by C. M. Mayo
“Elproblema,” the marquis is saying, in such a low voice that he pulls all but the slumbering Eloin toward him, “is that Louis Napoleon is under increasing pressure to bring the troops home—”
“There’s pressure,” the Belgian ambassador interrupts, “but—”
“Louis Napoleon’s back is against the wall,” the marquis counters, “politically and financially. Honor and glory, bringing peace and prosperity, the civilizing mission, without support in the Legislative Chambers, it’s a fart in a windstorm.”
“But!” The Belgian ambassador leans out, around Eloin’s bowed head, to wag a finger at the marquis. “By the Treaty of Miramar—”
“Hog slop.” The marquis flashes his beautiful teeth.
Ramírez says nothing but removes his spectacles and, furiously, wipes at them with his handkerchief.
“That is a dim view,” the Belgian ambassador says coolly, sitting back in his seat and crossing his arms. He pushes out his bottom lip. “But I grant you, militarily, Mexico has been a tougher nut to crack than anyone anticipated.”
The marquis slides his eyes away to the window. “Unlike a certain paternal figure, I do not view the situation through a glass of pink champagne.”
“Paternal what?” General Uraga barks.
“Champagne! I do hope someone brought some!” Ramírez slaps his knee with a hearty laugh. He’s willing to make himself the Punchinello. A certain paternal figure—Ramírez understands perfectly: the marquis means King Leopold of the Belgians, Her Majesty’s father, and the Mexican Empire’s single steadfast ally in Europe, other than Louis Napoleon. All Belgium has done is ship over a few hundred volunteers (such greenhorns that, in their first major engagement, eight officers were killed and two hundred men were taken prisoner), but the goodwill of King Leopold, the very Nestor of Europe, is no minor thing. And neither should the dignity of its ambassador and of Mexico’s sovereigns be besmirched.
The marquis looks like a harmless little peacock, with his short legs encased in boots, his manicured hands, and a comb-over that does not in the least disguise his freckled pate. But the Spanish ambassador is an intimate friend of the Countess of Montijo, mother of Eugénie. The marquis’s words in French ears could be exceedingly damaging.
It strains him, but Ramírez goes on with his pretend-nonchalant bonhomie. “With all this shaking, why, any champagne on board might explode!”
Eloin jerks awake, his cane clattering to the floor. “Quoi! De quoi parlez-vous?”
And so, the conversation reverts to French. As the road winds through pine forests, General Uraga says nothing, and Ramírez little more than that, as Eloin, the Belgian ambassador, and the marquis ramble through the cost, positively criminal, of importing photographic equipment; whose wife owns the superior collection of cartes de visite, and is it better to collect circus performers, actresses, or opera singers; the quality of the Algerian stallions as compared with those of Andalusia; and, apropos of bizarre accidents, the marquis swears that once, out front of a café in Valletta, on Malta, he saw a midget, a dead ringer for the Crown Prince of Prussia, flattened by a flower cart that had careened down a hill out of nowhere.
But through it all, laughing, puffing his cigar with the others, Ramírez remains alert to the chilling fact that the Spanish ambassador has spoken, however briefly, so brutally. Although the marquis directed his comment to his Belgian counterpart, the barb was in fact aimed at himself, Mexico’s minister of foreign affairs, as he is the senior official in Her Majesty’s party. In Veracruz, the marquis’s letters and reports will go into the mailbags for New York, Cadíz, Saint Nazaire. Spain is out of this game, but its ambassador’s assessments of Mexican affairs will be widely read, including in the Tuileries.
Certainly the marquis will report that General Bazaine has been unable to defeat the guerrillas, whose attacks are escalating. Curfews and rhetoric have not done a damn. Almost every day an ammunition depot is blown up, train tracks pried loose, telegraph wires pulled down, mules stolen, caches of pistols, food, blankets, hospital supplies commandeered, patrols ambushed and slaughtered. There are so many murders, stagecoach holdups, bank robberies, kidnappings, it has become impossible to discern whether a given act was perpetrated by a criminal or a guerrilla, and the more so because now even little street thieves will proclaim for Juárez when it suits them. Maximilian’s plans for foreign investment and colonists are fantasies if a man cannot expect to arrive in Mexico City with his life! A wasps’ nest of bandits infests the sierra around Río Frío—the first overnight stagecoach stop on this highway to the coast—and in all this time the French have not managed to knock them out of there. What has been widely reported in the foreign newspapers is true: at Mexico City’s Hotel Iturbide, the mozos run out to meet the stagecoach with blankets, because it frequently happens that the passengers arrive mother-naked.
