Arau-Kan .

Ex-pan-sia from the ti-ho-oke-an-sko-go-be-re-zhya began in 1532. In 1532-1535, F. Pi-sar-ro fought for the state of the in-cov. From Pe-ru the is-pan-tsy settled to the north (ex-pe-di-tion of S. de Be-lal-ka-sa-ra 1536) and to the south - in 1535- 1537 D. de Al-mag-ro conquered the territory of Bo-livia and, having overcome the Chilean Andes, went to the river. Mau-le. In 1535, P. Men-do-sa, moving from the hall. Gua-na-ba-ra on the Atlantic coastline, reaching the mouth of the river. Rio de la Plata, where the city of Buenos Ayres lived.

It is assumed that the conquest of North America and the islands of the Caribbean Sea ended in 1610, Central America - in 1573, South America - in 1580. In 1573, by decree of the Spanish king Philip II, the term “conquest” was excluded from the official lek-si-ko-na. Local research of the military ex-pe-di-tions was carried out until the end of the 19th century .

The conquest was accomplished with insignificant si-la-mi. Until 1556, from 80 to 100 thousand people arrived in the New World, of which no more than 10 thousand people did not study whether in the conquest. Kon-ki-sta-do-ry gathered in small groups led by ade-lan-ta-do, pre-va-ri-tel- but behind the key-chav-shi-mi ka-pi-tu-la-tion. As right, the king named ade-lan-ta-do as the life-long governor of the new-from-covered lands . Ade-lan-ta-do, in turn, took upon himself the obligation to wait for the power of the Spanish crown, to convert the Indians into something and pay the king’s kin-ta - 1/5 of all income. The overwhelming majority of ex- pe ; their insistence in conquering new territories was explained, incl. yes. Often there are rumors about the riches of mythical countries for the organization of this or that ex-pe-di-tion or talk about treasures found in already discovered lands. Fire-arms, use-of-con-nation and tough dis-ci-p-li-to provide-pe-chi-va-li con -ki-sta-do-ram will defeat many times, but will prevail over their si-la-mi Indians.

As a result of the conquest, the core of the Spanish Colonial Empire was formed. There were many cities and villages founded, management bodies were created for the war -ri-to-riya-mi, for-lo-the same os-but-you are their eco-no-mich. ex-plua-ta-tion. The destruction of traditional cultures and the consumption of Indians in connection with the so-called. spiritual conquest - Christian-stia-ni-za-tsi-ey in-ko-ren-no-go na-se-le-niya, official-ci-al-but pro-voz-gla-shen- noah ch. for the purpose of the co-captures of Is-pa-nii (later the prin-ci-pi-al-but from the conquest from the cru-sto- out of the way, Re-kon-ki-sty, co-lo-ni-za-tion of North America). Con-so-you are con-ki-sta-do-ditch with in-day-tsa-mi pre-do-pre-de-li-there are two more important con-sequences of the conquest - arose -newness of new ethnic groups (African non-gro-slavs took part in the formation of some of them later) and cultural synthesis. The conquest and the subsequent use of subsoil and the exploitation of the in-deeds of the village created in reference to the quick-finding of the European eco-no-mi-ki dra-go-pri-ny-mi metal-la-mi and has become important nym fact-rum first-on-chal-no-go on-cop-le-niya ka-pi-ta-la.

Additional literature:

Svet Ya.M. Lastly In-ka. M., 1964;

So-zi-na S.A. Na go-ri-zon-te El-do-ra-do! M., 1972;

Morales Padrón F. Los conquistadores de América. Madrid, 1974;

idem. Teoría y leyes de la conquista. Madrid, 1979;

idem. Historia del descubrimiento y conquista de América. 5 ed. Madrid, 1990;

Descola J. Les conquista-dors. P., 1979;

Aguilar Paredes H. Las guerras de conquista en La-ti-no-américa. Quito, 1980;

Ma-gi-do-vich I.P., Ma-gi-do-vich V.I. Essays on the history of geo-graphical discoveries. 3rd ed. M., 1983. T. 2;

New Iberian world. N.Y., 1984. Vol. 1-5;

Bal-les-te-ros Gaibrois M. La novedad indiana: noticias, informaciones y testimonios del Nuevo Mundo. Madrid, 1987;

De conqui-sta-dores y conquista-dos. Fr./M., 1992;

Beuchot M. La querella de la conquista: una polémica del siglo XVI. Méx., 1992;

Barbosa Sanchez A. Sexo y conquista. Méx., 1994;

Chron-ni-ki of the opening of America. 500 years. M., 1998;

Kofman A.F. America's unfulfilled miracles. M., 2001;

aka. Knights of the New World. M., 2007;

aka. Kor-tes and his ka-pi-ta-ny. M., 2007;

Duarte Duarte L. A. Ideales de la misíon medieval en la con-quista de América. Madrid, 2001;

In-nes H. Kon-ki-sta-do-ry. M., 2002;

Seven myths of the Spa-nish conquest. N. Y., 2003.



Conquistadors

CONQUISTADORS (obsolete) CONQUISTADORS , -s; pl.(unit: conquistador; (obsolete) conquistador, -a; m.). [from Spanish conquistador - conqueror] Participants in the Spanish campaigns of conquest in South and Central America.

conquistadors

(Spanish, singular conquistador - conqueror), Spanish adventurers who went to America after its discovery to conquer new lands. The campaigns of the conquistadors (F. Pizarro, E. Cortes, etc.) were accompanied by the extermination and enslavement of the indigenous population.

