Titans of History

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

Magellan sailed across the Atlantic, sighting South America in November 1519. He then headed south, wintering in Patagonia, where he had to crush a dangerous mutiny led by two of his captains. He set sail again in August 1520.

  In October Magellan found a channel leading westward between the South American mainland and the archipelago to the south, which enabled his fleet to avoid the stormy open seas south of Cape Horn. He called this passage All Saints’ Channel, but it is now known as the Strait of Magellan after the great navigator. As the ships passed through, the sailors were overawed by the snowy mountains on either side. To the north was the southern tip of Patagonia, and to the south the islands they called the Land of Fire—Tierra del Fuego—because of the fires lit by the native people that burned on the shore. Once they had passed through the strait, they found themselves facing a vast expanse of open water. In honor of the steady, gentle wind that blew them across it, Magellan named the ocean the Pacific.

  For ninety-eight days Magellan’s crew sailed northwestwards across the open ocean, spotting only an occasional rocky, barren island. They had little water, and what they did have was bad. They ran out of supplies and were reduced to eating moldy biscuit, rats and sawdust. But still Magellan pushed onwards, saying that he would rather eat the ships’ leather than give up. And that was exactly what the crew did, chewing leather from the yardarms.

  In March 1521 they reached the Philippines, which Magellan originally named after St. Lazarus (they would later be renamed after King Phillip II of Spain). They took on supplies and reached the island of Cebu, where Magellan befriended the native king. By purporting to convert to Catholicism, the king managed to convince Magellan to become involved in his violent feuds with neighboring islands, and it was in an attack on one of these on April 27 that Magellan was killed. The treacherous king then murdered two of Magellan’s men before the crew could regroup and head home for Spain.

  Only eighteen crewmen, four South American natives and one ship, the Victoria, made it around the Cape of Good Hope and back to Spain, plagued by contrary winds, harassment from the Portuguese, malnourishment and scurvy. Although Magellan was not among them, by the time of his death he had traveled well past the longitude of his original voyages to the east, when he had visited the Moluccas. He had also discovered the holy grail of navigators and traders: a passage to the eastern Spice Islands via the western ocean. This in turn helped to pave the way for Spanish and Portuguese dominance across the globe during the 16th century.

  Great explorers like Columbus and Marco Polo may have discovered the hitherto unknown parts of the world, but it was Magellan who joined them all together.

  BABUR

  1483–1530

  Wine makes a man act like an ass in a rich pasture.

  Saying attributed to Babur

  Babur was the nomad prince who emerged from a tiny Mongol kingdom to found India’s Mughal empire. Babur’s reign was brief, but he was a talented conqueror and intellectual, and his power over, and respect for, the myriad peoples whom he ruled created a vast empire of an incomparable cultural magnificence.

  Claiming descent from Genghis Khan, the young Zahir-ud-din Muhammad was directly descended from the Turkic-Mongol conqueror Tamurlane (Timur). The family had lost much of Tamurlane’s empire, so he was for much of his youth a king without a kingdom. Called Babur by tribesmen unable to pronounce his real name, he inherited the tiny central Asian state of Fergana at the age of twelve. Having fended off his uncles’ attempts to unseat him, Babur set out to conquer neighboring Samarkand. The fifteen-year-old prince miscalculated. In his absence rebellion at home robbed him of Fergana, and when he marched back to reclaim it, his troops deserted Samarkand, depriving him of that too. “It came very hard on me,” Babur later recalled of his nomad years. “I could not help crying a good deal.”

  Defeat strengthened Babur’s resolve. By 1504 the hardened warrior had secured himself the kingdom of Kabul in today’s Afghanistan. From there he looked east into Hindustan’s vast lands. After several attempts, Babur finally triumphed in 1526 at the Battle of Panipat, where his 12,000 men routed the sultan of Delhi’s 100,000-strong army. Over the next three years he defeated the Rajputs, the Afghans and the sultan of Bengal, to become the unchallenged ruler of Hindustan—today’s India. Thus did this descendant of Tamurlane carve out what was to become known as the Mughal empire, after the Persian word for Mongol.

