The Last Emperor of Mexico

As doomed Emperor Maximilian I faced his firing squad, he made the most heartbreaking request to the enemy soldiers. Emperor Maximilian I was the first and last ruler of the Second Mexican Empire, but his history is so much more sordid than even his doomed title implies. Beginning life as a coddled Austrian prince, Maximilian rose through the royal ranks through bitter jealousy, overweening ambition, and searing entitlement. Yet all it took for his downfall was one brutal betrayal. As a young boy, Maximilian had all the privilege but none of the power. The second son of Princess Sophie and Archduke Franz Karl, it was Maximilian’s older brother Franz Joseph who was destined to become Emperor of Austria. This drove the little boy nearly mad with jealousy, and he started trying to compete with his brother in everything he could, from academic studies to military accomplishments.

While Maximilian tried to fan the flames of sibling rivalry with friends, his own mother wasn’t helping matters. Princess Sophie was a notoriously headstrong woman. People dubbed her the only man at court in Vienna for her commanding air, and she made it very clear that Maximilian was her favorite child. Some say there was a disturbing reason for this. In truth, although Maximilian was a golden boy in his mother’s eyes, his birth had ignited a dark scandal. Sophie had never been in love with her husband, the archduke, who one historian described as an amiably dim fellow whose main interest in life was consuming bowls of dumplings. Instead, many people whispered that Maximilian was the princess’s love child with another man, Napoleon II. Like most princes, Maximilian was a spoiled brat. Unlike most princes, he had an enormous mean streak and was a master manipulator. Despite the fact that he sometimes treated the palace staff like garbage, everyone seemed to love Maximilian. After all, he knew how to turn on the charm when it mattered.

His brother Franz had always been aloof and placid by nature, and young Max actually consciously tried to outshine his sibling in the charisma department just to have one more thing to be better at than him. In 1848, Maximilian got one rude awakening when the prince was still a teen: his uncle abdicated his throne amidst political turmoil, which turned Maximilian’s 18-year-old brother into Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria. With Franz Joseph finally Emperor, Maximilian didn’t stick around the Viennese court to watch him settle into his royal role. Instead, the prince launched himself into a career with the Imperial Austrian Navy, rising up through the ranks with a gritty determination to come back and show his brother who was boss. Instead, he got something else entirely: heart-wrenching love. In 1852, the still-green Maximilian went to Portugal on a stopover with the Navy and visited his cousin, the beautiful and fair Princess Maria Amélia of Brazil. Although the pair had met before when they were children, they now fell into passionate, idealistic love with each other, and Maximilian quickly proposed. Unfortunately, it would all end in blood and tears. Just months after their betrothal, Maria Amélia caught scarlet fever.

Although she survived the illness, her health never bounced back, and instead she started showing symptoms of tuberculosis. In a desperate bid to save her life, her family took her to the warmer climate of Madeira, but to no avail. She died in February 1853, leaving Maximilian beyond bereft. With his dear Maria Amélia gone, Maximilian threw himself into his work. Like so much else he put his mind to, he was an instant success and became Commander-in-Chief of the Navy in 1854 when he was just 22. His mission accomplished, he went back to his brother Franz Joseph’s court and was met with blinding envy. The same year that Maximilian became Commander-in-Chief, his royal brother got married, and Franz Joseph didn’t just marry anyone. His bride was the Bavarian sensation Empress Elisabeth of Austria. Sharply intelligent, deeply magnetic, and strikingly beautiful, the new empress was all anyone could talk about. After losing his own fiancée, it’s safe to say Maximilian didn’t take well to his brother upstaging him. Before long, Maximilian struck up a very close friendship with Empress Elisabeth, or Sisi as her friends called her. As a sensitive, clever woman, Sisi shared more traits with Maximilian than she did with the calmer, slower Franz Joseph, and the pair became intimate confidants at court.

This of course stirred up a scandal, though not for the reason you might think. Although there’s no suggestion that Maximilian and Elizabeth’s friendship developed beyond platonic affection, it was a huge slap in the face for Maximilian’s beloved mother, Princess Sophie. Sophie grew to dislike Elizabeth, finding her disobedient and stubborn, and she hardly could have relished seeing her favorite son getting up close and personal with the new girl in court. In 1857, Maximilian selected Princess Charlotte of Belgium as his wife, marrying her that July. On the surface, Charlotte seemed absolutely perfect. The only daughter of King Leopold I of Belgium, she was a famous beauty in her own right and came complete with a sizable dowry. Although Maximilian could never quite get over Maria Amélia, he did begin to love Charlotte in his own way. But under the surface lay a much more sinister story. Charlotte was used to being the popular pretty girl in the palace, and her move to Vienna shook those very foundations. Suddenly, every day she was waking up and standing next to the formidably gorgeous Empress Elisabeth, who just so happened to be best friends with her husband Maximilian.

