School of War - Ep 192: Raymond Jonas on Europe’s War on the Monroe Doctrine (~165 years ago)

Episode Date: April 25, 2025

Raymond Jonas, Jon Bridgman Endowed Professor in History at the University of Washington and author of Habsburgs on the Rio Grande: The Rise and Fall of the Second Mexican Empire, joins the show to discuss a failed-but-spectacular 19th Century attempt by European powers to undermine the Monroe Doctrine. ▪️ Times      •      01:42 Introduction     •      03:31 Transatlantic relations      •      05:20 Europe distracted     •      08:39 Secession and unrest        •      12:46 Maximillian I        •      17:55 Continental powers      •      20:01 Britain, France and Spain         •      26:13 What the Americans did right      •      28:23 Napoleon III     •      30:09 Mexico and the Confederacy         •      35:20 Slavery adjacent       •      38:46 What went wrong         •      42:07 Benito Juarez    •       44:33 Maximillian’s execution    •       46:20 European alarm Follow along on Instagram, X @schoolofwarpod, and YouTube @SchoolofWarPodcast Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack

I really enjoyed this conversation on the ostensibly obscure topic of the Second Mexican Empire. For those not in the know, and I'd include myself in that bucket until very recently, that's when a concert of European powers, and in particular France, intervened in Mexico during the American Civil War to build a conservative outcropping of Habsburg power on our troubled republic's southern border. The adventure, we'll just say, didn't last. But the geopolitical and ideological forces that drove it, and that characterized the American and Mexican responses

are surprisingly relevant even today to understanding the unfolding destinies of America and of Europe. Let's get into it. It is for a shift before war, this to walk the invasion of the way. December 7, 1941, a date which will live in history. A bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a state.

We continue to face the rain situation in grand. Fight on the beaches, which will fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall never surrender. For more, follow School of War on YouTube, Instagram, Substack, and Twitter. And feel free to follow me on Twitter at Aaron B. McLean. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining School of War. I am delighted to welcome to the show today, Raymond Jonas, who is the John Bridgman Endowed Professor in History at the University of Washington. He's a specialist on the 19th century, author of numerous books, most recently, Habsburgs on the Rio Grande, The Rise and Fall of the Second Mexican Empire. Raymond, thank you so much for joining the show.

Glad to be here. So we were just chatting before we started recording, and I made a confession that my knowledge of the Second Mexican Empire essentially began with my coming across your book in a bookstore in Boston near the Harvard University campus. And I'm delighted that I, that I, I am now aware of it and even more delighted that I'm aware of your book. Because it really is interesting. And, you know, it seems relevant to me. We're recording this on April the 18th, which is the day before the 250th anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord, which I don't know if you, I don't know if you're getting, there's this thing going, we're going to do it in our house. We're going to put the two lanterns in the windows with the kids. I don't know if you're, I don't know if you're observing this in the Jonas household.

but I'm looking for it. I'm going to read them the Longfellow poem on Paul Revere. I'm going all in. Well, you know, I don't think Paul Revere got as far as Seattle on that. Right. But we'll put something in the window just in case. We're down in Virginia, but nevertheless, a little civics education for the kids. But I raise it because what your book is really about, I mean, it's about this fascinating episode that I certainly did not know about, which is this European intervention in Mexico during the American Civil War, the American Civil War. But what it's really about is European, imperial, kind of conservative reaction to the American Republic and its existence and it's developing power. And so it's, you know, to understand, you know, that dynamic is alive and well in 2025, especially.

And it seems to be like we should actually understand what you're talking about in your book. If we want to understand that dynamic today, certainly Western Hemisphere politics and policies today. So thank you for coming. Just so. I mean, I didn't plan it this way, I promise, but yes, it turns out to be a timely moment for a book of this kind on transatlantic relations. And that's, in fact, you're absolutely right. That's what the book is about. And it's about issues and tensions that are revealed because this, it takes place at a moment of acute vulnerability for the American Republic.

I mean, it's greatest challenge the American Civil War. The fact that the empire fails doesn't mean that what it shows us about European attitudes to the United States or about Mexican attitudes or the United States. It doesn't mean that those are important insights. And so what the book tries to do is to connect worlds that are usually treated separately. And in fact, in terms of the scholarship, usually treated separately. You know, Americanists and Mexicanists and Europeanists, but this book tries to situate itself. You know, somewhere, you know, at 30,000 feet maybe, but somewhere over those three poles and tries to make those connections. So for those of us whose knowledge of American history in the 19th century, you know, we're aware of the Mexican-American War.

