The Conquest of New Spain is the first-person narrative of Bernal Díaz del Castillo (1492–1581), the 16th-century military adventurer, conquistador, and colonist settler, who served in three Mexican expeditions -- those of Francisco Hernández de Córdoba (1517) to the Yucatán peninsula; the expedition of Juan de Grijalva (1518), and the expedition of Hernán Cortés (1517) in the Valley of Mexico. Del Castillo relates his participation in the fall of Emperor Moctezuma (Montezuma) II and the subsequent defeat of the Aztec empire. This is Volume I.