Moctezuma Xocoyotzin

Moctezuma Xocoyotzin
Huey tlatoani of the Mexica
Depiction of Moctezuma II made in the late 17th century.
Reign	1502 or 1503–1520
Predecessor	Ahuízotl
Successor	Cuitláhuac
Born	1467 Tenochtitlan, Mexica Empire (Aztec)
Died	June 29, 1520 (aged 54) Tenochtitlan, Mexica Empire (Aztec)
Issue	Isabel Moctezuma Tecuichpo Ixcaxochitzin Xipaguatzin Tlacahuepantzin Yohualicahuacatzin Tlaltecatzin Chimalpopoca (among many more)
Father	Axayácatl
Mother	Izelcoatzin

Anonymous portrait of Moctezuma II, late 17th century.

Moctezuma II Xocoyotzin (in Nahuatl Motēcuzōma Xōcoyōtzin; IPA [moteːkʷˈsoːma ʃoːkoˈjoːtsin]: "Moctezuma II the Younger") (1466 – June 29, 1520) was tlatoani of the Mexica in the period 1502 or 1503–1520. The spelling Moctezuma is the most frequent and modern one; nevertheless, Hernán Cortés transcribed his name as Mutecçuma or Muteçuma and most sources of the 16th and 17th centuries state that his name was Motecuhzoma including Friar Bernardino de Sahagún, who used a form closer to Nahuatl: Motecuçoma and Motecuzomatzin. For reasons of courtesy and royal respect, -tzin (a reverential suffix in Nahuatl) was frequently added when addressing him.

According to La Historia de Tlaxcala by Diego Muñoz Camargo:

This name of Moctheuzomatzin means as much as Pampered Lord, taking it literally; but in the moral sense it means lord, Lord over all Lords and the greatest of all, and a very severe and grave Lord and a man of courage and wrath, who becomes angry suddenly on slight occasion.

Nevertheless, the 16th-century scholars of the Nahuatl language, such as Motolinia, Torquemada, Betancourt and Sigüenza, rejected the sense of pampered man and deduced that Moctheuzomatzin came from the pronoun mo-, from teuc(tli) or tecuh(tli), "Knight or Lord," and çoma or çuma, "to frown as one who is angry, to be wrathful, from which derives çu ucalli, wrathful and full of rage," with -tzin as the reverential ending. Thus its meaning is "wrathful man, grave man, circumspect, serious, who makes himself feared and respected."

The ordinal number is used today to distinguish him from his namesake, also a huey tlatoani, Moctezuma Ilhuicamina (Moctezuma I), whom the indigenous chroniclers also called Huehuemotecuhzoma or "Moctezuma the Elder."

Biography

Stone of the Five Suns, a stone with inscriptions representing the date July 15, 1503, when Moctezuma was possibly crowned

Pourtraits et Vies des Hommes Illustres, Paris 1584.

Moctezuma Xocoyotzin, son of Axayácatl and Izelcoatzin, daughter of Nezahualcóyotl, was the ruler of the Mexica city of Tenochtitlan, whose dominions extended to the cities of Texcoco and Tlatelolco, from 1502 or 1503 until 1520, upon the arrival of the Spaniards. He was elected after the death of Ahuízotl, who died during the flood of 1502. He had been chosen as military chief during Ahuízotl's military campaigns. Once elected, he maintained a vigorous policy even internally and implemented mechanisms to concentrate power in his own person. In order to structure his dominions, Moctezuma organized the empire into various provinces, created a solid central administration and regulated the tributary system. At the moment he received power, the subjugated altépetl (lordships) were numerically many and paid heavy economic tributes, but they were scattered across geographic zones that contained enemy regions such as Tlaxcala, some lordships of Xoconochco and the Purépecha, so he focused his military apparatus on subduing those powerful altépetl, which he ultimately did not achieve.

Physical description

A sufficient number of 16th-century sources allow a physical description of Moctezuma to be outlined. The details of Moctezuma Xocoyotzin's character are contradictory, since it appears that he did not wish to be elected tlatoani.

