Bittersweet Infamy - #119 - In the Garden of the Emperor

Episode Date: March 23, 2025

Taylor tells Josie about France's disastrous attempt to overthrow the Mexican government in the 1860s, and the unwise rise and catastrophic fall of the last emperor of Mexico, Maximilian I. Plus: Taylor unpacks his trip to Cuernavaca, Mexico, including a tour of Jardín Borda, Emperor Maximilian’s lavish personal garden.

If you love chilling mysteries, unsolved cases, and a touch of mom-style humor, Moms and Mysteries is the podcast you've been searching for. Hey guys, I'm Mandi. And I'm Melissa. Join us every Tuesday for Moms and Mysteries, your gateway to gripping, well-researched true crime stories. Each week we deep dive into a variety of mind-boggling cases as we shed light on everything from heists to whodunits.

We're your go-to podcast for mysteries with a motherly touch. Subscribe now to Moms and Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Bitter Sweet and Sweet. I'm Taylor Basso and I'm Josie Mitchell. On this podcast, we share the stories that live on in infamy. The strange and the familiar. The tragic and the comic. The bitter and the strange and the familiar the tragic and the comic the bitter and the sweet Taylor welcome to 119 spring baby 119 you know what they say 119 that's extra clean oh they say

it they have said it and it is being said. They have said it but do they mean it? That's what I wonder. I mean it when I say it. I think that y'all are gonna really like what we've got in store for episode 119. It's mainly what you have in store. This is a Taylor Basel Basso special. It's not my name. Basel. It's not my name. But it's a special so when it comes together. Maybe today it is my name! It is a basil. Maybe it is today, so put in your basalts. A bushel of basil, yeah. I hope that it is as special as all that just was.

Truly, I think that you will enjoy. I told Josie to kick her feet up. She doesn't have to prepare anything today. Just come in and be ready to chat about my recent trip to Mexico with some friends of the podcast. And I even recorded a little bit of something from that for you. And then it'll all seg very beautifully into my story today. A little Faberge egg I made for you, very self-contained and beautiful. Oh, nice. Ooh. Yeah. Delicious and very springtime oriented. I like that. But it's sort of like, um, as it pertains to Mexico, maybe like Faberge huevos rancheros, you know what I mean? Ooh

Even better. Yeah, what was divorce? Ados? Let's go. Ooh. Yeah divorce those eggs. Mm-hmm Split him right on it. It's amazing. Yeah, but before we get into all that there's a there's something on the horizon Josie. Oh There is there is. There is iceberg dead ahead. It might be spring, but it's still chilly in those Atlantic waters. Yeah, that's true. And never was it chillier than in 1912. And in that spirit, here's a clip that we prepared for you.

If you listened last week, you already heard it, but if you didn't listen last week, you're hearing this for the first time. Listen and enjoy. April 1912. Somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. Hello, Taylor. I changed my mind. They said you might be up here. Shhh. Give me your hand. Keep your eyes closed, don't peek. I'm not. Now step up onto the rail.

Hold on. Keep your eyes closed. Do you trust me? I trust you. Alright. Open your eyes. I'm flying, Taylor! Well, the view from up here is rad, but if we're going to get started on our April episodes, we need to get down from this bow and get recording.

You're right. We've got to get ready for our Titanic new series, Bitter Sweet Infamy, Titanic April. A new story about the Titanic, every week in April, on 604 Podcast Network. Let's get to it! I'm king of the world! How are your Titanic preparations coming along? For Titanic April? They're coming well!

I've watched two films now, including the film of recent note, James Cameron's 1997 Titanic, which we're going to be hitting up over on the film club this month, coffee.com, k-i-f-n-f-i.com slash bittersweet, infamy. The other pertains to the episode, my first of two episodes that I'm going to be doing. We're going every week in April. Titanic was a big ship, a lot of stories. It was the biggest ship. Yeah, at the time it was, yeah. In the Basso household of one, we're very immersed as it were in the Titanic lore right now. How about you and Mitchell? Oh my goodness. The Mitchell Collins home, the Collins Mitchell home, the Josie and Mitchell

home, I don't know. I was Titanic-pilled for sure. We're in it. By the way, I should add that was Mitchell playing that Heart Will Go On cover in the background of our ad on the Melodica that I got him for Christmas. It's pretty like haunting, I have to say. Yeah, it's very nautical, huh? So what all have you, other than getting your melodica practice in, what all have you done to prepare for this April marathon of ours, this journey across the Atlantic that is hopefully uninterrupted? I have gotten a whack of library books from the Houston Public Library, which is pretty

fun for a topic that's this big because like for smaller things, you know, or like more niche things. There's like a book. A book. And it's like not available for six more weeks or whatever. But like with the Titanic, I'm just like, I want this, I want this, I want this, I want this, I want, I want 10 books. And then, you know, you get your five, you get, you know you know your fifty percent rate on that some of them just have nice pictures. What about it?

Oh, I love it the National Geographic one. Yeah amazing so good. Yeah great for a podcast. Yeah, wow We're gonna get into it. We're gonna get into it all in April every week every single week plus on the film club There's a lot to get into so it gonna be good And if you feel like a chiller, more abiding treatment of a nautical theme, why not join us over on the bittersweet film club now at coffee.com slash bittersweetinfamy and you become a monthly subscriber and you can listen to our take on the 1980 musical version of Popeye at the behest of our subscriber Ramon, friend of the podcast, former guest of the podcast, Ramon.

They built a set in Malta for this thing. They had a big cocaine trafficking thing. It was a whole thing. Mitchell does a little bit of research in it. Yeah, and that's the thing too, is we always do a little bit of research into the movie. And if there's any sort of infamous case that's related to the movie, we give you like a little bit of info on that too. It's a whole thing. We find it. We Google that. Have you seen Google these days? That's hard. It is. Oh my God. Yes. Right. I have to say you're looking very like island themed or like vacation. Like you just got back. It is a Hawaiian shirt,

but I did not get back from Hawaii. I got back from Mexico. But I am wearing, I should say on this trip, I bought some silver that I am wearing. I'm wearing a little tea necklace. I was noticing that. That's really cute. Tea for Taylor. And I have a little crown ring. Oh, that's nice. And those are just in case I need something to melt down into a little cube when Trump sends the nukes across the border. I also happened to be staying in Cuernavaca, which is in the province of Morelos, which is outside or state of Morelos, or I'm not. I pledge myself to be no expert in Mexican geography and believe me that will hamper me in the 90 or so minutes to come. Basically it's a little area just outside of Mexico City,

which is where I stayed with my partner and his family, as well as a friend of the podcast, Nigel Wong. That sounds like your partner is Nigel Wong. Maybe someday. Oh! My partner is Rui Gonzalez, whose family I stayed with. Rui is originally from Cuernavaca, which is where we stayed. And the Gonzalezales Flores clan, Rui Sr., Mari, Nick graciously opened their doors to us.

This is a very nice house, mind you. Oh, I love that. Not that it's just a nice house, that they opened their nice house to you. Oh no, I love that it was a nice house too. Okay, okay. Don't get me wrong. Everything in there very custom done by their grandmother,

late grandmother, who was like an artist. And now Rui's family lives there and it's just a stunning space. So cool. Really beautiful hand-carved archways. We were also there with Rui's two dogs, Kodiak and Lola. And Kodiak is like a big sleepy Malamute that is entirely motivated by lying around

or asking you for food. Oh. Like gigantic wolfdog. And then Lola is a little Chihuahua thing that was found down a well and now they're helping her. And Lola's very sweet. Lola just lays on her pillow and is very kind or was to me at the very least. What a pair. Yeah. They don't seem to hang out much. They're very, I think they're both maybe introverts. Okay, they have different schedules, different interests, hobbies, that kind of thing.

Different patches of cool ground that they like to lay on, yes. Well, you know, that's good. Good fences make good neighbors, as they say. That's what I think. And beautiful yard, I should say. Rui's a farmer and a gardener and a botanist and great with flowers and plants of all kinds. And has set up the garden very nicely there with orchids and hanging baskets and landscaping to beat the band. Wait, how far were you from, like you flew into Mexico City? Yes, flew into Mexico City and then Cuernavaca, which is where we were staying is an hour and a half,

two hour drive from the airport along that gigantic system of highways that sprawls out from Mexico City, right? It's the kind of place where you would say I'm going to Mexico City if you didn't want to get too into the specifics, but it's its own area with its own kind of history and its own specific, it's got its own downtown, it's got its own pretty much everything, right? Like it's its own place. Yeah. And because Mexico City is kind of its own state, whereas Cuernavaca is in Morelos, it is more, especially its own place, right? It's like Sur Rita, Vancouver. That makes sense. Especially because yeah, Mexico City Distrito Federal is

just so huge. Oh baby, is it ever. Did the dogs ever go venturing with you? Why would they? They've got their life figured out. They were chilling under the hanging orchids. Oh, and then someone comes and gives them food cause they looked at them. It's great. We went to the pyramid of Tepoxtec,

which overlooks the city of Tepoztlan. Ooh, okay, okay. Tell me more. Tepoztlan is a Pueblo Magico. Does that mean anything to you? A magic town. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's basically an official designation

that you can get in Mexico. I don't know the specifics of what one does to obtain and keep Pueblo Magico's status, but I assume it's sort of like a heritage designation where if you keep things a certain way and da da da da da, then we kind of name you a Pueblo Mágico and it's a tourism draw and it worked on me because there I was, right? Well, it was magic, yeah. It was like magic, there I was. And so this is like a really cool little pueblo where there's lots of like tiendas. There's lots of places you could go see a play

or get some shoes or just a little nice town that people live in. Yeah, and kind of old town vibe. But like a pueblo vibe, right? So you can kind of see like, it's got the influence of Spanish colonial styles. It's got the influence of, you know, local indigenous styles,

that sort of very classic Mexican pueblo. Yeah. And at the very top of this like kind of winding walk slash climb, I would say, it's really a climb up a mountain. And then when you get to the top of the mountain, there's this small little pyramid that was built for Tepochteketl, who's the Aztec god of the harvest fertility, Pulque, I think. Oh yeah. Did you try Pulque?

I didn't have Pulque. I don't know why I didn't have Pulque. After we went up to the top of Tepoxteco, which again, that'll burn the thighs. Good thing for that lazy river. I did get a mojito that is served in a large collectible mug that is in the shape of a chinelo's dancer, which is like a type of a dancer that exists in the area that is sort of made to look like a slightly mocking version of a fair-skinned European man with a pointed beard. And they kind of dance around in these weird little dresses, very of the area. I then went into the bathroom of the place and used the toilet, but then I saw too late that you're not allowed to flush toilet paper,

it'll back out, so I had to take all of the toilet paper out with my hand. Oh no. Which I then sanitized the fuck out of and then immediately went and started petting a bunch of stray dogs. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. With like open sores and shit, but they're very cute. One of the stray dogs from the city was actually at the top of the pyramid at De Pustico with us and then later we saw him again trotting around. Yeah, chilling, keeping track of you. Yeah, and I was like, I guess that's his day. He goes, he does his stair master, comes back down, chills and hangs around the tourists who seem like they might be into the food given mood.

Yeah, or at least a pet or two. Yeah, or like a companionship mood or whatever it is. Oh, he's just, yeah, he's like the little welcome wagon. Yeah. Didn't even mind your poop hands. That's really sweet. I sanitize them really well. My traveling companions were disgusted with me. Um, but yeah, all in, I would say you should go to Tepozlan if you're in the area. Okay. Very fun. That sounds pretty rad. You went to go see some Lucha Libre, didn't you? I did go to go see some Lucha Libre.

Yes, good call. How was that? Excellent, loved it. So it was my first Lucha Libre show, which is like funny, not only as like a big wrestling fan who's been to Mexico City before. Yeah.

But also we've talked about Lucha Libre a lot on the show. In this particular instance, we went to a CMLL show, which is Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre. It's a 90-ish year old organization that puts on shows constantly at Arena México, which is their iconic venue right in the middle of Mexico City proper. Oh wow. I got us banger seats. I figured out you want to go to Superviernes because that's their best show.

Tickets are still pretty affordable on those days I got in for. I couldn't tell it to you in Bezos but like put it to this way I got nice tickets for 25 bucks a ticket because I wanted to show my friends and Rui's family a good time because Rui's parents came with us and they'd never been to a lucha show before. Oh fun! So you were all you were all freshy newbie. We were all there together and I was there to like sort of act as like cultural translator for wrestling if need be, you know what I mean? That's very cool. Oh, I love that.

On the way into the arena to find parking, we got like the signature Mexico City gridlock traffic. Oh yeah. We're just, you're moving around a block in 20 minutes kind of thing. And everybody's in the packed in the car too. We got a park in like the middle, right outside the lot. And they're like, oh, we'll still look after it. We'll still look after it.

And then we suddenly get split. It's this big like crush of humanity kind of outside the arena. You get to all of these tiendas that are selling like wrestling figures, masks, every Lucha mask you can think of. Yeah. We kind of got split into men and women for pat downs, then we went up to get our seats.

I got nice seats, overlooking, like set behind the ring, everyone kind of coming down right to us. That's so good. One thing about CMLL that I really like is they have sexy ladies who are like, they're not tawdry. They're wearing like, there's the silhouette of what they're wearing is basically a Hooters girl outfit, right? Low-cut top, short sleeves, hot pants, but not like, not showing coos or anything because this is a family show. And there's probably pantyhose. Oh, yeah. A nice like nude pantyhose.

There's one of them on either side of the entrance where all the wrestlers come in and they always do like a little like a dance no more complicated than a box step to like very four four like one two three four one two that's just like the same four steps repeating over and over and they're just there to be sexy and do that little dance when the people come in they're great i thought the in ring action broadly was really good there was a really good women's tag match there was a really good it was like people from cdmx versus uh people from guadalajara, it was like people from CDMX versus people from Guadalajara and it was like a six on each side elimination match. It was really a really good show.

Everyone I was with enjoyed it very much. I got this mask, this a mystical mask. He's like a big name luchador. I really wanted another mask that was like a sexy lady kitty, but then the guy who was buying the mask was like, you don't want that's for a girl and I got like I guess like intimate okay I'll take this other mask which I really do like this mask yeah but the whole time I was like bitch and I'm like oh I should have gotten the other cat mask and so then when we were outside after the show as it like poured

rain starts one of these Mexican downpours oh me and Ruiz mom managed to find it's not the exact same mask but it's a very cute like orange kitty mask. Oh. And so this isn't the exact mask that I was eyeballing in the stadium, but it has this very nice story now of being like, as we leave the event, as it's pouring rain, just ducking into like a thing and being like,

do you happen to have an orange cat mask? And they did, and it was very cute, right? Thank you, thank you, Mommy for that. That and me and Rui's mom. Yeah, very cute, very cute. What if I told you I did some caving? I would say no fucking way. We went to the Grutas de Cacahuamilpa.

