It all happened quickly—almost in the twinkling of an eye. The date of the departure of the last French detachment was February 5th, 1867; and it was on the following day that Maximilian dispatched his letter instructing Miramon to condemn Juarez to death. On February 13th, he left the city of Mexico, and on February 17 he entered Queretaro amid the acclamations of the Clerical inhabitants. On February 26th he decreed a forced loan, and actually got the money; but on March 2nd his enemies began to arrive. Roughly speaking, there were 40,000 Republicans against 7,000 Imperialists; and, after sustaining a siege of rather more than two months’ duration, Maximilian had to surrender in the early morning of May 15th.

The news came to Europe. A Habsburg—the brother of the head of the House of Habsburg—was in the hands of Indians and half-breeds, who threatened to treat him as he himself had threatened to treat their leaders, under that notorious Black Decree which his own hand had signed. It was an urgent question for Francis Joseph what steps, if any, he should take in order to try to save his brother’s life.

He could have made excuses to himself if he had decided to take no steps at all; for he, no less than the Mexicans, had his grievances against Maximilian. At a time when Francis Joseph seemed to have been compromised by disaster, Maximilian had been cheered in the streets of Vienna. There had been a party in Vienna which had entertained the idea of putting Maximilian on Francis Joseph’s throne. Maximilian had himself spoken imprudent words on that occasion; and the imprudent words had been reported. Moreover, even after Maximilian’s elevation to the throne of Mexico there had been stormy diplomatic passages-at-arms between the brothers.

Maximilian had resented Francis Joseph’s allusion, in his speech at the opening of the Reichsrath, to his resignation of his Austrian privileges, and had addressed an indignant protest to his diplomatic representative at Vienna: a protest in which he set forth that he had consulted the most eminent jurists of the day about the Family Compact which he had been induced to sign, and that they had unanimously advised him to treat it as null and void. The protest had been published in the Viennese newspapers, but had not been formally presented at the Austrian Foreign Office. The Austrian Foreign Minister, taking unofficial cognisance of it, had unofficially intimated that if it were so presented, the Mexican Minister would be conducted to the frontier. It would have been easy, therefore, for Francis Joseph to excuse himself for bearing malice and leaving Maximilian to his fate.

He bore no malice, and he did what he could. The Austrian Minister at Washington was instantly instructed to solicit the intercession of the Government of the United States. As a guarantee that, if Maximilian were spared, he would definitely abandon his ambitions, it was proposed to offer formally to restore him to his old status as a Habsburg, and a family council was convoked for that purpose. One of the Archdukes present raised objections, recalling Maximilian’s ambitions as an Austrian Pretender, and predicting trouble; but Francis Joseph would not listen. “That question,” he said, “is not before us. Our only question is: how to save human life.”

But Maximilian’s life was not to be saved. The man who had him in his power was a man whose life he had threatened. Juarez might play with Maximilian as a cat with a mouse, but he would not let go. He used fine phrases about it—“high considerations of justice,” and the like; he most punctiliously accorded Maximilian the benefit of all the forms of law. But the law was against Maximilian; there was no way through that Black Decree which he himself had promulgated. Legally and morally alike, Juarez had as good a title to execute him as he had ever had to execute Juarez; and Juarez stood upon his rights. He laughed—or rather the President of the court-martial laughed on his behalf—at Maximilian’s naïve invocation of “the immunities and privileges which appertain in all circumstances to an Austrian Archduke.” The Indians and half-breeds knew nothing and cared nothing for those privileges and immunities. The Austrian Archduke had pretended to be their Emperor, and had killed some of them and threatened to kill others, and for those offences he should be shot. They shot him in the early morning of June 19th, 1867. For Charlotte, who still had occasional glimmerings of sanity, he was “the good Shepherd who gave his life for the sheep”; but for his Mexican subjects he was merely the foreigner who had presumed to come among them and pretend to be an Emperor.

Such was the first of the long series of tragedies which were to punctuate Francis Joseph’s personal life; and there is a moving irony in the fact of its occurrence in the very year of his first great political triumph. One can imagine that the shame of it was an even heavier blow to him than the sorrow. A Habsburg, close to the Habsburg throne, tried like a criminal and shot like a dog by Indians and half-breeds; the head of the House of Habsburg unable to help him, and curtly told, almost without the formula of politeness, that his attempt to interfere was an outrage on “high considerations of justice”! Truly Francis Joseph must have felt in that hour that the curse of Countess Karolyi, called forth because he too had tried his enemies like criminals and shot them like dogs, had not been unavailing.

CHAPTER XIX

Habsburgs and Wittelsbachs—Which is the madder House?—Insanity of the Empress Elizabeth’s cousin, Ludwig II. of Bavaria—His eccentricities—His tragic death—Grief of the Empress—Suicide of Elizabeth’s brother-in-law, the Comte de Trani—Tragic death of the Archduchess Elizabeth.

Archduke Maximilian was dead, and Francis Joseph had to humble himself to the Indians and half-breeds, and beg their permission to fetch his brother’s body to Europe and bury it in the tombs of the Habsburgs. Archduchess Charlotte was stark, staring mad, and all hope of the restoration of her reason had been abandoned. There was to be no other tragedy quite so tragic, or quite so intimate, until that of Meyerling, to which we shall quickly come; but there were intervening tragedies, tragic and intimate enough, which hit Francis Joseph through his cousins of Bavaria. Notably there was the tragedy of Elizabeth’s cousin—who was also Francis Joseph’s cousin—King Ludwig II.