by C. M. Mayo
Indeed, it was in the midst of the Iturbides’ domestic idyll that, beyond the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, in his still-under-construction Miramar Castle, the Archduke Maximilian von Habsburg very reluctantly accepted the Mexican throne—that same throne that had belonged to the ill-starred Don Agustín de Iturbide. The archduke’s reluctance was an ugly embarrassment for all concerned. However, the details of the episode were not generally known until years afterward, when most of the participants had already gone to their reward, for, in Austria and in Mexico during the French occupation, sharp-eyed censors inspected letters, magazines, newspapers, and telegrams, with not the least hesitation in confiscating matter their superiors might deem offensive. Which is not to suggest that no one in Mexico knew of the troubles surrounding the archduke’s acceptance of the Mexican throne, merely that the Iturbides, as most members of Mexico City society, were not privy to the whole of it. This turned out to have exceedingly unfortunate consequences.
The troubles surrounding the archduke’s acceptance were many, but the stickiest was the so-called Family Pact, a document the archduke referred to as “that accursed piece of paper.” His version of events was that his older brother, Kaiser Franz Joseph, sprang it upon him without warning and then strong-armed him—literally forced him—to sign it. However, ample time beforehand, when the archduke visited Vienna in January 1864, the foreign minister, Count Rechberg, had mentioned that, of course, before accepting the Mexican throne, Maximilian would have to resign from the House of Habsburg, thus renouncing his rights as an archduke of Austria. Maximilian had coolly answered, “That I will never do.”
How could one resign from the House of Habsburg? It was his blood, his fingernails, the very skin he wore. It was recorded in the Almanach de Gotha and would be, until the end of time: He, Maximilian von Habsburg, was the descendant of the kings of the Holy Roman Empire, rulers by Divine Right. It was as a member of the House of Habsburg, knight-errant for its glory, that he had given his word to Louis Napoleon that he would accept the throne of Mexico. The idea of giving up his rights was not only inconceivable, it was absurd!
Maximilian assumed that Count Rechberg had not spoken with the authority of the Kaiser. And indeed, subsequently, Maximilian met with his brother several times, and nothing was said about it. Not until the eve of Maximilian’s departure for Brussels—very late in the game—did Count Rechberg press upon him the court historian’s report on the matter of succession, again arguing that, before formally accepting the Mexican throne, Maximilian would have to sign the Family Pact. This report had the Kaiser’s signature, but it was, Maximilian told Count Rechberg, so much intellectual flatulence. Maximilian heard nothing more about it—until after Maximilian and his consort, Charlotte, had been feted as emperor- and empress-elect in both Brussels and Paris, after they had floated the loan for the Mexican Empire in the Paris bourse, after they had crossed the Channel to pay their respects to Queen Victoria, that is, after everything, lock, stock, and barrel, had been recognized in the most public way. On their way back to Trieste, where the coronation was to take place in Miramar Castle in a matter of days, Maximilian and Charlotte visited Vienna where they were received at the Hofburg, not as archduke and archduchess but as heads of state. The day after the state banquet, lo! Count Rechberg presented that piece of paper. Either sign the Family Pact, or Younger Brother would not be permitted to wear a crown.
Bitter rage welled in Maximilian’s throat. It was just like the fiasco of his governorship of Lombardy-Venetia when, notwithstanding his demonstrated competence, leadership, and popularity (really remarkable popularity given the restiveness of the Italian nationalists), Franz Joseph had dismissed him with no warning, no justification, and so made him appear ridiculous. Franz Joseph had never supported him. And now, their mother, Archduchess Sophie, stepped in. You should not deprive Max of his rights. You are not being a good brother. Franz Joseph argued right back, Felipe V, nephew of Louis XIV, renounced his rights to the French throne when he went to reign in Spain, as did their Aunt Marie-Louise forfeit hers to the Austrian throne when she married Napoleon Bonaparte.
Yet there was an undercurrent to Maximilian’s raging feelings: relief. To begin with, though Charlotte insisted he was overreacting, it did seem to him, as to many of the older generation, rather unseemly for a Habsburg to accept a throne from a mere Bonaparte. And to put one’s fate in the hands of a Bonaparte . . . Maximilian remembered, from the time he was a child, hearing them called “those dregs of the Corsican banditti.” His aunt the Archduchess Marie-Louise was the one who had been made to marry Bonaparte, once the barren and infinitely less distinguished Empress Josephine had been divorced. Bonaparte, that rapacious parvenu, he was horrible: Krampus, the Devil, was what they’d called him in Vienna in those days.
