Moctezuma I

Timeline

1. 1440–1450Tenochtitlan · Lake TexcocoMoctezuma I acceded in 1440; his predecessor Itzcoatl had already laid the foundations of the Triple Alliance. With chief advisor Tlacaelel, he rapidly advanced imperial ideology: ordering the destruction of old books recording history, rewriting the Aztec origin myth in an officially revised version, and strengthening the religious authority of the sun and war god Huitzilopochtli, providing a theological basis for the Flower Wars. Militarily he began launching expansions against peripheral regions, suppressing rival powers such as Tlaxcala and Cholula.
2. 1451–1460Tenochtitlan; Huaxtec; Toztepec · Valley of MexicoBetween 1450 and 1454 Tenochtitlan suffered the worst food crisis in Aztec history: four consecutive years of frost and drought (from One Rabbit to Four Rabbit in the Aztec calendar) destroyed harvests, and much of the city's population died or sold itself into slavery, an event known as the One Rabbit famine (Ce Tochtli famine). Moctezuma I opened the granaries, organized relief, and attributed the crisis to divine punishment, further strengthening the political legitimacy of the human sacrifice system. From about 1455, after the famine ended, he launched large-scale military expeditions: conquering Huaxtec (Huaxtec, today's Mexican Gulf region) to the northeast, taking Toztepec and areas around the Tehuantepec isthmus to the south, and beginning to expand into the tropical lowlands of the Gulf of Mexico, greatly increasing imperial tribute income. Around 1458 he ordered the rebuilding and enlargement of the Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlan, holding grand dedication ceremonies in which large numbers of war captives were sacrificed to Huitzilopochtli and the rain god Tlaloc.
3. 1460–1469Tenochtitlan · Valley of MexicoIn his later years Moctezuma I continued to consolidate the imperial tribute system and perfect the institutional framework of the Flower Wars, maintaining regular ritual warfare with city-states such as Tlaxcala to secure a supply of sacrificial victims. He established a strict sumptuary code regulating the clothing and ornaments permitted to different social strata, reinforcing social stratification. After his death in 1469, his nephew Axayacatl succeeded him. Moctezuma I's reign transformed the Aztec Empire from a regional power into a superpower controlling Central Mexico, laying the fundamental pattern of the vast empire the Spanish encountered in 1519.