SELIM DREW HIS LAST breath early in the morning of September 22, 1520, mere weeks before his fiftieth birthday. The cause of death was most likely plague, or perhaps anthrax contracted from his horse. A few months earlier, in June, the Aztec ruler Montezuma, whom Cortés described as a sultan, also died, probably at a similar age. Coming within months of each other, these two deaths could not have been more significant for the course of world history. Montezuma’s demise allowed the Spanish to march on the Aztec capital, with the empire yielding to its final destruction the very next year, 1521.
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