A dramatic rethinking of the encounter between Montezuma and Hernando Cort?s that completely overturns what we know about the Spanish conquest of the AmericasOn November 8, 1519, the Spanish conquistador Hernando Cort?s first met Montezuma, the Aztec emperor, at the entrance to the capital city of Tenochtitlan. This introduction—the prelude to the Spanish seizure of Mexico City and to European colonization of the mainland of the Americas—has long been the symbol of Cort?s’s bold and brilliant military genius.