made for her, her three children, her two maids, her two dogs, and her three parrots! The price for such miserable accommodations is so exorbitant that everybody prefers going immediately on board. . . .

Another letter, dated March 4, says:

The marshal is as unpopular as ever with the army. His methods are censured by every one. The transports are here. With a better system our men might be shipped as soon as they arrive in this God-forsaken hole. Instead of this, however, unnecessary delay results in sickness among the rank and file. According to my orderly, who saw them, fifteen men were picked up this morning whom the surgeons had declined to embark. . . .

And the last, from another friend, under date of March 12, on board the Castiglione, says:

We sail to-day at eleven o'clock. For twenty-four hours out of Vera Cruz we are to form an escort to the Souverain, on board of which are the marshal and his wife, in order that their Excellencies may sail out of port in state. After this we will make straight for Toulon. All our men are at this moment on board their transports. The Mexican colors are flying over the citadel. The French intervention has come to a close, and is now a thing of the past. . . .

PART V

THE END

I. QUERETARO, 1867

The end is known. On February 13 the Emperor, with Generals Marquez and Vidaurri, at the head of a column of some two thousand men, sallied forth from Mexico to establish his base of operations at Queretaro.

After his defeat at San Jacinto (January 27), General Miramon, with the remains of his army, had fallen back upon Queretaro, then held by General Mejia with nine hundred men, and it was urged that Maximilian should there join his faithful generals. This plan, evolved by Senor Lares and the clerical leaders, had for its ostensible object to spare the capital the horrors of a siege. But it was more than suspected that a certain distrust had arisen between the Emperor and his Mexican supporters. They feared lest he also might make terms with the national party; and they wished, by inducing him to leave the capital, to put it out of his power to sacrifice them or their cause. Had he not once before, after accepting the crown at their hands, thrown himself into the arms of their enemies by calling Liberal leaders to his councils? However worthy in the eyes of posterity may appear Maximilian's attempt to reconcile opposing elements in the interest of peace and order, such a course was not calculated to inspire confidence in his personal loyalty to the once discarded extremists, now become his only supporters. Miramon and Marquez were not likely to forget that, in the hour of triumph of the monarchy erected by their hands, they had been sent, as wags then put it, one to study the art of fortification in Prussia, the other to watch the progress of civilization in Turkey.

It is difficult to penetrate all the hidden causes that governed the extraordinary policy followed at this time; but there is little doubt that individual interest and personal distrust played too large a part in its adoption. However this may be, it was at Queretaro that the last scene of the tragedy was enacted.

The auxiliary regiments, Maximilian's most trustworthy dependence in his extremity, were, by the advice of Marquez, left behind. The Emperor, he urged, must now throw himself entirely upon the Mexican nation. Thus Colonels Kodolitch, Khevenhuller, Hammerstein, and others, remained in Mexico, and only a few of the Emperor's foreign supporters followed him.

General Quiroga's division was withdrawn from San Luis and brought to Queretaro, while the veteran division of General Mendez, who had victoriously held Morelia and the Michoacan against the forces of Generals Regules and Corona, was likewise ordered, on February 13, to abandon that section of the country and to hasten to the Emperor's support. These leaders, with Generals Miramon, Marquez, Mejia, and Castillo, and General Arellano, who commanded the artillery, were the most conspicuous among the Imperialist officers gathered around Maximilian at this time.*

* A. Haus, "Queretaro: Souvenirs d'un Officier de l'Empereur Maximilien," pp. 11, 17.

During the cruel weeks of mingled hope and despair that had elapsed since he had left Chapultepec, Maximilian had conquered self. Now the ambitious Austrian prince, the weak tool of intriguing politicians, the upholder of religious and political retrogression, disappears; and where he had stood posterity will henceforth see only the noble son of the Hapsburgs, the well-bred gentleman who, aware of his failure, was ready to stand by it and to pay the extreme penalty of his errors.

Before the figure of Maximilian of Austria, from the time when he took command of his little army and resolved to stand for better or worse by those who had remained faithful to his fallen fortunes, all true-hearted men must bow with respect. From this time forth his words and acts were noble; and in his attitude at this supreme moment, his incapacity as a chief executive, his moral and intellectual limitations as a man, are overlooked. We forget that he was no leader when we see how well he could die.

