The rise and fall of the Emperor Maximilian/Chapter XII
CHAPTER XII.
Arrival of the Empress Charlotte at Saint Nazaire—Her Journey to Paris—Conversation with M. Drouyn de Lhuys—Her exciting Interview with Napoleon III.—American Despatches as to her Arrival— Maximilian's Coup d'état—The Abbe Fischer—The Emperor's Reactionary Policy—Concentration of French Troops—American Assistance to the Liberal Party.
AT the very time (August 10, 1866) when Marshal Bazaine, operating in the north of Mexico to uphold the imperial cause, was replying to the Emperor Maximilian that he could not approve of a state of siege being declared over the whole territory, the Transatlantic Company's boat flying the imperial flag suddenly landed the Empress of Mexico at the port of Saint Nazaire. The surprise of the local authorities, who hastened to make this event known in Paris, was even less intense than that of the court of the Tuileries. Our government was very far from expecting this visit, the announcement of which, as will be recollected, caused a great sensation in our capital; for public opinion had already a presentiment of some mysterious incidents in this Mexican drama, the circumstances of which were becoming more and more involved. On the very evening before she landed, the Mémorial Diplomatique and certain other journals, which were known to derive their inspirations from official sources, had protested against the report, saying, 'that they were authorised to denounce as an arrant calumny the mere supposition that the Empress Charlotte was on her way to Europe.' As soon as the princess landed she announced her intention of travelling incognito, and that she would not demand hospitality of the court of the Tuileries.
Whilst waiting for the time for leaving, the august traveller visited the quay. She was accompanied by M. Martin Castillo, her minister for foreign affairs, by her high chamberlains, the Count de Bombelles, and other officers who had followed her. Her face bore the impress of painful cares, increased by her extreme fatigue; her eyes already shone with all the brilliancy of fever. The voyage had sorely tried the young empress. At her own desire, in order to be more retired, she had been placed at the stern of the ship, and had been unable to enjoy quiet sleep on account of the continual motion of the screw. The next day the empress arrived in Paris, and proceeded to the Grand Hôtel. As the end of her journey drew near, her excitement seemed to increase. The imperial family being then staying at the palace of Saint-Cloud, the empress, having asked that one of the court-carriages should be placed at her disposal, demanded an immediate interview with Napoleon III. In the meantime she received a visit from M. Drouyn de Lhuys, and spent a portion of the day in conversation with this minister. Although the emperor had replied that he felt indisposed, and that he regretted that he was unable to give her an audience, the Empress Charlotte, allowing no postponement, proceeded to the palace.
Her entreaties were so passionate that Napoleon at last consented to receive her. She then set forth Maximilian's demands, who still required from France fresh assistance, both financial and military. The conversation was long and vehement, replete on both sides with recriminations, which ended in altering the friendly tone of the explanations exchanged. The empress, seeing the gradual destruction of the structure of hope which her ardent imagination had been flattering itself in building up, from her leaving Chapultepec to the very threshold of Saint-Cloud, and feeling that her sceptre was crumbling in her hands, gave way to all her impetuosity. After having enumerated her wrongs, the daughter of King Leopold thought that she recognised, but too late, that, when she accepted a throne from the munificence of the emperor of the French, she had been wrong in forgetting that she was a daughter of the race of Orleans.[1] From the scene at the palace of Saint-Cloud must in reality be dated the insanity of this interesting princess, whose courage only failed together with her reason. Her sinking energies were scarcely sufficient to enable her to drag herself to the feet of the Holy Father, from whom she came to implore both assistance and consolation.
The United States had never lost sight, for a single instant, either of the journey of the Empress Charlotte, or of the actions of French policy. To the latter Mr. Seward, the American secretary of state, never ceased to give an impetus calculated both to satisfy the republican tendencies of the Congress, and to disarm the enemies of President Johnson, who was taxed with a want of vigour in his dealings with France. Mr. John Hay, the ad interim chargé d'affaires at Paris, wrote to Mr. Seward:—
. . . Yesterday, to the great confusion of these friends of the cause, who were so positive in their assertions and so full of indignation, the lady in question arrived in Paris, and proceeded to the Grand Hôtel.
