Montezuma II Biography: Aztec Empire's Final Emperor

[00:00:00]today's video is sponsored by floki floki lets you learn how to play the piano with the songs you love check them out through the link in the description below more on them in a bit imagine for a second that aliens land tomorrow bombed with futuristic weaponry they take the world's leaders hostage turning them into mere puppets they dismantle humanity's great buildings destroy all religion and mass execute anyone who disobeys them if that sounds like speculative fiction think again a similar scenario already unfolded 500 years ago in 1519 conquistadors led by Hernan Cortes landed on the edges of the Aztec empire within a year that captured the emperor Montezuma the second and turned him into their unhappy puppet shortly after the entire Empire collapsed torn apart by the arrival of the Europeans but while most of us know the tale of Cortes how many of us know the story of the Emperor he deposed how many know what it must have felt like to be Montezuma on the eve of his civilizations collapse born into Aztec royalty Montezuma was a man destined for greatness as ruler he expanded his empires reach until it dominated modern Mexico yet when the aliens arrived this great man could do nothing but watch as his entire world crumbled today we're journeying through an unrivaled Mesoamerican superpower and uncovering the tragic life of its last true emperor [Music] in the great library of history there are leaders whose lives fill not just shelves but entire rooms people like George Washington whose every single deed has been poured over innumerable times on the other end of the scale you have leaders whose lives are only a single slim volume rulers whose existence is such a mysteries that we know almost nothing about them it's into this latter category that Montezuma's life falls born circa 1467 ad Montezuma the second is one of those historical figures haunted by misconceptions for instance while this video is titled Montezuma the second Aztec culture didn't have regnal numbers to them it just have been plain old Montezuma only even that isn't quite right probably wrens it his name should be this which I'm not even gonna try and pronounce purser it can be delightfully translated as angry like a lord and this is an emotion I'm sure we've all experienced at one point or another we mentioned this not to be pedantic dicks but to demonstrate just how little most of us know of one of America's most significant pre-columbian figures but even scholars don't know a great deal more that's because a whole ton of Montezuma's past has been lost to history we know more or less when he was born in the last years of the reign of his namesake the first Montezuma we know that his father was the future ruler Axia Cattleman's that his uncle was also an emperor in Waiting called out subtle but if you're here to discover what kind of relationship Montezuma had with his mother or what he enjoyed doing as a kid well we hate to disappoint you but we can't say that for certain what we can say though is that Montezuma came of age during a time of transformation he was just 2 or 3 years old when the Aztec emperor or more properly the Atlanta Hwanhee meaning speaker Montezuma the 1st died in the aftermath a council of elders came together to decide who would be next to rule the Empire unlike European society Aztec culture didn't automatically award the throne to the dead guys eldest son instead electing someone from a narrow list of candidates this would turn out to be very lucky for the young prince despite his uncle a heads aatul being older it was Montezuma's father iooks a curtal who was eventually chosen to become the Tonto Ronnie from this point on Montezuma's already pampered life likely only got cushier as the son of the plant Ronnie and the Aztecs considered that a twonny to be literally divine Montezuma would have sat at the top of a gigantic pyramid made up of rigid social classes it would have received the best education learning the dark arts of warfare in politics amid settings so opulent they rivaled Versailles by the time he came of age Montezuma would have been as ready to rule as any king or Emperor in history so maybe it's time we discussed exactly what he was gonna rule the Aztec empire was one of America's greatest civilizations at its height it ruled millions of people we've seen estimates ranging from 6 million to over 11 million and around 500 cities most of what we'd now call central Mexico fell within its lands and its southern extremity stretched the fringes of Guatemala but this wasn't some ancient civilization like the Mayan Empire that had taken over a thousand years to build at the time Montezuma's father ark sack at all assumed the throne in 1469 the Aztec empire had been standing less than 50 years the people we call today the Aztecs first arrived in the valley of Mexico in the 13th century back then the fertile valley was basically Mesa America's cradle of civilization great empires like the Toltecs had risen and fallen here but by the time the earliest tanks arrived the days of a central power controlling the region were over instead the valley was a place of innumerable city-states all