The rise and fall of the Emperor Maximilian/Chapter V
CHAPTER V.
Military and Civil Arrangements—Organising Commissions Dissolved— Capture and Escape of Porfirio Diaz—Fresh Military Plans of the Emperor—Their Imprudence and Inexpediency—The Question of Church Property—The American Question—Attitude of the United States, and Recall of their Minister—Treason of Cortina—Revolt breaks out.
AT the beginning of the year 1865, the French commander had abundantly performed the task which the Emperor of Mexico (since his landing, May 29, 1864) had entrusted to his zeal and activity. The country was pacified, and peace was now reappearing. The national army had been reorganised on the basis of the schemes which each of our military chiefs, following his own special views, had elaborated and proposed. The whole territory had been divided into nine military departments, each with its constituted and regular staff. All the confirmatory documents were placed in the imperial hands. Besides, a list of the political and administrative employés, conscientiously framed by our heads of columns, permitted an effective control to be exercised over all the individuals who were called on to take a part in the various branches of the services. On January 26, the emperor signed the military code of laws, and two months after, now that things had been set in train by the French officers, he released our head-quarters staff from its duties by a letter couched in the following cordial terms:—
I thank your excellency for the devoted co-operation which you have afforded me in this matter, and for the fresh services which you have thereby rendered to the country.
The commission, and sub-commissions, of which you were the president, will be dissolved, and the recently reorganised ministry of war, by means of the regulations put in force, will be able to deal with the questions which have not yet been settled. Your affectionate
Henceforth, the minister of war had to deal personally with the questions which remained to be decided. Maximilian, who had fancied that his own council were capable of directing the affairs which the ministers had endeavoured to get into their own hands with the sole desire of diminishing the French authority, was not long ere he discovered that disorder was again beginning to creep into the machinery of the military service. Important operations even were endangered by this confusion. Contingents which had been appointed to march on Oajaca had not even left their quarters at Mexico.
It must be here borne in mind that Marshal Bazaine, by an energetic siege, had just shut up the Juarist general Porfirio Diaz in the town of Oajaca, and had forced him to capitulate with the whole of his army. This liberal chief, who had valiantly upheld his cause sword in hand, had a right to be treated as a prisoner of war, and with all the respect due to the vanquished. Marshal Forey, in asserting in the French senate that he deserved to be shot, made a mistake; for Porfirio Diaz, the regular chief of a state, the capital of which it was his duty to defend, deserved only to be strictly confined, or rather to be banished to the Antilles, since his territory had never yet been trod either by the French or imperial armies. Measures of violence, which mistake the true character of an enemy, only provoke terrible reprisals.
Porfirio was conducted to Puebla as a prisoner by the French army, and was confined in the fort of Guadalupe, from which escape was impossible. By order of the emperor, he was placed under the guard of the Austrians, who, after having brought him back into the city, allowed him to escape. Porfirio, still faithful to Juarez, again took the field, and was subsequently the means of overturning the imperial throne. But it must be confessed that, after the fights at Miahuatlan and La Carbonera, he treated the French prisoners in a proper way, and also gave the Austrians who remained in his hands after the fall of Oajaca every facility of exchange. Everything leads to the belief that the emperor himself, moved by a generous but imprudent feeling, was privy to his escape.
It was soon perceptible that the minister of war took upon himself to move troops, and to give orders directly to the generals, without consulting or even informing our head-quarters, and tacitly abolished the flying-guard placed to secure the communications on the road from Mexico to Vera Cruz, thus giving free course to a system of brigandage which now made fresh victims.
After a month of Mexican management, the emperor, now undeceived, adopted the course of entrusting the supervision of his army to better hands. A French general[1] was placed at his disposal, but he was removed by the influence of M. Eloïn. On May 5, 1865, the emperor made up his mind to invest the Austrian general Count de Thun with this post of command. This took place during his stay at the hacienda of Jalapilla. He himself there settled on the plan for a fresh military organisation, and summoned to Puebla a portion of the troops stationed at Toluca, Ario, Jalapa, Morelia, and Mexico, in order to form a brigade.
My dear marshal,—Sharing, as I do, the opinion of your excellency that the organisation of the army must be rapidly proceeded with, and being unable to find a French or Mexican general who either would or could undertake it, I have made up my mind to entrust the task to General Count de Thun.
The first arrangement to be made is to bring together the forces necessary to form a brigade. I request that your excellency will give orders that the under-named corps proceed to Puebla, the place that I have chosen for its organisation:—
The Bataillon de l'Empereur, stationed at Toluca;
The 3rd Battalion of the line, stationed at Ario;
The company of engineers, stationed at Ario;
The portions of battalions stationed at Jalapa and at Morelia;
The Regiment de Cavalerie de l'Impératrice; all the detachments scattered in different places being united.
