Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Emperor Maximillian I of Mexico

Starting point is 00:00:00 In 1864, Maximilian, the son of Archduke Franz Karl of Austria and a member of the Habsburg dynasty, arrived in Mexico. He had never been to Mexico before, but it was a pretty good first trip, considering that when he arrived, within days, he was crowned the new emperor of Mexico. Unfortunately, his rule over Mexico didn't last that long. Learn more about Maximilian I first and how a member of a European royal family came to rule Mexico on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now.

Starting point is 00:00:57 Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. From a pure drama and storytelling standpoint, as a general rule, the histories of countries in North America get far more interesting the further south you go. Mexican history is in many ways far more interesting than American history. This can probably be best exemplified by the story of Maximilian I of Mexico. To understand how Maximilian wound up in Mexico and how Mexico wound up with Maximilian, you need to know what was happening in Mexico and the rest of the world immediately beforehand. Mexican independence is usually said to have occurred in 1821.

Starting point is 00:01:40 The full story of how Mexico achieved independence is for, for another episode, but that was the year that they declared independence and the year that the Spanish control of Mexico fell apart. Mexico went through a lot in its first few decades. They had a very brief fling with an emperor and monarchy, which was then replaced by a republic. Much of the first few decades were dominated by the person of Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana. He was elected president of Mexico, Texas revolted and broke away, then there was a major war with the United States that resulted in a loss of territory. Santa Ana was exiled and returned, and eventually in 1855, and Benito Juarez became the new president of Mexico. I'm glossing over a whole lot there, but

Starting point is 00:02:18 the Warres administration is where this story really starts. Warez was considered to be a liberal reformer. He was also an indigenous Mexican, not of Spanish ancestry. And in fact, he didn't even know how to read or speak Spanish until he was 12 years old. In 1857, Mexico adopted a new constitution that put limits on the power of the Catholic Church in the country and established freedom of religion. It also put restrictions on the power of the president as well as the military. In 1858, an event known as the Reform War broke out. The Reform War was a civil war fought in Mexico between liberals who supported the 1857 Constitution and conservatives who advocated for a stronger central government

Starting point is 00:02:58 and greater integration of the Catholic Church in the affairs of Mexico. Within the conservative faction, there was a group that actually favored a European-style monarchy for Mexico. As early as 1853, the Mexican monarchists had been floating the idea of a Mexican monarchy to various royal houses in Europe. Almost immediately, one name began coming up in discussions about who could be the founder of a Mexican monarchy. Ferdinand Maximilian, Yosef Maria, Haxburg, Lothringen. Hereby known for the rest of this episode simply as Maximilian, he was born the second son

Starting point is 00:03:31 of Archduke Franz Karl of Austria in 1832. France Carl's first son and the older brother of Maximilian was Emperor Franz Joseph I of the Austrian Empire. Franz Joseph I was placed on the throne in 1848 at the age of 18, and he reigned for an incredible 68 years all the way through the First World War. But that too is for another episode. The reason why Maximilian's name kept coming up was because he was a second son and had no real path towards becoming an emperor in Austria. He was highly educated and could speak English, French, Italian, Spanish, and Hungarian in addition to his native German. Also, he had proven himself to be a very capable administrator. In particular, he served as the viceroy over the region of Lombardi Venetia, which was then part of the Austrian Empire in what is today northern Italy.

Starting point is 00:04:21 While Viceroy, he overhauled the tax system, dredged the canals of Venice, and open up new ports. And as an administrator, he proved himself to be highly competent. So it was not a surprise that when the Mexican monarchists ask who they should pick, so many people pointed to Maximilian as being the best candidate. Not surprisingly, the European power supported the conservatives in the reform war, especially Napoleon III of France. One of the attractive things to the monarchists was that Maximilian was a Habsburg. The Habsburgs were the royal family that ruled Spain during the peak of the Spanish Empire.

Starting point is 00:04:55 To the monarchists, it would be a return to the glory days of Spain. The idea of becoming Emperor of Mexico was first brought to Maximilian in 1859, soon after he was dismissed from his position of Viceroy. He found the offer tempting, but ultimately declined so that he could travel the world and take part in a botanical mission to Brazil. Shockingly, he was the first descendant of Ferdinand and Isabella to have actually visited the Americas. Back in Mexico, the reform war was wreaking havoc on the Mexican economy.

Starting point is 00:05:25 The war made it difficult to collect taxes, as the central government didn't control the entire country, country, and it put the country deep in debt trying to finance the war. The Americans were supporters of Juarez and the liberals in the Civil War. In 1861, the new American administration led by Abraham Lincoln tried to find a way to help the Mexicans with their debt problem, but they were unable to find a solution. On July 17th, Mexican President Benito Juarez announced the suspension of interest payments on Mexico's debt.

Starting point is 00:05:53 This ended up having enormous ramifications, because most of Mexico's debt was held by European governments. With the suspension of interest payments, the British, Spanish, and especially the French, now had reason to intervene in Mexico militarily. In 1861, they did exactly that. Known as the tripartite expedition, British, Spanish, and French forces landed in Veracruz and took control of the port on December 14th. Obstensibly, the Europeans were there to collect on their debt. However, Napoleon III had an ulterior motive. He wanted to create a Mexican monarchy that he could manipulate. Negotiations began in early 1862, but eventually broke down. The British soon left, but the French doubled down and announced that they were going to establish a new government,

Starting point is 00:06:39 and they welcomed Mexicans to join them. It was now a full-scale invasion in what had been just a civil war. The conservatives threw their support behind the French to create a monarchy. Normally, the Americans would have been all over this, as French intervention was a direct violation of the Monroe Doctrine. However, the United States was a bit preoccupied with the civil war of its own. Initially, the French didn't fare very well. They were defeated at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862, which if you remember back to my previous episode, is the event that is celebrated on Cinco de Mayo. The small expeditionary force had to fall back to the coast. However, by 1863, reinforcements had arrived, and they were able to push forward capturing Mexico City on June 10th.

