Page:The rise and fall of the Emperor Maximilian.djvu/78

62 deserved only to be strictly confined, or rather to be banished to the Antilles, since his territory had never yet been trod either by the French or imperial armies. Measures of violence, which mistake the true character of an enemy, only provoke terrible reprisals.

Porfirio was conducted to Puebla as a prisoner by the French army, and was confined in the fort of Guadalupe, from which escape was impossible. By order of the emperor, he was placed under the guard of the Austrians, who, after having brought him back into the city, allowed him to escape. Porfirio, still faithful to Juarez, again took the field, and was subsequently the means of overturning the imperial throne. But it must be confessed that, after the fights at Miahuatlan and La Carbonera, he treated the French prisoners in a proper way, and also gave the Austrians who remained in his hands after the fall of Oajaca every facility of exchange. Everything leads to the belief that the emperor himself, moved by a generous but imprudent feeling, was privy to his escape.

It was soon perceptible that the minister of war took upon himself to move troops, and to give orders directly to the generals, without consulting or even informing our head-quarters, and tacitly abolished the flying-guard placed to secure the communications on the road from Mexico to Vera Cruz, thus giving free course to a system of brigandage which now made fresh victims.

After a month of Mexican management, the emperor, now undeceived, adopted the course of entrusting the supervision of his army to better hands. A French general was placed at his disposal, but he was