Whatever you have known about Montezuma is false! This is his real story.

Established Aztec history has it that it was the Spanish conquistador, Hernán Cortés, who led the conquest of Mexico, resulting in the end of the Aztec Empire.

Old Saying

This narrative purports Cortés to willingly enter Tenochtitlan, the capital, to capture Montezuma so that he can rule Mexico by proxy. The defeat of Montezuma is also ascribed to a superstitious fear of the higher power. This is known as imperium translatio (willingly bestowing sovereignty upon superior returning deities). The prophecy goes that since Montezuma had defied, Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec god of war and sun, in organising extensive conquests, another equally important deity, Quetzalcóatl, who sported a white beard would exact his revenge. It's thought, Cortés, bearing the same resemblance exploited the psychological weakness to his advantage. It's as if by letting in Cortes and his 250 surviving conquistadors, he voluntarily surrendered to his fate.

Bad Light

Folklore states that Montezuma tried to trap Cortés in Tenochtitlán, but ended up being the captive, thus losing his respect and ultimately being desecrated by his own people. The overthrowing of Montezuma was also thought to be an eventuality on account of the industrial level of human sacrifice.

The totality portrays Montezuma as stubborn and ruthless, yet cowardly idiotic, and unintelligent ruler, loathed by his subjects.

New Light

Recent findings prove otherwise. Firstly, there's no sensible arithmetic, demography, or archaeological evidence at Templo mayor, the site where this extensive scale of the human sacrifices were supposed to be carried out. Cortés is now demonstrated not to be the heroic conquistador he is. In fact, he is painted as a mediocre, rather an incompetent character in his Hispaniola and Cuban conquests, who was not in charge of any key decisions.

A 360

By far the biggest complete turnaround is that instead of Cortés making a fool of Montezuma, it was simply the other way round. He purposefully orchestrated his perpetrators to take to a disastrous route. An ensuing Cholulan massacre that had long baffled the historians was carried out by the Tlaxcalan elites who punished them for breaking away from the Tlaxcala Triple Alliance (which included Huejotzingo) to join the Aztecs. The Spaniards neither had any role nor any clue about the incident at the time of happening.

Myth Corrected

The reasonable judgment does wonder if 250 battered and bruised conquistadors could be any match to an empire of one million spirited fighters, even if their emperor was in captivity. It was Montezuma who actually had immured Cortés in his garden zoo and claimed him as his puppet.

Lastly, Montezuma was never desecrated by his own people.