The most painful conclusions are drawn from this visit, especially by those who have the misfortune to be large holders of the Mexican loan. It is generally looked upon as a supreme and final effort to obtain, by means of personal influence, the assistance that is indispensable to the Mexican empire, which has been refused to its accredited diplomatic representative.John HayThe style of this diplomatic missive is certainly rather deficient in courtesy. On August 17, Mr. Hay thus reported to his government the visit of the Empress Charlotte to the palace of Saint-Cloud:—
At the time when the whole of Europe, feeling for the blow which was about to fall on the unfortunate Maximilian, was grieving over the despair and insanity of the Empress Charlotte, events in Mexico were hurrying on apace. The emperor, struck, as it were, with blindness, let loose the revolution with his own hands, by effecting an actual coup d'état. He turned out his ministers, and instead of trying to recruit the councillors of the crown among all parties, so as to be able to depend on the country and public opinion generally at the approach of the French evacuation, he threw himself, body and soul, into the arms of the ultramontane faction which had circumvented him with its intrigues and its promises. The 'reactionaries,' Lares, Marin, Campos, and Tavera, formed a part of the new council. The Abbé Fischer became chief of the imperial cabinet, and MM. Osmont and Friant,—the one chief of the staff, and the other chief commissary of stores in the expeditionary corps—whose temporary assistance had been afforded to Maximilian by the marshal during a critical movement, now definitely held the portfolios of war and finance. The news of this coup d'état, which was effected at Mexico on July 26, was late in reaching the French head-quarters authorities, whose astonishment only equalled their regret. For the choice which the emperor had made of this most extreme party was equivalent to a declaration of war against the great majority of the nation; moreover, the formal introduction of two French officers into public matters in Mexico was in positive contradiction to the orders of our government, which prohibited any interference in the political management of the country. It was, on the other hand, hardly to the interests of our army, that these two high functionaries should hold this plurality of offices. It was also much to be regretted that a decision on such a point as this was arrived at and even carried out without the consent of the commander-in-chief.
The confidence which Maximilian placed in the Abbé Fischer (who subsequently fulfilled a melancholy office) was to be deplored in every respect, and most certainly the religious scruples of the sovereign would not have been beguiled if he had known the real history of this Lutheran apostate, now become a Catholic. Augustin Fischer was of German origin, and about 1845 joined a body of colonists proceeding to Texas. After being a clerk to a notary without much success, he went off to California to seek for gold. He soon renounced the Protestant faith, received holy orders in the Roman Catholic church in Mexico, and obtained a post as secretary to the Bishop of Durango. Being soon after banished from the episcopal palace by reason of his profligate morals, he was received at Parras at the house of M. Sanchez Navarro, who, deceived by appearances, presented him to Maximilian. Father Fischer, who is endowed with rare intelligence, soon found himself intrusted with a diplomatic mission to the Holy Father; however he returned to Mexico having totally failed at Rome. Notwithstanding this, he increased in repute, and just at this time, the ambition of the imperial secretary, which knew no limits, was looking for the bishopric of Queretaro, the richest clerical benefice in Mexico. The direct favour of the sovereign was a sure means of success, but the selection of this priest was not calculated to soothe and rally round him the disaffected. Did Maximilian hope that he should thus pledge himself to the Holy See and conciliate its good graces by this appeal to a reactionary ministry; and was facilitating the proceedings of the Empress Charlotte his only aim? This is credible, especially if we recall the aspirations of his life as delineated in the 'Tableaux de sa Vie,' which has just been published at Leipsic. The archduke's turn of mind was profoundly Catholic, as much by instinct as by education. The tendencies of his devotion as a prince of the royal Austrian race inclined him towards mysticism, just as the pride of his descent from the great Charles V. made him boast there was nothing superior to the 'right divine.' Before this right alone the young prince had bowed his head until he accepted from a pretended popular suffrage the crown which he had so often caught a glimpse of in his dreams. For Maximilian believed that he was predestinated to it; and this is the secret of his Mexican adventure, which, in his thoughts, as we shall subsequently see, was not the limit of his hope. Looking at the religious aspirations which his visit to Rome would necessarily excite, it would not have been surprising, although impolitic, in our opinion, if Maximilian, on his first taking possession of the throne, had thoroughly embraced the clerical cause, and had striven boldly from the first onset against the liberal movement. This, however, would have been followed by a war à outrance as disastrous to the dignity of the throne as it would have been irreconcilable with the presence of our flag; for, although the French clergy take the lead in setting a high example in both the old and new world, the Mexican priesthood, with very few exceptions, is corrupted by the desire and misuse of pleasures; and the late long revolutionary periods and the total absence of discipline had caused an increase of these abuses. It was not from the bosom of the Mexican church that the new sovereign could hope to derive any living power; from this quarter there was neither sincerity nor disinterestedness to be hoped for. We cannot forget that the first words pronounced by Mgr. La Bastida, the Archbishop of Mexico, when he returned to the capital of his country, which he had not seen for years, were an enquiry 'if the olive trees on his episcopal domain at Tacubaya had been respected by the ravages of war.' The subject of the church and her faithful ones was as nothing before the question of his revenue. Maximilian, therefore, now committed a second grave error. From the very first he made the serious mistake of placing his dependence upon individuals hostile to the French name, when he might have placed a much better class of persons round him. At the present time, he was allowing himself to be carried away on the overflowing torrent of a reaction against which all true conservatives, and the greater part of a generation brought up in republican principles were bound to contend. These principles, at variance with the new programme of the throne, could not fail to regain the ascendency in all the populous centres which the French army in its evacuating movement had given over to the military defence of the imperial troops.
