Page:The rise and fall of the Emperor Maximilian.djvu/23

 must turn his back upon Europe and its ideas, and look only at the troubled horizon of Mexico.

The die was cast! The English and Spanish squadrons put to sea again, and the French expeditionary forces (about 6,000 strong) were left alone. They prepared for the offensive by pursuing their backward movement towards the Chiquihuite—an embanked torrent situate almost half-way between the Gulf and Orizaba—the wooded escarpments of which commanding the pass had been armed for the defensive by the Mexicans. Whilst the French commander, faithful to the engagement he had entered into, was making this counter-march, a report was spread that the lives of our sick soldiers who had been left behind in the hospital at Orizaba, under the protection of the enemy, were threatened by the Juarist army. The French commander, yielding to the dread that his defenceless men would be put to death, immediately faced about, and violating, though with reluctance, the promise he had given, began the offensive by making his way by forced marches to Orizaba, without having repassed the strong position of the Chiquihuite.

Such is a brief recapitulation of the events in the first phase of the Mexican expedition. If we consider nothing but the facts which the imperial government laid before the country, it looks as if Napoleon III. had but one aim in view—that of protecting the interests of our countrymen, interests which would have been wronged by the convention of La Soledad, if the latter had been ratified. Surely, France was only generous in protecting with its safeguard those Mexican refugees who wished to tread once more the soil of their country. If we were to believe the official language, the war took its rise from the refusal or illusory concessions opposed by the Mexican president