Discovery and Conquest of Mexico and New Spain. Vol 2

Discovery and Conquest of Mexico and New Spain. Vol 2

<p> The second volume of <em>Bernal Diaz del Castillo's</em> eyewitness chronicle picks up as the Spanish expedition under Hernan Cortes approaches the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, and the uneasy meeting with Moctezuma begins to unravel. </p> <p> Diaz, a foot soldier in the ranks rather than an officer, describes the city's causeways, markets, and temples with the wonder of a man who had never imagined anything like it, even as he registers his own unease at what is about to happen. His account tracks the growing tension between the small Spanish force and its far larger hosts, the violence that follows, and the desperate retreat later remembered as the Noche Triste. </p> <p> The narrative continues through the regrouping of Spanish forces, the siege that eventually brings down Tenochtitlan, and the long, uneven aftermath in which the conquerors turned to governing, and quarreling over, the land they had taken. Diaz, writing as an old man decades later, makes no secret of his grievances toward Cortes and the crown over recognition and reward. </p> <p> Blunt, occasionally bitter, and full of specific names and incidents that more official histories omitted, this volume closes one of the most detailed surviving <b>firsthand accounts</b> of the fall of an empire, written by one of the ordinary men who helped bring it about. </p> <p> Historians continue to draw on Diaz's chronicle for its granular detail on the <b>conquest of Mexico</b>, even as they weigh it against his evident personal stake in how the story was told. </p>