Page:The rise and fall of the Emperor Maximilian.djvu/58

 CHAPTER IV.

EING in possession of the documents relative to the last year of the reign of the Emperor of Mexico, we shall now proceed to trace out its history, and, by the help of facts, we shall put to silence all adverse comments. His sense of discipline would repel the idea that the marshal of France, partly honoured with the confidence of the emperor up to the time of the evacuation, whose acts during the last part of the period called forth a thousand expressions of approbation in various quarters, would have executed any orders but those which emanated directly from the sovereign. It was therefore most important to the dignity of our government to show, by publications of a more serious nature than the words of M. Rouher, that, in the hope perhaps of hurriedly reorganising a new state of things, and with the intention of preventing the complete disorder which must follow our evacuation, they had not plotted the downfall of Maximilian, as they had before plotted his elevation. Since it has thought proper to keep silence, we desire to tell the truth.

The principal aim of this historical study is to divide out and assign to each of the actors in the sanguinary drama that we call 'the French