The history of mankind knows many facts and events that cause universal amazement. But there are miracles, seemingly obvious, but they are not noticed, because they are not perceived as extraordinary events that cannot be soberly explained. This kind of “inconspicuous” miracles includes the Conquest - the Spanish conquest of America.

Let us remember: in the 16th century. Hordes of Spaniards invaded America, destroyed Indian civilizations, shed rivers of blood, plundered tons of gold, conquered the local population and established their own rules. And the Spaniards won because they had a colossal advantage in weapons, military tactics, and organization, because they had all the technical achievements of European civilization behind them, while the Indians did not even know the wheel. So what's unusual about this? The strong have always defeated the weak, haven't they? Generally true; and at the same time, the conquest has a number of features that decisively distinguish it from all previous and subsequent conquests and allow us to speak of it as a completely unique, inimitable experience in the history of mankind.

October 12, 1492 The Spaniards set foot in the New World. A turning point in human history: the meeting of two worlds

The miracle of the conquest remains unnoticed primarily because it is usually perceived as a purely military enterprise: I came, I saw, I conquered. And he robbed it. At the same time, other, no less significant aspects and incentives for the Spanish conquest of America are often not taken into account. First of all, the spatial aspect: what stands behind the word “came”. After all, we are talking not only about defeating the enemy on the battlefield, about taking a city or fortress - we also had to get to them, pave the way to them, walking thousands of miles through completely unfamiliar terrain. For the conquistadors, the word “came,” preceding the words “saw” and “conquered,” did not mean the same thing as for Julius Caesar, the author of the famous saying. The fundamental difference was that Julius Caesar and other predecessors of the Spanish conquerors usually knew where they were going, how far they had to cover, what settlements they would meet along the way, who they would fight against, what the approximate number of the enemy was and how he was armed. The conquistadors went into the unknown, guided by rumors and reports, which very often turned out to be fables.

Let’s think about it, let’s get a feel for what is behind this “came”: first, a two- to three-month grueling voyage across the ocean on fragile boats filled with people, livestock, supplies, and equipment; and then a many-month, or even many-year, journey through the impassable jungle, swamps, mountains, and waterless deserts; and on this path, many more warriors sometimes died from hunger, deprivation and disease than in battles with the Indians. If the conqueror of Mexico, Hernan Cortes, had to travel “only” about six hundred kilometers to the capital of the Aztecs, then the conqueror of Colombia, Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada, walked the country of the Chibcha-Muiscas (present-day Bogota) from the coast for almost a year, covering one and a half thousand kilometers; Hernando de Soto's expedition covered four thousand kilometers during four years of wandering around the North American continent; Diego de Almagro covered five thousand kilometers on his way from Peru to Chile and back - examples of this kind can be multiplied and multiplied.

The main feature of the conquest lies precisely in this unique experience of penetrating virgin space - unique because we are talking about the unexplored space of two huge continents. Never before in the history of mankind has such a vast expanse of unknown lands opened up before people. Conquest inextricably merged with pioneering, acquired a research character, and, importantly, the conquistadors themselves attached great importance to the research goals of their expeditions. The Spanish conquest of America became the most important page in the history of the exploration of the Earth: the conquest was inseparable from geographical discovery. Why is it that in books on the history of geographical discoveries the names of Balboa, Cortes, Pizarro, Almagro, Soto and other famous conquistadors rightly side by side with the glorious names of Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Magellan.

In the popular understanding of the Spanish conquest of America, another, no less significant aspect of the conquest, namely the colonialist one, is completely absent. The Conquest, like many other historical phenomena, was contradictory in nature, combining destruction and creation. There is no doubt that the Spanish conquest of America had catastrophic consequences for the Indian world, often taking monstrously cruel forms and entailing millions of casualties among the aborigines (including those who died from diseases introduced by Europeans). But to see only this in the conquest is the same as judging a capital city after visiting only its slum areas. In place of destroyed Indian cities, new cities were created; One way of life was replaced by other norms of life, new cultures: designed to copy Spanish models, they were initially different from the latter and formed the basis of the future Latin American civilization.

The dual nature of the Spanish conquest of America was reflected in the official wording that defined the goals and objectives of the expeditions: the conquistadors were instructed to “conquistar y poblar,” which means “to conquer and settle.” This formula, in essence, contains an attitude towards the space of the New World - unknown, closed, hostile and deeply alien in all manifestations of both the natural and cultural world. The concept of conquistar implies the act of appropriating space: breaking into it, penetrating into the very depths of the continents, capturing the appearance of new lands on the map, conquering space with your feet and its inhabitants with a sword. The word poblar - which has a very wide range of meanings associated with civilizing activities, including the construction of settlements and cities (pueblos) - implies the development of space: making it “yours,” domesticating it, reshaping it according to European regulations. Ultimately, this is what conquest is about. The chronicler Francisco Lopez de Gomara wrote on this occasion: “Whoever does not settle will not make a good conquest; and without conquering the earth, you will not convert the pagans to Christianity; therefore, the main task of the conquistador should be settlement.” Based on this, the chronicler explains the failure of the mentioned Soto expedition: “He did not populate these lands, and therefore he himself died and destroyed those whom he brought with him. Nothing good will ever come of it for the conquistadors if, first of all, they do not think about settlement...”

There is a widespread idea that the Spaniards rushed to America only to get rich in one fell swoop, and then return home and live the rest of their days in contentment in their homeland. In reality, everything was completely different. The conquistadors, uninvited guests, came to America to become masters here - and you can only feel like a master in your own home, furnished and decorated to your liking.

The evangelization of the Indians was officially proclaimed as the main goal of the conquest, and it also served as its justification

And in this house, servants must speak the same language with the owner, at least they must understand his orders, recognize his power and value system. Therefore, the conquistar formula of the poblar contained another component of the conquest - the Christianization of the Indians. Actually, the official ideology proclaimed the main goal of the conquest to be the introduction of pagans to the true Catholic faith - this is exactly what the Spaniards saw as their great historical mission in America. One should not believe those authors who claim that Christianization was just an empty slogan aimed at giving a noble appearance to a predatory campaign. It is not necessary, if only because the activities of the Catholic clergy who were part of the conquering expeditions began on a full scale after the Indians were conquered, and there was nothing left to plunder.

“Spiritual conquest” (conquista espiritual), a concept that was established at the dawn of the 16th century, was an organic, integral part of the Spanish conquest of America, and it is no coincidence that the clergy and missionaries themselves thought of themselves in the image of conquistadors - with the only amendment that they conquered from the devil's souls are weapons of words.

Here, for example, is the parting word with which the Master of the Franciscan Order sends the first twelve missionaries to Mexico: “Go, my beloved children, with the blessing of your father, in order to fulfill your vow; take up the shield of faith, put on the mail of justice, gird yourself with the sword of the divine word, put on the helmet of chastity, lift up the spear of perseverance and go to battle with the serpent, who has taken possession of the souls purchased by the most precious blood of Christ, and win them for Christ.

The Conquest is often compared to the Crusades and is even called the last Crusade in history. There were reasons for this, since both enterprises were of a religious and at the same time aggressive nature. However, there is a significant difference between these phenomena - in relation to the infidels: the crusaders proclaimed their task to be the expulsion of Muslims from the Holy Land and the liberation of the Holy Sepulcher, and not at all the conversion of infidels; In the ideology of the Conquest, the idea of ​​Christianization came to the fore, and the concepts of “exile” and “liberation” were used only in a purely religious sense (liberation from the power of the devil). And, it must be admitted, the Spanish crown and the church spared no people, no effort, no money to convert the Indians to Catholicism.

So, here they are - the four faces of the conquest: conquest and the associated robbery, discovery and exploration of new lands, development of the conquered space (colonization) and Christianization of the Indians. The conquest had another very important aspect - miscegenation; but since it was not part of the officially stated tasks and was carried out spontaneously, we will talk about this later. These goals were so closely interconnected that it was almost impossible to distinguish among them the main and secondary ones.

Let us ask ourselves: to what extent were these complex and difficult tasks completed during the era of the conquest? But let’s immediately say: if we take into account that in America there are still quite vast unexplored and little-explored areas, as well as Indian enclaves and tribes living according to their own laws and with their gods, then these tasks, it turns out, have not yet been completed (and thank God !). And yet it cannot be denied that these goals were mainly achieved - precisely during the era of the conquest.

Now it's time to talk about timing. The miracle of the conquest turns out to be so “inconspicuous” partly for the reason that even in historical literature the era of the conquest is usually presented with very blurred chronological boundaries. It is said: “The era of the conquest - the 16th century,” or: “In the 16th century, during the era of the Spanish conquest of America ...”, etc. - this creates the impression that the conquest lasted for a whole century, and a hundred years is a considerable period. Let us, however, try to outline a more precise chronological framework for the conquest - but for this we will have to briefly outline the history of the discovery and conquest of the New World.

It clearly distinguishes three periods. The initial one takes a quarter of a century - from 1493 to 1519. The first date is Columbus’s large-scale expedition to the New World, undertaken not so much for research as for colonialist purposes: then, on seventeen ships, the great navigator, already in the rank of “Admiral of the Sea-Ocean,” brought one and a half thousand settlers and everything necessary for their lives: cattle, horses, dogs, mountains of provisions, tools, seeds, goods. The second date - the beginning of Cortez's expedition to Mexico - marks a new period in the history of the Spanish conquest of America.

What happened between these chronological boundaries cannot yet be called a conquest in the full sense of this concept - it cannot be for two reasons: the wrong distances and the wrong aborigines. The action of this period takes place mainly on the Antilles, inhabited by Indian tribes (Arawaks, Tainos, Caribs, Sibones, etc.), who were at a low level of social development. Contrary to their aspirations, the Spaniards did not find either lush cities or rich deposits of precious metals on the islands - half-naked savages lived here, from whom there was nothing to take except pitiful gold trinkets. It happened that the Indians put up fierce resistance to the aliens, and sometimes they rebelled, but the forces were too unequal, and military operations turned into the beating of babies. As a result, over a quarter of a century, the indigenous population of the islands decreased tenfold, and by the end of the 16th century it disappeared almost completely.

Conquest of the Antilles

Since 1509, Juan Ponce de Leon begins the colonization of the island of San Juan (present-day Puerto Rico); a year later, Diego de Velazquez begins the conquest of Cuba; in 1511, Juan de Esquivel landed in Jamaica, but these expeditions cannot be compared with future grandiose mainland expeditions - neither militarily, nor in terms of distances traveled, nor in efforts, nor in the results obtained.

During this period, the most important geographical discoveries were made not in aggressive, but in purely exploratory expeditions. On August 1, 1498, Columbus discovered a new land and correctly assumed that it was “Solid Earth,” that is, a continent, although he considered South America to be the eastern tip of Asia. As soon as in 1499 the royal couple abolished Columbus's monopoly on the discovery of new western lands, other navigators rushed in his footsteps. Columbus's comrade Alonso de Ojeda, together with Vespucci, explored the northern coast of the continent from the mouth of the Amazon to the Gulf of Venezuela. On the Paraguana Peninsula, Vespucci saw a stilt settlement, “a city over the water, like Venice,” and named the bay Venezuela (Little Venice) - this name later passed to the entire southern coast of the Caribbean Sea to the Orinoco delta. Another companion of Columbus, Pedro Alonso Niño, in the same 1499, walked about three hundred kilometers along the mainland coast west of Margarita Island, where he exchanged almost forty kilograms of excellent pearls with the Indians. No Spanish overseas enterprise enriched its participants as much as this; and the next year some of the settlers from Hispaniola moved to the island of Cubagua, where they founded a colony.

The survey of the Caribbean coast of South America was completed by the wealthy Seville lawyer Rodrigo de Bastidas. In October 1500, following the footsteps of his predecessors, Bastidas reached Cape La Vela and went further southwest along the unexplored coast. In May 1501, Bastidas saw the snowy peaks of the Sierra Nevada, then discovered the mouth of the great Magdalena River and reached the Gulf of Darien, where the coast of the Isthmus of Panama begins. Another comrade-in-arms of Columbus, Vicente Yanez Pinzon, in 1500 walked about four thousand kilometers along the Atlantic coast of South America - from the eastern tip of the mainland to the Orinoco delta. The tireless Columbus himself, during his fourth expedition to the New World (1502–1504), explored the Caribbean coast of Central America - the shores of present-day Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama to the Gulf of Uraba.

In 1513, Vasco Nunez de Balboa forever inscribed his name in the history of geographical discoveries when he crossed the Isthmus of Panama and was the first European to see the Pacific Ocean, dubbing it the South Sea. By the way, it was Balboa who brought news from the Pacific coast about a rich state lying in the south. Balboa's deputy on that expedition was Francisco Pizarro - he was later lucky enough to conquer the Inca Empire.

In the same 1513, Juan Ponce de Leon, in search of the source of eternal youth, which he heard about from the Indians, discovered Florida, and then Yucatan - although he considered them islands. In 1517, Francisco Hernandez de Cordova, having sailed from Cuba in search of slaves, the shortage of which had already begun to be felt on the island, went to the Yucatan Peninsula, traced seven hundred kilometers of its coast and assumed that this was the mainland. What is more important is that native peoples were discovered here, whose level of culture was far superior to the savages of the Antilles. The natives (and these were the Mayan Indians) built large stone temples, wore beautiful clothes made of cotton fabrics and decorated their bodies with delicate gold and copper items. True, this discovery was very expensive for the conquistadors. The Mayans turned out to be not such simpletons as the Arawaks and secretly, they did not buy into cheap trinkets and met the uninvited guests fully armed. During the last battle near the village of Chapoton, the Spaniards lost fifty people killed, five drowned, and two were captured. Almost everyone was wounded, including Cordova himself, who received many wounds. There were not enough hands to control the ships, so one ship had to be burned, and on the remaining one the conquistadors somehow reached Cuba. Cordova died ten days after his return.

