The American quarrel did not last, nor did the monarchy take root. The French troops were withdrawn before the government of the Empire was in any sense fully established. The national army which Bazaine sought to establish on a firm footing was not strong enough or loyal enough to uphold the Emperor, and he was sacrificed.
Everybody wished him to abdicate. Napoleon sent a special messenger to Mexico to urge this course; Bazaine urged it, and it seems now as if Maximilian himself must have perceived that there was nothing else left for him. But he was very slow to admit such an idea. Neither he nor the Empress in any sense realized their perilous position.
At the end of June, 1866, came the final word of Napoleon, in reply to an appeal sent to him from Maximilian, upon which he, and still more Carlotta, had founded great hopes. The message of the French Emperor was short, its tenor distinct, hard, making it clear that no further support was to be furnished by the Tuileries to the Mexican project; the conditions were hard, asserting that the troops must be immediately withdrawn. Maximilian at last understood that but one course was left to him—abdication. On the 7th of July he took up his pen to sign away the Mexican monarchy; but the Empress stayed his hand. Carlotta, of a will stronger than that of her husband, with a determined ambition, offered to go herself to Europe to make a personal appeal to Napoleon and another at Rome. On the very next day she left the capital in haste, never to return.