Moctezuma, then, was a man of medium build, accompanied by a certain gravity and royal majesty, so that it seemed clear who he was even to those who did not know him. He was slender and lean, of a dusky color, like a parrot, in the manner of all those of his nation; he wore his hair long, very black and shining, almost to his shoulders; his beard was very sparse, with few black hairs, almost as long as a xeme; his eyes were black, his gaze grave, so that looking at him invited one to love and revere him. He was a man of good strength, agile and light; he drew the bow well, swam and performed all the exercises of war well; he was of good disposition, although very strict in justice, and he did this in order to be loved and feared, since, as much from what his forebears had told him as from the experience he had, he knew that his vassals were of such a condition that they could not be well governed and maintained in justice except with rigor and gravity.

— Francisco Cervantes de Salazar. Crónica de la Nueva España.

Bernal Díaz del Castillo describes him in his chronicle as a man of up to forty years of age, of good stature, well proportioned, slender, lean, of a color not very dark but with the color and hue of an Indian, with hair not very long, covering only his ears, a black and sparse beard, a cheerful face, expressive eyes that showed love or, when needed, gravity, refined and clean, bathing every afternoon, never using his clothes for more than one day; he had many women as mistresses and two cacicas as legitimate wives, but he was free of sodomies. He had two hundred nobles in other halls next to his own to attend him, who had to go barefoot when visiting him and address him with the words: "Lord, my lord, my great lord" without turning their backs to him and with their eyes lowered.

Royal conduct

Drawing of Moctezuma's palace with Moctezuma at the top, part of the Codex Mendoza.

The reforms made by Itzcóatl and his cihuacóatl Tlacaélel imposed a royal etiquette that included the almost nonexistent possibility of the common people seeing him; even his closest circle could not look him in the eyes, had to speak to him in a low voice and had to enter the enclosure where he conducted business barefoot, as did everyone in the hall of the icpalli (royal seat). As ruler of the most powerful State of the Late Postclassic, his obligations included sustaining the courtly, urban and even universal orders. The religious beliefs of Mesoamerica, grounded in the Zuyuan regime, implied the possibility of semi-deifying any person (such as those sacrificed), since divine influence could turn a human being into a worldly vessel of the god and acted in him naturally in the body's physiology, causing illnesses, moods, luck or misfortune. In this way, after a long process of fasting, learning and investiture over several months and stages, the young noble became the new huey tlatoani, received the royal weapons and possessed within himself the attributes of the tutelary god Huitzilopochtli, being charged with guaranteeing the continuity of the world itself and preserving the earthly and celestial order based on the tlatocayotl, literally the supreme knowledge inherited from the Toltecs, or what we might designate as the knowledge inherited from and arising among other Mesoamerican peoples.

Military campaigns

In 1503 Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin conquered Achiotlan in Oaxaca, this being the tlatoani's first conquest.Barlow 2015, p. 211 In 1504 the last stage of the temple of Ehécatl was built (according to other sources it was that of Centéotl).

A famine occurred in 1505, and from that year he advanced on Yanhuitlan and Zozollan, achieving victory in 1506; that same year he built the Teocalli of the Sacred War, and at the same time consecrated the last stage of the Templo Mayor (VII), which is the one the Spaniards saw.

The Maquizcohuatl emblem, the two-headed serpent.

In 1507 the pools were created in the living rock of the hill of Chapultepec, and Teuctepec was also conquered; at the end of that year the New Fire ceremony was held with a splendor never before seen.

From 1508 to 1513 he attacked Huexotzinco and weakened Cholollan; in 1510 he conquered Amatlan; by 1511 he deployed a gigantic army with which he subdued Tlachquiyauhco, Icpactepec, Nopallan and Izquixochitepec, which are part of south-central Oaxaca. With the conquests of Chichihualtatacallan in 1512, Alotepec in 1513, Cuezcomaixtlahuacan in 1514 and Iztactlalocan in 1515, he lacked only the coastal lordship of Tototepec to complete his first stage of territorial control, with which he sought to eliminate the union of Tlaxcaltecs and Mixtecs in order later to subdue Tlaxcallan. Cholollan was in no condition to go to war, so the Mexica, already in control of the Acolhua (on whom, after the death of Nezahualpilli in 1515, they had imposed the new tlatoani Cacamatzin), took advantage in 1517 of the moment of weakness that Huexotzinco was also suffering to conquer it, placing themselves one step away from subduing their strongest rival. By this time Motecuhzoma had conquered 48 head towns (which included around 450 settlements).