We know it happened. We know it was controversial. We know America generally gained a lot of territory and there was manifest destiny. But it's very much an American story, at least as I was taught it in school and frankly, as I'm kind of aware of it today, where the other characters are, They're sort of, you know, the French Empire by this point is sort of second spear carrier from the left and mild AP U.S. history textbook. Tell maybe, can you give us a bit of the prehistory of the story that you tell in the book in terms of the major muscle movements in the 19th century that condition the European, the condition the situation where the Europeans are suddenly going to invade in Mexico when the American Civil War kicks off? It's absolutely crucial that question because it gets at what I think is something often. underappreciated by Americans and Americanists, namely the fact that Europe was distracted by war from 1792 until 1815 was an enormous blessing for the United States.

It was a great advantage for the American Republic because it meant for the better part of 25 years, a generation, basically. Europe was profoundly distracted. And thanks to such things as Trafalgar, most, you know, European powers, the British apart, were largely cut off from the new world, cut off from their empires. And that gives breathing space for the American Republic. The Treaty of Paris of 1783 has set some generous but hard boundaries for the American Republic. And that is a space for the American Republic to grow. But by the time the war ends in 1815, the Europeans are interested in

looking at the Americas again. And this turns out to be an area of acute risk for the American Republic. I mean, the famous Monroe Doctrine is all about telling the Europeans to stay out. And I think, you know, this is all part of, you know, U.S. history from middle school on, the Monroe Doctrine is one of those, yeah, okay, sure. But in fact, it really addresses an acute fear on the part of not just Monroe, but a whole generation of American political leaders, that the European monarchies who are now, you know, back in power after being on the ropes, thanks to the revolutionary and Napoleonic armies, they're now back and they're looking at the Americas again. And they're you know, they're likely to intervene. The famous Holy Alliance, which brings the Prussians and the

Austrians and the Russians into an alliance, is hostile to the French Revolution, but it's hostile to the Republican idea. And that includes the Republican idea as manifest in the United States. They see the French Republic as aggressive and expansionist and dangerous. And when they look at the American Republic, they see the same qualities. And the American fear is that the Holy Alliance is going to look for an opportunity to reassert itself, and that's going to spell trouble for the United States. So there are a couple of more immediate things that condition this intervention and the strange career of the Emperor Maximilian in North America. The first is, of course, the Civil War, which we can say more about. And it would be interesting

to just think about for a second how that sort of turns the tables on the phenomenon you just described. Now it's the Americans, the members of the American Republic who are distracted from their ability to manage international relations. But then the second issue, of course, is unrest in Mexico itself in this episode called the Reform War. So if you wouldn't mind, just speak to then to the sort of immediate prehistory, the conditions for the events you readbook. Sure. Well, if I could just back up just a bit. I mean, the Texas secession for Mexico is a key issue. and it sets up this struggle in some pretty dramatic ways.

The British and the French are both eager to support the Republic of Texas. Remember, Texas is independent for 10 years, and the British and the French see that as a good thing. That's kind of effectively block U.S. expansion. The Mexican-American War seems like, after the U.S. in Texas, in 1845, that U.S. Mexican War looks like, like a resumption of a pattern of American settlement and annexation, and indeed, in fact, it does involve the transfer of a significant amount of territory from Mexico to the United States. The turmoil in Mexico that will lead to the intervention and the establishment of the Mexican Empire is, in some ways, a product of that because the dismemberment of Mexico, the loss of

Texas seems to be just prolonged to an ongoing, and there's suggestions on both the American side and the Mexican side that this is a real possibility that this sort of, this process of expansion and annexation is going to continue. And what it leads to, as defeat often does, the defeat of Mexico in this war leads to recrimination and infighting and accusations and pointed figures about, well, how did we get here? Whose fault is it that we've lost this war? And the way it plays out in terms of domestic politics in Mexico is that defenders of the Mexican Republic, the liberals, are accused in effect of supporting weakness.

