Page:The rise and fall of the Emperor Maximilian.djvu/106

90 In two months the reorganisation of the Mexican army, laboriously carried out by the French authorities, was again endangered by the government itself. As to the political and departmental management, it appeared in a deplorable state. The ministerial delays, extending even to personal questions and the forwarding of orders, had allowed even the best-disposed districts to fall back into their original apathy. The difficulty was to choose men who were capable of inspiring confidence. No stimulus seemed to excite them, and patriotism had not yet woke up. No one among the imperial party gave any thought to save the commonwealth in spite of the noble example of personal self-denial, set by the imperial family. Wherever the French were numerous, they came in contact with authorities who were either unfavourably disposed or unprovided with proper instructions. In a word, all the trouble fell on our officers, who found themselves compelled, in the interests of the country, to gradually make preparations against every contingency. Disgusted also at seeing functionaries slumbering in disgraceful carelessness, or discrediting and discouraging publicly those of their countrymen, who still clung to the empire as a means of safety, our officers ended by taking in hand the most trifling business in the various localities where they were carrying on their military duties. The fear was lest everything should drift away down the flood of insurrection which had taken its source from the American frontier, and was now rolling down from north to south.

It will not do to impute to Maximilian the responsibility of all the decay through which the empire was about to succumb; money, the sinews of war, was already deficient. As the French government had resolved, at the cost of enormous sacrifices, opposed by