Matters in Mexico after her departure grew worse every day.  Bazaine had received orders to withdraw all French troops from the country.  He was directed to withhold from Maximilian all French support, and in obedience to these instructions he flung into the river Sequia and Lake Texcoco[1] all the guns and ammunition he could not take away.

[Footnote 1:  Prince Salm-Salm, Diary in Mexico.]

Prior to the withdrawal of the French troops, the French Government made several efforts to induce Maximilian to abdicate.  The Marquis de Gallifet (of whom we shall hear again in another chapter) was sent, with two other French gentlemen, to urge him to leave Mexico.  “I know all the difficulties of my position,” Maximilian replied, “but I shall not give up my post.  A son of the house of Hapsburg never retreats in the face of danger.”  Nevertheless, after receiving the first letters from his wife, Maximilian’s resolution was shaken.  He hoped at least to return to Europe as an emperor, and not a fugitive, and to lay aside his crown of his own accord.  With this view he set out for Orizaba, where the “Dandolo” corvette was waiting to receive his orders.  On his way he was delayed some hours, because the white mules that drew his carriage had been stolen.

At Orizaba he was attacked by malarious chills.  There, too, he received news of his wife’s insanity.  Some of his generals surrounded him, and prayed him not to abandon his followers to the vengeance of their enemies.  The leaders of the clerical party also begged him, for the sake of the Church, to return to Mexico, promising him the support of the clergy throughout the country if he would but give up liberal ideas, and support, at all costs, the temporal prosperity of the Church.

Maximilian, on the strength of these assurances, went back to his capital, protesting that he remained only for the good of other people, and was influenced neither by personal considerations nor political wishes of his own.

But Maximilian was not the man to contend with the difficulties that beset him in Mexico.  His very merits were against him.  As we read the sad history of his failure, we feel that in his hands the regeneration of Mexico was hopeless.  Men like John or Henry Lawrence, heroes of the Indian Mutiny, accustomed to deal with semi-savages, might perhaps have succeeded; but Maximilian was the product of an advanced civilization, and all his sentiments were of a super-refined character.  He was no general; his forces were kept scattered over an immense area.  He seems to have been no administrator.  He was accustomed to deal with Italians,—­men of enthusiastic natures and fanatical ideas.  Mexicans had no enthusiasms; and in place of patriotism there was a prevailing sentiment of thorough aversion to the French and to the foreigners they had brought with them.  Maximilian had come to Mexico with all kinds of liberal projects for its civilization.  It was like forcing sanitary improvements on the inhabitants of an Irish shanty, or catching a street gamin and imposing on him the restraints and amenities of high-class culture.