1633 GOTTFRIED, J.L. - Showing Montezuma's dream as told by a laborer, predicts calamities to come.

An apocalyptic scene of Montezuma's dream. Montezuma II (Moctezuma Xocoyotzin), who became tlatoani, the supreme ruler of Mexico, in 1502, after a career as a warrior and priest. By 1519, he ruled an empire of tributary city-states, some of them restless under the burden.
When news arrived of strange ships on the Gulf coast, he sent envoys with gifts, probably hoping to impress the strangers and persuade them to leave. The gold had the opposite effect. Cortés marched inland, allied with the Tlaxcalans (long-time enemies of the Mexica), and massacred a crowd at Cholula. On 8 November 1519, Montezuma met him on the Iztapalapa causeway, welcomed him, and lodged the Spanish in his father’s palace.

Within weeks, Cortés had taken him hostage. In May 1520, while Cortés was away, Pedro de Alvarado attacked unarmed worshippers during the Toxcatl festival, and the city rose up. Montezuma died in June. Spanish sources say his own people stoned him when he tried to calm them, while Indigenous accounts say the Spanish killed him. The Spanish fled on the “Noche Triste” (30 June 1520). A smallpox epidemic then ravaged the city, and Tenochtitlan fell in August 1521 under his successor Cuauhtémoc.

One caution about the scene I drew: the omens and the idea that Montezuma took Cortés for the returning god Quetzalcoatl come mostly from accounts written after the conquest, such as Sahagún’s Florentine Codex. Many modern historians treat them as later reinterpretation rather than what he believed at the time.

Tenochtitlan and the Templo Mayor were founded in 1325, on an island in Lake Texcoco. By 1519, it likely held over 200,000 people, larger than any city in Spain. Three causeways linked it to the shore, an aqueduct brought fresh water from Chapultepec, and farmland on artificial islands (chinampas) fed it. The market at neighboring Tlatelolco astonished the Spanish with its size and order.

At the center stood the Templo Mayor, a stepped pyramid with twin shrines on top. One was for Huitzilopochtli, god of war and the sun, the other for Tlaloc, god of rain and water, so the temple joined the city’s military power to the farming that fed it. It was rebuilt in several phases, with a major dedication in 1487 under Ahuitzotl. The Spanish destroyed it and built Mexico City over the ruins. Electrical workers rediscovered it in 1978 when they unearthed the great Coyolxauhqui stone, and excavation has continued ever since.

In 1631, Johann Ludwig Gottfried inherited Theodor De Bry’s publishing firm, which included the illustrated accounts of the expeditions of Magellan, Columbus, Vespucci, Cortes, Balboa, Raleigh, Drake, Smith, and many others.
Gottfried issued together with Matthaeus Merian a one-volume condensation "Newe Welt Vnd Americanische Historien/ Jnhaltende Warhafftige vnd volkommene Beschreibungen Aller West-Jndianischen Landschafften..." that used many of the original copper plates and supplemented them with new ones of more recent voyages. The book was published by Matthaeus Merian. The work was reprinted in 1655 / 1657.

Johann Ludwig Gottfried