  Babur ascribed his astounding victories to “the fountain of the favor and mercy of God.” Weaponry helped. Babur introduced to India the matchlock musket and the cannon, although initially they only earned him ridicule. As Babur’s tally of victories attests, it soon became clear that with effective firepower his almost absurdly small armies could make huge inroads against opponents with a vast numerical superiority.

  A supremely well-trained collection of Pashtuns, Persians, Arabs and Chaghatai Turks, Babur’s men revered their consummate commander. He was a warrior of legendary strength—it was reported that he could run up slopes carrying a man on each shoulder, and that he had swum across every major river he had encountered, including the Ganges. The Mughal armies terrified their enemies and not without just cause, for vanquished combatants were beheaded and their heads strung up from parapets. Babur considered his son and heir Humayun’s decision to have 100 prisoners of war shot at Panipat, rather than released or enslaved as was the custom, “an excellent omen.”

  In contrast, as a ruler, Babur was merciful. The Muslim emperor ruled over an array of peoples with immense tolerance and respect. He never forced their conversion or sought to alter their practices. Preach Islam “by the sword of love and affection,” he told Humayun, “rather than the sword of tyranny and persecution.” His clarity of vision and his humanity allowed him to see that his vast empire could flourish in all its diversity: “Look at the various characteristics of your people just as characteristics of various seasons,” he told his son. An advocate of justice regardless of race or religion, he hated hypocrisy, describing it as “the lies and flattery of rogues and sycophants.”

  Babur’s respect for his conquered lands helped to forge an exquisite and unique culture. Babur brought to India his Timurid inheritance: the skills and practices of the jewel-city of Tamurlane’s old capital, Samarkand. The resulting fusion produced centuries of breathtaking art and architecture, such as the monumental Taj Mahal. Himself a skilled author, calligrapher and composer, Babur initiated his dynasty’s patronage of all these arts. He created magnificent formal gardens as a respite from India’s ferocious heat. They were the first of their kind on the subcontinent, stocked with plants and fruits that he brought from his homelands to the northwest. Buried according to his wishes in the garden of Baghe-Babur in his beloved Kabul, the inscription on Babur’s tomb reads: “If there is a paradise on earth, it is this, it is this, it is this!”

  Babur’s flaw was his excess. He drank heavily and developed a notable fondness for marijuana. His extravagant generosity emptied his coffers. And when Humayun seemed mortally ill, Babur was said to have offered up his life in return for his son’s. Babur’s last words say much about the ruthlessness of the time and the humanity of the man: “Do nothing against your brothers,” he told Humayun, “even though they may deserve it.”

  Babur’s extraordinary story is recounted in his personal journal, the Babur-nama, charting his progress from Fergana’s boy-king to Mughal emperor. It encompasses battles, intrigues, flora, fauna, geography, peoples, poetry, art, music, polo matches and feasts. It also gives the first documented mention of the priceless diamond the Koh-i-Noor. Encompassing even Babur’s personal feelings, the Babur-nama is an astounding record of the era and a startling insight into the man.

  CORTÉS

  1485–1547

  He came dancing across the water

  With his galleons and guns

  Looking for the new world

  In that palace in the sun …

  He came dancing across the water

  Cortéz, Cortéz

/>   What a killer.

  Neil Young, “Cortez the Killer”

  Hernán Cortés was like Pizarro the personification of the triumphant conquistador whose deeds—both blood-spattered and heroic—brought so much of the New World under the harsh rule of Spain. Arriving in Mexico at the head of a tiny mercenary army, he slaughtered the innocent and pillaged the land, destroying the civilization of the Aztecs and enriching himself beyond his wildest dreams. But the evidence suggests he was not himself cruel and rarely initiated atrocities. He was however a wholly remarkable leader—probably with Pizarro (a distant relative) the outstanding Spaniard of his time, who literally conquered a new empire.

  Cortés was born of a noble Castilian family in Medellín, Spain, in 1485. After a sickly childhood, his parents sent him to the prestigious University of Salamanca in the hope that the rarefied intellectual environment might be the making of their son. It was not to be, however, and Cortés soon returned home. Small-town provincial life proved no more satisfactory to young Cortés (except where women were concerned), and in 1502 he decided to move to the New World. Arriving in Hispaniola (modern-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic) in 1503, he soon established himself as a capable man with an eye for an opportunity.