It was a recipe for disaster. Soon enough, Charlotte had sparked up a full-blown rivalry with Elizabeth, and this girl was no amateur. One of her first stops was to ingratiate herself with Maximilian’s mother, Princess Sophie, who was all too happy to anoint Charlotte as the brightest beauty at court, not to mention the perfect wife. Unlike some empresses, she knew the uber-competitive Maximilian was probably over the moon about besting his brother in the bridal sweeps, but he was about to taste the bitterness of defeat. The year that Maximilian married Princess Charlotte, the new couple took over governance of Milan. Within months, the emperor got a stunning revenge. Apparently tired of Maximilian’s liberal policies in the capital and likely annoyed at a lifetime of his barbs, Franz Joseph suddenly fired his own brother from the job, all but rendering the prince obsolete as a royal. By 1859, Maximilian was itching for adventure, and he embarked on a journey around Europe. Only this was a very scandalous trip for the married man: he spent it visiting locations related to Maria Amélia, his long-lost love, and viewed it as a romantic pilgrimage. As he wrote when he reached Madeira, the place Maria Amélia died in, she left this flawed world pure as an angel who returns to heaven, her true native land.

In the 1860s, Maximilian got a dangerous offer he couldn’t refuse. Napoleon III of France had recently invaded Mexico and thought Maximilian was just the man for the job of puppet emperor for the country’s Second Empire. It was a title Maximilian had only ever dreamed of owning, so when he said yes, it changed his life forever, just not in a good way. Maximilian’s acceptance of the Mexican throne sent shock waves through his family, who all thought he was utterly foolish for taking on an immense responsibility so far away from home. Besides that, everybody knew the Second Empire of Mexico was far from stable. France had only just invaded, barely had a foothold within the borders, and were on dangerous legal ground with their plans. Plus, Maximilian would have to sacrifice one extremely precious thing for his ambition. In 1864, Emperor Franz Joseph met Maximilian to sign the so-called family pact. This was ominous and devastating. In the pact, Maximilian reluctantly renounced all his rights to the Austrian throne. It was the final nail in the coffin for any of his hopes of becoming an Austrian monarch, but at least he had the Mexican throne to look forward to, right? Maximilian and his wife Charlotte landed in Veracruz, Mexico on May 29, 1864. The moment they arrived, the liberal townspeople met their new emperor and empress with a very icy reception. Although the new emperor of Mexico had the French army on his side, military might simply wasn’t going to cut it with the disgruntled people of Mexico.

Instead, the royal couple went for PR tactics, with Charlotte changing her name to Empress Carlota in a very cringy bid to blend in. Maximilian and Carlota didn’t seem to be able to have children, so they went the classic rich white people route and adopted two Mexican heirs, Agustín and Salvador. The boys were both grandsons of a previous emperor of Mexico back when the emperor was actually Mexican. Almost the entire time he was raising Agustín and Salvador, Maximilian made a huge show of naming them as his successors, turning them into princes and making Agustín the next in line to the throne. In reality, Maximilian never intended to crown either boy since he didn’t see them as noble enough. What he was really playing at was much darker: he used the boys as pawns, hoping that his brother Archduke Karl would bark at the idea of a Mexican inheriting the throne and send one of his full-blooded Austrian sons to be heir. Maximilian had barely been in Mexico a year before trouble started brewing. The Republican leader, the formidable and cunning President Benito Juárez, was gaining more support, and nothing the emperor did or offered persuaded him into joining the royal family’s side. Then suddenly, Maximilian showed his true disturbing colors.

