title: Cortes: The Great Adventurer and the Fate of Aztec Mexico
author:  Richard Lee Marks 
description: Hernan Cortes, the conqueror of Mexico, was a puny, sickly baby and a dropout law student who, in Marks's vivid biography, enjoyed a long, carousing youth that lasted into his 30s. As captain of Spain's expeditionary force to subjugate the Aztec empire, this gadabout transformed himself into a resolute, ambitious adventurer. Tapping firsthand accounts by Indians and Spaniards as well as historical chronicles, Marks ( Three Men of the Beagle ) disputes the conventional notion that Aztec emperor Montezuma was terrified by a prophecy that his rule was coming to an end--a view promulgated by accommodating Aztec priests who testified to Franciscans after the conquest. It's more likely, claims Marks, that Montezuma saw himself in a trial partnership with Cortes and his men and was happy to regard them as descendants of Quetzalcoatl, the bearded white god and quasi-historical Toltec chief. Instead of the image of Cortes as a ruthless, bloodthirsty conqueror, Marks portrays a stubborn man who tried to succeed by guile rather than by armed combat, and who, by imposing Catholic ritual and Spanish law, ushered in 300 years of stability and peace in Mexico. Photos. <br />Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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  ##### The Aztec Heresy
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  An ancient secret. A lost city. A treasure that could change the world. In
  search of a Spanish galleon in the Caribbean, archaeologist Finn Ryan and her
  partner Lord Billy Pilgrim find evidence of a lost Aztec Codex. The invaluable
  book created by 15th- century explorer and accused heretic Hernan Cortez is
  said to reveal the secret location of the lost City of Gold.
  
  
  
  
  
  They are not alone in their quest. Also on the trail is the head of a menacing
  religious cadre who’d kill to get it first, and a sociopathic billionaire with
  his own sinister motives.
  
  
  
  
  
  While running for their lives, Finn and Billy come upon a more explosive
  secret that will take them from the Yucatan jungles to the Sonoran Desert,
  where the stakes are life and death.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### ![book cover](aztecheresy-510x680.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### _THE AZTEC HERESY_
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ##### A Novel by
  
  
  
  
  
  ### ![art](02-109x53.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  ##### Paul Christopher
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ##### Book Four 