The Rest Is History - 163. The Last Emperor of Mexico

Episode Date: March 14, 2022

What links the Mexican Republic, Palmerston, the Hapsburgs, Napoleon III and butterfly catching? Please tweet us if you can think of anything other than the following answer, which is the incredible story of the Last Emperor of Mexico. Tom and Dominic are joined by Edward Shawcross as they travel back to recount and discuss this amazing moment in Mexican history. Join The Rest Is History Club for ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. ************************************ If you are a new listener to The Rest Is History, you might enjoy these episodes from the archive: Watergate Alexander the Great Afghanistan Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Jack Davenport *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Hello, welcome to The Rest Is History. And we are aware we've probably got lots of new listeners. We've dominated, we've done an episode on ukraine haven't we we've done four episodes on recent history of russia and those are episodes that have very much been generated by what is in the news headlines but we just wanted to tell new listeners that not every episode we do is necessarily prompted by what's going on in the news and in fact our aim is very deliberately to sweep as far and wide that's right tom we've

done everything from the andertals to the 1990s we've done episodes on um on on sort of prehistoric paganism we've done episodes on the roman empire um on on sort of the beatles on the dinosaurs on the oil crisis on the lots of top tens we've done um top ten units yeah top ten mistresses top ten most disastrous parties so um something i hope for everybody to taste uh and if you are a new listener and you would like to sample um some of the other episodes you'll find links to them uh everything from uh alexander the great to watergate in the program description uh wherever you get your... That's right, we've got links to some of our most popular episodes.

And if you then go back into our feed, you can listen to all the previous episodes. And if you find you like what you hear, you can always join the Rest Is History Club at restishistorypod.com, and that is unbelievable value. And you get all kinds of treats and benefits, don't you, Tom? You get sensational benefits. You do indeed.

Right. We've probably promoted ourselves on our own podcast for long enough. So on with the show. To Mexico. Hello. Welcome to The Rest Is History. In room 44 of the National Gallery in London, there hang the fragments of a large unfinished painting

by the French impressionist Edouard Manet, entitled The Execution of Emperor Maximilian. In the centre stand the members of a firing squad, their rifles levelled. On the right, an officer is making the final adjustments to his own rifle. And on the left, well, the only hint of the condemned man is his hand. That's all we see of Maximilian von Habsburg-Lothringen, Emperor of Mexico.

The rest of him is missing. And Tom Holland, there is a metaphor there, isn't there, for the extraordinary, colourful, strange story of this ill-fated man. It is. And do you know, I mean, I kind of vaguely had an awareness of it. Principally, I have to say through the Manet painting. And reading up about him and discovering more about him, it actually reminds me a bit of General Gordon.

Yes, there's definitely General Gordon. So the plot is, I mean, this is a guy who is a Habsburg Archduke and he goes off to Mexico. And I don't think we're giving any spoilers. Well, no spoilers, because you've already given it away. I mean, he ends up in front of a firing squad. So there is a kind of slight parallel with Gordon, except that this story has a distinctively Latin American quality. And it comes across absolutely brilliantly in a new book, The Last Emperor of Mexico, by Edward Shawcross, which I thought, I mean, it has, I don't know if you've read the Louis de Bernier novels that he wrote before Captain Corelli. They're a kind of riff on the theme of

Latin American magical realism. You know, so Thomas Aquinas turns into a hummingbird, that kind of stuff. And this story is so odd. It's so bizarre. It's so kind of Baroque. It's very magical realist, isn't it? And it's so brilliantly told that it is a great privilege for us to have the author with us on the show.

Ed, thanks so much for joining us. We both enjoyed this book so much. And it is an amazing story. And as I said, this is a story that probably isn't widely known. So let's kick off with a question from Harry Lloyd Prentiss, who asks, who was the last emperor of Mexico? For now. That's true. Well, thank you for that fantastic introduction so the last emperor of mexico um is ferdinand maximilian and he's a hapsburg but of course he's the younger brother or a younger brother of franz joseph the emperor of austria uh now maximilian is a man who's absolutely convinced of his destiny to rule uh and it's only by an accident of birth that he's not the one who's

going to be in charge of the austrian empire Now Maximilian, he's an interesting character, very different from his brother. They're very close when they're young but when Franz Josef becomes emperor of Austria in 1848 the characteristics that separate them become more important. So Franz Josef is very autocratic, rigid and conservative. Maximilian is much more outgoing, gregarious and liberal. And what do you do with a younger brother who's outgoing, gregarious and liberal? You keep him far from power. So that description of the slightly rigid, dutiful elder brother who goes on to attain a royal position on the throne, and the slightly dreamier younger brother who ends up going to to america dominic does that remind you of tom and james holland right um it's surely it's william and harry isn't

it oh really i would never have guessed yeah but the difference is that well we'll we'll explore some of the differences but yes so so just to put this into context um maximilian was born in 1832 i think so two years younger than Franz Joseph. Is that about right? That's absolutely right, yeah. Franz Joseph, you know, the Habsburgs are not quite what they were, but Franz Joseph still rules this sort of great patchwork of Central Europe, including a bit of Northern Italy.

And meanwhile, so Mexico, I suppose, and the Spanish Empire had once been a Habsburg possession, but obviously that's a long time in the past. And what's going on in Mexico? I mean, why on earth would an Austrian end up in Mexico, Ed? That's an excellent question. So to take us to Mexico, it becomes independent, unlike most other Latin American nations, as a monarchy. The Spanish royalist changes sides, joins the independence movement, fights against the Spaniards and manages to unite the disparate forces fighting against Spain. Now he does that with this plan, which is that Mexico should become a monarchy ruled by a member of the Spanish royal family. The Spanish King Ferdinand VII, who I think has got to be one of the most incompetent monarchs of the 19th century, and that's a highly competitive field, refuses point blank to accept this plan whatsoever. So you're presented with a problem. You have a monarchy, but you don't have a monarch. Itabide, the Spanish royalist officer who's changed sides, his solution is he crowns

himself emperor. So Mexico does become an empire. There's a first Mexican empire, but it's disastrous. His reign is short, nine months. He's very quickly deposed, goes off into exile, actually comes back in 1824, expecting to be welcomed as a hero. He's not. He's arrested and then executed for treason. So that's the first emperor of independent Mexico. Now, after that, Mexico is plagued by instability. It does become a republic, but violence much more important than the ballot box in determining who holds power. And if you want to sys-espean task, try and memorize every single Mexican president from 1824 to 1861. If you include the interim presidents and the presidents who are not recognized by other presidents, it's near impossible. So you have what we might call anachronistically a failed state in

Latin America. But so far, apart from that beginning with monarchy, not that different to the fate of many other Latin American republics. What also sets Mexico apart is its proximity to the United States of America. And as a later president of Mexico famously says, poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States. And nowhere would that have been more apparent than in 1846. United States of America declares war on Mexico. It's a nakedly expansionist drive to dominate the North American continent. In just over a year, US troops march up from Veracruz,

the main Atlantic port of Mexico, and occupy the magnificent city, the capital of Mexico City, unfurling the stars and stripes across this glorious main square with the Catholic cathedral looming over them. Now, they only leave at an extraordinary high price. The Mexican government gets $15 million, which was nothing then, bearing in mind that what the United States of America is going to get, they're going to get half of Mexico's national territory. So this is places today like California, for example. And in return, US troops will end the occupation and a peace treaty is signed. So you not only do you have political instability, you have national humiliation and trauma. And in the 1850s, things don't improve. There's a civil war between two rival

factions, very loose political parties, liberals and conservatives. The liberals are led by Benito Juarez, and their argument as to why Mexico is in the situation it is, is that it's not liberal enough, it's not secular enough. And Ed, Juarez is actually, he's indigenous, isn't he? So he's not of Spanish descent. Yes, he's from indigenous peoples of Mexico, Zapotec, just outside of Oaxaca, which is southeast Mexico. He comes from an incredibly humble background.