So this is the day after we went to the Lucha Libre show. We went to the Grutas de Cacahuamilpa, which is a big series of, it's a national park. It's a series of caves with like a history dating back to its use as a site of worship by the indigenous people there. But it's basically these giant caves that you go into with like when you imagine a cave just like pitch black

and covered in stalagmites and slack tights and like evidently winding down forever. Amazing. This cave. Did you do spelunking or was it kind of just like some easy hiking into it or was there any swimming? A guided tour, like a few kilometers of a walk. Okay. There is a more intense one version of it below it apparently that's only open some time of the year because it's often flooded but you can swim there I think if you want. That's like an

intense situation. Yeah, that's the descent We don't we don't do that. I remember the last time your cave tour guide You thought was a bit awkward with his jokes. Mine was good. Yeah, I was good. Yeah Did you learn about any like weird little cave animals or insects? No weird cave animals or insects per se but it's an interesting cave and they have a lot of like formations that have been per se, but it's an interesting cave and they have a lot of like formations that have been marked in ways both religious and secular. So you'll get like, that's the Corazon de Guadalupe. That's Patrick from SpongeBob's house.

You know what I mean? Cool. I like that. Yeah. That's the elote. That's the mayonnaise dripping onto it. Yeah. Those are the young lovers.

There's the stepmother interrupting them in their throes of passion. Just like the way that we look at the stars and make pictures that's so too dewy in the cave. That's so cool. There's a theater in there that like apparently Pavarotti's performed there and you know, Placido and all the all the greats. Whoa. There's also a bathroom decorated with Fred Flintstone and it's immediately next to like

someone's grave who died there. Whoa. Yeah. Oh damn. I would say that I also recommend the Grutas de Cacoa Milpa if you're in the area. We went to a zoo so far in the area which was really cute because there was capybaras there. Oooh. But the camels ate all of our pellets like just took them and threw them so I don't recommend the camels. One thing that I really enjoyed was there was one day where Rui, Nigel, and I went to the city center of Cuernavaca, which is the town that we were seeing. And Cuernavaca means like cow horn, basically.

Cute. Love it. I should say the same day that we went to Cuernavaca, there was a 4.7 earthquake back in Vancouver. Whoa. Since no one got hurt and there was no major damage, I was choked that I missed it. I was pissed. That is kind of wild though that you're in central Mexico. Mexico!

Where the last time you and I were there, we got fucking earthquakeed. Yes! That was wild! I was in that, like, I forget what floor, like 12th floor or something like that. Seventh floor, I think. Something to that degree. Seventh floor. Yeah.

Apartment. And was like, why is the blind pole hitting against the window? That doesn't feel right. There's no wind or anything. Wild, wild stuff. But you missed that. I didn't miss the Mexico one. I remember you coming out of the bedroom and being like, dude, there was just an earthquake.

And I was like, cause I had heard this noise that just sounded like someone banging pots and pans while really skating around upstairs. Yeah. I was like, what the fuck are they doing up there? You came out and said there was an earthquake. I was like, really? And then I felt the whole building fucking shake. And I was like, yup.

Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I have been through earthquakes in Vancouver. I always miss them by being like in the shower because they're so small that you can't feel them if you're like distracted in any meaningful way. This one, apparently everyone was a flutter about the Vancouver earthquake and I missed it. Oh, I'm so sorry. We also went to the Palacio de Cortes, which is one of the oldest buildings in the Americas. As conquistadors do things,

it was built over an Aztec tribute site in the 1520s. Seems about right. It was Cortes's personal residence since then it's been a prison as well as the seat of governance of Cuernavaca and now it's the Museo Regional de los Pueblos de Morelos and it sort of tells the story of the area. How cool! I love when historic sites become museums because then you can go in them. That's great. And this one has like a bunch of really cool Diego Rivera paintings on the top floor that depict the conquest of Mexico. Whoa, are they murals or painting? Murals. Oh wow. Painted onto the walls. Yeah. Whoa, very cool. So that was really cool.

And then we went to the Borda Garden. Have you ever heard of the Borda Garden? No, I have not. Basically the Borda Garden. Have you ever heard of the Borda Garden? No, I have not. Basically, the Borda Garden is located directly in the city center of Cuernavaca. It was the basically vacation residence of Maximilian I, who was sort of a failed emperor of Mexico. Do you know Maximilian I? I know that he was a Habsburg

who was trying to like take over Mexico, but they very famously kicked his ass You got his shit pushed in yeah, yeah Which is like a beautiful like story of like European trying to conquest and failing a colonialism flop We love to see it. Yeah, so this is where him and his wife Carlotta Princess Charlotte of Belgium But Carlotta in the same way that Hillary becomes Hilaria. You know what I mean? My mom tried to bet me $10 to say she has completely bought into their rehab on TLC.

She's like, I bet you Hilaria is really Spanish. And my mom's Spanish. I know, so that the snow job is good. I took the bet and I looked it up on Wikipedia. She's like French, Irish, like da, da, da, da, da. I sent that back to my mom. She's like, the papers are gonna come. Let's get Geraldo on the case,

get those papers out there. I love it. She's playing the long game. She's like, this bet is not over. It's a shitty bet. No, the bet's over in my, the bet has been over. But whatever. Fun fact for bittersweet infamy trivia heads.

First ever minfamous Hilaria Baldwin. Yeah, oh my gosh. She lowkey has a place of honor in the pantheon. We don't talk Baldwin. Yeah, oh my gosh. She Lowkey has a place of honor in the Pantheon. We don't talk about it much, but she does. Whether or not she's Spanish is another question, but. Que bueno. So the reason, Josie, that I wanted to go

to the Jardin Borda in particular, because it's a big, nice botanical garden, but I very insistently put it on our itinerary for this trip. Well, and how nice to go with Rui the botanist. Yeah, this garden actually has a history of, let's say, rumors around it. Mmm, a rumorous garden. A rumorous garden, as no one says.

I'm- You're someone. Josie Mitchell, you are somebody, okay? Thank you, thank you. No worries. There's a lot of rumors in the vein of this place is haunted by the ghosts of anyone, but particularly common was indigenous servants that Maximilian mistreated. Right.

Okay. That was the most common, there's ghosts here thing that I saw. And I should say I didn't see any ghosts. That you know of? That I know of. They did not to say they didn't see me, but I didn't see them. They were well hidden that day. The other rumor that was quite common is of an affair between the Emperor Maximilian and

the teenage daughter. And again, we're using affair because that's the terms that was couched and use whatever modern term you want to for an emperor banging a teenager. Yeah. Her nickname was supposed to be La India Bonita because she was a very beautiful young indigenous woman and she was supposedly, and you'll notice that supposedly doing some work, the daughter of the gardener of the border garden, which is where me, Rui and Nigel visited. And in the Manuel M. Ponce salon of this place,

because it's actually, in addition to being a garden, it's got a little bit of a museum quality to it. And there's actually some quite forward thinking. There was like a, here's an exhibit on how many Afro Descendiente people of African descent live in Morelos. Here's like a Palestine thing. Like it was very, and there's a lot of information too

about like the injustices of the time, the caste system, that sort of thing. So you could very easily just sell that for what it is, which is a brush with royalty and get rid of the woke shit and people would still come. So I admire that they are so forward thinking in their programming here. So that's a mark for it. Yeah, that's very cool. But in the Manuel and Ponce salon, we have a large image by a painter named Salvador Tarazona, and I take special care to pronounce that name correctly because you'll hear me mispronounce it later in this bit of recorded footage.

Oh, okay. I say Tarazano. It's not. It's Tarazona. That's the pronunciation police. They heard me doing it again. I hear them. Yeah.

Wow. I'm going to show you this painting now, and it's a painting of an encounter between the emperor Maximilian and La India Bonita, the 17-year-old gardener's daughter he was supposed to have been engaged in liaison with. Very beautiful garden. It looks like some of it is kind of like wild flowers that are growing under a tree, but then there's also a beautiful pond it looks like and lawn and but the figures in this in the foreground there is la India Bonita I guess. Yup.

And she has a bouquet in her hands and it seems like she's wearing like a long embroidered dress and an embroidered top with her hair and braids and she's kind of sheepishly behind a tree looking out at the path where it looks like a very like 19th century Western gentleman is atop a very like perky white horse. The perfect horse. The perfect horse. Yeah. That horse was the first thing drawn. Yeah.

Yes. Yeah. And he's not noticing her. He seems to be maybe looking beyond her, but in her general direction. And he does seem to have like a Mexican, but colonial style saddle. As Maximilian became more accustomed to his new home country, he took on the stylings of it more and more, right? But also retained that Habsburg, like that is a Habsburg, you know?

Oh yeah, yeah, the like bifurcated beard, yeah, totally. So this painting hangs big as hell at the border garden. Unfortunately, we were not able to get in to see it because we arrived too late in the day, they'd already closed that room. Oh no. I was able to record a bunch of our trip to the border garden,

I was able to record a bunch of our trip to the border garden as well as a little bit of a explanation slash debunking of what we see here in this painting. Ooh One thing that's really nice is it happened to be the International Day of the Mother Tongues that day So there was a children's choir singing in Nahuatl. Oh my god Damn, dude talk about luck. They knew I was recording today, so they showed up. So you're going to hear here and there little snatches of kids singing in Nahuatl, which is a language of southern Mexico and Central America, one of the indigenous languages, particularly I guess relating to the Aztec.

Oh, that's so cool. I love that. So the next things you'll be hearing are from Rui Nigel and Taylor from the past Thank You future Taylor we are here in the Jardin Borda in beautiful Cuernavaca in Morelos, Mexico and This is a beautiful Residence and garden that has been many things and right now it is the site where I am Just chilling with my friends and friends of the podcast Nigel Long. Hello. And Rui Gonzales. Hi. And we're just gonna be walking around and taking in the sights of this garden that is

it was originally built in 1783 as a private residence for the Spanish merchant Jose de la Borda and he was a big silver guy at Taxco. Taxco is like a silver making capital of the area. And this garden was actually designed by Gustav Eiffel of the tower. Nigel have you ever been to the Eiffel tower? I have. Is this then the second Eiffel designed thing that you've seen? This is the second. Rui, how many Eiffel designed things have you seen? A few. I've been to Paris and they're here. There you go. After Borde d'Aida underwent many transformations, and in 1866 it became the summer residence of Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico and his wife, the Empress Carlotta.

And it sort of just became their summer residence where they entertained, I guess, various rich people and exploited various less rich people. Vamanos! That was lovely. They're practicing like native languages. Cool! I adore that. This is the international day of the Tongues basically and we're practicing our indigenous languages and singing beautifully. I'm going to be a good boy. I'm going to be a good boy. I'm going to be a good boy. I'm going to be a good boy.

I'm going to be a good boy. I'm going to be a good boy. I'm going to be a good boy. I'm going to be a good boy. I'm going to be a good boy. I'm going to be a good boy. I'm going to be a good boy. I'm going to be a good boy.

I'm going to be a good boy. I'm going to be a good boy. What are they called? I don't remember. But you can eat them. You roast these, like you take them out and they're green and you roast them. Can I eat them like this? They're not poisonous but they're not tasty at the moment. Ah! That's like eating a little piece of glass.

Yeah! So delightedly, yeah you get it exactly! Yeah, that's why I said they're not good right now. I admit. You did make the right... No disrespect, but... You did make the right... No disrespect but... We've established that the language that the children were singing in earlier was Nahuatl. Sweet! I know some words in Nahuatl.

Si huapili means princess like you. You're pronouncing the H. Si huapili. Princess, don't turn on me like this. What do you mean? What do you want me to say? Si huapili. Huapili? Si huapili. Princess don't turn on me like this See what Billy see what Billy yeah princess like you No No, no, I wouldn't ask I wouldn't ask you to do that. I don't know what that means I'm not trying to get anyone accidentally cancelled

Oh, I actually kind of knew that too. This is all Nancy Drew's Secret of the Scarlet Hand by the way. That's funny. Yeah. That's where my limited nahuatl comes from. You don't pronounce the H? I know, it's habitual. Yes. Nahuatl.

Do you mean habichual? It's habitual. Habitual. Habitual as in? What. Abitual al fin. What are some of the Spanish words you've learned on this trip, Nigel? I have learned pregunta. Yeah. Which means?

Question. Yeah. I've learned... What else have I learned? Camarones is shrimp. You got it? Give us one more for posterity. Azul is blue.

Good job, babe. Good job. You're practically a local. Anyone needs, if I have a question where can I find blue shrimp, I'll be in business. Exactly. So this is like a man-made lake. Yeah, I used to come here and I've fallen into this before. What happened? We came here for the first here and I've fallen into this before. What happened? We came here for the first time and I thought it was like a shallow little pond. And you were like, I'm gonna do the friends, the friends in show kind of thing. How old were you?

I was like, hip-high. Like maybe five. Okay, that's a little bit more excusable then. So one of the best- known attractions of the Jardín Borda is a painting by a painter named Salvador Tarazano and it's called La India Bonita and it shows Maximilian I sort of regarding this beautiful indigenous woman, hence La India Bonita, and this is a woman who's supposedly the daughter of the gardener of the Borda, the Borda Garden.

And he's supposed to, Maximilian is supposed to have like had an affair with her and taken her as his mistress. So I did a little bit of looking into this and this woman supposedly was named Concepcion Sedano Leguizamo or Leguizamo Sedano, we don't know. A researcher named Octavio Sedano did a whole bunch of research into her, couldn't find a damn thing. So who is this woman? Is she real? We think maybe not. It turns out that there was a guy named Julio Sedano Leguizamo who lived in Paris and he kind of made his inroads by

saying, that he, because of his physical resemblance to Maximilian, kind of blonde hair, blue eyes, that he was the son of Maximilian and this lady, La India Bonita. And he used this to gain entree to all kinds of spy circles, like he was traveling in the circles with the Madahari, he sold gunpowder to these people who tried to blow up the Eiffel Tower. Like truly a thumb in every pie this guy Julio who was sort of masquerading. He was like the secretary of an ambassador masquerading as the son of Maximilian in La India Bonita. Um, entonces, why do we have this painting of La India Bonita by Tarasano? Well, the story goes according to a researcher named Arianna Estrada Cajigal,

the story goes that Salvador Tarasano kept eating at a restaurant in Cuernavaca called La India Bonita that had a lot of art on the wall of indigenous women. And he sort of just took this and ran with it. Jesus. Yeah. So this sort of like fictional figure who's like quite infamous, La India Bonita, she probably didn't really exist. And as for our boy Julio Sedano Le Coisamo, shot for treason in Paris, so

it goes. But not the only person to me to grim face. See, we're not really here to talk about Maximiliano and La India Bonita. That's just one aspect of Maximiliano, the first supposed story that is infamous because not only was he the emperor of Mexico y'all, he was the last emperor of Mexico and his brief tenure as emperor, it was a fucking gong show. Back to you in the studio Josie and Taylor. Bye everyone! Say bye!

