The Last Emperor of Mexico: A Disaster in the New World

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Since Maximilian and Carlota had no offspring, there are no direct descendants. However, today members of the House of Habsburg consider Maximilian an important ancestor. But in terms of the Mexican political reality, they are not in the spotlight. The nearest living agnatic relative to Maximilian is the head of the Habsburg family, Karl von Habsburg, [52] and members of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine still reside in Mexico, among them Carlos Felipe de Habsburgo, the first male of the former ruling house to be born in the country. [53] Carlos Felipe is an academic who has given many interviews, conferences, and presentations regarding his family's history, Maximilian and Carlota, and the Second Mexican Empire. [54] [55] Viceroy of Lombardy-Venetia, 1857–59 [ edit ] Royal Palace of Milan Mexican diplomat José Hidalgo had been officially tasked by the Santa Anna administration to sound European courts for interest in establishing a Mexican monarchy, but after the fall of Santa Anna in 1853 with the successful liberal Revolution of Ayutla, Hidalgo had lost his official accreditation and continued his efforts independently. Hidalgo's childhood friend, the Spanish noblewoman Eugénie de Montijo was now wife of Napoleon III, Emperor of France, and it was through her that Hidalgo managed to gain the attention of the French ruler. Maximilian had barely been in Mexico a year before trouble started brewing. Big trouble. The Republican leader, the formidable and cunning President Benito Juárez, was gaining more support, and nothing the Emperor did or offered Juárez sweet-talked him into joining the royal family’s side. Then suddenly, Maximilian showed his true, disturbing colors. Richmond, Douglas W. (15 April 2015). Conflict and Carnage in Yucatán: Liberals, the Second Empire, and Maya Revolutionaries, 1855–1876. University of Alabama Press. p.70. ISBN 9780817318703. Smith, Gene (1973). Maximilian and Carlota: A Tale of Romance and Tragedy. Morrow. p.157. ISBN 0-688-00173-4.

A member of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, Maximilian was the younger brother of Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria. Prior to his becoming Emperor of Mexico, he was commander-in-chief of the small Imperial Austrian Navy and briefly the Austrian viceroy of Lombardy–Venetia, but was removed by the emperor. Two years before his dismissal, he briefly met with French emperor Napoleon III in Paris, where he was approached by conservative Mexican monarchists seeking a European royal to rule Mexico. [2] Initially Maximilian was not interested, but following his dismissal as viceroy, the Mexican monarchists' plan was far more appealing to him. McAllen, M.M (8 January 2014). Maximilian and Carlota: Europe's Last Empire in Mexico. Trinity University Press. p.182. ISBN 9781595341853. Cibrario, Luigi (1869). Notizia storica del nobilissimo ordine supremo della santissima Annunziata. Sunto degli statuti, catalogo dei cavalieri (in Italian). Eredi Botta. p.120 . Retrieved 4 March 2019.Wooster, Robert (2006). "John M. Schofield and the 'Multipurpose' Army". American Nineteenth Century History. 7 (2): 173–191. doi: 10.1080/14664650600809305. S2CID 143091703. Bancroft, Hubert Howe (1887). History of Mexico Volume VI 1861–1887. San Francisco: The History Company. p. 173. The tragedy of Maximilian’s life might be that he was simply too liberal for the fundamentally reactionary project he was asked to lead. Strategically, one of Maximilian’s greatest mistakes was deciding that his empire would uphold Juárez’s signature law redistributing church property. This was a noble decision, attesting to Maximilian’s genuine concern for Mexico’s poor. Yet he acted against the express wishes of the Vatican and the conservative Mexican elites on whose support Maximilian relied. Maximilian even toyed with the idea of asking Juárez to be his prime minister in a constitutional monarchy (Juárez, for his part, rejected any notion that he would participate in a government imposed by a foreign force).

Blasio, Jose Luis (1905). Maximiliano Intimo: El Emperador Maximiliano y su Corte. C. Bouret. p.96. Bancroft, Hubert Howe (1888). History of Mexico Volume VI 1861–1887. The Bancroft Company. pp.206–207.McAllen, M. M. (April 2015). Maximilian and Carlota: Europe's Last Empire in Mexico. Trinity University Press. p.165. ISBN 978-1-59534-263-8. If 19th-century geopolitics and Latin American literature were put in a blender together, something like this book would emerge. It all feels like a novel from a time gone by. And this is a tale of another world—of violent Wild West frontier towns like Brownsville in Texas and Matamoros across the river in Mexico, of European empires trying to paint more of the map their color and of a monarch more concerned with remodeling his castle than governing, even as his empire begins to collapse around him. In the 1860s, Maximilian got a dangerous offer he couldn’t refuse. Napoleon III of France had recently invaded Mexico, and thought Maximilian was just the man for the job of “puppet Emperor” for the country’s second empire. It was a title the covetous Maximilian had only ever dreamed of owning—so when he said yes, it changed his life forever. Uh, just not in a good way. Maximilian was clearly not a man suited to be the figurehead of a reactionary effort, and he ultimately alienated many of his own supporters. Meanwhile, his reliance on a foreign occupation and pretensions to title and privilege ensured he would never win over Juárez’s liberal and nationalist supporters. Ultimately, Europe’s last explicitly colonial and monarchical project in the Americas was just too reactionary for an age of revolution, too weak to counteract the growing power of the United States and too foreign to extinguish heroic Mexican resistance. The greatest of statesmen could not have overcome these obstacles and would probably have seen that from the get-go. Sadly for him, Maximilian was decidedly not a great statesman.