Page:The rise and fall of the Emperor Maximilian.djvu/155

 of the effective force at its disposal would have been sufficient to decide the triumph of the monarchy; but these persons have never witnessed the intrigues and disloyalties of a court, and have never scanned the distressing picture of financial difficulties springing up again and again. They could hardly have been aware of the French instructions directing that the towns should be evacuated in the beginning of 1866; and they had not had to deal with the premeditated sluggishness of the very highest officials, acting as a dead weight on nearly all the imperial territory. Maximilian was to be pitied; but it is not the commander-in-chief who must be blamed.

To be better convinced of this, one need only glance at the despatch which, at this very time, Mr. Bigelow, the American minister at Paris, addressed to his government, which had enjoined him to demand explanations from the cabinet of the Tuileries as to the asserted movements of troops intended for Mexico.

To Mr. Seward, Under Secretary of State at Washington. Paris, June 4, 1866. Sir,—I called on his excellency the minister of foreign affairs, last Sunday, to confer with him on the subject indicated in your instructions marked 'confidential.' As he had already been informed of the contents of this despatch by the French minister resident at Washington, I had not to explain it to him afresh.

. . . I then told him that the object of your instructions, as I understood them, is simply to obtain an explanation which would certainly be required of you in reference to the embarkation in France of large bodies of troops for Mexico, after the intention of withdrawing the whole army had been officially announced.

To this his excellency replied that, since he had seen me, he had received from his colleagues, the ministers of war and marine, the information that no troops belonging to the