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How Did Cortés Take Moctezuma Prisoner?

Si Sheppard says Cortés used a coastal attack as the pretext to put Moctezuma under Spanish custody, and that once he held the emperor he held the empire.

Word arrived that an Aztec regional officer had, on his own, attacked the Spaniards left on the coast with the Totonacs, and some of them had been killed. Cortés entered the palace and told Moctezuma to come with him for his own safety, or there would be violence. Nobody had spoken to the emperor that way. Sheppard says his view of the world collapsed. Moctezuma told his people not to resist, said he did not want bloodshed, and went with the strangers. Cortés then had the coastal officers executed in front of the emperor and the court, a punishment the Aztecs had not used.

From then on Cortés governed through a man who was becoming his puppet. Sheppard's sharper point is that the fatal mistake was staying in the capital. If Moctezuma had left and ruled through subordinates, Cortés could not have chased the emperor without looking like the aggressor, and he would have had no one at the center to govern through.

Transcript

Si Sheppard – How did a few hundred Spanish soldiers topple two empires? ·

Dwarkesh Podcast

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