Hernán Cortés Trivia
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60 free Hernán Cortés trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Hernán Cortés trivia quiz covers the conquistador who toppled the Aztec Empire with a few hundred men, thousands of indigenous allies and a talent for mutiny. The easy questions are the ones any history reader knows: his nationality, the empire he destroyed, the emperor he took hostage and the woman who translated for him. From there the set moves through the campaign: the governor of Cuba who tried to stop him, the priest rescued from the Maya, the ships he scuttled at Veracruz, the alliance with Tlaxcala, the massacre at Cholula, the Night of Sorrows and the thirteen brigantines that sealed the siege of Tenochtitlan. The harder end is for the specialists: the Salamanca uncle who taught him Latin, his kinship with Pizarro, the quinto he collected as a clerk, the notary training that let him justify his conquest, the coat of arms of 1525, the Honduras expedition and Cuauhtémoc's hanging, the marquessate of the Valley of Oaxaca, the viceroy who outranked him, Baja California, the Algiers storm, the five letters to Charles V, his mestizo children and the bones that were moved more than eight times before being rediscovered in 1946. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries for Cortés, the conquest and its principal figures before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Aztecs, Mexico and Age of Exploration quizzes next.
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Q 01Cortés was a conquistador in the service of which European crown?
Castile
Castile, not Aragon, owned Spain's claims in the Americas, because it was Queen Isabella of Castile who had sponsored Columbus, and Mexico was added to her grandson's Castilian crown.
Q 02Cortés's birthplace in Extremadura later gave its name to which Colombian city?
Medellín
Medellín: Colombia's second city took the Extremaduran village's name in 1675, a tribute to the Count of Medellín, who then presided over Spain's Council of the Indies.
Q 03Cortés was a distant relative of which other conquistador, through his mother's family?
Francisco Pizarro
Francisco Pizarro shared more than blood with his kinsman: news of the riches won in Mexico spurred his own expeditions south, which brought down the Inca Empire.
Q 04At 14, Cortés was sent to study what under an uncle in Salamanca?
Latin
Latin was meant to be his gateway to the law, but he is said to have given up after two years and gone home, to his parents' dismay.
Q 05Which profession did the young Cortés practise in the Caribbean before he turned conquistador?
Notary
Notary: he knew how to make a mutiny look legal, so at Veracruz he had his men form a town council that promptly elected him captain general.
Q 06Before Cuba, on which Caribbean island did Cortés first settle?
Hispaniola
Hispaniola: an illness there kept him off a 1509 expedition to the mainland that ended in disaster, and he farmed on until he joined the conquest of Cuba in 1511.
Q 07Which governor of Cuba first sponsored Cortés's expedition, then tried to recall it at the last moment?
Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar
Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar moved too late: Cortés put hastily to sea before he could be replaced, then filled out his fleet with men and ships from other Cuban ports.
Q 08In which animated film do two Spanish con men stow away on a ship commanded by Cortés?
The Road to El Dorado
The Road to El Dorado (2000) sends Tulio and Miguel from the conquistador's brig to a lost city in the jungle, where a scheming priest proclaims them gods.
Q 09Which Mexican muralist painted the Spanish conquest on the walls of Cortés's own former palace?
Diego Rivera
Diego Rivera was hired by the American ambassador, Dwight Morrow, and by 1930 had covered the conqueror's arcade with a history of the region from the Conquest to the Revolution.
Q 10Roughly how many soldiers did Cortés land with in 1519 to take on the Aztec Empire?
500
About 500 Spaniards did not topple an empire alone: Cortés won over subject peoples who resented paying tribute to the Aztecs, and they supplied the bulk of his army.
Q 11Which shipwrecked Spanish cleric, a captive in Yucatán for eight years, became Cortés's first translator?
Gerónimo de Aguilar
Gerónimo de Aguilar jumped at the rescue, but his fellow castaway Gonzalo Guerrero, by then tattooed and raising a family with a local wife, refused to leave.
Q 12La Malinche was among 20 enslaved women handed to Cortés by defeated lords in which present-day Mexican state?
Tabasco
Tabasco: after losing a battle near the coast, its lords made peace with gifts of food, gold and 20 women, one of whom proved to be the interpreter who would carry his words to the Aztecs.
Q 13La Malinche's Nahua name, Malintzin, echoes which Christian name she was given at baptism?
Marina
Q 21Whom did the governor of Cuba send to Mexico in 1520 with a larger army to arrest Cortés?
Pánfilo de Narváez
Pánfilo de Narváez brought the bigger army and lost it in a single night: Cortés surprised his camp, took him prisoner and enlisted his soldiers for the march back to Tenochtitlan.
