As soon as he had resumed his place, a sergeant came up to order Miramon and Mejia to turn round.  As traitors, they were to be shot in the back.

“Farewell, dear friends,” said Maximilian, and crossing his arms, he stood firm as a statue.

When the command was given:  “Shoulder arms!” a murmur of protestation, accompanied by threats, rose among part of the crowd, in which there were many Indians.  Their national superstitions and traditions had attached this simple people to the emperor.  They had a prophecy among them that one day a white man would come over the seas to set them free, and many of them looked for this savior in Maximilian.

The officers in command turned towards the crowd, shaking their swords.  Then came the words:  “Take aim!  Fire!”

“Long live Mexico!” cried Miramon.

“Carlotta!  Poor Carlotta!” exclaimed Maximilian.

When the smoke of the volley had cleared away, three corpses lay upon the earth.  That of the emperor had received five balls.  The victims were placed in coffins which lay ready near the place of execution, and, escorted as they had been before, were carried back to the convent of the Capuchins.

“The emperor being dead, we will do all honor to the corpse of the Archduke of Austria,” said Colonel Miguel Palacios, to whom this care was given.  The corpse was embalmed, and the body placed in a vault.

The Russian ambassador, Baron Magnus, and the American commander of a United States vessel of war which layoff Vera Cruz, in vain solicited the body of the late emperor.  The Austrian Vice-admiral Tegethoff (the illustrious conqueror at Lissa) had to come and personally demand it in November of the next year.  He at the same time time obtained the release of the Austrian soldiers still retained as prisoners, and of Prince Salm-Salm, lying under sentence of death since the execution of the emperor.

As for the traitor Lopez, instead of the two thousand ounces of gold that he expected, he got only seven thousand dollars.  His wife refused to live with him after his treachery to Maximilian; and once when he went to see General Rincon Gallardo to request his influence to get himself restored to his former rank in the Mexican army, which he had forfeited by his connection with the Imperial Government, the answer he received was:  “Colonel Lopez, if I ever recommend you for any place, that place will be under a tree, with a rope round your neck tied to one of its branches.”

Maximilian will live in history as a good man and a martyred sovereign.  Long after his death, the Indians in Queretaro would not put up an adobe hut without inserting in it a pebble from the hill on which he was executed.

On the very day of his death an order signed by him was received in Europe, not for rifled cannon, not for needle-guns, but for two thousand nightingales, which he desired to have purchased in the Tyrol to add to the attractions of his empire.