Page:The rise and fall of the Emperor Maximilian.djvu/145

 up his army on paper, he fancied he was dealing with German soldiers, and forgot that the chief need in Mexico was an iron hand, which could hold firmly all the threads of this complicated web, leaving nothing to chance or to the dangers resulting from want of discipline; he forgot, too, that for about fifty years the country had been trodden under foot by partisan bands. A scheme like his might have been practicable for the energetic Yankees, who often operated in this way during the war of secession; but in Mexico it would only have the effect of increasing the number of what the emperor himself called 'hordes,' which were nothing more than a destructive scourge.

Cuernavaca, May 17, 1866. My dear Marshal,—The Emperor Napoleon, having been compelled to settle formally and publicly as to the gradual recall of his troops, has informed me in his last letter that he has given the most definite orders that the co-operation, which is indispensable to the achievement of the work he has so gloriously begun, should be afforded to my government; and that every assistance should be rendered me for organising a substantial national army, for forming mixed troops, and for setting to rights the voluntary corps. To attain this end, I look upon it as an obligation on me and even as a conscientious duty to place myself in the closest and most continuous relations with you, my dear marshal, in order to definitively settle on the plans for organisation, to ensure their execution, and to determine the expenses that are to be incurred, and the men that are to be chosen. The most effective means of not wasting the little and so valuable time which is now left us appears to me to be, in the first place, to solicit you, my dear marshal, to let me have in writing your views and wishes on the subject of the fresh organisation, and of the detailed plan which must be followed to rapidly and entirely tranquillise the country, basing it upon the remarkable data which have been lately furnished us from all points of the empire; and, in the second place, by you and I meeting once, or, if necessary,