Charlotte, it seems, kept up his spirits during the voyage. She was going to be an Empress—that was enough for her. She knew nothing about Mexico, except that El Dorado lay thereabouts—nothing of the imperial status, except that it was outwardly splendid. She believed the people who told her that she was going to lie in a bed of roses in a gold mine. The things to which she looked forward were the banquets, the levées, the drawing-rooms, and the Court balls. Her talk—and Maximilian’s talk also when she launched him on the subject—was of rules of precedence, the creation of new Orders of Nobility, and new and lucrative offices for the benefit of personal friends. In short, as Emmanuel Domenech puts it in his History of Mexico:—
“One saw renewed on the Novara the story of the Frenchman who, having decided to open up trade with the Redskins of North America, stocked his shop with ostrich feathers, the most delicate linen of Belfast, and a number of costly porcelain tea-services.”
But the reality was widely different from the dreams; and disillusion followed quickly. Maximilian, like Charlotte, was puffed up with pride. He was even proud at Charlotte’s expense, and told her that, now that he was an Emperor, it would be unbecoming for her to enter his presence, without first asking permission, unless he sent for her; but that regulation was of no service to him in the practical conduct of Mexican affairs. His actual business as an Emperor consisted, and had to consist, in the waging of a civil war. So long as he had Bazaine and the French Army of Occupation to help him, he was able to wage his civil war successfully; but it was not long before Napoleon heard the voice of the President of the United States drawing his attention to the Monroe doctrine. Breaking his word to Maximilian, he withdrew his troops; and, after that, Maximilian’s position was hopeless.
So that we see misfortune and peril assailing the two Emperors of the House of Habsburg simultaneously: Maximilian fighting for his throne in every corner of his Empire in the very year in which Francis Joseph had to fight for his throne at Sadowa and Custozza. Only there was an important difference between the two cases. Francis Joseph’s enemies wished him no particular harm. They had certain affairs of honour and precedence to settle with him, and they meant to settle them; but, when those affairs were settled, they meant to shake hands and be friends. They did not thirst for his blood, but regarded his position as rather a convenience to Europe than otherwise, provided that he did not presume on it. He might suffer, but he would be left strong, and—above all—safe.
His brother Maximilian, on the contrary, was in personal peril, and knew it. Civil wars in Mexico were waged in a very different spirit from dynastic wars in Europe. There had once before been an Emperor of Mexico—the adventurer Iturbide—and he had been shot. There was a large party in Mexico—the party of Benito Juarez and Porfirio Diaz—which refused to recognise Maximilian, declaring that he was only pretending to be an Emperor, and that the real Government of the country was still Republican. The French had never quite subdued that party; and it began to lift its head again as fast as the French retired. If Maximilian was a nervous man, he had every reason to feel frightened.
He was a nervous man, and he did feel frightened. Charlotte was a nervous woman, and she was frightened too. It does not seem to have occurred to either of them that, if they could not maintain themselves in Mexico without French bayonets, they had no business there—ideas of that sort do not occur to Habsburgs who have tasted power: their accumulated pride—which is their substitute for strength—forbids. The idea was rather that, if they could not maintain themselves without French bayonets, those bayonets must be supplied; and it was agreed that Charlotte should go to Europe and lay that view of the matter before the Emperor of the French.
Her journey, in the year of Sadowa, was the occasion of the first of those blows which have since fallen, almost without cessation, on Francis Joseph’s head.
CHAPTER XVIII
Vanity and nervousness of the Empress Charlotte—Evil omens which frightened—Her journey to Europe to seek help for Maximilian—Her cold reception by Napoleon III.—Symptoms of approaching insanity—Her madness—Maximilian abandoned by the French—Attacked by the Republicans—Captured at Queretaro—Francis Joseph’s vain attempt to save him—His trial and execution.
It must be repeated that the common view of the Empress Charlotte as a valiant woman who took matters into her own hands when the Emperor Maximilian was timorous and hesitating cannot stand. She was, in the first place, a vain woman who took purely frivolous views of Imperial responsibilities; in the second place, a woman who lost her mental balance when she discovered that the position for which she had longed had its duties as well as its pleasures, and its perils as well as its privileges.