And the argument that conservatives make is that, well, you know, republics are inherently weak. And what Mexico needs is a monarchy, because monarchies are strong, and only a monarchy can defend Mexico and defend its territory. So the defeat in the Mexican-American War turns into some really serious recriminations and may erupt in a domestic civil war in Mexico just before the American Civil War, where defenders of the Republic, and eventually Benito Juarez will emerge as the leader, defenders of the Republic are challenged by defenders of the Old Order. people who are especially prominent in the old days of New Spain. I'm thinking here, especially

of the Army and the Catholic Church. And so the wars of the reform are essentially, you know, where these lines are drawn. And the Republic is quite determined to bring the Catholic Church to, under its control, carries out reforms that involve the transfer of the property of the Catholic Church to effectively nationalization and resale. So there are some profound differences that emerge and create a situation that offers an opening ultimately that the advocates of the Second Empire will exploit, that they can step in. What conservatives do when they lose in the war of reform to the liberals is they say, well, we're not done here. We're just going to go abroad and we're going to look for friends. And they go to the courts of Europe and say, well, you know,

We're looking for someone who can step in, ideally, with military force, and offer a candidate who can serve as a monarch in Mexico. And meanwhile, the Republican, the Mexican Republic owes a lot of money to the same Europeans who are being lobbied by the Mexican conservatives. So you get this intersection of events. Tell us about Maximilian, how he comes on to the scene, the French interest within the concert of different European powers who have an interest in. Mexico. Just his story and career is so odd. I'm curious to learn more. So Maximilian is a

Hobbesburg prince, which means that he is raised to rule. That's what these dynastic families do. Sons in particular are expected to be well educated. They're expected to be wise. They're expected to be prepared to step in and assume the reins of power. The problem for Maximilian is that he's not in the Well, he's in the line of succession, but he has a brother ahead of him, Franz Joseph, the man who will be the emperor, a Halsberg emperor, from the 1840s, right up and through the First World War. So for Max Billion actually to come to power, he would have to involve either the death or the abdication of his brother.

Maxvillian is a bright young man. He's well-educated. He's also vain. And he thinks that he would actually make a best. enter monarch and his older brother. He's frustrated. He's given some authority as Viceroy in northern Italy, where the Hotsbergs have domains. Italy doesn't exist yet as a political entity. The Havsburgs control Lombard. They control Milan and Venice, basically. And Maxvillian is sent there for a couple of years where he rules as a liberal lever. And that

doesn't work well in Vienna. They're nervous about it. In about nationalist and democratic impulses, and they pull him from power and put a general in his place. In fact, it doesn't prevent what they're trying to prevent, namely an insurrection. Italy eventually does achieve independence. Max Millian withdraws. He into his private life. He marries the daughter of the king of Belgium. And together, they entertain invitations from Mexican conservatives in exile, the refugees in Europe who are urging them to give some thought to going to Mexico and reestablishing the Hobbsburg rule there. We're getting a bit away from the real politic of the financial side of all this, but this is

interesting. So we'll come back to that. But can you explain to the modern American here, what you just said sounds so strange that you have conservatives from Mexico petitioning a seemingly. sort of random European aristocrat, a very high rank, but nevertheless, to come rule in their country. Say a bit about the ideological background that would make such a project seem rational at the time. Well, it's hard for us to imagine because we're impuged with the nationalist ideas. that we tend to think that the politicians we elect or the leaders we choose are going to be people who share our history and our heritage.

But in the 19th century and certainly before that, people who ruled ideally were from ruling houses. That didn't mean they had to share a national heritage. In fact, the thought was that it might actually be better if they didn't, that that would mean that they were above politics and not directly engaged. So, for example, the King of Greece was the Bavarian, and Victoria, of course, had German lineage. Catherine Le Great was from Prussia. I mean, we have lots of examples of, in the kind of combinations and marriages and invitations to rule in Europe, lots of examples of people who rule countries with which they have no direct lineage or direct connection. So for the Mexicans, the Mexican conservatives, this isn't a problem.

In fact, it's a feature, not a bug. And he's not the first person they contact. Mexican conservatives talk to the Queen Victoria's cousin about becoming Emperor of Mexico. They approach some members of the Orly Honest Line in France. They talk to the Duke of Modna in Italy to come to Mexico. It's only when they go to Maximilian that they find a receptive audience. He's captivated by the idea and eventually agrees. Meanwhile, there is this, you do a really nice job, I think, of characterizing this in the book, this expanding European conservative alarm, which it has an ideological valence.

