Ursúa The issue of crimes Aguirre and Robert Southey Kingdom of Redonda, 2010
Kingdom of Redonda, the editorial writer and academic Javier Marias, this book fulfills its twenty-rescue works past that are not easy to find. Several of them have to do with the history of Spain, as the autobiography of Captain Contreras in the Golden Age, or the memories of an English rifleman in the Napoleonic wars. In this case we go to 1560 to read in just 150 pages the story, as the highly descriptive title, "The expedition of Ursúa Aguirre and crimes. " Or how a Basque fifties, lame and low-born, eventually encountered native Indians, English conquistadors, Felipe II and even God himself that he had taken the lead in a blood bath that he only learned later fleeing to escape, to shed even more, to end his own.
Amid Amazon completely foreign to minds and bodies of southern Europe, a couple or three hundred soldiers and covered with iron bearded could achieve extraordinary feats or horrendous crimes. Empires could win or lose life, from his family and to the site from his home half a world away. Lope de Aguirre belonged to the second group, and its history has never stopped remembering. In the twentieth century were movies like "Aguirre, The Wrath of God 'or' El Dorado ', or feathers of Ramón J Sender and Gonzalo Torrente Ballester who did it, and in the nineteenth century, notably in 1821, was Robert Southey, Poet Laureate of England and historian, who published the version in question, after these extraordinary events surprised when researching sources for a 'History of Brazil' he was writing.
Most of the story is limited to describing the journey of Aguirre in the Indies and the continuing massacres that occurred in his case, but in the early nineteenth century, History with a capital hache should have a moralizing intention, and thus never ceases to be called Aguirre a "traitor" or "maverick" throughout the text. Southey's preface own ends: "It is (...) good example of the power that intoxicates men weak, the wicked crazy." Among the latter, in addition to Aguirre, "the fans of the era of Cromwell and the monsters of the French Revolution, as well as oriental despots and emperors." He ends by saying: "The atmospheric pressure is not necessary for the physical life of the man who brake the law and order is for his moral being."
The crux of the story, which is what is more that treaty in history, tells how went the famous expedition of Pedro de Ursua in search of El Dorado and its fabulous wealth (meaning both "big" as "dummy"), the viceroy of Peru sent organize, in part to get busy and away from him much of the dangerous soldiers who had been jobless after the end of the civil war against Gonzalo Pizarro. Aguirre, who had come to America with 21 years and I had been a quarter century on the continent that would never leave, was one of them. From there, everything that could go wrong went wrong: El Dorado did not appear, linked to badly Ursúa government spend time frolicking in the issue with his mistress Ines de Atienza, and natural rebel veterans who had his master too far had no patience to endure or false promises or hard without reward. In the name of freedom and against tyranny, Ursua was killed, his successor as head of the expedition as well, and Aguirre was gradually becoming the leader of those who were staying, by force of his personality and the fear that was his bloodthirsty spirit amid wild surroundings that offered no protection and no means of escape. The slightest suspicion, real or not, was punished without mercy, so that his whims were the cause of death of the fourth part of the English who came in the expedition. The book reports on several decisions to which his more ruthless, with patients, supporters and even her daughter. Amid all this, wrote letters to Felipe II challenging and viceroys. As news of his misdeeds were arriving at other English enclaves, was bound to come out to hunt, capture and death, until it occurred in Barquisimeto (Venezuela), October 27, 1561, after ten months of madness .
"There was something remarkable in its character, while monstrous", the story ends, and "any dramatic fable never met a catastrophic outcome so clear and so tragic."
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