Bye! Beautiful Anonymous changes each week. It defies genres and expectations. For example, our most recent episode, I talked to a woman who survived a murder attempt by her own son. But just the week before that, we just talked the whole time about Star Trek. We've had other recent episodes about sexting in languages that are not your first language or what it's like to get weight loss surgery. It's unpredictable. It's real. It's honest.

It's raw. Get beautiful anonymous wherever you listen to podcasts. I love it. I love it. That's so cute. What a good idea. We're covering Maximilian and his whole fucking flop campaign on Mexico. Oh my. Yes. I'm so stoked, I'm so stoked. That's the story. And another thing I should say is like, since then I've read a book called

The Last Emperor of Mexico by Edward Chacras. It has a longer title, I'll shout it out properly shortly. But that one put some credibility into the rumors of Lindio Bonita. So maybe this is a rumor that was spreading around that time about him that sort of became this restaurant or this painting or whatever. But the fact fact remains we can't pin this to an actual woman.

We can't. Thank you to Nigel and Rui for agreeing to play along with that. That's so cool! I was very conscious that when you bring the recording device for your podcast into a place that's rumored to be haunted by ghosts, you are like the guy from the horror movie who gets killed on tape, right? Wait, you brought your blue snowball? No, no, that was all, you could probably hear from the audio movie who gets killed on tape, right? Wait, you brought your blue snowball?

No, no, that was all, you could probably hear from the audio. That was all just taped on my phone. Oh, okay. Voice notes. But you could hear too that like, we truly are in the middle of downtown Cuernavaca. Yeah. There is a non-subtle city noise happening around you constantly,

but you're in this like beautiful botanical garden that's half like, pollinized Mexican plants. So we've got like native Mexican plants here, but then also we've got roses because this was a fucking Habsburg's house. We need some roses. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Designed by Gustav Eiffel, very beautiful space, little manmade lake that Rui fell into once. Oh, poor Rui. That's what we're going to be diving into. I am stoked. The flop, flop, floppity flop that was the second French intervention in Mexico. Because of course, as we join our story, all of these various powers, France, Spain, America, US, United States of, have all been fucking putting their beaks into Mexico for a long time.

Yep. Everybody loves Mexico, don't they? It's a beautiful place. Yet again, it is the case that I've got to compress like, let's say 400 years of history. Yeah, there we go. You know, real quick, as you one does, you know. I should say a great deal, before I do that, great deal of help comes from my main source, a book called The Last Emperor of Mexico,

the dramatic story of the Habsburg archduke who created a kingdom in the New World. It's by a British writer named Edward Shawcross. In discussing the book, Shawcross called the saga a storyteller's delight, as in, you will have fun telling this storyteller, which kind of brought me in. Yeah. I will say I agree, except that there are so very many characters.

Oh. As tends to happen in stories about both European nobility and military history, I would observe. You get a guy who does one important thing or you get some brother who blah blah blah blah blah. The audiobook version of The Last Emperor emperor of Mexico available by the way with a Spotify premium subscription like don't shop American But you know it's on Spotify premium which I have so I'm a hypocrite But which came in very useful in this particular situation And I've got to say Spotify premium has a fucking banger library of books everything is on there in audiobook form like everything for free Really? Yeah, yeah, not for free, but like for your subscription fee.

Robots are taking over the ambient music category there. It's terrible. I'm dead serious, the robots are killing my ambient electronica with like AI loops. This is a real problem. I'm so sorry. It's okay. I didn't expect my like chill library music to be the first thing to go, but whatever. I'll just make sure that it's something Czech from 1973 before I put it on now.

Not a hipster. So I will say that audiobook of The Last Emperor of Mexico is about 12 hours long. And it includes many more people, places, and religious and political themes than I have the luxury to go into in the next 90 minutes. If this version leaves you hungry for the more comprehensive telling, I recommend giving that book a read or a listen. Nice. Josie, what do you know about the Habsburgs?

So I know of the Habsburgs. They were the royal family of the Holy Roman Empire. They were from Austria. What else could I say? The sense that I get is that they were one of the last ruling families of Europe that kind of like intermarried all over the place, you know? They were very good about spreading their issue and like intermarrying strategically. Yes. But they were one of the last families to do that in like the early, I don't know, early 1900s, I felt like they kind of hit up against World War I.

World War I is about the assassination of Franz Ferdinand who was a Habsburg. Archduke. But yeah, that timeline of them being kind of on the tail end of an aristocratic Europe is kind of how they landed in Mexico, right? They were trying to get rid of Maximilian in some way. Okay, so you do know a bit about this,

like a good Texas girl shed. Oh. Basically, it was opportune for Maximilian to be the guy for the spot, just like almost sort of through inertia, like it being him ticked a lot of boxes, but it's not like he was particularly, other than he was sort of in his

brother's craw a lot just because they had differing political opinions, and we'll get into that. His brother was the emperor of Austria at the time, but other than that, he was sort of just a useful idiot. Like a useful, very earnest idiot. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. So to give you a little bit more depth on the Habsburgs, from the monarchy of King Rudolf of Germany in 1273 until the dissolution of their seat of power following the events of World War I in the 20th century, the Habsburg family enjoyed extensive prestige and power by occupying a number of royal thrones

and lesser noble titles in places like Austria, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Hungary, Croatia, like the list truly goes on and on and on and on and on. Damn, okay. Places that don't exist anymore, places that still do, some that still do but under different names. Right, yeah.

Places that sound made up, just like everything, everything. Okay, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. A lot of both. If you were a Habsburg who fell into a prominent place in the line of succession, chances are you would, through inheritance, appointment or marriage,

come into a throne, big or small, of your own one day. Okay, okay. Like you're an archduke at a minimum, you are an archduke. One notable Habsburg was King Charles of Spain, who in the 16th century sponsored the conquistador, Hernan Cortes, whose fucking house I just hung out at. Not friendly terms, different Spanish guys. In his efforts to topple the Aztec Empire

and bring Mexico under Spanish influence under the name New Spain. 200,000 plus dead indigenous people later, Cortes was and remains a pretty contentious figure in the region's history for obvious reasons. Keep this in the back of your mind as you hear this week's story, which involves a member of the Habsburg dynasty parachuting in unbidden to reorganize the affairs of the newly established Mexican Republic a few hundred years later. Cool cool cool. Tie tie tie.

People are a bit sussy of this and you might understand why. Hmm. I wonder. I wonder why? That's so strange. This story takes place in an era of Mexican independence. To start, I'm putting it all in Maximilian. As I'm alluding, there's things happening behind the curtain here for which Maximilian is maybe a useful puppet. Right, yeah, yeah. How does Mexico

become independent at this point? We got to move forward to the 19th century when in 1810 we get what is called the Grito de Dolores, the Cry of Dolores, literally the Cry of Pain, but so called because it took the form of a speech by Catholic priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla in the city of Dolores. So that's where the Dolores comes from. That it is pain is sort of a coincidence, although what a beautiful and poetic coincidence it is. Snaps Mexico, snaps. It got it. Urging the Mexican people to take up arms against their Spanish oppressors. This kicks off the Mexican War of Independence, which is a series of conflicts that would

result in 600,000 deaths. So a hard fought battle for independence. And Mexican Independence is in September. It's September 16th. That's right. That's the day of the Grito de Dolores. Yeah. And gringos always think it's Cinco de Mayo, but it's not. We get all into Cinco de Mayo in this story. Oh, we do? Yes. Yes. Cinco de Mayo comes from this story. Another thing that comes from this story, the phrase Latin America comes from this story.

Oh, very nice. Oh. Yeah. See, we're getting some like background on some sort of like, I guess, like cultural touchstones around this area and this time. Give me some foundational things that I didn't even know I needed to know. This is, I love this. Eleven years after the Grito de laores in 1821 a declaration of Mexican independence is drafted and military hero Agustín de Iturbide is named emperor in what will come to be called the first Mexican empire. As emperors do he moves from liberator to dictator going as far as

to dissolve the congress. people decide that newly independent nation needs not a monarchy, but a representative government of the people, notably the Mexican army, turns on Iturbide. So Iturbide reinstates the Congress, abdicates, is exiled, returns, and is executed for treason. Whoa, wow, he did, okay, wow. Easy come, easy go.

Yeah, yeah. Actually, that sounds like really difficult come, really hard way to go. Yeah, true. With that difficult, calm, really hard way to go. Yeah, true. With that said, Iturbide will return to this narrative in an unexpected and bizarre way later on, so keep him in the back of your mind as well. Okay. From there, we push forward to a series of Republican governments as well as the Mexican-American

War, which unfolds as the United States of Mexico battle over the US annexation of Texas in 1845. Josie, since you are not living in Mexico right now, you might suppose how that one ended. Uh, yep. Yep, I remember the Alamo. You're supposed to. Never forget.

The Alamo. Never forget, yeah. As Pee Wee says. Alamo or go home. I thought we agreed it was Alamo or go home. It's Alamo or go home, yeah. This war marked the Rio Grande, the river, as the de facto border between the US and the North and Mexico in the South.

Josie, what do you know about Benito Juarez? Mmm, Benito Juarez. What I know is he is the first indigenous head of state in the Americas he became. This is true. This is absolutely true. He was a political figure who is still known today as like one of the founding fathers of Mexico. So he's kind of revered as like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. Yeah, arguably the guy, if not certainly one of the guys on the Mount Rushmore, which is something that Mexico doesn't have because fuck that. Because it's a bad idea. But he's very beloved. He kind of went through a lot of this turmoil

age in Mexican Revolution and the road to independence. And for a short time, he was exiled to New Orleans, of which there is no, or I shouldn't say no, but the historical record is very thin on what he did there. This book said selling cigars on Bourbon Street. Okay. But like, this is just some book, I don't know. Yeah, but it was 18 months, so was it just 18 months of that?

Who knows? Not a very lavish lifestyle and a place that he went during like the many troubles between conservatives and liberals as we hammer out what a society not under colonial rule could look like. And especially being in Louisiana and New Orleans, which was the seat of the American slave trade, there's a lot of historians who figure that he was taking notes on what that looked like and felt like because Mexico at this time definitively decided in their independence that they would not have slavery.

And that was part of the Mexican-American war. That was one of the facets of it. But Benito Juarez was a big part of that because when he came back from the states, he was then voted in as head of state, as the president. Very brief history of our boy Benito Juarez, a member of the Zapotec indigenous group and consequently Mexico's first indigenous president.

As you say, in all the Americas, he's the first indigenous head of state. Juarez is born March 21st, 1806 to a poor rural family in San Pablo, Guelatau, Oaxaca, a small town near the mountains. His parents died when he was three, so he was raised by an uncle. Very determined child said to have encouraged his uncle

to beat him with a whip when he was wrong in his lessons. Geez Louise. Yeah, maybe a bit intense for me, but you do you. He worked in the fields until at age 12, he walked 60 miles to the state capitol seeking menial work in exchange for housing and schooling. So very determined and intense child even from the outset. He didn't want that popsicle. No way. 6 a.m. cold showers, dude. He knew, he knew.

He was the original hustle guy. In the state capital, he learns Spanish, he joins the seminary to train as a priest, although it's noted that he hates the church, so maybe means to an end or a path that appealed at the time or whatever. He eventually goes to a liberal university where he becomes a lawyer and begins his upward ascent to power. He becomes the governor of Oaxaca, then the president of the Supreme Court, then minister of justice. He eventually succeeds the presidency of Mexico upon the resignation of another member of

the Liberal Party, Ignacio Comón Fort in 1858. And then we get into a few years of fighting between the Mexican liberals with the Republican ideals and the Mexican conservative party who yearn for the return of the European monarchy and the Catholic Church as the predominant forces that govern the country and specifically like give the church their land back. The Catholic Church's land had been seized as part of the Republic. A different land back. A different land back movement.

Yes. It was the dark-sided one. So I don't get a lot more into what distinguishes the Republican side from the conservative side. And obviously, if you're listening in an American context, it might be like Republican versus conservatives. The people who want the republic, which are the liberals, and the conservatives, which are literally the Mexican conservative party. And this is mostly made up of like, people who think that Spanish society is like the best we ever did it. It's the pinnacle. It's the peak, yes.

And these people do exist, they still exist. I've met these people and it's completely batshit. And I say that my mother's from Madrid I'm fucking allowed to say it. Spain is like a cool country in Europe period. It has dirt under its fingernails like they all do. Oh yep yep. Yipper does. Go to Barcelona, ask them how they feel about the Spanish government. Yeah, there we go. Just know in the back of your head that those are the two sides. Mexican conservatives want the Catholic Church to get their land back in the year and for the return of like a Spanish type nobility, certainly. Right. But if preferable, a literal monarchy again. Okay. Yeah. Also part of that is

both sides have their own uneasiness about America, US. So among these conservative monarchists is Jose Maria Gutierrez de Estrada. Former Mexican minister of interior and exterior relations, now living in exile in Paris after writing a particularly spicy pamphlet full of monarchist rhetoric. Okay. Yep. love a spicy pamphlet. Well this was like, listen, we need the Spaniards to dig us out or the Americans are gonna be fucking our women kind of stuff. Maybe not literally fucking our women, I put that in there, but that was the tone of it. Right, that was the vibe, yeah.

Yes. He and another conservative living in Europe, José Manuel Hidalgo y Esnurrisa, set about the task of re-establishing the monarchy in Mexico with the help of European nobility. Oh, I'm sure had a vested interest in doing just that. A new kingdom in the Americas and someone else is doing all the work. Beautiful. Uh-huh. And specifically there are concerns about U.S. dominion in the Americas under the Monroe Doctrine, which Josie... Did that get him Alaska?

I forget. No! No, no, that's Seward. He comes out, he's a character in this story, so you're close. Oh, fun, okay. You were, as if you had to like, ask, pull a random like, American foreign policy thing, that wasn't a bad one to pull back. That guy is in this story.

Okay, okay. Well, I'm kind of proud, I gotta be honest. Monroe doctrine is we need to take an active role in basically policing foreign intervention in the Americas, because this is our territory. We don't want fucking France and Britain next door, we came here to get away from them. Got it, check, check.