Role during the Conquest

Omens

Moctezuma, Durán Codex.

According to legend, before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors, eight omens occurred during the previous ten years announcing the collapse of the Mexica State:

1. A column of fire appeared in the night sky (possibly a comet).
2. The temple of Huitzilopochtli was razed by fire; the more water was thrown to put out the blaze, the higher the flames grew.
3. Lightning struck the temple of Xiuhtecuhtli, at the place called Tzummulco, and no thunder was heard.
4. While the sun was still out, a fire fell. Divided into three parts, it went from west to east with a long tail, and noises were heard in a great uproar as if they were bells.
5. The water of the lake seemed to boil because of the wind that blew. Part of Tenochtitlan was flooded.
6. A wailing woman was heard singing a funeral lament to the Aztecs. The Mexica said that it was the goddess Coatlicue, who was announcing destruction and death to her children, sending the Cihuacóatl (later known as La Llorona).
7. A strange bird resembling a crane was caught. When Moctezuma Xocoyotzin looked into its pupils, he could see unknown men who made war and came riding on animals resembling deer.
8. Strange people, with one body and two heads, deformed and monstrous people, were taken to the "house of the black," shown to Moctezuma and then disappeared (possibly men on horseback).

First contact with the Spaniards

Monument to the Encounter in Mexico City.

In the spring of 1519, upon receiving news of the arrival of strangers on the east coast of present-day Mexico, at the beaches of Chalchihuecan in the present-day state of Veracruz, Moctezuma sent ambassadors led by five Mexica nobles to investigate the reports. Following his detailed instructions, the emissaries carried three sets of attire: one associated with Tezcatlipoca, another with Tláloc, and another with Quetzalcóatl. Each Nahua god had specific elements of attire, and Moctezuma believed that Cortés might be related to Quetzalcóatl, taking into consideration the prophecy that said "from the east will come white and bearded men," and he thought that if the Spaniard allowed himself to be adorned with its attributes, it would be proven that such a relationship was true, since no one would dare let himself be adorned in such a way without being authorized to do so by the deity. Perhaps by pure chance, Cortés appeared pleased when they dressed him in the costume of Quetzalcóatl. This terrified Moctezuma Xocoyotzin, who sent rich gifts to keep the Spaniards from approaching. Other exchanges with the Spaniards gave rise to new coincidences of religious interpretation that fed the tlatoani's mystical panic: a rusty military helmet sent by Cortés with the request that it be filled with gold turned out to be identical to a garment of Huitzilopochtli. After the alliance with the Tlaxcaltecs and the Cholula massacre, Moctezuma sent an ambassador named Cihualpopoca (or Tzihualpopoca), who passed himself off as Moctezuma himself, an impersonation discovered through Cortés's intuition and information from his newly acquired Tlaxcaltec allies. On November 8, 1519, he met Cortés, supposedly convinced that he was the god and priest Quetzalcóatl.

Moctezuma Xocoyotzin gave in to all of Cortés's requests, since he could not gather an army large enough to defeat him. Cortés's 400 men with 40 horses, and more than 3,000 Tlaxcaltec allies, were lodged in the sumptuous palace of Axayácatl. The images of the Mexica gods were torn down and replaced by Christian images, the blood of the sacrificed was cleaned away and human sacrifice was suppressed. The Spaniards were given a great number of gifts, and it is supposed that, among others, they were given what is now known as Moctezuma's headdress, which is currently in a museum in Vienna, Austria. Moctezuma agreed to be baptized and declared a subject of Spain, where his descendants still live, the Counts of Miravalle and the Dukes of Moctezuma.

Death

Moctezuma attacked with arrows and stones by his people from his palace.

According to the version of various Spanish chroniclers, on June 29, 1520, in an attempt to quell the violent tumult, Moctezuma appeared on the balcony of his palace, urging his followers to withdraw. The population interpreted the gesture as complicity of the Emperor with the Spaniards, so they began to throw stones and arrows at him, which wounded him mortally; he died a short time after the attack as a result of his wounds. A blow from a stone split his head open.

