Page:The rise and fall of the Emperor Maximilian.djvu/194

 of every kind of poverty and privation, just as it is with the Mexican corps, for the public treasury can pay no longer. The officers, generally the last to be paid, will find themselves reduced to a deplorable state, from which they will be unable to extricate themselves without leaving behind them their dignity and their honour. In spite of the emperor's instructions, enlistment by means of la leva is now being adopted. Thus, the imperial commissary Iribarren claims to send me, to be looked after and maintained, six hundred Juarists, every one of them prepared (everyone here is aware of it) to turn against us at the first opportunity; this, too, is done at a time when we ought certainly to avoid arming a number of certain enemies within our lines, for those without are numerous and strong, and are becoming more so every day. However, I cannot accept the command over the recruits of the leva; nothing but prisoners who must be looked after night and day, in action as well as in quarters. With a recruitment of this kind, the task of organising and instructing is an impossible one, and corps will be formed in which the French element will only meet with future mortification of every kind.

I therefore profess myself incapable of commanding a corps which is subject to this sort of recruitment, and it is my duty, monsieur le maréchal, to state this to you, and to beg you to withdraw me from the command of the. . battalion of cazadores.

September 23, 1866. Monsieur le Maréchal,—. . . All the Mexican coffers are empty. The imperial commissary has just laid upon us a most iniquitous ordinance, the decree of which I send you. Many a person will be reduced to poverty, and everyone is complaining. The various consuls have protested, but nothing has come of it. The most painful part of it is, that it is imagined here that this notorious decree has been issued under the protection of the French bayonets, as we are compelled to repress all the disorders which this unhappy decision has called forth.

A leva has been made to form the guard, and every inhabitant ought to take a part in it. But in consideration of the payment of a few piastres, many have been able to get off.