Nevertheless, all the early part of 1866 had been devoted by our soldiers to improving and completing the fortifications and armaments of the towns of the interior, such as Monterey, San Luis, Durango, Zacatecas, Guadalajara, and Matehuala. Our artillerymen had succeeded in placing in position on the works of these towns more than six hundred cannon in good order and plentifully provided with ammunition. But these defensive works being confided in succession to the Mexican troops, would now remain powerless against the revolt of the country, irritated as it was at the selection of the new ministers, which destroyed all hope of any liberal revival. After this coup d'état the Mexican government, in despair, gave its adhesion to the new convention extorted by France. By this contract, which was to come into execution on December 1, 1866, and was substituted for the treaty of Miramar, half the proceeds from the custom-houses of Vera Cruz and Tampico was assigned for the payment of the French debt. In signing this, Maximilian entered into a fatal engagement, which he knew well he could not keep without soon lapsing into a national bankruptcy. It would have been more dignified in the emperor if he had at once laid down his crown and retired from the scene, leaving to the French government all the enormous responsibility of the situation. But this sovereign did not know how to resist the seductions of royalty. Perhaps he still hoped for the success of the mission of the empress to Paris and Rome. This is his only excuse.
During this time, the French army, in conformity with the plan of evacuation to be carried out as settled at the successive periods, was concentrating its forces. To facilitate its retrograde movement, the marshal remained on horseback on the northern roads, ready to give his assistance to either of his two corps d'armée which might be menaced. On the left Castagny's division leaving gradually the immense tracts of La Sonora, and the plains of Zacatecas and of Durango, was falling back upon the town of Leon, its new headquarters. On the right, General Douay was quitting all the positions of the north close to the American frontier, and his troops, having been concentrated on Saltillo, were pitching their tents under the walls of San Luis, fronting the contingents of Zébéda, Pedro Martinez, and Aureliano Rivera. The French contre guerillas, who were operating on the confines of Matehuala, were preparing to go down into the Terres Chaudes of the State of Vera Cruz. This vast retrograde movement exposed the whole breadth of the states farthest from the centre, such as Tamaulipas, Nuevo-Leon, Cohahuila, Sinaloa, and La Sonora. This concentration would have been a wise step from the very outset, even if it had not been compelled by the orders of Napoleon the Third. Maximilian had dreamt of an impossibility when he desired to keep all these immense solitudes under his sceptre, and our head-quarters authorities would, in my opinion, have acted wisely in resisting still more strongly than they did the impulse of the crown; for our troops traversing Mexico resembled a ship gliding through the water and leaving behind it no traces of its track. This centralising movement was all the more prudent, as information sent to Maximilian himself by the prefect of Zacatecas established the fact that the liberals were on the point of obtaining the guarantee of a loan of fifty millions of piastres from the United States. In order to negotiate this loan, the Juarists offered to sell them Lower California. By means of this American assistance, Gonzalez Ortega, with ten thousand filibusters, a hundred thousand muskets, forty pieces of artillery, and a large quantity of stores, was to enter the territory by Piedras-Negras, so as to attack Zacatecas. Cortina was preparing to assail Monterey and Saltillo. Negrete had undertaken to land in Tamaulipas, and to penetrate into La Huasteca, whilst Corona moved down on Culiacan. To assist this well concerted plan, our consul at San Francisco advised us that General Miller, the collector of customs in this city, had authorised the transit and embarkation of the arms and stores which were sent to the Mexican rebels by the official agents of Juarez; whilst General Vega was clandestinely engaging on a large scale certain disbanded American soldiers, to send them on by small detachments to La Sonora. Moreover, the provinces of the interior needed to be firmly kept to their duty. Nearly all the Mexican regiments were worked upon by the liberals; even the generals themselves received secret propositions from the enemy, and some listened to them. General Quiroga, it must be stated to his honour, denounced these intrigues to the French authorities. Desertion, however, was the order of the day. Thus, General Lopez, who commanded at Matehuala, mustered a force of five hundred men; their pay had been wanting for several days; the French contre guerillas, moved at the destitution of soldiers deprived of food and clothing, consented to grant them an advance from their own coffers. As soon as they were clothed and paid, three hundred of these Mexicans deserted in eight days.
- ↑ After the interview at Saint-Cloud, the Empress Charlotte herself dictated the account of her conversation with the Emperor Napoleon.