Soon after, an Aztec general murders several Spaniards from Cortez's band and prove that Cortez and his companions are frauds. Cortez takes Montezuma prisoner and compels him in surrendering the entire empire. The Aztec people choose to disobey their master and than kill Montezuma after he attempts to calm the spirits of the rebellion. Hearing the news of Cortez's success in Mexico, Velasquez sends an army to arrest the deserter, but most of the men sent to capture Cortez join him after a clash between Cortez's forces and Velasquez's men.

Following several days of skirmish, Cortez enters the capital of the Aztecs once again, with the cost of thousands of lives of native people. After two years of attacks from the Spaniards and their allies, on the 13th of August, 1521, the Aztec king of Guatemoc surrenders his country before Hernan Cortez.

For the following seven years, Cortez remained in Mexico and conducted mining operations and built farmlands. In the process of imposing his power over his new subjects, Cortez destroyed several Aztec temples and buildings and humiliated the people that remained from one of the greatest empires of the world. After his campaign in Mexico, Cortez returns home in 1528 to meet some accusations, but is welcomed as a hero by his country. He returns to America to continue exploring inland at his own expense and he returns to Spain once more, only to be greeted as a stranger by the Court. Hernan Cortez dies in Seville in 1547 and before giving his last breath asks for his body to be buried in Mexico.

There is much controversy concerning the actions of Cortez,...

Cortez assassinated thousands of innocent people that he presumed had been savages with the motive that they were acting against the principles of man.
Works Cited

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Schmal, John P. 2004. The RISE of the AZTEC EMPIRE. Houston Institute for Culture. Available from Internet, http://www.houstonculture.org/mexico/aztecs.html, accesed 10 November, 2008.

William H. Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico, ed. Kirk, John Foster, Revised ed. [book online] (Philadelphia J.B. Lippincott, 1891, accessed 11 November 2008), 4; available from Questia, http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=9012160;Internet.

Cortes, Hernan: Introduction." Literary Criticism (1400-1800). Ed. Jennifer Allison Brostrom. Vol. 31. 1, 1996. eNotes.com. 2006. http://www.enotes.com/literary-criticism / cortes-hernan, accessed 10, November, 2008

THE CONQUEST of the AZTEC EMPIRE:HERNaN CORTeS." University of Calgary. Available from Internet, http://www.ucalgary.ca/applied_history/tutor/eurvoya/aztec.html, accesed 10 November, 2008.

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