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<p><b style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);">The Aztec Empire was one of the most remarkable civilizations to have ever existed.<br><br>In 1519, Hernándo Cortés landed on the Gulf Coast, and two years later the Aztec civilization was a shadow of its former self.</b><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);"><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);">The Spanish must have appeared invincible, with their Tlascalan allies, armoured pikemen, musketeers with gunpowder and mounted cavalry.</span><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);"><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);">But the conquest of Mexico was no simple process for the Spanish conquistadors.</span><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);"><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);">The Aztecs threw everything they had against their invaders. They fought in ferocious battles and committed bloody slaughter all under the fierce leadership of Montezuma.</span><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);"><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);">It was only through Spanish persistence that they pushed through the region conquering as they went. </span><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);"><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);">What stands out in Prescott’s masterful history of Mexico’s conquest is his sketches of the various instrumental figures involved, from Montezuma to Cortés and his lieutenants.</span><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);"><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);">“The sheer accumulation of substantiated detail is propelled forward by Prescott's unsparing identification with the fundamentally tragic nature of the conflict.... He has intuited that the "conquest" of Mexico was, in fact, the unsuccessful enterprise of grafting one civilization upon another.” - </span><em style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);">The Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review</em><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);"><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);">William H. Prescott published his </span><em style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);">History of the Conquest of Mexico</em><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);"> in 1843 and </span><em style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);">The New York Times </em><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);">stated that it “has remained surprisingly unsurpassed since its publication.” Prescott was one of the most eminent historians of the 19th century. He died in 1859.</span>
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<br>Subjects: Conquest Of Mexico; 1843; William Prescott; Benjamin Scrivener; Camp Life Of A Volunteer; 1847; George Furber; Journal Of A Private; 1849; Gogol; poetry; Saint Helena; Victorian Era; Sevastopol; General; horse; War; Mark Twain; The Brothers Karamazov; Russia; The Overcoat; Literature; Civil War; Franklin Expedition; Harper's Ferry; Victorian Era; Gothic; Balaclava; Biography; 19th Century; Battle; Dead Souls; Arctic passage; 1850s; 1853; Travel; Moby Dick; Western; French Directory; novel; War and Peace; Victorian Era; Diary of a Madman; Siege of Sevastopol; invasion of Russia; Island; Count Of Monte Cristo; sailors; history; 19th Century; Novel; poetic; camp; LDS; Life On The Mississippi; Thriller; Light Brigade; Emperor Russia; Alexandre Dumas; British Army; Herman Melville; Ulm Campaign; Alma; Thomas Hardy; fathers and sons; Inkerman; mountain; 19th Century; Literature; Czarist Russia; Return Of The Native; volunteer; Queen Victoria; Life And Work; Lorenzo Dow; Christian; Wilderness Preacher; Mansfield Park; Literary; adventure; Typee; Herman Melville; adventure; 1866; Christ; Tale; 1815; Gothic; Gogol; The Idiot; Silas Marner; Christopher Lee; 1850s; book of Mormon; horror; War and Peace; Leipzig; Austrian Empire; Dostoyevsky; Russian Empire; Trail; Peninsular War; course; George Eliot; Utah; Western; First Consul; West; Tell Tale Heart; Black Cat; Jesus; book of mormon; Herman Melville; Queen Victoria; mountain man; Tracker; short story; Leo Tolstoy; Victorian Era; Danites; Mormon; Holy Bible; history; wild west; Elba; Horror; Iberian Peninsula; poetic; Thriller; November; black cat; Mark Twain; War And Peace; Continental System; Turgenev; daguerreotype; Czarist; Vincent Price; 19th Century; premature burial; Western; Literature; Battle; Leo Tolstoy; Brigham Young; Napoléon Bonaparte; Repin; Napoleonic Code; Lorenzo Dow; Chekov; Literary; Oliver Twist; Daguerreotypes; Prussia; Drama; Moby Dick; Wilderness Preacher; 1812; Emperor of the French; Austerlitz; French Revolution; American History; USA; West; Fourth Coalition; Third Coalition; Grande Armée; 18th Century; mountain man; 1810; Jena; Auerstedt; Hundred Days; David Copperfield; 1809; Wagram; 1845; Mutiny; Zion; Documentary; Salt Lake City; Mormon Trail; Russian Literature; macabre; Czar; Nauvoo Temple; Charles Dickens; course; Polygamy; Corsica; Vengence; 1840s; Silas; 1799; LDS Movie; Alfred Tennyson; Tolstoy; Crimean War; Ulysses Grant; General Lee; Crime And Punishment; Oregon; Tale; Charge; The Possessed; Trail; Civil War; 1850s</div>
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Victorian Vault</div>
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