And to erect an empire in Mexico was, perhaps, a Quixotic quest—alike to a march into Russia? The finances were somewhat convoluted and, well frankly, mystifying. By the Treaty of Miramar, which Maximilian was to sign once he was crowned emperor, Louis Napoleon would keep troops in Mexico as long as needed, but at Mexico’s expense—the costs of the transports, the supplies, all arms, and the payrolls and interest, and indemnities, and—well, would that, ultimately, be feasible? In the beginning, although Louis Napoleon had assured Maximilian that they would, neither England nor Spain had offered their support for the Mexican expedition. The U.S. consul in Trieste came out to Miramar Castle to warn Maximilian not to swallow the honeyed words of the Mexican delegation. Who were these men, after all? Don José Hidalgo, a no-account expatriate Parisian society hanger-on; Don José María Gutiérrez de Estrada, another longtime expatriate, denizen of Rome, an ultramontane schemer; and General Almonte, a crony of Santa Anna’s and, as it happened, bastard of the guerrilla-hero of Mexican Independence, the priest Morelos. At that time, General Almonte had already returned to Mexico City and was serving as Lieutenant General of the Realm, which is to say, regent under the French occupation. More than any of them, General Almonte’s true purposes remained inscrutable. (Was Almonte secretly loyal to the exiled dictator, Santa Anna? Just another Albanian-style strongman? Or a visionary and true patriot? as was his father, Father Morelos, the glorified hero of the wars for Mexican Independence?) The U.S. minister in Vienna, according to the reports of the police spies, was dripping with disdain for the entire enterprise—he seemed to think Maximilian might as well have offered himself up to a rope and gibbet.
And the U.S. minister was not the only one of this persuasion. Queen Victoria had received Maximilian and Charlotte not as heads of state but as her cousins; at the dinner at Windsor Castle, at every mention of Mexico, she took on the expression of having bitten into gristle and changed the subject (to puppy-dogs and the unseasonable weather in Scotland!). On their return from London, Maximilian and Charlotte had stopped at Claremont to visit Charlotte’s Grand-maman, Marie-Amélie, the ex-queen of France. That was a nasty scene. Grand-maman had gripped Charlotte’s hands, crying, “Don’t go, my darlings, you mustn’t go!” She nearly shouted at Maximilian, “They will assassinate you!” The ravings of an old woman, perhaps, but there were many other warnings. One, in particular, blazed bright in Maximilian’s mind, for it came from Don Pedro Montezuma XV, the sole legitimate descendant of the Aztec emperor.
French cannon have cowed some into submission; once tranquility reigns, however, there will rise up all of a sudden a terrible counter-revolution . . . Your Highness has been too precipitous in accepting the Mexican throne . . . Those who today form the regency are of the most impious stripe . . . depraved evildoers, usurpers, they rob the Treasury, they rob even the Holy Church . . . they will supplant Your Highness perhaps after a tragic end.
Indeed, when the Mexican throne was first offered, Charlotte herself had forebodings. Her uncle Prince Joinville had visited Mexico some years earlier. It was a barbarous country, he said, rife with yellow fever, malaria, the revolting spectacles of bullfights, and if that weren’t enough, armed bands roaming th
e countryside. “And if Brazil was unsuitable for you, a white woman, to visit, Mexico is even less so. You, the empress of Mexico?” Joinville had laughed. Une idée affreuse! A dreadful idea!
However, when Maximilian began to give the invitation serious consideration, Charlotte not only warmed to the idea, she became its most energetic proponent. Neither had Maximilian, sunny by nature, been swayed by all this “doom and gloom.” As Charlotte pointed out, the enemies of France and the enemies of the True Church painted the picture with their own tints. Maximilian and Charlotte both interviewed diplomats, bankers, mining engineers, and scientists. They read stacks of letters, reports, and between them a library’s worth of books, including, of course, Baron Alexander von Humboldt’s extensive and meticulously documented report, Reise in die Äquinoktial-Gegenden des Neuen Kontinents, all volumes, from cover to cover. Mexico, astride the world’s two greatest oceans, rich with precious metals and fertile lands, had stupendous potential, and the catalyst, they both became convinced, would be himself.
