Page 17 - BBC History - September 2017

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Michael Wood on… the Conquistadors

“Of all the stories in history,

this has got everything”

The other day I met up with a couple architecture, civic order, law, books, writing. On the
of friends who write scripts for cinema. shores of the Yucatan, the Córdoba expedition was
We got talking about great stories in amazed to see great pyramids – and hence gave it the
history that could be turned into block- name ‘El Gran Cairo’. Outside of the realms of Star Trek,
busters. History of course has always been a great subject Doctor Who or films like the uncannily evocative Arrival,
for the movies. Only this year we’ve had some epic tales it is so rare that such encounters take place. How do we
from modern history: the Partition of India, Dunkirk, recognise, how to we ‘decode’ the Other? Were the native
not to mention the upcoming Darkest Hour (the second Mayans another creation not mentioned in the Bible? And
Churchill movie in a few months). for the indigenous peoples, even greater issues: who were
But I go further back in time for my dream epic: the the newcomers with their technologies of death? Demi-
Spanish conquest of the New World – Pizarro and the gods or demons? Or just another kind of human? On the
Incas; Atahualpa and the room of gold; the El Dorado answers, fatefully, depended their slim chance of survival.
expedition; Orellana; de Soto; the amazing 3,000-mile That encounter led inexorably to Cortés’s conquest
Almagro expedition into Chile across the Andes; the of Mexico. In 1517 when Córdoba made those first
Altiplano and the Atacama… take your pick. There are contacts with the Maya of the Yucatan, Hernán Cortés
incredible tales of endurance, bravery and cruelty, had been in Cuba for eight years, making money from
some beyond belief, like Pizarro’s disastrous cattle, slaves and gold panning. An inveterate gambler and
Amazonian expedition. womaniser, he was biding his time for the main chance.
Yet the ultimate epic, it seems to me, would be Cortés A man of unfathomable steely will, in my dream movie he
and Montezuma: The Conquest of Mexico. This has got would be played by the young Robert de Niro.
everything and, of all the stories in history, it seems to me Spurred on by rumours of a great empire in the plains of
the most throat-grabbingly dramatic, and the most Mexico, Cortés made his bid in 1519 with a private army
poignant and tragic. Adam Smith called the Spanish of 530 conquistadors. The story is full of unforgettable
conquest the greatest event in the history of the world. scenes, even before they reach ‘Mexico’, the magical city in
Whether it still appears that way now is something for the the lake; the first meeting with Montezuma, told by both
reader to judge; but this was the moment when an entire sides with riveting immediacy; the nerve-shredding cat
continent was opened up to the Europeans, its people Michael Wood and mouse that led to a fateful massacre; then the Aztec
dispossessed, its natural resources plundered. Ninety per is professor of fightback, the Spanish defeat on the ‘Night of Sorrows’;
cent of the native people are thought to have died of war public history at then Cortés ’s unbelievable tenacity to regroup and lay
and disease in the century after 1492. The Atlantic slave the University of siege to Mexico in 1521; and the heroic last stand com-
trade, too, it is often forgotten, brought 12 million Manchester. He memorated in Aztec poetry – a Mexican Iliad.
Africans to the Americas to replace the lives lost in the has presented And as for Cortés , in the end we are left with the
age of conquest. Our modern globalised world seems to numerous BBC mystery of his personality, his motivation, his implacable
me to be built on the violence of the Conquista, and most series and his will: things with which the historian must always wrestle.
countries of the Americas – not least the USA – are still books include I left my friends with a copy of Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s
dealing with the consequences. Conquistadors Discovery and Conquest of Mexico. A Hollywood movie
It was exactly 500 years ago that, for the first time, the (BBC Books) after all these years? The anniversary of the war is only
Europeans encountered an unknown civilisation – not a four years off, but maybe it’s not too late. And if anyone
tribe or a culture, but a true civilisation, with large-scale needs a scriptwriter, you know where to find me!

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ILLUSTRATION BY FEMKE DE JONG
BBC History Magazine 17