The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Volume 1

About this book

Bernal Díaz del Castillo was a common soldier in the small Spanish army that Hernán Cortés led into Mexico in 1519, and in old age he wrote his own account, angry that historians gave all the credit to Cortés. This first volume tells of the earlier expeditions to the coasts of Yucatán, the landing in Mexico, the indigenous woman Malinche, who became Cortés's interpreter, the alliance with the Tlaxcalans, and the march to Tenochtitlan, the great city on the lake, where the emperor Moctezuma received the strangers.

Context and significance

Díaz (about 1496–1584) wrote the True History in Guatemala, and it is the most vivid eyewitness account of the conquest, full of wonder at the cities, markets and temples of the Aztecs as well as the violence of the conquerors. This translation, of 1844, is by John Ingram Lockhart. Another eyewitness of the age of discovery is Pigafetta in The First Voyage Round the World.

About the author