Oh, absolutely. He's an extraordinary figure. And as we'll see throughout this story, he's someone who stays with it for the whole duration and, of course, stays with it for longer than Maximilian in the end. He's an extraordinary figure, determined on self-improvement. So if you read his sort of own notes, his own kind of autobiographical notes, he talks about how he wanted to learn Spanish, because Spanish wasn't his first language in this indigenous community that he grew up in, in foothills and mountains, very desolate. So he wanted to learn Spanish to better himself, and

his uncle was one of the few people who spoke Spanish. So sort of after toiling all day in the field, he would go to his uncle's house, And he wasn't making sufficient progress in his studies. So he used to take a whip, and he would ask his uncle to beat him to improve his Spanish. Tougher than Duolingo, isn't it? It's very Gladstonean behaviour. So you've got this extraordinarily determined individual in Benito Juarez, and he comes to power. Well, it's not him in power in 1855, but it's his party and it's a group of much more radical liberals determined to break the power of the Catholic Church, which is not only has an enormous spiritual hold over Mexico, but is the biggest landowner, is the principal economic powerhouse.

And so the key reform here is they nationalize church property and sell it on the open market as any good liberal will, which has two happy effects of that. One, you break the power of the Catholic Church and two, you enrich the coffers of the government treasury. Now, for the other faction, the conservatives, the reason why Mexico has been humiliated and is politically unstable is not because it's not liberal enough, but because it's gone too far in that direction. And the only thing they argue that meaningfully binds Mexico together as a nation state is Catholicism. So you have a bitter divide over the future of Mexico. Long story short, Benito Juarez's liberals win. They enter the capital in triumph in 1861. Conservatives are defeated and they flee, many of them in exile.

Benito Juarez holds elections and becomes the constitutional president of Mexico. But those exiles never accept, and actually many conservatives still in Mexico, never accept that result. Shock, horror. Who would have thought that? I know, disgraceful behavior in the 19th century. So to put this into context, Ed, you just said 1861. So 1861 is the year of the outbreak of the American Civil War. So at this point, the big sort of bullying neighbor to the north is absorbed by its own problems, because of course, actually now, to the north of Mexico, it's the Confederate States of America fighting the Civil War against the Union. Now, the other issue, I guess, is, am I right in thinking that the major

problem for Mexico is indebtedness? It's a problem of so many countries in what we would now call the developing world in the 19th century. They've run up colossal debts to Europe, largely to European sort of lenders, haven't they? They have. And the Mexican government particularly took out a series of loans in the 1820s, which they never paid back. And the principal debtor to the nation to whom they owe the debt is actually Britain. But they have also money which they owe to France and which they owe to Spain. Now, given the political history of Mexico, given the US-Mexican war and the civil war that we've just described, the treasury is not overflowing. You won't be surprised to hear. So what Benito Juarez

does as an emergency measure is he suspends foreign debt payment. He asks, well, he doesn't ask, he declares it, and Congress declares two years without paying foreign debt. Now, in the mid 19th century, that kind of behaviour has a pretty quick response from European powers, which is military intervention. Right. So we have, on the one hand, a man of peasant background, indigenous, didn't even learn to speak Spanish, hauled himself up from his bootstraps, who's become president of a liberal but massively indebted Mexican republic. On the other hand, we've already introduced him, Maximilian the Archduke, one of the long line of Habsburgs, one of the probably the most famous royal dynasty in the whole of Europe. Now, the person who brings them together, who joins, who binds their fates

together. I think we can say the villain of this podcast, Tom. Would he be, by any chance, a Frenchman? He is. He is a Frenchman. In some ways, a quintessential Frenchman, in other ways not. This is Napoleon III, nephew of the more famous Napoleon, and a man, similarly, we've got quite a few people in the story convinced of their destiny. Napoleon III is convinced that he is the man who will lead France back to greatness and, more importantly, lead himself to greatness and restore his uncle's empire in some form, which he does manage to do despite several failed attempts in the 1830s and 1840s. He's actually the first ever democratically elected president of France, happens to be a Bonaparte, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte. I should say it's universal male suffrage in this case. The problem he has is that the Second Republic, the regime that he is now president of, has a constitution which prohibits him being re-elected.

So he does what any self-respecting Bonapartist would do, launches a coup d'etat against his own government, and a year later, in 1852, declares himself emperor of the French. Yeah, that's so Napoleonic. And so presumably he is self-consciously following in the footsteps of his uncle. I think he wakes up every day and asks himself, what would my uncle have done? And tries to do some kind of version of it. But what's important as well about that moment in 1851, where he launches the coup d'etat, is that what he has done there is he has destroyed a republic. And on the ashes of that republic created an empire, a monarchy. This is where the famous Karl Marx quote comes. The first time is tragedy. The second time is farce. If people have heard of Napoleon III, it's often through that Karl Marx quote talking about

the coup. But in the 1850s, there's not very much farce at all about his regime. In fact, the economy booms, the foreign policy is a success. He allies with Britain in fighting the Crimean War. They invade northern Italy in 1859, defeating Franz Joseph. And it seems as though he's ended France's isolation, restored France to greatness to some extent, and has created a domestically stable political system. So this is something that monarchists and conservatives in Mexico take a look at. And they have the ear of Napoleon III through his wife, the Empress Eugenie. Their pitch to him is to make Mexico great again, to coin a phrase. You need to return to the original idea of independence, which is monarchy. And so they

tell Napoleon III it's going to be incredibly easy. All we would need is a few thousand French troops. We'll turn up there. We'll declare the plan, which is to restore Mexico to its original state of monarchy. Mexican conservatives who have been defeated by Juarez will flock to the banner. And Benito Juarez, you may say he's a liberal, actually, he's a despot. It's a radical minority oppressing the silent majority of Mexicans who will, once Maximilian turns up, acclaim him as emperor. Right, Napoleon. Now, what's in it for him? Because obviously, France, you know, it hasn't been a great colonial power in latin what we now think of as latin america and south america central america or the bottom bit of north america is he thinking he can he can carve

out a new a new french american empire or is he after the natural resources does he just want his debts paid or is it just about press what is it what what's what does he think he's going to get it's a mixture of all of those things, in fact. But I think one thing that's interesting to flag here is he does have incredibly grand vision for Latin America. Well, he comes up with the term, doesn't he? He doesn't come up with the term, but the term is first coined in Paris in the 1850s. And there's a bit of dispute about who said what and when. But it's mid-1850s. It's in Paris where this idea of Latin America bubbles up and begins to get expressed.