As Charlotte said, quoting one of the gentlemen of the Mexican delegation, a Habsburg prince on that throne would be as the sun to the planets. Yes, to lend their personal prestige—the prestige of the House of Habsburg and, on her side, Saxe-Coburg and Gotha—would be an enormous help to Louis Napoleon, and they could count, as a cathedral upon its foundation, on his deepest, most reverent gratitude. And: the equally, nay, perhaps even more profound gratitude of His Holiness the Pope. Yes, Maximilian’s ambition had been whetted. And was it not a sign of Divine approbation, that he, descendant of the Habsburg king of Spain who had commanded the conquistadores, should be the one to sit upon this throne?
Oh, and what a shining pleasure finally to have the chance to govern, to bring justice, peace, and prosperity to a people, without Vienna’s boot on one’s back! He revered his elder brother, but how trying, how absolutely exasperating at times, to be the Heir Presumptive, and after the birth of Prince Rudolph, second in line—inconvenient shadow or little chess piece, as it were, of those who were schemed to keep themselves close to the Kaiser, those ham-fisted reactionaries. Oh, right they were to fear Maximilian! Had he been All-Highest, he would not rule by instilling dread in the hearts of his subjects; he would earn their love with understanding and vision. Italian students should not be mowed down with guns, pulled off the streets to be beaten and tortured. Bravo tutti! The good ruler celebrates his people, he is of them, and so is lodged in their hearts. They had loved him in Lombardy-Venetia; many of his subjects had told him he was the best governor they had ever had. It would have worked out, he knew, he had tried to convince the Kaiser to just give him a chance—
Maximilian could almost feel the weight of the crown of Mexico upon his head; the cool metal of the scepter in his hand. He could see, in his mind’s eye, his own imperial seal—the crowned Aztec eagle, the MIM for the Latin Maximiliano Imperator de Mexico, and his motto “Justice with Equity”—he had sketched it in his notebook, refining the design, many times.
But to separate himself from the House of Habsburg? Maximilian saw no way he could sign such a document. Therefore, he could not leave Austria. In his view, he had been bullied and betrayed by his brother. But his brother was the Kaiser; the All-Highest’s word was an order. There was nothing to do but buck up.
He and Charlotte left Vienna for Trieste, and there, where the early spring winds tossed the Adriatic and the trees in the park were just beginning to bud, he told his wife, with a sprezzatura, a genuine lightness he had not felt in months: “We have much to do here.” Miramar was still in part a shell; only the ground and first floors had been finished. The walls wanted paintings and draperies. The parterre needed work, the driveway more gravel, and the aviary could be expanded. It could be finished by June. This summer they could spend cruising, perhaps, as an appoggiatura, Corfu, Patmos, and then a few blessed weeks on Lacroma, the island that Charlotte, so thoughtfully, had given him as a present. Lacroma was silence itself: pines and myrtle, and Richard the Lionheart’s ruin, an abandoned eleventh-century monastery, its walls laden with roses. Lacroma was so romantic, a place where he could botanize, read philosophy, and write poetry, whilst Charlotte painted or played the lute.
And so it was that, but three days before his coronation was to take place, with a mix of wounded pride, weltschmerz, and a heart secretly glad, Maximilian informed Don José Hidalgo, acting head of the Mexican delegation, that he was unable to accept. A telegram was sent to Paris. As for the pope, before cruising to Lacroma Maximilian would go to Rome to explain his decision in person. Thus ended the bittersweet might-have-been of the cactus throne, curious footnote within a footnote in history, so Maximilian imagined.
Louis Napoleon’s answer thundered back:
Your Imperial Highness has entered into engagements that you are no longer free to break. What would you really think of me if, when Your Imperial Highness had already reached Mexico, I were suddenly to say that I can no longer fulfill the conditions to which I have set my signature?
And then Louis Napoleon lunged with the saber: The honor of the House of Habsburg is in question.
What to do, what to do, what to do? Maximilian was in a teeth-gritting dither. No, it was more than that. He felt himself in the sucking grip of a kind of quicksand.