CONQUISTADORS

CONQUISTADORS (Spanish singular conquistador - conqueror, conqueror), participants in the Conquista, that is, the aggressive campaigns of Europeans (mainly Spaniards) in the New World: sea - in the West Indies (cm. WEST INDIA), to the Philippines, along the coasts of North and South America; land - deep into both continents. The bulk of the conquistadors were represented by hired soldiers, impoverished nobles and criminals who preferred the overseas unknown to prison, hard labor or the death penalty. This army of adventurers included a certain number of artisans, royal officials of various ranks, missionary monks, as well as simply adventurers. Their enthusiasm was fueled by stories about the incredible riches of the New World, the abundance of gold, the wonderful country of Eldorado, the fountain of eternal youth, etc.
Stages of the Conquest
Christopher Columbus himself can be considered the first conquistador (cm. COLUMBUS Christopher), who proposed selling the population of the lands he discovered into slavery. 39 sailors, companions of H. Columbus, who voluntarily remained on the island of Hispaniola (Haiti) shortly after the admiral’s departure for his homeland (January 4, 1493) came into conflict with local residents over women and property and all died. During the Conquest, two stages can be distinguished. In the first short period (1493-1518), the aliens took possession of small coastal areas on the islands of the Caribbean (Haiti, Puerto Rico, Cuba), and then spread throughout their entire territory. Almost simultaneously, they occupied the narrow coastal strips of North and South America, washed by the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. The second stage, covering almost eight decades (1518-1594), is the conquest of the two giant Aztec empires (cm. Aztecs) and Incas (cm. THE INCAS), as well as the Mayan city-states (cm. MAYA (people)); campaigns in the interior of both continents, access to the Pacific coast and the capture of the Philippines.
As a result of the military actions of the conquistadors, vast areas were annexed to the possessions of the Spanish crown. In North America, the part of the continent south of 36 n. sh., including Mexico and other territories in Central America, as well as large regions of South America without Brazil, where the power of Portugal established itself, and Guiana, which came under the control of England, France and the Netherlands. In addition, the Spaniards “took control” of almost the entire West Indies and the Philippine Islands. The total area of ​​land captured by the conquistadors was no less than 10.8 million km 2, which is almost 22 times the territory of Spain proper. The delimitation of conquests between Spain and Portugal took place along the “papal meridian” according to the Treaty of Tordesillas 1494 (cm. TREATY OF TORDESILLAS). It is believed that the conquest of Brazil by the subjects of the Portuguese king was due to the not entirely clear wording of the papal bull.
Each leader of a detachment of conquistadors (adelantado), having recruited a detachment, concluded an agreement (surrender) with the Spanish crown. This agreement stipulated the percentage of deductions from the captured wealth to the treasury and the share of the adelantados themselves. The first adelantado was H. Columbus's brother, B. Columbus. After the establishment of foreign domination, the conquistadors were replaced by European (mainly Spanish and Portuguese) settlers led by an administration subordinate to the metropolis. At the same time, many conquistadors obeyed the authorities only nominally, living independently in their vast possessions. Since the reign of Philip III (1598-1621), the Spanish metropolis has taken a course towards oppressing the descendants of the conquistadors, giving preference to the natives of Spain. Largely for this reason, the descendants of the conquistadors led the fight for the separation of the Latin American colonies.
Conflict of Civilizations
The most brutal was the second stage of the Conquest, when the Spaniards did not encounter tribes that were at the stage of primitive society, but encountered the Aztec civilizations, alien to Europeans (cm. Aztecs), Maya (cm. MAYA (people)), Incas (cm. THE INCAS) etc. The Aztec religion, which was replete with bloody rituals and human sacrifices, made a particularly repulsive impression on the Spaniards: they decided that they were faced with the minions of the devil, against whom any methods were justified. This explains, in particular, how carefully all traces of the cultural activities of the Indians were destroyed. If statues, or even entire pyramids, could not be destroyed, they were buried, works of art, and monuments of unique local writing were burned. The jewelry (and it was distinguished by its particularly careful finishing and original technologies) was almost all melted down and is now extremely rare.
All conquests were carried out by a handful of conquistadors (in groups of several hundred people, in rare cases thousands). Firearms alone, still imperfect at that time, could not give such an effect. The ease with which the Europeans managed to crush considerable states is explained by the internal weakness of these states, the power of whose leaders was absolute, but they themselves were often very weak and incapable of resistance. The Europeans discovered early on that if they captured an Indian war chief during a battle, the rest of the army would stop resisting. The Indians’ fear of horses and their admiration for whites, whom they considered gods, also played a role, because almost all Indians had legends about a white bearded god who taught people agriculture and crafts.
Suppressing the performances of the Indians, the Spaniards executed them in the thousands. Those left alive were turned into slaves by the conquistadors and forced to work in the fields, mines or workshops. Numerous group suicides from overwork and appalling living conditions, deaths from infectious diseases brought by aliens (smallpox, plague, diphtheria, measles, scarlet fever, typhus and tuberculosis) led to one of the largest demographic catastrophes on the planet. Over the century, the population of the New World decreased, according to various sources, from 17-25 million to 1.5 million people, that is, 11-16 times. Many regions are completely depopulated; a number of Indian peoples disappeared from the face of the Earth. African slaves began to be imported to work on plantations and mines. At the same time, well-organized resistance also brought results: the Araucanians (cm. ARAUCANA) in southern Chile they managed to defend their freedom, fighting for more than a century.
Geographical results of the Conquest
The pioneers were Columbus and his captains, brothers Martin Alonso and Vicente Yanez Pinson. (cm. PINSON), who discovered the Greater Antilles and part of the Lesser Antilles. Subsequent voyages of the conquistadors along the shores of the New World and campaigns in territories previously completely unknown to Europeans led to major geographical discoveries. About 2000 km of the Caribbean coast of North America was discovered from the sea by Columbus in 1502-1503. His achievement in 1508-1509 was continued by V. Pinson and J. Diaz de Solis (cm. DIAZ DE SOLIS Juan): they “account” for more than 2,700 km of the same strip further to the north and about 800 km of the western coast of the Gulf of Mexico up to and including the Northern Tropic; they consequently discovered the Gulfs of Honduras and Campeche, becoming the discoverers of the Yucatan Peninsula.
In Search of the "Fountain of Eternal Youth" Juan Ponce de Leon (cm. PONCE DE LEON Juan) in 1513 he was the first to trace about 500 km of the eastern and more than 300 km of the western coast of Florida, discovered the Strait of Florida and the initial section of the Gulf Stream (Florida Current). Several sections of the Pacific coast of Central America with a total length of 1000 km were examined by Gaspar Espinosa in 1518-1519. The peninsular "status" of Florida in 1519 was proved by Alonso Alvarez de Pineda. That same year, in search of a passage to the Pacific Ocean, he discovered 2,600 km of the Gulf Coast, the Mississippi Delta and the mouth of the Rio Grande.
G. Espinosa's successor, Andres Niño, was the first to trace about 2,500 km of the Pacific strip of Central America without interruption in 1522-1523. At the same time, he examined the entire length (500 km) of the Sierra Madre de Chiapas ridge. Further to the northwest, the pioneers of the coastline from land were the envoys of E. Cortes (see below). Diego Hurtado Mendoza, Cortes' cousin, on his instructions in 1532 explored about 1,400 km of the continent's Pacific coastline, 1,000 of them for the first time.
Cortez himself, who led a naval expedition in 1535, identified a small section of the coast of the California Peninsula, considering it an island. In 1537-1538, Andres Tapia, directed by him, discovered 500 km of the mainland coast of the Gulf of California further to the northwest. His work in 1539-1540 was continued by Francisco Ulloa, another “guarantor” of Cortes, who reached the top of the bay. He was the first to trace its western (1200 km) and Pacific (1400 km) coastal strips, proving the peninsular character of California. The furthest voyage to the north was made in 1542-1543 by Juan Cabrillo, who examined over 1800 km of the Pacific coast of North America and about 1000 km of the Coastal Ranges.
The list of the most significant land expeditions on the mainland opens with E. Cortes: during the campaigns of 1519-1521, he became acquainted with part of the Mexican Highlands. Four squads of his assistants - Gonzalo Sandoval, Cristoval Olid, Juan Alvarez-Chico and Pedro Alvarado (cm. ALVARADO Pedro)- in 1523-1534, the Pacific coastline of Central America was first identified for almost 2000 km. Alvaro Nunez Caveza de Vaca (cm. CAVESA DE VACA Alvaro) during eight years (1528-1536) of wandering through the southern United States, he made a journey of at least 5.5 thousand km. He discovered the Mexican Lowland, part of the Great Plains, the southern end of the Rocky Mountains and the northern regions of the Mexican Highlands.
Soto searched for mythical countries and cities in the southern United States (cm. SOTO Hernando) and Coronado (cm. CORONADO Francisco) who led two large expeditions. Hernando de Soto and Luis Moscoso de Alvarado walked about 3 thousand km through the southeastern part of the United States in 1539-1542. They discovered parts of the Mexican and Atlantic lowlands, the Piedmont foothill plain and the southern end of the Appalachians, as well as the rivers of the Mississippi basin (Tennessee, Arkansas and Red River). (cm. CORONADO Francisco)
Francisco Vazquez de Coronado (cm. CORONADO Francisco) in 1540-1542 he covered more than 7.5 thousand km in the interior regions of the continent, which turned out to be much more significant than was then thought. He discovered the Colorado Plateau, the river of the same name with a grand canyon, and continued the discovery of the Rocky Mountains, giant dry plateaus and vast prairies, begun by A. Cavesa de Vaca. Antonio Gutierrez de Umaña, directly called a “robber and murderer” in official Spanish documents, was the first to reach the geographic “heart” of North America. In 1593-1594, he traveled about 1 thousand km across the Great Plains and reached the middle reaches of the Platte (Missouri basin).
The discoverer of South America was Columbus, who in 1498 discovered 500 km of its northern coast and the Orinoco delta from the sea. 1499-1501 turned out to be very fruitful for discoveries: Alonso Ojeda (cm. OJEDA Alonso de) for the first time examined 3000 km of the northeastern and northern coastline of the continent with the Gulf of Venezuela and Lake Maracaibo. 1200 km of the Atlantic northeastern strip was first traced by V. Pinson, who also discovered the Amazon delta. 1000 km of the southern coast of the Caribbean Sea with the Gulfs of Darien and Uraba discovered by Rodrigo Bastidas (cm. BASTIDAS Rodrigo). In 1527 Francisco Pizarro (cm. PISARRO Francisco) from the sea revealed more than 1200 km of the Pacific coast of the continent with the Gulf of Guayaquil.
A long series of land campaigns in South America begins with the expedition of the Portuguese in the Spanish service of Alejo Garcia. In 1524-1525 he discovered part of the Brazilian Plateau and the Laplata Lowland, as well as the Gran Chaco plain and the Bolivian Highlands. The pioneers in the Northwestern Andes were the troops of Ambrosius Alfinger, Pedro Heredia and Juan Cesar. Diego Ordaz was the discoverer of the Orinoco River. (cm. ORDAS Diego): in 1531 he climbed it about 1000 km from the mouth, discovered the Guiana Plateau and the plains of the Llanos Orinoco.
Part of the Western Cordillera was discovered in 1532-1534 by Francisco Pizarro, his younger brother Hernando and Sebastian Belalcazar. E. Pizarro was the first to visit the upper reaches of the Marañon, one of the sources of the Amazon. Diego Almagro (cm. ALMAGRO Diego)-father in 1535 identified the Central Andean Highlands, Lake Titicaca (cm. TITICACA)(the largest alpine body of water on the planet) and the Atacama Desert (cm. ATTACK); he was the first to trace about 2000 km of the Argentine-Chilean Andes, as well as the Pacific coast of the mainland for 1500 km. The pioneer of the interior regions of Patagonia in the same 1535 was Rodrigo de Islas.
About 500 km of the Pacific coastline of the continent and the southern part of the Chilean Andes were explored by Pedro Valdivia in 1540-1544 (cm. VALDIVIA Pedro). Francisco Orellana (cm. ORELLANA Francisco) in 1541-1542 he completed the first crossing of South America, proving its significant extent along the equator, discovered more than 3000 km of the middle and lower reaches of the Amazon and the mouths of its three huge tributaries (Jurua, Rio Negro and Madeira). The pioneering voyage along Marañon and Ucayali in 1557 was made by Juan Salinas Loyola, sailing a canoe along these components of the Amazon for 1100 and 1250 km, respectively. He turned out to be a pioneer in the eastern foothills of the Peruvian Andes (La Montagna Hills).
The general geographical results of the centuries-long activity of the conquistadors: the length of the Pacific coast of North America, which they first examined, was almost 10 thousand km, and the Atlantic coast (including the shores of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea) - about 8 thousand. They identified three peninsulas of the mainland - Florida, Yucatan and California - and more than 6 thousand km of the Cordillera mountain system of North America with the Mexican Highlands, and laid the foundation for the discovery of the Great Plains, the Appalachians and the Mississippi River.
The length of the Pacific coastline of South America they discovered reaches almost 7 thousand km, and the Atlantic coastline (including the Caribbean coast) is about 5.5 thousand km. For the first time, they traced the Andes (Cordillera of South America) for almost 7 thousand km, that is, almost the entire length; they discovered the Amazon, the largest river system on the planet, the Brazilian and Guiana plateaus, the Amazon and Laplata lowlands, and the Llanos Orinoco plains. They became the discoverers of all the Greater Antilles, the vast majority of the Lesser Antilles, the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of California and the Gulf of Mexico, as well as the Gulf Stream.
Written sources
During the Conquest and after its completion, relatively many different documents appeared: messages, ship's logs, reports, petitions and letters from participants in the campaigns. To this enumeration it is necessary to add the chronicles and books of the conquistadors’ contemporaries, who did not directly belong to their number, but either had access to the documents of the Conquista, or were personally acquainted with its participants. The vast majority of materials remained unpublished; some were published, however, not always during the lifetime of their authors.
In addition to fairly well-known publications about the voyages of H. Columbus, we note a number of important primary sources and their authors. The first geographer of the New World was Martin Enciso (1470? - 1528?), correctly Fernandez de Enciso, a wealthy lawyer and enemy of V. Balboa (cm. NUNES DE BALBOA Vasco), participant in A. Ojeda's swimming (cm. OJEDA Alonso de)(1508-1510). In 1519, he created “Brief Geography” - a navigational and geographical directory of the regions of the planet known by the beginning of the 16th century. The West Indies section of this work constitutes the first manual for navigation in the waters of the Caribbean Sea and is therefore the first American sailing guide. This part was published in London in 1578.
From five letters of E. Cortes to Emperor Charles V (cm. CHARLES V Habsburg) the first is lost, the next three cover the conquest of the Aztec empire, and the last is dedicated to the campaign in Honduras. They are partially published in Russian. Events in Mexico are described in detail in “The True History of the Conquest of New Spain” by B. Diaz (cm. DIAZ DEL CASTILLO Bernal), participant in the events (there is an abbreviated Russian translation). The missionary monk Motolinea Torivio Benavente (d. 1568), who lived in the country for 45 years, spoke about the dire consequences of the Conquest for the American Indians, about their catastrophic mortality, about the bestial cruelty and incredible greed of the Spaniards in “History of the Indians of New Spain.”
B. Diaz in his “True History...” reported on the first contacts of the Spaniards with the Mayan people. The main source for their ethnography and history is the “Report on Affairs in Yucatan” by the fanatical missionary monk and attentive observer Diego de Landa (cm. LANDA Diego), who arrived in the country in 1549. (Russian translation was carried out in 1955). The first official chronicler of the conquest is considered to be Gonzalo Hernandez Oviedo y Valdez (1478-1557), the greatest of the early Spanish historians of the transatlantic possessions and their first naturalist. In 1526, he created the “Summary of the Natural History of the Indies” - a geographical summary, usually called “Sumario”, containing a lot of accurate information about the nature and animal world of the New World. Nine years later, he wrote the first part of the General and Natural History of the Indies, which included the lion's share of his first work and covered the progress of the discovery and conquest of the West Indies. The second and third parts of the work are devoted, respectively, to the conquest of Mexico and Peru, as well as a number of regions of Central America (Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama). This classic work, translated into several European languages, was first published in its entirety in Madrid in 1851-1855 (the next Spanish edition appeared in 1959 in five volumes).
Historian and publicist Bartolomé de Las Casas (cm. LAS CASAS Bartolome), a humanist who received from the Spanish crown the title “patron of the Indians” specially established for him. After graduating from the University of Salamanca in 1502 he arrived in the New World; was personally acquainted with many conquistadors, including J. Ponce de Leon (cm. PONCE DE LEON Juan), A. Ojedo (cm. OJEDA Alonso de) and E. Cortes (cm. CORTES Hernando). Over the course of half a century, from a planter in Haiti (1502-1510), a priest in the conquistador troops in Cuba (1511-1514), a missionary in Venezuela and Guatemala (1519-1530s), he turned into a passionate defender of the Indians, an indomitable fighter for their release and decisive exposer of the crimes of the invaders.
In his journalistic work “The Shortest Report on the Destruction of the Indies” (1541), Las Casas concisely outlined the history of the Conquista and presented a realistic picture of the inhumane attitude of the conquistadors towards the indigenous people. (Between 1578 and 1650, 50 editions of this angry and furious work were published in six European languages). His main work, “History of the Indies” (first published in 1875-1878; there is a Russian translation) is one of the most important primary sources on the history and ethnography of Latin America. It contains, by the way, descriptions of the Second and Third voyages of H. Columbus. Las Casas' major achievements also include the revision of the contents of the lost diary of the admiral's First Voyage.
Francisco Lopez de Jerez (1497-?) was F. Pizarro's companion and secretary (cm. PISARRO Francisco) in the Peruvian campaigns of 1524-1527 and 1530-1535. In a report sent to the emperor in 1527, he presented the Conquest as a just cause. At the same time, he gave an objective assessment of his boss and the ruler of the Incas. The vicissitudes of F. Pizarro’s second campaign and the characteristics of the “characters” were described by the official Agustin Zarate (1504 - after 1589) in the chronicle “The History of the Discovery and Conquest of Peru,” published in 1555.
The soldier Pedro Cieza de Leon (1518-1560) took part in several minor campaigns in Colombia and Peru. During his 17-year wanderings throughout Central America and the north-west of South America, he recorded messages from conquistadors and eyewitness accounts. These materials and personal impressions formed the basis of his reliable and reliable Chronicle of Peru, which consisted of four parts (only the first was published during the author’s lifetime in 1553). The entire work was published in English translation in 1864 and 1883.
Franciscan monk Bernardo de Sahagún, real name Ribeira (1499 - February 5, 1590) carried out missionary work in Mexico from 1529. He completed his valuable historical and ethnographic work “General History of Events in New Spain” in 1575, but the first edition was published only in 1829 -1831. Another Jesuit missionary, José de Acosta, nicknamed the "Pliny of the New World" (1540-1600), was active in Peru in the 1570s and 1580s. In 1590, he published “The Natural and Moral History of the Indies,” dedicated to the discovery and conquest of America, its physical geography, flora and fauna.
The soldier Alonso de Ercilla y Zuniga (1533-1594) in 1557-1562 participated in the unsuccessful southern Chilean campaigns of the conquistadors against the Araucanians. The heroic struggle of the Indians against the invaders prompted him to create the poem “Araucana,” which was truthful and accurate in detail. This epic work, published in three parts between 1569 and 1589, became the most important event in Latin American literature of the 16th century and the first national work of Chile.
The progress of the discovery and conquest of the Parana basin (about 2.7 million km 2) was described by the Bavarian mercenary Ulrich Schmidel. In 1534-1554 he participated in numerous campaigns of the Spanish conquistadors across the expanses of the La Plata Lowland and the Brazilian Plateau. In 1567, he published an account of these wanderings entitled “The True History of a Wonderful Voyage,” which went through several editions, the last in 1962 in German. Companion of F. Orellana (cm. ORELLANA Francisco) the monk Gaspar de Carvajal (de Carvajal; 1500-1584) immediately after the end of the voyage, that is, in the second half of September 1542, compiled “The Narrative of the New Discovery of the Glorious Great River of the Amazons.” This true story (there is a Russian translation) is the main and most detailed primary source of one of the great geographical discoveries made by the conquistadors.
Native American historians
The Spaniards created a writing system based on the Latin alphabet for many peoples of America. In addition, schools were founded in Mexico and Peru in which children of the local nobility were educated, both purebred descendants of local leaders and mestizos, whose father, as a rule, was a conquistador and whose mother was an Indian from a noble family. At the end of the 16th and throughout the 17th century. local Indian historians appeared. In Mexico, Hernando or Fernando (or Hernando) Alvarado Tezozomoc (born about 1520) wrote the Chronicle of Mexico in Spanish and the Chronicle of Mexicayotl in Nahuatl.
Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl (1568-1648) wrote several works about the Indians and the Spanish conquests, the most famous of which is The Chichimec History. Antonio Domingo Chimalpain wrote several historical works, among them "History of Mexico from the most remote times to 1567", "Initial reports of the kingdoms of Acolhuacan, Mexico and other provinces from the most ancient times."
The mestizo Juan Bautista Pomar was the author of the "Report of Texcoco", and another, Diego Muñoz Camargo, was the author of the "History of Tlaxcala". Many of these works begin with a creation myth, then give legendary information about the wanderings of tribes, and then the events of pre-Hispanic and early colonial times. They present the political history of Mexico depending on which city or nation a particular author came from.
In Peru, the most famous Indian author was Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, born in the early 1530s, died in 1615. He came from a noble Indian family in Huanuco, one of the lands of the Incan state of Tawantinsuyu. (cm. TAUANTINSUYU). His book "New Chronicle and Good Government" is written in Spanish with the inclusion of a large number of Indian words; it contains information on the history of Peru before the arrival of the Spaniards, the Spanish conquest and Spanish rule. Almost half of the extensive work consists of original drawings, which in themselves can serve as a source for studying the economy and material culture of the Indians. Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (el Inca, 1539-1616), whose mother was Indian and whose father was Spanish, was born and raised in Peru, then moved to Spain, where he published in 1609 “Authentic Commentaries of the Incas” ”, and in 1617 - “General History of Peru”. The first of the books dealt with the Inca state itself, and “History” talks mainly about the conquest of the country by the Spaniards. “Comments” were translated into Russian and published in 1974 under the title “History of the Inca State.”