One vision of Latin America, which is one that Napoleon III is sympathetic to, is this idea of Southern countries with a Catholic tradition and culture have an affinity with the Southern European Catholic countries. And of course, the most powerful Southern European Catholic country is France. So Latin America, and it's, it's that term Latin is in opposition to Anglo-Saxon, Northern United States of America, right? And

the reason why it becomes, it becomes coined in the 1850s is because you're demarcating an area of influence for France that is in opposition to further US aggression, because no one in the 1850s thinks that US expansion is going to stop where it stops. But the US have proclaimed the Monroe Doctrine, though, haven't they? So they basically said, the US have publicly said they don't want European powers involved in the Western hemisphere anymore. But Napoleon still thinks he can get away with it. He thinks, kind of sod the US. They've got their own troubles about slavery.

I can just ignore them. Is that basically, I mean, or am I being too simplistic? No, not at all. And it's precisely because of the US Civil War that Napoleon III is able to try and put his vision into practice. Because torn apart with the conflict between Union and Confederacy, the Monroe Doctrine, which is incredibly popular, actually, and that sort of nationalist cornerstone of foreign policy, it's not just in the corridors of power where it's discussed, it's something that

you can get up on and talk about in elections and people cheer. They cannot fear, they cannot risk, rather, antagonising the French and getting the French involved into the civil war, potentially recognising the Confederacy, worse still, offering some kind of mediation or perhaps even getting involved militarily. So the Monroe Doctrine, interestingly, Lincoln doesn't use the phrase Monroe Doctrine once from 1861 to 1865. Well, because in your book, you describe this episode as the greatest challenge to the Monroe Doct until the cuban missile crisis which is you know i mean that's quite something it's it gives you a sense of the kind of geopolitical stakes that were involved in in what might seem a you know an almost kind of opera buffet kind of episode but i i completely agree and i stand by that and this is this this

french intervention monarchy catholicism on the borders of the United States of America. I mean, this is the very nightmare that everyone's sort of... Habsburgs. Habsburgs turning up on your doorstep. I mean, this is what people... The horror. So you say, Tom says Habsburgs. Napoleon needs a candidate. He doesn't think of picking... I mean, I tell you what his uncle would have done, Ed. His uncle would have picked one of his family.

Why doesn't Napoleon do that? Of course. And he's got plenty. There are loads of Bonapartes lying around. That's part of the reason why they keep coming back. So I think even for a man as self-obsessed with the Bonapartist myth as Napoleon III, he feels that that's one sort of area of policy in which he shouldn't emulate his uncle. And it's also a sense because he's trying to,

and we'll see this when we get into what he creates, the independence of Mexico is central to the idea. Now, whether there is any independence or not, something we can discuss later, but having a half-brother or a cousin or whatever on the throne of Mexico is not a strong look. So that's not an option for him. Bonaparte's relations with the French royal houses is, of course, not brilliant. So you can't have a French monarch. And some of the sort of ultra-conservative Mexicans wouldn't mind a Spanish monarch, but even with their limited horizons, they're aware that the sort of toxic legacy of Spanish colonialism is

that's a hard sell. But also, if you're looking for a monarch in the 19th century, the name Habsburg is the illustrious one that sort of stands out above all others. And so if you could get a Habsburg on board, That would be fantastic for the project. And of course, the connection as well with the 16th century, it's under Emperor Charles V, also king of Spain, that Mexico is first subjugated and brought under the Spanish Empire. So you have that legacy as well. And not to be reductive, but also Maximilian looks like an emperor, right? I mean, he's a tall, impressive looking guy with a forked beard. I mean, but obviously the look of the whole business is going to be very important.

I mean, it's a slight element of smoke and mirrors about the whole concept. Which is and which, of course, is a huge part of monarchy and indeed a huge part of Maximilian's life. I mean, he's obsessed with the minutiae of detail and etiquette, but also the outward appearance of monarchy. And so, yeah, absolutely. He fits the role. And the other reason is that he's available because as we said earlier, he's been sidelined by his brother, Franz Joseph. And if we are going to make the Harry connection,

then- Who is Meghan? Every Harry needs their Meghan. And so enter Maximilian's Meghan. She's Princess Charlotte. Now, she's better known to Mexican history as Carlotta. But she's the daughter of the Belgian king, Leopold I, and her mother's side related to the kings and queens of France. So she has, and to push the Meghan analogy further, by virtue of being a Belgian princess, she's not someone who is on

an equal footing with the Habsburgs. Now, Maximilian has been sent on one of these sort of various pointless diplomatic missions that his brother likes to get him on because it gets him out of Austria and away from the centre of power. And he's very dismissive of going to the Belgian court. He thinks it's disgusting that someone like him should have to go to a monarchy which was only created in 1831, you know, a year before he was born. So it's hard for him to take it seriously. And when he's there, he goes to one of these bulls and he says it's awful because, you know, the elite of the country are sort of mixing and talking

with their tailors and their cobblers, and it's the kind of thing that shouldn't be allowed to happen. One thing he does like, though, is Princess Charlotte Carlotta. Well, do you know, I'm not surprised because, Dominic, did you pick up on this, that her favourite subjects when she was age 12? Remind me, Tom. Religion and Plutarch. Oh, my God. What a girl. What a girl. What a nightmarish image. I'd marry her like a shot. Which is exactly what Maximilian thinks, and indeed then does. Within months, they're married.

And she's fiercely ambitious herself. But obviously, as an aristocratic woman in the 19th century, she needs a husband for a meaningful political role. And she has a sense of destiny, doesn't she? Like everybody on this story. Everyone has a sense of destiny. God has picked her for some unspecified purpose. Is that right?

She's incredibly pious and incredibly Catholic. And yes, and very much buys into that vision of providence is the word that she always uses. And part of the condition, the Leopold I agrees to it on the proviso that Franz Joseph gives Maximilian a position of power, a meaningful position of power. And that is governor of Lombardy, Venetia, which is one of the richest parts of the Austrian empire at this time in Northern Italy. But it's a poison chalice because the forces of Italian nationalism make this an incredibly difficult job for anyone to do well and succeed in. So it's very much, oh, you wanted a position of power. Well, here you go, try this. Even then, Franz Joseph was quite careful to keep real power in Vienna and away from Maximilian. And within two years, Napoleon III, who had a sort of youthful, romantic love of Italian nationalism, backs Piedmont, invades northern Italy with 200,000

troops and defeats Franz Joseph in northern Italy. Franz Joseph has, sort of weeks before, sacked Maximilian as well, very humiliatingly. So what you have by the end of the 1850s and certainly beginning of the 1860s is you have Maximilian and Carlotta who are underemployed, underappreciated, but both convinced that they have a much greater destiny. So just to put this into,

just to absolutely nail this down, they have never been to Mexico. Never. They don never been to Mexico. Never. They don't speak Spanish. Well. Not at this point. No, not fluently, not fluently. So they don't fluently Spanish speakers.

