Cortez. From Charles the Fifth, the world's most potent king.
Other nations would gladly have shared the riches of the New World with the conquerors, but Spain haughtily warned away intruders, meaning to keep the prize for herself alone.
It was then that Francis I. demanded to be shown that clause in the will of Adam disinheriting him in the New World. But Spain was too formidable to be attacked on the seas. On the land, the two great rivals met at Pavia, where the pride of France was laid so low that after the battle was over, Francis wrote to his mother the memorable words, so often made use of in like emergencies, "Madam, all is lost except honor."
The pre-eminent grandeur of Spain, at this period, shines out all the clearer by comparison with the inferior attitude of England, not only as a military power, but in respect of peaceful achievement. By the light Spain carried in the van of discovery other nations moved forward, but at a distance indicating their respect for the dictator of European politics.
PONCE DE LEON.
It is worth our remembering that in the efforts made to obtain a foothold upon the mainland, or terra firma,[4] as the Spaniards then called it, the territory of the United States may claim precedence in the order of time. Before Cortez landed in Mexico, Ponce de Leon had discovered and named Florida. Therefore Florida was the first portion of the North-American continent to receive the baptism of a Christian name.[5]
Although, under this name of Florida, Spain first claimed every thing in North America, it was the great central region lying about the tropics to which her explorers first turned their attention.
Cortez landed on the Gulf Coast, unfurled his banner of "blood and gold," set fire to his ships,[6] to let his followers know that for him and them there was no retreat, and marched on into the heart of Mexico. Two initial points are thus fixed from which to continue the story of Spanish domination in the New World, Florida and Mexico.