🦅

Montezuma II

Last Emperor of the Aztec Empire, the Ruler at the Coming of the Spanish Conquistadors

Those Who Fought the Map Into Being · Generals & Conquerors

The Aztec EmpireTenochtitlanA Victim of the Spanish Conquest

Who they are

Montezuma II (reigned c. 1502–1520) was the last emperor of the Aztec Empire, during whose reign the empire’s power reached its height, its capital Tenochtitlan (built on an island in a lake, famed for its ingenious canals and chinampa agriculture) one of the most densely populated and finely planned cities of the Americas of the time, its population perhaps exceeding that of most contemporary European cities. When the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés arrived with his army in 1519, Montezuma II at first received this strange expedition with elaborate ceremony (the exact reason variously read by scholars, including his concern over the Aztec legendary prophecy of the "return of the feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl"), but was thereafter confined by Cortés in his own palace and at last died in a clash between the Spaniards and the Aztec populace (whether he was killed by the Spaniards or struck by a stone from the enraged Aztec people is disputed in the sources), the Aztec Empire then wholly falling in the ensuing warfare.

Primary sourcesSpanish conquistador accountsThe Aztec survivors’ oral source the Florentine Codex

Key stories

Receiving Cortés

In 1519 the Spanish expedition led by Cortés reached Tenochtitlan, and Montezuma II went out of the city in person with elaborate ceremony to receive them, giving abundant gold and jewels; on this rather anomalous manner of reception later historians offer various readings, including that the Aztec religious legendary prophecy that "the feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl would return from the east" may have influenced his judgment, though the specific historicity of this reading is also considerably questioned and reexamined in modern scholarship.

Confinement and Death

Cortés on a pretext confined Montezuma II in his own palace, indirectly controlling the Aztec Empire’s administration in his name, but this act provoked strong resentment among the Aztec populace, the clashes between the two sides escalating, and Montezuma II at last died; the Aztec Empire then erupted in large-scale resistance, and though they for a time drove the Spaniards out of the city (in what is called the "Night of Sorrows"), Cortés later returned in force and at last took Tenochtitlan wholly in 1521.

Version differences

The motive of Montezuma II’s elaborate reception of Cortés’s party is attributed by some early accounts to the religious prophecy of "the return of the feathered serpent," but modern scholars considerably question this widely told reading, holding it more likely a narrative constructed after the conquest to explain the failure than the real basis of Montezuma’s own judgment.

Relationships

Nemesis

⛵Hernán Cortés

Echoes today

Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.

"Montezuma’s revenge" (a colloquialism)The English-speaking world jokingly calls the traveler’s stomach upset in Mexico "Montezuma’s revenge," a colloquialism that, though bearing no direct relation to Montezuma’s own history, is one of the most widely known survivals of his name in modern popular culture.

Appears in

The Afterglow of the Old World and the Collision of the NewThe Fall of the Aztec Empire

← Back to Figures