CHAPTER I
EARLY DAYS
FERNANDO CORTES, son of Martin Cortes y Monroy and of Catalina Pizarro Altamirano, his wife, was born in 1485 at Medellin, an unimportant town in Estremadura. The house in which he first saw the Hght stood in the Calle de la Feria until it was destroyed by the French in the campaign of 1809. (Alaman, Dissertazioni sulla Storia del Messico; Dissert. V.) Both his father's and his mother's families were of good descent, and respected, though poor. Martin Cortes had been a captain of fifty light cavalry, and he is further described by the anonymous author of De Rebus Gestis as "pietate tamen et religione toto vitæ tempore clarus," while to his wife the same writer gives the highest praise, saying, "Caterina namque probitate pudicitia et in conjugem amore nulli ætatis suae feminæ cessit." Las Casas also states that he had known Martin Cortes in a poor and humble condition, but that he was a Cristiano viejo, and said to be a gentleman. Later when the great fame of Cortes had converted him into an ancestor of whom the most illustrious family might be proud, ingenious genealogists sought to prove him also the descendant of very noble, and even royal, forefathers; but these unconvincing efforts must seem somewhat unimportant in the case of one whose name and place in history were won by his own achievements, unaided by the support either of influential family or superior fortune.
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