So Gutierrez de Estrada and Esnorriza know that these are fears which will be shared by the European elite. France and Britain next door, we came here to get away from them. Got it. Check, check. So Gutierrez de Estrada and Esnurriza know that these are fears which will be shared by the European elite. They don't want America to be another fucking empire kicking around and taking up air that the rest of us could have. And look what fucking ended up happening, right? So they were right to feel that way. Ay, she hurts.

I know. And additionally, Juarez's government is in debt to the British and the French and the Spanish. So there's this idea that we need to reclaim these debts by force if need be. Eventually, Esenorisa, who's one of these monarchists, is able to get in the ear of the French Empress Eugenie, who's sort of the model of this diamond-dripping finery and court intrigue that the conservatives are hoping to restore in Mexico, right? We know, we know, because her name is Eugenie. And she's like, I think she's maybe got the perception that she's like a bit new money sexy to be an empress, so we love her.

By happenstance, Eugenie sees Esenorisa on the way to a bullfight. She said, come to the bullfight with me! And they go together, and he uses this opportunity to bend her ear on the case for a constitutional monarchy in Mexico overseen by a European regnant. She's like, listen, you've moved me, sir. Yeah.

I'll bring the idea to the attention of my husband, Napoleon III. Oh, yeah. Do you know anything about Napoleon III as opposed to Napoleon the original? I don't think I do. I mean, obviously I recognize the name Napoleon, but I imagine he was kind of a weakling of a leader on the very fact that I'm not too sure about him.

He has a mixed legacy for things like this melodrama that would play out in Mexico would not be one of the finer gold stars on his lapel, let's say. He would keep that one in a drawer. But he does genuinely like France expanding into Algeria and doing a bunch of military shit and winning a bunch of battles. He has a good quote unquote track record if you're like someone who is into like military expansion.

Okay. But with some misses like this Mexico thing which is popularly seen as a massive miss. track record if you're like someone who is into like military expansion. Okay. But with some misses like this Mexico thing, which is popularly seen as a massive miss. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sort of the person I've been talking around in my telling of the story so far, in so far as I would argue he is principally

the hand moving the puppet here. Oh, he's the architect. Yeah, he's the architect. That's a good way to put it. He, he's the architect. Yeah, he's the architect. That's a good way to put it. He's very much the architect of this. He's not the person who initially proposes it, but he is the one who turns it into a weird scheme that like ropes in half of Europe.

Yeah, he puts it into place. Yes. Makes some bad decisions in that process. Yes, yes, yes. So Napoleon III is the nephew of the original Napoleon Bonaparte. Okay. Who very much liked to emphasize that lineage original Napoleon Bonaparte, who very much liked to emphasize that lineage. Napoleon Bonaparte, the original, played a critical role in the

French Revolution. Then he declared himself emperor in 1804. A lot of that declaring yourself emperor, just going around these days. He wrapped up a bunch of military accomplishments, got defeated by the members of Abbat Waterloo, and then he got exiled along with his family when France reestablished itself under its original monarchy rather than Napoleon's dictatorship. Oops. Oops. Whoopsie.

However, in 1848, French King Louis-Philippe abdicates as part of a wider wave of European revolutions against monarchy, and we move into France's Second Republic, which Napoleon III is able to overthrow by winning a presidential election and then just ignoring his term limit. People do that. Oh my gosh. This isn't his first attempt to seize force in France. He's had a million failed coup d'etat attempts prior to this that ended in imprisonment and exile, including one where he rode in on a boat that capsized, whereupon he then needed to be fished out of the water and then arrested on the beach. STACEY Okay, wow. Drama queen! Gosh.

JARED How about this? He always escapes captivity, notably one-string prison renovations, by dressing in the clothes of a workman, taking a plank and walking out the front door and fleeing to London. STACEY Okay, I do love that. That's pretty good. JARED You know what? I think that's a really good strategy in general. Just dress like catering and you're good. When I worked as a bike courier in Vancouver, put a bike bag across your shoulder and wear a helmet and don't shower for a day. You could go anywhere. I used so many bathrooms in downtown Vancouver that I probably really shouldn't have been allowed into. Nice.

You know? It's what it is. It's not my bag allowing who goes into bathrooms. I'll say that for the record. Yeah, okay. Fair. I'm just saying that when you're out on the town and you got a helmet on, you can use any bathroom you want.

Oh yeah. In 1848, Napoleon wins the presidency of the French Republic in a landslide election by gaining populist support among the entirely male electorate. Like his uncle, Porus' reputation into a series of efforts at economic expansion and foreign policy maneuvering designed to make France great again, basically. Okay, yeah. While Napoleon III is popular among the electorate and his military maneuvers broadly successful, he still has his pesky detractors, as dictators do. Notable names have commented on Napoleon III and his tactics, comparing N3's empires to his uncles.

Father of communism Karl Marx offers that this is a repetition of history, quote, the first time is tragedy, the second time is farce. Mmm, wow, yes, the Trump second presidency, feeling it, feeling it, yeah. Adds French writer Victor Hugo, author of Les Miserables and the Hunchback of Notre Dame, quote, look at this hog wallowing in his own slime on a lion's skin. Mmm, wow, a lot of animals, a lot of nature imagery. That's nice. Oh, he's Victor Hugo, isn't he? As one is, you know? As we all are a little bit. Napoleon the Third agrees to hear Esna Risa about Mexico if Eugenie is also present. I've cut out a lot of the minor meetings in this story, but there's this sense, particularly with

this couple, where they're like, I'll do it if you're there. Okay. Which I think is kind of nice. That is kind of sweet actually. Yeah. I'll listen to him, but not alone. You gotta be there. I'm not going to be able to handle it alone. So the French rails invite the Mexican diplomat to be at its France to their lavish seaside villa built in the shape of an E for you Jenny. Wow New money, moi, never. There, our boy N3 gets the idea in his head that here is an opportunity for a new Mexican kingdom that will give us good trade rates and a seat of French power in what,

for propaganda reasons, we're now calling Latin America to distinguish it from the U.S. and link it back to the old world. What's older than Latin? Oh. So we're emphasizing we're Latin and you're Latin, right? France, Spain, you're France and Spain-ish, Spanish, you speak Spanish, Latin.

Interesting. America, Anglo-Saxon, boo, Protestant, boo. Us, Catholic, yay. To sort of create solidarity and other the wasps in America specifically. Yeah, to distinguish Anglo-Saxons from everybody else, yeah. And of course the best is that Napoleon III doesn't have to run the place himself

because he's got plenty on his plate legitimately. And three has a lot of meetings to go to with his wife. Oh yeah, he's got a lot of shitty, boring diplomats with bad breath and crappy causes he doesn't care about to pretend to entertain. Exactly. But he can spare a couple of army units in the name of securing the new emperor or empress at a favorable rate and with strict conditions of repayment, of course. Small short-term loss for a huge long-term gain. We'd be foolish not to. Without even running it by his foreign minister, N3 agrees to Esna Risa's scheme. France will support the establishment

of a new European monarchy in Mexico. And as for the lucky ruler who will take the throne, N3 knows exactly the guy. Exactly the Rube. He's got just the turkey in mind, yep. Yeah. An Austrian archduke named Ferdinand Maximilian Josef Maria von Habsburg-Lothringen better known as

Maximilian Josie I don't like to include language like this in a story that ends the way this story does for this guy Right this poor dumb fuck Man oh Right. This poor dumb fuck. Oh man, oh Max, no, just fucking played along like a fiddle from beginning to end in this story. Oh, rough, a Viennese fiddle. A Viennese waltz, baby. Maximilian is born July 6th, 1832 in the Austrian Empire

that his family owns. Yeah. Although the Habsburg family's influence is technically in decline compared to its expansion three centuries earlier when they were absolutely the hot shit everywhere all the time at once, Maximilian's uncle Ferdinand is still emperor of Austria as well as king of Hungary, Croatia, Bohemia and Lombardy Venetia. So there are very much still Habsburgs close in the lineage to our boy Max

moving and shaking in the royalty space. Yeah. Although Maximilian is granted a lavish upbringing among castles and servants and dignitaries, he's notably a daydreamer who would rather be at the zoo than at a military parade. And he- I mean, same.

There's Kathy Baras at the zoo. Yeah, military parade. And he- I mean, same. There's Kathy Barra's at the zoo. Yeah, exactly. Camel's boo. He's a lover of the arts having enjoyed personal fairy tale readings from Hans Christian Andersen as a child. Oh, fuck off. I know, right?

Can't believe this guy gets eaten. Spoilers. He doesn't get eaten, but you know. Metaphorically. Metaphorically. He does not eat. He doesn't get eaten, but you know. Metaphorically. Metaphorically. He does not eat. He gets eaten. Yes, he gets eaten.

His education includes seven days a week of study on language, geography, history, natural sciences, military tactics, Italian, Spanish, and English. He eventually grows into an affable and charismatic young man, mischievous yet good-natured, six feet tall, fair and blonde, with a distinctive long forked beard. No one likes it. I like it That's you're nobody. I told you you were somebody earlier Well, then you told me you like the forked beard You are somebody thank you you. You're somebody special. I fucking am somebody special, ass.

So no, I would say I like it as a writer for a podcast show who needs to give you one detail about the sky that'll really stick in your head. Okay, yeah. Long forked beard that he parts in the middle. How about that, motherfucker? Yeah. Take that description and run with it.

Put that in your mind's eye really easily. Somewhat contradictorily, he's attracted to liberal ideas of governance by and for the people, but he's also deeply bound to his like Habsburg status and code of honor. Yeah, he's bifurcated, not unlike his beard. Yes! See now it's an important character detail too, it's symbolic that beard. I get it, I get it, yeah.

Infamously, he carries around a small card, like a wallet size I would guess, Okay. with 27 rules to live by written on it. Oh my god. Aphorisms on the card include, nothing lasts forever and be kind to everyone. As if he has to remind himself of these? Live, laugh, love, you know?

Dance like no one's watching. Exactly, exactly. Kiss in the rain. Come on, Max. Oh my god, what a fucking rube. Give me more. I want more. I don't want to rube this guy too hard in a story where he dies, but he does attempt to colonize Mexico. He does. I gotta remind myself too. He does attempt to colonize Mexico. Listen. Listen. It's a podcast. Yeah.

Listen. In 1848, that wave of anti-royalty sentiment I was telling you about where the French king abdicated. That got the Austrian Habsburgs too. Okay, yeah. That was going around. It was a big movement, the movement, you know? When Maximilian is 15, and he can maybe be called Maxi because that's what his nearest and dearest called him.

But I'm just imagining his older brother calling him Maxi- Pat or something like that. I don't know if they had those then. Maybe not. Yeah, but in the revisionist history of it all. In the Diablo Cody version, for sure. Yeah. For sure.

Yes, the Diablo. That has Taylor Moms and music playing in the background, pretty reckless, you know? Yeah, that's it. When Maxi is 15, the Imperial family is forced to leave Vienna in the dead of night. Max's mother, Sophie, weeping bitterly in humiliation. All kinds of weird kinks develop that night, I'm sure.

Revolt spreads through the provinces, but the army remains loyal to the Habsburgs, so a compromise is drawn. Ferdinand, our Emperor of Austria, the uncle of Maximilian, agrees to abdicate, but only in favor of a new emperor, Maximilian's older brother Franz Josef, who does enjoy military parades rather than zoos and thus is probably much better suited to the role. This is the guy who calls his younger brother Maxi-Pad. Yes, he's the one who says that. You got it. You is the guy who calls his younger brother Maxi Pad.

Yes, he's the one who says that. You got it, you got it exactly. He's played by Ezra Miller. Yeah. Upon succeeding to the throne, Franz Josef launches a crackdown of rebellion across the empire, including imprisonment, torture, executions, the works.

This is appalling to our boy Max, who vocalizes his criticisms and alternate liberal ideas vocally, establishing himself as a likable liberal alternative to his older brother. Okay, yeah. This annoys Franz Josef, especially because Max is technically next in line for the throne, so if Franz Josef bites it, Max is now the Emperor of Austria. So he shouldn't be separating himself as a different figure because...

What are you auditioning, bro? Right, it's not like you're choosing in the succession line, you're just like the Lego block that's underneath your bro so... Right and so what kind of practically this means is that Franz Josef kind of wants Max out of the picture. Let's give this motherfucker something to do outside the public eye, make him a bit less of a headache and everything everything, like his entire life, prior to the snipe hunt in Mexico, this guy's life has been a series of snipe hunts, basically. Oh. Let's give this guy not, I would say, as ignominious as the Emperor of Mexico shit would end up going. He would actually find success in most of these roles, but they were very definitively roles that were given him

to give him something to do away from me. Yes, okay, yeah, that makes sense. At the age of 22, Franz Josef gives control of the Austrian Navy to Max, and the Navy at this time is a bit of a joke. They were notably, they were the only branch of the military who sided with the revolutionaries rather than the Habsburgs,

because remember the Habsburgs army stayed on side, which is how they're still technically in power, but they had to make it a constitutional marnocky. There's a constitution now, which we hate. That kind of shit. Despite being kind of given this, you know, go chase your tail thing with the Navy, he actually is able to modernize the fleet and bring things into ship shape, as it were. But that makes sense, because you were saying that, like, he doesn't actually flub up everything. Like, he does... He would have been a great mid-level titled noble who lives in a castle but doesn't actually have that much to do and so devotes himself to, like, charity or something.

You would kick the shit out of that, this guy. Right. He brings the same eye for change and modernity to his next role as the governor of Lombardy, Venetia, now part of Italy, where Max helps the local nationalists set up a semi-autonomous senate. Whoa. Whereupon older brother Franz Josef is like, No, you stupid bitch, I sent you there to repress them, expand the secret police and shut down the universities. He's like, uh, I think I'll just...

Dumbass. Yeah. Maxi-pat. Yeah. You got a little maxi-pat on your face, maxi-pat. No, no, stop. Oh, it's in your beard, it's in your beard. All of it, like seriously, these two.

Also of note, I wanna mention this cause it's not in the script, but I wanna mention it cause it's fucking funny. They also have another brother who is like a gay crossdresser who lives in Prague. There's a falling out between Franz Josef and Max at some point in the story because Franz Josef is really trying to like get this brother situated as the new emperor of Brazil to like make a man out of him. Oh! And fucking Maximilian's like no that's a fucking terrible idea and so they have a bit of a falling out over that.