It has a racial valence that on the one hand you have, well, you got the Russians, you have the Russian Empire and the threats it poses, but then on the other hand, you have the Anglo-Saxons. with the British playing in a sort of unusual or, you know, sort of an odd role in that worldview, but then the Americans, as far as this Mexican question, is concerned, the lead role. And Latin Europe, I guess, needs to assert itself, less the future belong to the Anglo-Saxons and the Russians, which I feel like I could probably, Emmanuel Macron is basically saying that to himself right now. So, you know, what's old is new again. But say more about that dimension of things, if you would. It's a, it's a, I mean, you find this idea in Alexei de Tocqueville, you're famous from, for democracy in America, but you'll find it other places too that the future belongs to the continental powers. And Russia obviously is one of those continental powers. And the other, as the 19th century goes forward, is the United States, which is rapidly becoming a continental power and that the future will belong to these two great continental formations. The problem for Europe is that, the, the

these formations completely dwarfed the great hours of the day. France, Spain, Germany, of course, doesn't exist yet. It might be helpful to keep in mind that the territory of France is about the size of Texas. So the scale of power is changing in the 19th century. And when Tockfield visits the United States in the 1830s, there's a passage toward the end of the first volume of democracy in America, where he takes a bird's eye view of the country he's been studying, and he says, and he identifies what he sees as a looming racial conflict

between the Anglo-Saxons and the Latins. And so he articulates this emerging struggle in terms of race. It's a really interesting concept. You know, maybe right from history, in American history, we think of race in terms of morphological differences, but these are differences that aren't really obvious and morphologically speaking. But he says that they're profound.

And he defines this boundary between the United States and Latin, what is being now called Latin America. It's a neologism. But he sees it in these terms as a racial boundary. And that does something really important for the Europeans who are interested in engaging in the Americas in the 1850s and 60s. And that is it gives them a way in. Because, I mean, if you think about it,

if France wants to stop U.S. expansion, they had a perfect opportunity. It was called Louisiana. And when Napoleon decides to cash out of the Americas and sell Louisiana to the United States, Thomas Jefferson, this is, this, you know, moves the boundary substantially to the West. And the French don't really have a pretext for getting involved until a group of intellectuals, starting with Philkeville, but others later, who invests. this concept of Latin America and pose the idea, proposed that France should put itself at the head of Latin peoples. It sounds far-fetched, but it's just the kind of pretext that the French need

and that Napoleon III needs to build public opinion and build support for an idea of an intervention in Mexico. So you have all these forces building Abraham Lincoln's elected in the United States, the Mexicans have their own nasty civil affair, and they end up owing a lot of money to Britain, France, and Spain. And Ray, what happens next? Well, yes, there are different motives. The French motivation is quite clearly geopolitical. The British are interested in this.

Lord Palmerston, the prime minister, is worried about the United States, but he's worried about challenging the United States, too, far more cautious than the French. But he does British investors have his, year. They're really enormous dividend payments from their Mexican bonds and stopped, and they're worried about getting their principal back. The Spanish occupies a position somewhere in between. Mexico used to be Spains. They'd like to get it back. They have some investments at stake, too. But for them, the ideal would be for

them to jockey to the front and reestablish Spanish dominion over Mexico. So there are varying motives involved on the part of these three countries. But there are the three who are there in 1860, just as the American Civil War is erupting, they're there arriving at Maracruz ready to assert their will. And so this war of debt collection and liberation and establishment of Latin America

and all these other various rhetorical lines begins. And this is all pre-Max-Milian, right? Maximilian doesn't actually show up for a couple more years. How do these initial rounds of warfare in Mexico actually go? And I guess May the 5th, 1862 figures prominently in this. That's right. The Spanish are there, they hope to reestablish rule, but they very quickly realize that the Mexicans are not at all interested in having

the Spanish come back. The memories there, the reflex is there, and it's profoundly anti-Spanish. They are the first. to arrive and they'll be the first to leave Mexico when they realize that the dream of reestablishing dominion is false. The British end up being more pragmatic. They get assurances that they can get a slice of customs revenue at Veracruz to repay British investors and they will peel off too. They're also nervous about challenging, even during the Civil War, about appearing to challenge U.S. authority so directly. But the French persist, and they begin to march up from the coast from Veracruz,

and they're quite confident that this is going to work out well for them. They get as far as Puebla, which is about, I mean, remember, Mexico City is over 7,000 feet in altitude. So it's quite a campaign. At about halfway up, there's a city called Puebla that, where the French arrive and they're first of all confident because they have they have troops who are seasoned veterans who are who are with them and who are going to lead the charge but they're also they've been convinced they've been told that the Mexican people are seething under the rule of the Mexican Republic and they're ready to welcome the French as liberators that they're privately monarchist and they as soon as the French arrive they're going to they're going to really

reveal their true monarchist sentiments. What the French do when they get to Puebla is, armed with a certain arrogance and confidence, they assault the fortress at Guadalupe directly, and the result is the Cinco de Mayo, the 5th of May, they are defeated quite decisively and are forced to withdraw. I mean, on the eve of the battle, the commander of a man named Lorenz is absolutely convinced.

