Page:The rise and fall of the Emperor Maximilian.djvu/201

Rh military commander became more and more difficult, what was Maximilian to think, who had just asked, If it was true that the alliance between his own and the French government was to be considered as a reality, as he flattered himself that it was?

The attitude of the United States, full of a logic which was never inconsistent with its purpose, was at all events an attitude of open hostility. Just at this time President Johnson issued a proclamation, declaring null and void a decree of Maximilian, which ordered the blockade of certain ports in Mexico.

One cannot help wondering at the illusions of a prince who thought proper to order a blockade at the very doors, as it were, of the United States, and yet did not possess a single Mexican ship ready to enforce with its guns the will of the sovereign. Nevertheless, Mexico lies between two seas, and possesses an extensive line of coast. What had her naval department been doing for the last three years? Although it might not, perhaps, have been able to launch large ships, or to measure their strength with the American Monitors, surely they ought to have constructed gunboats and light vessels fitted to go up the rivers, and to protect the shores against duerilleros and smugglers. Certainly, France, as an ally of Maximilian, might, with her fleet, have maintained an effective blockade of Matamoros, and especially of Tampico, where, by the convention of July 30, she had powerful interests at stake. She preferred to abstain from doing this, and again gave way before the Americans.

It will be recollected that when the convention of July 30, so ruinous to the Mexican monarchy, was so dictatorially exacted, the Emperor Napoleon promised