That brother is a novel that is waiting to be written. So Max hates the part of the role where you have to be the Iron Fist. He seems like someone who really wants to be liked. It's important to him that his subjects like him and he's realized that like the liberal policies popular of the day are probably the ones that best get your subjects like you because like you give them power over their own lives. Yeah, yeah. Kind of the basic stuff, but... But also he wants the privilege and the power that comes with being a Habsburg, right? He

wants both. Like his beard, he's forked in two different directions. And he's doing it not because he thinks people should have agency over their own lives, but because he's like, they'll like me, won't they? For sure. And also it should be noted that he was brought up literally in a nursery that had an acronym A-E-I-O-U, like the vowels written across the wall. And when translated, this stood for all the world is subject to Austria. Imagine growing up in your playroom and knowing that you were, like you would think you were chosen by God. You'd have to.

Oh, yeah. Your God special were chosen by God, you'd have to. Oh yeah. Your God special boy, he picked you and you're gonna go down and save Catholicism in Mexico or whatever. Just privilege in the extreme. Point being, even as governor of Lombardi Venice, he's sort of restricted by his brother

who wants him to be more of draconian figure and he's left to imagine what he would do if he were in charge for a day. Like any good royal or royal adjacent, Max has a fabulously appointed fairy tale castle in Trieste Lille whose costs nearly bankrupt him. The neo-gothic exterior hides a labyrinth of internal rooms showcasing basically Habsburg merch everywhere.

Oh, the concert shirts, the frisbees, yeah. Mmhmm, mmhmm, the rubber King Rudolph mask. Yeah, the color changing plastic caps I yeah and notably it's everyone from King Rudolph of Germany all the way down to Maximilian's own brother Franz Joseph But not crucially himself. Oh because he doesn't have a throne. It would be improper. Oh What Maximilian does have is a wife and when he's very politically well situated as you expect of any good Habsburg marriage, right? Like we ain't marrying these people off to fucking anybody. Yeah Marie Charlotte Amélie Augustine Victoire Clementine Léopoldine known then as Princess Charlotte of Belgium daughter of King Leopold the first of Belgium

reigning as of this story King of Belgium and laterally known due to her role in Mexico as Carlota, which is what I'll call her. So when talking Carlota or Carlota, depending on which accent I feel like doing at the moment, we are talking about Max's wife. And the two meet in her home country and are quickly impressed by one another. In Carlota, Max finds a young, beautiful, intellectual woman, ambitious, although you'd never call a refined woman that to your face. And in fact, Carlota sort of takes offense at the idea that she's ambitious, even though she plainly is, and that's okay. That's not how we thought of women back then, right? It had a different connotation, that word.

Yes. Kind of intense, kind of severe, and a deeply pious Catholic. As for her impression of Maximilian, Carlotta said, "...the Archduke is charming in all respects. Physically, I find him attractive, and morally, he leaves nothing to be desired. So a match right away, great. We didn't even have to work hard on this one. Yeah, done and done.

Done and done. And evidently, Napoleon III was also impressed upon meeting the Habsburg Maximilian in May, 1856, enough to remember him when conceiving of the Mexican Empire scheme, although it's also been suggested that Maximilian was simply the only man available at the time. José María Gutiérrez de Estrada, whom you may remember as one of our exiled Mexican monarchists, writes a

letter to Maximilian proposing that he take the throne of Mexico. He says the country wants and needs it, which is a massive lie as we'll find out, and that we've already got Napoleon in and we'll get Spain and Britain too. Oh. Don't forget, Mexico owes debts to France, Spain, and Britain. Big debts. Oh, is the idea that it would be like a shared monarchy with all of them or they would be in support of? In support of slash I'm sure that Napoleon probably conceives of this as predominantly a French thing in a very cloak and dagger kind of way.

Like he would go to them and be like very like, amigos, a great time for all of us to have one third of a monarchy. But in his head, he's sort of like, he's moving around some of the place values. Okay, yeah, I get you, okay. Maximilian of course, with all his noblesse oblige, is deeply enchanted by this great sacrifice

he's been asked to make on behalf of the Habsburgs and the people of Mexico. Yes. He doesn't agree to it right away, but he's clearly mulling over this opportunity with its accompanying power and glory. Let me talk to my wife. Gotta run it by the boss.

Gotta run it by the boss. Let me sleep on it, okay. Well, he does actually pitch it to Carlotta and she supports the idea. She can open her used car lot. Her used Carlotta, Carlotta's used Carlotta, we got a Carlotta used cars, used Carlotta's car lot. Yeah. As does her father, King Leopold of Belgium, who frequently offers his counsel to his daughter and son-in-law kind of throughout this story, it seems to be like, I would say one of the few people who doesn't seem to secretly have it out for this couple. He actually is earnestly trying to help as opposed to like Napoleon III and the monarchists

and all these other people who are kind of just trying to like prod them in a convenient direction. Yeah, yeah. Pawn them over to Mexico, yeah. He asks his older brother Franz Josef for permission. Franz Josef, the Emperor of Austria, he's like, fuck yeah, can't get rid of you quick enough. Oh, okay. Finally, Maximilian unofficially agrees, but he has two lingering fears. Invasion from the United States? We will do that. We have been known. It has been said. Also the potential unpopularity of this monarchy in Mexico. You can't get out of his head. These people have just formed a republic. Are you sure they want this? Yeah. As a result he lays down two conditions. Number one, Britain and France must agree to militarily defend this new thing. Not a problem

France-wise. Napoleon's kind of already in for that. Britain may be a bit of a harder sell. And number two, Mexico must agree to this via a popular vote of his citizenship. Oh wow, that's more sensitive than I had anticipated. Well neither of these things ever really happens, but Maximilian does end up going to Mexico, so like don't get too complimentary, I would say. Yeah, okay. I work at arts non-profit. I get the like, you put it on the table and then say, I don't really need a table.

No. It's fine. So neither of these things kind of happens even from the outset, but we're able to snow Maximilian that they're happening under a season of not very comprehensive schemes. So for example, to smoke screen Mexican support Gutierrez de Estrada cobbles together a petition signed by only six Mexicans, including his son. That's kind of the same thing. Yeah, six people, sure. Meanwhile, N3, he's like,

let me take care of this Britain thing. He visits UK Prime Minister Lord Palmerston, who's intrigued by the idea of thwarting US expansion in the Americas, but remarks that the whole thing kind of seems like a money pit, I don't know. Faced with this non-committal response, N3 goes back to Max. Yeah, Britain's in. Yeah, they love it. They're so down.

Oh god. Eventually, we are able to cobble together a French, Spanish, and British military alliance with the express purpose of collecting repayment for Mexico's debts. Napoleon is kind of able to get them in by pushing it not. Like, he doesn't push the Maximilian set up a new empire part. He pushes the let's go to Mexico to recollect our debts from Juarez's government part. That's the thesis.

And then this Maximilian guy is the added on. Right now it's just, it's collections, right? It's a debt collecting call to Mexico. Maximilian is still not entirely convinced, but he's nibbling hard, inviting the monarchists, the Mexican monarchists. He's got them spending Christmas with him at Miramar, his lavish castle in Trieste, where Gutierrez de Estrada in particular lavishly glazes him for this entire stay. Just like,

will not shut up about like, you were sent from the heavens to save Mexico, and we have been living in shadow since the time that we knew you. Evidently, this is his bad luck. Napoleon III and Eugénie evidently entertained Gutierrez de Estrada one time and never again, lamenting that he never shuts the fuck up about going back to the old monarchist ways. Oh. Complains Eugénie, he is like a portrait that has been nailed to the wall for centuries and suddenly comes to life in the present.

That's pretty good. For her part, Carlotta would later call Gutierrez de Estrada a retrograde crayfish. Even better. We're just getting every turn is better and better. A crayfish from the past. A retrograde, love it. Now let's talk about how the second French intervention

as it's called happens. How do we actually come into Mexico? By boat. Well, you got that part right, but there's more to it. To way, way, way simplify this series of events, the still rulerless French intervention, as in Maximilian hasn't signed on the dotted line yet, he's still considering it very strongly, but this is a collections call.

They find their pretext to invade when President Benito Juarez, in July 1861, orders a moratorium on foreign debt repayments, aka, we're not giving you your money, Spain, Britain, and France. Yeah, so they're definitely like, we gotta do something. We gotta keep face. We can't lose face. Yeah. It's about face. Yeah, so they're definitely like, we gotta do something. We gotta keep face, we can't lose face. Yeah. It's about face. Yeah. You know Josie? Face. Chicken. It's a game of chicken. It's a game of chicken face. In November 1861, 6,000 Spanish, 3,000 French, and 800 British troops, so less from the Brits, you'll notice they're still very foot out the door on this

whole thing, march to Veracruz, basically as a cold call, hey guys, about that debt. March to Veracruz, basically as a cold call, hey guys, about that debt. Uhhhhhhhhh. So this is a very opportune piece of timing as the intervention into Mexico officially begins in 1861. Josie, what's happening in the US in 1861? The Civil War. The Civil War. The US is distracted and stretched thin, making it unable to effectively employ the Monroe Doctrine in the South.

Yes, interesting. And Josie, you know what the Monroe Doctrine is. I do now. Now you do. Yeah. So as it goes, the British and the Spanish are able to establish terms of debt repayment and then peace out in April of 1862, amid much disgust in infighting with their French allies when Napoleon's true intentions become clear.

Napoleon III, meanwhile, pours in hundreds more troops to fill the gap and convinces Maximilian still at Miedemont in Italy of the safety and even inevitability of his reign. Oh, that's a good tactic. As for President Juarez, he prepares to resist, fortifying key routes and bringing in 25,000 new guns to equip the army. He appeals to patriotic Mexicans to join in the fight, and issues a new decree that anyone caught helping the monarchist intervention will be court-martialed and executed. The French troops make their attempts to capture various cities, most notably at the First

Battle of Puebla on May 5th, 1862. Cinco de Mayo! Cinco de Mayo! Now Josie, you lived in Puebla on May 5th, 1862. JOSIE Cinco de Mayo! STAN Cinco de Mayo. Now Josie, you lived in Puebla for a time, no? JOSIE I did a semester there, a semester abroad. STAN That's cute! Tell us about Puebla. JOSIE Puebla is a state in Mexico, and then there's a city, the capital city is Puebla. STAN That's what we're talking about here in this story. JOSIE It's a very old city, and it has a lot of colonial influence. The very well-known cuisine there is called chiles en nogada and it's

like a stuffed pepper with, I think it's like a pork, a minced pork. And then it's covered with a walnut cream sauce and pomegranates. Okay. It's very good. What I was familiar with was that city and then the little town outside that city that I lived in called Cholula. Like Cholula was in the city, is in the foothills to the mountains that pretty much encase Mexico City.

It's in central Mexico next to Mexico City. And you can look out on the mountain range and know just beyond it is Mexico City. Popocatapitals sort of watching over. Yes, exactly. And it's pretty high up there. It's a pretty high elevation already. I mean, that whole kind of central highlands

is pretty elevated, but being high up, it's not desert, but it doesn't get like a whole bunch of rain. So it's kind of dry, dry climate, dry soil. It's interesting that you say that. So one of the things as the French sort of fight uphill through the sort of surrounding mountains to this very high city of Puebla

is that this day there happened to be a hail storm too. Like, so you imagine these Frenchmen slipping and sliding. No! Sacre bleu! And sort of because of this, the Huaristas, as the supporters of Juarez are known, are successfully able to repel the imperialistas as the supporters of the empire are known.

This is a huge moral victory for the relatively new Mexican Republic, sort of their first big battle with this army of French interlopers and they've won it. The date is now recorded and celebrated as Cinco de Mayo. It's not just a gringo holiday. It is representing like a turning point in the Juarez war, I guess.

Yes, and it became popular with gringos when beer companies started advertising it. That's okay, okay. That's what you're thinking of there. You're like, I thought this was just like a St. Patrick's day. Yeah. Like, yes, but that's what you're thinking of there. You're like, I thought this was just like a st. Patrick's day Yeah, like yes, but it's a bastard ization of the legitimately significant Incident in Mexican history, which is specifically the first battle of Puebla

Which is this at this point all of max's advisors back in Europe are like look man This Mexico shit was a fun idea, but it's clearly a flop They don't want a monarchy your cousin just gotoed off the throne in Greece. Go take that. Oh, yeah. That's shiny object. Go. Shiny object. Go right closer. You won't even need to move house so far. Britain tells him not to do it. His brother Franz Josef in Austria tells him not to do it. Juarez writes him a letter. I heard that they've got you up for this fucking emperor thing, man. Don't do it.

But it's been a couple of years by this point of wooing and Max and Carlotta can't give up the dream. While they're not in they're certainly not out and certainly when the French army does finally capture Puebla in May 17th 1863 they hokey pokey back in. When the French army takes Mexico City that same year the French army set up a little fake assembly to convince Max that the Mexican people, all 260 of them who attended this party this time. Oh, that's 250 people more than they were used to. Yeah. And so every time, basically, I won't go into all of them, but just know and imagine that throughout this story, there are successive different attempts to bring Maximilian slightly more Mexican signatures

to cool that part of his request. As for British support, you may have noticed that Britain has written to Max and be like, dude, we don't think this is a good idea. So we don't get that, but we do get the support of someone almost as good, the Confederacy. No, no.

Yay. One of the big players in the American Civil War, and Max is able to kind of just like rationalize that. He kind of drops the British support part of his ticket at this point. He's like, okay, we've got the Confederacy. And you mentioned early on, the New Mexican Republic, anti-slavery, right?

Yeah, yeah. So of course the Confederacy would take the opposite side. True. Many further months ensue of brushing and stroking and coddling of Maximilian by Napoleon III and the Mexican monarchists. And there are also many approbations from Max and Carlotta's many family members who repeatedly tell the couple, no, you don't understand, the Mexicans are going to fucking murder you. Ooh.

But Maximilian is like, what? I was floor planning my castle. What were you saying? They wanted me. I was told by six specific people that I was chosen by God. I was the guy. And know too that like in the sort of parts of the story where he's dithering around, Maximilian is also like sending his architect to head to Mexico. Oh God. Yeah, yeah. He's like, well, I just don't know, but...

Get some inspirations. Put me together a little mood board. Bring it back at a cost of $250,000 to the taxpayers overall. We'll see if it works out. So finally, in what is called the Treaty of Miramar, Maximilian conclusively decides to accept the crown to much firing of cannon and fireworks on the yacht and da da da da da. He takes on the title here, Maximilian I, which is now his sort of super-K, and he agrees to the following conditions.