convinced that he's on his way to Mexico City in the same way that Winfield Scott in the Mexican-American war had marched from Veracruz to Mexico City in a matter of weeks. The French commander Lorenz says he's doing actually better than Winfield Scott did. He's doing it faster and he's doing with fewer men. And on the 5th of May, he realizes to his cost that he's been deceived, but he's also deceived himself. And this is the origin of Cinco de Mayo, is it not? Not to get a bit silly, but this is how it turns. It is. I mean, the irony is when, you know,

the French are treating their wounded on the night of the 5th of May. They're treating their wounded. They're trying to figure out what to do next because, you know, their campaign is at risk. They're potentially cut off from the coast. And as evening, as evening sets in, they can hear within the walls of the city of Puebla, people singing the Marseillaise, the French national anthem, which, you know, in a bitter bit of

taunting and irony because the Marseillaise, of course, was a song written in the moment that the French Republic was invaded in 1792, and it's all about, you know, citizens defending their freedom and defending their fatherland. So the Mexicans turn the national anthem on the French. To what do you attribute the troubles of the French here in 62, as opposed to the success of the Americans a generation earlier. In military terms, what goes wrong? What the Americans do right, the Mexican-American War begins, of course, in Texas, President Polk orders Zachary Taylor to take troops into this disputed gap between the Noises River and the Rio Grande. And that leads to a confrontation with Mexican troops. Zachary Taylor will take his forces all the way to Monterey.

So well into northern Mexico. But he doesn't march on Mexico City. Instead, what the Americans do is open a second front. They send Winfield Scott to Veracruz, and Scott bombards the city of Veracruz, a substantial loss of life there. And then lands and lands forces who then begin their march up from there.

The difference is that the conflict, there's Mexican resistance at Veracruz, but not at Puebla. and then again at Mexico City. But obviously, for Mexico, even with internal lines of communication, they're having a fight on two fronts. And so Winfield Scott's situation is much better

than the situation that the French face in 1862. That's the primary campaign and meets with substantial resistance. There's no resistance at Veracruz when the French arrive, but there is substantial resistance at Puebla. So other Europeans, I mean, there's a treaty, there's sort of settlement with the Mexicans, but the French persevere and Napoleon,

and I guess I would fail to examine your class. Is he, is he the emperor Napoleon by this point? It's right around this point. So this is, this is Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. He, he's the nephew of the famous Napoleon. Right, of course. But is he, is he, is he, he starts, as a Republican, yes? And he becomes the emperor right around this point, am I? Right. He's elected president of the Republican 1848, but he subverts the republic, as his uncle had, four years later, and he picks the time of Napoleon III, emperor of the French. Got it, got it. Okay, so he is Napoleon the Third at this point, and then we have, I mean, Maximilian is sort of perceived as his puppet, right, as this story plays on. So we should say something

about him and his motivations in all of this. Tell us a bit about Napoleon III. Yeah, I think that's unfair to Maximilian. We'd call him a puppet. He has a grandiose vision of what this is going to be. The Hobbesburgs have ruled. We have to remember this. The Hobbsburgs and ruled New Spain during the time of Charles V. So in the eyes of Max Billion, this is a restoration. He's restoring Altsburd rule to New Spain and doing better than his brother, obviously, he thinks he's going to revive the Homsburg dynasty. Napoleon III is happy to entertain this illusion of Max Millions, but I think Max Millian would certainly have bribled at the idea that he was anybody's puppet. But he thinks that he and Napoleon III share a grand vision of what the future of Latin America can be.