The version of events given by Bernal Díaz del Castillo states that after several days of fighting in Tenochtitlan, the Spaniards, overwhelmed by the numerical superiority of the Mexica and the great number of casualties they suffered daily, and by the great difficulty of leaving the city, since it lay in a lagoon and the causeways leading out of it had numerous bridges that had been raised, placed Moctezuma on the parapet of a rooftop, protected by many soldiers, so that he might speak to his people and negotiate the Spaniards' departure from the city.

With his intervention the fighting ceased, and they informed him of the appointment of Cuitláhuac as the new lord, and that the Spaniards would not be allowed to leave the city, since they all had to die; and as for his person, that he should forgive them, and that when it was over they would honor him and give him the respect he deserved. It was at the end of the Mexica reply that they threw so many stones and spears that the Spanish soldiers protecting him with shields, having seen that the fighting stopped while he spoke, were caught off guard and could not prevent Moctezuma from receiving three blows from stones, to the head, arm and leg. Moctezuma would die shortly afterward in the Spaniards' quarters because of the head wound. Díaz del Castillo states:

And Cortés wept for him, and all our captains and soldiers, and there were men among us, of those who knew him and dealt with him, by whom he was mourned as if he were our father, and we need not marvel at it, seeing how good he was. And they said that he had reigned for seventeen years and that he was the best king there had ever been in Mexico, and that in his own person he had won three challenges he had over the lands he subjugated.

Díaz del Castillo also gives the version of the Mercedarian friar who was always with him, whom they reproached for not having converted him to Christianity before he died; but the friar did not believe that he died of those wounds, but rather that Moctezuma would have brought about an assisted suicide, by means of a substance that paralyzed his vital functions.

Gómara (ch. CVIII) notes that at the last hour Moctezuma asked to be baptized, but this is not recorded by Cortés, who says nothing on the matter; it is recorded by other later chroniclers, such as Cervantes de Salazar, Herrera or Solís. In Cortés's second letter of relation, he states that Moctezuma died from a stone thrown by "one of his own." Friar Francisco Aguilar, also a witness to the events, states that Moctezuma died from a Mexica stone.

The capture of King Moctezuma by Cortés.

Florentine Codex The tlatoani Moctezuma and the lord of Tlatelolco Itzquauhtzin.

Since the commemorations of his death in 2021, the version has begun to be spread that the Emperor was murdered by strangulation, a beating, or a stab wound to some part of the body, and that this was planned and carried out in advance, with the corpse then brought out to the balcony so that the people would think he was alive. The Spanish Wikipedia also asserts that Bernardino de Sahagún compiled a version from Tlatelolcan sources that narrated how he had been murdered beforehand, but without providing any reference. Nor is there any specific reference in Sahagún's works (such as the "Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España", the "Florentine Codex", or the "Annals of Tlatelolco") to the claim that Moctezuma was already dead when he was brought out onto the rooftop. Although the Tlatelolcan sources compiled by Sahagún offer an indigenous perspective on the Conquest that often differs from other Spanish versions, there is no explicit passage stating that Moctezuma was already lifeless before being shown on the rooftop, so that version is considered an unfounded invention created well into the 21st century.

After his death, Moctezuma's lifeless body was handed over to Apanécatl, who carried it to Huitzillan, Necatitlán and Tecpanzinco, being turned away from all these places. Finally the body of the tlatoani was received and burned in Acatliyacápan. Meanwhile, the body of Itzquauhtzin was taken in a canoe to Tlatelolco. Cuitláhuac was elected as Moctezuma's successor.

Descendants

Statue of Moctezuma in the Royal Palace of Madrid.

Moctezuma II had numerous wives and concubines, by whom he had many children. According to a Spanish chronicler, when he was taken prisoner his offspring already exceeded one hundred, while fifty of his wives and concubines were pregnant, although perhaps these figures are somewhat exaggerated. In any case, it should be noted that since Mexica culture distinguished between the different types of wives and the concubines, not all his descendants would have had the same social rank.

The Emperor's favorite son was Chimalpopoca, named heir before he died. Being a prisoner of Cortés, he had to leave Tenochtitlan together with the Spaniards, perishing during the so-called Noche Triste. However, others were able to survive.

