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Cortes: In the early sixteenth century, the Spanish conquistador, Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro, led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of mainland Mexico under the King of Castile [SPAIN???]. Cortés was part of the generation of Spanish colonizers that began the first phase of the Spanish colonization of the Americas.
You're missing an introduction here. What follows seems to have almost nothing to do with your first paragraph. What's missing? How can you move the reader from your first paragraph to this passage from "Signs"?
What countries produced Columbus and Las Casas? Or, descending from virtue and heroism to mere energy and spiritual talent: Cortes, Pizarro, Alba, Ximenes? The Spaniards of the sixteenth century were indisputably the noblest nation of Europe: yet they had the Inquisition and Philip II.
Carlyle refers to Cortes and the Spaniard of the sixteenth century to argue that “For man is not the creature and product of Mechanism; but, in a far truer sense, its creator and producer: it is the noble People that makes the noble Government; rather than conversely.” Cortes, Pizzaro, Alba, and Ximes were notably “the noblest” of their time yet they had the government, the Inquisition, and a tyrannical Phillip II in their way.
I think you slightly miss the point here — Carlyle pointedly does NOT say Cortes, Pizzaro, Alba, and Ximes wwre the noblest of their times. What does he say? You have to read more carefully.
Bibliography
Schreffler, Michael. "Their Cortes and our Cortes': Spanish colonialism and Aztec representation." The Art Bulletin 91.4 (2009): 407+. Student Resource Center - Gold. Web. 13 Apr. 2010.
"The Siege of Tenochtitlan, 1520-1521." Gale Encyclopedia of World History: War. Ed. Anne Marie Hacht and Dwayne D. Hayes. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Student Resource Center - Gold. Web. 13 Apr. 2010.
Thompson, I. A. A, Crown and Cortes : government, institutions, and representation in early-modern Castile. Variorum, 1993, Brookfield, VT
Last modified 8 April 2010