On October 3, 1865, Maximilian crossed a barbaric line he could never go back from, issuing the so-called black decree. In it, Maximilian essentially condemned armed supporters of Juárez to execution within 24 hours of their arrest. Thousands upon thousands of people perished under Maximilian’s orders in one fail swoop, but it backfired on him in a vicious way. By 1866, Napoleon III, the man who had brought him to Mexico in the first place, had seen the rebellions and abandoned ship, pulling his troops out and leaving Maximilian and Carlota like sitting ducks. After Napoleon III completely dumped him, Maximilian had a choice to make: withdraw from Mexico himself, or stay and try to beat back Juárez and his Republicans. Stubborn, competitive, and too desperate to prove himself until the very end, Maximilian gathered up the very few supporters he had left and hunkered down, refusing to abdicate or surrender. The Last Emperor of Mexico never stood a chance. After losing ground to Juárez without the support of the French army, Maximilian fell back to Querétaro City, only to withstand a blistering enemy siege for weeks on end. Eventually, he had to admit that all was lost, but instead of surrendering, he went the dishonorable route and tried to escape. Far from a resounding victory, Maximilian’s last stand turned into a brutal betrayal. The plan was for the precarious emperor to sneak through enemy lines in mid-May 1867. Yet before this could happen, as Colonel Miguel López flipped sides in the still of the night, the traitorous López left a gate open, letting the enemy army right into the city.

On May 15, 1867, Maximilian’s house of cards toppled. The Republican forces captured him trying to run through enemy lines and scheduled him for a court-martial. In a matter of months, everything Maximilian loved melted away: his wife had a mental breakdown, his family was an ocean away, and his empire was no longer his. The only thing left to do was await the results of the trial and meet his doom. In making his black decree, Maximilian had made a lifelong enemy of the liberals, and they wouldn’t soon forget the bloody lesson he had dealt them. So when it came time for the court-martial, they easily found the awol emperor of Mexico guilty, but more than that, they sentenced him to execution. When the world got the news that the Mexican liberals had captured Maximilian, many luminaries and monarchs of Europe started pleading with Benito Juárez to spare the emperor’s life and give him a merciful exile back to his country.

But Juárez didn’t come to play. As June arrived in Mexico along with the scorching heat, Benito Juárez began to set up the firing squad that would execute Maximilian along with two of his most loyal generals. The Austrian royal must have been shaking in his boots as the day approached. Yet when a chance for his salvation came, he faltered at the most crucial step. Despite the hatred that Maximilian stirred up in the liberals, he still had ardent supporters in Mexico up until the bitter end, and they never stopped trying to free their ruler. So at the 11th hour, one of his men came up with a conspiracy to bribe Maximilian’s guards and whisk him away in the night. Until Maximilian declined for a strange reason: the plan involved Maximilian shaving off his beard so his captors wouldn’t recognize him as he made the escape. Ever the good soldier, Maximilian was scandalized by the suggestion since it opened him up to undignified ridicule if his enemies recaptured him. On June 19, 1867, just over three years after Maximilian took on the job of Emperor of Mexico, the guards brought the monarch to the Cerro de las Campanas at the crack of dawn. At this point, Maximilian knew he had no more options left except to face down the barrel of a gun. But just before he did that, he performed a final heartbreaking act.

Maximilian was many things: competitive, stubborn, foolish. But he wasn’t unprincipled, and he went out like a true gentleman. When he met the men who were about to shoot him, he insisted on speaking Spanish to them and then gave each of the soldiers a gold coin. However, this wasn’t just payment; it had a much more gut-wrenching meaning. When Maximilian placed the coins in the men’s hands, he made it clear to them that this was payment in advance for not shooting him in the face when they aimed and took fire. Why? Because when his body made its way back to Austria, he wanted his beloved mother Sophie to be able to look at his face and recognize him. With that duty done, Maximilian uttered his last words just seconds before the guns went off. Max told his executioners, “I forgive everyone, and I ask everyone to forgive me. May my blood, which is about to be shed, be for the good of the country. Viva México, viva la independencia.

” Apparently, his words and gestures paid off: the man’s aim was true, and he died almost instantly. Benito Juárez intended on making an example of Maximilian, and for nearly a year after his execution, the liberals displayed his embalmed body for all to gawk at. People also began taking photos of memorabilia relating to his violent death. This included snapshots of his bloody shirt riddled with bullets, which they passed around like morbid baseball cards. It was certainly not the honorable end that Maximilian had hoped for. By the time of his death, his wife Charlotte had lost her mind so entirely no one trusted she could survive knowing about her beloved husband’s gruesome fate, let alone the fact she was no longer an empress. Instead, her family actively pretended he was still alive, even sending a fake telegram from him to prove it. Charlotte wasn’t the only one who Maximilian’s death affected: his fate also all but destroyed his mother Sophie, who never fully recovered from the shock of hearing that her favorite son was gone.