Excerpt from By Right of Conquest: Or With Cortez in Mexico The conquest of Mexico, an extensive empire with a numerous and warlike population, by a mere handful of Spaniards is one of the romances of history; indeed, a writer of fiction would scarcely have dared to invent so improbable a story. Even the bravery of the Spaniards and the advantage of superior arms would not have sufficed to give them the victory had it not been that Mexico was ripe for disruption. The Aztecs, instead of conciliating by wise and gentle government the peoples they had conquered, treated them with such despotic harshness. That they were ready to ally them selves with the invaders and to join with them heartily against the central power; so that instead of battling against an empire single-handed, the Spaniards had really only to war with a great city, and were assisted by a vast army of auxiliaries. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.