He thinks that Maximilian thinks that Napoleon III is providing the military muscle for this restoration of Hotsburgh rule that is not incidentally going to block the United States and prevent and perhaps even claw back some of the territory that Mexico had lost to the United States. in the Mexican-U.S. war. So they are partners. That's certainly, that's millions of view, not the, not, although obviously people are talking about him as a puppet or as an Archduke, as just as just things from Archduke, but he doesn't see himself as that role. He sees himself as a strategic partner. So he shows up in country, as it were, in 1864. Talk a bit about what he gets up to once he's on the ground. And then not that long after that event,

sort of unfortunately for him, I suppose, the Civil War concludes unfavorably for the Confederates in the South, and that becomes a major factor in all of this. It does, because there's a potential there from the very beginning that the Mexican Empire could somehow connect with the Confederacy. And at a minimum,

support the Confederacy, and thus split the United States and eliminate the problem of this dominant power in North America. But partly because of Cinco de Mayo, and I think it's really crucial, it takes a year for the French to recover from that defeat and eventually march into Mexico City.

And it's even months after that before Maximilian and Charlotte arrive. They get settled in June of, and it's only a matter of weeks before two signal events happen, specifically Gettysburg and Vicksburg, both of which signal, let's say, the beginning of the end of the Civil War. So their timing is horrible, but they want to try to make the most of this situation.

What they also learn is that all of the reports of the fact that the Mexican people are rallying to the French presence and rallying to the empire, that these are not true, that the control of Mexico is very much contingent upon the presence of French troops or the volunteers from Europe who would arrive later. And outside of that, there's an insurgency growing. It's true that the, that the, the American army is effectively defeated in our Puebla when the French return a year after the Cinco de Mayo in 1863. But that solely means that there's the conventional finally ends, but an insurgency begins. and it turns out to be obviously a militarily and politically very complicated situation that they've inherited. And meanwhile, you do have folks of all different stripes flocking to Maximilian's cause, doomed as it may have been in the not even exactly the long run, sort of the middle run.

You have, I mean, his army is multinational drawn from all sorts of different corners of Europe. And then you open your book with this discussion of Maori, who, I used to work in pretty close vicinity to Mari Hall, what was then, Marry Hall, the Naval Academy. I didn't even, I knew he was a Confederate. I didn't realize he had renounced his citizenship and gone off to that. That part of the story was unknown to me. But talk a bit about the appeal of this banner here now that he's ensconced. Max Millian is ensconced in Mexico.

So I would have to say there's a Mori Island at Puget Sound. Amazing. Napuaries everywhere. And if I understood your question, you're interested in the various parties that rally to the empire? Yeah, and the Confederates, people like Maori included. Yeah, so lots of European volunteers across Europe, a volunteer to serve next billion, although it's not clear that they're so much ideologically motivated

as motivated by a variety of circumstances. But when, you know, in 1865, Maury is in England. He's lobbying the Europeans on behalf of the Confederacy. When Appomattox happens, when Lee surrenders, he makes his way back. He stops off in Cuba. It looks like he's going to make his way to the Trans-Mississippi West, where fighting continues, but he eventually, he decides or he's told that that's not a good idea.

And so he goes to Veracruz and he goes to Mexico City. He'd been in correspondence with Max Billion. Max Billion served in the Navy, the Austrian Navy, so they have that connection. Mori's a famous oceanographer, and they have a mutual admiration that. brings them together in Mexico City. And Mori pitches Maximilian and Charlotte on the idea that there are lots of disgruntled Confederates who are ready to leave, and they're just looking for a new home. Mori, it should be said, as a Huguenot, a Huguenot extraction.

So those Protestants who fled Catholic France to the United States generations earlier, and he's proposing something similar. Look, we can really reinvigorate your empire if you can allow Confederates, Confederate refugees to settle there. And Maximilian and Charlotte agree. They give him an office. They give him a budget. And he becomes the head of the office of colonization with the power to support the arrival of Confederate families, Confederate households for resettlement in Imperial Mexico. It's a really interesting episode where, you know, it looks as though, I mean, Marie promises that there are 250,000 Confederate families who are ready to come.

And, of course, the reality is far more complicated. But this, for Max Billions, seems to be a way to, at a minimum, to shore up his empire at a moment where the prospects are starting to look pretty bleak. We've had enough of republics. I think you quote Maria Zane. This is a great line. And there's a slave dimension to this. Is there not the empire is going to be tolerant of slavery or I guess slavery adjacent institutions in a way that obviously the post-Civil War, United States, will not. Yeah, that's right. And that's a really good point.

Yes, he's up, more he's upset with republics. And one of the things that's going to be crucial for getting some Confederate households to repatriate to Mexico is the question of slavery. And, of course, Mexico had abolished slavery. That was one of the issues that led to the Texas secession back in the 1830s. And so, and Maximilian himself, you know, likes to think of himself as a progressive monarch. and he's not, he has an abolitionist attitude. So what he has to do is find a way for slavery to be perpetuated in Imperial Mexico.