Starting point is 00:07:24 In July, the new Mexican assembly met, consisting entirely of conservative monarchists, and extended a formal invitation to Maximilian to become the new emperor of Mexico. A staged plebiscite was held on December 4, 1863, which claimed that the Mexican people wanted Maximilian as their ruler. Juarez fled to northern Mexico to form a government in exile, but at no point did he ever actually leave the country. Maximilian accepted the crown this time, but it was a poisoned crown. he would be entirely dependent on France militarily, and many people question the wisdom of accepting

Starting point is 00:07:59 the position of emperor. The French colonel Francois Claude Dubarie, who served in Mexico, told him, quote, if you succeed in bringing order out of this chaos, fortune into this misery, union into these hearts, you will be the greatest sovereign of modern times. Go, poor fool. End quote. In April 1864, he resigned from his remaining duties in the Austrian Empire, and he and his wife, the new Empress Charlotte, aka Carlotta in Spanish, arrived in Veracruz on May 29th. Maximilian was not the emperor that conservative Mexicans thought he would be. They just assumed that he would overturn all of the reforms made by the liberals in 1857. Instead, Maximilian was a reformer himself, albeit now a monarch.

Starting point is 00:08:42 Moreover, the French didn't want the conservatives ruling in the country either. Maximilian's disappointment with the conservatives resulting in him losing his own domestic support. With the end of the American Civil War in 1865, the Andrew Johnson administration began issuing warnings to France and started to give material aid to the Mexican Republican forces in the North. Moreover, American volunteers began signing up to join the Mexican Republicans. The Civil War, which had never really ended, now began to swing back in favor of the Liberals. When the French moved north to try to capture Republican territory, it only invited Republican activity in the South. Maximilian issued what became known as the Black Decree, which ordered the

Starting point is 00:09:24 execution of anyone aiding or participating in the rebellion. It resulted in the execution of 11,000 Mexicans, and it caused him to lose support amongst the common people. Throughout 1865, conditions worsened for Maximilian and the monarchy. As the Republicans under the command of Juarez continued to advance, the French eventually decided that the war was unwinnable. In January 1866, Napoleon the third announced that he was going to withdraw support and troops from Mexico. Empress Carlotta actually went to Europe to plead the case of her husband, but she got no response and never actually ended up returning to the country. Everything was working against Maximilian at this point. He no longer had the support of the French, nor the conservatives who felt betrayed by his

Starting point is 00:10:08 liberal reforms, or the liberals who are now closing in. By October 1866, Maximilian had retreated to the city of Carretero. By this point, most people had assumed. that Maximilian would probably flee the country and return to Europe. On March 6, 1867, Republican forces consisting of 40,000 men laid seized to Corretero, which was defended by only 10,000 men. Maximilian actually did try to escape on May 11th, but he was thwarted by one of his own officers. Coraitero fell on May 15th, and Maximilian was captured the next day trying to escape. On June 13th, Emperor Maximilian was put on trial for conspiring to overthrow the Mexican government

Starting point is 00:10:46 and for the black decree. The trial lasted a single day. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. The Mexican government was flooded with telegrams from European heads of state and other 19th century political liberals trying to spare the life of Maximilian. Juarez actually personally respected Maximilian. Maximilian was more of a political reformer than he had expected, and he also realized that he had been manipulated by Napoleon III.

Starting point is 00:11:11 However, Wores felt that he had to make a firm statement to the rest of the world, that foreign intervention in Mexico wouldn't be tolerated, so he refused to pardon Maximilian or rescind the order. On June 19th at 6.40 a.m., Maximilian I was executed by firing squad, along with two of his generals. He gave each of his executioners a gold coin, and his last words spoken in Spanish, were, quote, I forgive everyone, and I ask everyone to forgive me. May my blood which is about to be spilled end the bloodshed which has been experienced in my new

Starting point is 00:11:43 motherland. Long live Mexico, long live its independence. End quote. His body was displayed in public for several days before being returned to Austria for burial. A depiction of his execution was painted by Edward Mene. There were some monument built in his honor in Europe, and some of his possessions are on display today at a museum in Vienna. He's been the subject of books, movies, and orchestral compositions. However, there's very little in Mexico today that can be traced back to his rule other than the Evenda Reforma, aka the Avenue of Reform in Mexico City, whose construction he ordered. Maximilian's rule remains a rather odd episode in Mexican history, out of place with everything that came before or after. While his brother had one of the longest rules in history as an emperor,

Starting point is 00:12:28 he had one of the shortest. With the death of Maximilian I, Mexico's flirtation with monarchy permanently ended and was never seriously considered again, making Maximilian not just the first, but the last. The executive producer, Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Peter Bennett and Cameron Kiefer. Today's review comes from listener Miami Heat Number One over on Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write, best podcast ever. This podcast is amazing, and I love how it comes out every day. I found this podcast through my son, and I love listening along with him. Thanks, Gary. Well, thank you, Miami Heat Number One. And I can only assume by your name that this must be

Starting point is 00:13:12 former Miami Heat star Chris Bosch, who had number one retired by the Heat. So glad to hear that you and your son enjoyed the show. And I'm sorry that the Heat will not be winning the Eastern Conference this year, as that will be won by the Milwaukee Bucks. Remember, if you leave a review or send me a boostagram, you two can have it read on the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Emperor Maximillian I of Mexico

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