  In 1510, at the age of twenty-six, Cortés managed to obtain a place on an expedition to conquer Cuba. The expedition was led by Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, who went on to become the governor of the newly seized territory; having impressed Velázquez, Cortés was appointed as his secretary. The cordial relationship between the two men did not last, however—in part because of Cortés’ continual philandering, even as he secured the hand in marriage of Velázquez’s sister-in-law, Catalina.

  Cortés grew increasingly restless with his life in Cuba, and in 1518 he persuaded Velázquez to give him command over an expedition that was to explore and colonize the mainland (modern-day Mexico). At the last minute the governor changed his mind and attempted to have Cortés removed from his command. But it was too late: Cortés ignored the countermand and proceeded as originally planned.

  In March 1519 Cortés and a force of some 600 men landed on the Yucatán Peninsula, and a month later he formally claimed the land for the Spanish crown. To create a reality to match the rhetoric, Cortés marched first north and then west, achieving a series of victories over hostile native tribes and proving himself a skilled exponent of divide and conquer.

  In October 1519 Cortés and his troops arrived at Cholula, then the second largest city in the region. Many of the city’s nobility had gathered in the town’s central square in the hope of parleying with the approaching Spaniard, but he was in no mood to listen to them. In an act of calculated terror, he ordered his troops to raze the city. Thousands of unarmed citizens were butchered in the process.

  In the wake of this massacre, Cortés and his men were received peacefully by the Aztec emperor, Moctezuma II, in the city of Tenochtitlán (Mexico City). The Aztec empire, which emerged in the 14th and 15th centuries from an alliance of three rapidly growing cities—Tenochtitlán, Texcoco and Tlacopan, had been fashioned by Moctezuma I (c. 1398–1469) into a cohesive political and cultural unit, with Tenochtitlán at its capital, and reached its zenith under Ahuitzotl (c. 1486–1502), who more than doubled the territory under Aztec control. He was succeeded on his death by his nephew, Moctezuma II—the man on the throne when Cortés and his mercenaries arrived seventeen years later. The Aztecs practiced human sacrifice of men, women and children—sometimes on a vast scale. On one occasion in the 1480s, it was said that they sacrificed 84,000 prisoners at the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan.

  Moctezuma believed Cortés to be the incarnation of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl (the Feathered Serpent), and, having heard of the military superiority of the intruders, was anxious to avoid direct confrontation. For his part, Cortés was determined to receive the submission of the Aztec emperor to the Spanish king, and to this end he took Moctezuma prisoner.

  Back in Cuba, meanwhile, Velázquez had grown jealous of Cortés’ success, and in 1520 he sent a force under Pánfilo de Narváez to retrieve the insubordinate conquistador. Despite the numerical inferiority of his troops compared to those of Narváez, Cortés defeated the challenge. However, during his absence from Tenochtitlán, the man he had left in charge had slaughtered many of the city’s leading figures and provoked an uprising, during which Moctezuma was killed. After attempting to re-enter Tenochtitlán, Cortés was forced to abandon it and only just avoided defeat at the hands of pursuing Aztec forces.

  Having regrouped in the lands of his allies, the Tlaxcala, he returned in late 1520, intent on recapturing the city. In the war that followed, the Spaniard sought to break the Aztec resistance through a strategy of attrition. Tenochtitlán was isolated, and resistance eventually crushed. The fall of the city effectively marked the end of the Aztec empire. Cortés was now the undisputed master of the territory, which he renamed the New Spain of the Ocean Sea.

  As governor of the new colony from 1521 to 1524, Cortés oversaw the destruction of many artifacts of Aztec culture. The indigenous people were forced into a system of forced labor, under which they were ruthlessly exploited for centuries to come. All the while, the principal concern of the Spanish conqueror was personal aggrandizement. Those who suffered under Cortés’ yoke were finally relieved of their burden when he was dismissed from his post by the Spanish king, who had received various reports of his viceroy’s misrule. In 1528 Cortés returned to Spain to plead his case, but despite being made marques del Valle de Oaxaca, Cortés was not convinced he had won the king’s support. Charles V never forgave him for his insubordination to royal officials and would never let him command in Europe.