And the device he comes up with is the slavery adjacent practice of peonage on haciendas, which is effectively means that laborers and their offspring are closely bound to a particular household and enterprise. And P&H, which effectively involves a multi-year contract, very much like debt, PNH becomes the way that the distinctions between slavery and Mexican practice can be massaged, can be assimilated. And so this turns out to be a suitable way to make this happen. And there are a substantial number of Confederates who go. I mean, it's worth pointing out that, these are not, you know, minor figures. Mory himself, obviously a prominent figure. But Sterling Price, who was governor of Missouri, John McGruder, who was a commander of Confederate

forces in Texas, there's a governor of Louisiana. These are some prominent figures who make their way to Mexico. I believe in Tommy Watkins Allen, who gets a subsidy from Maximilian to start an English-language newspaper in Mexico called the Mexican Times. And in fact, it's thanks to that newspaper that it's possible for historians to reconstruct this exodus, because one of the things the Mexican Pines does is, in effect, to welcome new families to Mexico by printing their names and their stories in their pages. So this is a precious historical record. So lots of high expectations, lofty expectations about what's going to happen and how these Confederate refugees are going to rejuvenate Mexico and actually rejuvenate the process. aspects of Max Billions of Empire.

I mean, even so, it still would have been sort of the second best outcome from where the vision originally began a few years earlier, right? Because the ideal outcome would have been an American Republic defeated in the Civil War. And so, you know, a northern rump republic hemmed in. You have then a robust Confederate states of America, which is, I guess, we might expect it to be more conservative. and however it shakes out, certainly you can play the one off the other, which is an advantage from the European perspective. And then instead of having another liberal state to its south, now we're going to have a conservative state, indeed ruled, or a conservative monarchy ruled by a European family.

Instead, it has to, the plan B is it's going to absorb the energy and be reinvigorated by the energy of the Confederate elites. What goes wrong? It doesn't work out. No, it doesn't. And let me just add parenthetically that that scenario that you just painted was one that Truman took up in a letter in 1960 with a correspondent who was trying to imagine what would have happened if the Mexican Empire had won and what would have happened, you know, if the Russians had held Alaska and pushed southward, imagining a much different and fragmented future for the North American continent. But back to your point, back to your question. Yeah, no, what happens is that, Well, first of all, Maximilian is abandoned by the French. Secretary of State, Seward, the U.S. Secretary of State, once the war, the American Civil War is winding down, he's able to re-engage. And the Mexicans have a very effective lobbyist in D.C. throughout the war who's coaching him. And what Seward does is he makes it emphatically clear.

They send a U.S. General Schofield to Paris. And the message, the consistent, coherent message is that the French troops need to be withdrawn, that any incident could result in war. And so the French withdraw, they begin their withdrawal. They give a date. And that means they also need to persuade Max Millian to stand on his own if he wants to continue as emperor. Maximilianization of the war effort. Yes, that's a millionization, right, of the war effort.

And, you know, he first, he feels abandoned and very angry. And Charlotte, Empress Charlotte, goes to Paris and pleads with Napoleon III to stay the course and maybe even call a European Congress to intervene to support the empire. But he's done. Napoleon III is done. He wants out. He has Germany and Bismarck to worry about after the wars of 1864 and 1866. So he has plenty of reason to get out and he certainly doesn't need a war with the United States. And so what Maximilianian is, does. He's quite angry. He feels abandoned and rightfully so because their initial agreement envisioned a much longer engagement on the part of the French and the Foreign Legion. But in his

anger, he decides, you know, what the problem is. The problem is, in fact, that the Mexicans see this as a European empire. And so this is actually a good thing. So get out of here. He effectively tells the French leave and leave as soon as you can. Because if you leave and when you leave, my empire will become fully Mexican. This is my country now. I am Mexican and those who stay are Mexican. And so he thinks that by Mexicanizing his empire, he can save it. And he's ultimately a need.

He's encouraged in this illusion by conservatives who now see that their cause is lost, but they're beginning to look for exits for themselves. But they support him in this idea that, yes, we can come up with the money and we can come up with the men. and we can come up with the kind of support you're going to need to sustain this vision of a Mexicanized empire. And we've mentioned him in passing, but say a bit about Benito Juarez in his role in the ultimate victory here. Maximilian is captured, and I'm not going to pronounce this correctly, the siege of, I'll just let you pronounce that. Chatea.