In the diplomatic realm, one crucial step is proving stickier than Ramírez anticipated: recognition by the United States. Soon after the French took Mexico City, Mr. Corwin, the U.S. minister, was recalled. Then Mexico’s minister to Washington, bringing Maximilian’s personal letter to President Lincoln, was refused an audience. Carlota’s letter of condolence to Mrs. Lincoln was returned unopened. This so-called Monroe Doctrine is a term now on everyone’s lips. (Ramírez had to explain it to General Uraga, who at first could not believe it. Never in his life, the general said, could he have anticipated that even a Protestant people would lend their support to Juárez’s so-called republic—a regime on their own border that stands for anarchy, institutionalized robbery, and the wanton destruction of the Mother Church.)
As for himself, like General Uraga, not long ago Ramírez had been leaning toward the liberal cause, for the idea of foreigners occupying Mexico was distasteful to him. As time went by, however, he had come to the conclusion that Mexico was not ready for democracy. Perhaps in another century. What Mexico needed was a firm hand. Mexicans squabbling among themselves were helpless before the United States—which would, sooner or later, attempt to expand its territory further, at Mexico’s expense. About the French, one had to be realistic. As General Almonte put it: “Better this devil than the other one.” General Uraga was more vivid: “If you cannot knife your enemy, bring him close, kiss his hands.” And surely, once the French have set things to rights here, then the United States will recognize that a monarchy is the most natural form of government for Mexico, and a stable prosperous neighbor is in their best interest.
In recent weeks, however, Ramírez has had many an occasion to reconsider what he heard, last June, in the garden at Bazaine’s wedding, when Angel de Iturbide insisted: The United States are going to be no friend to this empire.
The brothers, Agustín Gerónimo and Agustín Cosme, well, someone shot the dots off their dice. But Angel is an experienced diplomat who had resided many years in Washington. After the U.S.-Mexican war, he served as the secretary of the Mexican legation there, indeed served as its head, for it was some time before the ambassador, General Almonte, could be sent up from Mexico City. Scarce few men could have had their finger more on the pulse of things in Washington than Angel de Iturbide. Ramírez realizes now he should have given Angel’s comment more credence. But at the time, it had seemed a prophecy so outlandish, so peevish, so—?
What was this arrangement the Iturbides made with Maximilian?
Ramírez himself witnessed the signing of the secret contract in Chapultepec Castle; his own signature is on that paper. But more than two months later, he remains befuddled. Honors and pensions are always welcome, but to hand over one’s flesh and blood? How could Angel and the mother, a young American, have put their names to such a thing? And, to boot, agreed to go live abroad?
The single time that Maximilian mentioned the matter, it was to instruct that the Iturbides’ status be “as that of the Murat princes to the Emperor of France.” Ramírez had nodded sagely, though he hadn’t a clue what Maximilian was talking about. Murat? Murat princes?
&nbs
p; Fortunately, the Grand Chamberlain had an Almanach de Gotha, which, discreetly, and on another pretext, Ramírez could consult. Joachim Murat, he learned, was a French officer who, in the time of the revolutions, had married the sister of his comrade Napoleon Bonaparte. The coincidences were so extraordinary, they verged on the supernatural: Murat, as Iturbide, was a military hero. Murat, as Iturbide, was not of royal blood (Murat, son of an innkeeper; Iturbide, son of a wealthy provincial creole). Murat was crowned king of Naples; Iturbide, king of Mexico. Both abdicated and then, on an ill-advised return from exile, were captured on a beach and executed by firing squad.
And there was more: the portrait of Joaquim Murat sent a shiver down his spine. The man could have been Iturbide’s own brother: the thick masculine sweep of hair, the high collar, the expression of active genius infused with hapless ambition, eyes forever fixed upon some star invisible to mere mortals.
Very, very peculiar . . .
