Seizure of Montezuma

A little bit from something I’ve been reading that Gee-Flipps loaned me. I can’t stop thinking about the Aztec Empire’s ride on Fortuna’s Wheel. Empires all seem to go in this direction sometime, don’t they? Monarch to organ grinder monkey in a fortnight. Sometimes it ain't good to be the king...

The events recorded in this chapter are certainly some of the most extraordinary on the page of history. That a small body of men, like the Spaniards, should have entered the palace of a mighty prince, have seized his person in the midst of his vassals, have borne him off a captive to their quarters,- that they should have put to an ignominious death before his face his high officers, for executing, probably, his own commands, and have crowned the whole by putting the monarch in irons like a common malefactor, -that this should have been done, not to a driveling dotard in the decay of his fortunes, but to a proud monarch in the plenitude of his power, in the very heart of his capital, surrounded by thousands and tens of thousands, who trembled at his nod, and would have poured out their blood like water in his defense,-that all this should have been done by a mere handfull of adventurers, is a thing too extravagant, altogether too improbable, for the pages of romance! It is, nevertheless, literally true. Yet we shall not be prepared to acquiesce in the judgments of contemporaries who regard these acts with admiration. We may well distrust any grounds on which it is attempted to justify the kidnapping of a friendly sovereign, -by those very persons, too, who were reaping the full benefit of his favors.

William Prescott; The History of the Conquest of Mexico, 1843