The Mexican delegation had not yet departed Trieste. The Mexicans, shocked, were imploring him to change his mind. In Miramar Castle, from the window of his study, Maximilian could see, anchored out in the bay, the Novara and the French frigate the Themis, which was to be its escort for the voyage to America. The ships’ captains, too, were waiting, expecting him to change his mind.
Charlotte pointed out that now, if he refused the throne, how could they possibly hold their heads up? “Louis Napoleon and Eugénie will ridicule you. In all the courts of Europe, you will be despised.”
“You exaggerate.”
“They would brand you a coward!”
He had never seen her so agitated. “No . . .”
“Yes!!!”
She had raised her voice at him. He lifted his eyes, but before they met hers, they slid over to the window. Slowly, a horrible expression came over his face; his breath went shallow. “Really? You really think . . . that . . . they . . . ?”
“Max,” she cut him off. “It is too late.”
They were in the library; above the double doors hung the portrait by Winterhalter of Charlotte as a small child. Maximilian was looking at it with the most heartbreakingly forlorn expression she had ever seen. Suddenly, he cast his gaze to the carpet. He whispered, “Oh . . . my . . . God.”
“Max . . .” she touched his hand, but he pushed it away.
He bolted out to the terrace, leaned over the side, and threw up.
He took to his bed. Charlotte, a hive of anxiety, did not wait; she barged past Dr. Jilek, right into Maximilian’s sickroom, and hovered there, urging him: What else was there for him? The Kaiser was jealous of his talents and popularity. The men Franz Joseph surrounded himself with, rigid-minded officers, distrusted Maximilian; they would continue to intrigue against him, and now, his refusal of the Mexican throne would be ammunition for them!
Maximilian was propped up on pillows, his face deathly pale. Under the covers, he clutched at his stomach. He protested weakly, “I cannot give up my rights.”
Yes, Charlotte agreed, the Family Pact was a horrific injustice. “But consider, is it meet that you, a man born to govern, born to make a people happy, have been left at the age of thirty-one with nothing to do but build castles and sail around collecting bugs?”
She herself was on the verge with boredom in Trieste—this stuffy, fifthrate, provincial town. They had been exiled, put out to pasture, and was this to be the rest of their lives? Wasted! She wanted so very much to be useful, to serve, which she knew in her heart had always been God’s purpose for them both. She knew how terribly wounded he had been to have lost the governorship of Lombardy-Venetia—but now, God had delivered to him a throne. N
ot any throne, not a Poland or a Greece, no! This was a throne backed by the might of the French Imperial Army! A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!
“You must sign the Family Pact.”
Maximilian raised his hand, as if to make some gesture; it fell limp at his side. “I—” He closed his eyes. His voice had dwindled to a thread: “I . . . can . . . not . . .”
Now Charlotte reminded Maximilian that without a monarch, notwithstanding the fine work of the French Army (which had, by this time, pacified most of Mexico), the country would slide right back into the abyss of bloodshed and anarchy. Had not the Mexican delegation made it clear that Maximilian was their savior? Had not His Holiness expressed great gratitude? Thousands of men had fallen in the battles to liberate Mexico from godless terrorists; would their deaths be in vain? They had lost arms, legs, they had died like dogs of disease! Would so many wives be left widows and children orphans for nothing? For Maximilian’s scruples about a piece of paper! He would let the Holy Church in an entire nation be sacked! Between Salvation and the fires of Hell, souls were tottering on the precipice! Millions—nine million Mexicans—were depending on him! She fell to her knees at his bedside. Tenderly, as if it were a child’s, she held his hand in both of hers. She spoke softly, her voice on the edge of breaking:
“In the name of God, you must accept.”
The awful wheezing sound brought Dr. Jilek into the room.
The patient was hyperventilating, he said. Indignantly, but with perfect formality, he ushered Charlotte out into the hallway and firmly closed the door behind him. Maximilian, he said, could not, absolutely not, be disturbed.
In Dr. Jilek’s professional and personal opinion, and he gave it freely when asked, the archduke’s going to Mexico would be tantamount to suicide. No, he himself would not go as part of the retinue, for he had no intention of leaving God’s earth by way of the yellow fever or being shot by some Mexican. Let younger, rasher men than himself tempt Fate. Might it please God, he hoped to continue to serve the archduke right here.