Surveyed coasts of South America by 1502

Obstacles in no way stopped the conquistadors - on the contrary, they only inflamed their irrepressible energy. The following year, a much more impressive expedition was organized, consisting of four ships and two hundred and forty soldiers under the command of Juan de Grijalva. He traced the northern coast of Yucatan, reached the Panuco River and was finally convinced that these lands were mainland; and most importantly, he brought the first news of the richest state of the Aztecs, which served as an incentive for organizing Cortez’s campaign of conquest.

It is important to emphasize, however, that although the Spaniards traced several thousand miles of continental coastline, they, with the exception of Balboa, did not attempt to go far into uncharted lands and therefore had no idea about the size of the continents or the peoples who inhabited them. No one, for example, even suspected that Florida and Yucatan are lands of the same continent. Things were even worse with the geographical status of South America. It would seem that it should have initially established itself as a “Solid Earth”, since the expeditions of Ojeda and Pinzón, which explored a total of more than seven thousand kilometers of coastline, left no doubt about its “solidity”. Then came the famous letter from Vespucci, which directly spoke of a huge new continent. However, for a very long time, in the minds of most conquistadors and cosmographers, South America was considered a large island stretching from west to east. In this form it appears on the globe of Johann Schöner (1515) and on the world map (1516), found in the archives of Leonardo da Vinci. Even in 1552, the famous cosmographer Sebastian Munster described South America as a group of islands - Venezuela, Peru, Brazil, Tierra del Fuego - all separately. For a long time it did not have not only owners and settlements, but even a firm name. Columbus dubbed the continent the Land of Grace, suggesting that in its depths there was an earthly paradise. However, there was no special blessing in these poor lands with their unhealthy climate, and the name did not stick. Most often it was called by the name of the gulf discovered by Columbus - the Land of Paria. Almost simultaneously, new names arose: America, the New World (these names initially applied only to the southern continent), the Land of the True Cross, Brazil, and sometimes the Unknown Land.

None of this is intended to diminish the significance of the initial period of Spanish exploration and conquest of America. No, this was an extremely important preparatory period, without which the conquest could not have taken place; it was a kind of springboard for a throw to the mainland. The geographical discoveries made during these years and the information received about rich states showed the conquistadors the path to further expansion. Further, during the quarter century of Spanish presence in America, those forms of economic and social organization of the colonies were developed that were successfully used in the future. And for the practice of the coming conquest, two circumstances were of particular importance.

During these years, the relations of the conquistador with the royal power were developed and adjusted, that is, that system of treaties and obligations, which, as it turned out, was best suited for the grandiose enterprise of conquering America. And another thing: the initial period of the conquest became a harsh school for future conquerors of the continents: Cortes, for example, spent thirteen years in the Antilles before making a breakthrough to the mainland, and Pizarro spent eighteen years in the coastal colonies of South and Central America, after which he dared to conquer the powerful Inca state led by one hundred and eighty people.

And therefore, perhaps, the main result of the “pre-Conquista” period is that in these quarter of a century in the New World the conquistador as such was born in all the originality of his spiritual appearance: a man of special strength, indomitable energy, with an unbridled imagination, infinitely hardy and persistent , ready to do anything to achieve a goal, directed into the unknown, no longer a European in his self-awareness, who has experienced the inevitable transformative influence of virgin space - the future conqueror of America.

Now, having approached the period of the conquest itself, let us first look at how events developed on the North American continent and in Central America. Of necessity, we will have to limit ourselves to a cursory list of events - the main thing is that the reader has a general idea of ​​the history, dynamics and, let’s say, the density in time of the conquistadors’ conquests. We will, of course, talk only about the most significant expeditions, in addition to which hundreds of reconnaissance expeditions on a local scale were undertaken.

So, in 1519, the governor of Cuba, Diego de Velazquez, sent Cortes with six hundred warriors to the mainland. At the last moment, he decided to replace the captain-general of the expedition; Having learned about this, Cortes immediately gave an unauthorized order to sail. On the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, Cortez founded the first Spanish settlement in North America - the city of Veracruz, after which, in the manner of the ancient Greeks at the walls of Troy, he destroyed the ships, thereby cutting off the path of retreat for himself and his comrades. From here, in August 1519, he began to fight his way to the capital of the Aztecs, the city of Tenochtitlan. Like other conquistadors, Cortez well mastered the ancient principle of “divide and conquer,” and “dividing” in the Aztec state was not difficult, because, created by the subjugation of many peoples, it was already bursting at the seams. Along the way, Cortez enlisted the support of the inhabitants of Tlaxcala: sworn enemies of the Aztecs, they sent six thousand selected warriors with the Spaniards. Cortes, from afar, “showed his fist” to the Aztec ruler Moctezuma, organizing a terrible massacre in the city of Cholula subordinate to him and discouraging the indecisive ruler from impeding the advance of foreigners.

On November 8, 1519, the Spaniards and allied troops entered Tenochtitlan. First of all, Cortes isolated the ruler and his closest subordinates and, essentially turning Moctezuma into a hostage, began to govern the state on his behalf. The Spaniards soon learned that Velazquez had sent a powerful punitive expedition against Cortes - eighteen ships and one and a half thousand crew members, led by Captain Panfilo de Narvaez, who was ordered to deliver the arbitrator “dead or alive.” Leaving a small garrison in Tenochtitlan under the command of his deputy Pedro de Alvarado, Cortes with three hundred men hurries to Veracruz, with gold and promises he lures most of Narvaez’s people to his side, and after a short skirmish he himself is captured.

Meanwhile, the maniacally suspicious Alvarado, during an Aztec religious festival, carried out a massacre of the Aztec nobility, causing a general uprising of the inhabitants of Tenochtitlan. The Spanish garrison, taking refuge in Moctezuma's palace, had difficulty holding back the onslaught of the rebels. Cortes with an impressive army came to the aid of the besieged - and he himself found himself in a trap. The Aztecs' fury continued unabated; the besieged knew no rest either day or night; and Moctezuma, called to calm his subjects, received a hail of stones from them and died from his wounds.

Meeting of Cortes and Moctezuma in Tenochtitlan

In this hopeless situation there was no other option but retreat. On the night of June 30, 1520, the Spaniards and allied Indians tried to sneak out of the city, but were spotted and attacked from all sides. A stampede began; a portable bridge prepared for crossing the canal collapsed under the weight of bodies; hung with looted gold, the conquistadors sank like stones. About eight hundred Spaniards and one and a half thousand allied Indians died that night, which is why it received the name “Night of Sorrow.” A few days later, the handful of surviving conquistadors, exhausted by incessant rearguard battles, were blocked by a huge Aztec army. The Spaniards themselves perceived their victory in the Battle of Otumba as a miracle - and it was a miracle. So the Spaniards broke through to Tlaxcala, under the protection of the allies.

Here Cortez begins careful systematic preparations for the campaign against Tenochtitlan: he builds up his forces, finds new allies among the Indian peoples, and builds brigantines on Lake Texcoco to isolate the island city from the land. In August 1521, after a three-month bloody siege, starved and thirsty, Tenochtitlan fell.

Immediately after the victory, the conqueror sent his brave captains to different parts of Mexico, and in the same 1521 Gonzalo de Sandoval went to the Pacific Ocean. In two years, all of Central Mexico was conquered. In 1524, Cortés sent his deputy Pedro de Alvarado to conquer Cuauhtemallan, which means “Country of Trees” in Mayan Quiche, hence the Spanishized name Guatemala. At first, Alvarado, having entered into an alliance with the lowland Cakchikels, smashed the mountain Quiches; when the Kaqchikels, subject to exorbitant tribute, rebelled, he crushed them with the help of the Quiche - and so in two years he subjugated Guatemala. In search of a strait between oceans and “big cities,” he penetrated along the Pacific coast into El Salvador, but was forced to retreat.

In 1523, Cortes sent his faithful captain Cristobal de Olid to explore Honduras, where he founded the colony of Iberas on the Atlantic coast. Successes turned his head, and he decided to leave Cortes. Having found out about this, Cortez abandoned the administration in Mexico and rushed to Honduras to punish the disobedient man. For two years, from 1524 to 1526, he wandered in the wilds of the jungle and was already considered dead; when Iberas approached the port, he found out that Olid’s comrades, in order to receive the forgiveness of the formidable superiors, hastened to execute their captain themselves.

Another direction of expansion into Central America came from the south, from the Isthmus of Panama, where in 1511 the Spaniards founded the colony of Santa Maria. In 1514, seventy-four-year-old Pedrarias Davila, appointed its governor, arrived in Golden Castile (as Panama was called) at the head of one and a half thousand people. He entered into an agreement with the former governor Balboa on the construction of a fleet on the Pacific coast. With incredible efforts, Balboa built ships, transporting timber from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast; and when he was already preparing to sail to the country of the Incas, he was captured and executed by slander by Pedrarias, who was cruelly jealous of his fame as the discoverer of the South Sea and always suspected him of wanting to resign. Davila founded the port of Panama, where he moved the “capital” of Golden Castile.

Hernan Cortes. From the series “Portraits and Lives of Famous Captains”, 1635 by Italian engraver Aliprando Caprioli

Balboa's former comrade-in-arms Andres Niño and his companion Gil Gonzalez de Avila decided to continue the work of the executed man and signed an agreement with the king for discoveries in the South Sea, taking possession of the fleet that Vasco Nunez had built with such pains. At the beginning of 1522, the expedition left Panama and headed north. Having learned from the natives that there were two huge lakes in the north, the Spaniards thought it was a waterway from one ocean to another. There, in the “capital” on the shore of the lake, the powerful cacique of Nicarao ruled - after his name the conquistadors named the entire “province”, which later became the independent country of Nicaragua.

In 1524, Pedrarias sent an expedition to Nicaragua led by Francisco Fernandez de Cordoba, who was ordered to populate those lands. Having defeated the Indians, Cordova founded three forts: Granada on the shores of Lake Nicaragua, Leon to the northwest of Lake Managua and Segovia. He also discovered the San Juan River, flowing out of Lake Nicaragua, built boats and walked along the river to the Atlantic Ocean. His head was spinning from success, and his boss, an old grouch, was far away. And Cordova decided to leave the governor in order to become the owner of Nicaragua himself. At the news of the rebellion, a miracle of rejuvenation happened to the eighty-five-year-old Pedrarias: with the energy and impudence of the twenty-year-old governor, he quickly prepared a powerful punitive expedition and rushed to Nicaragua. Cordova was captured and, after a short trial, beheaded, and Pedrarias became governor of Nicaragua.

Let's return to North America. In 1527, Cortez's rival Panfilo de Narvaez decided to reverse his unfortunate fate and, at the head of three hundred people, undertook an expedition to Florida, discovered by Ponce de Leon. Having learned about the rich capital of the Appalachians, Narvaez, blinded by a golden mirage, decided to immediately move deep into the earth and ordered the ships to look for a convenient harbor where they could wait for him for at least a year. And so it happened that the ships and the ground forces never met again. The “capital” of the Appalachians turned out to be an ordinary village; when the thinned squad returned to the sea, the Spaniards had no choice but to build fragile boats and sail to Mexico along the coast.

During the difficult months-long voyage, the conquistadors died one after another from hunger, thirst and Indian arrows. One can only be amazed how the Spaniards still managed to get to the Mississippi Delta. As they crossed the mouth of the great river, a storm broke out and most of the people, including Narvaez, were drowned. Those who survived died from hunger, disease and cruel treatment by the Indians. From that ill-fated expedition, only six survived, among them Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Baca, who recounted his adventures in the remarkable chronicle “Shipwreck.” Having experienced unimaginable hardships, after eight years of wandering, the four finally reached Mexico, covering a distance of eight thousand kilometers. Only now are the true dimensions of the continent beginning to emerge.

Cabeza de Vaca reported that he had heard from Indians about large cities with multi-story buildings somewhere in northern Mexico. This message was enough to arouse the initiative of the conquistadors. Hernando de Soto follows in the footsteps of the wanderers, having invested all his untold wealth acquired in Peru in organizing a powerful expedition. Starting from Florida, in three years (1539–1542) he walked three thousand kilometers through the territories of the current states of Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi, but he never discovered the “golden cities”. In the spring of 1542, exhausted and hopeless, Soto died. His successor, Luis de Moscoso, continued northwest, reached the eastern spurs of the Rocky Mountains and turned back. The Spaniards built brigantines on the Mississippi, went to sea and miraculously reached Mexico. Of the nine hundred and fifty participants in that expedition, a third returned.

In Mexico, meanwhile, they also did not sleep. Nuño de Guzman explores the north-west of Mexico, in 1530 he traces six hundred miles of the Pacific coast and establishes the northern outpost of Spanish possessions - Culiacan (at the entrance to the Gulf of California). Cortes does not rest on his laurels: one after another he sends expeditions from the Pacific coast of Mexico to the Moluccas and China; and as a result, California was discovered, which the famous conquistador personally set out to explore in 1535.