Of all the daughters who managed to escape alive, the most important was Tecuichpo Ixcaxochitzin. She was first the wife of her uncle Cuitláhuac and later of Cuauhtémoc. Upon the latter's death, she was baptized and named Isabel de Moctezuma by Hernán Cortés and the Spaniards. She married three more times, all three times to Spaniards by Cortés's decision, having with them a total of six legitimate children of both sexes, and one more whom she did not acknowledge, Leonor Cortés Moctezuma, whom she had with the Extremaduran conquistador himself. She was considered the legitimate descendant of Moctezuma II and as such was given the encomienda of Tlacopan, the largest in the Valley of Anáhuac. She died in 1551. The Spanish Crown granted her descendants the title of Counts of Miravalle.

As for the sons who came out of the Conquest alive, the principal one was Tlacahuepantzin Yohualicahuacatzin, named Pedro de Moctezuma once baptized, who died in 1570 and was buried in the Church of Santo Domingo of the new Mexico City. One of Pedro's sons was Ihuitemotzin, also called Diego Luis de Moctezuma, who was taken to Spain by order of King Philip II and married the noblewoman Francisca de la Cueva y Valenzuela. From that moment on, all of Ihuitemotzin's descendants would originate in Spain, among whom Pedro Tesifón de Moctezuma, born in Guadix, is noteworthy. Ihuitemotzin died in Valladolid in 1606 and Philip IV named his son Pedro Tesifón Count of Moctezuma in 1624. This noble title persists in today's Spain and is called the Duchy of Moctezuma de Tultengo.

The second Count of Moctezuma was Pedro Tesifón's son, named Diego Luis de Moctezuma y Porres. He in turn had an illegitimate son, Pedro Manuel Moctezuma, whose granddaughter Bernarda de Moctezuma y Salcedo was born in 1716 and married in 1739 in Ronda Pedro Morejón Girón y Ahumada, related to the House of Girón, one of the most exclusive Spanish lineages. One of their sons was Jerónimo Girón y Moctezuma. This man was the 3rd Marquis of las Amarillas and a general who took part in the War of Independence of the United States, playing a prominent role in the victory obtained over the English at the Battle of Fort Charlotte (Mobile, Alabama, 1780). In turn, his son, General Pedro Agustín Girón Las Casas, 4th Marquis of las Amarillas and 1st Duke of Ahumada, was one of the principal Spanish generals during the Napoleonic Invasion of Spain. Finally, Pedro Agustín would be the father of Francisco Javier Girón Ezpeleta, a descendant of Moctezuma Xocoyotzin in the eleventh generation and founder of the Guardia Civil.

Furthermore, the current Dukes of Atrisco of the Spanish nobility are also descendants of Moctezuma II through his son Pedro (Tlacahuepantzin), since their first duke, José Sarmiento de Valladares y Arinés, Viceroy of New Spain, married the third Countess of Moctezuma.

Finally, another daughter of Moctezuma II who survived was Xipaguatzin, who once Christianized was named María de Moctezuma and who married or lived with Juan de Grau Ribó, noble Baron of Toloríu (Catalonia), who took part alongside Cortés in the conquest of Tenochtitlan. This conquistador took Xipaguatzin to Toloríu, and she died there in 1537.

Until 1934 the descendants of Moctezuma born of Isabel de Moctezuma received a pension from the Mexican government. In 1934, 1991 and 2003 there were attempts by the House of Miravalle together with other descendants to recover that pension, without success.

The current ambassador of Mexico to the United States, Esteban Moctezuma Barragán, is a descendant of Moctezuma.

According to the Mexican historian Blanca Barragán Moctezuma, a descendant of the emperor, in the second decade of the 21st century there were between 600 and 700 adult descendants of Moctezuma II in Mexico and around 350 in Spain. Of the latter, not all hold a noble title.

Treasure of Moctezuma

Surrounding the figure of Moctezuma there is a story about a great treasure that the Spaniards tried to steal but which was lost.

When Hernán Cortés and his army arrived at the great Tenochtitlan, the conquistadors were lodged in the palace of Axayácatl, Moctezuma's father. In that palace, the Spaniards found a treasure.

During the battle of the Noche Triste, the Spaniards tried to steal the treasure, but they lost it in their flight.