It is noteworthy that, with the exception of General Miramon, those who had most urged upon him the last sacrifice were not with him to share it. Father Fischer disappeared from the stage of history almost as abruptly as he had entered it. Senior Lares and the cabinet, who were responsible for the last plan of action carried out by the Emperor, had remained in Mexico at the head of affairs. General Marquez, when the republican forces closed in upon the doomed empire, was sent from Queretaro with General Vidaurri, under an escort of cavalry led by General Quiroga, to raise supplies and reinforcements. He was vested with supreme authority as lieutenant of the empire, and had pledged himself to return with relief within twenty days. The Emperor wearily counted the hours as time went by; but, like the raven sent out from Noah's ark, General Marquez found enough to occupy him in the satisfaction of his own greed, and was never again heard from by him who sent him.

Overruling General Vidaurri, he deserted his imperial master in his extremity. He used the extraordinary powers given him to establish himself in the capital, where, for his own ends, he subjected the wretched inhabitants to the most cruel extortions. Routed at San Lorenzo* by General Diaz, who at once proceeded to besiege Mexico, he unduly prolonged the resistance of the city after the final downfall of the empire, exposing it to the unnecessary hardships of a four months' siege, the horrors of which were mitigated only by the generosity and forbearance of the Liberal commander.

* In the difficult retreat which followed these defeats, General Marquez fled with a body of two hundred cavalry, leaving his beaten army, then pursued by sixteen thousand men, to extricate itself as best it might. Colonel Kodolitch then assumed command, and fighting his way through the enemy, brought back the debris of the imperial forces, now reduced to one third, to the capital, where the general had preceded him.

It is said that this extraordinary conduct on the part of their official leader caused the indignant foreign officers no little concern with regard to the future. In order to guard against similar accidents, a council was held by the foreign leaders, Colonel Kodolitch, Captain von Wickemburg, Captain Hammerstein, Commanders Klickzing and Chenet, etc., who resolved that, although it was deeply humiliating for them to serve under a general who did not blush to desert his command under fire, as their service was needed by the Emperor they would retain their respective commissions; but in the moment of danger they would regard themselves as under the orders of Colonel Kodolitch. They further decided, should the city surrender, not to share in the terms of a Mexican capitulation, but to make their own terms, or, if necessary, to cut their way through to the sea.

See Charles d'Hericault, "Maximilien et le Mexique," page 231 et seq.

When at last the starving people rose in indignation, and would stand him no longer, he suddenly vanished. It is said that on the eve of being delivered into the hands of his enemies he managed his escape by concealing himself in a freshly dug grave. Twenty-seven years elapsed before the Mexican "Leopard" dared show his face once more in his native land, now transformed by the triumph of the men and of the institutions against which he had so desperately fought.

General Marquez, who, strangely enough, seems to have enjoyed the full confidence of his sovereign, had opposed with all his influence General Miramon's desire to conduct the war aggressively and to attack in detail the enemy's forces before they could unite to invest Queretaro.*

* A. Haus, loc. cit., page 164.

Gradually the republican divisions, arriving from all points of the country, were allowed to concentrate, until the imperial army was completely hemmed in. The heroic sorties with which the weary monotony of those weeks of expectancy was broken could now only result in the gradual exhaustion of the besieged and of their supplies. General Miramon, fretting under the restraint imposed upon him, saw the circle growing closer and stronger, until it was too late to make a winning fight. Only the energy of despair could contemplate a bare escape from the trap in which the Imperialists were now caught.

After a siege of over two months (from March 4 to May 15), during which his army had been cruelly depleted by frequent sorties and by the typhus fever now raging in the town, having abandoned all hope of relief from without, starvation staring him in the face, and ammunition beginning to fail, Maximilian and his still faithful generals resolved to cut their way through the enemy's lines with the little army, then numbering about nine thousand men and thirty-nine guns. This course had been urged for some time, but General Miramon, ever sanguine of ultimate success, had opposed the idea.

Three o'clock in the morning of May 14 was the time agreed upon for the sortie. Colonel Salm-Salm was to form a body-guard for the Emperor with the Khevenhuller hussars, the cavalry under Major Malburg, and the regiment of the Empress, commanded by Colonel Lopez.* All was in readiness. The gold and silver in the imperial treasury were divided for safe-keeping among four or five trusted men,** one of whom was Colonel Lopez, military commander of La Cruz, who enjoyed the confidence of Maximilian and had just received from him a decoration for valor.***

* Dr. Basch. (loc. cit., p. 229) mentions fifty of the Khevenhuller hussars, eventually increased to one hundred by volunteers, and eighty men were commanded by Major Malburg. Count Pacuta was lieutenant-colonel of the cavalry regiment of the Empress, of which Colonel Lopez was commander. These, led by Prince Salm-Salm, were to protect the Emperor during the sortie.