The next year, four wanderers from Narvaez’s expedition showed up: Cabeza de Vaca’s messages excited all of Mexico. The prudent Viceroy of New Spain decided, before starting an expensive expedition, to send a reconnaissance detachment, headed by a man not prone to speculation - the clergyman Fray Marcos. In March 1539, he set off north from Culiacan and returned a few months later with amazing news. The richest country he discovered, Cibola of the Seven Cities, is, as he wrote in his “Report,” “the greatest and best of all discovered in the past,” and the city of Cibola, the smaller of the seven cities, “surpasses Mexico City in size.”

The Viceroy, casting aside his doubts, immediately sets about organizing a large-scale conquering expedition. Its commander, Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, in 1540, having made a difficult journey through the desert, abandoned a convoy stretching for kilometers, with a small detachment he quickly marched to Cibola - and what does he see in front of him? Either a small village, or a large unsightly building made of mud bricks, which from a distance resembled a honeycomb. Such unusual buildings of the Zuni Indians, called “pueblos,” have partially survived to this day and are protected as monuments of ancient Indian architecture. “I can assure you that the Reverend Father did not tell the truth in any of what he reported, and in fact everything is exactly the opposite of what he said,” Coronado bitterly reported to the Viceroy. However, he was not the right person to immediately turn back. Inspired by a new golden mirage - the mythical country of Great Quivira, about which the Indians weave tall tales - he opens the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River, passes through the territories of the current states of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, plows the Great Plains, only to return empty-handed a year later. At the same time, by right of discoverer, the Spaniards came into possession of colossal territories of the North American continent, including all the southern states of what is now the United States. There was no further expansion of the Spaniards to the north of the mainland for purely mercantile reasons: after the fruitless expeditions of Soto and Coronado, the conquistadors realized that there, in the north, they could not find a second Mexico, there was only wilderness and wildness, and they lost all interest in these lands.

And finally, the last dramatic act of the conquest in North America. Back in 1527, Cortes' comrade-in-arms Francisco Montejo began the conquest of the Mayan city-states in Yucatan. The Mayans offered fierce resistance to the invaders, and more than once the Spaniards retreated in defeat - to start all over again. For twelve years, Montejo was never able to settle on the peninsula. Then Montejo’s son, his full namesake, got down to business. He turned out to be a better strategist than his father: in his youth, given as a page to Hernan Cortes, he was able to learn a lot from the famous conquistador and, acting on the principle of “divide and conquer,” in two years he firmly established himself in Yucatan, founding its “capital” city ​​of Merida. In 1543, in the decisive battle of Merida, the Indians were defeated and actually lost their independence.

At this point, the conquest in the Spanish possessions of North and Central America can be considered completed. What has been said, of course, does not mean that the Indian resistance has completely ceased and that there are no white spots or unconquered tribes left in this territory. Indian uprisings shook the colonies more than once and cost the Spaniards considerable efforts and sacrifices; the Mayan city of Tayasal in the interior of Guatemala remained independent until 1697; fanatics obsessed with golden visions searched in the north for the mythical countries of Quivira, Teguayo, Kopala and others until the end of the 16th century. - but all these were just echoes of the conquest, already accomplished forever and irrevocably. Accomplished from 1519 to 1543. - for twenty-four years. A quarter of a century to conquer, explore, conquer a huge territory!

Now let's move to South America. Cortez is already in full control of Mexico, and the shores of the southern continent are still waiting for the conquistadors. The first Spanish settlement on the mainland, San Sebastian, founded by Alonso de Ojeda in 1510, did not last long: the continuous war with the Indians forced the colonists, on the advice of Balboa, to relocate to the Isthmus of Panama, where they founded the settlement of Santa Maria. The South American Indians turned out to have little gold, ridiculously little, which means there was no sense in this land - so the colonial authorities declared it “a useless land.”

And yet, Cortez’s successes finally stirred up the conquistadors and they became alarmed: if a gold-bearing country was discovered in the north, then why shouldn’t it be in the south? That's where she belongs! Just then I remembered an ancient and very widespread scientific theory, which played an important role in the emergence of the myth of Eldorado. This theory said that gold grows underground from the heat of the sun, which means that there should be more precious metals and stones in equatorial countries than in northern ones. And so, on the Caribbean coast of South America, two permanent settlements appeared, which became bases for penetrating into the interior of the mainland: Santa Marta in Colombia, at the mouth of the Magdalena River (1525), and Coro in Venezuela (1527). Expansion into South America proceeded in three directions.

It started from the Caribbean coast and was inspired by rumors about the treasures of the nearby South Sea (Venezuela was then considered an island), and later - about the gold-bearing countries of Meta, Jerira, Omagua, and Eldorado. The first large-scale expeditions into the interior of the mainland were undertaken by agents of the German bankers Welser, to whom the Spanish crown sold Venezuela in payment for debts. The deal seemed mutually beneficial: by renting out countless lands of the New World, the monarch received a one-time payment (according to various assumptions, from five to twelve tons of gold) plus the royal fifth of the income; the German owners acquired an entire country, bounded from the north by the Caribbean Sea, from the west by Cape La Vela, from the east by Cape Maracapan, and from the south - not limited in any way, since no one yet knew its extent in the meridional direction. “To the sea” - the treaty simply indicated, meaning the South Sea (Pacific Ocean), washing America from the south. Venezuela was of interest to German bankers only as a transit point on the way to the wealth of Asian countries. According to the general opinion, they were convinced that Lake Maracaibo communicated with the South Sea and ordered their governors to look for a sea strait, and at the same time remove the “golden skins” from Indian civilizations.

In two expeditions 1529–1531. The first German governor of Venezuela, Ambrose Alfinger, explored the shores of Lake Maracaibo and the spurs of the Sierra Nevada mountains and advanced three hundred kilometers up the Magdalena River. Having learned about the rich country of Jerira (this name is associated with the Heridas plateau, where people lived who stood at a relatively high level of development), the conquistadors recklessly rushed to storm the steep mountains, not even having warm clothes. Two dozen Christians and one and a half hundred Indians died in the mountains. Left almost without porters, the conquistadors were forced to abandon all their equipment. One day Alfinger became separated from the column, fell into an Indian ambush and was mortally wounded; the remnants of the army returned home ingloriously.

In Alfinger's absence, his compatriot Nikolaus Federman rushed south from Coro in 1531 and discovered the Venezuelan llanos (endless grassy plains).

At the same time, in 1531–1532. The Spaniard Diego de Ordaz, one of Cortez's most influential and trusted captains in the conquest of Mexico, penetrated the mouth of the Orinoco and ascended the river a thousand miles. Here he learned from the Indians about a country rich in gold, lying in the mountains in the west (we were undoubtedly talking about the country of the Chibcha-Muiscas). He called the Orinoco tributary, originating in that country, Meta (in Spanish - “goal”), and since then the mythical state of Meta has excited the imagination of the conquistadors. The trial and sudden death prevented Ordaz from undertaking a second expedition to the Orinoco.

Unexpected guests

His successor was Jeronimo de Ortal, who organized an expedition in the footsteps of Ordaz, putting Alonso de Herrera in command. He reached the Meta River and climbed two hundred kilometers upstream, where he found death from Indian arrows in another skirmish with the warlike Caribs. Left without a commander, the conquistadors turned back. Ortal zealously takes up the preparation of a new expedition and rushes to his cherished goal - to the kingdom of Meta. But the campaign turned out to be so difficult that along the way the soldiers mutinied, removed Ortal from the post of captain general, put him in a boat and sent him down the Orinoco. By some miracle he survived to end his days peacefully in Santo Domingo. Following Ortal, the governor of the island of Trinidad, Antonio Cedeño, went in search of the kingdom of Meta. He died along the way - it is believed that he was poisoned by his own slave.

Expansion from the Pacific Coast brings the wealth we are looking for. In 1522, Pascual de Andagoya walked from Panama about four hundred kilometers along the western coast of South America: he himself saw nothing but wild tribes, but he received certain information about a rich gold country lying south of the Viru River (apparently the local name of the Patia River , which Andagoya interpreted as “the country of Peru”), This information inspired the middle-aged Pizarro to organize a kind of “share society” together with the conquistador Diego de Almagro and the wealthy priest Hernando Luque to conquer Peru. In 1524, Pizarro and Almagro, with a hundred people, made their first voyage to Peru, but did not advance further than Andagoya; two years later they tried again, crossed the equator and captured several Peruvians, who confirmed information about the fabulous treasures of the Inca Empire. In 1527–1528 Pizarro reached the Gulf of Guayaquil, where the rich city of Tumbes was located. He returned to Spain with the trophies, signed a treaty with the king, and as governor of Peru in 1531 set off to conquer the Inca state with a detachment of one hundred and two infantry and sixty-two horsemen. The Incas did not put any obstacles in the way of the advance of the Spaniards, who cheerfully reached the mountain fortress of Cajamarca, where the Supreme Inca Atahualpa was stationed with an army of five thousand. Further events are well known: upon meeting with the emperor, the Spaniards carried out a massacre, took him hostage, and he offered the aliens, as a ransom for his life, to fill the room where he was kept (with an area of ​​thirty-eight square meters) with gold objects. Pizarro received about six tons of gold from this deal, and the Inca ruler received garrote, death by strangulation.

The riches of Peru turn the heads of the conquistadors; a kind of mass psychosis of the search for a golden country begins, which lasted two and a half centuries. From the capital of the Inca state, Cusco, conquered in 1533, conquerors rush in two streams to the north and south. By 1537, Sebastian Belalcazar conquered vast territories of the northern part of the Inca Empire, including the city of Quito (Ecuador). Diego de Almagro in 1535–1537 crosses Bolivia and opens the high-altitude Lake Titicaca, then, having overcome the Chilean Andes through a pass at an altitude of four kilometers, reaches the banks of the Ma-ule River. Empty-handed, having frozen dozens of Christians and one and a half thousand porters in the Andes, he returned back through the waterless Atacama Desert, having traveled about five thousand kilometers in both directions.

Execution of Atahualpa

Almagro returned to Peru when the country was engulfed in an Indian uprising. Installed by the puppet emperor of the Incas, Manco Capac II outwitted Pizarro, raised the Incas to fight, inflicted several defeats on the Spaniards and besieged the city of Cusco for six months, where Pizarro’s brothers Gonzalo, Hernando and Juan were locked up. The latter died during the sortie; the position of the besieged became critical, and only the sudden appearance of Almagro’s troops turned the situation in favor of the Spaniards. The defeated rebels, led by Manco Capac, went to an inaccessible highland region, where they founded the so-called New Inca kingdom, centered in the city of Vilcabamba - this fragment of the Inca empire remained until 1571.

Having lifted the siege of Cuzco, Almagro, dissatisfied with the division of Peru, took Gonzalo and Hernando prisoner; the first managed to escape, and the second Almagro was released on parole by Francisco Pizarro, who promised to cede Cuzco to him. One should not trust the word of the one who so treacherously captured and executed Atahualpa. As soon as Hernando was free, the Pizarro brothers gathered forces, defeated Almagro’s army in the bloody battle of Salinas, and he himself was executed in July 1538. The surviving supporters of Almagro, whose rights were infringed, formed a conspiracy three years later and broke into the house of Francisco Pizarro and hacked him to death, after which they proclaimed Almagro’s illegitimate son Diego governor of Peru. However, he did not reign for long. A new governor appointed by the king, with the help of Pizarro's supporters, captured Diego, tried him and executed him in September 1542.

Meanwhile, expansion from the Caribbean coast finally brought not only geographical discoveries, but also significant booty. In 1536, the Spaniard Jimenez de Quesada, at the head of seven hundred people, set out from the colony of Santa Marta south through the impenetrable jungle along the Magdalena River, and then turned east into the mountains, crossed the Cordillera and entered the Bogotá valley. During the difficult transition, he lost four-fifths of his people, but with the remaining one and a half hundred people in 1538 he conquered the Chibcha-Muisca country, rich in gold and emeralds, taking third place among the successful conquistadors after Pizarro and Cortez. Soon, to the chagrin of Quesada, two more expeditions appeared in the Bogotá valley: the German Federman got there from the east, through the Venezuelan llanos, and Belalcazar - from the south, from Quito, and both laid claims to ownership of the country. Surprisingly, the matter did not end in a fight - the three captains-general went to Spain to peacefully resolve their disputes in court. Federman ended up in a debtor's prison, where he ended his days, Belalcazar received control of the province of Popayan, and Quesada, after long judicial ordeals, was elevated to the rank of marshal of the viceroyalty of New Granada, which became the former country of the Muiscas.

The Eldorado Mirage does not fade. The Germans Georg Hoermuth von Speyer (1535–1539) and Philipp von Hutten (1541–1546) plow the vast Venezuelan plains in vain in search of golden kingdoms, losing hundreds of people. The latter managed to reach the equator, penetrating into the most hidden regions of the continent, where, according to his assurances, he discovered the powerful state of the Omagua Indians, tributaries of the Amazons, and saw their lush city of Cuarica, which was subsequently never found. He intended to make a new attempt to conquer Omagua, but was treacherously executed by the governor of Venezuela. In 1557, after a lengthy litigation, the Spanish crown terminated the contract with the German bankers, and Venezuela came into the possession of the Spaniards.