The history of mankind knows many facts and events that cause universal amazement. But there are miracles, seemingly obvious, but they are not noticed, because they are not perceived as extraordinary events that cannot be soberly explained. This kind of “inconspicuous” miracles includes the Conquest - the Spanish conquest of America.

Let us remember: in the 16th century. Hordes of Spaniards invaded America, destroyed Indian civilizations, shed rivers of blood, plundered tons of gold, conquered the local population and established their own rules. And the Spaniards won because they had a colossal advantage in weapons, military tactics, and organization, because they had all the technical achievements of European civilization behind them, while the Indians did not even know the wheel. So what's unusual about this? The strong have always defeated the weak, haven't they? Generally true; and at the same time, the conquest has a number of features that decisively distinguish it from all previous and subsequent conquests and allow us to speak of it as a completely unique, inimitable experience in the history of mankind.

October 12, 1492 The Spaniards set foot in the New World. A turning point in human history: the meeting of two worlds

The miracle of the conquest remains unnoticed primarily because it is usually perceived as a purely military enterprise: I came, I saw, I conquered. And he robbed it. At the same time, other, no less significant aspects and incentives for the Spanish conquest of America are often not taken into account. First of all, the spatial aspect: what stands behind the word “came”. After all, we are talking not only about defeating the enemy on the battlefield, about taking a city or fortress - we also had to get to them, pave the way to them, walking thousands of miles through completely unfamiliar terrain. For the conquistadors, the word “came,” preceding the words “saw” and “conquered,” did not mean the same thing as for Julius Caesar, the author of the famous saying. The fundamental difference was that Julius Caesar and other predecessors of the Spanish conquerors usually knew where they were going, how far they had to cover, what settlements they would meet along the way, who they would fight against, what the approximate number of the enemy was and how he was armed. The conquistadors went into the unknown, guided by rumors and reports, which very often turned out to be fables.

Let’s think about it, let’s get a feel for what is behind this “came”: first, a two- to three-month grueling voyage across the ocean on fragile boats filled with people, livestock, supplies, and equipment; and then a many-month, or even many-year, journey through the impassable jungle, swamps, mountains, and waterless deserts; and on this path, many more warriors sometimes died from hunger, deprivation and disease than in battles with the Indians. If the conqueror of Mexico, Hernan Cortes, had to travel “only” about six hundred kilometers to the capital of the Aztecs, then the conqueror of Colombia, Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada, walked the country of the Chibcha-Muiscas (present-day Bogota) from the coast for almost a year, covering one and a half thousand kilometers; Hernando de Soto's expedition covered four thousand kilometers during four years of wandering around the North American continent; Diego de Almagro covered five thousand kilometers on his way from Peru to Chile and back - examples of this kind can be multiplied and multiplied.

The main feature of the conquest lies precisely in this unique experience of penetrating virgin space - unique because we are talking about the unexplored space of two huge continents. Never before in the history of mankind has such a vast expanse of unknown lands opened up before people. Conquest inextricably merged with pioneering, acquired a research character, and, importantly, the conquistadors themselves attached great importance to the research goals of their expeditions. The Spanish conquest of America became the most important page in the history of the exploration of the Earth: the conquest was inseparable from geographical discovery. Why is it that in books on the history of geographical discoveries the names of Balboa, Cortes, Pizarro, Almagro, Soto and other famous conquistadors rightly side by side with the glorious names of Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Magellan.

In the popular understanding of the Spanish conquest of America, another, no less significant aspect of the conquest, namely the colonialist one, is completely absent. The Conquest, like many other historical phenomena, was contradictory in nature, combining destruction and creation. There is no doubt that the Spanish conquest of America had catastrophic consequences for the Indian world, often taking monstrously cruel forms and entailing millions of casualties among the aborigines (including those who died from diseases introduced by Europeans). But to see only this in the conquest is the same as judging a capital city after visiting only its slum areas. In place of destroyed Indian cities, new cities were created; One way of life was replaced by other norms of life, new cultures: designed to copy Spanish models, they were initially different from the latter and formed the basis of the future Latin American civilization.

The dual nature of the Spanish conquest of America was reflected in the official wording that defined the goals and objectives of the expeditions: the conquistadors were instructed to “conquistar y poblar,” which means “to conquer and settle.” This formula, in essence, contains an attitude towards the space of the New World - unknown, closed, hostile and deeply alien in all manifestations of both the natural and cultural world. The concept of conquistar implies the act of appropriating space: breaking into it, penetrating into the very depths of the continents, capturing the appearance of new lands on the map, conquering space with your feet and its inhabitants with a sword. The word poblar - which has a very wide range of meanings associated with civilizing activities, including the construction of settlements and cities (pueblos) - implies the development of space: making it “yours,” domesticating it, reshaping it according to European regulations. Ultimately, this is what conquest is about. The chronicler Francisco Lopez de Gomara wrote on this occasion: “Whoever does not settle will not make a good conquest; and without conquering the earth, you will not convert the pagans to Christianity; therefore, the main task of the conquistador should be settlement.” Based on this, the chronicler explains the failure of the mentioned Soto expedition: “He did not populate these lands, and therefore he himself died and destroyed those whom he brought with him. Nothing good will ever come of it for the conquistadors if, first of all, they do not think about settlement...”

There is a widespread idea that the Spaniards rushed to America only to get rich in one fell swoop, and then return home and live the rest of their days in contentment in their homeland. In reality, everything was completely different. The conquistadors, uninvited guests, came to America to become masters here - and you can only feel like a master in your own home, furnished and decorated to your liking.

The evangelization of the Indians was officially proclaimed as the main goal of the conquest, and it also served as its justification

And in this house, servants must speak the same language with the owner, at least they must understand his orders, recognize his power and value system. Therefore, the conquistar formula of the poblar contained another component of the conquest - the Christianization of the Indians. Actually, the official ideology proclaimed the main goal of the conquest to be the introduction of pagans to the true Catholic faith - this is exactly what the Spaniards saw as their great historical mission in America. One should not believe those authors who claim that Christianization was just an empty slogan aimed at giving a noble appearance to a predatory campaign. It is not necessary, if only because the activities of the Catholic clergy who were part of the conquering expeditions began on a full scale after the Indians were conquered, and there was nothing left to plunder.

“Spiritual conquest” (conquista espiritual), a concept that was established at the dawn of the 16th century, was an organic, integral part of the Spanish conquest of America, and it is no coincidence that the clergy and missionaries themselves thought of themselves in the image of conquistadors - with the only amendment that they conquered from the devil's souls are weapons of words.

Here, for example, is the parting word with which the Master of the Franciscan Order sends the first twelve missionaries to Mexico: “Go, my beloved children, with the blessing of your father, in order to fulfill your vow; take up the shield of faith, put on the mail of justice, gird yourself with the sword of the divine word, put on the helmet of chastity, lift up the spear of perseverance and go to battle with the serpent, who has taken possession of the souls purchased by the most precious blood of Christ, and win them for Christ.

The Conquest is often compared to the Crusades and is even called the last Crusade in history. There were reasons for this, since both enterprises were of a religious and at the same time aggressive nature. However, there is a significant difference between these phenomena - in relation to the infidels: the crusaders proclaimed their task to be the expulsion of Muslims from the Holy Land and the liberation of the Holy Sepulcher, and not at all the conversion of infidels; In the ideology of the Conquest, the idea of ​​Christianization came to the fore, and the concepts of “exile” and “liberation” were used only in a purely religious sense (liberation from the power of the devil). And, it must be admitted, the Spanish crown and the church spared no people, no effort, no money to convert the Indians to Catholicism.

So, here they are - the four faces of the conquest: conquest and the associated robbery, discovery and exploration of new lands, development of the conquered space (colonization) and Christianization of the Indians. The conquest had another very important aspect - miscegenation; but since it was not part of the officially stated tasks and was carried out spontaneously, we will talk about this later. These goals were so closely interconnected that it was almost impossible to distinguish among them the main and secondary ones.

Let us ask ourselves: to what extent were these complex and difficult tasks completed during the era of the conquest? But let’s immediately say: if we take into account that in America there are still quite vast unexplored and little-explored areas, as well as Indian enclaves and tribes living according to their own laws and with their gods, then these tasks, it turns out, have not yet been completed (and thank God !). And yet it cannot be denied that these goals were mainly achieved - precisely during the era of the conquest.

History of the Conquest. Initial period

Now it's time to talk about timing. The miracle of the conquest turns out to be so “inconspicuous” partly for the reason that even in historical literature the era of the conquest is usually presented with very blurred chronological boundaries. It is said: “The era of the conquest - the 16th century,” or: “In the 16th century, during the era of the Spanish conquest of America ...”, etc. - this creates the impression that the conquest lasted for a whole century, and a hundred years is a considerable period. Let us, however, try to outline a more precise chronological framework of the conquest - but for this we will have to briefly outline the history of the discovery and conquest of the New World.

It clearly distinguishes three periods. The initial one takes a quarter of a century - from 1493 to 1519. The first date is Columbus’s large-scale expedition to the New World, undertaken not so much for research as for colonialist purposes: then, on seventeen ships, the great navigator, already in the rank of “Admiral of the Sea-Ocean,” brought one and a half thousand settlers and everything necessary for their lives: cattle, horses, dogs, mountains of provisions, tools, seeds, goods. The second date - the beginning of Cortez's expedition to Mexico - marks a new period in the history of the Spanish conquest of America.

What happened between these chronological boundaries cannot yet be called a conquest in the full sense of this concept - it cannot be for two reasons: the wrong distances and the wrong aborigines. The action of this period takes place mainly on the Antilles, inhabited by Indian tribes (Arawaks, Tainos, Caribs, Sibones, etc.), who were at a low level of social development. Contrary to their aspirations, the Spaniards did not find either lush cities or rich deposits of precious metals on the islands - half-naked savages lived here, from whom there was nothing to take except pitiful gold trinkets. It happened that the Indians put up fierce resistance to the aliens, and sometimes they rebelled, but the forces were too unequal, and military operations turned into the beating of babies. As a result, over a quarter of a century, the indigenous population of the islands decreased tenfold, and by the end of the 16th century it disappeared almost completely.

Conquest of the Antilles

Since 1509, Juan Ponce de Leon begins the colonization of the island of San Juan (present-day Puerto Rico); a year later, Diego de Velazquez begins the conquest of Cuba; in 1511, Juan de Esquivel landed in Jamaica, but these expeditions cannot be compared with future grandiose mainland expeditions - neither militarily, nor in terms of distances traveled, nor in efforts, nor in the results obtained.

During this period, the most important geographical discoveries were made not in aggressive, but in purely exploratory expeditions. On August 1, 1498, Columbus discovered a new land and correctly assumed that it was “Solid Earth,” that is, a continent, although he considered South America to be the eastern tip of Asia. As soon as in 1499 the royal couple abolished Columbus's monopoly on the discovery of new western lands, other navigators rushed in his footsteps. Columbus's comrade Alonso de Ojeda, together with Vespucci, explored the northern coast of the continent from the mouth of the Amazon to the Gulf of Venezuela. On the Paraguana Peninsula, Vespucci saw a stilt settlement, “a city over the water, like Venice,” and named the bay Venezuela (Little Venice) - this name later passed to the entire southern coast of the Caribbean Sea to the Orinoco delta. Another companion of Columbus, Pedro Alonso Niño, in the same 1499, walked about three hundred kilometers along the mainland coast west of Margarita Island, where he exchanged almost forty kilograms of excellent pearls with the Indians. No Spanish overseas enterprise enriched its participants as much as this; and the next year some of the settlers from Hispaniola moved to the island of Cubagua, where they founded a colony.

The survey of the Caribbean coast of South America was completed by the wealthy Seville lawyer Rodrigo de Bastidas. In October 1500, following the footsteps of his predecessors, Bastidas reached Cape La Vela and went further southwest along the unexplored coast. In May 1501, Bastidas saw the snowy peaks of the Sierra Nevada, then discovered the mouth of the great Magdalena River and reached the Gulf of Darien, where the coast of the Isthmus of Panama begins. Another comrade-in-arms of Columbus, Vicente Yanez Pinzon, in 1500 walked about four thousand kilometers along the Atlantic coast of South America - from the eastern tip of the mainland to the Orinoco delta. The tireless Columbus himself, during his fourth expedition to the New World (1502–1504), explored the Caribbean coast of Central America - the shores of present-day Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama to the Gulf of Uraba.

In 1513, Vasco Nunez de Balboa forever inscribed his name in the history of geographical discoveries when he crossed the Isthmus of Panama and was the first European to see the Pacific Ocean, dubbing it the South Sea. By the way, it was Balboa who brought news from the Pacific coast about a rich state lying in the south. Balboa's deputy on that expedition was Francisco Pizarro - he was later lucky enough to conquer the Inca Empire.