They've never crossed the Atlantic. Maximilian has actually. He's been to Brazil. Yeah. After he gets sacked as governor of Lombardy, Venetia, Maximilian loves to travel. That's sort of of wanderlust,

travelling the globe to the exotic. Alexander von Humboldt-esque is one of his great heroes. But he's not been to North America, right? No, he's not. Brazil is a very long way away from Mexico. I've been to a Brazilian restaurant, but I wouldn't supply it to become Brazil. Have you been to Mexico? Well, no, I have been to Brazil, though.

Yeah, that's his pitch. So so so obviously it's a brilliant idea to them. It does seem like a brilliant idea. It does. And so basically he signs up to it. Carlotta signs up to it and they decide that they they will go. They accept this. I think we should take a break at this point uh and when we come back we should um look at the story of of what actually happens when maximilian and carlotta set sail for their kingdom i'm marina hyde and i'm richard osmond and together we host the rest is entertainment it's your weekly fix of entertainment news reviews splash of showbiz gossip and on our Q&A,

we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Tom, excellent news.

Sponsors UnHerd, that's U-N-H-E-R-D, the online magazine that pushes back against herd mentality and encourages independent thinking. They are back. Hooray. It's great news, isn't it? That's fantastic news. And what are they publishing imminently, Dominic? Well, Tom, I hate to blow my own trumpet.

I don't, actually. I don't hate it at all. I love it. So I have just written a piece for them about, it was their idea, actually. It was Jacob Faraday's idea, one of the editors at Unheard. And he said this was the 75th anniversary, on I think March the 12th,

of the promulgation of the Truman Doctrine. Do you know what that is, the Truman Doctrine? No. Okay, well, I'll tell you. This is why you have to read on her, Tom. Yes. So Harry Truman, little man, former haberdasher from Kansas City

who's shot and bust after two years, is catapulted into the US presidency in 1945. So that's when Roosevelt dies. When Roosevelt dies. And then there's that sort of muddy period at the end of the Second World War and the beginning of the Cold War. And then in 1947,

he gets up in front of a joint session of Congress and he basically says, we're in a global conflict with the Soviet Union. We're going to give loads of money to Greece and Turkey to stave off communism. We can't allow them to force communism. And then basically we've got a new policy, which is containing communism wherever it is.

We're not fighting it militarilyarily but using economic political and cultural pressure to draw a line between the free world and the totalitarian world and it'll be a long struggle and one day we'll win and so dominic when you wrote this were you aware of any contemporary potential i was of course and this was very much in because tom we're in the not dissimilar position to the one tr was in in 1947. So Stalin didn't have nuclear weapons at that point. They were two years away. But, you know, the Red Army was massive

and fighting Stalin would have meant millions of casualties. So the Americans and the British didn't want to do it. But they actually had a contingency plan, but they knew it would be incredibly costly. So the same sort of deterrent was still there. And I think you could argue that Truman's genius and Clement Attlee in Britain and Ernest Bevan, the founders of NATO, was that they said basically it'll be a long campaign, very grueling. And it means, in a way, condemning a lot of people to live under communism in regimes they don't want, in a world of lies and all that sort of stuff. But in the long run, we can do it and it

will be worth it so i think there is a there is a good lesson there actually okay i don't i mean people should obviously read your article go to unheard.com u-n-h-e-r-d yeah um good but do you have any do you draw any optimistic conclusions yes i do i do okay i'll tell you what i'd say tom i will tell you what i'd say tom i will tell you what i'd say okay i will have my say uh i say harry truman has already seen off lenin and stalin even in death he can see off vladimir putin as well well there is a thought and if you would um like to read articles of a similar quality to dominates in what i'm sure is the ongoing campaign that all of us are engaged in

to stave off herd mentality you go to unheard.com u-n-h-e-r-d and if you are a restless history listener slash rest you type in slash rest and you get three months for free yeah and normally tom it is a one pound a week a week i mean that's good value in itself but to have it for free isn't that's just yeah yeah and often absolutely not to be missed so many thanks to unheard and now let's get back to whatever it is whatever it is we're talking about they're going to mexico which i cannot understand that that was queen victoria commenting on um maximilian and carlotta that's very liam neeson straight creepy boy i thought actually tom but there you go it was queen victoria everyone would know that was queen victoria i mean obviously

you're queen victoria now going to mexico which i cannot understand. But enough of that. Ed, we have Maximilian and Carlotta are heading off to Mexico. And this is a Mexico that has basically been, it's under French occupation. Is that right? Or most of it is, the central part of it is. That's a good way of describing it, Tom. So the reason why Napoleon III had accepted it and Maximilian Carlotta too, is because it thought that it would be fairly easy to put into practice. In fact,

it's a massive undertaking that requires regime change. So Napoleon III, in 1862, he only sent 6,000 troops. That's how easy he thinks it's going to be to work his way up from Veracruz to Mexico City and the overland route, same route that the conquistadors did. And is that because he's kind of influenced by the story of Cortez conquering the Aztecs? I mean, is this kind of idea that it's really easy to conquer Mexico City? That looms so large in the minds of the soldiers and in the mind of Napoleon III. All I would say as a caveat to that is that the US Expeditionary Force

that fights its way along exactly the same route, there's only one route to Mexico City from Veracruz, right, you're going to take, is only about 12,000 men. So Napoleon III sent half that, but what he thinks will happen is that Mexican monarchists, Mexican conservatives will rally to the French flag. And therefore, he's got much more support than the United States of America had. So it's part delusion, but partially based on what he thinks happened, you know, a few decades ago, a couple of decades ago of that. These 6,000 troops, they're on their way to Mexico City.

And to get there, you have to go past Mexico's great second city, Puebla. And the French commander is incredibly confident because remember, this is the French army that defeated the Russians in Crimea, defeated the Austrians in 1859. And so he deploys before this city, magnificent churches and convents. You'd love it, Tom. And gives the order for wave after wave of French troops just to attack frontal assault onto the city. But they are cut down by the heroic resistance of Benito Juarez's army, which, of course, has remained loyal to the constitutional president rather than rallying to the flag of a French invader. So that's just the key. And that's, sorry, by the way,

I should say that goes down in history as Cinco de Mayo, because that's on the 5th of May. It's a Mexican national holiday, isn't it? I mean, I still remember it. It's often, it's often, it is, it's a big deal, but it's often mistaken for Mexican independence. It's not, it's actually celebrating this victory at the Battle of Puebla. So that gives you an indication of how difficult the situation is. And so difficult is it that that pacification, which is the euphemism the French use for their brutal counter-insurgency tactics, it takes another year for them to get to Mexico City. And it takes yet another year for Maximilian and Carlotta to make the voyage across to Mexico. So they don't get there until May 1864. And Ed, I mean, there are some hilariously badly

behaved Frenchmen in this story. So there's this diplomat, Dubois de Saligny, who's, I mean, he seems the worst diplomat in diplomatic history. I mean, his chief talent seems to be for offending people. There's a general, General Foiret, who is so fat that a chair collapses under him. And then there's this terrifying colonel who whose kind of counterinsurgency record is reminiscent of the Battle of Algiers. I mean, this is it's not a kind of dream team, is it? A French dream team in terms of nation building. It's not a great it's not a dream team for nation building at all. And the counterinsurgency colonel Charles Dupin is an extraordinary figure. It's sort of the reverse of General Gordon, although actually perhaps not in one way.