fighting in a Darwinian struggle for survival those who were good at war flourished those who weren't went the way of the dodo luckily for the Aztecs war was something that they excelled at around the Year 1325 AD at least according to tradition the migrant Aztecs established a city on an island in the middle of the valley known as tennard shetland it became this centre of power but this wasn't yet power on a grand scale in the dark forests of Mesoamerican society you couldn't get too powerful without attracting the attention of a bigger rival it wasn't long before Tenochtitlan found itself under the thumb of the mighty Tampa neck Empire but in this cutthroat era the balance of power shifted all too easily in 1428 civil war erupted among the tavern acts the ins and outs are complicated but the upshot is that 1000 chitlin allies with two other city-states texcoco and Clark upon to destroy the tappan a capital when the fog of war finally cleared the to panic Empire was no more Teno chitlins triple alliance had one it was from this alliance that the Aztec empire proper would be born considering it only appeared in 1428 the Empire expanded a phenomenal rate if you look at a map of Aztec conquests you'll see them go a small smudge of territory around modern Mexico City to a regional superpower in the blink of an eye by the time Montezuma was born in 1467 the Empire stretched from the Atlantic coast to within spitting distance of the Pacific yet it would be wrong to think that this was an empire in the regular sense whereas other historical empires like the Romans integrated new conquests into a relatively centralized state the Aztecs were nowhere near as disciplined conquest by the Aztecs didn't mean becoming an Aztec citizen so much as it meant a bunch of Nahuatl speakers defeating you dumping a gigantic carving of their God on your temple and then demanding tribute hell of the words the Aztec empire was more a bunch of loosely aligned city-states with their own distinct identities United mostly in annoyance at paying all this tribute to tarnish a plan the Empire then was vast but it was unstable so long as it could remain the most powerful beast in the dark forest it would survive but the moments are bigger stronger predator came along well we're gonna find out shortly what happens first though we need to witness Montezuma's rise to absolute power [Music] after Montezuma's dad axia cattle took the throne in 1469 it must have looked like the family was set but then axia cattle managed to screw things up completely in just a single decade in 1479 just after Montezuma turned ten Axia cattle tried to conquer the purépecha or taraskin empire only for the parapets shirt hands the as tags but feathered asses to them on an obsidian platter the entire army was wiped out given the importance the Aztecs placed on their elites doing battle it's probably lucky Montezuma wasn't yet old enough to fight else this video would be ending right about now the Montezuma was still too young to be a warrior so he avoided the fate of all those captured by the Terra scans just as he avoided the fate that his father suffered in 1480 AXI act all fell within a year he was dead killed by a mysterious wasting disease that today looks more like a really unsubtle assassination via poison exactly how the teen aged Montezuma would have taken his dad's death is a bit of an open question we know that as plateau Arnie axia cattle would have been given a send-off party befitting a god his body burned atop a gigantic pyre in the middle of the city but what Montezuma would have felt upon getting the news upon seeing his father's mortal remains turn into smoke and fan upwards into the night sky we simply cannot say was he sad proud did he swear then and there to one day do better than his useless old man no one knows after Axia kettles death the Empire went through a brief lull in which it was ruled by the magnificently useless tis ik before he too died of one of those mysterious diseases in 1486 in the wake of yet another Atlanta Lonnie getting bumped off with poison the council of elders finally decided to place someone competent on the throne and that man was Montezuma's uncle odds or tall and he ushered in the aztec golden age now the aztecs being the Aztecs what was a golden age for them was more of an age of oh please stop conquering us through everyone else one of the first things adds Oertel did was celebrate his new reign by sacrificing between 20,000 and 80,000 atop the templo mayor this gory deed done he said about vastly expanding his brand-new empire and guess who was by his side the entire time by now Montezuma had grown into a powerful young man had been trained in the art of Aztec warfare in diplomacy it even served as a high priest now he just had to prove himself in battle prove himself worthy of his place in the royal family luckily for Montezuma he hadn't inherited his father's incompetence in warfare first at our total size then as his own man he was going to conquer more land than any other Aztec in history and if you would like to conquer a new skill or improve one that you already have well let me tell you about today's sponsor floki floki is an app that allows you to