Hernan Cortes and Montezuma II
Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes (1485 – 1547) pulled off one of history’s most momentous double-crosses against Montezuma II (circa 1469 – 1520), ruler of Tenochtitlan and the Aztec Empire from 1502 to 1520. The result was the native empire’s destruction and replacement by a vast Spanish domain in Mexico, while Cortes amassed extraordinary wealth and power.
In February 1519, Cortes had landed with a small force on Mexico’s eastern coast, and after subduing the region surrounding today’s Vera Cruz, proceeded to march inland towards the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, defeating and allying with the natives en route. By the time he reached Tenochtitlan, Cortes had a large native army, surrounding a core of Spaniards.
Montezuma, indecisive since hearing the first reports of the Spaniards’ landing, invited Cortes and his Spaniards into Tenochtitlan in November 1519, in the hopes of better understanding them and their weaknesses. Foolishly, he plied his guests with lavish gifts of gold, which excited their lust for plunder. Cortes treacherously seized Montezuma in his own palace and keeping him a hostage, ruled Tenochtitlan and the Aztec Empire through the captive emperor.
In April 1520, Cortes had to speed back to Mexico’s east coast in order to ward off another Spanish expedition sent to oust him, leaving behind a Spanish garrison of 200 men under a trusted deputy. In Cortes absence, however, his deputy massacred hundreds, or thousands, of Aztecs in Tenochtitlan’s Great Temple, triggering an uprising.
Cortes rushed back to Tenochtitlan and trotted out the captive Montezuma in hopes that he would placate the natives, only for the livid Aztecs to stone the Spaniards’ puppet ruler to death. Cortes fled Tenochtitlan, and returning with a powerful native army, finally subdued the city, whose population had been decimated with plagues of Old World diseases against which the natives had no immunity.