In 1521, with the fall of Tenochtitlan, Cortés tried to recover the treasure; to do so he ordered the torture of the last tlatoani, Cuauhtémoc, since they believed he had hidden it in a lagoon.

In 1637, an indigenous man named Francisco Tapia presented himself before the Viceroy as a descendant of the Mexica and claimed that he knew the whereabouts of the treasure. However, the Treasure of Moctezuma was never found.

Reception

Moctezuma has been the subject of several operas:

• Montezuma by Carl Heinrich Graun (1755), libretto by Frederick II of Prussia;
• Motezuma by Antonio Vivaldi (1733), libretto by Girolamo Giusti;
• Motezuma by Gian Francesco de Majo (1765), libretto by Vittorio Amadeo Cigna-Santi;
• La conquista del Messico by Mattia Venlo (London, 1767), libretto by Giovan Gualberto Bottarelli.
• Montezuma by Josef Myslivecek (Prague, 1771), libretto by Vittorio Amadeo Cigna-Santi;
• Montezuma by Giovanni Paisiello (Rome, 1772), libretto by Vittorio Amadeo Cigna-Santi;
• Montezuma by Baldassare Galuppi (Venice, 1772), libretto by Vittorio Amadeo Cigna-Santi;
• Montezuma by Antonio Sacchini (London, 1775), libretto by Vittorio Amadeo Cigna-Santi;
• Montezuma by Pasquale Anfossi (Reggio Emilia, 1776), libretto by Vittorio Amadeo Cigna-Santi;
• Montezuma by Giacomo Insanguine (Turin, 1780), libretto by Vittorio Amadeo Cigna-Santi;
• Montezuma by Nicola Antonio Zingarelli (Naples, 1781), libretto by Vittorio Amadeo Cigna-Santi;
• Fernando Cortez o la conquista del Messico by Giuseppe Giordano (1789), libretto by Filippo Tarducci;
• Fernando Cortez o la conquista del Messico by Giuseppe Mugens (Florence, 1789), libretto by Filippo Tarducci;
• Fernando Cortez o la conquista del Messico by Marcos Antonio Portugal (Venice), libretto by Filippo Tarducci;
• Fernan Cortez où la conquête du Mexique by Gasparo Spontini (Paris, 1809), libretto by Victor-Joseph Etienne de Jouy and Joseph-Alphonse Esménard;
• Montezuma by Roger Sessions (Berlin, 1964);
• Die Eroberung von Mexico by Wolfgang Rihm (1987/91), libretto based on texts by Antonin Artaud and Octavio Paz;
• La noche y la palabra by Gonzalo Suárez (Madrid, 2004);
• La conquista by Lorenzo Ferrero (Prague, 2005);
• Montezuma - Fallender Adler by Bernhard Lang (Mannheim, 2010).

See also

• Mexica history
• Mexico
• Tlatoani
• Isabel Moctezuma
• County of Miravalle
• Duchy of Moctezuma de Tultengo

References

Bibliography

• Barlow, Robert (2015). "Las conquistas de Moctezuma Xocoyotzin" (PDF). Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl (in español) (49). Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas. UNAM: 209–221. ISSN 0071-1675. Retrieved August 24, 2016.
• Carrillo de Albornoz, José Manuel (2004). Moctezuma, el semidiós destronado (in español). Madrid: Espasa Calpe S.A. Colección Biografías y Memorias. ISBN 84-670-1415-6. {{cite book}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
• Chavero, Alfredo (1888). "Tomo I. Historia antigua y de la conquista". In Vicente Riva Palacio (ed.). [[México a través de los siglos]] (in español). México: Ballescá y Cía. Retrieved October 7, 2012. {{cite book}}: URL–wikilink conflict (help)
• Bernal Díaz del Castillo. "CXXVI,CXXVII". Historia Verdadera de la Conquista de la nueva España (1568); pág. 473, pág. 474 (in español). Galaxia Gutenberg. ISBN 978-84-8109-987-4.

External links

• Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzín - sin mito
• Descubren parte del palacio de Moctezuma en el D.F. on the blog Vivir México
• Review of Moctezuma, el semidiós destronado, by José Miguel Carrillo de Albornoz