Expeditions to Peru and Chile

Pizarro's brother Gonzalo owned a vast province in Peru and was immensely rich. Still, Eldorado was not enough for him, and at the beginning of 1541 he went north from Quito in search of a golden country. The expedition was luxuriously equipped: three hundred and twenty Spaniards, almost all on horseback, four thousand Indian porters, countless herds of llamas, sheep and pigs for food. Having crossed the Eastern Cordillera, Pizarro discovered the Napo River, a tributary of the upper Amazon. Here he discovered entire forests of cinnamon trees. Considering that in that era cinnamon was worth almost its weight in gold, Gonzalo Pizarro could be sure that he had found his Eldorado. While exploring the “land of cinnamon,” Pizarro went down the river until he reached the Amazonian lowlands for the first time. There were no provisions in these deserted places, and hunger became more and more noticeable. And then Pizarro sent a detachment of fifty men under the command of Francisco de Orellana downstream the Napo with orders to obtain food for the starving warriors at any cost. Weeks passed after weeks, and nothing was heard from the scouts. The conquistadors had to return home. Along the way they finished off the last horses, the last dogs and all the leather ammunition. In June 1542, eighty emaciated people appeared in the vicinity of Quito, asking the townspeople to send them some clothes to cover their nakedness. The most terrible blow awaited Pizarro in Quito: when looking at samples of cinnamon wood, knowledgeable people said that they had nothing to do with the precious Ceylon cinnamon.

What happened to Orellana’s squad? The Spaniards rafted several hundred kilometers along the fast flow of the river in two weeks and, unable to return, continued their journey wherever the water took them: so in 1541–1542. They, constantly attacked by the natives, sailed along the Amazon River from the headwaters to the mouth for almost eight thousand kilometers and along the Atlantic coast reached the island of Margaret. Only now are the enormous dimensions of the South American continent becoming clear. Along the way, as the chronicler of the unprecedented voyage reports, the Spaniards had a brutal clash with fair-skinned warriors, and also obtained “reliable” information about the wealth of the Amazon state. And so it happened that the river, named by right of the pioneer the Orellana River, appeared on the maps of South America under the name of the Amazon River.

In Chile, since 1540, Pedro de Valdivia has been trying to persuade the proud Araucanians to submit, but during thirteen years of fierce war he was never able to advance south of the Bio-Bio River. In 1553, Valdivia was captured by the Indians and was brutally executed. After the death of their military leader, the Spaniards were forced to retreat, and in the unconquered territories the Indians maintained independence until the 20th century.

The third direction of Spanish expansion in South America, inspired by rumors of the mythical Silver Kingdom, the City of the Twelve Caesars, the Silver Mountain and the Great Pai-titi, comes from the southeastern coast of the Atlantic, through the mouth of the Rio de La Plata, discovered back in 1515– 1516 In 1535, a powerful expedition led by Pedro de Mendoza founded the cities of Buenos Aires and Asuncion, the capitals of the future Argentina and Paraguay. In 1541–1542 The restless Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca crossed the southeastern part of the Brazilian Highlands and reached Asuncion. From Paraguay, the conquistadors move northwest, to Bolivia, where in 1545 the Silver Mountain, the world's largest silver deposit, was actually found; The city of Potosi was founded here. From Bolivia, the conquistadors rush south to Argentina, where in the 60s and 70s. The cities of Tucuman and Cordoba were founded.

However, by that time the conquest in South America had already largely ended. Its apotheosis can be considered the war against the Araucanians, which ended in 1553 with the conquest of northern Chile and the defeat of the Spaniards during their further advance to the south. Let us again stipulate: vast unexplored territories remained on the mainland - the Orinoco Basin, the Guiana Highlands, the Amazon, the North-Eastern Brazilian Plateau, the Paraguayan Gran Chaco region, southern Chile and Argentina - and these blank spots fed the imagination of Europeans who were looking for mythical cities of gold right up to until the end of the 18th century. (the last large-scale expedition in search of El Dorado was undertaken in 1775). Of course, exploration and conquest expeditions were still undertaken and new settlements and cities were founded. At the same time, the expedition of Pedro de Ursua down the Amazon in search of El Dorado (1560), subsidized by the Viceroy of Peru, had already turned out to be an anachronism, and the conquistadors themselves apparently felt this, which is why they turned the campaign into an unbridled rebellion against royal power. Of course, the unconquered Indians remained: the Araucanians defended their independence; and in Argentina, vast unconquered Indian territories remained until the 80s. XIX century, and their moving border (frontera) was similar to the North American frontier; and in the jungle the natives continued to live in the Stone Age, meeting white-faced newcomers with poisoned arrows. And yet, basically the conquest completed its tasks precisely by the middle of the 16th century. The main thing is that in the next hundred, if not two hundred years, the situation on the continent did not change significantly: those areas that were not conquered and explored during the era of the conquest remained for the most part unconquered and little explored.

From the middle of the 16th century. The third stage of the development of America begins: the exploration of white spots, the slow but steady colonization of new territories, the construction of settlements and roads, missionary activity, and the development of culture. It is difficult, almost impossible, to determine the borders of this period closest to us; and if we take into account the reservations made above, then it will not be at all absurd to assert that this period has not yet finally ended. Be that as it may, it will remain outside the scope of our book.

In 1550, in connection with the unfolding official dispute about the legality of the conquest (which will be discussed in detail later), a royal ban was adopted on any campaigns of conquest in America - so Valdivia spent the last three years of his life fighting the Araucanians, so to speak, illegally. Perhaps the most significant evidence of the completion of the conquest was precisely in the mid-50s. XVI century was the removal of the word “conquest” from the official lexicon, declared by the Spanish king in 1556: “For good reasons and justifications, the word “conquest” itself should be excluded from all capitulations and instead the words “pacification” and “settlement” should be used, for the will ours is such that our subjects come to the natives in peace and all kinds of goodwill, since we fear that the word “conquista,” contrary to our good intentions, will cause excessive zeal in the person entering into the treaty and encourage him to cause violence or damage to the Indians.” By the way, the first attempt to exclude the word “conquest” from the official lexicon was made by the authorities back in 1542–1543, when, under pressure from humanists, the New Laws of the Indies were adopted. In them, in particular, instead of the word “conquest” it was recommended to use the concepts of “entry” (entrada) and “opening”. However, the New Laws aroused fierce resistance in the colonies and were repealed a few years later; As for the odious word, the conquest was in full swing, and then it was not possible to write it off in the archive. But in 1556, the operation to remove the word was painless. The king's decree actually legitimized the fait accompli: the conquest had already taken place, there was no one to conquer (in the sense of the Aztecs, Mayans, Incas), and now the outdated concept could be sent to the dustbin of history.

Spanish King Charles I in his youth. Etching by D. Hopfer. The monarch went down in history as Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Under him, Spain became the most powerful power in the world. The era of the conquest is associated with his name

This date - 1556 - in the history of the conquest has another, symbolic content: this year Emperor Charles V, who ascended the throne in 1516, renounced the crown in favor of his son Philip II. All the major enterprises and conquests of the conquistadors are associated with the name of Charles V, and it turned out that his reign almost exactly coincided with the chronological framework of the conquista. And finally, one more, no longer symbolic fact: in the same 1556, Andres Hurtado de Mendoza was appointed Viceroy of Peru, who, at the direction of the crown, began to restore order with an iron fist. He wrote about the conquistadors: “There is no place for peace and peace in the souls of these people, although I persecuted them in every possible way and since I arrived here, I have strung up, beheaded and exiled more than eight hundred people.” The position of the viceroy clearly reflects the dramatically changed official attitude towards the conquistadors: the conquista is over, the free reign is over, from now on the times of order and obedience are coming. All of the above gives the right to consider 1556 as the conditional date for the end of the conquest.

So, the exploration and conquest of the Southern continent took approximately the same amount of time as the conquest in Central and North America along the border of the southern states of the United States - that is, from 1529 to 1556. - twenty-seven years old. We should not forget that the territory of the southern continent is at least twice as large as the area of ​​the Spanish conquest in the north, and is not comparable to it in terms of natural conditions: the mountains here are steeper, the countryside is denser, the rivers are faster and fuller, and the deserts are drier. The conquest of the southern continent, of course, required much greater effort and greater loss of life. In general, it turns out that the era of the conquest, which began in 1519 and basically ended by the mid-50s. of the same century, within three and a half decades. Thirty-five years to explore and conquer vast territories of two continents! And this was with the technology of that time, not yet developed, despite the fact that all distances had to be covered on foot!

Let's try to look at the results of the conquest in all four of its components.

If we take the conquest aspect of the conquest, then this task is basically completed: all four highly developed peoples of America - the Aztecs, Mayans, Incas and Chibcha-Muiscas - were all brought to their knees, their cities were taken and destroyed, their territories were occupied and divided. And besides, dozens of other peoples of the continent were conquered.

If we turn to the purely predatory aspect of the conquest, inseparable from the conquest, then in this direction the tasks, one might say, have been exceeded (although the conquistadors themselves would not agree with this statement, for those who love gold always lack it). Pizarro plundered six tons of gold, Cortes a little less than two tons, Quesada a ton of gold and a quarter of a ton of emeralds; and others, less fortunate, collected a total of several tons of small items and trinkets, so that there was absolutely nothing to plunder and the Indians were driven to plantations and mines. But the mines of America turned out to be a true Eldorado: according to some estimates, from 1503 to 1560, 101 tons of gold and 577 tons of silver were delivered from the New World to Spain. After the discovery of the Potosi deposit, the flow of silver increased significantly and over the next forty years reached 6872 tons - this was twice the amount of silver that was available in all of Europe before Columbus.

Let's take the research aspect of the conquest - the results are truly grandiose: territories of about twenty million square kilometers were surveyed. Tens of thousands of miles have been walked through lands where no European has set foot; open mountain ranges, valleys, rivers, plains, deserts; The sizes and outlines of the continents appeared. If the maps are from the 20s. XVI century In the Western Hemisphere there is still complete confusion, then on the maps of the 40s. America has already become quite recognizable.

Let us turn to the colonialist aspect of the conquest - and in this area the results are also stunning. It is enough to give an incomplete list of major American cities founded during the era of the Conquest. These are the future capitals of Panama (1519), Mexico City on the site of the completely destroyed Tenochtitlan (1521), Guatemala (1524), San Salvador (1525), Quito (1533), Lima (1535), Buenos Aires (1536), Asuncion (1537 ), Bogota (1538), Santiago de Chile (1541) La Paz (1548). And in addition to them - the cities of Veracruz (1519), Guadalajara (1530), Merida (1542) in Mexico, Guayaquil (1531) in Ecuador, Popayan (1537) in Colombia, Maracaibo (1531) in Venezuela, Potosi (1545) and Santa -Cruz (1548) in Bolivia, Valparaiso (1544), Concepcion (1550) and Valdivia (1552) in Chile. This is not counting hundreds of small settlements.

Map of America 1544

But the colonialist aspect of the conquest is by no means limited to the construction of cities and settlements. In 1540, a printing house was opened in Mexico City, and in 1551, the University of San Marcos in Lima was founded. A territorial and administrative division of the colonies was made: two viceroyalties, Peru and New Granada, three captaincy generals (Santo Domingo, Guatemala and New Granada, which included the territories of present-day Colombia and Venezuela), and two audiences, La Plata and Chile. Firm local power was established, Indian Laws were approved and repeatedly adjusted, a bureaucratic management apparatus was established, lands and Indians were distributed.

Equally impressive results have been achieved in the Christianization of the Indians. For example, the first missionaries arrived in Mexico in 1524, and seven years later the Archbishop of New Spain, Juan de Zumarraga, informed the king that during this time the Franciscans alone converted a million Indians to Christianity. By the end of the century there were in Mexico one thousand Franciscans, six hundred Dominicans, eight hundred Augustinians, four hundred Jesuits, and four hundred and fifty friars of other orders; Four hundred monasteries and a huge number of “cofradias,” religious brotherhoods, were created. Of course, it would be naive to assume that the natives will easily abandon their gods, which their ancestors worshiped. In fact, the natives profess dual faith, which has not been eradicated to this day - that is, they bizarrely combine the worship of Christ and the Virgin Mary with pagan elements. It should be emphasized that the conquistadors played a special role in the Christianization process: they personally showed the Indians the “weakness” of their gods. When an Indian saw how his idols were being destroyed and his altars were being desecrated, and the blasphemer remained unpunished, he experienced severe psychological shock, his faith cracked. Thus the sword paved the way for preaching.

Missionaries not only instruct the conquered Indians in the Christian faith - they teach them Spanish and Latin, play European musical instruments, and engage them to build churches and decorate interiors. Schools for Indians appeared at the monasteries. About a thousand Indians studied in the schools established by Pedro of Ghent in Mexico City in 1529. In the same year, the first girls' school for the daughters of the Indian nobility was founded in Texcoco, and in 1534, Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza and Archbishop Zumarraga created the Colegio Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco for the male offspring of the Indian nobility, where they actually studied at the university in the humanities. well. In 1537, Mendoza appealed to Charles V with a request to allow him to open a higher educational institution for the natives, citing their outstanding learning abilities. History has brought to us many rave reviews about the extraordinary receptivity of Indians to European languages. But we will not cite these reviews; It’s better to refer to a document that is much more convincing due to its genre - namely, denunciation.

