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Moctezuma's Revenge

© Hans Hereijgers

When Cortés and his soldiers reached the Mexico around 1519, they most certainly did not expect that they would see what they would see, that that large an empire was to be found beyond those many mountains. Little by little they came to realize that indeed the most powerful Mexican tribe was living and prospering there. In the November article I mentioned two of the most famous translators in history, i.e. la Malinche and Jerónimo de Aguilar, who made it possible to communicate with the many tribes they found on their way and who shared their grievances with the Spaniards, telling them of that evil people that had dominated and brutalized them for so many years: the Aztecs.

The Aztecs had come from a place called Aztlan, a place difficult to locate on today's map but that presumably was situated somewhere in the north of Mexico. They started wandering around 1168 and it would not be until 1325 that their God Huitzilopochtli gave them a sign (an eagle devouring a serpent on a cactus... to be found on the Mexican Flag) that the time had come to settle down. Tenochtitlan was founded on two small islets of the Texcoco lake. Especially in the next century they would start expanding their empire. Many emperors would spare no efforts to that cause and their thirst for blood and power was difficult to be quenched. Emperor Ahuizotl is said to have doubled the Aztec territory and to have ritually slaughtered twenty thousand (a number almost forty times the size of Cortés' army) enemy soldiers during his reign.

By the time that Cortés arrived, the Aztec capital was home to 300,000 people and was bigger than any European city at the time. There they were, the Spaniards, knocking at the gate of the unknown city with the intention of making it theirs. Personally, I would have placed my bet on the Aztecs. A good thing I was not there, though, for I would have lost that bet. How on earth can this be explained? There were the tribes that Cortés had won as his allies, there were the interpreters that gave them the gift of communication, but, at the gate of his city, there was also Moctezuma II or Moctezuma Xocoyotl, the last Aztec emperor Mexico would ever see. Moctezuma signifies 'a lord who shows anger'. Indecision would have been a better word, for, although absolute ruler of the one of the world's mightiest powers, he was brought down by a force of fewer than a thousand men.

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