The American quarrel did not last, nor did the monarchy take root. The French troops were withdrawn before the government of the Empire was in any sense fully established. The national army which Bazaine sought to establish on a firm footing was not strong enough or loyal enough to uphold the Emperor, and he was sacrificed.
Everybody wished him to abdicate. Napoleon sent a special messenger to Mexico to urge this course; Bazaine urged it, and it seems now as if Maximilian himself must have perceived that there was nothing else left for him. But he was very slow to admit such an idea. Neither he nor the Empress in any sense realized their perilous position.
At the end of June, 1866, came the final word of Napoleon, in reply to an appeal sent to him from Maximilian, upon which he, and still more Carlotta, had founded great hopes. The message of the French Emperor was short, its tenor distinct, hard, making it clear that no further support was to be furnished by the Tuileries to the Mexican project; the conditions were hard, asserting that the troops must be immediately withdrawn. Maximilian at last understood that but one course was left to him—abdication. On the 7th of July he took up his pen to sign away the Mexican monarchy; but the Empress stayed his hand. Carlotta, of a will stronger than that of her husband, with a determined ambition, offered to go herself to Europe to make a personal appeal to Napoleon and another at Rome. On the very next day she left the capital in haste, never to return.
It is said that on arriving at Vera Cruz the Empress could find nothing at the quay but a small French boat to carry her out to the great steamer in the offing. She absolutely refused to place herself under the French colors which floated at the stern of the boat, so bitterly she felt the insult offered to her interests by the French nation.
She arrived at Saint-Nazaire early in August, to the surprise of the local authorities, and, still more, of the court of the Tuileries. The report of the arrival of the Empress of Mexico produced a sensation at Paris, for public opinion there was already interested in the Mexican drama. When Carlotta landed she was the object of a large crowd assembled on the docks. She appeared dressed in deep mourning, with great sadness of demeanor. Her face was pale and haggard, and her eyes burned with fever. She was accompanied only by a few ladies and gentlemen of her house. No preparation, of course, had been made for her; a common voiture de place took her to the hotel. Her Mexican servants, with their large sombreros trimmed with gold braid, made a sensation in the French port.
The next day she arrived in Paris, and went to the Grand Hotel, refusing to ask hospitality at the Tuileries. The imperial family was at Saint Cloud. She at once sent to request an immediate interview with Napoleon III.
The Minister of State paid her a visit immediately, and she passed part of the day in conversing with him. The next morning she went to the palace, although the Emperor had sent word that he was indisposed. Finally he concluded to see her. She eloquently demanded, on the part of Maximilian, continued aid, in money and troops. The interview was long and violent, it is said, and full of recrimination. The Empress, as all the fair structure of hopes she had raised since her departure from Chapultepec crumbled before her, gave way to bitter emotion. She declared that she, a king's daughter, of the blood of Orleans, had made a terrible mistake to accept a throne from the self-made Emperor of the French, a Bonaparte.
From this scene at Saint Cloud the madness of the new Empress is thought to have begun. She had scarcely the force left to continue her course to the Vatican, where she found no more redress than she had done at the Tuileries. The whole of Europe had soon to shudder at the news that she had lost her reason. She never returned to Mexico.
It was by way of the United States that Maximilian first heard of the failure of the interview at Saint Cloud. He kept silent, still hoping better success from the negotiations of the Empress with the Pope; but meanwhile he quietly made preparations for his departure from Mexico, giving out that it was his intention to meet the Empress at Vera Cruz on her return. Much household baggage had been already transferred thither, and the rumor spread abroad, of the probable departure of the royal household, producing a lively sensation throughout the country.