In the same 1513, Juan Ponce de Leon, in search of the source of eternal youth, which he heard about from the Indians, discovered Florida, and then Yucatan - although he considered them islands. In 1517, Francisco Hernandez de Cordova, having sailed from Cuba in search of slaves, the shortage of which had already begun to be felt on the island, went to the Yucatan Peninsula, traced seven hundred kilometers of its coast and assumed that this was the mainland. What is more important is that native peoples were discovered here, whose level of culture was far superior to the savages of the Antilles. The natives (and these were the Mayan Indians) built large stone temples, wore beautiful clothes made of cotton fabrics and decorated their bodies with delicate items of gold and copper. True, this discovery was very expensive for the conquistadors. The Mayans turned out to be not such simpletons as the Arawaks and secretly, they did not buy into cheap trinkets and met the uninvited guests fully armed. During the last battle near the village of Chapoton, the Spaniards lost fifty people killed, five drowned, and two were captured. Almost everyone was wounded, including Cordova himself, who received many wounds. There were not enough hands to control the ships, so one ship had to be burned, and on the remaining one the conquistadors somehow reached Cuba. Cordova died ten days after his return.

Surveyed coasts of South America by 1502

Obstacles in no way stopped the conquistadors - on the contrary, they only inflamed their irrepressible energy. The following year, a much more impressive expedition was organized, consisting of four ships and two hundred and forty soldiers under the command of Juan de Grijalva. He traced the northern coast of Yucatan, reached the Panuco River and was finally convinced that these lands were mainland; and most importantly, he brought the first news of the richest state of the Aztecs, which served as an incentive for organizing Cortez’s campaign of conquest.

It is important to emphasize, however, that although the Spaniards traced several thousand miles of continental coastline, they, with the exception of Balboa, did not attempt to go far into uncharted lands and therefore had no idea about the size of the continents or the peoples who inhabited them. No one, for example, even suspected that Florida and Yucatan are lands of the same continent. Things were even worse with the geographical status of South America. It would seem that it should have initially established itself as a “Solid Earth”, since the expeditions of Ojeda and Pinzón, which explored a total of more than seven thousand kilometers of coastline, left no doubt about its “solidity”. Then came the famous letter from Vespucci, which directly spoke of a huge new continent. However, for a very long time, in the minds of most conquistadors and cosmographers, South America was considered a large island stretching from west to east. In this form it appears on the globe of Johann Schöner (1515) and on the world map (1516), found in the archives of Leonardo da Vinci. Even in 1552, the famous cosmographer Sebastian Munster described South America as a group of islands - Venezuela, Peru, Brazil, Tierra del Fuego - all separately. For a long time it did not have not only owners and settlements, but even a firm name. Columbus dubbed the continent the Land of Grace, suggesting that in its depths there was an earthly paradise. However, there was no special blessing in these poor lands with their unhealthy climate, and the name did not stick. Most often it was called by the name of the gulf discovered by Columbus - the Land of Paria. Almost simultaneously, new names arose: America, the New World (these names initially applied only to the southern continent), the Land of the True Cross, Brazil, and sometimes the Unknown Land.

None of this is intended to diminish the significance of the initial period of Spanish exploration and conquest of America. No, this was an extremely important preparatory period, without which the conquest could not have taken place; it was a kind of springboard for a throw to the mainland. The geographical discoveries made during these years and the information received about rich states showed the conquistadors the path to further expansion. Further, during the quarter century of Spanish presence in America, those forms of economic and social organization of the colonies were developed that were successfully used in the future. And for the practice of the coming conquest, two circumstances were of particular importance.

During these years, the relations of the conquistador with the royal power were developed and adjusted, that is, that system of treaties and obligations, which, as it turned out, was best suited for the grandiose enterprise of conquering America. And another thing: the initial period of the conquest became a harsh school for future conquerors of the continents: Cortes, for example, spent thirteen years in the Antilles before making a breakthrough to the mainland, and Pizarro spent eighteen years in the coastal colonies of South and Central America, after which he dared to conquer the powerful Inca state led by one hundred and eighty people.

And therefore, perhaps, the main result of the “pre-Conquista” period is that in these quarter of a century in the New World the conquistador as such was born in all the originality of his spiritual appearance: a man of special strength, indomitable energy, with an unbridled imagination, infinitely hardy and persistent , ready to do anything to achieve a goal, directed into the unknown, no longer a European in his self-awareness, who has experienced the inevitable transformative influence of virgin space - the future conqueror of America.

Conquest of North and Central America

Now, having approached the period of the conquest itself, let us first look at how events developed on the North American continent and in Central America. Of necessity, we will have to limit ourselves to a cursory list of events - the main thing is that the reader has a general idea of ​​the history, dynamics and, let’s say, the density in time of the conquistadors’ conquests. We will, of course, talk only about the most significant expeditions, in addition to which hundreds of reconnaissance expeditions on a local scale were undertaken.

So, in 1519, the governor of Cuba, Diego de Velazquez, sent Cortes with six hundred warriors to the mainland. At the last moment, he decided to replace the captain-general of the expedition; Having learned about this, Cortes immediately gave an unauthorized order to sail. On the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, Cortez founded the first Spanish settlement in North America - the city of Veracruz, after which, in the manner of the ancient Greeks at the walls of Troy, he destroyed the ships, thereby cutting off the path of retreat for himself and his comrades. From here, in August 1519, he began to fight his way to the capital of the Aztecs, the city of Tenochtitlan. Like other conquistadors, Cortez well mastered the ancient principle of “divide and conquer,” and “dividing” in the Aztec state was not difficult, because, created by the subjugation of many peoples, it was already bursting at the seams. Along the way, Cortez enlisted the support of the inhabitants of Tlaxcala: sworn enemies of the Aztecs, they sent six thousand selected warriors with the Spaniards. Cortes, from afar, “showed his fist” to the Aztec ruler Moctezuma, organizing a terrible massacre in the city of Cholula subordinate to him and discouraging the indecisive ruler from impeding the advance of foreigners.

On November 8, 1519, the Spaniards and allied troops entered Tenochtitlan. First of all, Cortes isolated the ruler and his closest subordinates and, essentially turning Moctezuma into a hostage, began to govern the state on his behalf. The Spaniards soon learned that Velazquez had sent a powerful punitive expedition against Cortes - eighteen ships and one and a half thousand crew members, led by Captain Panfilo de Narvaez, who was ordered to deliver the arbitrator “dead or alive.” Leaving a small garrison in Tenochtitlan under the command of his deputy Pedro de Alvarado, Cortes with three hundred men hurries to Veracruz, with gold and promises he lures most of Narvaez’s people to his side, and after a short skirmish he himself is captured.

Meanwhile, the maniacally suspicious Alvarado, during an Aztec religious festival, carried out a massacre of the Aztec nobility, causing a general uprising of the inhabitants of Tenochtitlan. The Spanish garrison, taking refuge in Moctezuma's palace, had difficulty holding back the onslaught of the rebels. Cortes with an impressive army came to the aid of the besieged - and he himself found himself in a trap. The Aztecs' fury continued unabated; the besieged knew no rest either day or night; and Moctezuma, called to calm his subjects, received a hail of stones from them and died from his wounds.

Meeting of Cortes and Moctezuma in Tenochtitlan

In this hopeless situation there was no other option but retreat. On the night of June 30, 1520, the Spaniards and allied Indians tried to sneak out of the city, but were spotted and attacked from all sides. A stampede began; a portable bridge prepared for crossing the canal collapsed under the weight of bodies; hung with looted gold, the conquistadors sank like stones. About eight hundred Spaniards and one and a half thousand allied Indians died that night, which is why it received the name “Night of Sorrow.” A few days later, the handful of surviving conquistadors, exhausted by incessant rearguard battles, were blocked by a huge Aztec army. The Spaniards themselves perceived their victory in the Battle of Otumba as a miracle - and it was a miracle. So the Spaniards broke through to Tlaxcala, under the protection of the allies.

Here Cortez begins careful systematic preparations for the campaign against Tenochtitlan: he builds up his forces, finds new allies among the Indian peoples, and builds brigantines on Lake Texcoco to isolate the island city from the land. In August 1521, after a three-month bloody siege, starved and thirsty, Tenochtitlan fell.

Immediately after the victory, the conqueror sent his brave captains to different parts of Mexico, and in the same 1521 Gonzalo de Sandoval went to the Pacific Ocean. In two years, all of Central Mexico was conquered. In 1524, Cortés sent his deputy Pedro de Alvarado to conquer Cuauhtemallan, which means “Country of Trees” in Mayan Quiche, hence the Spanishized name Guatemala. At first, Alvarado, having entered into an alliance with the lowland Cakchikels, smashed the mountain Quiches; when the Kaqchikels, subject to exorbitant tribute, rebelled, he crushed them with the help of the Quiche - and so in two years he subjugated Guatemala. In search of a strait between oceans and “big cities,” he penetrated along the Pacific coast into El Salvador, but was forced to retreat.

In 1523, Cortes sent his faithful captain Cristobal de Olid to explore Honduras, where he founded the colony of Iberas on the Atlantic coast. Successes turned his head, and he decided to leave Cortes. Having found out about this, Cortez abandoned the administration in Mexico and rushed to Honduras to punish the disobedient man. For two years, from 1524 to 1526, he wandered in the wilds of the jungle and was already considered dead; when Iberas approached the port, he found out that Olid’s comrades, in order to receive the forgiveness of the formidable superiors, hastened to execute their captain themselves.

Another direction of expansion into Central America came from the south, from the Isthmus of Panama, where in 1511 the Spaniards founded the colony of Santa Maria. In 1514, seventy-four-year-old Pedrarias Davila, appointed its governor, arrived in Golden Castile (as Panama was called) at the head of one and a half thousand people. He entered into an agreement with the former governor Balboa on the construction of a fleet on the Pacific coast. With incredible efforts, Balboa built ships, transporting timber from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast; and when he was already preparing to sail to the country of the Incas, he was captured and executed by slander by Pedrarias, who was cruelly jealous of his fame as the discoverer of the South Sea and always suspected him of wanting to resign. Davila founded the port of Panama, where he moved the “capital” of Golden Castile.

Hernan Cortes. From the series “Portraits and Lives of Famous Captains”, 1635 by Italian engraver Aliprando Caprioli

Balboa's former comrade-in-arms Andres Niño and his companion Gil Gonzalez de Avila decided to continue the work of the executed man and signed an agreement with the king for discoveries in the South Sea, taking possession of the fleet that Vasco Nunez had built with such pains. At the beginning of 1522, the expedition left Panama and headed north. Having learned from the natives that there were two huge lakes in the north, the Spaniards thought it was a waterway from one ocean to another. There, in the “capital” on the shore of the lake, the powerful cacique of Nicarao ruled - after his name the conquistadors named the entire “province”, which later became the independent country of Nicaragua.

In 1524, Pedrarias sent an expedition to Nicaragua led by Francisco Fernandez de Cordoba, who was ordered to populate those lands. Having defeated the Indians, Cordova founded three forts: Granada on the shores of Lake Nicaragua, Leon to the northwest of Lake Managua and Segovia. He also discovered the San Juan River, flowing out of Lake Nicaragua, built boats and walked along the river to the Atlantic Ocean. His head was spinning from success, and his boss, an old grouch, was far away. And Cordova decided to leave the governor in order to become the owner of Nicaragua himself. At the news of the rebellion, a miracle of rejuvenation happened to the eighty-five-year-old Pedrarias: with the energy and impudence of the twenty-year-old governor, he quickly prepared a powerful punitive expedition and rushed to Nicaragua. Cordova was captured and, after a short trial, beheaded, and Pedrarias became governor of Nicaragua.

Let's return to North America. In 1527, Cortez's rival Panfilo de Narvaez decided to reverse his unfortunate fate and, at the head of three hundred people, undertook an expedition to Florida, discovered by Ponce de Leon. Having learned about the rich capital of the Appalachians, Narvaez, blinded by a golden mirage, decided to immediately move deep into the earth and ordered the ships to look for a convenient harbor where they could wait for him for at least a year. And so it happened that the ships and the ground forces never met again. The “capital” of the Appalachians turned out to be an ordinary village; when the thinned squad returned to the sea, the Spaniards had no choice but to build fragile boats and sail to Mexico along the coast.

During the difficult months-long voyage, the conquistadors died one after another from hunger, thirst and Indian arrows. One can only be amazed how the Spaniards still managed to get to the Mississippi Delta. As they crossed the mouth of the great river, a storm broke out and most of the people, including Narvaez, were drowned. Those who survived died from hunger, disease and cruel treatment by the Indians. From that ill-fated expedition, only six survived, among them Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Baca, who recounted his adventures in the remarkable chronicle “Shipwreck.” Having experienced unimaginable hardships, after eight years of wandering, the four finally reached Mexico, covering a distance of eight thousand kilometers. Only now are the true dimensions of the continent beginning to emerge.

Cabeza de Vaca reported that he had heard from Indians about large cities with multi-story buildings somewhere in northern Mexico. This message was enough to arouse the initiative of the conquistadors. Hernando de Soto follows in the footsteps of the wanderers, having invested all his untold wealth acquired in Peru in organizing a powerful expedition. Starting from Florida, in three years (1539–1542) he walked three thousand kilometers through the territories of the current states of Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi, but he never discovered the “golden cities”. In the spring of 1542, exhausted and hopeless, Soto died. His successor, Luis de Moscoso, continued northwest, reached the eastern spurs of the Rocky Mountains and turned back. The Spaniards built brigantines on the Mississippi, went to sea and miraculously reached Mexico. Of the nine hundred and fifty participants in that expedition, a third returned.

In Mexico, meanwhile, they also did not sleep. Nuño de Guzman explores the north-west of Mexico, in 1530 he traces six hundred miles of the Pacific coast and establishes the northern outpost of Spanish possessions - Culiacan (at the entrance to the Gulf of California). Cortes does not rest on his laurels: one after another he sends expeditions from the Pacific coast of Mexico to the Moluccas and China; and as a result, California was discovered, which the famous conquistador personally set out to explore in 1535.

