Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The Other Class Of Nobility Has
More Of An American Character.
It is composed of the descendants of
the Conquistadores, that is to say, of the Spaniards who served in
the army at the time of the first conquest.
Among the warriors who
fought with Cortez, Losada, and Pizarro, several belonged to the
most distinguished families of the Peninsula; others, sprung from
the inferior classes of the people, have shed lustre on their
names, by that chivalrous spirit which prevailed at the beginning
of the sixteenth century. In the records of those times of
religious and military enthusiasm, we find, among the followers of
the great captains, many simple, virtuous, and generous characters,
who reprobated the cruelties which then stained the glory of the
Spanish name, but who, being confounded in the mass, have not
escaped the general proscription. The name of Conquistadares
remains the more odious, as the greater number of them, after
having outraged peaceful nations, and lived in opulence, did not
end their career by suffering those misfortunes which appease the
indignation of mankind, and sometimes soothe the severity of the
historian.
But it is not only the progress of ideas, and the conflict between
two classes of different origin, which have induced the privileged
castes to abandon their pretensions, or at least cautiously to
conceal them. Aristocracy in the Spanish colonies has a
counterpoise of another kind, the action of which becomes every day
more powerful. A sentiment of equality, among the whites, has
penetrated every bosom.
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