The Conquistadors

This enthralling study which examines the impact of the Spaniards upon the Aztec and Inca worlds is dominated by the personalities involved, in particular Cortes and Montezuma. Their confrontation in the Aztec lake-city of Tenochtitlan is a moving drama of human conflict revealing the dilemma and the enigma of the Indians. It is a story of battles and voyages, full of strange episodes - Cortes burning his ships, Pizarro drawing a line with his sword, saying "Gentlemen, this line represents toil, hunger, thirst, weariness, sickness" and daring them to cross it, and Atahualpa nursing his wound in the hot springs of Cajamarca and watching, with his army, the tiny band of Spanish adventurers descending the green slopes of the Andes.

Ralph Hammond Innes (1914-1998) was an English adventure author who wrote over thirty novels as well as children's and travel books.
He was born in Horsham, Sussex. Educated at Cranbrook School in Kent he left in 1931 to work as a journalist, initially with the Financial Times. The Doppelganger, his first novel was published in 1937.
In WWII he served in the Royal Artillery, eventually rising to the rank of Major. During the war a number of his books were published. After being demobbed in 1946 he worked full-time as a writer, achieving a number of early successes. His had sixteen further novels published before 1960, producing books in a regular sequence of six months travel and research and then six months of writing, many featuring the sea.
His rate of work was reduced from the 1960s but was still substantial, and he became more interested in ecological themes. Innes continued writing until just before his death.