In October 1541, one of the advisers to the Viceroy of New Spain complained to the emperor that the Indians had learned to read, write and play musical instruments perfectly; Moreover, “there are young men among them - and their number is increasing every day - who speak Latin so refined that they are not inferior to Cicero.” The Indians, the adviser complains, show miracles in learning and quickly leave their mentors behind. He recently visited one of the monastery schools and was shocked with what knowledge the Indians discussed the most subtle issues of Christian doctrine. All this must stop, the adviser pleads, “otherwise this earth will turn into a cave of the Sibyls, and all its inhabitants into spirits immersed in theological problems.”

The above should not create “rosy” ideas about the situation of the indigenous population of America, where thousands and thousands of Indians were killed, sold into slavery, and worked hard on plantations and mines. At the same time, the conquest also had such a face, this Two-Faced Janus.

So, having briefly summarized the results of the conquest, let us turn to another question: by what forces, in fact, was all this done? It is reasonable to assume that in order to accomplish such enormous tasks in such a short historical period and achieve such impressive results, a huge number of people are needed. This reasonable assumption gave rise to the popular idea of ​​“hordes” of Spaniards invading America. How many were there really? Can we judge this more or less accurately?

Yes - according to two sources. The first of them is the lists of passengers departing for the New World that have survived to this day. The fact is that during the colonial era, one could travel to America from Spain only with the highest permission of the authorities, and this rule was observed especially strictly at the dawn of the colonial era. In 1503, a Chamber of Commerce was created in Seville to manage overseas territories, which was later transformed into the Royal Council for the Indies. And in the 19th century, when the “Indies” took care of their own affairs - that is, threw off the yoke of Spanish rule - this bureaucratic organization, which had accumulated tons of papers over three centuries, had no choice but to become an invaluable archive. And this archive partially preserves the name lists of those who were allowed to go to the New World, starting with Columbus’s second expedition. Of course, there were many who entered India illegally, but in any case they were not the majority. In the 40s XX century The "Catalog of Passengers in India" was published in Spain, and the author was fortunate to hold this bibliographic rarity in his hands.

Unfortunately, history has not brought us complete lists of passengers: not only have the lists been preserved only since 1509, but for some years the data is incomplete, and for some there is no data at all. In this case, can passenger lists provide an opportunity to judge the number of emigrants? They can. Of course, we are not talking about any exact figures, but only approximate ones. Fortunately, two years of apparently relatively complete data have been preserved, which provides the basis for calculations. It should be noted that emigration during the Conquest went through three stages: initial, until 1521; after the discovery and conquest of the Aztec state, the number of emigrants increases; and the flow of settlers, attracted by the fabulous riches of the Inca Empire, is growing even more.

In the passenger lists, the data for 1513 can be considered relatively complete - 728 names and for 1535 - 2214 people. For the period from 1521 to 1533, we derive the arithmetic mean and get about one and a half thousand people per year. Let us even take these maximum values, multiplying them by the number of years, and for the first period of emigration we get the figure of thirteen thousand people, for the second - eighteen thousand, for the third - fifty thousand. It turns out that during the era of the conquest, that is, before 1556, about eighty thousand people emigrated to America. Let’s add “illegals” to them, but there could not be more than ten thousand of them. In total, according to the most balanced estimates of historians, by the beginning of the 17th century. About two hundred thousand people emigrated to America, so the data obtained for the period of the Conquest (most likely overestimated) are generally close to these figures. Now let the reader look at a map of America from the Colorado River to Tierra del Fuego and try to imagine these spaces and distances. Even if there were a hundred thousand Spaniards, it’s still a “drop in the ocean” of hostile virgin lands!

In addition, let’s not forget to take into account the extremely high mortality rate among the colonists and the colossal loss of life during the expeditions. Pedrarias Davila brought one and a half thousand people to Golden Castile - two months later, seven hundred of them died of hunger and disease. The story is by no means exceptional; the governor of Santa Marta forbade the ringing of bells for the dead, because the daily funeral ringing plunged the colonists into despair. It was in the first two or three months that cruel natural selection took place, when every fifth, or even every third, of the new arrivals died; but the survivors became like flint. Losses on expeditions were often also quite significant. On the "Night of Sorrows" during his flight from Tenochtitlan, Cortés lost between six hundred and eight hundred fellow Spaniards; out of three hundred people of Narvaez’s expedition, four reached Mexico; out of eight hundred Quesada warriors, one hundred and sixty came to the country of the Chibcha-Muiscas; out of nine hundred and fifty conquistadors of Soto, three hundred and eleven people returned home - examples can be multiplied and multiplied. Finally, often the colonists could not withstand the hardships of the New World and returned to their native Spain.

Of the eighty to one hundred thousand settlers, of course, only a minority directly participated in the exploration and conquest of the New World, because, apart from women and people of non-military professions, settled colonists also lived in America. So how many of the emigrants were actual conquistadors? This can be confirmed by the accurate information that has reached us about the quantitative composition of all expeditions of any significance (the conquistadors had a good record of accounting and control). So, summing up the data for North America, we got a figure of approximately four and a half thousand people; in South America - about six thousand. Total - ten thousand. Having already made these calculations, the author found confirmation of them in the book of the Mexican historian Jose Duran, who writes: “It is quite clear that the conquest was carried out by a few thousand soldiers, there were maybe ten thousand.”

But we must immediately emphasize: this calculation is incorrect and the figures turned out to be very inflated. The fact is that with such a purely mechanical addition it is implied that each conquistador took part in only one single campaign, and newcomers were recruited for each expedition. In reality, everything was completely different. A real conquistador, at the first call, would break away from his home and go into the unknown while his legs dragged him; and in turn, the captains-general always preferred veterans to newcomers. So, I think these numbers can be safely reduced by one and a half to two times. And closest to the truth, apparently, is the Argentine historian Ruggieri Romano, who believes that Spanish America was explored and conquered by a maximum of four to five thousand people. In any case, there are fewer soldiers than in one modern division.

Only now, when the reader has some idea of ​​the multifaceted nature of the conquest, its tasks, timing and human resources involved, only now will he understand that the title of this chapter - “The Miracle of the Conquest” - is not at all a catchy journalistic device. But how did it turn out to be possible - to accomplish all this with such small forces and in such an insignificant time frame?

The author honestly answers this question: I don’t know. After all, a miracle is something that cannot be fully explained. And there is hardly anyone who will put everything so neatly into pieces that there will be no more room for surprise or questions. By the way, the participants and contemporaries of the conquest themselves perceived it as a miracle, and when they tried to explain it, they most often referred to “divine protection” or to the superiority of the Spanish nation (“God became a Spaniard,” Europeans said in that era), and sometimes and on the “weakness” of the Indian world. Of course, now these answers cannot be considered convincing. And therefore the author will risk making some judgments and assumptions on this score, believing that a hypothesis is still preferable to a question mark.

The miracle of the conquest was accomplished by people, not gods, and it would not have become possible if not for the colossal, downright fantastic energy of the conquistadors. But these words are only a statement, not an explanation. The main thing is to understand where this incredible energy came from and what fueled it?

The answers will be far from exhaustive, and in some places controversial. In the author's opinion, the extraordinary energy of the conquistadors was born of three circumstances.

The first factor is time. The beginning of the 16th century is a turning point from the Middle Ages to modern times, and turning points, as a rule, are accompanied by powerful outbursts of human energy. On the one hand, the very dynamics of the historical process, which sharply increases in such eras, gives rise to people of action, not reflection; on the other hand, the boundary of eras passes through a person’s consciousness, which is why it becomes dual, restless.

In the chapter on the spiritual appearance of the conquistador, it will be shown that these people retained the features of the thinking and culture of medieval man and at the same time were representatives of the Renaissance personality type. The rift between two grandiose eras of European history, perhaps, was most clearly manifested precisely in the minds of the conquistadors - people as dual and contradictory as their deeds and actions, which they themselves, of course, were not aware of. Contradiction is the driving force of development. A harmonious, integral consciousness, with an unshakable system of values, strives to protect its stability with a shell of regulations, and therefore it gravitates towards statics, dogma. A contradictory consciousness, turbulent between opposing value guidelines, generates energy that motivates a person to action, search, destruction and creation.

If we descend from the heights of psychology and turn to historical specifics, then one thing is certain: at the turning point of the eras from the Middle Ages to the modern era, opportunities opened up for people from the lower and middle classes that they could not even dream of before. Medieval society was very hierarchical, static, it was built on the principle “every cricket knows its nest.” Born a smerd (peasant) was doomed to die, the son of a craftsman followed in his father’s footsteps, the soldier did not dream of becoming a general. In Spain, for a number of historical reasons, which will be discussed later, medieval society was much more democratic than in many other European countries, but it was also subject to regulations, and most importantly, feudal freedom ended just on the eve of the discovery of America with the establishment of absolutism.

And suddenly, like in a fairy tale, everything changed at once. Hernan Cortes, favored by the king, becomes Marquis del Valle, ruler of a vast territory larger than his native Spain. Yesterday's swineherd Pizarro can now compete with other kings with his wealth. The humble lawyer Jimenez de Quesada receives the title of marshal, the family coat of arms and a rich income. These are exceptional cases. But what an inspiring example they served! However, it is no longer out of the ordinary to call it an unusual case when a seedy hidalgo, or even a commoner, a wandering need, went to the New World and received encomienda ownership - vast lands with a couple of hundred Indians in his service. The people of that amazing time really gained very real opportunities to radically change their destiny for the better.

And these opportunities were provided to them by the grandiose space that opened before them. Space is the second source of initiative and energy of the conquistadors. Great geographical discoveries became the best answer to the demands of the time. The energy born at the turn of the epoch has found a way out and a worthy field of application. In Western Europe, everything was distributed long ago, each piece of land had its own owner. The newly discovered immeasurable lands seemed to be calling: come and take possession; and this call found an instant response in the hearts of people. But this is a purely material side of the matter. Besides this, there was also a spiritual side.

We are talking about a kind of revolution in human consciousness. There is no need to prove that the image of the world, being a product of consciousness, in turn has a formative effect on thinking, largely determining a person’s worldview, his ideas about his capabilities, and his behavior patterns. In the medieval image of the ecumene - the inhabited world - the concept of edge, border, and insurmountable limit played a significant role. In the north there is a belt of eternal snow - life there is impossible. In the south, it was believed, there was a hot equatorial belt - it could not be crossed due to the hellish heat. In the east, beyond distant Muscovy, travelers said, “there are lands of darkness, where pitch darkness reigns and nothing is visible,” these lands are inhabited by devils and dragons. In the southeast lay the legendary alluring lands of India, Cathay (China) and Sipango (Japan), but the path to them was long, difficult and dangerous. And even this path was cut off in 1453, when the Turks captured Constantinople. Of particular importance for the mentality of a person in the 15th century was the border in the west - the Atlantic Ocean or, as it was called, the Sea of ​​Darkness, which since ancient times was perceived as the limit of the inhabited earth, as the western border of the world.

The traveler reached the end of the Earth

Thus, the ecumene was limited on all sides, like a rectangle: the Lands of Darkness in the east correspond to the Sea of ​​Darkness in the west, the cold belt in the north corresponds to the hot equatorial belt in the south. It is quite obvious that these purely spatial boundaries were projected into human consciousness, transforming into existential boundaries. In this closed space, a person is forced to recognize the limitations of his capabilities: wherever you step, there is an insurmountable limit.

And in a matter of years, the spatial boundaries of the ecumene opened up in the south, west and east. In 1492, Columbus crossed the ocean, and besides, as it was believed a decade and a half after the famous voyage, he paved the way to Asia - that is, it turned out that he simultaneously broke the two borders of the ecumene, western and eastern. And six years later, Vasco de Gama, having circled Africa, reached India, also breaking two borders - southern and eastern. Let us emphasize: not only spatial boundaries collapsed, the boundaries of human consciousness collapsed, which in itself transformed man, opening up for him unprecedented space for movement and initiative. It turned out as if a recluse, who had lived for many years in a confined space at home, suddenly walked out the door - and was amazed at the open space before him and his freedom to go wherever he wanted.

And soon another revolution took place in the picture of the world - when the opinion was established that Columbus had discovered the New World, two huge continents, unknown to the geographers of antiquity and the Middle Ages. The first assumptions on this matter were made back in 1493 by the remarkable Italian humanist Pietro Martire Angleria (in the Spanish manner - Pedro Martire); then followed the famous letters of Amerigo to Vespucci (1499) and, finally, the widely known cosmography of the German Martin Waldseemüller (1507), in which he proposed to call the New World in honor of Vespucci the Land of Amerigo or America.

Already by virtue of its second name - New World - America transformed the image of the ecumene. With everyday use of the word, the freshness of its meaning is quickly lost. But let’s try to renounce the usual and restore the original powerful semantic energy contained in the phrase Mundus Novus, New World, New World. This truly revolutionary concept destroys the entire previous image of the world that had developed over thousands of years of previous European history. The space of human existence expands explosively, doubles, which is visually embodied in the first map of the world with two hemispheres, placed in the mentioned cosmography of Walseemüller. Accordingly, ideas about the boundaries of the possible expand, and these new ideas, carrying a charge of energy, will immediately find embodiment in action, deed.

And the space of the New World itself became a source of energy for pioneers and conquistadors. After all, it challenged a person, and this challenge provoked an adequate energetic response. A grandiose space also requires tremendous efforts to conquer, not only physical but also spiritual efforts, which ultimately lead to radical changes in a person’s consciousness and worldview. However, we will talk about this in more detail later.

