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Rh of the nation to see me occupy the throne." These sentiments he expressed two years later, when the commission (appointed by the Assembly of Notables, which had been elected by the Junta, which had been elected by the Assembly) approached him with their flattering offer. He declined accepting it until he had heard an expression of the people's voice.

[A. D. 1864.] This the regency pretended to obtain, and in March, 1864, another deputation waited upon him and claimed compliance with his promise. Misled by what he was led to believe was a popular call to the throne, he yielded his consent, and on the tenth day of April, at the Castle of Miramar, accepted definitely the crown of Mexico. On the same day, the Treaty of Miramar was signed between Maximilian and Napoleon III., by which the French Emperor pledged himself to support the new ruler until firmly seated upon his throne, both with his legions and with his gold.

After taking leave of his royal relatives, and after a journey to Rome to receive the special blessing of the Pope, Maximilian and Carlota, Emperor and Empress of Mexico, set sail for the distant country they had been called upon to govern across the sea.

Maximilian, Archduke of Austria, brother to the Emperor Francis Joseph, was born in 1832. Educated in the company of the most accomplished personages of the Austrian court, he had acquired a refinement of deportment that set off well his natural endowments. He spoke fluently six or seven languages, and his intellectual acquirements were of a high order. In 1857 he was married to the Princess Maria Charlotte Amalia, daughter of Leopold I., King of the Belgians. This Princess, Carlota,— with whose sad history all the world is familiar—was at the time of her marriage seventeen years of age, and