Francisco de Aguilar (1479 — 1571?), born Alonso de Aguilar, was a Spanish

conquistador Conquistadors (, ) or conquistadores (, ; meaning 'conquerors') were the explorer-soldiers of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires of the 15th and 16th centuries. During the Age of Discovery, conquistadors sailed beyond Europe to the Americas, ...

who took part in the expedition led by

Hernán Cortés Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro Altamirano, 1st Marquess of the Valley of Oaxaca (; ; 1485 – December 2, 1547) was a Spanish ''conquistador'' who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of w ...

that resulted in the

conquest of the Aztec Empire The Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, also known as the Conquest of Mexico or the Spanish-Aztec War (1519–21), was one of the primary events in the Spanish colonization of the Americas. There are multiple 16th-century narratives of the ev ...

and the

fall of Tenochtitlan The Fall of Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec Empire, was a decisive event in the Spanish conquest of the empire. It occurred in 1521 following extensive manipulation of local factions and exploitation of pre-existing political divisions ...

, the capital of the

Aztec The Aztecs () were a Mesoamerican culture that flourished in central Mexico in the post-classic period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec people included different ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl ...

state in the

central Mexican plateau The Central Mexican Plateau, also known as the Mexican Altiplano ( es, Altiplanicie Mexicana), is a large arid-to-semiarid plateau that occupies much of northern and central Mexico. Averaging above sea level, it extends from the United States b ...

. He was granted an ''

encomienda The ''encomienda'' () was a Spanish labour system that rewarded conquerors with the labour of conquered non-Christian peoples. The labourers, in theory, were provided with benefits by the conquerors for whom they laboured, including military ...

'' after the conquest, but in 1529, eight years after the fall of Tenochtitlan, he gave up his ''encomienda'' and entered the

Dominican Order The Order of Preachers ( la, Ordo Praedicatorum) abbreviated OP, also known as the Dominicans, is a Catholic mendicant order of Pontifical Right for men founded in Toulouse, France, by the Spanish priest, saint and mystic Dominic of ...

, adopting the name ''Francisco''. Aguilar spent the remaining 40 years of his life as a Dominican friar. According to Patricia de Fuente, who translated his account to English, Aguilar "was contemplative by nature, and ... he brooded about the moral aspect of the Conquest." Late in his long life, in his early 80s, his fellow Dominicans urged him to write an account of the Aztec conquest drawing from his experiences. This account, known as '' Relación breve de la conquista de la Nueva España'' ("Brief Record ccountof the Conquest of New Spain"), went unpublished in his lifetime, however a

manuscript A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand – or, once practical typewriters became available, typewritten – as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced i ...

copy of it was preserved at the royal library of El Escorial outside of

Madrid, Spain Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...

. It was first published in 1900 by the Mexican historian and archivist,

Francisco del Paso y Troncoso Francisco de Borja del Paso y Troncoso (October 8, 1842 in Veracruz, Veracruz Mexico – April 30, 1916 in Florence, Italy) was an important Mexican historian, archivist, and Nahuatl language scholar. He "was and remains the outstanding maj ...

. A modern English translation of Aguilar's chronicle is published in ''The Conquistadors: First-Person Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico,'' In his elderly years, he was diagnosed with gout and he soon died in Mexico at the age of 92.Nash, Gary B. 2003. ''Encyclopedia of American history''. New York: Facts on File.

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* Spanish conquistadors Encomenderos Spanish Dominicans 16th-century Mesoamericanists Novohispanic Mesoamericanists People of New Spain 1479 births 1571 deaths Historians of Mesoamerica 16th-century Spanish writers 16th-century male writers Colonial Mexico Castilian-Manchegan conquistadors {{mesoamerica-stub