  The final two decades of Cortés’ life saw the increasingly embittered conquistador journeying back and forth between Spain and his estates in the New World, and attempting to counter what he felt were the lies of his “various and powerful rivals and enemies.” Vastly rich, perhaps the most titanic European of his time, the marquis of the Valley died in 1547, en route to South America.

  HENRY VIII

  1491–1547

  He never spared a man in his anger, nor a woman in his lust.

  Sir Robert Naunton, Fragmenta Regalia, 1641

  Henry VIII was a golden and gifted boy who grew up to become a forceful, energetic and ambitious ruler—he was a majestic and ruthless monarch who created an “imperial” monarchy by asserting English independence, defying Rome, breaking up the monasteries, promoting his realm’s military and naval power and his own autocracy, all ultimately enabling the triumph of Protestantism. Yet he became a bloated, thin-skinned tyrant who ordered the killing—on faked evidence—of many, including two of his wives, because of his own wounded pride. He was, in his paranoid cruelty, the English Stalin.

  Henry was second son of the shrewd, mean and pragmatic Henry VII who, as Henry Tudor, had seized the throne in 1485, reconciling the York and Lancaster factions after the Wars of the Roses, and established a new dynasty. The early death of his heir, Prince Arthur, in 1502, shortly after marrying Catherine of Aragon, highlighted the fragility of the parvenu Tudors, which explains much of Henry VIII’s ruthlessness over the succession. Henry succeeded to the throne in 1509 and married his late brother’s Spanish widow. He was handsome, strapping and vigorous but also highly educated: courtiers hailed the dawning of a golden age. He promoted his glory with the macho sporting entertainments of a Renaissance prince—hunting, jousting, dancing, feasting—and won popularity by executing his father’s hated tax collectors, Empson and Dudley, on spurious charges. It set the pattern for how Henry would dispose of his ministers when expedient.

  Henry longed to test his vigor in the lists of Europe, where Francis I of France and the Habsburg emperor, Charles V, were vying for dominance. He started to build a navy, including his huge battleship the Mary Rose (which later sank). At first, he backed the emperor against the French, leading an army to France and winning the Battle of Spurs in 1513, while defeating a Scottish i
nvasion at Flodden. He made peace with France, meeting Francis at a magnificent summit, the Field of the Cloth of Gold, stage-managed by his able and hugely rich minister Cardinal Thomas Wolsey—a butcher’s son who had risen to the scarlet—but after Francis was captured at Pavia in 1525, Henry again changed sides, aspiring to hold the balance of power in Europe.

  Henry’s queen, Catherine of Aragon, Emperor Charles V’s aunt, had provided him with a girl, the future Queen Mary, rather than a male heir—an affront to Henry’s pride and dynastic sensitivity, so he sought, via Wolsey, to have the marriage to his brother’s widow annulled. The pope, under the influence of Emperor Charles, would not permit Catherine to be cast aside. “The king’s great matter” was not just a matter of personality but of Henry’s insistence that his crown was “imperial”—not subordinate to the pope or any other power. This became even more important when he fell in love with Anne Boleyn, one of Catherine’s ladies-in-waiting, who—flirtatious, intelligent and ambitious—withheld her favors before marriage. The pope remained intransigent, so Henry turned on Wolsey. The cardinal would have faced the ax but died on his way to face charges of treason.

  Henry now decided on a radical course, and in his Act of Supremacy and Treason Act of 1534 declared himself head of the Church in England and independent of the pope. At last Henry’s marriage to Catherine could be annulled, and in 1533 he married Anne Boleyn.

  Henry, backed by his rising minister Thomas Cromwell, repressed anyone who questioned his religious policies: his former chancellor, Thomas More, was executed. A rebellion in the north, the Pilgrimage of Grace (1536), was defeated, then dispersed on Henry’s word of honor, which he then broke, executing the rebels ruthlessly. Throughout his reign, Henry was pitiless in killing anyone who opposed him: after Dudley and Empson he went on to execute Edmund de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, in 1513, Edward Stafford, duke of Buckingham, in 1521, all the way to the young poet Henry Howard, earl of Surrey, in the last days of his life. His number of victims is hard to calculate—the historian Holinshed absurdly claimed 72,000—but there were many.