60 Fun Facts About Hernán Cortés

Cortés was a conquistador in the service of which European crown?

Castile, not Aragon, owned Spain's claims in the Americas, because it was Queen Isabella of Castile who had sponsored Columbus, and Mexico was added to her grandson's Castilian crown.

Cortés's birthplace in Extremadura later gave its name to which Colombian city?

Medellín: Colombia's second city took the Extremaduran village's name in 1675, a tribute to the Count of Medellín, who then presided over Spain's Council of the Indies.

Cortés was a distant relative of which other conquistador, through his mother's family?

Francisco Pizarro shared more than blood with his kinsman: news of the riches won in Mexico spurred his own expeditions south, which brought down the Inca Empire.

At 14, Cortés was sent to study what under an uncle in Salamanca?

Latin was meant to be his gateway to the law, but he is said to have given up after two years and gone home, to his parents' dismay.

Which profession did the young Cortés practise in the Caribbean before he turned conquistador?

Notary: he knew how to make a mutiny look legal, so at Veracruz he had his men form a town council that promptly elected him captain general.

Before Cuba, on which Caribbean island did Cortés first settle?

Hispaniola: an illness there kept him off a 1509 expedition to the mainland that ended in disaster, and he farmed on until he joined the conquest of Cuba in 1511.

Which governor of Cuba first sponsored Cortés's expedition, then tried to recall it at the last moment?

Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar moved too late: Cortés put hastily to sea before he could be replaced, then filled out his fleet with men and ships from other Cuban ports.

In which animated film do two Spanish con men stow away on a ship commanded by Cortés?

The Road to El Dorado (2000) sends Tulio and Miguel from the conquistador's brig to a lost city in the jungle, where a scheming priest proclaims them gods.

Which Mexican muralist painted the Spanish conquest on the walls of Cortés's own former palace?

Diego Rivera was hired by the American ambassador, Dwight Morrow, and by 1930 had covered the conqueror's arcade with a history of the region from the Conquest to the Revolution.

Roughly how many soldiers did Cortés land with in 1519 to take on the Aztec Empire?

About 500 Spaniards did not topple an empire alone: Cortés won over subject peoples who resented paying tribute to the Aztecs, and they supplied the bulk of his army.

Which shipwrecked Spanish cleric, a captive in Yucatán for eight years, became Cortés's first translator?

Gerónimo de Aguilar jumped at the rescue, but his fellow castaway Gonzalo Guerrero, by then tattooed and raising a family with a local wife, refused to leave.

La Malinche was among 20 enslaved women handed to Cortés by defeated lords in which present-day Mexican state?

Tabasco: after losing a battle near the coast, its lords made peace with gifts of food, gold and 20 women, one of whom proved to be the interpreter who would carry his words to the Aztecs.

La Malinche's Nahua name, Malintzin, echoes which Christian name she was given at baptism?

Marina was so constantly at the captain's side when envoys came that the peoples they met began calling Cortés himself 'Malinche'.

When she was handed to Cortés in 1519, La Malinche already spoke which two languages?

Nahuatl and Maya made her the last link in a relay: Cortés spoke Spanish to a rescued castaway, who put it into Maya for her to turn into Nahuatl, until she learned Spanish herself.

Cortés is famously said to have burned his ships at Veracruz; what did he actually do to them?

Scuttled them: the ships were stripped of sails, rigging and ironwork, then sunk or run aground, and Cortés saw to it that the proposal came from his men, so the blame and the bill would not be his alone.

Which people fought Cortés fiercely in 1519, then became his most faithful indigenous allies?

The Tlaxcalans had never been conquered by the Aztecs and lived in perpetual war with them, so once they had tested the newcomers in battle they chose to march on Tenochtitlan beside them.

In which city, home to the Americas' largest pyramid, did Cortés's men massacre thousands in 1519?

Cholula's nobles were cut down in their own plaza after, by the Spanish account, a local woman warned Cortés's interpreter of an ambush; why it really happened is still disputed.

Where did Moctezuma come out to meet Cortés in November 1519?

On a causeway into the city: the emperor arrived under a canopy of green feathers with cloths laid before his feet, and when Cortés moved to embrace him the Aztec lords caught his arms.

Tradition holds that the Aztecs first took Cortés for an envoy of which returning god?

Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent, was said to be due back from the east in a One Reed year, and 1519 was one; many historians now think the story took shape only after the conquest.

What did Cortés do to Moctezuma within days of being welcomed into Tenochtitlan?

Took him hostage: Cortés used the killing of Spaniards on the coast as his pretext to move the emperor into the Spanish quarters, then ruled the city through him for months.

Whom did the governor of Cuba send to Mexico in 1520 with a larger army to arrest Cortés?

