Page:The rise and fall of the Emperor Maximilian.djvu/24

 to the legitimate demand for reparation put forward by our minister. Juarez then must remain alone responsible to posterity for the ruin of his people, and for all the blood shed upon Mexican soil, shed, too, in such profusion, but yet powerless to fertilise it!

We will, however, endeavour to seek out the truth which in this matter is so difficult to get at; and now that we have placed the principal actors on the stage, let us enquire what was passing behind the scenes. To the ambiguity of official phraseology, we shall reply by hard facts and incontestable documents.

On January 18, 1861, exactly ten months before the convention was signed by the three powers, whilst Juarez was presiding in his capital, and little thinking of the storm that was gathering in Europe in order to break over his head, France was conspiring for his fall. In the little town of Tlalpam, about four leagues from Mexico, General Leonardo Marquez was riveting the first links in the chain of intrigue which already united the cabinet of the Tuileries with the palace of Miramar. On this very night, an Indian courier, bearing a confidential note, entered Mexico. General Marquez wrote to the Licenciado Aquilar, Santa Anna's former minister, to say that the time was come 'for organising a reaction—political, social, and military.' He offered him the presidentship of a directory, and the right of choosing as its members those whom he thought most capable of serving the good cause. The motto Dios e Orden was proclaimed; it was the signal of revolt against ' Libertad e Independencia', which was the republican formula.

At the same time, a body of Mexican refugees, at whose head stood MM. Gutierrez de Estrada, Hidalgo, Almonte, Mgr. La Bastida, and the ex-president Miramon, was agitating in Paris; they profited by the