learn piano via a tablet or phone it allows you to learn how to play songs in minutes rather than weeks or even months if you're not very good now I used to play piano at 20 years ago and I didn't do it well but I thought I'd give it another go because floki sponsored this episode so I decided to crack out the app and have a go at it but the best way for me to show you that is to jump over to my home where I have a piano everyone so welcome to my home I come in here so this is a play key what you do is you have your piano up here can you see this good and then the music down here and there's 1500 songs you can choose from I've took chosen to learn moonlight sonata by Beethoven so what I prefer to use is this weight mode and then what you do come in here come closer and then what you do is you just follow what the guy's hands are doing so when you play this and what you do is you just play along with this guy and before you know it and I learned this and I'm definitely gonna screw it up as soon as I show you [Music] okay I've screwed up a few times but I think that's not bad seeing as I just follow this guy along in the app and you learn how to play a song I think it's pretty cool let's go back to the office so yes floki really is an incredible app there are over 1500 songs to choose from from all musical genres plus 50 step-by-step courses from beginner to advanced and I just showed you guys weight mode with both hands but you can also learn one hand at a time which is perfect at the beginning or you could just play along with the songs on slo-mo mode or regular mode if you're feeling bold which is a great alternative to weight mode perfect for more challenging sections just to slow it down a touch anyway I fully recommend checking out floki there is a link below and let's get back to it it's hard to overstate just how important war was to the Aztecs like their foundation myth literally involved the God quits Allah potty leaping out of the womb fully armed and immediately decapitating his sister 4 Aztec males life was effectively like being in Street Fighter 2 it was a series of battles in which you had to best an endless string of opponents in order to advance and this advancement was real the clothes you could wear the respect afforded to you was all tied up in the number of people you're defeated as a result the Aztec nobility were on the frontlines of war not hanging back and avoiding the slaughter not that any slaughter happens on the battlefield when Montezuma joined Howard's Oertel in his campaigns of conquest he wouldn't have been trying to kill his enemies he'd have been fighting to disable and to capture them why well because Aztec warfare sprang largely from one need the need to sacrifice humans depending on where you get your history from you might have either heard that the Aztecs were monsters who sacrificed innocence every day or alternately that all accounts of Aztec human sacrifice were fabricated by the Spanish tube justify conquering them neither of these is exactly true on the one hand it would be nonsense to say that the Aztecs literally sacrificed someone every single day on the other hand sacrifice was still something that they did a ton of the Aztec calendar was broken up into 18 months each of which at a major festival all of them involving human sacrifice we know this because excavations in 2015 and 2018 dug up huge evidence including towers of human skulls long thought to have been conquistador propaganda the Aztecs believed the gods had given their own blood in order to create humanity this blood dirt needed to be paid back regularly or the world would end it was to repay this debt that Aztec warfare took place that young men like Montezuma went out to take prisoners in battle and Montezuma and uncle Howard's Oertel were absolute experts at winning battles as our dajjal's reign wore on the two of them managed to finally connect to the Empire to the Pacific coast to overrun the oaxaca valley together they captured zouk on a Chaco right down on the pacific coast by the and Guatemalan border although our total was the mastermind Montezuma was his trusted left hands always right in the thick of the fighting by the time the boy turns 30 he was renowned as a ferocious warrior a prime candidate to become fat Ronny luckily the chance soon presented itself exactly how our total died is mystery some sources say he contracted another of those wasting diseases while others say that he died from a blow to the head while escaping a flat either way the outcome was the same in 1502 our total the Conqueror was burned atop a massive funeral pyre in the heart of town a chitlin shortly after the council of elders gathered to elect the new Aztec leader you won't be surprised to hear that Montezuma was the winner one of the coolest Aztec relics is the coronation stone of Montezuma carved as part of the lavish ceremony surrounding his ascension to Santa juanny it gives us a date of year 11 read day 1 crocodile aka the 15th of July 1503 it is one of the few specific dates we have regarding Montezuma's life and it's a fair bet to say that it was the greatest day of all as clatter our new Montezuma was given a palace to live in that would make even