or him to do but obey. He knew very well that if he resisted, the
armies of the civil war would make very short work of his forces in
Mexico.

Maximilian was strongly advised to give up his dream of an empire and
leave the country with the French. He changed his mind a half-dozen times,
but finally decided to stay, fancying that he could hold his throne with
the aid of the loyal Mexicans. Carlotta, full of ambition, went to Europe
and appealed for help to Napoleon. She told him very plainly what she
thought of his actions; but it was all of no avail, and she left the
palace almost broken-hearted. Soon after Maximilian received the
distressing news that his wife had lost her reason through grief, and was
quite insane. At once he made up his mind to return to Europe, and set out
for Vera Cruz. But before he got there he changed his mind again and
concluded to remain.

At the end of January, 1867, the French army, which had held on until
then, with one excuse after another, left the capital city, which it had
occupied for years, and began its long march to the sea-shore at Vera
Cruz. Much was left behind. Cannon were broken up as useless, horses sold
for a song, and the evacuation was soon complete, the Belgian and Austrian
troops which the new emperor had brought with him going with the French.
Maximilian did not want them; he preferred to trust himself to the loyal
arms of his Mexican subjects, hoping thus to avoid jealousy. As for the
United States, it had no more to say; it was content to leave this shadow
of an empire to its _loyal_ Mexicans.

It cannot be said that Maximilian had taken the right course to make
himself beloved by the Mexicans. Full of his obsolete notion of the
"divine right of kings," a year after he had reached Mexico he issued a
decree saying that all who clung to the republic or resisted his authority
should be shot. And this was not waste paper, like so many decrees, for a
number of prisoners were shot under its cruel mandate, one of them being
General Orteaga. It has been said that Maximilian went so far as to order
that the whole laboring population of the country should be reduced to
slavery.

While all this was going on President Juarez was not idle. During the
whole French occupation he had kept in arms, and now began his advance
from his place of refuge in the north. General Escobedo, chief of his
armies, soon conquered the northern part of the country, and occupied the
various states a