PART III
THE EMPIRE OF MAXIMILIAN I 1864-65
I. MARSHAL BAZAINE
In October, 1863, the reins of power, so loosely held by General Forey, at last passed into firmer hands. General Bazaine took command of affairs. It was high time. The Juarists, profiting by the long respite afforded them, were reorganizing in the interior, and were threatening. The daily stage was attacked on its way to the coast as often as not. Highwaymen tore up the rails of the Paso del Macho Railroad, attacked the train, and killed passengers. Detachments of banditti, called by courtesy guerrillas, everywhere infested the roads, even at the very gates of the capital. A picnic was given to us at this time, by some officers of General Bazaine's staff, at a wild, beautiful spot, where the ruins of a graceful aqueduct, built by the Spaniards, formed the principal attraction. It was less than a twenty-mile ride, yet it was deemed unsafe to go without a strong escort, although we and the officers who gave the affair formed, with their orderlies, a large cavalcade.
General Forey's policy in letting the regency have its way, and in countenancing reactionary legislation of an aggressive character, had discouraged the honest partizans of order. The clergy now openly declared that Maximilian was pledged to the holy see for the restoration of the confiscated property of the clergy to its original owners. The archbishop, newly landed, did all that was in his power to encourage such a belief and to guide the regency to an uncompromising surrender to the holy see.* As the security of immense transactions in clergy property was involved, serious uneasiness was felt.
* Compare M. de Keratry, loc. cit., p. 31.
General Bazaine handled all these complications with firmness and skill. He compelled the regency to repeal the decrees most objectionable to the thinking portion of the community. He enforced the maintaining of all bona-fide transactions in clergy property, but advocated the revision of such contracts as might be proved fraudulent, and urged a concordat proposing that the state provide for the support of the clergy. His orders were to rally around him the Liberal chiefs, and he strove by a wise, tactful policy to conciliate men of all shades of opinion. His vigorous military action soon established order in the territory surrounding Mexico. With the concurrence of General Almonte, who earnestly wished the welfare of his country, he reduced Archbishop Labastida to terms, if not to silence.
Having done this, he took the field, concentrated his army from the various distant points where the different corps had been ordered in view of the campaign which he was preparing, and within six weeks defeated, by rapid and well-concerted blows, Generals Doblado, Negrete, Comonfort, and Uraga, who at that time, thanks to General Forey's procrastination, were holding the country with. the rallied forces of the Liberal party.
From Morelia to San Luis, from Mexico to Guadalajara, the French flag waved over every stronghold. The conquered cities received the conquerors coldly, but acknowledged the archduke (of whom, we were told by the officers, many did not even know the name) just as resignedly as for over forty years of civil war they had been wont to acknowledge the victor's chosen presidential candidate.
This campaign was little more than a race, and it was said that the French conquered the country with their legs far more than with their bayonets.
In February, 1864, the general, uneasy at the turn which political affairs were taking in the capital, returned with an escort as suddenly as he had departed. It was high time. In his absence, Mgr. Labastida, not giving due consideration to the change of leadership that had taken place at the French headquarters, had so far forgotten himself as to fulminate, in the name of the church, against the French. But upon the return of the commander-in-chief he reconsidered his action, and publicly "gave them his blessing."*
* M. de Keratry, loc. cit., p. 33.
General Bazaine was at this time the most popular man in the army. Hitherto eminently successful in all his military undertakings, he had risen from the ranks, having won his honors step by step upon the battle-field, at first by his courage, later by his remarkable military ability.
He was a plain-looking man, short and thick-set, whose plebeian features one might search in vain for a spark of genius or a ray of imagination; and yet under the commonplace exterior dwelt a kindly spirit, an intelligence of no mean order, and, despite a certain coarseness of thought and expression too common among Frenchmen, a soul upon which the romance of life had impressed its mark in lines of fire.
The story went that, when a colonel, he had in Spain come across a little girl of great beauty and personal attractions, who seemed to him out of place amid her surroundings. He picked up the little wild rose as it grew on the roadside, and conceived the notion of transplanting it into good, rich soil, and of giving it its share of sunshine. He took the child to Paris, where he left her in a convent to be educated.
The soldier continued his brilliant career in the Crimea, Italy, Syria, and Africa; and when, after some years, he returned to Paris, he found the little girl grown into a beautiful and attractive woman, whose heart was full of warm gratitude for her benefactor. He fell in love with her, and, breaking through all rules of French matrimonial usage, married her.
Her charm won for her many friends in the circle which his position entitled her to enter; her attractions exposed her to temptations which her early training had ill fitted her to meet; and her death, which occurred under peculiarly distressing circumstances soon after his promotion to the command of the army in Mexico, was a cruel blow. The news of his loss reached the general while away from the capital on the brilliant campaign which added the greater part of the country to the projected empire (November, 1863). After a funeral mass, which he heard with his officers, he retired to his tent, and, alone, fought that hardest of all battles, and conquered his own heart. In a few days he returned to his duty, and no one ever knew what had passed in his innermost soul.
Two years later a ball was given at the quartier-general. Bazaine, who had lately been promoted to the rank of marshal (1864), had stopped for a moment to say a few words, when one of his guests, a young Mexican girl who was waltzing by, suddenly stopped near us, having torn her dress. Pins were produced, the damaged ruffle was repaired, and the girl passed on. "Who is this?" asked the marshal, evidently much struck with her appearance. "It is extraordinary," he muttered, "how much she reminds me of my wife." He looked distrait, and shortly after excused himself, and wandered off in the direction Mlle. de la Pena had taken.
The courtship was a short one. Maximilian, in order to facilitate a union which he deemed to be in the interest of his government, gave the young girl as a dowry the palace of San Cosme,* valued at one hundred thousand dollars; and thus was May united, to December. Two children were born to the marshal, one of them in Mexico,** and never was father prouder of his young wife and of her offspring than was the marshal.***
* A suburb west of Mexico.
** Maximilian was his godfather,
*** When, after the Franco-Prussian war, the marshal, having been made a sacrifice to France's wounded pride, was court-martialed, and, amid the imprecations of his countrymen, was imprisoned in the Fort de Ste. Marguerite, his young wife and her cousin contrived the perilous escape of the old man. By means of a rope procured for him by them he lowered himself from the walls of the fortress. Mme. Bazaine was awaiting him in a small boat, the oars of which were held by her cousin. A ship was near by, ready to sail, on which they sought refuge in Spain. And so it was that a fallen marshal of France passed from a state prison into exile, where he ended a life in which fame and romance had an equal share.