Finally, the third source and stimulus of the conquistador’s energy was the rare coincidence in history of the interests of the individual and the state, the subordinate and the ruler, or, specifically in our case, the conqueror and the king. The conquista was organized in such a remarkable way that it provided maximum freedom of initiative to the conquistadors and at the same time took into account the interests of the crown. There is no doubt: if the organization of the conquest had been thought out and planned by someone in advance, then it would never have turned out so effective.

The forms of the conquest, although they were not completely new in the history of Spain, nevertheless developed spontaneously, in the process of developing America, and turned out to be optimally adapted for this unprecedented experience in the history of mankind. It can be argued that the organizer of the conquest was again the space of America, for such forms of conquest were unthinkable in Europe, Asia Minor or northern Africa, where only a regular army could operate effectively.

The conquest was left to private initiative. America was conquered by separate and completely independent detachments of conquistadors, led by a captain general, who had complete freedom of action and decision-making - right up to the execution of guilty comrades. Previously, he concluded an agreement with the king, less often with a representative of royal power in the New World - such agreements were called capitulations. The essence of these monstrously verbose documents actually boiled down to a few phrases. The king told the conquistador: “Go wherever you want, do whatever you want, just promise to fulfill my three conditions. The first is to declare the newly discovered lands the property of the Spanish crown. The second is to force the natives, who inhabit those lands, to recognize my power and Christian teaching. And thirdly, do not forget to give a fifth of all the spoils (kintu) to my treasury. And I won’t stand for titles and honors.” Indeed, the king did not skimp on titles; usually, at the conclusion of capitulation, the captain-general became the governor and alcalde (chief judge) of the yet undiscovered lands.

Columbus says goodbye to the royal couple as he sets sail overseas

None of the interested parties were left at a loss. The king zealously served the holy cause of Christianization, moreover, he expanded his possessions, strengthened his power and replenished his treasury. Is quinta, a fifth of the spoils, a lot or a little? Not so much that the conquistadors felt greatly disadvantaged. But not so little: streams of gold merged into rivers. Quinta is reasonable.

In turn, the conquistadors had the opportunity to quickly get rich and change their fate for the better. It is important to emphasize this point here. Expeditions paid for at government expense can be counted on one hand. There are only two large ones: the second expedition of Columbus and the expedition of Pedrarias David to Golden Castile. Most of the expeditions were paid for by the conquerors themselves. The king did not risk anything; The conquistadors put everything on the line. Hernando de Soto, who returned from Peru a rich man, invested his money in organizing an expedition to North America. When he realized that he would not find a second Peru here, he chose to die. But the successful Quesada, who also invested all his wealth in the expedition in search of El Dorado, undertaken in 1568, chose to return and, as a result, died in poverty, besieged by creditors. The main burden of expenses fell on the captain-general, but other members of the expedition also invested money (often the last) in the purchase of weapons, ammunition and a horse. Thus, the initiative and manic persistence of the conquistadors were dictated, among other things, by the desire to at least recoup expenses at any cost.

In the existing balance of personal and state interests, both components were important. Let's try to make a far from fantastic assumption and imagine that America is being conquered by a regular Spanish army, the kind that fought in Flanders and Italy at that time. Everyone, from infantryman to captain general, has a certain salary; the production is completely handed over to the treasury; there is a general staff headed by the commander-in-chief, who develops strategy and gives orders, etc. Of course, even in this case, the conquest of America would have taken place, because such was a historical inevitability; but there is no doubt that then the conquest would not have been completed in such a fantastically short historical period; then it might indeed have dragged on for a century. If the same Soto had been a hired captain, would he have spent years wandering the wild lands of North America in search of a golden kingdom? I would throw up my hands in front of my superiors: “If you please see, there is no smell of Tenochtitlan there, there is only wilderness and wildness everywhere.” Or imagine: the commander-in-chief calls Pizarro, gives him one hundred and sixty men, orders him to invade the powerful Inca empire and go to meet Atahualpa’s five thousand-strong army. Pizarro would have cried: “Have mercy! This is madness! Pure madness!..”

Private initiative is important; however, the role of the state cannot be underestimated. Let's try to mentally turn the situation around: the crown renounces all claims to America, does not interfere in anything at all and stands on the sidelines. Without the tutelage of royal power, the conquest would have turned into a purely robbery enterprise, into piracy - and in this case, it would not only have failed to fulfill its complex tasks, but could have failed altogether.

It must be admitted that in terms of initiative and energy, the pirates are in no way inferior to the conquistadors; but, unlike the latter, they were completely incapable of two things. First, they did not know how to conduct any long-term joint military campaign. They could assemble a powerful flotilla, strike with lightning speed, and then immediately scatter “to their own corners.” It’s funny to imagine that the famous pirate Henry Morgan led his people into the jungle for a couple of years, without knowing where, but within a month his comrades would have cut his throat. And the second thing that pirates were completely unsuited to was creative activity.

The royal power stimulated the conquistador's initiative primarily by promising him at the end of his journey legal and permanent status in the social system, as well as official recognition of his merits and appropriate rewards. He can become a governor, a city manager, or, at worst, a landowner - the main thing is that he will not be an outcast, but a full-fledged respected member of society. A pirate is a caliph for an hour. The conquistadors came to new lands to become their rightful owners and pass them on to their heirs. Royal power gave their actions the character of legitimacy, legality, and this was extremely important for the participants in the conquest.

And besides, it gave them the conviction that they were acting in the interests of the state, for the good of the nation. Of course, personal interests for the conquistadors were in the foreground - in this way the people of that era were no different from their brothers in intelligence of both previous and subsequent centuries. And yet it would be extremely simplistic to ignore the ideas of serving Christianity and their king and faith in the greatness of Spain that were deeply rooted in the minds of the conquistadors. The countless statements made by America's pioneers and conquerors on this subject should not be taken as empty rhetoric. When Cortez persuades the recruits to go to the conquest of Tenochtitlan, he, according to the chronicler, participant in the campaign Bernal Diaz del Castillo, says that they “are in lands where they could serve God and the king and get rich.” Cortez very clearly outlined the three main incentives of the conquistador; only in this triad, if one were not to be an idealist, the third position should be put in first place. Be that as it may, the conquistadors recognized themselves as representatives of the true faith and a great nation. They were equally aware of the greatness of their deeds, and this fed their national pride, which also served as one of the sources of their indomitable energy.

Notes:

The present island of Haiti.

In antiquity and the Middle Ages, geography in our understanding was an integral part of a broader body of knowledge called “cosmography” - an almost comprehensive science, which, along with topography, included zoology, botany, meteorology, geology, and ethnography.

Captain General is a rank given to the commander of a large expedition, sea or land.

The captain is the commander of a unit in the army of conquistadors. Captains were also placed at the head of reconnaissance and conquest campaigns as part of a large expedition.

The Appalachian tribe that lived in northern Florida has long been extinct. Only a few geographical names remind of it.

This is discussed in detail in the fifth chapter of the book “America of Unfulfilled Miracles.” M., 2001.

Martir Pedro (1459–1526) lived in Spain from 1487, was friends with Columbus, and became a member of the Royal Council for the Indies. He sent lengthy narrative letters in Latin by papal mail to the Vatican about everything that concerned the newly discovered overseas lands, and these letters, over eight hundred in number, formed the basis of the historical work “Decades of the New World,” which became the first book in history about America.

Díaz del Castillo Bernal (between 1492–1496 - 1584) is the author of The True History of the Conquest of New Spain, an outstanding monument of conquest literature. From now on we will simply call him Bernal.

The first inhabitants of South America were the American Indians. There is evidence that they were from Asia. Around 9000 BC, they crossed the Bering Strait and then descended south, passing through the entire territory of North America. It was these people who created one of the most ancient and unusual civilizations in South America, including the mysterious states of the Aztecs and Incas. The ancient civilization of the South American Indians was mercilessly destroyed by Europeans who began colonizing the continent in the 1500s.

Capture and plunder

By the late 1500s, most of the South American continent had been conquered by Europeans. They were attracted here by enormous natural resources - gold and precious stones. During colonization, Europeans destroyed and plundered ancient cities and brought with them diseases from Europe that wiped out almost the entire indigenous population - the Indians.

Modern population

There are twelve independent states in South America. The largest country, Brazil, covers almost half the continent, including the vast Amazon River basin. Most residents of South America speak Spanish, that is, the language of the conquerors who sailed here from Europe on their sailing ships in the 16th century. True, in Brazil, on whose territory the Portuguese invaders once landed, the official language is Portuguese. In another country, Guyana, they speak English. There are still indigenous American Indians in the highlands of Bolivia and Peru. The majority of Argentina's residents are white, and neighboring Brazil is home to large numbers of descendants of African black slaves.

Culture and sports

South America has become the birthplace of many unusual people and a hospitable home that has brought together many different cultures under its roof. Bright, colorful houses in La Boca, a bohemian quarter of the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires. The area, which attracts artists and musicians, is inhabited primarily by Italians, descendants of settlers from Genoa who arrived here in the 1800s.
The most beloved sport on the continent is football, and it is not surprising that it was the South American teams - Brazil and Argentina - who became world champions more often than others. Pele, the most outstanding football player in the history of this game, played for Brazil.
In addition to football, Brazil is famous for its famous carnivals, which are held in Rio de Janeiro. During Carnival, which takes place in February or March, millions of people march through the streets of Rio to the rhythm of samba, and millions more watch the colorful action. The Brazilian Carnival is the most popular holiday held on our planet.

The continent of North America was deserted at the moment when the Lower and Middle were replaced in the eastern hemisphere, and the Eurasian Neanderthal gradually turned into homo sapiens, trying to live in the tribal system.

American soil saw humans only at the very end of the Ice Age, 15 - 30 thousand years ago (From recent research:).

Man entered America from Asia through a narrow isthmus that once existed on the site of the modern Bering Strait. This is where the history of the exploration of America began. The first people walked south, sometimes interrupting their movement. When Wisconsin glaciation was coming to an end, and the earth was divided by ocean waters into the Western and Eastern Hemispheres (11 thousand years BC), the development of people began who became aborigines. They were called Indians, the indigenous inhabitants of America.

Called the aborigines Indians Christopher Columbus. He was sure that he was standing off the coast of India, and therefore it was a suitable name for the aborigines. This stuck, but the continent began to be called America in honor Amerigo Vespucci, after Columbus's mistake became apparent.

The first people from Asia were hunters and gatherers. Having settled down on the land, they began to engage in agriculture. At the beginning of our era, the territories of Central America, Mexico, and Peru were developed. These were the tribes of the Mayans, Incas (read about), Aztecs.

The European conquerors could not come to terms with the idea that some savages created early class social relations and built entire civilizations.

The first attempts at colonization were made by the Vikings in 1000 AD. According to the sagas, Leif, the son of Eric the Red, landed his detachment near Newfoundland. He discovered the country, calling it Vinland, the land of grapes. But the settlement did not last long, disappearing without a trace.

When Columbus discovered America, the most diverse Indian tribes already existed there, standing at different stages of social development.

In 1585 Walter Raleigh, favorite of Elizabeth I, founded the first English island colony in North America Roanoke. He called her Virginia, in honor of the Virgin Queen.

The settlers did not want to do hard work and develop new lands. They were more interested in gold. Everyone suffered from gold fever and went even to the ends of the earth in search of the attractive metal.

Lack of provisions, mistreatment of the Indians by the British and the resulting confrontation all put the colony in jeopardy. England could not come to the rescue, since at that moment it was at war with Spain.

A rescue expedition was organized only in 1590, but there were no more settlers there. Famine and confrontation with the Indians depleted Virginia.

The colonization of America was in question, since England was going through hard times (economic difficulties, war with Spain, constant religious strife). After the death of Elizabeth I (1603), the throne was James I Stuart, who had nothing to do with the colony on Roanoke Island. He made peace with Spain, thereby recognizing the enemy's rights to the New World. This was the time of the “lost colony,” as Virginia is called in English historiography.

This state of affairs did not suit the Elizabethan veterans who participated in the wars with Spain. They strove to the New World out of a thirst for enrichment and a desire to rub elbows with the Spaniards. Under their pressure, James I gave his permission to resume the colonization of Virginia.

To make the plan come true, the veterans created joint-stock companies, where they invested their funds and joint efforts. The issue of settling the New World was resolved through the so-called “rebels” and “loafers.” This is what they called people who found themselves homeless or without a means of subsistence during the development of bourgeois relations.

By the middle of the 16th century, Spain's dominance on the American continent was almost absolute, with colonial possessions stretching from Cape Horn to New Mexico , brought huge income to the royal treasury. Attempts by other European states to establish colonies in America were not crowned with noticeable success.

But at the same time, the balance of power in the Old World began to change: the kings spent the streams of silver and gold flowing from the colonies, and had little interest in the economy of the metropolis, which, under the weight of an ineffective, corrupt administrative apparatus, clerical dominance and lack of incentives for modernization, began to lag further and further behind from the rapidly developing economy of England. Spain gradually lost its status as the main European superpower and mistress of the seas. The many years of war in the Netherlands, huge amounts of money spent fighting the Reformation throughout Europe, and the conflict with England accelerated the decline of Spain. The last straw was the death of the Invincible Armada in 1588. After the largest fleet of the time was destroyed by the English admirals and, to a greater extent, by a violent storm, Spain withdrew into the shadows, never to recover from the blow.

