insurrection of the Liberal party led by the old Indian governor of Guerrero, General Alvarez.

The Crimean war and the downfall of General Santa Anna checked the progress of these negotiations, which were resumed as soon as, peace having been restored, the European powers could turn their attention to their commercial interests in America, which Senor de Estrada represented to them as gravely compromised by the encroachments of the United States in Mexico, and to the grievances urged by their subjects against the Mexican government.*

* Compare Abbe Domenech, "Histoire du Mexique," vol. ii, p. 360.

In 1859 General Miramon* confirmed the powers given by General Santa Anna to the Mexican representative; and then it was that, for the first time, the Emperor commended to his attention the Archduke Maximilian.

* General Miramon was barely twenty-six when he rose to the first rank in Mexican politics. Of Bearnese extraction, his father's family passed over to Spain in the eighteenth century. His grandfather had gone to Mexico as aide de-camp to one of the viceroys. Miguel Miramon had served in the war against the United States. He was a brilliant officer, bold, vigorous, original. During his term of office he had on his side the clergy, the army, the capital.

It were also unfair not to admit that the varying success of the conflict between the two factions struggling for supremacy in Mexico was likely to deceive the European powers, and made it easy for men whose personal interests were at stake to misrepresent the respective strength of the contending parties and the condition of the country. But no leader of men has, in the eyes of history, a right to be deceived either by men or by appearances; and granting that Napoleon might at first have been misled, he had timely warning, and the opportunity to withdraw, as did the Spaniards and the English, without shame, if without glory.

After Mexico, led by the patriots Hidalgo and Morelos, had thrown off the Spanish yoke, it became for forty years the scene of a series of struggles between contending factions which reduced the country to a state of anarchy. Once rid of their Spanish viceroys, the Mexicans found themselves little better off than they had been under their rule. For centuries the Mexican church had played upon the piety of the devout for the furtherance of its own temporal interests, until one third of the whole wealth of the nation had found its way into its hands. It was against the clergy, and against the retrogressive policy for which it stood, that in 1856 a wide-spread revolutionary movement was successfully organized, as a result of which, in 1857, a liberal constitution was drawn up and accepted by the people.

The clerical or reactionary party, although it counted among its adherents many of the best old Spanish families composing Mexico's aristocracy, would probably soon have ceased to be a serious practical obstacle in the way of reform had it not been for the wealth of a corrupt clergy, by means of which its armies were kept in the field. Be this as it may, the reign of constitutional order represented by President Comonfort in 1856 was shortlived, General Comonfort abdicated in 1858. Benito Juarez, by virtue of his rank of president of the Supreme Court, then became constitutional president ad interim.

By a pronunciamiento General Zuloaga, with the help of the army, took possession of the government and of the capital, while Juarez maintained his rights at Queretaro. War raged between the two parties, with rapidly varying success. A letter dated November 19,1860, written by my brother, a young American engineer who had gone to Mexico to take part in the construction of the first piece of railroad built between Vera Cruz and Mexico, gives a concise and picturesque account of the situation:

Things look dark--so dark, in fact, that for the present I do not think it advisable to risk any more money here. There is a fair prospect of the decree of Juarez being annulled. If so, our bonds go overboard. There is a prospect of Juarez signing a treaty. If so, our bonds go up 15 or 20. It is rouge et noire--a throw of the dice. The Liberals have been beaten at Queretaro, where Miramon took from them twenty-one pieces of artillery and many prisoners, among them an American officer of artillery, whom he shot the next day, AS USUAL. Oajaca has fallen into the hands of the clergy. The Liberals under Carbajal attacked Tulancingo, and were disgracefully beaten by a lot of ragged Indians. They are losing ground everywhere; and if the United States does not take hold of this unhappy country it will certainly go to the dogs. There is a possibility of compromise between Juarez and Miramon, the effect of which is this: the constitution of '57 to be revised; the sale of clergy property to their profit; the revocation of Juarez's decree of July about the confiscation of clergy property to the profit of the state; religious liberty, civil marriage, etc.

A gloomy picture, and true enough, save in one respect. The Liberals might be beaten everywhere, but they were not losing ground; on the contrary, their cause rested upon too solid a foundation of right and progress, and the last brilliant exploits of General Miramon were insufficient to galvanize the reactionary party into a living force.

On December 22, 1860, Miramon was finally defeated at Calpulalpan by General Ortega, and shortly after left the country. On December 28 the reforms prepared in Vera Cruz by Juarez, proclaiming the principles of religious toleration, and decreeing the confiscation of clergy property, the abolition of all 13 religious orders, and the institution of civil marriage, etc., were promulgated in the capital by General Ortega; and on January 11,1861, Juarez* himself took possession of the city of Mexico. The Liberals were triumphant, and the civil war was virtually at an end.