But one of his fellow French officers said of Dupin, he had all the vices known to man except for drink. But actually, I think that makes it slightly more terrifying because he's put in charge of counterinsurgency. He was actually thrown out of the French army, not for looting the Summer Palace in Beijing. So he was in the Opium Wars, of course he was. Mexico is a conflict that drags in the sort of the dregs and soldiers of fortunes and various imperialist ventures. Now, he was, unlike General Gordon, he was, he was, you know, leading the charge. He's literally one of the first in and first out with as much loot as he could. He then went back to Paris and just openly sold it, which even for the Second Empire, Napoleon III was considered corruption too much. So he was kicked out of the French army. But when he heard they

were going to Mexico, he wrote to Napoleon III and said, well, you know this is the kind of place I excel in. And Napoleon III essentially backs him and gets him off to Mexico, where he sets up this counter guerrilla unit to defeat the forces. Benito Juarez, who'd never surrendered, by the way, Benito Juarez is just retreating northwards from Mexico City after the French take the capital. And this is an extraordinary letter that he writes to his niece where he says, I have waged an atrocious war. If I were Mexican, what hatred I would have for the french and how i would make them suffer i think what you don't why would you write that to your niece i don't know i don't i mean i'd like to see what she wrote back thanks for the necklace um what's your thoughts about the war but the serious point is as tom

says if you're trying if you're trying to win over hearts and minds to use the phrase that would probably be used today in this kind of foreign intervention, having someone who is burning down villages, summarily executing people suspected of aiding Benito Juarez, and generally causing all kinds of trouble is not necessarily the person that you want. And so Maximilian has that problem. How do you win over a population that is potentially hostile anyway, and even more so when they've borne the brunt of the French army? said, everybody in Mexico is absolutely on board with you arriving. And it's only a tiny minority who are making a fuss. And also Napoleon has said, crucially, the British are completely on board with this and they'll support you as well, which is an outright lie. The British have already said, haven't they? We're not going to intervene. We're not going to bail you out if it goes wrong.

But Maximilian, is it self-delusion or was he genuinely deluded by the French? I think it's a bit of both. I think that he wants to be misled. So Napoleon III does spin an incredibly elaborate diplomatic game. And Napoleon III is a man who loves conspiracies and back channels and smokefield rooms. And so this is a fantastic opportunity for him to really put that into practice. He absolutely misleads Maximilian about the popularity of monarchy in Mexico. And he completely deceives him about the British view. And the British, British is interesting, but slightly ambivalent. Because although, so Palmerston is prime minister at this time.

And although no lover of the French, he's absolutely no lover of the United States of America. And so when this plan is put to him, he says, well, it will cost tens of millions of pounds and would have to send 20,000 troops. No way Britain would do that. But if France wants to push back the power of the United States of America for us, we shouldn't, you know, that would be fantastic. So actually, Russell, his foreign secretary, wants to write a letter to Maximilian because Maximilian's condition of accepting the crown is British support. And Palmer says, no, no, no, no, no. Don't write the letter. Keep it ambiguous.

Keep it ambiguous. So Maximilian, he is misled. But there's, you know, there's sort of a lot of intrigue going on, which is probably, you know, it's slightly above anything that he would be able to comprehend. But Ed, so you have a brilliant passage in your book where you describe how Maximilian Carlotta and all their gang come from Veracruz to Mexico City. And they all have to kind of get off a train and get picked up by mules. And you describe it, this caravan presented an extraordinary sight, the elite of Habsburg society dressed in the finest European fashions, driven towards the capital by local muleteers, clothed in leather jackets, goatskin trousers, and wide gold trim sombreros. And that's what I mean about the kind of magical realist quality,

because it's the conjunction of these two fabulously remote and different worlds coming together that just kind of seems to generate. I mean, it's a kind of tragic comedy, isn't it? Don't they have like, they have hundreds of pieces of luggage. I mean, they basically brought everything with them. And they've also brought, am I right in thinking they brought their own personal orchestra conductor? Well, you can't go to, of course.

I mean, you can't go to, you can't be an emperor without that. I mean, they just have clearly no clue. Are we, or are we being too harsh? And billiards, billiards tables. Billiard tables, exactly. The brilliant thing that if a guest loses, Maximilian forces him to crawl under the table as a forfeit but if maximilian loses then a servant does it for him i mean this is this is quality emperorship

it is isn't it so there are there are many reasons that um maximilian is not necessarily the man for the job because he's faced with an extraordinary situation and difficult problems and to overcome them require a man of equally extraordinary ability and there are elements to him which as you say lend themselves to to farce and one of them is his obsession with etiquette and court ceremony uh hence why you need to have your orchestra with you because you need to have the right music playing at the right time so on the long sea voyage over to mexico where you think that he might in fact be you know reading up on on the history and politics of the country he's about to rule he actually spends most of his time writing a 600 page guide to the etiquette that will be followed at his court it's so important it's well that's the thing but so you can some you know his

enemies of course they wouldn't it's absurd that he's he's he's worried about you know what shoes to wear but um what you the other thing this course is that etiquette is incredibly important to monarchy. And as Tom was saying earlier, partially it is the image. It's the pomp and the ceremony. And there is no court in Mexico because it's a republic. So in order for that to be established, it has to be created. And monarchy is so much depends, doesn't it, on that outward appearance of sort of grandeur and majesty. But there's a paradox, isn't there, about Maximilian, which is that although we're making him sound a kind of very stiff, pompous, faintly foolish figure,

and although he's been sponsored by Napoleon III, and although he's been backed by the monarchists, in fact, he's a very, very liberal figure. I mean, and not just by the standards of the Habsburgs. I mean, you know, by anybody's standards. And he brings in a whole range of remarkably progressive laws, among which, am I right, he's the first person to introduce a legally guaranteed lunch break? I'm not sure whether he's the first person. I mean, that is a Corbynite measure, isn't it?

He does. He takes incredible. So this is, but again, it sort of backs Fireship. So you're absolutely right. He is liberal and very progressive by the standards of the day. But of course, the people who have called him to rule over him are these Mexican Catholic conservatives who want to restore the power of the church. Now, that's anathema to Maximilian's way of thinking. And part of the reason why he became so distant to Franz Joseph was exactly because he disagreed over these kind of policies. So when he comes to Mexico, conservatives are expecting, you know, the sort of ultra-maintained Catholic monarchy and autocracy. And what they get is a slightly watered-down version of Benito Juarez's liberalism. He confirms that key policy that Benito Juarez had been fighting for,

the nationalisation of church property, to the horror of his own allies. So what he does... Is that because he genuinely believes that's the right thing to do? Or is it because actually he's politically astute enough to recognise that he has to do that if he wants to keep foundations for his regime? But Tom, I don't think it is astute. You see, now, regular listeners will expect this from me.