Q 22Which lieutenant of Cortés carried out the massacre in the Great Temple that sparked the Aztec uprising?
Pedro de Alvarado
Pedro de Alvarado, left in command of a small garrison, fell on nobles celebrating a religious festival, and Cortés returned from the coast to find his men besieged in their quarters.
Q 23According to Spanish accounts, how was Moctezuma killed during the Aztec uprising of 1520?
Marina was so constantly at the captain's side when envoys came that the peoples they met began calling Cortés himself 'Malinche'.
Q 14When she was handed to Cortés in 1519, La Malinche already spoke which two languages?
Nahuatl and Maya
Nahuatl and Maya made her the last link in a relay: Cortés spoke Spanish to a rescued castaway, who put it into Maya for her to turn into Nahuatl, until she learned Spanish herself.
Q 15Cortés is famously said to have burned his ships at Veracruz; what did he actually do to them?
Scuttled them
Scuttled them: the ships were stripped of sails, rigging and ironwork, then sunk or run aground, and Cortés saw to it that the proposal came from his men, so the blame and the bill would not be his alone.
Q 16Which people fought Cortés fiercely in 1519, then became his most faithful indigenous allies?
The Tlaxcalans
The Tlaxcalans had never been conquered by the Aztecs and lived in perpetual war with them, so once they had tested the newcomers in battle they chose to march on Tenochtitlan beside them.
Q 17In which city, home to the Americas' largest pyramid, did Cortés's men massacre thousands in 1519?
Cholula
Cholula's nobles were cut down in their own plaza after, by the Spanish account, a local woman warned Cortés's interpreter of an ambush; why it really happened is still disputed.
Q 18Where did Moctezuma come out to meet Cortés in November 1519?
On a causeway
On a causeway into the city: the emperor arrived under a canopy of green feathers with cloths laid before his feet, and when Cortés moved to embrace him the Aztec lords caught his arms.
Q 19Tradition holds that the Aztecs first took Cortés for an envoy of which returning god?
Quetzalcoatl
Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent, was said to be due back from the east in a One Reed year, and 1519 was one; many historians now think the story took shape only after the conquest.
Q 20What did Cortés do to Moctezuma within days of being welcomed into Tenochtitlan?
Took him hostage
Took him hostage: Cortés used the killing of Spaniards on the coast as his pretext to move the emperor into the Spanish quarters, then ruled the city through him for months.
Stoned by his own people
Stoned by his own people, the Spanish said, as he appealed from a balcony for calm, after which he refused to have his wounds dressed; other accounts say the Spaniards killed him once he was no longer useful.
Q 24'La Noche Triste', the Sad Night of 1520, names which episode of the conquest?
The flight from the capital
The flight from the capital cost the Spaniards most of their loot, with men drowning under the weight of their gold; in 2021 Mexico City renamed the tree that marks it for the 'Victorious Night'.
Q 25Which Italian Baroque composer put Cortés on stage in his 1733 opera Motezuma?
Antonio Vivaldi
Antonio Vivaldi's score was thought lost until 2002, when part of it turned up in a Berlin choir's archive, newly returned from Kyiv, where it had lain for decades as Red Army war booty.
Q 26What won the battle of Otumba for Cortés's outnumbered army in July 1520?
A cavalry charge
A cavalry charge: with every cannon lost in the retreat a week earlier, Cortés led his few horsemen straight at the Aztec commander, who was cut down and his standard seized, and the army broke off.
Q 27To besiege the island city of Tenochtitlan, Cortés had what built far inland?
A fleet of warships
A fleet of warships: thirteen small brigantines were built far from the water, taken apart, hauled overland by porters and armed with cannon, which gave him command of the water around the city.
Q 28Which disease devastated the population of Tenochtitlan while Cortés rebuilt his alliances?
Smallpox
Smallpox arrived with the 1520 fleet sent from Cuba to arrest Cortés, and is thought to have killed even the new emperor, Cuitláhuac, only 80 days into his reign.
Q 29How was Cuauhtémoc captured in August 1521, ending the siege of Tenochtitlan?
Fleeing by canoe
Fleeing by canoe across the lake on 13 August, he was overtaken and seized; brought before Cortés, by the Spanish account, he asked to be killed with the conqueror's own knife.
Q 30Why did the Spaniards burn the feet of the captive emperor Cuauhtémoc after the fall of Tenochtitlan?
To find hidden gold
To find hidden gold: the loot fell far short of what the soldiers expected, and when they accused Cortés of hiding it with the emperor's help he handed Cuauhtémoc over to them; little was ever found.