The next year, four wanderers from Narvaez’s expedition showed up: Cabeza de Vaca’s messages excited all of Mexico. The prudent Viceroy of New Spain decided, before starting an expensive expedition, to send a reconnaissance detachment, headed by a man not prone to speculation - the clergyman Fray Marcos. In March 1539, he set off north from Culiacan and returned a few months later with amazing news. The richest country he discovered, Cibola of the Seven Cities, is, as he wrote in his “Report,” “the greatest and best of all discovered in the past,” and the city of Cibola, the smaller of the seven cities, “surpasses Mexico City in size.”

The Viceroy, casting aside his doubts, immediately sets about organizing a large-scale conquering expedition. Its commander, Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, in 1540, having made a difficult journey through the desert, abandoned a convoy stretching for kilometers, with a small detachment he quickly marched to Cibola - and what does he see in front of him? Either a small village, or a large unsightly building made of mud bricks, which from a distance resembled a honeycomb. Such unusual buildings of the Zuni Indians, called “pueblos,” have partially survived to this day and are protected as monuments of ancient Indian architecture. “I can assure you that the Reverend Father did not tell the truth in any of what he reported, and in fact everything is exactly the opposite of what he said,” Coronado bitterly reported to the Viceroy. However, he was not the right person to immediately turn back. Inspired by a new golden mirage - the mythical country of Great Quivira, about which the Indians weave tall tales - he opens the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River, passes through the territories of the current states of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, plows the Great Plains, only to return empty-handed a year later. At the same time, by right of discoverer, the Spaniards came into possession of colossal territories of the North American continent, including all the southern states of what is now the United States. There was no further expansion of the Spaniards to the north of the mainland for purely mercantile reasons: after the fruitless expeditions of Soto and Coronado, the conquistadors realized that there, in the north, they could not find a second Mexico, there was only wilderness and wildness, and they lost all interest in these lands.

And finally, the last dramatic act of the conquest in North America. Back in 1527, Cortes' comrade-in-arms Francisco Montejo began the conquest of the Mayan city-states in Yucatan. The Mayans offered fierce resistance to the invaders, and more than once the Spaniards retreated in defeat - to start all over again. For twelve years, Montejo was never able to settle on the peninsula. Then Montejo’s son, his full namesake, got down to business. He turned out to be a better strategist than his father: in his youth, given as a page to Hernan Cortes, he was able to learn a lot from the famous conquistador and, acting on the principle of “divide and conquer,” in two years he firmly established himself in Yucatan, founding its “capital” city ​​of Merida. In 1543, in the decisive battle of Merida, the Indians were defeated and actually lost their independence.

At this point, the conquest in the Spanish possessions of North and Central America can be considered completed. What has been said, of course, does not mean that the Indian resistance has completely ceased and that there are no white spots or unconquered tribes left in this territory. Indian uprisings shook the colonies more than once and cost the Spaniards considerable efforts and sacrifices; the Mayan city of Tayasal in the interior of Guatemala remained independent until 1697; fanatics obsessed with golden visions searched in the north for the mythical countries of Quivira, Teguayo, Kopala and others until the end of the 16th century. - but all these were just echoes of the conquest, already completed forever and irrevocably. Accomplished from 1519 to 1543. - for twenty-four years. A quarter of a century to conquer, explore, conquer a huge territory!

Conquest of South America

Now let's move to South America. Cortez is already in full control of Mexico, and the shores of the southern continent are still waiting for the conquistadors. The first Spanish settlement on the mainland, San Sebastian, founded by Alonso de Ojeda in 1510, did not last long: the continuous war with the Indians forced the colonists, on the advice of Balboa, to relocate to the Isthmus of Panama, where they founded the settlement of Santa Maria. The South American Indians turned out to have little gold, ridiculously little, which means there was no sense in this land - so the colonial authorities declared it “a useless land.”

And yet, Cortez’s successes finally stirred up the conquistadors and they became alarmed: if a gold-bearing country was discovered in the north, then why shouldn’t it be in the south? That's where she belongs! Just then I remembered an ancient and very widespread scientific theory, which played an important role in the emergence of the myth of El Dorado. This theory said that gold grows underground from the heat of the sun, which means that there should be more precious metals and stones in equatorial countries than in northern ones. And so, on the Caribbean coast of South America, two permanent settlements appeared, which became bases for penetrating into the interior of the mainland: Santa Marta in Colombia, at the mouth of the Magdalena River (1525), and Coro in Venezuela (1527). Expansion into South America proceeded in three directions.

It started from the Caribbean coast and was inspired by rumors about the treasures of the nearby South Sea (Venezuela was then considered an island), and later - about the gold-bearing countries of Meta, Jerira, Omagua, and Eldorado. The first large-scale expeditions into the interior of the mainland were undertaken by agents of the German bankers Welser, to whom the Spanish crown sold Venezuela in payment for debts. The deal seemed mutually beneficial: by renting out countless lands of the New World, the monarch received a one-time payment (according to various assumptions, from five to twelve tons of gold) plus the royal fifth of the income; the German owners acquired an entire country, bounded from the north by the Caribbean Sea, from the west by Cape La Vela, from the east by Cape Maracapan, and from the south - not limited in any way, since no one yet knew its extent in the meridional direction. “To the sea” - the treaty simply indicated, meaning the South Sea (Pacific Ocean), washing America from the south. Venezuela was of interest to German bankers only as a transit point on the way to the wealth of Asian countries. According to the general opinion, they were convinced that Lake Maracaibo communicated with the South Sea and ordered their governors to look for a sea strait, and at the same time remove the “golden skins” from Indian civilizations.

In two expeditions 1529–1531. The first German governor of Venezuela, Ambrose Alfinger, explored the shores of Lake Maracaibo and the spurs of the Sierra Nevada mountains and advanced three hundred kilometers up the Magdalena River. Having learned about the rich country of Jerira (this name is associated with the Heridas plateau, where people lived who stood at a relatively high level of development), the conquistadors recklessly rushed to storm the steep mountains, not even having warm clothes. Two dozen Christians and one and a half hundred Indians died in the mountains. Left almost without porters, the conquistadors were forced to abandon all their equipment. One day Alfinger became separated from the column, fell into an Indian ambush and was mortally wounded; the remnants of the army returned home ingloriously.

In Alfinger's absence, his compatriot Nikolaus Federman rushed south from Coro in 1531 and discovered the Venezuelan llanos (endless grassy plains).

At the same time, in 1531–1532. The Spaniard Diego de Ordaz, one of Cortez's most influential and trusted captains in the conquest of Mexico, penetrated the mouth of the Orinoco and ascended the river a thousand miles. Here he learned from the Indians about a country rich in gold, lying in the mountains in the west (we were undoubtedly talking about the country of the Chibcha-Muiscas). He called the Orinoco tributary, originating in that country, Meta (in Spanish - “goal”), and since then the mythical state of Meta has excited the imagination of the conquistadors. The trial and sudden death prevented Ordaz from undertaking a second expedition to the Orinoco.

Unexpected guests

His successor was Jeronimo de Ortal, who organized an expedition in the footsteps of Ordaz, putting Alonso de Herrera in command. He reached the Meta River and climbed two hundred kilometers upstream, where he found death from Indian arrows in another skirmish with the warlike Caribs. Left without a commander, the conquistadors turned back. Ortal zealously takes up the preparation of a new expedition and rushes to his cherished goal - to the kingdom of Meta. But the campaign turned out to be so difficult that along the way the soldiers mutinied, removed Ortal from the post of captain general, put him in a boat and sent him down the Orinoco. By some miracle he survived to end his days peacefully in Santo Domingo. Following Ortal, the governor of the island of Trinidad, Antonio Cedeño, went in search of the kingdom of Meta. He died along the way - it is believed that he was poisoned by his own slave.

Expansion from the Pacific Coast brings the wealth we are looking for. In 1522, Pascual de Andagoya walked from Panama about four hundred kilometers along the western coast of South America: he himself saw nothing but wild tribes, but he received certain information about a rich gold country lying south of the Viru River (apparently the local name of the Patia River , which Andagoya interpreted as “the country of Peru”), This information inspired the middle-aged Pizarro to organize a kind of “share society” together with the conquistador Diego de Almagro and the wealthy priest Hernando Luque to conquer Peru. In 1524, Pizarro and Almagro, with a hundred people, made their first voyage to Peru, but did not advance further than Andagoya; two years later they tried again, crossed the equator and captured several Peruvians, who confirmed information about the fabulous treasures of the Inca Empire. In 1527–1528 Pizarro reached the Gulf of Guayaquil, where the rich city of Tumbes was located. He returned to Spain with the trophies, signed a treaty with the king, and as governor of Peru in 1531 set off to conquer the Inca state with a detachment of one hundred and two infantry and sixty-two horsemen. The Incas did not put any obstacles in the way of the advance of the Spaniards, who cheerfully reached the mountain fortress of Cajamarca, where the Supreme Inca Atahualpa was stationed with an army of five thousand. Further events are well known: upon meeting with the emperor, the Spaniards carried out a massacre, took him hostage, and he offered the aliens, as a ransom for his life, to fill the room where he was kept (with an area of ​​thirty-eight square meters) with gold objects. Pizarro received about six tons of gold from this deal, and the Inca ruler received garrote, death by strangulation.

The riches of Peru turn the heads of the conquistadors; a kind of mass psychosis of the search for a golden country begins, which lasted two and a half centuries. From the capital of the Inca state, Cusco, conquered in 1533, conquerors rush in two streams to the north and south. By 1537, Sebastian Belalcazar conquered vast territories of the northern part of the Incan Empire, including the city of Quito (Ecuador). Diego de Almagro in 1535–1537 crosses Bolivia and opens the high-altitude Lake Titicaca, then, having overcome the Chilean Andes through a pass at an altitude of four kilometers, reaches the banks of the Ma-ule River. Empty-handed, having frozen dozens of Christians and one and a half thousand porters in the Andes, he returned back through the waterless Atacama Desert, having traveled about five thousand kilometers in both directions.

Execution of Atahualpa

Almagro returned to Peru when the country was engulfed in an Indian uprising. Installed by the puppet emperor of the Incas, Manco Capac II outwitted Pizarro, raised the Incas to fight, inflicted several defeats on the Spaniards and besieged the city of Cusco for six months, where Pizarro’s brothers Gonzalo, Hernando and Juan were locked up. The latter died during the sortie; the position of the besieged became critical, and only the sudden appearance of Almagro’s troops turned the situation in favor of the Spaniards. The defeated rebels, led by Manco Capac, went to an inaccessible highland region, where they founded the so-called New Inca kingdom, centered in the city of Vilcabamba - this fragment of the Inca empire remained until 1571.

Having lifted the siege of Cuzco, Almagro, dissatisfied with the division of Peru, took Gonzalo and Hernando prisoner; the first managed to escape, and the second Almagro was released on parole by Francisco Pizarro, who promised to cede Cuzco to him. One should not trust the word of the one who so treacherously captured and executed Atahualpa. As soon as Hernando was free, the Pizarro brothers gathered forces, defeated Almagro’s army in the bloody battle of Salinas, and he himself was executed in July 1538. The surviving supporters of Almagro, whose rights were infringed, formed a conspiracy three years later and broke into the house of Francisco Pizarro and hacked him to death, after which they proclaimed Almagro’s illegitimate son Diego governor of Peru. However, he did not reign for long. A new governor appointed by the king, with the help of Pizarro's supporters, captured Diego, tried him and executed him in September 1542.

Meanwhile, expansion from the Caribbean coast finally brought not only geographical discoveries, but also significant booty. In 1536, the Spaniard Jimenez de Quesada, at the head of seven hundred people, set out from the colony of Santa Marta south through the impenetrable jungle along the Magdalena River, and then turned east into the mountains, crossed the Cordillera and entered the Bogotá valley. During the difficult transition, he lost four-fifths of his people, but with the remaining one and a half hundred people in 1538 he conquered the Chibcha-Muisca country, rich in gold and emeralds, taking third place among the successful conquistadors after Pizarro and Cortez. Soon, to the chagrin of Quesada, two more expeditions appeared in the Bogotá valley: the German Federman got there from the east, through the Venezuelan llanos, and Belalcazar - from the south, from Quito, and both laid claims to ownership of the country. Surprisingly, the matter did not end in a fight - the three captains-general went to Spain to peacefully resolve their disputes in court. Federman ended up in a debtor's prison, where he ended his days, Belalcazar received control of the province of Popayan, and Quesada, after long judicial ordeals, was elevated to the rank of marshal of the viceroyalty of New Granada, which became the former country of the Muiscas.

The Eldorado Mirage does not fade. The Germans Georg Hoermuth von Speyer (1535–1539) and Philipp von Hutten (1541–1546) plow the vast Venezuelan plains in vain in search of golden kingdoms, losing hundreds of people. The latter managed to reach the equator, penetrating into the most hidden regions of the continent, where, according to his assurances, he discovered the powerful state of the Omagua Indians, tributaries of the Amazons, and saw their lush city of Cuarica, which was subsequently never found. He intended to make a new attempt to conquer Omagua, but was treacherously executed by the governor of Venezuela. In 1557, after a lengthy litigation, the Spanish crown terminated the contract with the German bankers, and Venezuela came into the possession of the Spaniards.

