For many years Zorro, this mysterious hero, the Spanish hidalgo, who led a second life under a black mask, full of adventure and mortal risk, was considered a fictional figure.
And recently in the historical archives of Madrid, Dublin, Rome and Mexico City, the Italian scientist F. Troncarelli found documents from which it follows that the literary and cinematic Zorro had a very real prototype.
Studying the protocols of interrogation of the heretics of the 17th century, the professor drew attention to the name of William Lamport, often mentioned there. The description of his appearance, and most importantly, the facts of his stormy life surprisingly coincided with those attributed to the legendary Zorro. After a careful study of the documents, Fabio Troncarelli came to the firm conclusion: William Lamport is the mythical Zorro.
William Lamport was born in 1615 to a wealthy and noble Irish family. He received an excellent education at the Jesuit colleges in Dublin and London. Having become an ardent opponent of the English who enslaved Ireland, Lamport was forced to leave his homeland. He went to sea, was a sailor and even pirated.
In his twenties, William Lamport found himself in Spain, where he changed his first and last name and began to be called Julio Lombardo in the Spanish way. In 1640, handsome Lamport seduced and abandoned a very noble Spanish woman. To hush up a loud scandal, the Duke of Olivares sent the conqueror of women's hearts to Mexico. He studied healing and astrology from the Indians.
Soon, the Inquisition accused the Irishman of organizing a conspiracy against the mother country. Ostensibly to become the king of an independent Mexico, according to prosecutors, Lamport was actively involved in the liberation struggle of Indians and black slaves against the Spanish enslavers.
Lamport spent ten years behind bars. In the end he managed to escape. He returned to Mexico City and hid there in a secret hideout, which he left at night to post proclamations on the walls of houses ridiculing the Inquisition.
And then William Lamport was let down by his love for beautiful women. Lamport was caught in … the Viceroy of Mexico's bed!
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In 1659, the court of the Inquisition sentenced William Lamport, who served seven more years behind bars, as a heretic, to be burnt at the stake. But here, too, William managed to deceive the hated inquisitors. Before the executioner had time to bring the lighted torch to the wood, he contrived and contrived to strangle himself with the rope with which he was tied to the post.
In 1919, New York journalist Johnston McCull transformed the legendary Lombardo into Zorro and donned the famous black mask. The book was a great success. Less than a year after the novel was published, the first Zorriana film, The Sign of Zorro, was shot based on its motives, in which the famous Douglas Fairbanks played the main character.