HORsem*n OF THE APOCALYPSE (2024)

Richard Marks, in his biography of Cortes, tells us how it happened in Mexico, for Cortes's life and the conquest of Mexico are virtually synonymous. The Spaniards wore armor that was impervious to Indian weaponry. They had firearms and crossbows and, no less important, horses and fierce dogs that did battle on their side. The mounted Spanish warrior was the tank of medieval warfare, as formidable in European combat as he was among the lightly armed Indians of Mexico. Above all, the Spaniards had Cortes. Marks makes a convincing case that his generalship was an enormous asset to the invaders. Cortes was as wily in negotiating the political intrigues among his fellow Spaniards as he was astute in dealing with allies and enemies and brilliant in leading his men into battle. Throughout the entire conquest of Mexico, Cortes had to deal with Spanish officials who wished to recall him and even sent expeditions to force him to turn back. Marks tells us in fascinating detail both about the politics and the lesser known circ*mstances of the conquest.

We learn how each man was responsible for purchasing and providing his own equipment, so that Spanish expeditions were agglomerations of individuals over which a leader had to establish his authority. Cortes clearly excelled at this. He also had qualities of leadership and a strategic vision that led his forces to do the seemingly impossible, yet he was as much a diplomat as a soldier. He was always on the lookout for interpreters who would enable him to speak with the Indian leaders and, if possible, win them over to his side. The most famous of these was La Malinche, the Indian woman given to him as a slave, who became his mistress and ubiquitous companion. He discovered that the Aztecs were not popular among the subject people of their empire, over whom they ruled by terror and from whom they demanded tribute of, among other things, a constant stream of young men and women to be sacrificed in Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City). These reluctant subjects could be induced to help the Spaniards, but only if the Spaniards could convince them that they were more powerful than the Aztec emperor.

Here the emperor Montezuma played into Cortes's hands. He allowed him and his men to enter Tenochtitlan and established them as somewhat ambiguous guests close to his own palace. Generations of historians have puzzled over Montezuma's hesitations and ultimately disastrous strategy, both for himself and for his empire. The fact is that he allowed himself to become a hostage of the Spaniards in his own capital and was eventually repudiated by his own people. Aztec resistance began in earnest after that and came close to defeating the invaders. That was when Spanish casualties mounted, Cortes's men were chased out of Tenochtitlan and Spanish conquistadors watched in horror as they saw their captured comrades forced up the great pyramids, sacrificed and dismembered by the Aztec priests.

The central place given to human sacrifice in Aztec religion and Aztec life provides a grisly backdrop to the conquest. The prospect, not unnaturally, appalled the conquistadors, but it also helped them. Aztec warriors were taught to terrify and to capture. Their armies were throngs of men, jostling and competing with each other to seize their enemies. The Spaniards, by contrast, fought in disciplined bodies that sought to kill.

Moreover, at the critical moment when Cortes's men had been ejected from Tenochtitlan, and pursuit in force might well have finished them off, the Aztecs were ravaged by smallpox. Marks mentions the smallpox epidemic but does not lay sufficient stress on disease as the real secret weapon of the conquistadors. The arrival of Europeans in the New World launched pandemics that led to the greatest demographic disaster in human history. We do not know the precise figures, but we do know the scale of the population loss. It is estimated for instance that the indigenous population of Mexico was reduced from about 20 million to something like 2 million in the early colonial period.

This has a direct bearing on Marks's contention that the conquest must on the whole have been a good thing, since it ushered in a period of relative peace in Mexico during colonial times. Indeed the Spanish crown did try to protect indigenous communities against the rapacity of local landowners, whose power as feudal lords it wished to control; but the staggering death rate among the Indians may have had as much to do with the pax hispanica as the protection (often more theoretical than real) offered by the distant king. The lethal epidemics not only freed Indian lands that passed into Spanish ownership; they also weakened the power and resolve of indigenous communities who might otherwise have resisted.

MARKS's enthusiasm for the pax hispanica and his summary dismissal of Bartolome de las Casas -- the man who denounced Spanish cruelty in the Americas -- as a naysayer, guilty of gross exaggeration, give a clue as to why he wrote this book now. This is a moment when the world has just finished marking the quincentenary of Columbus's first voyage and debating whether it should be celebrated or vilified. And 1993 has been declared by the United Nations to be the Year of Indigenous People. It seems that Marks wishes to contribute to these debates. He tells us that he has lived much of his life with American Indians and that he thinks that, by nature, he has a Spanish heart. His biography of Cortes seems intended, then, to bring new understanding to the meeting of Spaniards and Indians in Mexico. Here he is unsuccessful. His generalizations about the "Indian Mind," the "Spanish temperament" cannot be taken seriously. Marks is impatient with the "leyenda negra" or black legend of Spanish cruelty in the Americas, and sets out, in a series of irritating parentheses that interrupt his story of Cortes, to set the record straight. It is not useful, though, to be arguing 500 years later, about which Europeans were more or more especially cruel. The whole process of conquest was shot through with cruelties on all sides. After the initial period of battles, these cruelties were monotonously visited on the Indians by their powerful conquerors. If we are to consider the significance of the conquest, then we should reflect on the processes that it set in motion and the ways in which it marked the subsequent history of the Americas. Instead Marks gives us an adventure story, full of derring-do and splendid characterizations of the protagonists. When he wants to tell us the meaning of it all, however, he offers us only unconvincing generalities.

David Maybury-Lewis is professor of anthropology at Harvard University and the founder of Cultural Survival, an organization that defends the rights of indigenous peoples. He is the author of "Millennium."