the sultan of brunai vomit with envy there were Hanging Gardens pools of fresh and salt water to bathe in a private zoo filled with Jaguars and eagles ten whole rooms dedicated to a vast Avery 3,000 attendants fulfilled Montezuma's every desire for just a single meal chefs would prepare hundreds of dishes that the Emperor could pick from at his leisure he wore sandals made of gold had jugglers acrobats albinos and dwarves at his beck and call yet Montezuma's rain wasn't just about indulgence there was also conquest the Eyrie was crowned 1503 Montezuma launched a coronation war against the city of Nepal on but this was just the warm-up act over the next 16 years Montezuma initiated four major Wars eventually growing the Empire so large it effectively swallowed central Mexico by the end the only viable enemies the Aztecs had left were the pesky taraskin su @ handed our titles asked him back in 1479 and the plaques Carla but even the plaques Carla were hemmed in a small enclave of hostile territory completely surrounded by the Aztec superpower Montezuma hadn't just fought alongside our exotic hid learns the art of conquest from him yet Montezuma was even more ambitious than his uncle had been as Clara Hwanhee Montezuma reduced the power of his plat sail a lag I we might call the chief of internal affairs in effect he swiped a load of powers elevating himself from living God to living God who's also a dictator it's kind of tempting to see Montezuma on the eve of the Spanish invasion as leader in his prime guy so powerful at the top of his empire so great that's its collapse at the hands of the Europeans is the ultimate Black Swan events but that's not exactly true even before 1590 there were signs that Montezuma's empire was in trouble in 1515 for example Montezuma tried to finally tame the plaques Carla Enclave only to suffer a defeat almost as humiliating as the one that told his dad in the wake of this gigantic scrub insurrection z' broke out in the Empire's outer provinces city-states started looking side long at one another quietly wondering if now might be the time to break free of Tenochtitlan we don't want to speculate too much but it's possible the Empire was already close to disintegration yes we'll never know if it would have fallen apart under Montezuma's rule in 1515 reports reached an archer plan of floating temples spotted off the coast two years later the first of these temples landed on the shores of the Aztec empire its grand white sails billowing in the winds the Aztecs didn't know it but the aliens had just arrived travelers from another world the old world when they finally decided to explore Mexico it would be the end of everything Montezuma had ever known almost every account you'll ever hear of hernan cortes invasion tells it from the point of view of the Europeans following them as they battle their way into the interior and they defeat city after city certainly it makes for a juicy narrative there's lots of adventure and 20 of action but even more compelling might be the narrative from inside turn out Shipman how it must have felt as reports of floating temples and strange white men gave way to stories of butchery and violence how it must have felt as those stories got closer and closer to the capital as the aliens drew nearer frustratingly this is another one of those times when we basically have to guess so sparsa the records from the Aztecs side but we do have some clues we can assume Montezuma was nervous about the invaders the moment they landed since he sent them gifts of gold and silver the traditional way of resolving disputes in Aztec society unfortunately the Europeans saw these gifts not as a message saying thanks for coming that you can go now but an invitation to come and do some serious looting this brings us to our second assumption that Montezuma received news of the aliens with mounting despair Cortes and his men subdued the coastal tribes with ease they then fought Montezuma sold enemies the tax car Larenz once that one asked tax Karla to join forces with him by summer reports would have been flooding into town our plan of the massacre at Cholula this was where the Spaniards put six thousand loyal Aztec subjects to the sort you can always do Majan the fear gripping want to see miss Hart for the best part of a century the Aztecs had been the top predator in the dark forests of Mesoamerica and now here came the super predator society one that could brush Aztec warriors aside as easily as Montezuma could swat a fly the only question was how he could stop them from destroying Tana chitlin in November 1519 the aliens were at last spotted approaching the Aztec capital much has been made of the fact that Montezuma put up no resistance including the now disproved tale that the Aztecs Latta wani mistook Cortes for a god but there seems to be an obvious answer Montezuma knew that resistance was futile better to extend the hand of friendship and hope for the best and to fight a battle you're destined to lose Oh November the 8th Cortez was welcomed inside the great city for the first time while it was a strange experience for the Spaniard it must have been even stranger for Montezuma here he was showing this unknowable