Leadership in the “relay race” of colonization passed to England, France and Holland.

English colonies

The ideologist of the English colonization of North America was the famous chaplain Hakluyt. In 1585 and 1587, Sir Walter Raleigh, by order of Queen Elizabeth I of England, made two attempts to establish a permanent settlement in North America. An exploration expedition reached the American coast in 1584, and named the open coast Virginia (Virginia) in honor of the “Virgin Queen” Elizabeth I, who never married. Both attempts ended in failure - the first colony, founded on Roanoke Island off the coast of Virginia, was on the verge of destruction due to Indian attacks and lack of supplies and was evacuated by Sir Francis Drake in April 1587. In July of the same year, a second expedition of colonists, numbering 117 people, landed on the island. It was planned that in the spring of 1588 ships with equipment and food would arrive in the colony. However, for various reasons, the supply expedition was delayed for almost a year and a half. When she arrived at the place, all the buildings of the colonists were intact, but no traces of people were found, with the exception of the remains of one person. The exact fate of the colonists has not been established to this day.

Settlement of Virginia. Jamestown.

At the beginning of the 17th century, private capital entered the picture. In 1605, two joint stock companies received licenses from King James I to establish colonies in Virginia. It should be borne in mind that at that time the term “Virginia” denoted the entire territory of the North American continent. The first of the companies, the Virginia Company of London, received rights to the southern part, the second, the Plymouth Company, to the northern part of the continent. Despite the fact that both companies officially declared their main goal to be the spread of Christianity, the license they received gave them the right to “search for and extract gold, silver and copper by all means.”

On December 20, 1606, the colonists set sail aboard three ships and, after a arduous nearly five-month voyage during which several dozen died of starvation and disease, reached Chesapeake Bay in May 1607. Over the next month, they built a wooden fort, named Fort James (the English pronunciation of James) in honor of the king. The fort was later renamed Jamestown, the first permanent British settlement in America.

Official US historiography considers Jamestown to be the cradle of the country; the history of the settlement and its leader, Captain John Smith of Jamestown, is covered in many serious studies and works of art. The latter, as a rule, idealize the history of the city and the pioneers who inhabited it (for example, the popular cartoon Pocahontas). In fact, the first years of the colony were extremely difficult, during the famine winter of 1609-1610. out of 500 colonists, no more than 60 remained alive, and according to some accounts, the survivors were forced to resort to cannibalism to survive the famine.

In subsequent years, when the question of physical survival was no longer so pressing, the two most important problems were tense relations with the indigenous population and the economic feasibility of the existence of the colony. To the disappointment of the shareholders of the London Virginia Company, neither gold nor silver was found by the colonists, and the main product produced for export was ship timber. Despite the fact that this product was in certain demand in the metropolis, which had depleted its forests, the profit, as from other attempts at economic activity, was minimal.

The situation changed in 1612, when farmer and landowner John Rolfe managed to cross a local variety of tobacco grown by the Indians with varieties imported from Bermuda. The resulting hybrids were well adapted to the Virginia climate and at the same time met the tastes of English consumers. The colony acquired a source of reliable income and for many years tobacco became the basis of Virginia's economy and exports, and the phrases “Virginia tobacco” and “Virginia mixture” are used as characteristics of tobacco products to this day. Five years later tobacco exports amounted to 20,000 pounds, a year later it was doubled, and by 1629 it reached 500,000 pounds. John Rolfe provided another service to the colony: in 1614, he managed to negotiate peace with the local Indian chief. The peace treaty was sealed by marriage between Rolf and the chief's daughter, Pocahontas.

In 1619, two events occurred that had a significant impact on the entire subsequent history of the United States. This year, Governor George Yeardley decided to transfer some power to the House of Burgesses, thereby establishing the first elected legislative assembly in the New World. The first meeting of the council took place on July 30, 1619. That same year, a small group of Africans of Angolan descent were acquired as colonists. Although they were not formally slaves, but had long-term contracts without the right to terminate, it is customary to begin the history of slavery in America from this event.

In 1622, almost a quarter of the colony's population was destroyed by rebel Indians. In 1624, the license of the London Company, whose affairs had fallen into disrepair, was revoked, and from that time Virginia became a royal colony. The governor was appointed by the king, but the colony council retained significant powers.

Timeline of the founding of the English colonies :

French colonies

By 1713, New France had reached its greatest size. It included five provinces:

Canada (the southern part of the modern province of Quebec), divided in turn into three "governments": Quebec, Three Rivers (French Trois-Rivieres), Montreal and the dependent territory of Pays d'en Haut, which included the modern Canadian and American Great Lakes regions, of which the ports of Pontchartrain (French: Pontchartrain) and Michillimakinac (French: Michillimakinac) were practically the only poles of French settlement after the destruction of Huronia.

Acadia (modern Nova Scotia and New Brunswick).

Hudson Bay (modern Canada).

New Earth.

Louisiana (central part of the USA, from the Great Lakes to New Orleans), divided into two administrative regions: Lower Louisiana and Illinois (French: le Pays des Illinois).

Dutch colonies

New Netherland, 1614-1674, a region on the eastern coast of North America in the 17th century that ranged in latitude from 38 to 45 degrees north, originally discovered by the Dutch East India Company from the yacht Crescent ( nid. Halve Maen) under the command of Henry Hudson in 1609 and studied by Adriaen Block and Hendrik Christians (Christiaensz) in 1611-1614. According to their map, in 1614 the Estates General incorporated this territory as New Netherland within the Dutch Republic.

Under international law, claims to territory had to be secured not only by their discovery and provision of maps, but also by their settlement. In May 1624, the Dutch completed their claim by bringing and settling 30 Dutch families on Noten Eylant, modern Governors Island. The main city of the colony was New Amsterdam. In 1664, Governor Peter Stuyvesant gave New Netherland to the British.

Colonies of Sweden

At the end of 1637, the company organized its first expedition to the New World. One of the managers of the Dutch West India Company, Samuel Blommaert, participated in its preparation, who invited Peter Minuit, the former general director of the colony of New Netherland, to the position of head of the expedition. On the ships "Squid Nyckel" and "Vogel Grip" on March 29, 1638, under the leadership of Admiral Claes Fleming, the expedition reached the mouth of the Delaware River. Here, on the site of modern Wilmington, Fort Christina was founded, named after Queen Christina, which later became the administrative center of the Swedish colony.

Russian colonies

Summer 1784. The expedition under the command of G.I. Shelikhov (1747-1795) landed on the Aleutian Islands. In 1799, Shelikhov and Rezanov founded the Russian-American Company, the manager of which was A. A. Baranov (1746-1818). The company hunted sea otters and traded their fur, and founded its own settlements and trading posts.

Since 1808, Novo-Arkhangelsk has become the capital of Russian America. In fact, the management of the American territories is carried out by the Russian-American Company, the main headquarters of which was in Irkutsk; Russian America was officially included first in the Siberian General Government, and later (in 1822) in the East Siberian General Government.

The population of all Russian colonies in America reached 40,000 people, among them the Aleuts predominated.

The southernmost point in America where Russian colonists settled was Fort Ross, 80 km north of San Francisco in California. Further advance to the south was prevented by Spanish and then Mexican colonists.

In 1824, the Russian-American Convention was signed, which fixed the southern border of the Russian Empire’s possessions in Alaska at latitude 54°40’N. The convention also confirmed the holdings of the United States and Great Britain (until 1846) in Oregon.

In 1824, the Anglo-Russian Convention on the delimitation of their possessions in North America (in British Columbia) was signed. Under the terms of the Convention, a boundary line was established separating the British possessions from the Russian possessions on the western coast of North America adjacent to the Alaska Peninsula so that the border ran along the entire length of the coastline belonging to Russia, from 54° north latitude. to 60° N latitude, at a distance of 10 miles from the edge of the ocean, taking into account all the bends of the coast. Thus, the line of the Russian-British border in this place was not straight (as was the case with the border line of Alaska and British Columbia), but extremely winding.

In January 1841, Fort Ross was sold to Mexican citizen John Sutter. And in 1867, the United States bought Alaska for $7,200,000.

Spanish colonies

The Spanish colonization of the New World dates back to the discovery of America by the Spanish navigator Columbus in 1492, which Columbus himself recognized as the eastern part of Asia, the eastern coast of China, or Japan, or India, which is why the name West Indies was assigned to these lands. The search for a new route to India was dictated by the development of society, industry and trade, and the need to find large reserves of gold, for which demand had risen sharply. Then it was believed that there should be a lot of it in the “land of spices”. The geopolitical situation in the world changed and the old eastern routes to India for Europeans, which now passed through the lands occupied by the Ottoman Empire, became more dangerous and difficult to pass, meanwhile there was a growing need for the implementation of other trade with this rich region. At that time, some already had ideas that the earth was round and that India could be reached from the other side of the Earth - by sailing west from the then known world. Columbus made 4 expeditions to the region: the first - 1492-1493. - discovery of the Sargasso Sea, the Bahamas, Haiti, Cuba, Tortuga, the founding of the first village in which he left 39 of his sailors. He declared all the lands to be the possessions of Spain; the second (1493-1496) - the complete conquest of Haiti, the discovery of the Lesser Antilles, Guadeloupe, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Jamaica. Founding of Santo Domingo; third (1498-1499) - discovery of the island of Trinidad, the Spaniards set foot on the shores of South America.

In preparing the material, articles from Wikipedia- free encyclopedia.

§ 6. Discovery and development of new lands in Central and South America

Columbus's discovery of the sea route to the new continent created the preconditions for the development and conquest by Europeans of territories located in the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico, as well as the lands lying south of it.

These lands were inhabited by the Aztec and Incas tribes. The Aztecs kept a chronology of the reign of emperors and wars, writing everything down on special scrolls using the knotted writing they developed - “quipu”. The quantity, color, and method of tying a particular knot carried certain information. But in this way, mainly statistical material was transmitted. These scrolls were kept in special underground rooms at constant humidity and temperature. All books of great events and dates in the history of these civilizations were destroyed by Europeans as pagan literature containing heresy. Therefore, we know almost nothing about the history of the civilizations of pre-Columbian America.

We can say that the discoverers of America found the peoples living there at the stage of transition from a tribal system to a slave society. Although there were already characteristic signs of statehood and class differentiation. The Aztecs had patriarchal slavery. Not only prisoners became slaves, but also persons who committed crimes, debtors and people forced into bondage to their wealthier fellow tribesmen. A hundred years before the arrival of Europeans, a union of tribes living in Southern Mexico was formed, headed by the Aztec tribe. This tribal union then extended its power over the tribes living along the Pacific coast. The capital of the Aztec state was Tenochtitlan, located on an island in the middle of a lake.

Tributes in grain and precious stones were collected from enslaved tribes. In addition, these tribes had to provide people for sacrifices. Frequent wars and raids, on the one hand, contributed to the strengthening of the military nobility, on the other, led to discontent among the enslaved tribes, resulting in frequent uprisings.

A more advanced tribe was the Incas. The Incas are one of the tribes of the Quechua people. Heading an alliance of tribes, the Incas subjugated other Quechua tribes and conquered neighboring peoples, of which the Aymara people were the most numerous. By 1438, the Incas had formed the largest of all Indian states. This early slave state extended south from the Patia River to the Manule River for more than 4,000 kilometers and covered an area of ​​about 2 million square kilometers with a population of about 6 million people. The capital of the state was the city of Cusco, located in the high mountain valley of the Urubamba River. The Europeans who arrived in their lands called them the Romans of the New World.

It was an empire with a developed road system. The empire had two main highways, parallel to each other, which ran from north to south. One of them walked along the coast, and the other in the mountains. These two main roads were intersected by numerous secondary roads, their total length being on the order of 25,000–30,000 km.

The most ambitious road construction was carried out under the Sapa Incas (the so-called supreme rulers of the Inca Empire). For example, under Tupac Yupanqui (1471–1493) and his son Huayna Capac, roads passed through mountains and were sometimes built at altitudes of up to 5,000 meters above sea level. Their rocky surface was skillfully smoothed. Stepped serpentines leading to passes were often cut into the rocks. There were also tunnels carved into the rocks. Where roads passed through deserts, their surface was paved with stone slabs. The roads were very strong.

The Inca Empire was one of the most striking examples of the command-administrative system in the Middle Ages. The entire male population was divided into 10 age categories. Every subject had to serve the state. Population censuses were carried out regularly. Any movement from one's place of residence required permission, making travel for personal reasons unlikely.

In general, the travels of the Indians of pre-Columbian America, just like those of the peoples of the Ancient East, were of a commercial, military and diplomatic nature. Only the aristocracy could afford to travel.

Pilgrimage also existed in the Inca Empire. The analogue of the most famous Delphic oracle in ancient times among the Incas were the priest-foretellers of the temples of Tawantinsuyu. The scale of activity of these temples and, indirectly, the number of people wishing to receive a prediction is indicated by the fact that the number of priests exceeded 4,000 people. Divinatory activity was so profitable that the position of high priest was always occupied by the emperor's closest relative.

The first conquistadors found the Aztecs and Incas in this state. Among them, the most famous are Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro.

Hernan Cortes was born into a poor noble family. He began traveling at the age of fourteen. At first it was a “hike for knowledge” at the University of Salamanca. But, without achieving much success in his studies, he returned home two years later and, becoming a conquistador, set off to conquer Cuba.