The Murat princes, descended from Napoleon Bonaparte’s sister, were therefore first cousins of Louis Napoleon, who was the son of Napoleon Bonaparte’s brother Louis and Hortense (who was, by the way, the Empress Josephine’s daughter by her first husband, the Viscount Beauharnais). Oh, these labyrinthine genealogies: just thinking about them makes Ramírez remove his spectacles and massage the bridge of his nose.
So, now, Ramírez’s conception of the arrangement with the Iturbides is that it was Maximilian’s way of forging a stronger alliance with Mexico’s clerical party and distancing himself from the French, who are arrogant and increasingly unpopular. Ramírez categorically refuses to believe it, but Eloin, among other intimates of the imperial couple, has conjectured that Maximilian adopted the little Iturbide as a lure. The idea, supposedly, is that Maximilian’s younger brother, Archduke Karl Ludwig, will become jealous and so agree to provide one of his sons to be Mexico’s Heir Presumptive, and apparently, the Kaiser will approve, as it would keep the throne of Mexico for the House of Habsburg. It is a steadying thing for a monarchy to have an heir, but why the hullabaloo? Carlota is young and in blooming health. There are those who whisper that Maximilian suffers from a venereal disease, those who claim he is impotent, others, that Carlota—tsk, Juarista swill. Ramírez dislikes gossip. It makes him feel dirty and disloyal to his sovereign.
His Majesty is a visionary man. Well Ramírez remembers the morning, now many months past, when he was summoned to the Imperial Palace and led, not to His Majesty’s office, but—the billiards room! Maximilian was not in his customary cut-away coat, but a general’s uniform and gleaming boots. There on the game table’s felt lay an enormous map. It had been painted on the back of a tablecloth.
“Behold the Americas,” Maximilian said, and with the tip of his cue, he tapped the city of Washington, which was (Ramírez had to bend over the table to get a closer look at the letters) quite a bit further south from New York City than he had realized.
“You see, the United States, the North.” Maximilian then swung the cue down to the other end of the table. “The Brazilian Empire, the South.”
Ramírez had hurried to the opposite end of the table and bent down to see, yes: Río de Janeiro. Through his spectacles, he squinted at the letters beneath the point of the cue. Petropolis. This, he knew, was the hamlet that had grown up around the summer residence of Dom Pedro II, Emperor of the Divine Holy Spirit, the cousin of Maximilian and Carlota.
Maximilian said, raising the cue, “And the center?”
Ramírez considered the map. It was spectacular with color: the mountains cinnamon and russet-red, the valleys emerald and fern green, deserts tinted orange; the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans indicated with a wash of aquas. Above Canada the glâce flotante was represented by icebergs and spouting whales. At the bottom, below South America’s curling tail at Tierra del Fuego—
Ramírez was distracted for a moment by the ingenious little crowd of orange-footed penguins.
The middle of it all? Of course! Ramírez pushed up his spectacles. “The Mexican Empire.”
“No.”
Across the expanse of the table they stared at one another. Maximilian’s blue eyes were laughing. Then with the cue, in the air above the map, Maximilian drew an enormous circle encompassing Cuba, all of Sonora, Chihuahua, Lower California, the Revillagigedo Archipelago, and the isthmus of Panama.
“Behold, the new world power, the Central American Empire. A Habsburg empire in the heart of the New World.” Without warning, Maximilian tossed him the cue.
“Uh,” Ramírez said, as he caught it.
“And what will be the anchor, my minister of foreign affairs?”
“Why, Mexico City, sir.”
“No.”
Ramírez blinked. He felt his spectacles slipping down his nose.
“The anchor—” His Majesty leaned over the table and placed his fist on Mexico’s fist-like peninsula—“is Yucatan.”
“Yucatan?”
“The Egypt of the Americas.”
Yes, the Yucatan peninsula was known to have some pyramids left by the Mayan Indians but . . . “The Egypt?”
It took time for Ramírez to comprehend His Majesty’s vision, but it was brilliant, farseeing. Yucatan with its sisal hemp plantations could be richer than Georgia, Mississipi, and the Carolinas combined. It would be the anchor of the empire—or, another way of seeing it, Yucatan, as the hub of the Caribbean, could serve as a counterweight against the encroaching United States.