Expeditions to Peru and Chile

Pizarro's brother Gonzalo owned a vast province in Peru and was immensely rich. Still, Eldorado was not enough for him, and at the beginning of 1541 he went north from Quito in search of a golden country. The expedition was luxuriously equipped: three hundred and twenty Spaniards, almost all on horseback, four thousand Indian porters, countless herds of llamas, sheep and pigs for food. Having crossed the Eastern Cordillera, Pizarro discovered the Napo River, a tributary of the upper Amazon. Here he discovered entire forests of cinnamon trees. Considering that in that era cinnamon was worth almost its weight in gold, Gonzalo Pizarro could be sure that he had found his Eldorado. While exploring the “country of cinnamon,” Pizarro went down the river until he reached the Amazonian lowlands for the first time. There were no provisions in these deserted places, and hunger became more and more noticeable. And then Pizarro sent a detachment of fifty men under the command of Francisco de Orellana downstream the Napo with orders to obtain food for the starving warriors at any cost. Weeks passed after weeks, and nothing was heard from the scouts. The conquistadors had to return home. Along the way they finished off the last horses, the last dogs and all the leather ammunition. In June 1542, eighty emaciated people appeared in the vicinity of Quito, asking the townspeople to send them some clothes to cover their nakedness. The most terrible blow awaited Pizarro in Quito: when looking at samples of cinnamon wood, knowledgeable people said that they had nothing to do with the precious Ceylon cinnamon.

What happened to Orellana’s squad? The Spaniards rafted several hundred kilometers along the fast flow of the river in two weeks and, unable to return, continued their journey wherever the water carried them: so in 1541–1542. They, constantly attacked by the natives, sailed along the Amazon River from the headwaters to the mouth for almost eight thousand kilometers and along the Atlantic coast reached the island of Margaret. Only now are the enormous dimensions of the South American continent becoming clear. Along the way, as the chronicler of the unprecedented voyage reports, the Spaniards had a brutal clash with fair-skinned warriors, and also obtained “reliable” information about the wealth of the Amazon state. And so it happened that the river, named by right of the pioneer the Orellana River, appeared on the maps of South America under the name of the Amazon River.

In Chile, since 1540, Pedro de Valdivia has been trying to persuade the proud Araucanians to submit, but during thirteen years of fierce war he was never able to advance south of the Bio-Bio River. In 1553, Valdivia was captured by the Indians and was brutally executed. After the death of their military leader, the Spaniards were forced to retreat, and in the unconquered territories the Indians maintained independence until the 20th century.

The third direction of Spanish expansion in South America, inspired by rumors of the mythical Silver Kingdom, the City of the Twelve Caesars, the Silver Mountain and the Great Pai-titi, comes from the southeastern coast of the Atlantic, through the mouth of the Rio de La Plata, discovered back in 1515– 1516 In 1535, a powerful expedition led by Pedro de Mendoza founded the cities of Buenos Aires and Asuncion, the capitals of the future Argentina and Paraguay. In 1541–1542 The restless Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca crossed the southeastern part of the Brazilian Highlands and reached Asuncion. From Paraguay, the conquistadors move northwest, to Bolivia, where in 1545 the Silver Mountain, the world's largest silver deposit, was actually found; The city of Potosi was founded here. From Bolivia, the conquistadors rush south to Argentina, where in the 60s and 70s. The cities of Tucuman and Cordoba were founded.

Dates and results of the conquest

However, by that time the conquest in South America had already largely ended. Its apotheosis can be considered the war against the Araucanians, which ended in 1553 with the conquest of northern Chile and the defeat of the Spaniards during their further advance to the south. Let us again stipulate: vast unexplored territories remained on the mainland - the Orinoco Basin, the Guiana Highlands, the Amazon, the North-Eastern Brazilian Plateau, the Paraguayan Gran Chaco region, southern Chile and Argentina - and these blank spots fed the imagination of Europeans who were looking for mythical cities of gold right up to until the end of the 18th century. (the last large-scale expedition in search of El Dorado was undertaken in 1775). Of course, exploration and conquest expeditions were still undertaken and new settlements and cities were founded. At the same time, the expedition of Pedro de Ursua down the Amazon in search of El Dorado (1560), subsidized by the Viceroy of Peru, had already turned out to be an anachronism, and the conquistadors themselves apparently felt this, which is why they turned the campaign into an unbridled rebellion against royal power. Of course, the unconquered Indians remained: the Araucanians defended their independence; and in Argentina, vast unconquered Indian territories remained until the 80s. XIX century, and their moving border (frontera) was similar to the North American frontier; and in the jungle the natives continued to live in the Stone Age, meeting white-faced newcomers with poisoned arrows. And yet, basically the conquest completed its tasks precisely by the middle of the 16th century. The main thing is that in the next hundred, if not two hundred years, the situation on the continent did not change significantly: those areas that were not conquered and explored during the era of the conquest remained for the most part unconquered and little explored.

From the middle of the 16th century. The third stage of the development of America begins: exploration of white spots, slow but steady colonization of new territories, construction of settlements and roads, missionary activity, cultural development. It is difficult, almost impossible, to determine the borders of this period closest to us; and if we take into account the reservations made above, then it will not be at all absurd to assert that this period has not yet finally ended. Be that as it may, it will remain outside the scope of our book.

In 1550, in connection with the unfolding official dispute about the legality of the conquest (which will be discussed in detail later), a royal ban was adopted on any campaigns of conquest in America - so Valdivia spent the last three years of his life fighting the Araucanians, so to speak, illegally. Perhaps the most significant evidence of the completion of the conquest was precisely in the mid-50s. XVI century was the removal of the word “conquest” from the official lexicon, declared by the Spanish king in 1556: “For good reasons and justifications, the word “conquest” itself should be excluded from all capitulations and instead the words “pacification” and “settlement” should be used, for the will ours is such that our subjects come to the natives in peace and all kinds of goodwill, since we fear that the word “conquista,” contrary to our good intentions, will cause excessive zeal in the person entering into the treaty and encourage him to cause violence or damage to the Indians.” By the way, the first attempt to exclude the word “conquest” from the official lexicon was made by the authorities back in 1542–1543, when, under pressure from humanists, the New Laws of the Indies were adopted. In them, in particular, instead of the word “conquest” it was recommended to use the concepts of “entry” (entrada) and “opening”. However, the New Laws aroused fierce resistance in the colonies and were repealed a few years later; As for the odious word, the conquest was in full swing, and then it was not possible to write it off in the archive. But in 1556, the operation to remove the word was painless. The king's decree actually legitimized the fait accompli: the conquest had already taken place, there was no one to conquer (in the sense of the Aztecs, Mayans, Incas), and now the outdated concept could be sent to the dustbin of history.

Spanish King Charles I in his youth. Etching by D. Hopfer. The monarch went down in history as Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Under him, Spain became the most powerful power in the world. The era of the conquest is associated with his name

This date - 1556 - in the history of the conquest has another, symbolic content: this year Emperor Charles V, who ascended the throne in 1516, renounced the crown in favor of his son Philip II. All the major enterprises and conquests of the conquistadors are associated with the name of Charles V, and it turned out that his reign almost exactly coincided with the chronological framework of the conquista. And finally, one more, no longer symbolic fact: in the same 1556, Andres Hurtado de Mendoza was appointed Viceroy of Peru, who, at the direction of the crown, began to restore order with an iron hand. He wrote about the conquistadors: “There is no place for peace and peace in the souls of these people, although I persecuted them in every possible way and since I arrived here, I have strung up, beheaded and exiled more than eight hundred people.” The position of the viceroy clearly reflects the dramatically changed official attitude towards the conquistadors: the conquista is over, the free reign is over, from now on the times of order and obedience are coming. All of the above gives the right to consider 1556 as the conditional date for the end of the conquest.

So, the exploration and conquest of the Southern continent took approximately the same amount of time as the conquest in Central and North America along the border of the southern states of the United States - that is, from 1529 to 1556. - twenty-seven years old. We should not forget that the territory of the southern continent is at least twice as large as the area of ​​the Spanish conquest in the north, and is not comparable to it in terms of natural conditions: the mountains here are steeper, the countryside is denser, the rivers are faster and fuller, and the deserts are drier. The conquest of the southern continent, of course, required much greater effort and greater loss of life. In general, it turns out that the era of the conquest, which began in 1519 and basically ended by the mid-50s. of the same century, within three and a half decades. Thirty-five years to explore and conquer vast territories of two continents! And this was with the technology of that time, not yet developed, despite the fact that all distances had to be covered on foot!

Let's try to look at the results of the conquest in all four of its components.

If we take the conquest aspect of the conquest, then this task is basically completed: all four highly developed peoples of America - the Aztecs, Mayans, Incas and Chibcha-Muiscas - were all brought to their knees, their cities were taken and destroyed, their territories were occupied and divided. And besides, dozens of other peoples of the continent were conquered.

If we turn to the purely predatory aspect of the conquest, inseparable from the conquest, then in this direction the tasks, one might say, have been exceeded (although the conquistadors themselves would not agree with this statement, for those who love gold always lack it). Pizarro plundered six tons of gold, Cortes a little less than two tons, Quesada a ton of gold and a quarter of a ton of emeralds; and others, less fortunate, collected a total of several tons of small items and trinkets, so that there was absolutely nothing to plunder and the Indians were driven to plantations and mines. But the mines of America turned out to be a true Eldorado: according to some estimates, from 1503 to 1560, 101 tons of gold and 577 tons of silver were delivered from the New World to Spain. After the discovery of the Potosi deposit, the flow of silver increased significantly and over the next forty years reached 6872 tons - this was twice the amount of silver that was available in all of Europe before Columbus.

Let's take the research aspect of the conquest - the results are truly grandiose: territories of about twenty million square kilometers were surveyed. Tens of thousands of miles have been walked through lands where no European has set foot; open mountain ranges, valleys, rivers, plains, deserts; The sizes and outlines of the continents appeared. If the maps are from the 20s. XVI century In the Western Hemisphere there is still complete confusion, then on the maps of the 40s. America has already become quite recognizable.

Let us turn to the colonialist aspect of the conquest - and in this area the results are also stunning. It is enough to give an incomplete list of major American cities founded during the era of the Conquest. These are the future capitals of Panama (1519), Mexico City on the site of the completely destroyed Tenochtitlan (1521), Guatemala (1524), San Salvador (1525), Quito (1533), Lima (1535), Buenos Aires (1536), Asuncion (1537 ), Bogota (1538), Santiago de Chile (1541) La Paz (1548). And in addition to them - the cities of Veracruz (1519), Guadalajara (1530), Merida (1542) in Mexico, Guayaquil (1531) in Ecuador, Popayan (1537) in Colombia, Maracaibo (1531) in Venezuela, Potosi (1545) and Santa -Cruz (1548) in Bolivia, Valparaiso (1544), Concepcion (1550) and Valdivia (1552) in Chile. This is not counting hundreds of small settlements.

Map of America 1544

But the colonialist aspect of the conquest is by no means limited to the construction of cities and settlements. In 1540, a printing house was opened in Mexico City, and in 1551, the University of San Marcos in Lima was founded. A territorial and administrative division of the colonies was made: two viceroyalties, Peru and New Granada, three captaincy generals (Santo Domingo, Guatemala and New Granada, which included the territories of present-day Colombia and Venezuela), and two audiences, La Plata and Chile. Firm local power was established, Indian Laws were approved and repeatedly adjusted, a bureaucratic management apparatus was established, lands and Indians were distributed.

Equally impressive results have been achieved in the Christianization of the Indians. For example, the first missionaries arrived in Mexico in 1524, and seven years later the Archbishop of New Spain, Juan de Zumarraga, informed the king that during this time the Franciscans alone converted a million Indians to Christianity. By the end of the century there were in Mexico one thousand Franciscans, six hundred Dominicans, eight hundred Augustinians, four hundred Jesuits, and four hundred and fifty friars of other orders; Four hundred monasteries and a huge number of “cofradias,” religious brotherhoods, were created. Of course, it would be naive to assume that the natives will easily abandon their gods, which their ancestors worshiped. In fact, the natives profess dual faith, which has not been eradicated to this day - that is, they bizarrely combine the worship of Christ and the Virgin Mary with pagan elements. It should be emphasized that the conquistadors played a special role in the Christianization process: they personally showed the Indians the “weakness” of their gods. When an Indian saw his idols crumbling and his altars being desecrated, and the blasphemer remaining unpunished, he experienced severe psychological shock, his faith began to crack. Thus the sword paved the way for preaching.

Missionaries not only instruct the conquered Indians in the Christian faith - they teach them Spanish and Latin, play European musical instruments, and engage them to build churches and decorate interiors. Schools for Indians appeared at the monasteries. About a thousand Indians studied in the schools established by Pedro of Ghent in Mexico City in 1529. In the same year, the first girls' school for the daughters of the Indian nobility was founded in Texcoco, and in 1534, Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza and Archbishop Zumarraga created the Colegio Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco for the male offspring of the Indian nobility, where they actually studied at the university in the humanities. well. In 1537, Mendoza appealed to Charles V with a request to allow him to open a higher educational institution for the natives, citing their outstanding learning abilities. History has brought to us many rave reviews about the extraordinary receptivity of Indians to European languages. But we will not cite these reviews; It’s better to refer to a document that is much more convincing due to its genre - namely, denunciation.

In October 1541, one of the advisers to the Viceroy of New Spain complained to the emperor that the Indians had learned to read, write and play musical instruments perfectly; Moreover, “there are young men among them - and their number is increasing every day - who speak Latin so refined that they are not inferior to Cicero.” The Indians, the adviser complains, show miracles in learning and quickly leave their mentors behind. He recently visited one of the monastery schools and was shocked with what knowledge the Indians discussed the most subtle issues of Christian doctrine. All this must stop, the adviser pleads, “otherwise this earth will turn into a cave of the Sibyls, and all its inhabitants into spirits immersed in theological problems.”

