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 296 MAXIMILIAN try, and the usurper Moro thereupon prevailed on the king of France to renew the old claims of the house of Anjou to Naples, and to enter on an Italian campaign. This led to those long Italian wars, in which during Maximilian's life- time Charles VIII., Louis XII., and Francis I. of France, Ferdinand the Catholic of Spain, the popes Alexander VI. and Julius II., the empire, Switzerland, the republic of Venice, and Naples were principally engaged. Cam- paigns, treaties of peace, alliances, and treach- erous desertions of allies followed in rapid succession ; but the details belong to the his- tory of the more important actors. Maximil- ian, who in 1493 had succeeded his father as emperor, played in the whole a secondary part, so far inadequate to his schemes were the sup- plies which he was able to extort from the unwilling states. One of these plans was that of becoming pope after the death of Julius II. Instead of aiding their emperor, the states of Germany were always ready to complain, and the empire itself was not a little distracted by feuds, in spite of the eternal peace decreed by the diet of Worms in 1495, of the new Reichs- Jcammergericht, and the exertions of the Swa- bian league for the maintenance of order. Switzerland, which was to be reconquered, now entirely detached itself from the Germanic body, whose head saw himself often deserted by his allies, sometimes by his own troops, and frequently penniless. The troubles of the ref- ormation broke out shortly before his death. In the mean time he had not neglected to con- tinue the safer and peaceful conquests of his house. Philip and Margaret, his only two children by Mary of Burgundy, married Juana and Juan, the children of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile ; Philip succeeded to the throne of Castile in 1504, and died in 1506; and his son Charles, on the death of Ferdinand in 1516, inherited the whole of Spain. This young prince also became the successor of Maximilian as emperor of Germany, under the name of Charles V., his younger brother Fer- dinand receiving the German possessions of Austria, and subsequently, in consequence of other marriage connections, also ascending the thrones of Hungary and Bohemia. Having also succeeded Charles V. in the empire, Ferdi- nand 1. left all his thrones to his good-natured but feeble son Maximilian II. (1564-"T6). Max- imilian I. left several treatises on military science, gardening, the chase, and other sub- jects, and a poetical work on his own life. MAXIMILIAN (FERDINAND MAXIMILIAN JO- SEPH), archduke of Austria and emperor of Mexico, born in Vienna, July 6, 1832, shot in Quere"ta/o, Mexico, June 19, 1867. He was the second son of the archduke Francis Charles and of the archduchess Sophia, and a brother of the present emperor Francis Joseph. He en- tered the naval service, and in 1854 became rear admiral and chief of the navy, and in 1857 governor of the Lombardo- Venetian kingdom. In the same year he married in Brussels (July 27) the princess Charlotte, daughter of Leo- pold I. and sister of the present king of the Belgians. On the outbreak of the war of 1859 he retired to Venice, and subsequently to his beautiful chateau of Miramar near Trieste. Here, with the exception of a voyage of sci- entific exploration to Brazil, he resided until his departure, April 14, 1864, for Mexico, hav- ing accepted, at the instance of Napoleon III., the crown of Mexico, under the name of Max- imilian I., with the consent of the emperor of Austria and of that portion of the people of Mexico whose sanction could be secured through French influence. He had waived his claim of succession to the throne of Aus- tria in the event of his brother's death, and made farewell visits at the French, Belgian, and English courts ; and in Rome he received the pope's blessing. He landed with his wife at Vera Cruz, May 28, 1864. An auxiliary corps was organized in Austria and Belgium, and a loan was raised in France for the benefit of the new Mexican empire, which was in- tended by Napoleon to consolidate the power of the Latin race in the new world. One of the first measures of Maximilian, who was childless, was to adopt a son of the emperor Iturbide as his presumptive successor on the throne. He established committees for the regulation of public affairs, promulgated an amnesty, and manifested excellent intentions for the faithful administration of the govern- ment; but he soon lost the support of the clergy, who were grievously disappointed by his failure to restore their sequestered estates, and who had been almost his only zealous par- tisans. Almost from the beginning he found himself confronted by formidable difficulties, which increased in proportion to the deter- mined resistance of President Juarez and of the masses of Mexicans to the French invasion and to his usurpation of the throne, a resist- ance encouraged by the dissatisfaction of the United States with European encroachments upon the American continent. In 1865, after the close of the civil war in the United States, the attitude of the latter government became more determined ; and public opinion in France, and the increasing complications of Napoleon at home and abroad, admonished the latter to abandon the scheme. The empress Charlotte in vain attempted in 1866, in interviews with Napoleon in Paris and with the pope in Eome, to change the current of events. While in Rome her mind gave way under the pressure of anxiety, and she has ever since lingered at the chateau of Laeken hopelessly insane. Na- poleon, having formally undertaken to with- draw his troops, despatched Gen. Castelnau to the city of Mexico to reconcile Maximilian to the necessity of abdicating ; but the latter would not entertain such an idea, and went to Orizaba to avoid meeting the French envoy. Here in November he assembled his ministers, who were nearly all opposed to his, abdication, and on Dec. 5 he called a national congress,