(r. 1502-1520) Aztec emperor
Moctezuma II was huei tlatoani (great speaker) of the Aztecs when Hernan Cortes arrived and died in 1520 during the Spanish occupation of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan.
Son of Axayacatl (r. 1468-81) and nephew of the previous speaker Ahuitzotl, Moctezuma ascended to the rulership of the Aztec Empire at age 34. His main function, like that of other great speakers, was dealing with external relations of Aztec politics, including relations with tributaries and enemies. He governed his realm with the assistance of the cihuacoatl (“woman snake,” although the officeholder was always male), who dealt with internal affairs of the Aztec state. Like his predecessors, he was elected from the royal lineage by a council of nobles, priests, and top military officers of Tenochtitlan as well as rulers of neighboring cities.
Spanish chroniclers noted that the Aztecs treated Moctezuma as divine rather than human. The fact that Moctezuma carried this aspect of the Aztec ideology of kingship further than had any of his predecessors stands in sharp contrast to his reaction to the arrival of Cortes and his troops. Moctezuma sent humbly attired representatives to present the newcomers with fine gifts, causing some historians to speculate that this semidivine ruler capitulated to the invaders sight unseen. However, his response may also be interpreted not as an act of submission but rather as a gesture fitting the Aztecs’ belief in their own supremacy over all other peoples, of the great speaker over his people, and of this speaker in particular, who developed the ideology of divine rulership to a degree not seen under other rulers. The sumptuousness of the gifts may have been meant as a display of disposable wealth as well as the power needed to acquire that wealth, the humble state of the presenters merely a gesture to emphasize what a trifling impact such a gift had on the overall wealth and power of the giver.
Spaniards may have missed the point of the lavish gift giving, but they could not help but be impressed by Moctezuma’s lifestyle. Chroniclers noted the scope of his palace, garden, zoo, and aviary as well as the number of people supported at the palace. Moctezuma’s power over his subjects was also a source of awe: Cortes asserted in his letters to the emperor Charles V that the Aztecs both revered and feared their leader to a degree that might make him the envy of any European monarch.
Moctezuma’s opulence was not the only thing that set him apart from his predecessors. Although Spanish chronicles emphasized the bellicose character of Aztec society, Moctezuma was actually much less preoccupied with warfare than were his predecessors. Instead, he devoted himself more to the religious aspects of leadership and was especially consumed by the study of the old Toltec religious philosophy. Later sources assert that he believed that Cortes, or perhaps one of his lieutenants, was the reincarnation of Quetzalcoatl, returned to destroy the Mexican peoples if they did not somehow appease him, and that this idea proved instrumental in the intruders’ conquest of Tenochtitlan.
Many accounts portray Moctezuma as an ineffective leader who presided over the downfall of his people. Such a judgment does not fit the available evidence. At the time of his ascension to the throne, the Aztec Empire had in many ways reached the limits of its outward expansion. Previous administrations had already extended the Aztec domains south to the Pacific and east to the defensible Isthmus of Tehuantepec. In addition, Aztecs were hemmed in on the west by both mountainous terrain and the armies of the Tarascan, and in the north the empire already bordered on desert, the conquest of which would have brought very little profit at huge expense. Moctezuma thus turned to the internal consolidation of his empire, focusing his efforts on subduing long-standing pockets of resistance and rebellion within his own borders. External expansion had long been the engine of the Aztec Empire’s prosperity and the foundation upon which earlier generations had built the social, economic, and political structures of their state. Moctezuma thus faced the unenviable task of creating a stable monarchy out of a society based on physical expansion and a warrior ethos. His reforms included a general purge of the plebeians whom his predecessor had raised to high office, reinforcing the notion of the great speaker as the representative of or substitute for the gods and forcefully reasserting the privilege of the hereditary nobility. (This latter effort might have contributed to his downfall; according to some chronicles, Moctezuma chose his bodyguard more on the basis of impeccable breeding than on military valor, and was thus ill protected when captured by Cortes.) The resulting economic and social dislocations contributed to the new ruler’s unpopularity with both subjects and neighbors. Regardless of Moctezuma’s intentions, the internal tensions that his policies created or exacerbated weakened his empire at a time when it would be most in need of strength and stability. In light of these facts, it is not surprising that Moctezuma probably died of wounds inflicted by his own subjects during a riot that was as much a rebellion to overthrow their own leader as it was a revolt against the occupying Spanish forces.
Further reading: Francis J. Brooks, “Motecuzoma Xocoy-otl, Hernan Cortes, and Bernal Diaz del Castillo: The Construction of an Arrest,” Hispanic American Historical Review 75 (1995), 149-183; Geoffrey W. Conrad and Arthur A. Demarest, Religion and Empire: The Dynamics of Aztec and Inca Expansionism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Nigel Davies, The Aztec Empire: The Toltec Resurgence (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987); Susan D. Gillespie, The Aztec Kings: The Construction of Rulership in Mexican History (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989).
—Marie A. Kelleher
World History