He will pay the entire cost of the intervention thus far. 270 million francs plus 3% interest we need our terms of repayment right? Oh my goodness. After that Mexico needs to pay a thousand francs per man to keep the French army there. So basically if we're not going to get our debt out of Juarez we'll give you one and get it out of you. Maximilian is sort of agreeing to these terms on behalf of Mexico but implicitly like he is responsible for their repayment on Mexico's behalf so it's is sort of agreeing to these terms on behalf of Mexico, but implicitly, like, he is responsible for their repayment on Mexico's behalf. So it's like, sort of both, but Mexico.

Yeah, yeah. This puts Maximilian in a financial quandary from the outset, but these are the important decisions men of power must make. Maximilian accepts the terms, contingent upon the agreement of the head of the House of Habsburg, his brother, the Austrian Emperor Franz Josef. Franz Josef. Franz Josef agrees, but on the following conditions. You have to announce your own right of inheritance to the Habsburg throne. Remember, he's next in line after the brother.

Okay. Yeah. And you have to agree to that for any future offspring. Although Max and Carlotta to this point have no kids. Okay. Yeah. What does this mean? Effectively, you're no longer a Habsburg. Like, yes, you are a Habsburg in name, but like, if you come back, you're not guaranteed anything. If this is a flop, if you go and flop this up and decide to come back, go find a salary to make.

You're not getting paid by the host of Habsburg. If I get shot, it goes to someone else. Who? I don't know. We'll spin a wheel. Not you. Yeah, okay. And remember, this guy has been told his whole life, you are a Habsburg, the Habsburg lineage is the most, the Habsburg order of a wheel, not you. Yeah, okay. And remember this guy has been told his whole life, you are a Habsburg, the Habsburg lineage is the most, the Habsburg order of a Habsburg, if you Habsburg, but if you Habsburg, Habsburg.

Like this is the whole world to him. He's basically being told, if you're gonna leave this house, you can't come back. That's when he got stalled. That's when he gets stalled. Okay. Noogies were dealt out. Noogies were dealt out. Noogies were dealt out.

Maxi pads were stapled to foreheads. Yes, exactly. After a long, loud fight in some antechamber of an Austrian castle, Maximilian with no light heart accepts his brother's terms. The man who has been tethered to the Habsburg dynasty his entire life has formally parted ways with his birthright. Shit dog. The Mexican deputation in Europe arrives at Miramar where, after a long, boring speech by

Jose Maria Gutierrez de Estrada, canons roar as the crowds acclaim Emperor Maximilian I and his wife, the Empress Carlotta. After a brief tour of Europe, the royal couple head to Mexico together in their beloved boat, the Novada. On the way to Mexico, Carlotta practices Spanish and reads books about Mexico, while Maximilian composes a new book of etiquette based on the very rigid Habsburg etiquette, invoking an obsessive amount of fine detail of just exhausting protocol bullshit drawn from Louis XIV. When you take the hat, when you take the handkerchief, who's allowed to take the handkerchief, etc. We're gonna need bigger, remember he had that card with his little slogans on them, we're gonna need bigger cards.

That's rough. Meanwhile, as hell arrives from Europe, Juarez retreats to the north near the Rio Grande, Rio Grande I suppose they would call it down there, but in my head it's the Abba song Fernando and they pronounce it Rio Grande. Understood. And he prepares his guerrilla soldiers for an even greater battle. When a petition for the president to resign emerges, he refuses. Good. He admits the situation is unfavorable but he is resolved to fight, writing to his critics, I'll leave my post if I get voted out or if the French throw me out. Until then, I'm fighting for

Mexico. Boom! Love it. So to chat a little bit about what this fight looks like. I don't actually include much about the military part of this. There's a lot of it. There's a lot of people in it. I'm not the best at remembering or describing it. Very candidly, I focused mostly on Maximilian and his aspect of this story.

And he spends most of this story on little tours of Mexico or lounging around on his ass in a castle. He's not on the battlefield, so why would we be? Not until very late in the story. He does kind of eventually join the troops, but not for very, very long into the story. Okay. It's sort of a tale of two wars, because there's a city part of it where we're laying siege to places like Puebla and

Querétaro and Monterrey. And this tends to go quite successfully for the French army. And when I say French army, it's not just the French army. But when I say the French army assume that I mean the imperialists. Yeah. And then there's sort of the countryside side part of it, which is where Juarez and his guerrillas really have the upper hand in the way that guerrilla fighters do, right? Yeah, they know the terrain. They know the locals. They have the support of the population.

They probably already had yellow fever and malaria when they were young. French getting it for the first time. As Maximilian's empire seems to expand, imagine it expanding along the major cities, starting at Veracruz and then going, you know, Mexico, like this kind of route up until we push up to the Rio Grande. Okay. Okay. That's, that's a big chunk of the, of the country for sure. But Maximilian and his forces never get really the countryside. They never get the entire

country. And there's a tipping point in the story at which their domain basically starts contracting in the opposite order Just because the balance of troops shifts in terms of what the combat entails Awful shit beheadings tortures Burning villages down to the ground with no good reason at all there's a description of a time when the French army sees that the guerrillas

have killed some of their kind of compatriots and hung them naked from trees. Atrocities across the board. Whichever side you were on, you were committing some kind of war crime in this one. So don't, I guess, be deceived in specifically my telling, which sort of, because it's Maximilian-centric, it's basically a story about a fop that you could find half-ass endearing if you wanted to laugh at his absurdities. Yeah, yeah. But a lot of people died needlessly in really gruesome ways for the sake of this ridiculous cause, so please keep that in your minds. Here's some of the big names, and I mention them either because they'll come up later in the story some ways for the sake of this ridiculous cause. So please keep that in your minds. Ugh. Here's some of the big names and I mentioned them either

because they'll come up later in the story or just because they're kind of like big names in actual Mexican history outside of this context. I didn't write them too much in this story. So I'll mention them here because they're sort of military figures. The brain of the French army is a guy named Achille Bazin. Partisans that Max has include Leonardo Marquez.

He's like a ruthless battle-harging soldier called the Butcher of Taco Baila, because he, I mean, he butchered some people in Taco Baila. He loves to massacre liberals, this guy. We've got Miguel Miramon. He's a conservative general. Memorably, he contested the presidency against Juarez back in 1859 at a time like, okay.

So we've got a couple of presidents and it's just up to which one you find legit. Miramon was one of them. There's also Tomas Mejia. He's a member of the Otomi indigenous group and he's a staunch conservative as well. And so those three guys, Marquez, Miramon and Mejia, the three Ms, they're kind of Max's like Charlie's Angels, right? They're his three theories.

And as for Juarez, one of his generals is Porfirio Diaz, who mostly becomes notable after this story when he seizes the government and runs Mexico as a dictatorship. Oh, Porfirio. So with all that kind of set, we're ready for Maximilian and Carlotta. Their boats finally arrived.

I'm sure Max is just letting the ink dry on that onerous new coat of etiquette that he was putting together. Carlotta knows how to say like... Donde esta la biblioteca? The Novara arrives in Veracruz with the thunder of 101 cannons and an extravagant court full of unnecessary people, 80 and all, cooks, aristocrats, because you need courts people to make up the court, right? Yeah, that's true.

A conductor for the orchestra, Carlotta's lady-in-waiting, and 500 pieces of luggage to be transferred into coaches and carriages. No one is there to receive them. French Army Captain Achille Bazin evidently being busy. I don't know. Yo, you meant 3 Eastern time. Oh, I thought. Oh, okay.

See, we didn't... A few different time zones here in Mexico. Veracruz, a liberal town pissed about their legitimate election being overturned by a European monarchy, is not inclined to whoop in the streets about the situation. Oh. The port is deserted without even incidental traffic because of yellow fever, which maybe explains the vultures circling in the air. The triumphal arches meant to greet them are half finished

because all the scaffolding blew over last night in the windstorm. The royals and their hangers-on then enter their carriages which peel down the unfinished muddy roads full of partisans lurking in the shadows ready to kill. From there the welcome parades as they kind of proceed on the path to Mexico City. They're organized in part by Captain Bazen and they go a bit better. Okay. We attend mass, we host banquets, we get to see what the triumphal arches look like when they're actually done, which is nice. We scrounge up some royalists to cheer on. As Maximillian kind of tours the cities, we're able to get like incrementally more Mexicans who are willing to act happy about this.

Okay. Max and Carlotta get greeted by indigenous leaders in Nahuatl and sit down for their first Mexican meal of mole de guajolote, which is mole on turkey. Nice. Pulque, nice little cactus juice drink, tortillas and peppers. Sounds pretty nice. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Mexican food is some of the best food in the world. So there you go. They couldn't finish it too spicy. Oh, yeah. Too spicy. Yeah. That old Belgian tum tum was turning over, you know what I mean? Finally after much pomp and circumstance and touring of the outlier cities, we arrive at the capital Mexico City, where Maximilian sets up his palatial estate in the Castillo

de Chapultepec, a lush castle built on top of a sacred Aztec site. Because again, as these things are, publicly accessible now as part of Mexico City's Bosque Chapultepec. This is yet another residence of Maximilian's that I have been to with Josie. Yes, yeah, been there too. What did you think of the Castillo de Chapultepec? Now that you've heard about Maximilian, does it make a lot of sense that this guy lives there? Yes, Yes. And I still remember the outdoor flooring that was like black and white tile. It's a big lavish, fuck you Habsburg estate. It's way up on top of a little hill, so it has a view of the entire city more or less. Oh, beautiful sweeping view of the entirety of CDMX and the nearby

volcanoes. A lot of like marble and brokeage. There's this one, like it might just be like a giant Jade door. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. And there were quite a few like trinkets and pieces of art on display too, which were interesting, but they were all very like ornate and yes, intense. They were large portraits of the type of people we've been discussing in this story, right? Exactly. Rooms and rooms and rooms.

If you're sick of this room, you go into this room. We have many rooms. We have many a room, yes. So Maximilian spends a huge amount of money refurbishing the place, bringing in all his gardeners, silk tapestries, chandeliers from Venice. He got stuck in this real rabbit hole of picking out the china crystal, which is imported from Europe and carried to Chapultepec on mules. Of course, it's easy to insure all of these lavish accoutrements on a

salary of 125,000 a month. President Juarez was making 30 grand a year. So if we look at that president's salary of 30 grand a year, I believe, although I'm not entirely certain that this is in pesos, either way, President Juarez was making 30 grand a year compared to Maximilian's 125 grand a month salary. Okay. So good luck with balancing that budget, man, with those terms of repayment. Snip, snip. Yes. Oh oh gosh. Of course, with this windfall, he and Carlotta keep up their lavish lifestyle. Carlotta holds soirees for diplomats on Mondays. The upper class love it. They're all trying to scheme their way in. And this is sort of how Carlotta exerts her own influences.

She holds court, like in a very conventional Marie Antoinette kind of way. Yeah, this was their whole deal. It was like, well, the lifestyle there could be really nice. Like we could have this type of house and we would be kind was like, well, the lifestyle there could be really nice. Like we could have this type of house and we would be kind of like the outsiders, the cool Europeans there. So maybe that would fit us. They'd look up to us. Something aspirational, real housewives basically. Maximilian is in bed every night at 8 p.m. for his eight hours of sleep, no matter the affairs of the kingdom. I kind of admired that. I think you would like that, yeah. Yeah.

no matter the affairs of the kingdom. I kind of admired that. I think you would like that, yeah? But not, it should be added, until after his nightly game of billiards. Oh god. The losers had to crawl under the billiard table as a forfeit, unless Maximilian lost, in which case he would have his Mexican servants do it for him. Jesus. So you remember how the border garden was said to be haunted by the ghosts of his poorly treated indigenous servants? For what it's worth, that's the worst I could hear of him treating any servant of his, but it would piss me off. That would be rough, yeah.

I wouldn't like that, no. I would haunt his garden about that. Oh yeah, that's definitely worth a haunting, for sure. At least until he admits it wasn't cool. Yeah. Because he's probably around there too haunting it. Spoilers. I mean, it's the Yeah. Because he's probably around there too haunting it. Yeah. Spoilers.

I mean it's the 1800s. He's dead. But yeah. Another time when he maybe didn't seem like the best boss, he wouldn't let his secretary get married because once you got kids then no more getting up at 4am. Rude! Rude. Not always a bad employer though.

We're brought back to the border garden in Cuernavaca and this is specifically where he like indulges himself and allows himself to like be a little Austro-Hungarian and like can we have some nice schnitzel and bland food here, right? Oh, okay, okay. When we hit up Cuernavaca, we go back to tall glasses of milk. Yeah. Actually, there's this horrible Hungarian wine that he makes everyone kind of drink that is like the house wine, but he has his own like private reserve basically

of whatever kind of fancy bubbles he wants and he finds that one of his servants has been stealing and selling some of this wine, his like good wine. Oh. But because he's sort of like a cool emperor who wants to be liked, he sort of walks this guy around the border garden just like Ruby and Nigel and I were walking around and he kind of just like he gets a confession off him, but he kind of lets him off with like a little slap on the wrist. Oh. And Carlotta admonishes him for being too lenient, but that's his thing. He wants to be beloved. Yes. Yeah. He also wants to bang Mexican women. Oh. He's 32. He's got a wandering eye. Rumors abound that he's got a taste for the beautiful Mexican women. He's 32, he's got a wandering eye, rumors abound that he's got a taste for the beautiful Mexican women, but that has something to do with his settling here to

begin with and the emperor and empress are evidently sleeping in different rooms while the emperor uses his lavish schnitzel hall in Cuernavaca for affairs other than those in state. The schnitzel hall. The schnitzel hall. Remember probably fictional gardener's daughter, La India Bonita. So there would have been rumors, rumors and rumors. Yes, rumors afloat. Rumors getting pounded in the Schnitzel Hall. There's Schnitzel and there's pounding, we can tell you that. When it comes to state affairs

too, Maximilian is determined to be loved rather than feared, and he's far more liberal than the alliance of conservative monarchists that ushered him into the throne would prefer. Right. He basically appoints a lot of moderate liberals to his cabinet. He's not seen as the most effective governor.

He's fond of going on these three month long expeditions to go and see the environs of his kingdom, which earns him the nickname, the Royal Tourist. Mm-hmm. Resentment begins to build, but Maximilien and Carlotta are both well-shielded and see the environs of his kingdom, which earns him the nickname The Royal Tourist. Resentment begins to build, but Maximilien and Carlotta are both well-shielded from their own unpopularity by their backers. They think that they're doing great throughout this story. Yeah. Everyone is telling these people to their face that they're doing great, and they're not doing great.

