Moctezuma II

Moctezuma Xocoyotzin became the ninth emperor of the Aztec Empire around 1502, inheriting a military machine he pushed to its limit. Through warfare he extended the territory south to Chiapas and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, folding the Zapotec and Yopi into an empire that reached its greatest size under his watch. He tightened the social order, banning commoners from royal palaces and widening the gap between nobles and everyone else. In 1519 the first contact between Mesoamerica and Europe arrived in the form of Cortés and his men, who seized Tenochtitlan and killed Moctezuma on 29 June 1520…