The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire

by C. M. Mayo

  “She tells me she has no intention of leaving.”

  “What does she say about Maximilian? Does she think he’ll abdicate?”

  “She tells me that Maximilian is a man of the highest honor, a member of the House of Habsburg. He would sooner go back to Europe in his coffin.”

  Bazaine rubbed his jaw.

  Doña Juliana still held the lorgnette to her eye. “Pepa says the Mexican Empire will last for a thousand years.”

  A thousand years? Bazaine leaned back and looked at the ceiling. There hung an elaborate gold-and-glass chandelier. He could not help but wonder what it had cost. In Acapulco, the garrison was running low on ammunition. In Veracruz, the supply of hardtack had been spoilt by mold.

  Doña Juliana’s voice went up half an octave. “A child should be with its parents.”

  Pepita shot a glance at her husband, who had once again gone as silent as the Sphinx. He had told her the details of his meeting, back in September, with Doña Alicia de Iturbide. He had also told her, and she was never to repeat it, that his police agents inspected Maximilian’s correspondence, and on the subject of this child there had been some real head-shakers. Recently, Maximilian’s ambassador to Queen Victoria had been questioned at length about the Iturbide family by Foreign Secretary Lord Clarendon. The ambassador’s report to Maximilian reeked of embarrassment. Good God, Bazaine had said to his wife. His own ambassador doesn’t understand the damn thing.

  Doña Juliana said, “I have Don Angel’s books in crates upstairs in my house. I don’t know what to do with them.” She massaged her knuckles and the joints of her fingers. “I don’t know,” she said, suddenly, “I don’t know . . .” She burst into tears.

  “Auntie . . .” Pepita came over and put her arms around Doña Juliana.

  “I am sorry,” Doña Juliana sobbed, “I am sorry.” She knew she had embarrassed the general.

  “Do not be,” Pepita said. “But, Auntie, we will miss you so much. wear out my soul with worry for you. Oh, won’t you change your mind?”

  In the office, after lunch, hours later in the day than was his custom before his marriage, General Bazaine has his boots shined. The shoeshine boy rubs the cloth, making a soft chuffing.

  The window is ajar; the papers on the massive mahogany desk quiver from the breeze. On the opposite side of the desk, Captain Blanchot says, apropos of the angry protests by his officers in Chihuahua, “You are caught between the Mexican anvil and the French hammer.”

  “Oof.” Bazaine makes a grimace of indigestion. Fist to his mouth, he belches. (He’d promised Pepita he wouldn’t, but he’d had seconds on the beef enchiladas.) It is out of character, but his mind is wandering, while his aide finishes up with the latest stupidity regarding those visiting Belgians (another police report, about Charlotte’s tea party and their visit to the museum of antiquities). Then, the day’s field reports. Bitterly, Bazaine thinks how, had he been given the men and materiel to do the job, he could have sunk the foundations to make this Mexican Empire stand, yes, as Princess Iturbide said, for a thousand years. Had he not taken Oaxaca?

  Oaxaca: forgotten already, the months of backbreaking work, roads carved through the mountains, and then the siege of the city, buckets of blood sacrificed. Buckets of French blood, fine officers, good men, boys green with lives unlived, their bodies stacked up like cordwood and then rolled into ditches. Matamoros, Monterrey, Saltillo, Chihuahua, Zacatecas, Tampico, Guadalajara, all pissed away.

  It is his signature on the letters that go to the mothers and fathers in Lyons, Marseille, Limoges, the little villages, little farms . . . “For the glory of France,” their boys have been shot, stabbed, burned alive and castrated, disemboweled. For the glory of nada they die of typhoid, cholera, gangrene, syphilis, meningitis, yellow fever. And such stupid things: they shoot each other by accident; one lost a knife fight with an Austrian corporal, another had his kneecap shattered in a duel, and then after a week in the hospital the fever took him down. Another, in a drunken stupor, runover by a garbage wagon. Many times Bazaine has toured the military hospitals. The smells, the piteous cries, have begun to invade his dreams. The Mexicans, too, have been subjected to unspeakable suffering. Bazaine did not use to dwell on such matters. He’d had a steel trap of a mind: It is not for a soldier to judge, he’d liked to say. My orders are, kill the enemy. When they’re dead, Jesus Christ, he can judge them.

  To lead, one must first learn to follow. To follow, one must learn not to judge. One must, as a blinkered workhorse, plod forward. One does not see all that the leader sees—intelligence from London and Washington, Moscow and Berlin, the myriad political and financial considerations to be weighed one against the other, carefully calibrated, the decoded dispatches of the secret police. One sits at the desk of the supreme command here in Mexico, not upon the throne in the Tuileries.

