Cortez the Killer
“Gambling even had a role in the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs. When Hernán Cortés arrived in 1519, Montezuma believed him to be the returning god Quetzalcoatl. Montezuma brought Cortés to a ball game, and Cortés found the game interesting enough that he later sent a team to his emporer in Spain. Cortés soon imprisoned Montezuma and, to keep him occupied during his five-month captivity, played totloque, a game using small gold dice. The Spaniards found a passing similarity to their game of tables, or backgammon, which had been memorialized by their kind Alphonso X in his thirteenth-century Book of Games. On one occasion, Montezuma noted that the Spaniard keeping score for Cortés was cheating; this would be the smallest injustice committed by the Spaniards against the Aztecs. Even the Spanish soldiers in attendance conceded that Montezuma was a generous winner who gave away everything he won. Unfortunately, Cortés was not so magnanimous, and when Montezuma surrendered his treasures to the Spanish, Cortés ordered the gold melted down. The soldiers, using playing cards improvised from parchment, immediately began gambling among themselves for their shares. Within months, Montezuma was dead, and after finally taking the capital city of Tenochitlán, Cortés announced his new power by promulgating a law that outlawed all gambling. Having won an empire, he was determined not to lose it back.”