Is there not an argument, Ed, that Maximilian could have prevailed if he'd just been, if he'd really gone all out, all in with the Conservatives, if he'd basically been more partisan and less liberal. A question from Peter Edmund. Would the Emperor Maximilian have been more successful had he been less liberal? Would a fully reactionary monarch, Sandbrook style, have had a better chance?

Yeah, the dream of authoritarian is everywhere. It's a really interesting question. I think in terms of counterfactuals um yeah so we'll be dealing with that point first the thing about i think actually he's he is a genuine liberal but he's also um we've painted him as slightly a buffoonish figure but he's also doing something pragmatic here if the mexican conservatives had been powerful enough to achieve what they wanted to achieve, they would have done it. They lost the civil war and they need the help of France in order to create

this monarchical regime. That conservative project has failed. Now he does alienate his conservative allies, but when push comes to shove, they're going, they are going to back him, right? If necessary.

And they, and as we see, they do what the people who will not back him, right, if necessary. And as we see, they do. The people who will not back him, even moderate liberals, will not back a reactionary government in Mexico. And therefore, winning over the Juaristas is something that he genuinely believes is the right thing. He is a moderate liberal, but also is something that might give his empire a much firmer base for the long term. There's another constraint, though, which is in fact Napoleon III, because Napoleon III is very keen not to be seen as reactionary

himself. And he refuses to allow, he wouldn't have allowed the conservatives to overturn the nationalization of church property, because that was actually one of the foundational resolutions of the 1789 resolution in France. And Napoleon III, although we think of him as autocratic and dictatorial, he himself saw himself as ploughing a sort of middle road between liberalism and conservatism. So there are also constraints on Maximilian. The real counterfactual, sorry, I say real, I mean, I think that's a good one. I think it would have to be combined with something else. And it's that this has to work and happen in 1862. By 1864, you've only got one year until the end of the American Civil War.

And so that geopolitical space to carve out a monarchy on the borders of the United States of America is quickly vanishing. So what Maximilian has got into basically is a situation of an incredibly narrow time window, colossal constraints, his foreign patron, the issues on the ground, all this stuff. and also the fact i mean do you not think though ed he's a i mean he is out totally out of his depth isn't he i mean this is this kind of situation that he's never ever had to deal with as franz joseph's younger brother when he was running the austrian navy or whatever i mean all this stuff about sort of rebranding himself as the champion of the indigenous people and dressing as a cowboy and whatnot i mean these are all they're bound to fail aren't they or am i being

too harsh well but but isn't also i mean he's he's gone in there to he's under an obligation to napoleon iii to pay back this debt yeah that has been kind of ticking away i mean that's never going to be popular is it no well of course of course and i think the other thing to bear in mind is his opponent, that man we talked about earlier, Benito Juarez, who is absolutely determined that he will never give in to the forces of European imperialism, monarchy, and ultimately Maximilian's back as conservatism.

In fact, Benito Juarez, his former foreign minister, urges Benito Juarez to resign. He says there's no way you will be able to defeat Maximilian back by the French. We have to come to an accommodation. And look, Maximilian's liberal anyway. And Benito Juarez completely rejects it. So I think it's also the opponent that he's dealing with that makes this difficult. The resistance is determined and heroic. But for a brief while, I mean, what, a year, a couple of years, things kind of go okay. You know know he brings in measures he has them translated into nahuatl the language of the aztecs and all this kind of

stuff and it's all ticking along and then and then it all starts to crumble and is that um is that due to circumstances within mexico or is it the is it the effect of the ending of the american civil war or uh it's both french In fact, all three. So the fact that Benito Juarez has been able to hold out for as long as he has and is undefeated is crucial. It buys him and the Republican forces in Mexico time that they need. And what they need desperately is more money and they need resupply as well in terms of munitions. And they get that with the end of the American Civil War. During the American Civil War, there's an arms embargo. And as we said, Lincoln is desperate not to do anything to offend France, lest he might tip the balance in his own internal conflict.

Once that's over, the arms embargo is lifted. Huaristas have access to guns, they have access to money, and they can begin to resupply. Also, crucially, what Washington can now do is pressure Napoleon III. And we can now start talking about the Monroe Doctrine without fear of any meaningful French reprisal, which is exactly what happens. get your troops out of Mexico or it's war. At the same time, Maximilian, not least because of his penchant for orchestras and champagne and interior design and decoration and making all these wonderful residences, his government is bankrupt. So he writes to Napoleon III at the end of the year 1865 as well and says, oh, by the way, the payments that we agreed

to keep the French army in Mexico, I can't make them anymore. Obviously, we're friends, so it doesn't matter. Can you just cover it for me so that's looking bad that's looking bad and then um Carlotta goes to Europe right right so she's she's she's been uh she she's really loved being an empress I mean she's a great great hostess she's had an absolute ball I mean often literally yeah often literally but she she so she now goes back to Europe, and that's partly to kind of finesse things with Napoleon III.

But that's also, she's already said to Maximilian, hasn't she, Tom, that you can't abdicate. You know, basically like Theodora with Justinian in the Byzantine Empire, you know, the purple is a great winding sheet or whatever. I'd rather die an emperor than live as a slave. But he agrees, a true Habsburg never leaves his post in the moment of danger. But anyway, so she heads off to Europe and it goes badly wrong. It does. So when Maximilian finds out that Napoleon III is going to abandon him,

he does rather petulantly say, well, I'll find, I'll abdicate if you don't want me here. Carlotta is furious and she says, no, you must stay there and convinces him exactly of what you say to him, that a houseboat never leaves his post. So resolved to stay, she'll go to Paris and she'll persuade Napoleon III to change his mind. So she voyages over in the summer of 1866 and arrives in France. I have a lot of sympathy. We've all been in this situation, haven't we, with Napoleon III. He does everything he can to avoid this meeting. No one likes to be reminded of their foreign policy mistakes.

And so he says, well, I'm not feeling very well. And why wouldn't you rather speak to this person? And perhaps we can do the next one. Oh, I've got COVID. I'm isolating. Eventually he's shamed into it. And Carlotta, as we said, her favorite subjects are religion and classics.

So she's done her homework. She's brought letters that Napoleon III had written to Maximilian saying, you know, my support will never fail you. Now, of course, earlier in the year, Napoleon III has announced publicly that his support has massively failed and that French troops are coming home. So Carlotta brings these letters out and puts them in front of Napoleon III, an incredibly dramatic meeting. And Napoleon III starts crying, but he doesn't change his mind. He doesn't change his mind. Don't know, shaking his head. It's such Gallic conduct.

I mean, it's like this podcast, the story of this podcast could have been written by Dr. Johnson or somebody. And actually, there's a moment where a servant comes in and serves refreshments. And it slightly sort of befuddles Carlotta. And then she sort of talks herself out of it. She says, I see what's happened. Your ministers are forcing you to do this. It's not your decision. Let me speak with them.