The above should not create “rosy” ideas about the situation of the indigenous population of America, where thousands and thousands of Indians were killed, sold into slavery, and worked hard on plantations and mines. At the same time, the conquest also had such a face, this Two-Faced Janus.

Conquistador forces

So, having briefly summarized the results of the conquest, let us turn to another question: by what forces, in fact, was all this done? It is reasonable to assume that in order to accomplish such enormous tasks in such a short historical period and achieve such impressive results, a huge number of people are needed. This reasonable assumption gave rise to the popular idea of ​​“hordes” of Spaniards invading America. How many were there really? Can we judge this more or less accurately?

Yes - according to two sources. The first of them is the lists of passengers departing for the New World that have survived to this day. The fact is that during the colonial era, one could travel to America from Spain only with the highest permission of the authorities, and this rule was observed especially strictly at the dawn of the colonial era. In 1503, a Chamber of Commerce was created in Seville to manage overseas territories, which was later transformed into the Royal Council for the Indies. And in the 19th century, when the “Indies” took care of their own affairs - that is, threw off the yoke of Spanish rule - this bureaucratic organization, which had accumulated tons of papers over three centuries, had no choice but to become an invaluable archive. And this archive partially preserves the name lists of those who were allowed to go to the New World, starting with Columbus’s second expedition. Of course, there were many who entered India illegally, but in any case they were not the majority. In the 40s XX century The "Catalog of Passengers in India" was published in Spain, and the author was fortunate to hold this bibliographic rarity in his hands.

Unfortunately, history has not brought us complete lists of passengers: not only have the lists been preserved only since 1509, but for some years the data is incomplete, and for some there is no data at all. In this case, can passenger lists provide an opportunity to judge the number of emigrants? They can. Of course, we are not talking about any exact figures, but only approximate ones. Fortunately, two years of apparently relatively complete data have been preserved, which provides the basis for calculations. It should be noted that emigration during the Conquest went through three stages: initial, until 1521; after the discovery and conquest of the Aztec state, the number of emigrants increases; and the flow of settlers, attracted by the fabulous riches of the Inca Empire, is growing even more.

In the passenger lists, the data for 1513 can be considered relatively complete - 728 names and for 1535 - 2214 people. For the period from 1521 to 1533, we derive the arithmetic mean and get about one and a half thousand people per year. Let us even take these maximum values, multiplying them by the number of years, and for the first period of emigration we get the figure of thirteen thousand people, for the second - eighteen thousand, for the third - fifty thousand. It turns out that during the era of the conquest, that is, before 1556, about eighty thousand people emigrated to America. Let’s add “illegals” to them, but there could not be more than ten thousand of them. In total, according to the most balanced estimates of historians, by the beginning of the 17th century. About two hundred thousand people emigrated to America, so the data obtained for the period of the Conquest (most likely overestimated) are generally close to these figures. Now let the reader look at a map of America from the Colorado River to Tierra del Fuego and try to imagine these spaces and distances. Even if there were a hundred thousand Spaniards, it’s still a “drop in the ocean” of hostile virgin lands!

In addition, let’s not forget to take into account the extremely high mortality rate among the colonists and the colossal loss of life during the expeditions. Pedrarias Davila brought one and a half thousand people to Golden Castile - two months later, seven hundred of them died of hunger and disease. The story is by no means exceptional; the governor of Santa Marta forbade the ringing of bells for the dead, because the daily funeral ringing plunged the colonists into despair. It was in the first two or three months that cruel natural selection took place, when every fifth, or even every third, of the new arrivals died; but the survivors became like flint. Losses on expeditions were often also quite significant. On the "Night of Sorrows" during his flight from Tenochtitlan, Cortés lost between six hundred and eight hundred fellow Spaniards; out of three hundred people of Narvaez’s expedition, four reached Mexico; out of eight hundred Quesada warriors, one hundred and sixty came to the country of the Chibcha-Muiscas; out of nine hundred and fifty conquistadors of Soto, three hundred and eleven people returned home - examples can be multiplied and multiplied. Finally, often the colonists could not withstand the hardships of the New World and returned to their native Spain.

Of the eighty to one hundred thousand settlers, of course, only a minority directly participated in the exploration and conquest of the New World, because, apart from women and people of non-military professions, settled colonists also lived in America. So how many of the emigrants were actual conquistadors? This can be confirmed by the accurate information that has reached us about the quantitative composition of all expeditions of any significance (the conquistadors had a good record of accounting and control). So, summing up the data for North America, we got a figure of approximately four and a half thousand people; in South America - about six thousand. Total - ten thousand. Having already made these calculations, the author found confirmation of them in the book of the Mexican historian Jose Duran, who writes: “It is quite clear that the conquest was carried out by a few thousand soldiers, there were maybe ten thousand.”

But we must immediately emphasize: this calculation is incorrect and the figures turned out to be very inflated. The fact is that with such a purely mechanical addition it is implied that each conquistador took part in only one single campaign, and newcomers were recruited for each expedition. In reality, everything was completely different. A real conquistador, at the first call, would break away from his home and go into the unknown while his legs dragged him; and in turn, the captains-general always preferred veterans to newcomers. So, I think these numbers can be safely reduced by one and a half to two times. And closest to the truth, apparently, is the Argentine historian Ruggieri Romano, who believes that Spanish America was explored and conquered by a maximum of four to five thousand people. In any case, there are fewer soldiers than in one modern division.

Only now, when the reader has some idea of ​​the multifaceted nature of the conquest, its tasks, timing and human resources involved, only now will he understand that the title of this chapter - “The Miracle of the Conquest” - is not at all a catchy journalistic device. But how did it turn out to be possible - to accomplish all this with such small forces and in such an insignificant time frame?

The author honestly answers this question: I don’t know. After all, a miracle is something that cannot be fully explained. And there is hardly anyone who will put everything so neatly into pieces that there will be no more room for surprise or questions. By the way, the participants and contemporaries of the conquest themselves perceived it as a miracle, and when they tried to explain it, they most often referred to “divine protection” or to the superiority of the Spanish nation (“God became a Spaniard,” Europeans said in that era), and sometimes and on the “weakness” of the Indian world. Of course, now these answers cannot be considered convincing. And therefore the author will risk making some judgments and assumptions on this score, believing that a hypothesis is still preferable to a question mark.

At the origins of a miracle

The miracle of the conquest was accomplished by people, not gods, and it would not have become possible if not for the colossal, downright fantastic energy of the conquistadors. But these words are only a statement, not an explanation. The main thing is to understand where this incredible energy came from and what fueled it?

The answers will be far from exhaustive, and in some places controversial. In the author's opinion, the extraordinary energy of the conquistadors was born of three circumstances.

The first factor is time. The beginning of the 16th century is a turning point from the Middle Ages to modern times, and turning points, as a rule, are accompanied by powerful outbursts of human energy. On the one hand, the very dynamics of the historical process, which sharply increases in such eras, gives rise to people of action, not reflection; on the other hand, the boundary of eras passes through a person’s consciousness, which is why it becomes dual, restless.

In the chapter on the spiritual appearance of the conquistador, it will be shown that these people retained the features of the thinking and culture of medieval man and at the same time were representatives of the Renaissance personality type. The rift between two grandiose eras of European history, perhaps, was most clearly manifested precisely in the minds of the conquistadors - people as dual and contradictory as their deeds and actions, which they themselves, of course, were not aware of. Contradiction is the driving force of development. A harmonious, integral consciousness, with an unshakable system of values, strives to protect its stability with a shell of regulations, and therefore it gravitates towards statics, dogma. A contradictory consciousness, turbulent between opposing value guidelines, generates energy that motivates a person to action, search, destruction and creation.

If we descend from the heights of psychology and turn to historical specifics, then one thing is certain: at the turning point of the eras from the Middle Ages to the modern era, opportunities opened up for people from the lower and middle classes that they could not even dream of before. Medieval society was very hierarchical, static, it was built on the principle “every cricket knows its nest.” Born a smerd (peasant) was doomed to die, the son of a craftsman followed in his father’s footsteps, the soldier did not dream of becoming a general. In Spain, for a number of historical reasons, which will be discussed later, medieval society was much more democratic than in many other European countries, but it was also subject to regulations, and most importantly, feudal freedom ended just on the eve of the discovery of America with the establishment of absolutism.

And suddenly, like in a fairy tale, everything changed at once. Hernan Cortes, favored by the king, becomes Marquis del Valle, ruler of a vast territory larger than his native Spain. Yesterday's swineherd Pizarro can now compete with other kings with his wealth. The humble lawyer Jimenez de Quesada receives the title of marshal, the family coat of arms and a rich income. These are exceptional cases. But what an inspiring example they served! However, it is no longer out of the ordinary to call it an unusual case when a seedy hidalgo, or even a commoner, a wandering need, went to the New World and received encomienda ownership - vast lands with a couple of hundred Indians in his service. The people of that amazing time really gained very real opportunities to radically change their destiny for the better.

And these opportunities were provided to them by the grandiose space that opened before them. Space is the second source of initiative and energy of the conquistadors. Great geographical discoveries became the best answer to the demands of the time. The energy born at the turn of the epoch has found a way out and a worthy field of application. In Western Europe, everything was distributed long ago, each piece of land had its own owner. The newly discovered immeasurable lands seemed to be calling: come and take possession; and this call found an instant response in the hearts of people. But this is a purely material side of the matter. Besides this, there was also a spiritual side.

We are talking about a kind of revolution in human consciousness. There is no need to prove that the image of the world, being a product of consciousness, in turn has a formative effect on thinking, largely determining a person’s worldview, his ideas about his capabilities, and his behavior patterns. In the medieval image of the ecumene - the inhabited world - the concept of edge, border, and insurmountable limit played a significant role. In the north there is a belt of eternal snow - life there is impossible. In the south, it was believed, there was a hot equatorial belt - it could not be crossed due to the hellish heat. In the east, beyond distant Muscovy, travelers said, “there are lands of darkness, where pitch darkness reigns and nothing is visible,” these lands are inhabited by devils and dragons. In the southeast lay the legendary alluring lands of India, Cathay (China) and Sipango (Japan), but the path to them was long, difficult and dangerous. And even this path was cut off in 1453, when the Turks captured Constantinople. Of particular importance for the mentality of a person in the 15th century was the border in the west - the Atlantic Ocean or, as it was called, the Sea of ​​Darkness, which since ancient times was perceived as the limit of the inhabited earth, as the western border of the world.

The traveler reached the end of the Earth

Thus, the ecumene was limited on all sides, like a rectangle: the Lands of Darkness in the east correspond to the Sea of ​​Darkness in the west, the cold belt in the north corresponds to the hot equatorial belt in the south. It is quite obvious that these purely spatial boundaries were projected into human consciousness, transforming into existential boundaries. In this closed space, a person is forced to recognize the limitations of his capabilities: wherever you step, there is an insurmountable limit.

And in a matter of years, the spatial boundaries of the ecumene opened up in the south, west and east. In 1492, Columbus crossed the ocean, and besides, as it was believed a decade and a half after the famous voyage, he paved the way to Asia - that is, it turned out that he simultaneously broke the two borders of the ecumene, western and eastern. And six years later, Vasco de Gama, having circled Africa, reached India, also breaking two borders - southern and eastern. Let us emphasize: not only spatial boundaries collapsed, the boundaries of human consciousness collapsed, which in itself transformed man, opening up for him unprecedented space for movement and initiative. It turned out as if a recluse, who had lived for many years in a confined space at home, suddenly walked out the door - and was amazed at the open space before him and his freedom to go wherever he wanted.

And soon another revolution took place in the picture of the world - when the opinion was established that Columbus had discovered the New World, two huge continents, unknown to the geographers of antiquity and the Middle Ages. The first assumptions on this matter were made back in 1493 by the remarkable Italian humanist Pietro Martire Angleria (in the Spanish manner - Pedro Martire); then followed the famous letters of Amerigo to Vespucci (1499) and, finally, the widely known cosmography of the German Martin Waldseemüller (1507), in which he proposed to call the New World in honor of Vespucci the Land of Amerigo or America.

Already by virtue of its second name - New World - America transformed the image of the ecumene. With everyday use of the word, the freshness of its meaning is quickly lost. But let’s try to renounce the usual and restore the original powerful semantic energy contained in the phrase Mundus Novus, New World, New World. This truly revolutionary concept destroys the entire previous image of the world that had developed over thousands of years of previous European history. The space of human existence expands explosively, doubles, which is visually embodied in the first map of the world with two hemispheres, placed in the mentioned cosmography of Walseemüller. Accordingly, ideas about the boundaries of the possible expand, and these new ideas, carrying a charge of energy, will immediately find embodiment in action, deed.

And the space of the New World itself became a source of energy for pioneers and conquistadors. After all, it challenged a person, and this challenge provoked an adequate energetic response. A grandiose space also requires tremendous efforts to conquer, not only physical but also spiritual efforts, which ultimately lead to radical changes in a person’s consciousness and worldview. However, we will talk about this in more detail later.

Finally, the third source and stimulus of the conquistador’s energy was the rare coincidence in history of the interests of the individual and the state, the subordinate and the ruler, or, specifically in our case, the conqueror and the king. The conquista was organized in such a remarkable way that it provided maximum freedom of initiative to the conquistadors and at the same time took into account the interests of the crown. There is no doubt: if the organization of the conquest had been thought out and planned by someone in advance, then it would never have turned out so effective.

The forms of the conquest, although they were not completely new in the history of Spain, nevertheless developed spontaneously, in the process of developing America, and turned out to be optimally adapted for this unprecedented experience in the history of mankind. It can be argued that the organizer of the conquest was again the space of America, for such forms of conquest were unthinkable in Europe, Asia Minor or northern Africa, where only a regular army could operate effectively.