I have selected these troops as being those the least required for the time in the places which they occupy.
After all I have observed on my journey, and reflecting seriously on military matters, I adopt the opinion of the necessity of a prompt and effective organisation of the gendarmerie.
In the first place, we want an active chief, thoroughly acquainted with the admirable arrangements of the French gendarmerie, and then a short list of officers and sub-officers,I think that it will be necessary to commence by embodying a not very numerous force, which will occupy the capital, and will form the nucleus of a progressive organisation.
This letter of May 5, by which Maximilian gave the order to remove the troops from the town of Morelia and its environs, proves that the sovereign acted of his own accord, and that the marshal, as chief of his army, was not in an independent position. It also effectually impugns a military statement emanating from Maximilian at this time, and reproduced in a recent publication, entitled 'The Court of Rome and the Emperor Maximilian':—
'The town of Morelia is surrounded by the enemy,' say these imperial notes;. . .'the most perilous point is to ensure the safety of the large towns. . . The public treasury is ruined; the poor country must pay the French troops.'
It is difficult to explain the view thus taken of the country. The French army, as well as the fleet, can attest that at this very epoch they occupied all the chief cities of the states, and the principal ports of Mexico. We are not aware that they ever yielded up a place to the liberals as conquerors. One city alone, the capital of the state of Guanajato, had been confided to the care of the Mexican arms, because it was protected on all four sides by a cordon of fortified places under our charge, which acted as barriers against the advance of the enemy. On the other hand, Oajaca had just succumbed to the brilliant siege and attack directed by Marshal Bazaine in person.
As to the treasury being 'ruined' by the payment of our troops, the unfortunate sovereign had no right to complain of the sums which Mexico paid to France; for when he placed on his brows the crown which he had so imprudently accepted, he voluntarily signed article 10 of the treaty of Miramar, which stipulated that the yearly expense of every French soldier should amount to a thousand francs, which Mexico would pay.
But the truth must be told. The imperial notes, which were intended for certain public journals in Europe, were often worded in the secretary's office in a way that, by giving a more gloomy view of matters, would exercise an indirect pressure on public opinion and on the French cabinet; the latter being too much inclined to diminish prematurely its military force, as subsequent events have proved.
It must be observed that these military modifications in the distribution of the forces, which were repeated time after time by the Emperor Maximilian, were but little calculated to give solidity to the troops, who were amazed at constantly having to obey fresh chiefs.
Moreover, the mixture of the Austro-Belgian auxiliary contingents with the national troops was a mistake; for the latter looked upon them with mistrust, and were too much reminded of the foreign extraction of their sovereign; Puebla, too, was exactly like an Austrian camp. Maximilian was likewise in the wrong in establishing, in addition to the ministry of war, a military cabinet—an institution he had derived from his own country—and also in decreeing the formation of a military section comprising the Austro-Belgian troops exclusively, and under direct management. These innovations only tended to weaken the unity of command, and to deprive the marshal—the sole commander-in-chief in virtue of article 6 of the treaty of Miramar (an article which the emperor had need subsequently to appeal to)—of a portion of the authority so necessary to rapidity of action in a country so vast and so disturbed as Mexico was. At about the same date, Maximilian entertained the happy idea of establishing a corps of gendarmerie on the French model, intended to occupy the capital and its environs, and to be extended by degrees to the other military divisions. To help in its formation, he appealed to the officers and sub-officers of the expeditionary corps, who did not delay in responding. A French lieutenant-colonel received the command; but he soon had to give way to a Dutch colonel, named Tindal, who was appointed to this post by the sovereign's desire.
General de Thun, who was invested with the highest confidence, soon sought to shake off the French direction. These tendencies were, however, inevitable, if we take into account the national susceptibilities which were called into action. It must be confessed, on the other hand, that his position presented great difficulties; for the Austrian general met with no cooperation from his subordinates in the ministerial body, and the Mexican officers hindered his readiness of will by their natural inertness.
Although Maximilian fell into errors, resulting especially from his indecision and his fickleness of temper, as well as from his ignorance of the Mexican character, the impartiality of history will pronounce that his imprudent ambition had accepted a very heavy task, alike momentous both within and without the empire; and we are justified in asking if anyone else, filling his position, would have proved either more capable or more fortunate?