I'll convince them, and they'll convince you. And Hermione says, absolutely. I will set up those meetings. You can have a whole suite of rooms to do whatever you want. And, of course, foreign policy is to preserve the emperor anyway. But his ministers never supported it in the first place.'s hugely unpopular in france the decision stands but carlotta's got one trick left up her sleeve which is to go to the vatican and have a meeting with the pope because as we said maximilian's liberal policies have alienated his core catholic

conservative constituency but if they are backed by the Pope, then, of course, that brings the Catholics in Mexico on board. So there's still hope. She travels overland to Rome and arrives there. I think it's in September of 1866. The first meeting goes relatively, relatively unproblematically. It's the second meeting where things begin to unravel because she's the pressure is enormous. She's convinced her husband to stay in Mexico. The empire looks like it's falling apart. And this mission with the Pope is crucial. She can't wait for it. And her health is beginning to suffer. And she demands to be driven to the Vatican. Unannounced, she breaks into the Vatican. I mean, how do you stop the Empress of Mexico if

you're just on the door to let them through? Demands to see the Pope. Eventually, the Pope is sort of roused, presumably in his papal pyjamas, and sort of, you know, what's going on in the corridors of the Vatican, confronted with the Empress of Mexico. And she breaks down, uncontrollable sobs, and screaming. And what she's screaming is that Napoleon III is trying to murder her with poison. That her entire entourage that has come with her from Mexico, her servants, Mexican politicians, whoever they be, are in the pay of the French emperor and they're trying to have her killed. Now, of course, Napoleon III, I mean, devious though he may be, has no interest

in poisoning Carlotta and she's lost her mind. She's completely gone into a world of delusion and paranoia and she sees Napoleon III as literally the devil incarnate, the principle of evil upon earth, she calls him. Now, this, of course, doesn't result in a concordat with the Pope, which we're rallying Catholic Mexico behind. So her mission is failed. So actually, I said Du Bois de Saligny was the worst diplomat of all time, but perhaps Carlotta has actually pipped him.

She's not achieved her mission. But I like the way you were focused on that Tom I've been an excellent boss but did you and the deal yes did it come off it doesn't she's actually taken into um taken into care by her Belgian family and put into into you know well the equivalent of isolation which is the way that people thought they were best to deal with these these mental problems in those days and of course was the very opposite she never recovers and in fact she never goes back to mexico but meanwhile maximilian is stuck in mexico and and and the sphere of his control is starting to shrink and collapse and so he gets advised doesn't he to um go to a place called Carretero, is that right? Carretero, yes.

He's already had another flirtation with abdication, hasn't he, when he hears about Carlotta? He does. And again, people say to him, other people say, oh, don't abdicate, you know, better to, you're a Habsburg, all this sort of stuff. And I think he packed his, am I right to think he packed his bags on that occasion. So again, once he hears the news that Carlotta has had suffered this terrible incident and his wife is sick, he resolves to abdicate again. So second time. But we I mean, we should have really emphasized about Maximilian. He's indecisive. He procrastinates. He doesn't like if you don't have to make a decision, don't make it. Always push it. But he is brave, right? I mean, he is very brave. That comes across. Absolutely. So he's he he is very brave that comes across absolutely so he's

talked out of it as dominic says um the conservative allies promise him everything tens of thousands of men tens of millions of dollars once the french have gone we won't have the stigma of foreign intervention just think how we'll be able to defeat the paristas yeah without any soldiers we'll be so but he does have some doesn't he i mean he does and that's why and that's why he ends up going to this place cuaraterero, because there are, you know, this is a stronghold of conservatism. So once the French have left, and there's all kinds of scenes reminiscent

of more recent events where refugees following in the wake of the French army and sort of chaos and so on and so forth. And they desperately want Maximilian to come with them. He refuses to say, I'm going to stay and fight. And that's it. So the plan is to go to a town about 130 miles northwest of Mexico City, Guerrero. Now, this is an imperial stronghold.

There are imperial Easter soldiers, the supporters of Maximilian, imperial Easter's already there. And what's going to happen is this is the plan as it stands. Maximilian will become commander in chief of the army. He will lead a small force out from Mexico City. They will march to the relief of these imperialist. Three Haurisa armies are converging on the city, but you defeat them one by one. And then the empire will be gloriously restored after this dramatic victory over the forces of the empire's atheistic liberals. It sounds like a desperate plan, and it is one. instead of the tens of thousands of men the conservatives managed to scrape together 1500 for maximilian uh to lead northwards and only 50 000 dollars uh which is barely enough to pay the wages of the troops that he's marching to um with

rather than um even you know to relieve that force force. And then he goes butterfly hunting. Well, this is it. So Maximilian has never served in an army, let alone commanded one. He's appointed commander-in-chief with the idea that, you know, this victory will be his responsibility and therefore will demonstrate what a wonderful leader he is. Maximilian, he's, I guess,

what one would call a dilettante, although he's, you know, he's interested in natural science and botany and especially butterflies. And it's sort of a fantastic moment. So the territory, call a dilettante although um he's you know he's he's interested in natural science and botany and especially butterflies and a sort of fantastic moment so the the territory his empire has shrunk to the point because while he's prevaricated about whether i should abdicate the juaristas are advancing on all sides and they're taking towns and cities uh and taunting the defenders saying well your emperor's packed as dominic says your emperor's you know he's packed up his furniture

and he's off so what on earth are you fighting Plus, they haven't been paid in about a year either. So there's not really much support for him. It's melting away. And so the countryside is held by Khawri's Degreer forces. And so he's constantly under attack on this march. But he's always stopping off for sort of teachable moments about Aztec history that will inspire his troops. Or to look at a rare butterfly that he hasn't catted. I mean, this is where it's very Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

I think that's how you would behave, Tom. I mean, you would see some sort of interesting fossil, or, you know, you go on one of your walks and look at some old churches. Well, I can tell you, I can tell you, I would have scarpered in his situation. I would absolutely have abdicated. It's a wonderful, wonderful moment.

He's writing letters to his, the director of a museum of natural science, which he's opened. He's a big fan of museums. So there's a lot to like with Maximilian there. And he's talking about the journey and he really does focus on the butterflies. And he says, well, as the bullets were whistling around me, I noticed the most extraordinary butterfly. It's admirable in a certain way. Well, he does show absolute cool, calm and collective courage under fire. And he does show leadership abilities and charisma. And he does lead this horse safely to Carretero. But that then turns out to be, because as I understand it from your book,

it's kind of, it's surrounded by heights. And his enemies are able to occupy the heights. And so basically he's stuck there it's the worst place to have a siege surrounded by uh hills on three sides open plain to the west there's a beautiful 18th century aqueduct that brings water and that's very quickly cut the quarries to state the high ground uh and of course the plan to defeat these armies one by one would require decisive action and maximilian which has a council of war prevarication it doesn't happen but even now he could still escape, right?

Because somebody says to him, don't they, at some point, you know, I've basically got a great plan for you to get away and get out of the town. But Maximilian says, no, no, no, I've invited some local officials. What would they say if they arrived and I was gone? It would be very disrespectful and discourteous of me to leave. Which, again, I think reflects very well on this. Yes, absolutely.

