By Right of Conquest

Roger Hawkshaw, a sixteen-year-old sailor, returns to Plymouth with his father after a profitable but perilous voyage, only to be drawn into a far greater adventure. In G. A. Henty's By Right of Conquest, this spirited English youth is swept across the ocean into the age of Hernan Cortez and the dramatic Spanish conquest of Mexico. Henty brings to life a world of seafaring hardship, family expectation, and the restless energy of a boy on the brink of history. Amid exotic coasts, uneasy alliances, and the clash of empires, Cortez emerges as a force of ambition and iron resolve. He secures his authority, founds a Spanish colony, sends treasure and reports to Spain, and destroys his ships to prevent retreat, turning panic into loyalty and pressing onward toward the Aztec heartland. Along the way, the novel captures native hospitality, political instability, translator-mediated encounters in the Yucatán, and the tense collision of cultures that made conquest possible. Fast-moving and vivid, it is a thrilling retelling of a real historical upheaval. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.