Page:Vol 6 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/175

Rh He set out on the 10th of August from Chapultepec, where he then resided, leaving the empress in charge of affairs. The route lay through Querétaro into Guanajuato, public offices and institutions, industrial establishments, and places of interest being visited in an informal manner. Appointments were made of prefects and minor officials, and audiences granted. September 16th was appropriately celebrated at Dolores, the cradle of independence, the emperor in a speech lauding the heroes of that epoch. He returned to Mexico at the close of October, by way of Michoacan, convinced "that the empire was a fact, firmly based on the free-will of an immense majority of the nation," and that this majority anxiously demanded peace and justice. His duty being to grant this desire and to protect the people, he could no longer remain indulgent to the political adversaries who used a banner merely as a pretence for robbing and killing, and ordered that all armed bands overrunning the country and creating disorder and desolation should "be regarded as bandits, and subjected to the inexorable severity of the law."

In this document are revealed two mistakes of Maximilian: first, in allowing himself to be deceived by enthusiasm, evoked partly by flattered curiosity, partly by official prompting, and along a narrow circuit in