* "Diplomatic Correspondence," 1865, Part III, p. 484.
** According to Prince Salm-Salm, yet another attempt was planned in the fall of 1866, in which he and his wife were intended to be the principal actors, and were to be sent to Washington armed with a fund of $2,000,000 in gold. He states that the news of the Empress's illness, and the consequent failure of her mission abroad, prevented the carrying out of the scheme.
On January 1, 1865, President Juarez issued from Chihuahua a proclamation in which he confessed defeat, but in dignified tones asserted the righteousness of the national cause, in which he put his trust, and appealed to the nobler ideals of his countrymen.
At that moment, to the superficial observer, and in the capital, the empire seemed an accomplished fact. The country at large, although by no means pacified, was nominally under imperial rule. Almost alone, in the south, General Porfirio Diaz held his own at Oajaca, and remained unsubdued.
General Courtois d'Hurbal, who had been sent against him, had so far been unable to deal with him. The commander-in-chief resolved once more to take the field in person. As a result, Oajaca shortly afterward was taken, and General Diaz, at last forced to surrender, was made prisoner, and transferred to Puebla for safe-keeping.*
* He, however, boldly managed his escape a few months later, and again took the field at the head of a band of fourteen men. These increased in number, snowball fashion, as other guerrillas gradually rallied around the distinguished chief; and, at the head of an army, he reappeared in Oajaca. After defeating the Austrians, in whose keeping the state had been left, he reentered the city in October, 1866.
In the course of these and other vicissitudes General Diaz conducted himself not only as a patriot, but as a soldier. It was generally to him that the French turned when called upon by circumstances to trust to a leader's word or to his humanity. Yet General Forey, in the Senate, March 18, 1866, declared him a brigand in time whose summary execution would be warranted, as indeed would that of all the Mexican generals.
From Mexico to the coast the country was quiet, and things were apparently beginning to thrive. But if to the residents of the capital the national government was a mere theoretical entity, in the interior of the country, and especially in the north, the small numbers of the French scattered over so vast an expanse of territory were obviously insufficient to hold it permanently. In order to please Maximilian, they traveled from place to place, receiving the allegiance of the various centers of population;* their battalions multiplied their efforts, and did the work of regiments. But the predatory bands now fighting under the republican flag were, like birds of prey, ever hovering near, concealed in the sierras, ready to pounce upon the hamlet or the town which the French must perforce leave unprotected, and wreaking terrible vengeance upon the inhabitants.
* As Colonel de Courcy cleverly remarked, some of these regiments "brought back eighteen hundred leagues of country on the soles of their boots."
At this time there were some fifteen thousand French residents in the country, and these naturally suffered most both in life and property, especially toward the last.*