Pánfilo de Narváez brought the bigger army and lost it in a single night: Cortés surprised his camp, took him prisoner and enlisted his soldiers for the march back to Tenochtitlan.

Which lieutenant of Cortés carried out the massacre in the Great Temple that sparked the Aztec uprising?

Pedro de Alvarado, left in command of a small garrison, fell on nobles celebrating a religious festival, and Cortés returned from the coast to find his men besieged in their quarters.

According to Spanish accounts, how was Moctezuma killed during the Aztec uprising of 1520?

Stoned by his own people, the Spanish said, as he appealed from a balcony for calm, after which he refused to have his wounds dressed; other accounts say the Spaniards killed him once he was no longer useful.

'La Noche Triste', the Sad Night of 1520, names which episode of the conquest?

The flight from the capital cost the Spaniards most of their loot, with men drowning under the weight of their gold; in 2021 Mexico City renamed the tree that marks it for the 'Victorious Night'.

Which Italian Baroque composer put Cortés on stage in his 1733 opera Motezuma?

Antonio Vivaldi's score was thought lost until 2002, when part of it turned up in a Berlin choir's archive, newly returned from Kyiv, where it had lain for decades as Red Army war booty.

What won the battle of Otumba for Cortés's outnumbered army in July 1520?

A cavalry charge: with every cannon lost in the retreat a week earlier, Cortés led his few horsemen straight at the Aztec commander, who was cut down and his standard seized, and the army broke off.

To besiege the island city of Tenochtitlan, Cortés had what built far inland?

A fleet of warships: thirteen small brigantines were built far from the water, taken apart, hauled overland by porters and armed with cannon, which gave him command of the water around the city.

Which disease devastated the population of Tenochtitlan while Cortés rebuilt his alliances?

Smallpox arrived with the 1520 fleet sent from Cuba to arrest Cortés, and is thought to have killed even the new emperor, Cuitláhuac, only 80 days into his reign.

How was Cuauhtémoc captured in August 1521, ending the siege of Tenochtitlan?

Fleeing by canoe across the lake on 13 August, he was overtaken and seized; brought before Cortés, by the Spanish account, he asked to be killed with the conqueror's own knife.

Why did the Spaniards burn the feet of the captive emperor Cuauhtémoc after the fall of Tenochtitlan?

To find hidden gold: the loot fell far short of what the soldiers expected, and when they accused Cortés of hiding it with the emperor's help he handed Cuauhtémoc over to them; little was ever found.

Cortés hanged the captive Cuauhtémoc during a jungle march in 1525, accusing him of what?

Plotting to kill the Spaniards was the charge, but one of Cortés's own soldiers, who was on the march, wrote that the hanging was unjust and that guilt cost the general his sleep.

The name Cuauhtémoc means 'one who has descended like' which bird of prey?

Eagle: 'cuauhtli' is the eagle and 'temo' means to descend, like a raptor diving on its prey, and the name lives on in Mexico, borne by footballer Cuauhtémoc Blanco.

Cortés's captain Cristóbal de Olid, sent in 1523 to conquer which Central American land, claimed it for himself?

Honduras: Cortés spent the better part of two years marching there through jungle to punish him, only to learn that the officer he had sent ahead by sea had already beaten Olid, who was dead.

Charles V made Cortés a marquis in 1529, with a title taken from the valley of which Mexican region?

Oaxaca: as Marquis of the Valley he was lord of some of New Spain's richest land, and he matched the new rank at once by marrying into a Spanish ducal family.

Cortés's rival Antonio de Mendoza arrived in 1535 as New Spain's first what?

Viceroy: Mendoza took over civil government while Cortés kept only military command, and the two fell out over who had the right to explore the lands to the north.

One of Cortés's soldiers wrote that the Aztec capital was built in the water like which European city?

Venice: the old soldier marvelled at a lake city larger than Venice, a likeness since lost, because most of the lake was later drained and Mexico City now covers its bed.

In which city south of Mexico City did Cortés build the palace he retired to after 1530?

Cuernavaca: shut out of government, he poured his energy there into two projects, a palace that still stands and ships to explore the Pacific.

Why did Cortés sail back to Spain in 1528?

To plead his case at court: sidelined by royal officials and under investigation in Mexico, he arrived with treasure and a grand retinue and was confirmed as captain general, yet the governorship he wanted was never restored.

Cortés reportedly told Charles V he had given him more provinces than his ancestors left him what?

Cities: the retort comes down from Voltaire, writing two centuries later, and the historian Prescott, who could find no authority for it, called the anecdote most improbable.

In 1541 Cortés joined the emperor's expedition against which North African city?

Algiers: a storm wrecked his ship and Cortés had to swim for the shore, losing a fortune in jewels, and the conqueror of Mexico was never even invited to the emperor's council of war.