I mean, manners are much more important than saving one's own life. But anyway, so he ends up, and again, you have a fabulous sentence, the Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, born at the Habsburg Palace of Schönebrunn, offered his sword to Escobedo, a former farm labourer from the harsh Sierras of Nuevo León, which again, it's that conjunction

of two totally alien worlds. And he gets, he becomes a prisoner and things take a dark turn for him from that point on. Yes, I understand. The result is not good from his point of view. Yeah, the siege, it was a disaster. He's actually betrayed after two months by one of his most loyal officers, a man that he was godfather to children of, who goes over and took Juarista lines, leased them through. And in the morning of May 15th, 1867, the Juaristas have encircled the town and broken

through the Imperial Easter lines and he's put in prison. Court-martialed, which is very much going to be a show trial. It's actually held in a theatre named after the first emperor of Mexico, Itabide. People who've been paying attention will remember that he was also executed. I love the detail in your book where he says, I don't think, I don't really think I want to have a trial. You know, I'm an emperor. And they say, yeah, but people have been, kings have been tried before. Look at Louis XVI. I can't imagine anything less reassuring. I know, and that's from another French diplomat. It's a French diplomat. He desperately doesn't want to go. And she says, yes, but what about Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI? I mean, that was good

for them. Charles I, interestingly, is an inspiration for him. I was going to say, very much, well, is he a friend of the show, Charles I? He has an ambiguous relationship. He does, I think. But Ed, here's a question for you. Why do the Mexicans, why are they so set on trying him

and executing him? Why don't they just put him on a boat and say, you know, bugger off back to Europe? It's an excellent question. And Maximilian would have been fairly confident that that's what would have happened. Of course, it's something that he's offered to do. He says, you know, I'll applicator go.

I promise I won't come back. And if you think about the conflict you have in North America between Union Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, who's committed the most egregious treason you possibly could against the Union, right? He is put in prison, but he's eventually pardoned an amnesty or whatever it is. So that execution is rare. But Benito Juarez, as we said, is made of stern stuff. Now, this conflict in Mexico has been raging almost without interval since 1858. So that's nearly 10 years.

And it's not, the fight is not with Maximilian, although, I mean, at this stage, of course it is, but it hadn't begun with Maximilian. It had been with the Conservative Party. Remember, it was just defeated in civil war in 1861. And so the French poured gasoline onto the burning embers of this conflict, which then flared up again. And, you know, tens of thousands of Mexicans have been killed. And Benito Juarez wants to end that conservative resistance to his legitimacy, I suppose, is the way of saying it. And of course, we focus on Maximilian, but he's executed alongside two

other men, Miguel Miramont and Tomás Mejia. And these are both leaders of the Conservative Party representing different strands. Miramont, the Creole landed aristocracy descendants of Spaniards. Mejía, who is another indigenous peoples of Mexico, but that deep strand of pious rural conservatism based on Catholicism. And so you essentially, and Maxman, of course, representing Europe and European monarchy in foreign intervention. And so it is an incredibly determined attempt to put an end to that kind of resistance. And I suppose also to kind of offer, you know, serve as a warning to other European

princelings who may be tempted to pop over and have a crack. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because that monarchy, the idea of monarchy had just been bubbling below the surface in Mexico from the 1840s onwards. So this is what happens if you try and set up a monarchy in Mexico. So Ed, he together with the two conservatives gets hauled in front of a firing squad. They get shot.

He's not wearing a sombrero, as Manet shows him wearing. His body is treated quite disrespectfully isn't it uh they don't follow court etiquette they they keep the body in Mexico City and then after the negotiations it goes back to uh to to Vienna they don't follow court etiquette um yeah and she's worth pointing out that Maximilian wrote an emergency court etiquette to be observed during siege uh siege warfare conditions with artilleries raining down. So he always had an eye for etiquette,

which is not followed, as you say, after his death. So the body's embalmed, the idea will be sent back to Vienna. Benito Juarez tries to use it as diplomatic leverage, essentially, to get Franz Joseph to recognise the Mexican Republic, because by doing it, by executing Maximilian, Mexico does become something of a rogue state in European eyes for a good 10 years or so before any European court actually recognizes

the Mexican Republic. And so the body is, it's not treated well, it's kept in Mexico City in rather insalubrious conditions. And it's eventually sent back, I think it's November 1867, so a good few months after the execution. So your book is The Last Emperor of Mexico. We've already said yet, but of course, you know, the likelihood that there'll be another emperor of Mexico is fairly low. So Mexico is a republic to this day. I think we should end just by asking a question from Thomas Henselick, which I was wondering as well. Is there still any remembrance of Maximilian amongst contemporary Mexicans, or has the episode been utterly forgotten? And what role does this episode play in the historical memory of Mexico? No, it's not been forgotten at all. But of course,

the celebration there is Benito Juarez and all things like Cinco de Mayo. So if you fly into Mexico City, you fly into Benito Juarez Airport. The role that it plays in Mexico in terms of its history is a foundational moment. Independence in the 19th century was contested. Depending on who you spoke to, they'll tell you a different story and about different heroes. The story of Benito Juarez's triumph over the forces of European imperialism, monarchy, and reactionary Catholic conservatism becomes one that most Mexicans, if not all, are able to rally behind. And so it has a unique place in Mexican history, and therefore the story is well known. In terms of

Maximilian's legacy, it becomes quite, it does become quite romanticised, as you can imagine, with Carlotta and the court. And it's because as you say, it's so exotic, and so almost out of time, even in the 1860s, that it does become the focus of quite a lot of literature

and film and things like that. So he's remembered very much as being on the wrong side of history and Benicio Juarez as being on the right side. But there is an element as well that his character does shine through in some of the things

that he's sort of naive and unwelcome, but not perhaps irredeemable in and of himself, I think. Talking of irredeemable, maybe we should end with the villain of the story. Because, I mean, he doesn't have long left himself, does he? Napoleon III. It looks like he sent this man to his doom

and basically got away with it. But, I mean, his own imperial ambitions are about to collapse in ashes around him, aren't they? In 1870, 1871? Well, one of Maximilian's last wishes, which was that if he was able to go into exile, he would enrol in the Prussian army and fight against the French. And, of course, that's exactly what happens,

well, except for the fact that he can't enrol in it. So he would have been delighted when Prussian troops streamed across the French border and Napoleon III, who is sort of ironically trapped in a larger version of what happened to Maximilian. But he gets away, doesn't he, and ends up in chisel house. Well, he very sensibly abdicates. He says, ah, I think the game might be up. And Ed, you are currently, I think, writing a book

about Napoleon III, which, based on the evidence of your wonderful book on Maximilian, is going to be so worth reading. I guess kind of grimly funny, as in so many ways this book is. I can't thank you enough. It's been an absolute tool to force. And just to reiterate, Edward Shawcross, The Last Emperor of Mexico, fantastic book.

Rush out and buy it. Cheers. Thank you. We should say, I guess, adios. Adios and au revoir. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening,

and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com.