There it is. There it is. Tell us about Benito. So at Calantharo, the advice is for the, for, for. Max Villain to put himself at the head of a reconstituted Mexican army and take to the field. And of course, we know this is always a bad idea. Heads of state always want to have somebody between them and military failure. It's our rule number one of statecraft in times of war.

But he puts himself at the head of this army and they march northward. And they go to a city reputed to be conservative and pro-imperial, the city of Karetero. and they settle there. It's, you know, geographically speaking, it's a bad idea. It's a city that's surrounded by hills on three sides. It's not a defensible position. By this time, the Mexican army has begun to reconstitute itself. It's no longer simply a resistance and insurgency.

These are conventional forces that are going to descend on the city. And he, you know, they, very soon, the city is encircled. It's besieged. The situation inside deterioration. rates rapidly. There's talk about a breakout, there's talk about a race to the coast, maybe to exit Mexico entirely. But in the end, Maximilian is trapped, he's captured, he's put on trial, and he's executed for his role in the civil war. And it's a, you know, obviously a tragic end from his point of view, but it is a moment of where Benito Juarez, who has been in internal exile

throughout this period as this symbol of Mexican independence. You know, wherever he is, there's the Republic. And he's constantly being pursued by occupation forces all the way up to the Rio Grande, but he never leaves Mexican territory and he's never captured. And so by the time that Maximilian is captured, he's now in a position to reassert himself as head of state, not just in a nominal sense, but in a real sense, and to take the reins of power as the empire collapses. And the execution of the emperor, this is the famous Manet painting, right?

Which, that was probably the sum total of my knowledge of all of this before coming across your book, which is, I knew that there had been a Mexican emperor who was executed because this is very dramatic Manet painting about it. So the Impressionists were Team Maximilian in all this, it turns out. Yeah, there is a lot of internal operations. to this adventure on the part of Napoleon III, and Manet's painting probably captures it as well as anything. This painting where Maximilian is wearing the sombrero that doubles as a kind of halo,

which prefigures the ultimate veneration of Maximilian. But yes, and in fact, the death of Max Millian and the news of his death reaches Paris just as Napoleon III is getting ready to open the world exposition, which Paris is hosting that year. So it's a disastrous collision of a huge foreign policy failure at a moment where it's supposed to be Paris as a showcase for Napoleon III. It's a disaster for him, which, of course, is only going to be compounded by defeat

in the Franco-Prussian war a few years later. He also did not take the memo on letting others run things at the battlefield. You feel like he might have paid attention to that. Although it seems that his intention was to get himself killed. He wrote his horse within range of German guns on the battlefield, thinking that that was maybe the best way out of what was clearly a very bad situation. We've throughout the conversation sort of alluded to present-day parallels or maybe a better way or more flexible way of putting it would be sort of the long echoes

of these events throughout history to the present day. But here, maybe just as somebody who's spent a lot of time thinking about this episode and its consequences, maybe just in summary fashion, what does this otherwise sort of neglected episode mean and how have its consequences meant something in the years that followed? So I think what it shows us, again, is this, first of all, this concept of continental European alarm at the continental scale of the American. Republican Republic. And putting that in tandem with the vast potential of Russia is, I think that that's really important to get, that it gives us a perspective on Europe. You know, I might have mentioned parenthetically the Crimean War was in some ways analogous to the European intervention in Mexico, the Crimean War being a way of stult, of halting the southward drive of Russia in the 1850s. But it also, I mean, I think we can see also some of the origins, if you

will, of the European idea, the European Union. Obviously, in the 1860s, Europe is in, if that's not the European future, the European future in the 19th century is still a future of monarchies and nation states and not some sort of agglomeration of states under a European umbrella. But I think we can see the germ of a European idea here. In fact, in some contemporary commentary, You see exactly that. There is a fear, in fact, that ultimately the United States might turn on Europe and that that would be a sorry day. And if there's going to be a five, it should happen in Mexico and it should happen in the 1860s rather than in some dark future where the new world turns on the old. There very clearly, I think you can see some connections with our career predicament.

Raymond Jonas, author of Hapsburgs on the Rio Grande. Genuinely, genuinely, genuinely fascinating conversation. Really, really interesting book. Thank you so much for making the time. My pleasure, Aaron. Thank you. This is a nebulous media production. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.