  Louis Napoleon has decided to withdraw from Mexico, and Bazaine’s orders are to prepare for that—to break down the whole goddamned edifice. A mere two weeks ago, Louis Napoleon’s letter found Maximilian in Cuernavaca. Shortly thereafter, Bazaine had the less than pleasant task of going to Mexico City’s Imperial Palace. At the news of the impending withdrawal, Maximilian returned from Cuernavaca in a white-hot rage; Charlotte nearly had to be given smelling salts. After months of antagonism with those two, Bazaine had felt so sorry, so goddamned sorry, that, though they were raising their voices with him, though he had been angered so many times by their ineptitude and ingratitude, he himself nearly wept. They were all on this ship together, this ship that was going to be scuttled. He did not protest when Maximilian said, “This is a violation of the Treaty of Miramar.” Charlotte plunged in, “The grossest violation!” She clenched and unclenched her fists, her eyes unnaturally large, all whites. “A treaty is not a rag to wipe the floor!” she cried. “It is a solemn contract!”

  These two overlooked the obvious, which was that neither were they upholding that treaty. It was clear as sunshine, the Mexican treasury was to finance the costs of the occupation. But the money had never been sufficient, and credit was exhausted. Financial calculations, now more a question of splitting bristles on a gnat’s butt, were, in all events, within the entirely opaque purview of Ambassador Dano.

  “Madame,” Bazaine said in as even a tone as he could manage, “I do not make treaties.”

  After Charlotte flounced out of the room, Bazaine said to Maximilian, “In the interest of securing the safety of Your Majesty’s person and household, I respectfully request that you keep me fully apprised of the proceedings for abdication.” That Austrian raised his nose and glared down with pure hate.

  “Abdicate?” Maximilian nearly spit the word. “We will do no such thing.” But Bazaine knew perfectly well that, since late autumn, Maximilian had been corresponding with his decorators in Trieste. They were working on Miramar Castle, adding furniture, planting hedges, painting—for what purpose other than to receive himself and his entourage? Furthermore, Maximilian had sent Count Bombelles to Vienna with instructions to renegotiate his Family Pact. Once Vienna conceded something palatable to his dignity, or his dignity could shrink to fit, Maximilian would leap off this cactus throne. So why, in the meantime, did he have to be such an obfuscating prick about it?

  As the Arabs say, water in a mirage is not water you can drink. In his darker moments, Bazaine wishes he could grab Maximilian by the collar and shout in his face: Face the facts! Face the goddamn facts!

  All men, all money, all energies must go to the coming conflict with Prussia—the future of France, the future of Louis Napoleon’s throne, depend on it. There is no glory at the end of the road called Mexico. No victory parade for its veterans. Bazaine’s only hope is for his sovereign’s gratitude for his unbending loyalty and duty well done. Bazaine’s duty now, pleasureless as a year’s diet of hardtack, amounts to a massive logistical task: get the boys home, the horses, the artillery, what to do with the ammunition, the mules, the wagons, calculate the supplies, food, water, clothing, coal,
animal feed. It is cuentachiles, counting chiles—and in the meantime, keeping tempers soothed, keeping morale from disintegrating, and avoiding unnecessary bloodshed—above all, hostilities with U.S. troops at the border. The Mexican Empire may be a house of cards, but until the day the French Imperial Forces evacuate, that house must remain standing.

  This picture would have been a different one had Maximilian made use of the past year to build up his own army, put his treasury in order, state his policies clearly, and execute them with resolve. But Maximilian seems to think the sun shines out the crack of his ass. His Majesty the Magnanimous, granting amnesty to guerrillas and toadying to their sympathizers, throwing costly balls, granting pensions, commissioning his viennoiseries, gardens, statues, whole boulevards, and when the whim took him, off he went, dillydallying about Indian villages, Aztec ruins, collecting butterflies—setting up an Imperial Residence in Cuernavaca! He could play the despot, too—that dunder-headed October 3rd Black Decree, summary execution of anyone found with a weapon. There is not a French officer in Mexico who has not been galled by the puerile stupidity of this Austrian’s decisions. For example, to kidnap Doña Alicia de Iturbide. It made the ugliest of impressions. When he told Pepita what Maximilian had said about them, her expression grew hot. “Bald lies!” she cried. Bazaine had also queried her aunt, Doña Juliana. She had answered him with strained dignity that perhaps Agustín Gerónimo was a bit eccentric, but Angelo was a highly respected diplomat. All of the Iturbides were great patriots. And no, Doña Juliana swore it, the sons of the Liberator had no ambition but to live quietly. In returning to Mexico City last September, Doña Alicia, God help her, was nothing more than a mother with a broken heart.

  To arrest her was a ham-handed cruelty—but there too, Maximilian was inconstant. Flip-flop: His Majesty the Merciful permitted the Iturbides to leave Mexico unmolested. And where did they go? Washington where they met with Seward! And now the Iturbides are set up in Paris, where they have ample opportunity to intrigue with the U.S. minister there—who, at Seward’s instigation, is putting the screws on Louis Napoleon to get out of Mexico! And Maximilian, deluded dreamer, seems to believe that republic can be induced to recognize his empire! It did not help that he had that beans-for-brains of a foreign minister, Ramírez. Well, that one’s another rat off this sinking ship . . .

