In part as a response to Francisco López de Gómara’s published account of the heroics of Hernán Cortés in Mexico, one of Cortés’s infantry men, Bernal Díaz del Castillo (1496–1584), dictated to his grandson “the story of myself and my comrades, all true conquerors, who served His Majesty in the discovery, conquest, pacification, and settlement. . . . of New Spain.”  Full of telling anecdotes, Díaz’s version has become a classic in many languages.