* Benito Pablo Juarez was of Indian birth, and as a boy began life as a mozo, or servant, in a wealthy family. His ability was such as to draw upon him the attention of his employer, who had him educated. He soon rose to greatness as a lawyer, and then as a member of the National Congress, governor of Oajaca, secretary to the executive, and president of the republic.

The defeated army, as was invariably the case in Mexico, dissolved and disappeared, leaving only a residuum of small bands of guerrillas. These preyed impartially upon the people and upon travelers of both parties. Leonardo Marquez almost alone remained in the field and seriously continued the conflict. The principal leaders fled abroad, especially to Paris, where they made friends, and planned a revenge upon the victorious oppressors of the church, whose outrages upon God and man were vividly colored by religious and party hatred. Among these were men of refinement and good address, scions of old Spanish families, who, like M. Gutierrez de Estrada, found ready sympathy among the Emperor's entourage. As a rule, none but "hopelessly defeated parties seek the help of foreign invasion of their own land"; but the Empress Eugenie, who, a Spaniard herself, was a devout churchwoman, lent a willing ear to the stories of the refugees, impressively told in her own native tongue. To reinstate the church, and to oppose the strong Catholicism of a Latin monarchy to the Protestant influence of the Northern republic, seemed to her the most attractive aspect of the projected scheme.

The struggle that had been carried on for so many years in Mexico with varying vicissitudes was not purely one of partizan interest based upon a different view of political government: it was the struggle of the spirit of the nineteenth century against the survival of Spanish medievalism; it was the contest of American republicanism against the old order of things, religious and social as well as political; of progressive liberalism against conservatism and reaction.

The French intervention as planned by Napoleon III was, therefore, a glaring paradox, and betrays his absolute ignorance of the conditions with which he was undertaking to cope. As a matter of fact, the party upon whose support he relied for the purpose of developing the natural resources of Mexico, and of bringing that country into line with European intellectual and industrial progress, was pledged by all its traditions to moral and political retrogression.

The enterprise, undertaken under these conditions, bore in itself such elements of failure that nothing save the force of arms and a vast expenditure of life and money could, even for a time, make it a success. Unless the French assumed direct and absolute control of Mexican affairs irrespective of party--and this contingency was specifically set aside by the most solemn declarations--they must sooner or later come into direct antagonism with allies who were pledged to the most benighted form of clericalism, and into real, though perhaps unconscious, sympathy with their opponents who stood arrayed upon the side of progress.

It was not long before the pretensions of the church and party complications caused a breach between the Corps Expeditionnaire and its original supporters, which placed the French in the unlooked-for, and by them much deprecated, attitude of invaders and conquerors of the land, equally hated by ally and foe. And yet at the outset one aspect of the situation was favorable to the success of the French undertaking.

The sweeping reforms carried out by Juarez during his brief undisturbed occupation of the country had greatly smoothed the way for the French in their self-imposed task of Mexican regeneration. The new laws had already been enforced regulating the relations of church and state. The confiscation of clergy property, the breaking up of the powerful religious orders, and religious tolerance, all had been proclaimed, as well as the freedom of the press.

Spanish, influence, which in these struggles had been exercised strongly against reform, had been abruptly brought to an end by the summary dismissal of Senor Pacheco, the Spanish minister, and the Archbishop of Mexico had been exiled.

III. M. DE SALIGNY AND M. JECKER

One of the first problems, and quite the most important, to be faced by President Juarez, upon his establishment in the capital, had been the raising of funds with which to carry on the expense of the Liberal government. As a measure the throwing upon the market of the nationalized church property recommended itself. There was, however, but little confidence, and still less ready money, in the country after many years of civil strife. So much real estate suddenly thrown upon the market depreciated property. The easy terms of sale--a third cash, the balance to be paid in pagares--tempted speculators and gave rise to many fraudulent transactions, and the measure brought little relief to the government.

Although in March, 1861, President Juarez had signed a convention adjusting anew the pecuniary claims of the French residents, on July 17 Congress found itself compelled to suspend payment on all agreements hitherto entered into with foreign powers. The very next day the representatives of France and Great Britain entered a formal protest on behalf of their governments. On July 25, having obtained no satisfaction, they suspended all diplomatic relations with the Mexican government.

Feeling ran high between Mexicans and foreigners. The speculators in Mexican bonds, as well as more innocent sufferers, were loud in their denunciations. The Swiss banker Jecker,* who had cleverly managed to enlist the interest of powerful supporters at the court of Napoleon III, and who had become naturalized in order to add weight to his claim to