Two important foreign questions, to which the new reign was necessarily the heir, weighed heavily on domestic matters in Mexico. In the first place, the settlement of the mortmain endowments still remained in suspense. The court of Rome had not yet consented to declare its sentiments, and appeared still less inclined to do so, as the emperor had repudiated the clerical party, to whom he owed his crown. This sudden change of policy had but little inclined the pope to make any concessions. For the Holy See, in assisting an Austrian archduke to place himself on an old Spanish throne, had expected that it would bring back these distant lands into the bosom of the Church. On the other hand, the holders of the clerical property professed that they were anxious for a settlement favourable to their interests, although, to a great extent, their right of property had originated in fraud. They therefore employed every means they could to hurry the steps of the emperor in the path which would lead him to a rupture with the 'Saint-Père.' The organs of the liberal press, especially at Puebla, stirred up with unseasonable violence a question which required all the more caution as the papal nuncio was then expected for the purpose of negotiation.
And there was also the American question, which was just as replete with danger. The late events in the United States, and the threatening movements of the Juarist general Negrete on the northern frontier of the empire, constituted a peril affecting the security of the crown. It was well known that the partisans of Juarez were bestirring themselves, and were only waiting for the cessation of hostilities between the Northern and Southern States in order to bring serious difficulties on Maximilian. Through the intrigues of Romero, the accredited representative of the president of the Mexican republic, public enlistment-offices had been opened in the principal cities of the Union; and the press appealed to the adventurers, and urged them to cross the frontier.
Then it was that Maximilian, in the hope of baffling the filibusters, and of putting an end to the system of American volunteering, made up his mind, without consulting the French authorities, to endeavour to obtain the support or at least the neutrality of the cabinet at Washington by means of certain secret measures. In order to carry out this purpose, he despatched M. Arroyo with directions to attempt certain overtures. It may be recollected what kind of reception was reserved for this mysterious ambassador, who was politely bowed out by the republican cabinet. It really is a cause for astonishment that Maximilian, subject as he was to evil influence, should have yielded to such a temptation. Was not the status quo, with its concealed filibusterism, a hundred times preferable to a loss of influence which could not fail to become public and disquiet those who were still in doubt as to the real sentiments of the United States? The Emperor of Mexico had very quickly forgotten the following important document, which could hardly have escaped his examination, the form as well as the matter of which were equally unfriendly to the French cabinet:—
From Mr. Seward to Mr. Dayton, Minister of the United
States at Paris.
Sir,—I send you a copy of a resolution passed unanimously by the house of representatives, on the 4th of this month. It asserts the opposition of this body to any recognition of a monarchy in Mexico.
After all I have written you with so much candour for the information of France, it is scarcely necessary for me to say that this resolution honestly represents the unanimous feeling of the people of the United States with regard to Mexico.
W. H. Seward.From Mr. Seward to Mr. Dayton.
We beg to inform you that Mr. Corwin, our minister plenipotentiary to Mexico, is now at Havannah, en route for the United States, where he returns on leave of absence.
W. H. Seward.Notwithstanding the French intervention, Mr. Corwin had remained in Mexico, and only went away on the arrival of the new sovereigns. Such a position could give little hope of a reconciliation, especially after the disastrous overthrow of the Southerners. The simplest prudence and a regard for his own dignity should have forbidden any application by M. Arroyo to the White House.
The French army had already done its utmost to repulse the attacks of the filibusters. Colonel Jeanningros immediately strengthened the fortress of Monterey, and, by means of earthworks thrown up round Cadeyreta, protected the district with a considerable force in case of an American invasion being attempted. Higher up, General Brincourt watched the upper part of the river frontier ready for any eventuality. Unfortunately, General Cortina, who commanded a party of troops ranged en échelon on the lower portion of the Rio Bravo, and was already notorious for his treachery, suddenly declared himself against the empire, and endeavoured to deliver up the valuable port of Matamoros into the hands of Negrete, with whom he had agreed for a large sum of money. What blindness, in spite of repeated warning, could have urged Maximilian six months before to pardon Cortina, a merely irregular general, and a thief, as cowardly as he was unruly, at the time when he was blockaded in Matamoros, without hope of escape, and was compelled to surrender after many extortions? Then, again, why should he have been promoted on the same day to the rank of regular general, and given an active command on the frontier, and in the very town he had just plundered without remorse? Maximilian believed he was acting with good policy, and that he would thus appease the other non-contents. Negrete immediately attacked Matamoros, but his contingent was obliged to be disbanded owing to the landing at Bagdad of our naval forces, who came to the help of Mejia, who occupied the place.
The signal of revolt was given. The imperial government had directed that the department of Tamaulipas, so laboriously conquered by the French contra-guerillas, should be given over to one of its brigades. Two months afterwards this province was again entirely lost, and Monterey, the capital of Nuevo Leon, which the Mexican authorities, in spite of all the recommendations from our head-quarters, had neglected to put in a proper state of defence, also succumbed under the attacks of the rebel party. During the month of May, the marshal was obliged to resume the offensive at all the points invaded, and to capture them afresh.
- ↑ This general, being recalled to France, waited in vain for Maximilian's decision, and was ultimately compelled to leave after a month's useless delay.