The conqueror of the Aztecs spent his last years in Spain in what state?

Deep in debt: he had sunk his fortune into new expeditions, and his claims on the royal treasury went unanswered for three years. 'I am old, poor and in debt', he wrote to the emperor.

What threat led to Cortés's bones being secretly moved from their tomb in 1823?

An angry mob threatened to destroy them: the minister Lucas Alamán had the tomb emptied overnight and its bust shipped to Italy, so that all believed the bones had left Mexico, and they stayed hidden until 1946.

In Mexican Spanish, what does it mean to call someone a 'malinchista', a word taken from La Malinche's name?

They prefer foreign things: because she served the invaders, her name became a byword for turning on one's own, though she has also been cast as a victim and as a mother of the Mexican nation.

Cortés's five letters to Charles V aimed at what?

Justifying his conquest: having sailed in defiance of his governor, he went over that man's head with reports written to win the king's favour, and the first of the five is lost.

Cortés named two sons Martín; by what nickname is the elder told apart?

El Mestizo: Cortés had the Pope declare him legitimate and is said to have favoured him, yet the title and estates went to the younger Martín, born to his Spanish wife.

The Aztec princess Tecuichpotzin, who bore Cortés a child, was what relation to Moctezuma II?

Daughter: baptised Isabel and treated by the Spanish as Moctezuma's heir, she was married to the last Aztec emperor, Cuauhtémoc, and after his death to three Spaniards in turn.

Which blockbuster film turns on a chest of cursed Aztec gold once paid to Cortés to stop his slaughter?

Pirates of the Caribbean: in The Curse of the Black Pearl, Barbossa's crew stole the coins once paid to Cortés and are cursed to live on as undead until every piece is returned.

Which soldier-chronicler described Cortés physically, calling his beard black and sparse?

Bernal Díaz del Castillo began his memoirs decades later in Guatemala, angry that the biography by Cortés's chaplain gave the general all the glory and the men who fought beside him none.

The coat of arms the Crown granted Cortés in 1525 bore three gold crowns standing for what?

Three Aztec emperors: Moctezuma, Cuitláhuac and Cuauhtémoc each became a gold crown on the shield of the man who had sailed for Mexico as a mutineer six years earlier.

When Cortés landed in 1519, Moctezuma II's empire was in what condition?

At its widest: Moctezuma had succeeded his uncle and ruled the empire at its greatest extent, yet he was dead within a year of meeting Cortés and the empire gone a year after that.

Cortés was once quoted as saying it was more difficult to contend against whom than against the Aztecs?

His own countrymen: his advocates quoted the line to the royal council while listing how a hostile bishop at court had blocked his recruits, stopped his supplies and seized what he sent home.

Cortés missed his first ship to the Indies when a wall gave way as he was doing what?

Climbing to a lover's room: the stones gave way and buried him, he was still in bed when the new governor's fleet sailed, and it took him two more years to find another passage.

An encomienda, like those Cortés held and handed out, gave its holder no land; what did it grant instead?

Native labour and tribute: the holder was meant to protect and convert the people entrusted to him, but in practice it became a form of enslavement, and Cortés spread it across New Spain, keeping many grants himself.

Whose sudden death in 1522 brought Cortés an accusation of murder?

His first wife, Catalina Suárez, had joined him from Cuba only months earlier; an inquiry took evidence from the household, and the charge was still being thrown at him in 1530.

Which gulf, explored for Cortés by Francisco de Ulloa in 1539, is also called the Sea of Cortés?

Gulf of California: Ulloa's voyage showed that Baja California was joined to the mainland, yet mapmakers went on drawing California as an island through the 17th and 18th centuries.

Charles V made Cortés a knight of which chivalric order?

The Order of Santiago, named for St James, whose name was also the army's war cry: a veteran of the conquest recalled the men charging to shouts of 'Santiago! Santiago!'

Which rock singer released 'Cortez the Killer', a song about the conquest of Mexico, in 1975?

Neil Young recorded it with Crazy Horse for the album Zuma. By his father's account the track fades out because a circuit blew in the mixing console, losing a final verse that Young said he never liked anyway.

Which kind of institution did Cortés found in Mexico City that was still open 500 years later?

A hospital: the Hospital de Jesús, which Cortés endowed in his will, was still treating patients 500 years on, and his remains lie in the church beside it.

Which poet's 1816 sonnet wrongly credits 'stout Cortez' with discovering the Pacific Ocean?

John Keats wrote the sonnet after an old schoolfriend showed him Chapman's translation of Homer; the man who really gazed on the Pacific from Darien, in 1513, was Balboa.

The mountain pass Cortés crossed on his march to Mexico City lies between Popocatépetl and which volcano?

It is known today as the Paso de Cortés.