warrior around his capital pointing out its sacred temples grand canals and flowering gardens all while never knowing if they would still be standing in a few days time Montezuma could never have guessed as he led his guests into the heart of the temple precinct that this was the greatest city Cortes had ever seen that it overshadowed anything in contemporary Europe Cortez had already decided to present it intact to his own Emperor a few days after the Spanish arrived Montezuma's slowed down for began Cortez took him hostage forcing him to swear allegiance to Charles to the earth and placing it under house arrest from now on Cortez would rule the city from behind the scenes Montezuma would just be a figurehead a puppet for the Spanish perhaps the last true Aztec emperor agreed in the hopes that Cortez would spare his people perhaps he was simply afraid for his own life and willing to do anything to stay alive either way Montezuma did exactly as Cortez wished from that moment on Aztec society was already dead [Music] it's hard to think of many puppet rulers who've had it good but perhaps few have had it quite so bad as Montezuma although he still lived in luxury was still officially a deity in reality he was nothing but a Spanish slave forced to justify the most outrageous acts to an increasingly angry public it was Montezuma for example who had to go out and calm his people when the Spaniards placed a giant cross atop a great temple that's if Montezuma thought that life as caught as his lap dog was bad well it's about to get even worse in early 1520 Cortez was called away from town Oh Chaplin probably bore Montezuma was told was that the Spaniard was going and would leave pedrad alvarado in charge this was a bad move where Cortez was like a crafty Fox worming his way into control of Tenochtitlan Alvarado was like a particularly obtuse bull that's been blindfolded and dropped into a porcelain factory as the power behind the curtain Alvarado began having elite Aztecs executed on a whim each time he made Montezuma go out and do his thing telling the enraged crowds that everything was still cool as a smallpox epidemic broke out in the empire caused by the conquistadors 10 a chitlin reached boiling point it was at this time that Alvarado did something even Montezuma couldn't justify in may 15 21 of the Aztecs great frequent rituals took place in the temple precinct as warriors dressed in feathers danced and world under the dark sky drummers beat out a rhythm rising to crescendo preparing the city for another sacrifice but that sacrifice never came instead the Spaniards strode into the precinct unsheathed their swords one by one the greatest deck Warriors were struck down their bodies dismembered on sacred grounds there was the end of Montezuma's puppet regime tenet rippln exploded the Spaniards were besieged the city of 200,000 Souls suddenly an inferno at some point in June Cortes managed to slip back in and demand won't assume go out and calm the crowd there are two versions of what happens next the first is that docile to the ends Montezuma went out onto a balcony to speak with his people there the rioting crowd threw rocks at their false God until one struck him on the head and killed him instantly the second is more prosaic it claims the court has realized Montezuma's usefulness was over and had him summarily executed montezuma ii died on either the 22nd or the 30th of June 1520 the very next night the Spanish tried to flee tenet Japan only for dozens of them to meet there fades either at the hands of the Aztecs or drowning while they tried to cross the lake known in Spain as the night of Tears the botched flight from 1000 Chaplin marked the point the Spanish conquest came its closest to collapse but it didn't quite end there just nine months later Cortes would be back at the head of an invasion force marching on the Aztec capital but that's another story for now for this video we ends with Montezuma lying dead on a balcony in a pool of his own blood or perhaps bleeding out on the tip of a Spanish sword at the end of all that carnage then we can finally ask who really was Montezuma ii well he was unlucky for one if he had died of one of those mysterious wasting diseases before Cortez showed up it's likely he'd be remembered as the greatest Aztec emperor but there was more to Montezuma's life than simply being the guy in charge when the aliens arrived although much of it is mysterious Montezuma story remains a window into an entire other world into a culture so different from ours that we can never hope to fully understand it yet in this tale of his struggles in his life and death we can still catch enough glimpses of the Aztec world to wonder what it must have been like how it must have felt to be living in this time and this place when the apocalypse finally arrived the Spanish may have wiped out Montezuma Zampa they may have ground his people into dust but his name still lives on a reminder of an entirely forgotten world so I really hope you enjoyed that video if you did please do hit that thumbs up button below do not forget to subscribe also please do check and our fantastic sponsor floki who i'm linked you below and thank you for watching [Music]