Page:The rise and fall of the Emperor Maximilian.djvu/120

104 representation of them will induce you to say, 'This man tells the truth.'

The military state of things, in a financial point of view, is well known to your excellency. In the north, Mejia's division is scarcely able to live even by eating up the meagre resources of the place in which it is stationed, by making almost forced loans, and also by drawing considerable sums from Vera Cruz.

Also in the north, the troops commanded by Quiroga have no food of any consequence, and this chief is compelled to enforce the payment of taxes a whole year in advance, and also to exact loans, so that the citizens of the places where his troops are stationed are obliged to emigrate in order to avoid these molestations.

In the south, the troops which are under Franco's orders cannot leave Oajaca to meet the enemies which menace them because the daily pay of the soldiers is not secured, and also because there is no forage for the horses.

In the centre of the empire, Florentino Lopez has been compelled by like causes to lose much time before leaving San Luis.

The Austro-Belgian troops are owed more than half a million of piastres, and before your excellency caused them to be paid out of the French treasury, they had spent their last centime, and consumed all the available provisions in the towns they occupy.

It is useless to prolong this sad picture of the poverty of our resources in a military point of view; your excellency is well aware of it, and I have been compelled to reply to the sovereign, when I have been requested to help pecuniarily various Mexican corps, that there were not the means of doing it.

What is going on in the central pay-office at Mexico? Various bills have been drawn upon it amounting to about 300,000 piastres, which have not been paid, and for which there is no hope of payment; there are urgent requisitions to which we can pay no attention; there are, finally, the troops forming the garrison to whom their pay has been owing for nearly two months.

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