SOURCE: An introduction to Hernándo Cortés: Five Letters 1519-1526, translated by J. Bayard Morris, George Routledge & Sons, Ltd., 1928, pp. ix-xlvii.

In the following excerpt, Morris attempts to counter the charges of barbarism that have frequently been levelled against Cortés and briefly reviews the style and contents of the five Cartas de relación.

"Conquest" has always been held an ugly word: so much so that even conquerors themselves have been wary of it. The Norman William crossed the channel, as he announced, to assume a kingdom which was his by right of a rival's oath. Alaric the Goth led his barbarian mercenaries southward to the sack of Rome with the proclaimed intent of securing arrears of pay long overdue.

In like fashion the conquistadores of the New World might invent a hundred plausible reasons by which the white man was entitled to oust the native...