Yeah, their report cards, A, A, A+, A+. Unfortunately, even a positive guy like Maximilian has to confront some of the bad news staring at him. The French army is too small for a country as big as Mexico. Big country. Big country, especially when you're dealing with like these kind of guerrilla tactics and all of a sudden you're hanging naked from a tree. It's no good. Yeah. Napoleon III writes to Max about this, expressing alarm. The French army forces are eventually supplemented by 4,500 volunteers, including 3,500 Belgians, 600 Austrians, and 450 Egyptians. The U.S. Union is sticking their neck in, issuing official disapproval of Max's campaign

in Mexico. So the Union as opposed to the Confederacy, like the Union... The North. The side that wins the war, the North, the side that wins the warrior and the Catholic Church headed by Pius the ninth denounces liberalism and modern society in all their forms declaring quote, freedom of worship is a pestilence more deadly than any other. A papal nunzio, which is like emissary,

visits Mexico to demand the return of the church lands. Max refuses, and his conservative allies turn on him. Because that was one of the big things that they wanted. That was huge. Yeah, that was like point number 1.2. Hashtag badlandback. Yeah, badlandback.

And Jose Maria Gutierrez de Estrada, who's been in Europe for 25 years now trying to make this exact case, he writes an 84 page letter sternly admonishing Max, which I'm sure he read. Cover to cover. Oh, every single word, yeah. Gripped. Undeterred, and now that he's lost the support of the conservatives, fuck it, Max now truly goes for the gold with his liberal policies. He outlaws corporal punishment. Oh, yeah. He regulates child labor. That's

kind of cool. Yeah. He issues decrees requiring lunch breaks and days off and access to free schooling, water and shelter for the workers at large factories. I love it. Damn. He establishes an Imperial Academy of Science and Literature. Okay, okay. He embraces the indigenous population, returning land to its indigenous landowners, and starts publishing government decrees in Nahuatl. What the? These reforms are patchily applied over the landmass of an embattled Mexico that's split between two rulers.

The degree to which these actually come into effect? Probably less even. And that seems to be his modus operandi is like, I want to do the nice good thing, but I don't want to have to do any of the work involved to ensure that the nice good thing happens. I just want people to like me because I did the nice good thing. Because I said the nice good thing, not even did the nice good thing. I want to move to Mexico to implement all of these great new liberal policies, thereby marginalizing the democratically elected liberal government that already exists there. He's an interesting character, huh?

He's an interesting character, but he's not making a very good case for himself, I guess. He's not a savvy politician. No by no means. Maximilian continues to enjoy visiting his kingdom on his lengthy tours, while Carlotta is back at Castillo de Chapultepec continuing to host her balls, which one visitor calls, quote, dull formal affairs in a badly lit hall. I'm just mentioning her balls as dull formal affairs and a valid awe. By the end of 1865, Maximilian has to return home and start some preparations as big news, the Confederacy surrenders, bringing to an end the U.S. Civil War.

Right. Oh, oopsies. Lost his ally to the North. And now, all of a sudden, the Union, who have declared their opposition to Maximilian's regime, have emerged victorious and Secretary of State William Seward supports Juarez's government. Hey Seward, I know you. Alaska. Yeah, that's the one. This is great news for Juarez, who is press nuts to butt with the Rio Grande on the city

of El Paso del Norte, nowadays called Ciudad Juarez, right? Oh, look at that! And in true American style, while not joining the war themselves, the Americans load Juarez up to the gills with weapons and ammunition. Very true. Classic Americana right there. Baseballs, apple pie, and providing the arms for foreign wars in order to exert influence in them. Da da da da da da!

God bless America! There's also another, more bizarre reason for Seward and the Americans to get involved. You may have noticed, with interest, that Maximillian and Carlotta don't have any kids. The most salacious reason that's given for this is because Max has VD from sleeping around, but I don't think we actually know if that's true. Her balls might not be, they're not well lit. Her balls are very dimly lit.

He doesn't know how to find them. Oh. Maximilian decides that in order to really dig in and establish an empire, and certainly against like a native son like Juarez who was born in Oaxaca and is a Zapotec and you know all of these things. Yeah. He needs to sort of I guess tether himself more to Mexico and he decides to do this in the form of an heir.

Okay. And specifically he decides that his heir should be the grandson of Agustin yurbide, the first emperor of Mexico, who's named Agustin like his grandfather, Agustin Iturbide again. Okay. The look on my face that you're reading through the Zoom. Is like, what the fuck does that? That makes no sense.

Yeah, how does one create an heir from- Out of a child that's already living in someone else's? Great question. Yes. Iturbide's daughter, who's an American named Alice Green. She signs the contract under duress in Mexico City. As she's leaving, she like changes her mind and has terrible cold feet over the fact that she just signed her son away to a stranger.

She sends Max and Carlotta a letter begging them to reconsider the arrangement. Two days later, Maximilian's household guard appears before Alice. They say, the emperor and empress want to see you. She climbs into the carriage, but she notices that the driver misses the turn for the palace. Oh shit. And then misses the turn for Chapultepec. Oh. And then she realizes she'd be enforceably deported. Oh, I thought they were just gonna kill her, but okay. She's getting like dropped off at the county line and told to get out and stay out. Oh man, here's some slurpy money lady. See ya.

Here's the bus fare. She goes to Seward because she's an American and she asks him to intervene. Yeah, and Seward who just came fresh from the Union is like, well, we've already got beef so let's add your bus fare to the, you know, to the pot. We already got beef. Let's add some mole, baby. So this is sort of, I would say, the beginning of the end. Third act, third act. Feels like we just got here.

I know. Specifically, the end of the civil war is a huge domino and the Americans now having the time, money, and wherewithal to supply Juarez's side with weapons. Yeah. That's huge. But it's also true that by January 1866, popular support of the Mexican Empire has plummeted in France. Oh, so across the pond, they're like, oops. This is no longer popular.

France is also getting diplomatic pressure from Andrew Johnson, US president, to pull out of the Americas. And Napoleon III needs his armies back as things heat up with Prussia on France's Western border. Oh, OK. Boys gotta come home because we got a mess over here. Finally, Napoleon III basically breaks up

with Maximilian via letter. Ooh. And begins the process of recalling the troops. Oh, text breakup. Rough. Text breakup. And Maximilian kind of goes through all the stages of grief on this one.

He flies into a rage. He threatens to abdicate, as he will many times. Yeah. Then he decides, well, I'm not abdicating. I'd rather die fighting Juarez. So once he cools his heels, he tries to abdicate as he will many times. Then he decided, well, I'm not abdicating, I'd rather die fighting Juarez. So once he cools his heels, he tries to write back to Napoleon to renegotiate terms. Like, listen, you're not thinking this through.

Maybe I don't need all of this French army. Maybe you send over some Navy. Like, I'm open. All the emotions. No dice, it ain't happening. He tries to appeal to Belgium and Austria. Belgium, by the way, also during all of this, King Leopold, his father-in-law,

who is like half as nice to him, dies. That's no fun. Oh, yeah. And then his son, Leopold II, takes over the throne in Belgium. So he tries to talk to Leopold II, and he tries to talk to Franz Josef in Austria. They're not gonna help out.

No, no, his brother was like, you signed a thing that says I don't have to talk to you anymore. Aren't you dead yet? Yeah. Yeah. Psych it, just so you realize now that whole contract was ruined on a Maxi-Pad. Their stated reason, by the way, is they don't want smoke with the Americans.

And even still, no one wants smoke with the Americans right? Yeah fair enough. Maximilian contemplates renouncing the throne again but this really disgusts Carlotta and she writes him like a long comprehensive letter basically chastising him for like you're not a man you're a mouse you know this kind of rhetoric. He's like down the hall and she does not want to be misunderstood And sometimes when we are in the heat of passion we misspeak or we fumble or we don't have the adequate words to convey our emotions But if I write this down in a long ass letter, which you must read all of all day And by the way, it is not well lit in here Then you understand let me make myself clear let's be clear with Shannon Doherty Then you will understand. Let me make myself clear.

Let's be clear with Shannon Doherty, motherfucker. They agree that Carlotta will go to Europe to try to rally support while Maximilian arranges a proper military strategy in Mexico. Carlotta is extremely dogged during this trip. She manages to get an audience with Napoleon III and Eugenie despite their attempts to dodge out. Napoleon fakes sick specifically,

so he doesn't have to do it and then it kind of becomes another one of those I'll do it if you do it situations that this couple seems to have sometimes. So the couple entertains Carlotta and she gives this very passionate case to them about like here's why you need to do this and here are the letters in which you promised friendship to my husband it's your orders man da da da da da. But then a servant brings in a picture of orangeade and offers her a glass. She's like, I don't want it. And they're like, well, you should have the orangeade. You should have some orangeade. I don't want the fucking orangeade.

And she eventually, she agrees to have some of this orangeade, but the whole thing has just like thrown her off and she just never gets her momentum back. It's a real shame. It sounds like, I don't know, such a Christopher Guest kind of thing. It has that energy. It has that energy. I said no. Acid, acid, I can't. But we have already prepared the oranges. Well, I won't feel very good. I'll pass gas. This does not give you gas. The Parisian oranges they are excellent. You must have a glass. I just, I'll pass gas. This does not give you gas. The Parisian oranges, they are excellent. You must have a glass. I just, I'd rather not.

Oh, it's delicious. What did you do? Do you not like the orange? Do you not like the French? I'll take a little. I'll just take a little. I see. I get it. I totally get it.

I'm totally sidetracked now. So I can actually give you a bit more context on this orange aid thing because it ends up being- Was it laced? Well, that's her fear. Ohhhh. So, unfortunately, during this trip to Europe, Carlotta goes mad. Euro trip, baby.

Oh, baby. You become a totally different person. Oh no. In the most literal sense, I don't know if she had some latent mental illness that started expressing itself under stress Or if it was just the case of like the internal timer going off as sometimes happens with these sort of encompassing You know you hit 25 and then all of a sudden something changes. You know what I mean? Yeah, Carlotta loses it never finds it again for the rest of her life. Whoa She starts getting headaches

anxiety religious nightmares. Religious nightmares, not just any nightmares. Because remember, she's very Catholic this week. Yeah. Very, very Catholic. Oh, no. She becomes literally convinced that Napoleon III is the manifestation of Satan on Earth,

which is not unfair. Well, no wonder she doesn't want to drink his orangeade. Yeah. Yeah. She writes letters to Maximilian. Napoleon has never loved you beginning to end. He fascinated you like the serpent. All his deeds are treachery. Don't come to Europe. You will be burned to ashes if you exist in the same hemisphere as him. Whoa. Okay. And I'm sure he wrote

back like, Hey, babe. Yes. Thanks for the heads up, sweetie. She also becomes convinced around this time that the group of like servants and monarchists like Gutierrez de Estrada, her traveling party, she becomes convinced that basically that they're trying to poison her. She stops eating anything that could have been tampered with. Like orangeade. Like orangeade. She takes meals alone, preferring fruits and nuts and other untamperables.

She starts drinking from fountains in public, under the logic that they won't have been poisoned. No, but pigeon shit and a man. She starts buying live chickens, which she insists need to be killed and cooked in front of her, and she gets a cat to serve as a taster. Oh, that's kind of a lucky cat, as long as it doesn't die from poison. Throughout her difficulties she's still lobbying the European powers that be. She went to a bunch of meetings in France that were like very like, you know, sympathetically

received but ended in very non-committal, non-promises, right? She shows up unannounced at the Vatican looking bedraggled and frightened, demanding an audience with the Pope, shows up at the Vatican without an invite and says, get me the Pope right now. And she's holding a cat. They're like, uh, your highness? It's kind of just by virtue of who she is, she's able to actually get this invitation. She is an empress and she married into the Habsburg, she's the king of Belgium's sister, right?

Yeah. When she gets this audience, she hurls herself at the Pope's feet, sobbing uncontrollably that she's in danger and basically, these gays are trying to murder me! Like, she gives him that talk. Pius offers her a cup of hot chocolate to soothe her nerves, but she ain't taking that! No! At her behest, she's brought a different cup and then she just drinks out of the first one anyway while she's talking to the Pope. Oh my gosh.

The subsequent conversation is rambling and incoherent, ending when Pius brings her to a library and then kinda just slips away on her when her back is turnt. Smart move, Pius. You don't get to be Pope by bein' a dummy, do you? Finally, she writes a will, leaving everything to Maximilian in a letter of goodbye saying that God is calling her. She doesn't die here, but she does like write out this will saying like, God is calling me I can feel it.

And then she's taken to a convent where the nuns offer her food and thankfully Carlotta is alert enough to know that the knife and fork have been poisoned. And she credits this knowledge to God and she kind of falls to the ground, lavishly thanking God for saving her from death while the confused nuns give each other the look. And then sort of to cap off this joyous reverie, yeah, that's the one.

Pull the collar. Pulling their habits out a bit. Oh, this habit getting a little snugger isn't just me. Carlotta caps off this lavish reverie by plunging her hand into a boiling pot of stew. She passes out from the pain and is taken by carriage back to the hotel. Her younger brother, Philippe, arrives and brings her back to Miramar to convalesce. This next section I've titled further setbacks. It's kind of all further setbacks from here folks honestly.

It's all further setbacks. Back in Mexico, Juarez's fortunes have reversed now that he's got a benefactor in the United States. He takes Matamoros, then Monterrey, then Chihuahua. Maximilian loses the whole of the Northeast and the Pacific with court life over since that was Carlotta's thing, her big dimly lit balls. Maximiliane effectively becomes a hermit at Chapultepec more so when he contracts malaria. Further setbacks. Oooh, further setbacks.

Maximiliane tries to cozy up with the French again by appointing French army ministers to his cabinet when the US objects. Napoleon III disavows the whole thing and sends an aide-de-camp to persuade Maximilian to abdicate. Oh, oh, okay, okay. Eugh, eugh! Eugh! Around this time, telegraphs about Carlotta's illness finally arrive and Max figures out the person tending to her is the head of the insane asylum. That's not good. Oh. And with things falling apart and preparing yet again to abdicate, Maximilian finally

sends little Agustini Torbide back to his mother, Alice Green, mother and son reunited. Aww, Mama Alice, back again. And I bet he knows Spanish now, so that's great. So it was just a little immersion situation. Just like you did. It was just like you. Just like me. Maximilian starts to lay out his conditions of abdication.

