Chapter summary:
Extremadura is a land is of unspeakable beauty and savage cruelty with no maritime tradition yet this ravaged land was the birthplace of Francesco Pizarro and the conquistadores who conquered the mighty Inca, Maya and Aztec empires. Extremadurans colonised America from Florida to Tierra del Fuego. Today, Extremaduran names, Trujillo, Guadeloupe and Medellin, are found the length and breadth of the Americas – a testament to the courage of those poor, brave, devout men of long ago.
The contrast in 1434 between the wealth of China, or of the great civilisations of the Americas, and the poverty of Extremadura could hardly be greater. Did poverty drive the conquistadores quest? And what could the conquistadores expect to find when they reached the fabled Americas, land of Amazons? In an age of romantic literature, their dreams were no doubt fired by the epics of The Amadis of Gaul. Nubile, sex-mad women awaited them in marble palaces. Handmaidens would wash their feet and clothe them in golden gowns. White rubies and green emeralds the size of pigeon eggs would be theirs for the taking. Small wonder Pizarro had such an easy time selecting two hundred comrades from among the many who answered his call.
Fortune favours the brave. The Conquistadores found three desperately weakened empires in the Americas. The Aztecs had become psychopaths – cannibals who ate their fellow tribes in Mexico. In Central America, the same ghastly cult had poisoned the Maya. Weakened by civil war, they too offered only token resistance. In South America, the “mummy cult” of the Incas had reached its inevitable conclusion.
With nowhere to expand, the Incas had taken to fighting each other. They had no iron. An army of padded dolls awaited Pizzaro. By a series of amazing coincidences, each empire succumbed to fatal weakness at the very moment the Conquistadores landed.