Yes, Yucatan is rich, but it is also a tricky customer, as His Majesty was ready to learn. Its Divine Caste, as its aristocratic families call themselves, is not invariably loyal to Mexico City—not long ago, they tried to break apart and join the Republic of Texas. The Maya have revolted in bloody rebellions. The Yucatecs could remain happily in the fold of the Mexican Empire, but it would take a personal visit from their shepherd. That is, both highly skilled diplomacy and His Majesty’s personal prestige.
Working closely with His Majesty, Ramírez had planned the expedition down to the number of luggage wagons, the imperial gifts (two hundred monogrammed silver watches and four hundred monogrammed silver brooches), the seating arrangements at the state dinners, the speeches, the supplies for the fireworks—a thousand and eleven details. But over September and October, the military and political climate in Mexico deteriorated, and Ramírez was seized with dread. Medicines, meat, and charcoal every day became more dear, and in Mexico City itself Carlota had been hissed in the streets.
His Majesty’s expedition to Yucatan could be fatal for the empire. With the emperor absent from the capital for an entire month, the Juáristas would claim he had gone back to Europe; there could be rioting, looting, murder in the streets. But what if Ramírez were mistaken?
It was not his place to question his sovereign—or, was it?
His heart told him, Tell His Majesty the truth. But was it the truth? His wife had chided, You sound like a defeatist. As Tacitus warned, Impunitatis cupido . . . magnis semper conatibus adversa—the desire for escape, that foe to all great enterprises. Was he being “defeatist”? There were numerous and very complex considerations. Nonetheless, expressing his concerns now could make him appear weak, even traitorous. To put it bluntly, to speak up could cost him his position in the cabinet. Then, without power, how could he help his country? Ramírez agonized, he prayed to God, what to do?
The day of departure approached. Maximilian was showing no sign of hesitation; on the contrary, at every meeting he enthused about the collecting he would do for Professor Bilimek’s Museum of Natural History, the ruins he would explore, have surveyed and photographed. The pyramids of Uxmal interested him especially, and every time the subject came up, he recalled having climbed the Pyramid of Giza. In earlier stages of the planning, Maximilian had cannily weighed the various political and economic concessions to be granted to the Yucatecs, but now, he seemed lost in fanciful dreams.
Ramírez could no longer bite his tongue. He requested a private audience and was granted a quarter-hour,
just before His Majesty’s luncheon with the Austrian ambassador. He was ushered in; Maximilian, seated at his desk, did not look up. Ramírez tugged his waistcoat down. With his heart a stone in his throat, he waited for the signal that he might speak.
Maximilian was surrounded by a swirling halo of smoke. He had been reading a book. The desk was littered with bonbon wrappers. Brombeeren mit Mandeln: he had taken to keeping them in a Totonac bowl encircled with a sinuous, lobster-like caterpillar. It had become a gentle joke in the court that one knew one was in His Majesty’s favor when he offered a bonbon. He did not offer one.
Maximilian took his cigar from his lips and held it in his fingers. “Yes?”
“Your Majesty, I urge you, sir, to postpone.”
“Luncheon?”
“Sir, I mean, the expedition to Yuc—Yucatan.”
“For what reason,” Maximilian said, without expression.
Ramírez felt a knife of fear slice from his gut to his ankles. He stood at his usual respectful distance of about two and a half meters, but to stress the life-and-death urgency of this matter, he willed himself to take one step closer to the imperial desk.
“Sir.” Ramírez cleared his throat. “With all due respect, sir, the situation, sir, I mean, politically and when the people see your, the imperial coach heading in the direction of Veracruz—um, sir, they may say, sir—”
“My good man, get it out!”
Ramírez whipped off his spectacles. “Our emperor has abandoned us! You see, he is going back to Europe!”
Maximilian puffed his cigar. The space between them had filled with smoke. A fly buzzed at the window. On the ledge, ninepins of pigeons. From the Plaza Mayor below, confused trills of music and shouting. This was it, Ramírez thought: he was going to get the axe.
“The empress will go to Yucatan in my stead.”
Ramírez was so stunned by the wonderful simplicity of this solution, he did not know what to say.
“I entrust the empress, and the expedition, to your hands.”