However, the conservatives still haven't let up hope of a new Mexican monarchy. Even one ruled by a flip-flopper who went woke, and they begin a full court press to beg Max to reconsider. Okay, yes. He does and agrees to stay in Mexico to defend the monarch's cause, rationalizing that a true Habsburg never leaves his post in the moment of danger

and that abdicating would be treason. But he signed away his Habsburgness on that Maxi pad to his brother. I don't have a rebuttal to that, you're right. So by December, 1866, the majority of the country is under the control of President Benito Juarez, Maximilien's empire is financially, politically, and militarily bankrupt, France has formally broken off the alliance, though there's still the question of repayment, and on February

1st 1867, Gachille Bazin and the French Foreign Legion, along with whatever volunteers wish to escape safely with military protection, leave for Veracruz, scored by the soundtrack of a full military band. Damn, okay. So now the French army is gone. Napoleon III had already like broken off the agreement, but there was like, we'll wind it down with the French army. It's been wound down, no more French army. Oh man. Maximilien, watching the parade from the castle parapet and shrouded with a cloak,

so you just imagine him like brooding with his fucking little cloak on, has been abandoned, left only with his remaining partisans, volunteers, and the various Mexicans he has press-ganged into military service and forced to give him loans. If you were wondering how he lost the liberals, by the way, it was that. Oh, well that would do it. Which kind of makes sense, yeah. By the time Maximilian takes control of the army in March 1867, we're down to 1500 men

and 50,000 pesos. The Huaristas march on CDMX, so Maximilian leaves it under the control of one of his big name 3M generals, Marquez the Butcher, who loves to kill liberals. He puts that guy in charge of CDMX and he fights his way down to Queretaro. Maximilian has never fought in an army and there's even talk during this war of him like kind of like, oh, looking at the butterflies. Well, all the volts are being shot. But he cuts a fine profile in his wide sombrero with his sabers and two revolvers proclaiming

to go down, sword in hand, is fate, but not disgrace. Sounds like a little foreshadowing to me, but okay. That may end up being a self-fulfilling prophecy. The Horistas convening around Queretaro now have three times as many forces as Max. So three times here. He's fucked. Yeah. Yeah. No support whatsoever and totally outnumbered. Queretaro receives Max well as the Imperialistas arrive for what might be their last stand. Even still, our creature of habit, Max, is playing billiards every night and going to bed at 9. Yeah.

I thought it was 8. Well, you know… In times of war. This war is keeping me up. Yeah, you got it, you got it. He's also still collecting forced loans from residents as money rapidly dwindles. These damn pool sharks, you know? Uh…

Finally, the siege begins, and it's not pretty. Querétaro is in a valley, so very hard to hold if you had to hold it because you're surrounded. Whoever is surrounding you has the higher ground. Oh, I see. Okay, yeah. Food runs out quickly. We're eating roast meal soaked in vinegar if we're eating it all.

Horses and mules themselves not getting fed at all. We need them for our forces, but we don't have enough money to feed them or food to feed them. Constant combat, women and children getting maimed. Terrible stuff. Again, a really violent series of conflicts throughout this story. Finally, one of Maximilian's forces, a guy named Miguel Lopez, whose son Max was godfather of, he jumps ship to the Republicans and betrays Maximilian's position for a promise. 30 grand and we'll spare your life, but not Maximilian's. Oh, your own godson is like, cowabunga, see you later. Listen, you know who'd be a good godfather? Juarez, that's what I think.

Maximilian finally raises the white flag of surrender because now his location has been, they've caught him. He's surrounded, he can't get out. He actually tries to escape at one point, like running by foot, but it's no good. Maximilian finally raises the white flag of surrender and presents himself to Juarez's general, Mariano Escobedo, declaring,

if blood must be spilt, then let it be only mine. A plea that his closest allies, including the captured Miguel Miramon and Tomas Mejia, be spared. That's big of him. He's got his nobility, right? But it does seem like he would say that. And then if it came to that, he'd be like, well, I mean, I said that, but...

I mean, I said if blood must be spilled. Yeah. He's held in a convent, spending the first night in the convent's crypt as a reminder of what's to come. Ooh. As we await the court-martial on June 13th, because again, per Juarez's law, those who aided the French intervention will be executed. Oh, okay. Plans of escape begin to bubble up.

There's discussion that Maximilian as part of this escape should shave his distinctive forked beard, but he refuses. I will not change myself! It's my style, bro. Someone's like, what if you just like braided it or like put it together. He agrees to tie it around his neck. Oh god gross. It's not bad.

And hey maybe that Habsburg chin would have given him away even quicker. We don't know. That's fair enough okay. I hesitate to say this about a family that was so often depicted in oil paintings but they're not oil paintings the Habsburgs. Truly. A lot of in-braiding let's be real. It's fine. The many escape plans, and it's to my regret because this episode is already running a bit

long that I had to cut the many escape plans. Damn. They come to nothing. Okay. The show trial takes place, although Maximilian is able to avoid attending by pleading illness, malaria as you would call. Oh yeah, handy. Ultimately Maximilian along with Miramon and Mejia, his generals, are condemned to death by firing squad. June 19th, 1867.

Josie, you know what happens when we start saying individual dates. I think there might be a firing squad. There might be a firing squad. It's a clear day with good weather. Maximilian says his goodbyes. The evening before he was incorrectly told that Carlotta had passed away back in Europe. Maybe a mixed blessing with this he reasons he has no more reason to haunt this earth and looks forward to reuniting with her.

It's gonna be a few decades man, sorry. Maximilian, Miramon, and Mejia exchange hugs. They're taken, dressed in black, to thejia exchange hugs. They're taken dressed in black to the execution site in Queretaro where they stand with their backs against the proverbial chipped adobe wall looking out at their soon-to-be executioners and the crowd of onlookers. To the gathered, Maximilian says in his good Spanish, and as we insult this man it must be noted he apparently had good Spanish. Okay, well there you go. I forgive everybody. I pray that everyone may also forgive me and I wish that my blood,

which is now to be shed, may be for the good of the country. Long live Mexico, long live independence. What a confusing guy! What a confusing guy! Independence parenthesis from me! What? That's a confusing guy. Independence parentheses from me. What? That's so... And it is said of him that like, he gave these very rousing Independence Day speeches on like the day of the Grito de Dolores and that they were very moving to everyone in the crowd,

parentheses of like French and Belgian soldiers and he's like an Austrian monarch. He believes in these liberal things. He really does believe in them. He's just very conveniently naive. I feel like if he were born like 50 years later, 60, 70 years later, he would have been a really good Hollywood producer. Like he could have moved to LA and just been like, let's tell rousing stories of the revolution, but not actually like follow any of those ideals. Yeah, with his set of ideals, I think this man would have been better off born, not a Habsburg.

Yeah. With the politics he's got, because his politics and him being this guy from this family don't mix. No, uh-uh. It doesn't seem like he knew enough or was self-aware enough or was brave enough to disconnect from either one No, you know like mm-hmm I use the phrase conveniently naive because like the part of me that empathizes with him to a degree is like oh he was Just naive and then the part of me that does not is like oh he was naive in a way that let him go like Me take over this entire country that doesn't want me well I guess you'll notice he never got

his fucking referendum, by the way. That vote of like 50% of the population needs to agree that it's okay that I'm here. That never happened. And he was never really told explicitly that it happened. He was just willing to hand wave it because again, he was at the end of the day, power hungry like the rest of them, right?

Or prestige hungry or I wanna to be really popular or whatever it was. Yeah. Me? I'm just a little baby. I don't have any money. I'm just a little baby with a big little beard and go to directions. Yeah, no, it's fucking weird. Not to interrupt this execution. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah. He gives the executioners money. He tells them to aim for his heart, and he looks to the beautiful, cloudless Quere-Taros

guy. Shots ring out, and all three men, Miguel Miramon, Tomás Mejía, and Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico, are killed. Like all things with Maximilian, we appreciate the duality. Either this is the Emperor finally facing the poetic fate of his destiny. That's the one side of the beard. Yeah, the one side of the beard. Finally unspooling

as Mexico gloriously retakes its liberty. Or else this is a guy being shot like a dog in the street after a saga of pointless blunders that ultimately amounted to nothing but unnecessary death. All in, more than 45,000 people were killed by the end of the second French Intervention. The other side of the beard. And these people were Mexicans, Huaristas, Imperialistas, rank and file soldiers, who were brought to this place that they knew nothing about and then sent on this kind of like pointless fruitless quest and then got yellow fever or got their fucking head cut off. Yeah. Oh gosh. Maximilian's body is given a comically terrible embalming job of which there are pictures. Oh no.

Oh no. By morticians who smoke over the corpse while openly voicing their disdain for the body and the man who once inhabited it. So this is a bad embalming job on purpose. Mm-hmm. Rough. It's very like, hey! You're like, hello!

Scary shit. Benito Juarez stops in Queretaro on his way back to the capital to see Maximilian dead. This is the first time he has ever physically seen the man who tried to steal his country. Whoa! Because when would they have seen each other? Juarez got cleared out like a year before Maximilian even came to Mexico. That's true. And that seems like a political blunder

that they didn't meet well before that year that he got cleared, you know, like. He did send him a letter being like, hey man, I don't think you should try to invade Mexico. They were pen pals. That he should have really given more weight to in his deliberations. Yeah.

In 1867, Maximilian's corpses loaded onto his boat, the Novada, and brought back to Europe. Leonora Marquez, the butcher, holds CDMX for two days after Maximilian's execution. Finally forced out by future dictator Porfirio Diaz, flees to Vanna, dies many years later at the age of 93. The Mexican conservative party effectively ceases to exist after this fiasco. I can see why, yeah. Heartbroken at the collapse of the Mexican empire, José María Gutiérrez de Estrada dies in Paris in 1867, a month or so after Maximilien died of a broken heart, they said, truly.

Whoa, okay. He had written so many long and boring speeches about this, and now to see it come to nought that has to be devastating. Yeah, fair. His fellow monarchist in exile, José Manuel Hidalgo Yesnoriza, becomes a novelist and dies in 1896. Yeah, why not? Everyone's got a book in them. Franz Josef continued to rule as emperor of Austria for 45 more years, but he did suffer various personal tragedies including not only the death of his brother

Maximilian but the suicide of his son Rudolf in 1889 and the assassinations of his wife Elizabeth in 1898 and his nephew Franz Ferdinand in 1914. Napoleon III gets his ass kicked by Prussian, the Franco-Prussian. Remember I told you things were heating up back home with Prussia? They certainly were. He gets spanked. He is captured and dethroned in 1870, bringing about the third French Republic. He dies in exile in Great Britain in 1873. Empress Eugenie enjoys 50 more years of life dying in Madrid in 1920 at the age of 94. I'm liking these 90s numbers for these folks. That's great. Good for them. It's not a meritocracy, is it?

Yeah. Not all our Empresses are so lucky as Empress Eugenie. Carlotta is moved into the care of her family at a series of estates in Belgium. She's not told about Maximilian's death until the next year, 1868, whereupon she is inconsolable. For the next 60 years, she struggles her lucidity interspersed with madness. It's said she spotted wandering the halls at night crying for Maximilian and once she's found at the piano Softly playing the Mexican national anthem creepy creepy

creepy That's not how it goes She dies at her Belgian castle in 1927, aged 86, the Habsburg Empire by then well into its post-World War I disintegration. Oh yeah, damn. Benito Juarez dies of a heart attack in 1872, shortly after the events of the story. He goes down in history as one of the greatest Mexican leaders of all time, beloved for his strength in the face of foreign intervention and the specifics of his unlikely military victory over more established powers. Yeah, this guy fucking beat

the French! He beat the Europeans! He beat the French, he beat the Habsburgs. I mean, America pumping a bunch of guns into the situation helped, but we're not, we give out assists too, you know what I mean? You know, yeah. Mexico remains a republic, though not one without its turmoil, as folks like Porfirio Diaz sees in relinquish and sees in relinquish power. Yeah. At the border garden in Cuernavaca, where we began our story today, Maximilian's vacation residence, there is now a plaque on a quiet, out of the way, bearing the words of Maximilian's rival Mexican president Benito Juarez from his Manifiesto a la Nacion, delivered July 1867.

Writers were kind of putting back the china and putting the tablecloths back on in CDMX and being like, that was a fucked up few years. Translated from Spanish, the plaque reads, Between individuals as between nations, Respect for the rights of others is peace. In our free institutions, the Mexican people are the arbiters of our fate. And with that, and a cry of Viva Mexico, we bring today's unfortunate tale to an end. Oh god, what a rube.

What a jamoke. What a schmuck. Yeah, a jabroni. A jabroni of the first order. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And that glimmer again of something where you're like, I don't think that you're an entirely bad-hearted person. Yes, yeah.

But the arrogance with which you approached this country and its people was not it. Yeah. You can't come in and re-subjugate an entire group of people that just attained democracy from literally this exact thing and then be like, don't worry guys, I'm cool, I voted for Obama. Yeah. Cool.

You know what I mean? What's that about? He was the jabroni that was like hand plucked for this fiasco Napoleon was like who can we get who can we get and then a turnip truck came by and Maximilian fell off the back. Yeah, it was like that guy from one Story of misplaced hubris to another we will see you every week in April for Titanic April. But no pressure, Bitter Sweet Infamy is free, baby. You can always support us by liking, rating, subscribing, leaving a review, following us on Instagram at Bitter Sweet Infamy, or just pass the podcast along to a friend who you

think would dig it. Stay sweet! My sources for this episode included The Last Emperor of Mexico, the dramatic story of the Habsburg Archduke who created a kingdom in the New World by Edward Shawcross, 2021. I also read Longview, when an Austrian Archduke became Emperor of Mexico, also by Edward Shaw Cross January 25th, 2022 for America's Quarterly. I read Maximilian I, the Austrian Archduke who regretted trying to conquer Mexico, and El Pais by Jacinto Anton, October 9th, 2023. I read the Google Arts and Culture page on Maximilian I in Mexico. I read Maximilian I, the first Emperor of Mexico,oleon.org. I read El Mito de la

India Bonita en Diario de Morelos. I read Maximiliano y la India Bonita, un romance que nunca existió by Maritza Cuevas en El Sol de Cuernavaca, April 28th, 2024. I read the Lonely Planet pages on Pirámides de Tepochtéco, Tepozla, Mexico, and Jardín Bordo, Cuernavaca, Mexico, as well as the Mexican government's page on Parque Nacional, Crutas de Cacahuamilpa. I also read the Wikipedia pages on the Habsburg Monarchy, the Mexican War of Independence, Porfirio Diaz, and the Second French Invention of Mexico. Join us on ko-fi.com, that's K-O-FI.com, slash, bittersweetinfamy. Become a monthly subscriber to become a member of

the Bittersweet Film Club. Get those episodes. You'll be joining Terry, Jonathan, Lizzie, D, Erica, Joe, Soph, Dylan, and Satchel. Bittersweet Infamy is a proud member of the 604 Podcast Network. This episode is edited Street by Bryan Steele. You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy! Just use Indeed. Stop struggling to get your job post seen on other job sites. With Indeed Sponsored Jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates,

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