Émile de Kératry

“ Monsieur le Maréchal de France,—Now, as we are about to quit the soil of Mexico to return to Austria, I have the honour of expressing to your excellency our extreme gratitude for your kind protection, without which the lot of the Austrian corps would have been but a sad one.
It will ever be for us a glorious reminiscence, that we have fought under the orders of your excellency, and by the side of the French expeditionary corps. ”

“ Violence invites reprisals! The heart cannot fail to be wrung by the distressing thought that the condemned and royal prince had not the consolation of exchanging a last look with his august spouse; but the last adieus of the Juarist generals were not less touching. Let a sacred pity spread the same funeral veil over the three graves in which repose the victims of undoubtedly noble sentiments. Maximilian has expiated by his blood his confidence in the assistance of our government, and his useless though sincere devotion to his adopted people. ”

“ You appear to accuse the French army of want of energy—have not I a much greater right to exclaim against the arbitrary acts and deeds of violence which have been daily committed for some weeks past, and does not our presence in Mexico appear to render the flag of France an accomplice in these proceedings? For this reason, sir, and because the wording of your letter betrays a feeling of mistrust undoubtedly based upon calumnies which affect our honour, I consider it necessary to state to you that I do not wish to have any further communication with your ministry. ”

“ Now that various considerations compel us to confront the termination of our military occupation, the emperor's government, in its solicitude for the glorious work which it has begun, and in its sympathy for the Emperor Maximilian, feels bound to acquaint itself exactly with the financial position of Mexico. The situation is a serious one, but is not desperate. With energy and courage, with a firm and unswerving will, the Mexican empire may triumph over every obstacle in its path ”

“ For the citizens, who rose en masse under the republican banner, induced either by conviction or by political necessity, had already given their votes. The lot of the monarchy was, therefore, settled without chance of appeal. But, then, would the Mexicans take up arms to elect an Austrian archduke as president of the republic, in preference to a liberal—a son, too, of the nation? This idea of a congress was an unhappy dream, which Maximilian obstinately pursued, circumvented as he was by the passions of his partisans. ”

“ The political prefects, and the chief commandants themselves, have represented to the emperor the necessity for making this or that military operation within the circle of their own individual sphere of action, each one looking only to that portion of territory under his immediate charge.
But the commander-in-chief alone holds the threads of this complicated web, and he alone can judge not only of the opportune moment for undertaking any operation, but also as to the expedient mode for combining all the movements so as to arrive at a definite result without fear of danger in any direction. ”

“ The public enlistments which have been organised in the principal towns of the Union, and the appeals which the American press are making for emigrants to Mexico, abundantly prove the intrigues of a party which holds Mexican nationality so cheap, and show that the sympathies of the American people, whose adventurous spirit is unhappily too well known, are all in favour of this party.
Your majesty has nothing to dread for the present. All my preparations are ready for repulsing any bands of filibusters which may attempt to invade the south of the empire. ”

“ Does it not seem more natural to act than to issue edicts? and, in the unquestionable state of war in which the country now is, is not the gradual transition to a state of siege both simple and easy? There are generals and chief commandants close to all the points where their actions would be indispensable.
Courts-martial are now at work over the whole extent of the empire. Would a state of siege give more force, more activity, more prestige to the military authority? ”

“ Surely, France was only generous in protecting with its safeguard those Mexican refugees who wished to tread once more the soil of their country. If we were to believe the official language, the war took its rise from the refusal or illusory concessions opposed by the Mexican president to the legitimate demand for reparation put forward by our minister. Juarez then must remain alone responsible to posterity for the ruin of his people, and for all the blood shed upon Mexican soil, shed, too, in such profusion, but yet powerless to fertilise it! ”

“ Thus the French army spent itself gloriously in this immensity of space, without profiting the crown, the prosperity of which it longed to see, if it were only from feelings of patriotism, leading them to hope for some return for the grievous sacrifices of men and money which had been swallowed up in this Mexican gulf. For Juarez, it is to be expected, will sink with Mexico into the abyss which the intervention has lastingly dug out between the two parties. ”

“ The presence of a sovereign is always eloquent, and warms the feelings of the masses. Was it not by this system that Alexander conquered Asia in three years, and impressed on the whole country a character that it has never lost since that grand era? But the German system, with all its deliberate inaction, was the prevailing one here. But it is only just to confess that the Mexican climate had already affected the constitution of the emperor, and in these latitudes the state of health reacts cruelly on the mental faculties. ”

