Moctezuma II

Biography

Moctezuma Xocoyotzin ruled the largest and most powerful state in the Americas at its height. A priest and successful general before his election in 1502, he expanded the empire's tribute reach further than any predecessor, centralised authority around his own person, and purged the nobility of officials he had not appointed. By 1519 the Triple Alliance drew tribute from millions across central Mexico — and had made enemies of nearly every people it touched. Why he let the Spanish into his capital is the enduring question of the conquest. The familiar story — a fatalistic king mistaking Cortés for the returning god Quetzalcoatl — comes almost entirely from sources written decades later under Spanish supervision, and most historians now read it as a retrospective justification rather than history. The likelier Moctezuma was a calculating ruler who received a strange, tiny embassy into a city of 200,000 fully expecting to control or absorb it, and who was wrong. He spent his last eight months a hostage in his own palace, issuing orders under Spanish supervision, and died in June 1520 after being brought onto a rooftop to calm his rebelling people — stoned by his own subjects, the Spanish said; strangled by the Spanish once he was useless, said the Mexica.

Key Battles