Episodes of Woody

Why does history matter?  I’m presented this question commonly, and have always stumbled in finding a decent answer, but due to recent experiences, I think I’ve come up with an answer – so you don’t look like an idiot to the people who actually do know history.  This came across me over the last few weeks listening to a certain person I know babble on inaccurately about history, and unfortunately for me relationship inhibits me from correctly him.  For the purposes of this post (and maybe others) I’ll refer to this person as “Woody”.  Just so you know, Woody is not a reader of this blog (as far as I know), and I’m sure some of you have heard of this person, but I doubt any of you know him personally.

 

I can understand not liking history like I do, it’s not really common and I get that.  But Woody is WAY off, and it doesn’t take a history buff to figure that out quickly.  And the sad thing is, he’s a bit of a self-proclaimed genius, so he seriously thinks he’s right, and he likes to show off his “mad history skills” at the drop of a hat.

 

Here’s one history lesson taught by my dear friend Woody:

 

Cortez and 100 Spaniards arrive on the coast of North America where they are greeted by an army of thousands of Aztecs and their leader Montezuma.  Due to the shiny armor of the Spaniards and their dignified posture, they scared off the vast army of Aztecs.  They then marched into Tenoctitlan, unopposed and were running the city within a week.

 

Wow.  Ya, you see my point now?  It’s insane.  I feel all bottled up not being able to throw back some history into his face, but like I said, if I did… well it’s kind of an employer-employee relationship so if I did it wouldn’t be worth it.

Anyway, the real thing went something more like this:

 

Cortez (pictured below) and 600 Spaniards leave Cuba and land on the coast of Mexico.  They march to Tenoctitlan along the way gathering together an army of tribes that had been waiting for any reason to revolt against their Aztec masters.  It’s fact that their were actually more native Mexicans in the army of Cortez than in the army of Montezuma (technically Montezuma II, but is generally referred to as just Montezuma) when they finally fought, which doesn’t come until later.  So Cortez reached the city, and all the while Montezuma was unresolved on his position with the Spaniards, and finally decided to let things go for the time being.

 

Well no matter the decision of the Aztec king, Cortez believed that efforts were going to be made to drive him out of the city, so he took Montezuma hostage and made him swear loyalty to Charles I.  An enormous some of gold and jewels ransom was demanded.  Another series of events occurred with Cortez momentarily leaving the city and coming back with more Spanish that I won’t go into much detail about.  So he came back to find the Aztec citizens had revolted against the Spanish and their imprisoned leader.  He was allowed into the city, but was immediately surrounded and attacked.  Upon his request, Montezuma was to address the people to try to quell the revolution, but failed and was stoned to death three days later.

The Spanish were pushed out of the city and had to resupply at Vera Cruz before returning and commencing a three-month siege that eventually led to the victory of Cortez.

 

Yup, so I just had to post that.  Maybe I’ll present episodes of botched history from Woody later, but for now I just wanted to use him as an example why history matters.

Oh, do you remember that article I wrote about how 300 wasn’t very historically accurate?  Well about that time, right around when I had JUST written that post, he told me he was so happy that 300 was such a historically accurate movie.  Ha, ha… no joke.  I felt like I was going to explode.

 

 

 

Tags: Life, History