Page:The rise and fall of the Emperor Maximilian.djvu/221

 express beforehand my feelings of gratitude, at the same time renewing the assurance of respect and friendship with which I am your very affectionate,

Maximilian, as we see, urgently requested that his project of abdication should not transpire, even to his own council; in the second place, he begged the marshal to assemble the ministers to communicate his orders to them—orders all the more important as the law of October 3 was therein revoked. When he was just on the point of leaving the country, he did not wish that blood should be uselessly shed. The very next day, on the morning of October 22, the commander-in-chief (although the French government had charged him not to interfere in political matters), impelled by his devotion to the Emperor Maximilian, hastened to summon and assemble MM. Larès, Marin, minister of the interior, and Tavera, minister of war. He officially notified to them the will of their sovereign, and gave the order to put it into execution. It must be added that the ministers Larès and Marin professed themselves to be disinclined to accede to the generous ideas of Maximilian. The marshal replied to the emperor, informing him of the execution of his orders, but stating that hostilities could not be put a stop to at points where the rebels and parties who had not recognised the empire were attacking the French troops. In fact, the commander-in-chief had not the power of signing an armistice with the liberals. He had no right to modify, by his private authority, the military programme of the expeditionary corps, whose only duty was to save the empire. The general evacuation, however, still followed its course, and the number of places occupied by our troops lessened every day.

Maximilian appears to have changed his mind on this occasion too; for he never sent to the marshal