A few years later he returned to Spain, where he bought land with the wealth he had accumulated in Cuba and became a successful landowner. He was even elected city judge twice. But, having received news that another expedition was being sent to new lands for Aztec treasures, Cortez did everything possible to lead it.

In 1519, a flotilla of several ships set sail. The expedition was purely military in nature. Its goal was to conquer new lands and enslave the tribes living there. But the main thing is to capture more gold and jewelry, of which, according to eyewitnesses, the Aztec leaders had countless quantities. In essence, it was a military aggression against the peoples inhabiting the territory of modern Mexico.

Cortez's detachment consisted of 400 people. These were warriors well armed with firearms, clad in armor, whose appearance terrified the Indians, who knew neither gunpowder nor guns. The detachment also had 10 heavy guns and 3 light field guns. In addition, Cortez skillfully used the contradictions and enmity between individual tribes and, above all, used the discontent of the tribes enslaved by the Aztecs. He stood up for them, promising them independence from the Aztecs, set one tribe against another, then brutally dealt with both. As a result, he quickly managed to capture significant territories in southern and eastern Mexico.

The final destination of his aggressive campaign was the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City). The Aztec ruler Montezuma II offered Cortes a huge ransom to prevent the conquistadors from capturing the capital. Cortez agreed, but when Montezuma arrived with the ransom, the leader was arrested, and Tenochtitlan was destroyed and plundered.

Having captured the supreme ruler of the Aztecs, the conquistadors began to rule the country on his behalf and demanded that the Indian leaders subject to Montezuma swear an oath of allegiance to the Spanish king and pay tribute in gold. The treasures that personally belonged to Montezuma II were so numerous that it took the Spaniards several days to view them. Cortez was going to send the treasure to Spain, but did not have time.

In June 1520, under the cover of darkness, Indian troops suddenly attacked the invaders. The Indians besieged the Spanish detachment in one of the palaces where the captive supreme ruler was located. Cortez managed to escape from the siege, the Aztec capital was liberated. Cortez went to Cuba, where more and more new troops of conquerors arrived. In addition, the Spaniards were helped by Indian tribes who took their side and were now afraid of the revenge of the Aztecs. Having gathered an army of ten thousand, Cortes again approached the capital and besieged the city. During the long siege, the majority of the population died from hunger and disease. In August 1521, the Spaniards captured the capital, but no gold was found there. Aztec treasures disappeared without a trace; They are still being sought to this day. The Aztecs were enslaved. Tenochtitlan is sacked. The Aztec country began to be called New Spain, and later Mexico. More than 30,000 thousand Indians died during the conquest of Mexico.

The captured and enslaved Aztec empire fully justified the hopes of the Spaniards. It contained natural reserves of gold in quantities that were many times greater than all known European reserves. In the 20s XVI century reserves of silver and other precious metals were discovered.

Having captured Mexico, Cortez did not sit in one place. He embarked on a new voyage in search of a passage from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean. The path first went along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and the Bay of Campeche. Having crossed the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the detachment delved into the tropical swamp forests in the territory of modern Honduras. The Spaniards, accustomed to a temperate climate, suffered heavily from tropical downpours and heat. Many Spanish soldiers were killed while crossing the Mayan country of Petén. At the beginning of May 1525, the greatly reduced detachment reached the shore of the Gulf of Honduras, leaving the Yucatan Peninsula from the north. A few more weeks later, Cortes, sick with malaria, and several people from his squad reached the city of Trujillo, founded by Francisco Casas on the southeastern shore of the Gulf of Honduras. During this campaign, a rumor was spread that Cortes had died. Power in Mexico City was usurped by the crown auditor. In June 1526, Cortes managed to gather his supporters and restore power in Mexico City. But the new viceroy sent Cortes to Spain. The king granted Cortes the title of marquis and "captain general of New Spain and the South Sea."

But Cortes did not calm down this time either. The thirst for discovery again brought him to the shores of America. He did not give up trying to find a passage from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific Ocean. In 1533, an expedition led by Cortez reached California, which was mistaken for an island. This territory seemed to Cortez one of the hottest on earth, so he called it Calida Fornaks, which in Latin means “hot oven.” Overall, the expedition was not successful. Cortez tried to continue his research, but death prevented him.

In North America, the Spanish conquest did not extend beyond Mexico. This is explained by the fact that there were no other states or major cities in the lands north of the Aztec Empire. The Spaniards considered these lands infertile and unpromising. Therefore, they directed their conquests to Central and South America.

In the 30s XVI century Spanish conquistor Francisco Pizarro undertook the conquest of the Inca state in Peru. In Spain, these lands were called the “Golden Kingdom”. Europeans learned about the fabulous riches of these lands from the stories of Balboa, who explored the Isthmus of Panama. Francisco Pi-zarro was a participant in this campaign. He began his travels at the age of nineteen as a soldier in the Spanish army in Italy. Soon he leaves for America. It is reliably known that he took part in a campaign against the Indians on the island of Hispaniola (Haiti).

Pizarro made three reconnaissance expeditions from Panama to the land of the Incas. His companion on these campaigns was another conquistador, Diego Almagro, who arrived on the Isthmus of Panama in 1514.

In 1524, Pizarro and Almagro made their first voyage to the shores of Peru. They reached the delta of the San Juan River, explored part of its basin, but did not find anything valuable there. Due to lack of food they had to return back.

In 1526, the conquistadors made a second campaign. Having reached the mouth of the San Juan, they continued to sail along the Pacific coast of South America, crossed the equator and saw in the distance the giant peak of Chimborazo (6,272 m) in the Western Cordillera of the Andes. Local residents, whom the conquistadors made their captives, confirmed the stories about the enormous wealth of this country.

In 1527, Pizarro and Almagro set off on a third journey to the shores of Peru. But this time they did not reach the equator, as food supplies ran out. Pizarro remained on the coastal island, and Almagro went back for new supplies. At this time, power changed in Panama. The new governor decided to arrest Pizarro, considering him an adventurer and a fraudster. But Pizarro captured the ship sent for him and set off on it to explore the Pacific coast of South America. After passing the equator, he entered the Gulf of Guayaquil and continued south, stopping at the coast. The Spaniards robbed the local population. Having landed in the Magdalena River basin, they witnessed one of the religious rituals: every morning the leader of the Muisca tribe smeared his body with special liquid clay (a mixture of golden sand and silt), and in the evening he washed off the gold in the waters of the sacred Lake Guatavita. Pizarro and his crew captured many gold and silver vessels, captured several dozen young Peruvians, and captured two live llamas. With such trophies, Pizarro returned to Spain with honor.

In Spain, his stories about the country of El Dorado (translated from Spanish as “the gilded man”) so shook the imagination of his compatriots that there was no shortage of subsidies or volunteers for the new expedition. Pizarro took his brothers Hernando and Gonzalo on the campaign.

In 1531, an expedition began that led to the collapse of one of the most developed civilizations of the New World. With a large detachment, Pizarro invaded the Incan possessions. At this time, the country had just ended a three-year internecine war. The Supreme Inca Huascar was defeated and captured by his brother Atahualpa.

In September 1532, having received reinforcements from Panama, large detachments of Spaniards marched south along the coastal lowlands, crossed the Western Cordillera and reached the city of Cajamarca, where Indian detachments led by Atahualpa were located. The rapid advance of the Spaniards was facilitated by roads paved with stone, tunnels carved into rocks, and beautiful bridges across gorges. Atahualpa also did not interfere with the Spaniards. In mid-November 1532, the Spaniards entered Cajamarca, and Atahualpa's five-thousand-strong detachment was located two miles away. Having invited Atahualpa to negotiations, ostensibly to conclude an alliance, Pizarro captured him and at the same time attacked a detachment of Indians. Having learned that their leader was captured, the Indians began to flee, but most of them were killed by Spanish horsemen.

Realizing that the Spaniards valued gold most of all, Atahualpa offered a large ransom for himself. On the wall of the dungeon in which the Spaniards had imprisoned him, he drew a line as high as he could reach with his hand, and proposed to fill it up to that level with gold vessels and other decorations. For more than six months, the Incas collected gold to ransom their leader. But Pizarro deceived the Indians this time too. He accused Atahualpa of the murder of his brother Huascar, of idolatry and polygamy, subjected him to a humiliating trial and executed him. All the gold was melted down into ingots, destroying the most valuable monuments of the Inca civilization.

Pizarro captured the capital of the state, Cuzco, and appointed Manco Capac, the son of Huascar, as the supreme ruler of Peru. In Cusco, the Spaniards plundered the treasures of the Temple of the Sun, and a Catholic monastery was created in its building.

In April 1536, Manco Capac raised an uprising in Cuzco and liberated the city. In December of the same year, the Spaniards received reinforcements and defeated the rebels. Pizarro founded a new administrative center on the coast, which he called the "City of Kings", later renamed Lima.

The so-called royal five was sent to Spain, i.e. a fifth of all looted wealth. The rest of the gold was divided among the invaders, but not all of them were happy with this. For example, Almagro considered himself extremely deprived. He accused Pizarro of embezzling wealth and led a rebellion against him. In 1538, Pizarro's brother Hernando brutally suppressed the rebellion and killed Almagro. But Almagro's execution led to retribution. In June 1541, conspirators broke into Pizarro's house and killed him.

Another equally outstanding discoverer of lands in South America was Francisco Orellan. He went overseas when he was 16 years old. He took part in the campaigns of conquest in Peru as part of Pizarro’s troops. In 1534 he was part of a detachment that captured the city of Cusco. And in 1536 he played a decisive role in suppressing the revolt of the rebel Indians and in the liberation of the city. The following year, Pizarro sent Orellana to pacify the rebel Indians in the province of Culata. On the banks of the Gayas River, not far from where it flows into the bay, Orellan founded the city of Guayaquil.

In February 1541, Orellan, as part of an expedition led by Gonzalo Pizarro, set out in search of the country of Eldorado. They left Quito, whose ruler was Gonzalo, but six months later, after unsuccessful attempts to overcome the snowy Cordillera, they turned back.

In the fall of 1541, the Spaniards managed to overcome the Eastern Cordillera and reach one of the tributaries of the Amazon - the Napo River. Gonzalo Pizarro continued along this river and entered the Amazonian lowland for the first time. Here the Spaniards began to experience food problems. Some of them fell ill with yellow fever. They learned from the Indians that downstream the Napo River there was a land where there was a lot of food and gold. Pizarro sent Orellana on reconnaissance.

At the end of December 1541, Orellan set off with 57 soldiers on a brigantine and four canoes. Only after ten days of sailing along the river did they come across the first village where they managed to get food. Orellan did not turn back, since they would have had to swim against the current for at least three months, and there were no roads by land in these places. The travelers built a new brigantine and continued down the river.

In mid-February 1542, the brigantine Orellana reached the place where three rivers connected: Napo, Marañon and Ucayami. The travelers did not yet know that they had entered the longest and deepest river in the world. It was so wide that from the middle of the river it was not always possible to see both banks at once. A powerful stream carried travelers east.

In one of the villages, the Spaniards built another brigantine, calling it “Victoria”. Along the way, the Spaniards engaged in looting, but mostly they only managed to get food. They did not find any gold or jewelry.

In May 1542, Orellan discovered the mouth of the Jurua River. A little later, the travelers entered the densely populated country of Omagua, located between the Zhurua and Purus rivers. Here the Spaniards were attacked by local tribes. The battle began on the water. The Indians on pirogues attacked the brigantines, then the battle continued on land. Only on the fifth day did the Spaniards manage to escape. Having raised the sails, they broke away from their pursuers.

In June 1542, Orellana reached the largest tributary of the Amazan River, the Rio Negro (which means “black river”). Continuing their journey further, the Spaniards, according to the testimony of one of the expedition members, the monk Carvajal, allegedly encountered a tribe in which women fought in battle alongside men. This gave rise to one of the geographical legends. Later expeditions, in search of the so-called Amazons, examined the banks of this river in detail, but no one had ever met a tribe of female warriors there. However, the river that Orellan was going to name after himself was called the Amazon River (in Russian the name of this river is used in the singular).

Orellan continued his journey along the great river, approaching the ocean. In August 1542, the travelers entered a huge delta, which they mistook for the ocean, as a strong storm arose, during which their brigantines were damaged and thrown ashore. The repairs took almost three weeks, after which the Spaniards continued their voyage and entered the Atlantic Ocean.

The Amazon voyage lasted 172 days. During this time, the travelers covered about 6 thousand kilometers. Orellan made one of the most important discoveries in the history of South American exploration. He was the first to cross this continent from west to east, and proved that the “Fresh Sea” is the mouth of the Amazon, and it is navigable from the foothills of the Andes.

The discovery and development of new lands in Central and South America continued. The incentive for this was gold coming to Europe and eyewitness accounts of the untold riches of these places. A stream of treasure seekers and adventurers poured into the New World. Most of them were poor, marginalized and fugitive criminals. This created fertile ground for piracy and robbery at sea. Pirates robbed ships carrying gold to Spain. The looted treasures were hidden on the islands of the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific coast.

At the same time, the seizure of new lands continued. In the early 40s, the Spanish conquistadors conquered Chile, and the Portuguese conquered Brazil. In the second half of the 16th century. The Spaniards took over Argentina. This is how the colonial possessions of Spain and Portugal were created on the American continent.