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Conquistador: Hernan Cortes, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs | 
 enlarge | Manufacturer: Bantam
Category: EBooks
List Price: $20.95
Buy New: $12.57
You Save: $8.38 (40%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  18 reviews
Sales Rank: 7504
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 448
Dewey Decimal Number: 972.02
ASIN: B001BANK3C
Publication Date: June 24, 2008
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Product Description
In an astonishing work of scholarship that reads like an adventure thriller, historian Buddy Levy records the last days of the Aztec empire and the two men at the center of an epic clash of cultures.
"I and my companions suffer from a disease of the heart which can be cured only with gold." -Hernan Cortes
It was a moment unique in human history, the face-to-face meeting between two men from civilizations a world apart. Only one would survive the encounter. In 1519, Hernan Cortes arrived on the shores of Mexico with a roughshod crew of adventurers and the intent to expand the Spanish empire. Along the way, this brash and roguish conquistador schemed to convert the native inhabitants to Catholicism and carry off a fortune in gold. That he saw nothing paradoxical in his intentions is one of the most remarkable-and tragic-aspects of this unforgettable story of conquest.
In Tenochtitlan, the famed City of Dreams, Cortes met his Aztec counterpart, Montezuma: king, divinity, ruler of fifteen million people, and commander of the most powerful military machine in the Americas. Yet in less than two years, Cortes defeated the entire Aztec nation in one of the most astonishing military campaigns ever waged. Sometimes outnumbered in battle thousands-to-one, Cortes repeatedly beat seemingly impossible odds. Buddy Levy meticulously researches the mix of cunning, courage, brutality, superstition, and finally disease that enabled Cortes and his men to survive.
Conquistador is the story of a lost kingdom-a complex and sophisticated civilization where floating gardens, immense wealth, and reverence for art stood side by side with bloodstained temples and gruesome rites of human sacrifice. It's the story of Montezuma-proud, spiritual, enigmatic, and doomed to misunderstand the stranger he thought a god. Epic in scope, as entertaining as it is enlightening, Conquistador is history at its most riveting.
From the Hardcover edition.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 13 more reviews...
 I learned a lot, but something of a cultural double standard January 6, 2009
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book covers the Cortes expedition, from the landing along the coast through the destruction of the Aztec capital, with a short wrap up of the featured players. I was glad that the author resisted the temptation to go on and on. He found his ending point and took it. For those wanting more, there is extra information about the important characters and chronologies in several appendices at the end.
Levy writes in a readable style that is befitting the book's popular audience. It is a narrative account more than academic treatise. Although Montezuma gets equal billing in the title, the book is largely written from Cortes' point of view. No doubt his person is better sourced, but it is also a choice of the author. It is Cortes who drives the action, landing in a foreign land basically on the run from the authority in Cuba. His courage, determination, diplomacy, and charisma gathers native allies and even Spaniards sent to arrest him. The encounter with Montezuma is almost anti-climatic, as he is an almost passive character once in Cortes' presence. Once he is off stage the real resistance begins and the Last Stand of the Aztecs arrives and is recounted with a keen eye towards explaining tactics and narrating battles, without bogging down in the details.
If I liked this book, why am I not giving it more stars? One reason is that there are a few scenes and characters that cry out for more detailed explanations or musings -- such as the passivity of Montezuma or the politics and motivations of Cortes' native allies. I appreciate the author's readable style and modest length, but some key points suffer from his relative brevity. A related issue is the relative lack of discussion of dissenting views or scholarly disputes. This may add to the readability of the book, but at perhaps too high a price.
Another reason is the curious tendency of the author to employ a judgmental tone towards Cortes while explaining away the gruesome practices of human sacrifice, cannibalism, and skinning (and wearing human skins) that was at the center of Aztec religion and culture. By their own accounts, the Aztecs could sacrifice tens of thousands of human beings during one religious festival. Many of the victims were infants, children, and women. The Aztecs required tribute of human sacrifice victims from the peoples it conquered. Their hearts were cut from their living bodies and shown to the victim. To get a dramatized portrait of how this might have looked, check out the sacrificial scene from Apocalypto.
Cortes, understandably, was horrified by this and no doubt used these practices to justify his own conquest and domination of the natives. It strikes me as overcompensation, however, for the author to devote a lengthy footnote to the "hypocrisy" of Cortes which "cannot be overlooked or overstated" because of Spanish practices of of the Reconquest and the Inquisition. Perhaps I am not as able to escape my Western perspective, but comparisons of tens of thousands of human sacrifices a year, including infants and children, versus an Inquisition that may have committed around 3,000 sanctioned murders over 150 or so years seems misplaced.
The comparison is especially interesting given the author's more nuanced understanding of ritual human sacrifice on what is likely the largest scale in human history. Take this passage as an example, "After his priests sacrificed a dozen children, believing that the survival of the universe depended on them, Montezuma would kneel before flickering firelight and pray for vision, for truth." Notably, up to this point, the author had reminded his audience several times that the Aztecs justified their human sacrifices as being required by the gods for the sun to come up, the rains to come, and the harvests to be successful. Setting aside for the moment the fact that the Spanish Inquisitors where no doubt just as sure they were doing God's bidding, dropping this "reminder" just after a very unpleasant fact associated with the Aztec religion comes across as misplaced excuse making. In short, there is a double standard of "cultural context" which condemns the West but absolves others.