The conquest was left to private initiative. America was conquered by separate and completely independent detachments of conquistadors, led by a captain general, who had complete freedom of action and decision-making - right up to the execution of guilty comrades. Previously, he concluded an agreement with the king, less often with a representative of royal power in the New World - such agreements were called capitulations. The essence of these monstrously verbose documents actually boiled down to a few phrases. The king told the conquistador: “Go wherever you want, do whatever you want, just promise to fulfill my three conditions. The first is to declare the newly discovered lands the property of the Spanish crown. The second is to force the natives, who inhabit those lands, to recognize my power and Christian teaching. And third, don’t forget to give a fifth of all the spoils (kintu) to my treasury. And I won’t stand for titles and honors.” Indeed, the king did not skimp on titles; usually, at the conclusion of capitulation, the captain-general became the governor and alcalde (chief judge) of the yet undiscovered lands.

Columbus says goodbye to the royal couple as he sets sail overseas

None of the interested parties were left at a loss. The king zealously served the holy cause of Christianization, moreover, he expanded his possessions, strengthened his power and replenished his treasury. Is quinta, a fifth of the spoils, a lot or a little? Not so much that the conquistadors felt greatly disadvantaged. But not so little: streams of gold merged into rivers. Quinta is reasonable.

In turn, the conquistadors had the opportunity to quickly get rich and change their fate for the better. It is important to emphasize this point here. Expeditions paid for at government expense can be counted on one hand. There are only two large ones: the second expedition of Columbus and the expedition of Pedrarias David to Golden Castile. Most of the expeditions were paid for by the conquerors themselves. The king did not risk anything; The conquistadors put everything on the line. Hernando de Soto, who returned from Peru a rich man, invested his money in organizing an expedition to North America. When he realized that he would not find a second Peru here, he chose to die. But the successful Quesada, who also invested all his wealth in the expedition in search of El Dorado, undertaken in 1568, chose to return and, as a result, died in poverty, besieged by creditors. The main burden of expenses fell on the captain-general, but other members of the expedition also invested money (often the last) in the purchase of weapons, ammunition and a horse. Thus, the initiative and manic persistence of the conquistadors were dictated, among other things, by the desire to at least recoup expenses at any cost.

In the existing balance of personal and state interests, both components were important. Let's try to make a far from fantastic assumption and imagine that America is being conquered by a regular Spanish army, the kind that fought in Flanders and Italy at that time. Everyone, from infantryman to captain general, has a certain salary; the production is completely handed over to the treasury; there is a general staff headed by the commander-in-chief, who develops strategy and gives orders, etc. Of course, even in this case, the conquest of America would have taken place, because such was a historical inevitability; but there is no doubt that then the conquest would not have been completed in such a fantastically short historical period; then it might indeed have dragged on for a century. If the same Soto had been a hired captain, would he have spent years wandering the wild lands of North America in search of a golden kingdom? I would throw up my hands in front of my superiors: “If you please see, there is no smell of Tenochtitlan there, there is only wilderness and wildness everywhere.” Or imagine: the commander-in-chief calls Pizarro, gives him one hundred and sixty men, orders him to invade the powerful Inca empire and go to meet Atahualpa’s five thousand-strong army. Pizarro would have cried: “Have mercy! This is madness! Pure madness!..”

Private initiative is important; however, the role of the state cannot be underestimated. Let's try to mentally turn the situation around: the crown renounces all claims to America, does not interfere in anything at all and stands on the sidelines. Without the tutelage of royal power, the conquest would have turned into a purely robbery enterprise, into piracy - and in this case, it would not only have failed to fulfill its complex tasks, but could have failed altogether.

It must be admitted that in terms of initiative and energy, the pirates are in no way inferior to the conquistadors; but, unlike the latter, they were completely incapable of two things. First, they did not know how to conduct any long-term joint military campaign. They could assemble a powerful flotilla, strike with lightning speed, and then immediately scatter “to their own corners.” It’s funny to imagine that the famous pirate Henry Morgan led his people into the jungle for a couple of years, without knowing where, but within a month his comrades would have cut his throat. And the second thing that pirates were completely unsuited to was creative activity.

The royal power stimulated the conquistador's initiative primarily by promising him at the end of his journey legal and permanent status in the social system, as well as official recognition of his merits and appropriate rewards. He can become a governor, a city manager, or, at worst, a landowner - the main thing is that he will not be an outcast, but a full-fledged respected member of society. A pirate is a caliph for an hour. The conquistadors came to new lands to become their rightful owners and pass them on to their heirs. Royal power gave their actions the character of legitimacy, legality, and this was extremely important for the participants in the conquest.

And besides, it gave them the conviction that they were acting in the interests of the state, for the good of the nation. Of course, personal interests for the conquistadors were in the foreground - in this way the people of that era were no different from their brothers in intelligence of both previous and subsequent centuries. And yet it would be extremely simplistic to ignore the ideas of serving Christianity and their king and faith in the greatness of Spain that were deeply rooted in the minds of the conquistadors. The countless statements of America's pioneers and conquerors on this subject should not be taken as empty rhetoric. When Cortez persuades the recruits to go to the conquest of Tenochtitlan, he, according to the chronicler, participant in the campaign Bernal Diaz del Castillo, says that they “are in lands where they could serve God and the king and get rich.” Cortez very clearly outlined the three main incentives of the conquistador; only in this triad, if one were not to be an idealist, the third position should be put in first place. Be that as it may, the conquistadors recognized themselves as representatives of the true faith and a great nation. They were equally aware of the greatness of their deeds, and this fed their national pride, which also served as one of the sources of their indomitable energy.

Notes:

The present island of Haiti.

In antiquity and the Middle Ages, geography in our understanding was an integral part of a broader body of knowledge called “cosmography” - an almost comprehensive science, which, along with topography, included zoology, botany, meteorology, geology, and ethnography.

Captain General is a rank given to the commander of a large expedition, sea or land.

The captain is the commander of a unit in the army of conquistadors. Captains were also placed at the head of reconnaissance and conquest campaigns as part of a large expedition.

The Appalachian tribe that lived in northern Florida has long been extinct. Only a few geographical names remind of it.

This is discussed in detail in the fifth chapter of the book “America of Unfulfilled Miracles.” M., 2001.

Martir Pedro (1459–1526) lived in Spain from 1487, was friends with Columbus, and became a member of the Royal Council for the Indies. He sent lengthy narrative letters in Latin by papal mail to the Vatican about everything that concerned the newly discovered overseas lands, and these letters, over eight hundred in number, formed the basis of the historical work “Decades of the New World,” which became the first book in history about America.

Díaz del Castillo Bernal (between 1492–1496 - 1584) is the author of The True History of the Conquest of New Spain, an outstanding monument of conquest literature. From now on we will simply call him Bernal.

For many centuries, American cultures developed in isolation from the rest of the world. Voyages to America from other parts of the world before Columbus were sporadic and had virtually no impact on the cultures of its inhabitants. In the light of various hypotheses and navigation experiments (like the voyage of Thor Heyerdahl’s team on the Kon-Tiki raft), it is very possible that the shores of the New World were reached from the east by the Romans, then by the Icelandic Vikings; from the west - Polynesians, Chinese, Japanese. In some cases, these were deliberate trips to new lands for booty and to found colonies (like the Icelander Leif the Happy), in others - the misadventures of coastal sailors caught in storms and currents. However, these small groups of aliens did not have any influence on the American aborigines - the Eskimos and Indians received them with hostility and over time destroyed them. Therefore, much more cultural borrowing (plants, birds) occurred spontaneously, thanks to ocean currents. So it was Christopher Columbus and his followers who truly discovered America for the rest of the world (this continent was named after one of them, Amerigo Vespucci).

The Spanish began their conquest of America. In 1492, a flotilla of several of Columbus's caravels crossed the Atlantic. In 1513, the Spaniards first crossed the Isthmus of Panama to the Pacific Ocean. The period of conquest of the newly discovered continent was the end of the 15th – 16th centuries. - received the name conquest (Spanish “conquest”). The name of the participant in these campaigns and wars - conquistador - became a common noun for the brave and greedy adventurer, the invader of conquered peoples. In 1521, a small detachment of Hernand Cortes captured the Incan capital Tenochtitlan, captured and killed their king Montezuma. In 1531, Francisco Pizarro and his thugs sailed from Panama to conquer the Inca kingdom, legendary for its wealth, with its capital in Cuzco, treacherously dealing with its head Atahualpa. The courage of the invaders, the cynical deception of the enemy leaders, firearms, the shocking sight of white bearded men clad in armor on “terrible” creatures - horses, which shocked the Indians, contributed to the victories of a handful of adventurers over huge empires. The winners received mountains of gold and masses of slaves.

N.S. Gumilyov, who in his youth was delirious about geographical discoveries and adventures in the tropics, called the first collection of his poems “The Path of the Conquistador” (1903–1905). He returned to this same theme in his further work (“The Old Conquistador” from the collection “Pearls”). However, the idea and psychology of the conquest is expressed much better in the mature poems of this poet. In particular, in his poetic testament “My Readers”:

There are many of them, strong, angry and cheerful,

Killed elephants and people

Dying of thirst in the desert,

Frozen on the edge of eternal ice,

Faithful to our planet,

Strong, cheerful, angry...

I don't insult them with neurasthenia,

I don’t humiliate you with my warmth,

I don’t bother you with meaningful hints

For the contents of an eaten egg,

But when bullets whiz around,

When the waves break the sides,

I teach them how not to be afraid

Don't be afraid and do what you need to do...

So, at the turn of the XV-XVI centuries. In the Western Hemisphere, two huge worlds met, which before that, starting from the Stone Age, had developed completely independently. And if the Indians by that time remained at the level of ancient Sumer or Egypt, then the Old World stood on the threshold of industrial capitalism. The fusion of the cultures of the Old and New Worlds had contradictory consequences for them. On the one hand, the conquest disrupted the historical development of the Americans. Their civilizations were destroyed by Spanish soldiers; The Indians were finished off by subsequent generations of colonists from different European countries, primarily the British and French. Driven to the beginning of the 20th century. to inhospitable reservations, the Indians suffered and died out there for many decades.

Thanks to the European conquerors, despite their cruelty towards the local population, Native Americans became familiar with world civilization, its achievements (including medical and pharmaceutical ones) and, unfortunately, specific vices. Including a whole range of terrible epidemic diseases that they did not know before the European conquest. The indigenous population of America decreased by several million people due to overseas infection. The Spanish chronicler B. de Las Cassa (1474–1566), who lived in the American provinces of Spain for almost half a century, wrote about their indigenous population: “These are people of fragile constitution. They cannot tolerate serious illnesses and quickly die from the slightest ailment.” In addition to truly weak health in primitive conditions, this refers to the Indians’ lack of immunity to European viruses and bacteria.

At the same time, using terrorist methods, the conquerors stopped inter-tribal massacres, slave trade, human sacrifices, and enslavement of the mass of compatriots in America. All this was widely practiced by the Mayans, Incas and all their neighbors.

Europe received a lot of American treasures, which played a role in its political, scientific and technical rise above the rest of the world. Moreover, the influx of gold from overseas came at a very opportune time: it allowed Western Europe to mobilize forces to repel the most dangerous aggression of the Ottoman Turks. So, had the conquistadors been a few decades late, world history could have taken a completely different path.

The masterpieces of the Mayans, Incas, their predecessors and neighbors were discovered by archaeologists from underground only in the 20th century. Their restoration and study has enriched the world history of art, science, and religion. Unfortunately, due to the poor development of writing among the peoples of Ancient America, we clearly do not have enough specific information about their medical knowledge and skills.

In addition to currency in the form of precious metals and stones, Europeans borrowed from the New World such agricultural crops, without which our life is now unthinkable: potatoes and other mountain roots, tobacco, beans, beans, tomatoes, corn, sunflowers, cocoa, vanilla, coca ; quinine, rubber, some other tasty and healthy products. As you can see, many of them and their derivatives are now widely used in the chemical-pharmaceutical industry and medical technologies.

Essentially European standards of living on the vast American soil have given rise to the super-civilization of the USA, which now sets the tone, including in terms of world standards of medicine and pharmacy. Today, the remnants of the Indians, whose existence on former reservations is now rather preferential and privileged, are also integrated into the multi-layered North American culture.

The Spanish and Portuguese colonies overseas turned over time into a motley map of Latin American states, which in turn gave the world a vibrant culture - music, dance, literature. We get acquainted with the way of life of Latin Americans, including health care and the fight against illnesses, from the wonderful novels of Gabriel García Márquez, Jorge Amado and other representatives of “magical realism.”

Review questions

What features of the social system and spiritual culture are similar among the peoples of Ancient Mesopotamia and Pre-Columbian America, and which ones distinguish them?

Why did ancient states and entire civilizations arose in some areas of the American continent, while others remained forever at a primitive level?

How, in your opinion, would history have developed, including medical and pharmaceutical history, in the Old and New Worlds if the discovery of America by Europeans had been delayed for more or less time?

Pre-Columbian voyages to America: myth or reality? To what extent could these contacts between representatives of different cultures influence their development?

What types of medicinal raw materials did America gift to the Old World? Would there be equivalent replacements for them among purely European medicinal plants?

Healthy life of primitive peoples in the bosom of virgin nature: is this version acceptable?

The conquest of America by Europeans: good or evil for its native inhabitants? Is it possible to determine the proportion of both?

What medical and pharmaceutical knowledge of the inhabitants of Ancient America can the study of Indian mummies reveal?

Name the crops that Europeans brought to America. Which ones are used in the pharmaceutical industry?

What is the place of South America in international drug trafficking?

How to explain the plight of the indigenous inhabitants of America after its European conquest? Including all medical indicators.