“ It will not do to impute to Maximilian the responsibility of all the decay through which the empire was about to succumb; money, the sinews of war, was already deficient. As the French government had resolved, at the cost of enormous sacrifices, opposed by public opinion, to found a firm dynasty in Mexico, was it not wrong in having paid to its ally only forty millions out of two enormous loans—loans by which it had realised, through its own receivers-general, the sum of five hundred millions lent by imprudent subscribers who had been allured and then deceived? ”

“ When, after the lapse of two years, conflicting parties are still tearing one another to pieces in every part of the territory, the ambition which still persists in its aim becomes as guilty as the hand which is lifted against the liberty of a people; the responsibility of the convulsions of the country is then to be traced back to rulers, who, though they may evade the judgment of men, cannot escape the strictures of history. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Rarely has French valour been compelled to testify to its personal prowess in so vast a field as this. If our country could only have been a witness of the thousand deeds of arms which were obscurely done during the last five years in every corner of Mexico, by a handful of men lost, as it were, in its vast expanse, the admiration which would have been inspired by the warlike virtues of her children might have stilled for a time the tumult of opposition and complaint. ”

“ Although the duty of our military commander became more and more difficult, what was Maximilian to think, who had just asked, 'If it was true that the alliance between his own and the French government was to be considered as a reality, as he flattered himself that it was?'
The attitude of the United States, full of a logic which was never inconsistent with its purpose, was at all events an attitude of open hostility. Just at this time President Johnson issued a proclamation, declaring null and void a decree of Maximilian, which ordered the blockade of certain ports in Mexico. ”

“ A state of siege is in fact a transitory state in which all the powers are combined in the hands of the military authority; a state which extraordinarily modifies the administrative and judicial machinery, and places the citizens in an abnormal and unnatural position.
It is likewise only in the public interests and at some great unforeseen crisis, that the sovereign authority should resort to these extreme means to point out that force is the only argument which is left for it to employ.
Is it necessary at the present time to apply this measure to the Mexican empire? ”

“ The United States content themselves with explaining to France the exigencies of a situation so embarrassing to Mexico, and with expressing the hope that some means will be discovered compatible both with the interests and dignity of France, and also with the principles and interests of the United States, of putting an end to this state of things without injurious delay. ”

“ After a mature examination of all the contradictory documents, we are fully persuaded that the French government had wrongly thought that they should find in the marshal a docile instrument of its policy, and that he would be prompt in comprehending mere desires, and be ready of his own accord to ensure their success. In this ambiguous path, which seems authorised in modern diplomacy, military honour runs a risk of being led astray. ”

“ As to the court of Madrid, General Prim had enticed it into the Mexican expedition, animated as he was by a purely personal ambition. Being allied through his wife to the family of Etcheverria, a member of which was actually in Juarez's council, and keeping up, as he did, an active connection with Mexico, which he knew was always ready for military 'pronunciamientos' the Count de Reuss, whose brilliant reputation had already preceded him, pictured for himself, if not a royal diadem, at least a viceroy's coronet, which would once more attach the former Spanish colony to its mother-country. ”

“ The appeal made to me by the council of state and the ministers was simply this, that, in conjunction with them, when the time to abdicate shall arrive, the ad interim power should be made over to those to whom it is due, and that, in the meantime, the vote of the nation shall settle the rest. The appeal made to Marshal Bazaine had no other aim than that these points should be arranged in conjunction with the commander-in-chief of the army. The assertion that a provisional government will be recognised by the United States is more than doubtful. ”

“ How many centuries have been required, since Charlemagne, for shaking off barbarism and fanaticism, and for finally organising a nation, and how many commotions has it cost? We are all too forgetful of history.
Public opinion was painfully excited by the discord which broke out during the last year between the imperial authority of Mexico and the French commander. There is but little reason to wonder at it, if it is true that the instructions emanating from Paris, and going a year back, directed that an almost compulsory abdication was to be obtained from Maximilian. ”

“ WE are now entering upon the period of those disastrous events which gradually crushed down the Mexican empire. A just idea may, we hope, have been formed as to the errors which caused them. The following pages, describing step by step the long agony of an empire, will surprise by the recital of sudden events, of solemn promises trodden under foot, of strange and unexpected political changes, through which the policy of the French and Mexican courts (soon to be at variance) will finally shatter itself to pieces against the arrogant threats of the United States. ”

“ The Austro-Belgian troops are owed more than half a million of piastres, and before your excellency caused them to be paid out of the French treasury, they had spent their last centime, and consumed all the available provisions in the towns they occupy.
It is useless to prolong this sad picture of the poverty of our resources in a military point of view; your excellency is well aware of it, and I have been compelled to reply to the sovereign, when I have been requested to help pecuniarily various Mexican corps, that there were not the means of doing it. ”