Page:The rise and fall of the Emperor Maximilian.djvu/73

Rh impressed on the whole country a character that it has never lost since that grand era? But the German system, with all its deliberate inaction, was the prevailing one here. But it is only just to confess that the Mexican climate had already affected the constitution of the emperor, and in these latitudes the state of health reacts cruelly on the mental faculties.

In the departments, the political prefects chosen out of the midst of the national party neutralised all the efforts of our movable columns. Besides these injurious tendencies, against which Maximilian, misled, as he was, by the suggestions of those round him, but feebly contended, the ministry, managed by M. Eloïn, a Belgian attached to the suite of the Empress Charlotte, furnished fresh proofs every day of its ill-will in everything that concerned French interests. In spite of the repeated entreaties of the Marquis de Montholon, the commission which had been formed at Mexico to discuss and estimate the demands of our claimants found itself incessantly impeded by planned occurrences. Apart from the pressure brought to bear on him by his advisers, Maximilian would doubtless have fulfilled his engagements; but he met with encouragement to his resistance even from Paris itself, through the stimulus of M. Hidalgo, whose recriminations were not without influence at the court of the Tuileries, thanks to a certain august intervention. We must also state that the French requirements, not without reason, appeared to Maximilian to be exaggerated, and in part not well founded, so far as regarded the portion relating to the usurious bonds of Jecker, the Swiss, who had been naturalised as a Frenchman after the outset of the intervention.

There had been a point in litigation for about five months. Our minister in Mexico demanded, but did not