 A very well written work January 5, 2009
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is an extremely well written account of the conquest of the Aztec empire by Cortes and his allies. The author does a very good job of conveying the complete "otherness" of the Aztec beliefs and customs and the Spaniards reaction to them. In many ways it was a clash of two barbaric cultures----both fated to not understand one another. The culture of the Americas developed in isolation for thousands of years and in many ways it appears to us like a culture from a science fiction novel. I cannot imagine what it was like to go from the worldview of 16th century Europe to 16th century Aztec culture.
I did not know much of anything about Cortes or his campaign. Now I know that Cortes was both brilliant and barbaric---he conquered the most populous city on earth and it costs the lives of over 200,000 people. This book will leave you wanting to learn more about the Aztec culture and you will be thinking about the morality of what Cortes and the Aztecs did for a long time.
If you have interest in this area of history, I would highly recommend this book. You will not be disappointed.
Conquistador: Hernan Cortes, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs December 30, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Conquistador: Hernan Cortes, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs by Buddy Levy. 448 pages. 2008.
The Conquest of Mexico was not a single event, it was not the result of disease, treachery, technology, or evil it was a long two year slog of battles won and battles lost. Too often the events surrounding the Conquest are simplified to issues of technology or disease and to a demonizing of the Spaniards. The reality is of course more nuanced and the simplification denigrates all sides.
This book does an admirable job of introducing the History and some of the issues related to the Conquest in an honest way. It draws on sources from all sides, including modern research and legacy studies. It presents the events in a complete enough narrative to tell the story with out getting bogged down in the details, some of which can be quite gory.
There are many other books available on this same topic but they tend to be one-sided or focused n on a single topic. When for instance a writer tries to make the case that Spanish victory was predicated on superior technology the writer would denigrate Spanish tactics, Aztec adaptations to technology and tactics. The focal point of this book is on the two leaders, Cortes and Montezuma.
The image of Cortes presented is a fairly complete image. This image may very well surprise many casual readers. Cortes was a real person and defies simple demonizing. He was physically very brave almost to the point of abject recklessness. The travail he endured is astounding. Cortes did not win every battle he presided over the long retreat from Mexico City and he proved capable of learning and adapting to the methods and abilities of his opponents. This natural military ability is something that is often overlooked in rash judgments which focus on technology or disease. The simple truth is that the majority of Cortes's forces were not Spanish they were locals. The gaining of local support speaks to another side of Cortes which gets overlooked and that is his diplomatic skills. His ability to discern fissures in the Aztec world and exploit them, creating a unified force of opposition, a coalition of the willing. We also see the darker side of Cortes, the side we are more apt to be familiar with the earnest religious zealot and the gold hungry adventurer.
The Aztec ruler is also fleshed out and we meet a troubled man at the height of his powers who has been a priest and a successful warrior. He is in church of a society built up on the shoulders of a triple federation, tribute, fear, and faith. Too often we get a glamorized image of the Aztecs, the kind that is popular in Mexico today ... which is often far from the truth.
This book ends really with the birth of a son to Cortes and to his native interpreter mistress. In a way this is fitting as there in lays the creation of modern Mexico a blend of two civilizations moving forward together.
All told this book is an excellent introduction the casual reader and beginning scholar of a story which seems at times more fiction then truth, but which really happened
 Conquistador December 1, 2008
One of the most enlightening and thorough retelling of the clash of cultures and civilizations when a handful of Spaniards conquered a thriving enlightened people. The result: creation of a completely new race in Mexico and eventually elsewhere in Latin America. The first meeting between Hernan Cortes and Moctezuma was so dramatic it won't be repeated until an eathling and an alien from space meet face to face. Sad that many Americans have no knowledge of the feas accomplished by Cortes and his conquistadores.
An Excellent Read November 10, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
"Men of God and men of war have strange affinities" Levy quotes Cormac McCarthy at the outset of this fascinating narrative of Hernan Cortes and Montezuma. The quote could hardly be more appropriate, since both men were undoubtedly, each in their own way, exactly that: men of war and men of God. It makes for a heady mix: Cortes a pious Spaniard who unhesitatingly committed mass murder, Montezuma the absolute ruler of an empire both capable of civil achievements and horrendous human sacrifice. The author's achievement is to relate the chain of events in a fascinating, eyewitness-quality way that leaves the reader marvelling at the audacity, ruthlessness and uncanny luck of the Gran Conquistador, whose character gave me the shivers, even while I found it impossible not to admire his competence. Cortes was his own man who made his own decisions, while Montezuma, for all his power, looked to me a prisoner of his elevated position, his advisors, his high priests and his gods. He certainly made the tragic mistake of not being as ruthless from the start as his opponent was, every moment of every day. This is a most enjoyable book, a great read even for those familiar with the story of the Spanish conquests in the Americas. It is also mercifully free of irritating references to future, unrelated events, of the kind that Michael Wood so liberally sprinkles his book 'Conquistadors' with, even going so far as to label them the precursors of today's economic globalisation. Buddy Levy is not guilty of any opinion-mongering: he leaves the reader to make up his own mind. It's very respectful of him, and I respect him the more for it.
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