Stories of South America

Seitenzahl:

150

Gewicht:

227 g

Erschienen bei:

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Kurzbeschreibung

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III PIZARRO, THE GREAT ADVENTURER The question naturally arises why did the Spanish colonies in South America develop so rapidly in the sixteenth century? It was chiefly due to the tremendous power of Spain, whose sovereigns were the greatest rulers of the world in that century. Spain in the days of Ferdinand .and Isabella had not been so strong a nation. Their grandson, Charles V., however, was not only king of Spain but also ruler of a territory including the Netherlands and much of Italy. Then he was elected king of Hungary and emperor of Austria and the German states, and later gained by discovery and conquest a large part of North and South America. He was known as the Emperor Charles V. He ruled over a wider territory and a larger population than any Christian sovereign had ever before done. In 1519, the year in which Charles V. became emperor, Cortez landed in Mexico and overthrew Montezuma, the ruler of that land, sending to Spain a vast quantity of gold. This enabled Charles V, to build palaces, raise armies, strengthen his empire, and equip other adventurers desiring to explorethe New World. As was said in a previous chapter, England was too weak to compete with such a sovereign. France was the next most powerful nation, and the only one that could hope to check the growing ambition of the young emperor. Within a few years of Cortez's conquest of Mexico, Charles V. was surprised by the news that another Spaniard had led an expedition into Peru and opened a new country containing immense amounts of gold and silver. This was Francisco Pizarro, one of the most remarkable men that Spain has produced. Through him, Charles V. obtained further territory and more gold and silver than he had hitherto received from all other sources together. The life of Fra...

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Mehr von:  Eugene Clyde Brooks, Cambridge Scholars Publishing