Hernán Cortés conquered the Aztec Empire after disobeying a recall order
In 1519 the governor of Cuba cancelled the expedition Hernán Cortés was about to lead, at the last minute. Cortés sailed anyway. Using a lawyer's grasp of Castilian law, he wrote straight to the king to recast mutiny as service, and his campaign ended in the fall of the Aztec Empire.
Cortés came from Medellín in Extremadura, a poor corner of Castile, born around 1485 to Martín Cortés, a minor nobleman of good lineage and thin purse, and Catalina Pizarro. Through his mother he was distantly related to Francisco Pizarro, who would later topple the Inca. His chaplain-biographer described a pale, sickly child. At 14 he went to Salamanca to learn Latin from an uncle, which later writers mistook for university study, and came home two years later to his parents' annoyance, having dropped the legal career they had hoped for.
Those years were not wasted. Along with later work as a notary in Valladolid and Hispaniola, they gave him a working knowledge of Castilian legal codes. A planned voyage with Nicolás de Ovando, the new governor of Hispaniola, collapsed when Cortés was injured, and he spent a year drifting around southern ports before sailing in 1504. In the Caribbean he received an encomienda, a grant of native labour, in Cuba and served briefly as a town magistrate.
Chosen in 1519 to captain the third mainland expedition, partly at his own expense, he clashed with Governor Diego Velázquez, who tried to recall him. On the mainland he allied with some indigenous peoples against others and relied on Doña Marina, a native woman, as interpreter; she later bore his first son. When Velázquez sent men to arrest him, Cortés defeated them and absorbed the survivors into his force.
Victory brought reward, though not the highest. He was made Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca, but the post of viceroy went to the nobleman Antonio de Mendoza. He returned to Spain in 1541 and died on 2 December 1547. He always signed himself Hernando; the shorter Hernán became standard only during the 20th century.
Source: Hernán Cortés
