Maximilian in Mexico: A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867. Sara Yorke Stevenson
his willingness to recognize the debt. The minister refused. General Marquez seized the treasure, and had it taken to the palace by his soldiers. The British envoy there upon lowered his flag and retired Jalapa.
** Bibesco, loc. cit., p. 64.
On February 19 the preliminary treaty of La Soledad was signed by the allies and by Senor Doblado for the Mexican government, and on February 23 it was ratified by President Juarez. By its terms the allies were allowed, pending the negotiations having for object the adjustment of their claims, to take up their quarters beyond the limits of the unhealthful district, and to occupy the road of Mexico as far as Tehuacan and Orizaba. On the other hand, "the allies pledged themselves, should the negotiations not result in a final understanding, to vacate the territory occupied by them, and to return on the road to Vera Cruz to a point beyond the Chiquihuite, near Paso Ancho,"* i.e., in the pestilential coast region.
* Ibid., p. 49.
President Juarez only agreed to the terms, it is stated, upon the formal declaration on the part of the commissioners that "the allies had no intention to threaten the independence, the sovereignty, and the integrity of the territory of the Mexican republic."
The French contingent originally sent by Napoleon III numbered, all told, only three thousand men. As soon as the Emperor was notified of the doubtful attitude of General Prim, reinforcements numbering some forty-five hundred men had been ordered, and on March 6, 1862, General Count de Lorencez arrived at Vera Cruz to take command of the Corps Expeditionnaire.*
* Ibid., p. 36. The Spanish corps, under General Prim, numbered seven thousand. England, besides a contingent of one hundred men, furnished a fleet under Commodore Dunlap, which was to support the joint expedition.
This ended all prospect of concerted action on the part of the combined forces. The landing of these troops, which brought the French contingent to a figure far exceeding that originally agreed upon, gave umbrage to the allies* and proved, beyond the possibility of a doubt, that, notwithstanding the most explicit assurances given by the French minister of foreign affairs to the British ambassador in Paris,** it was the intention of the French government to carry out its policy at all hazards. Moreover, the new military commander did not possess the tact and wisdom of the French admiral, whose policy had not been approved in Prance, where his signing of the convention of La Soledad had been received with dismay and disapproval.
* Compare General Prim's letter to Napoleon III, foot-note to pp. 25–27.
** "No government shall be imposed upon the Mexican people" (despatch of Lord Cowley to Lord Russell, May 2, 1862). See "L'Empereur Maximilien," etc., par le Comte Emile de Keratry, p. 11 (Leipsic, 1867). Another time the minister, M. de Thouvenel, assured Lord Cowley that negotiations had been opened by the Mexicans alone, who had gone to Vienna for the purpose (ibid.).
General de Lorencez came as the representative of the most aggressive policy, with orders to march without delay upon the capital; and there is no doubt that a worse man could not have been chosen to take the leading part in an enterprise where cool judgment was the most important requisite. Hotheaded, brave to rashness, and, if one may judge by his acts, wholly incapable of discrimination in his appreciation of the problems involved, General de Lorencez, when he arrived on the field of action, allowed himself to be misled by M. de Saligny's misrepresentations of fact. Only a bitter experience showed him his error—too late. Meantime he added to the difficulties in the way of the admiral by feeding the illusions of the French government with sanguine despatches in which he spoke in glowing terms of the "march of the French upon the capital," and of the "acclamation of Maximilian as sovereign of Mexico."
The lack of knowledge of existing conditions that characterized the French leaders in the conduct of this wretched affair was conspicuous from the very beginning of the expedition. Prince Georges Bibesco, an accomplished young Wallachian nobleman whom I knew well, and who was then on the staff of General de Lorencez's brigade, has, in his spirited account of these early events,* furnished ample evidence of the manner in which the general and his chief of staff, Colonel Valaze, were deceived as to the strength of the Liberal party by the French minister, and how they were induced by him to misrepresent the caution and judgment which the French admiral alone seems to have in some measure possessed, as an evidence of weakness and of procrastination.
* "Au Mexique, 1862: Combats et Retraite des Six Mille, par le Prince
Georges Bibesco. Ouvrage couronne par l'Academie Francaise" (Paris, G.
Plon, Nourrit et Cie.). Prince Bibesco was intrusted with drawing up the
monthly official reports sent by the Corps Expeditionnaire to the War
Office in 1862, and is therefore a trustworthy guide for that period.
In a letter addressed to the French minister of war, Marshal Randon, dated March 30, Colonel Valaze asserts his conviction that "an armed force, however small it may be, could take possession of the capital without any other difficulty than might be encountered by the commissariat to supply the army on its way." The admiral had written with a truer appreciation of the situation, and for his pains had lost the confidence of his sovereign.
V. RUPTURE BETWEEN THE ALLIES
The situation was fast reaching a crisis. An explosion was imminent. The arrival of General Almonte,* who was destined by Napoleon to be the chief executive during the regency, only hastened the rupture between the allies and precipitated the final declaration of hostilities between France and Mexico.
* March 1, 1862.
The irritation of the Mexican government knew no bounds. A decree condemning to death all traitors and reactionaries had been passed, and on March 23 it was officially communicated to the allies. On March 26 General de Lorencez joined the admiral at Tehuacan, and the latter pushed on to Orizaba, where the allies were to hold a final conference on April 9. Here General Prim and Sir Charles Wyke insisted upon the departure of the exiles, urging that their presence placed the intervention of the powers in an absolutely false light before the world.
Their secret relation to the exiles imposed upon the French the responsibility of their safety; the admiral flatly refused, at the same time announcing his intention to carry out at once the provisions of the convention of La Soledad, and to retreat with his contingent toward the coast, thereby recovering his freedom of action and the right to march upon Mexico without further delay.
It was obvious that the Mexican government was only gaining time in order to give the climate a chance to do its work. General de Lorencez, disapproving of the preliminary treaty which circumstances had forced the admiral to sign, was strongly inclined to break through its provisions and push on to the capital. He was overruled by the admiral's high sense of honor.
Measures were immediately taken to execute the articles of the convention by bringing back the French forces beyond the Chiquihuite, and on April 7 General Almonte, officially recognized by the French, endeavored to rally the scattered remnants of the clerical party by issuing a proclamation signed by ninety-two Mexican notables, in which he declared himself provisionally the supreme chief of the nation. To this President Juarez responded by a decree establishing martial law and declaring all cities occupied by the French in a state of siege. War with Mexico was declared.*
* "Where was the solemn assurance that there existed no intention to threaten the independence, the sovereignty, and the integrity of the territory of the Mexican republic? And yet, even after the repulse of the French at Puebla, Napoleon, in a letter to General Forey, dated July 3, 1862, still kept up the flimsy farce. "The end to be attained," he wrote, "is not to force upon the Mexicans a form of government which would be disagreeable to them, but to aid them in their efforts to establish, according to their own wish, a government which may have some chance of stability and "which can insure to France redress for the wrongs of which she complains" (Memorial Diplomatique, March 12, 1865). Was this blindness or duplicity?
The rupture between the allies was final, though peaceable. On April 15 Sir Charles Wyke and General Prim* concluded a separate treaty with the government of Juarez, and, having thus skilfully extricated themselves from a perilous situation, they prepared