  Bullet-fast, a green bird flies into the room.

  “Blanchot,” he interrupts.

  His aide lowers the report he was reading.

  The general, coolly extending his other boot to be polished, aims his gaze beyond his aide’s left shoulder. Captain Blanchot turns around. A parrot flutters at the ceiling. Suddenly, it dives across the room, past the door to the map room, and over to the racks of muskets fixed with bayonets.

  Blanchot takes in a sharp breath. “Jesus.”

  “He won’t land there.” As if in answer, the bird swoops over their heads, behind the general, to the flags, silks of the Cavalry, the Foreign Legion, the Navy, Tirailleurs algériens, Zouaves, Infantry . . . It finds no purchase on a flag’s pike, nor on the frame of Louis Napoleon’s portrait. Off the parrot flies to the other wall, an array from floor to ceiling of sabers and Arab daggers. It settles on a tasseled handle, ruffles its feathers, and lets out an ear-piercing shriek.

  The shoeshine boy lifts his head. The rag still in his other hand, he crosses himself. Then he whistles. “Titis, Titis,” he says. The parrot, bobbing its head, whistles back.

  “Whose pet?” Bazaine says in Spanish.

  “The apothecary’s.”

  “At the bottom of the street?”

  “Sí, señor.”

  Bazaine tells Blanchot to shut the window. “Run get a basket, son,” he commands the shoeshine boy, who stares at him with a wrinkled forehead. Bazaine sighs. He’d forgotten to switch back to Spanish. “Una canasta, hijo.”

  “Si, seÖor.” The boy flashes out the door.

  Captain Blanchot, having fastened the window, felt something shift— not so much the air in the general’s office but the fabric of time itself, for he felt as though he were watching the commotion not as it was happening but as if he had already seen it all in a dream—the general going after the parrot with his own jacket; the secretary, climbing on top of the general’s desk in his stockinged feet and then slipping, sliding, as with a broom, he tries to shoo it off the cornice near the ceiling; the bird trapped at last between the bookcase and a potted palm; the shoeshine boy coming down upon it with the wastebasket, so that, to the poor squawking bird, it must seem some gigantic maw.

  Captain Blanchot made a quick inspection of the carpet. (He detests parrots; they stink and they shit like sieves.) The carpet, on the east side, behind the potted palm, had faded to a color that reminded him of the stain on an amputee’s bandage. Highly particular about decoration, Blanchot had requisitioned a new carpet six months ago. When the inventory of the latest shipment from France, to his disgust (is there no respect for the chain of command?) did not include the carpet, nor carpets of any sort, he had his wife look at the one the widow de Gómez Pedraza wanted to sell. A threadbare old thing, she’d said it was, and its smell suggested it had absorbed a bucketful of mop water. The carpet Doña Concha Aguayo was offering for sale was no better.

  The sun had moved; the office was cast into gloom.

  “Shall I light the lamp, sir?”

  The general put on his spectacles, which made his eyes seem even smaller. “Save the kerosene, son.”

  Captain Blanchot sat down opposite the desk. He picked up the report he had been reading. But the general unhooked his spectacles, folded them, and lay them on the blotting paper. He offered Blanchot a cigar. The cigar box, one of innumerable gifts, was more a chest; it was inlaid with an intricate rectangular design of polished bone, turtle shell, and silver studs. The cigars, too, were a gift, and the onyx ashtray. Over on the table by the door sat a staggeringly large the basket of oranges and another of dates, from the head of customs in Veracruz. The silver coffee service, from Don Eusebio. The silver sugar tongs, from the owner of some stables the army rented in Tlalpan. Blanchot remembered, at the general’s wedding in the Imperial Palace last June, in the hallway, passing by, he had glimpsed the gifts—a glittering mountain. Bazaine did not look for these things, but they came. There was no stopping them. Was it really a mere three years ago that Bazaine’s headquarters were a mud-spattered field tent? That they were working at a rickety campaign desk, on folding stools, the crash and boom of the artillery all around them?

  The general had lit his cigar. He stretched an arm over the back of his chair. A rope of smoke wound toward the ceiling.

  “My first wife kept a parrot. Not one of these noisy loros. An African gray.”

  Captain Blanchot, stiff in his chair, the field report on his lap, puffed at his cigar. He knew that the first Madame Bazaine had not committed suicide, as wags claimed, but the rest of the gossip about her was, alas, based on fact.

  Bazaine said, “Ever seen an African gray?”

  “Yes, sir. Beautiful bird, sir.”

  The general gazed out the window. “Hers could imitate a human voice. It was like her child. It went everywhere with her.” He stretched out his left leg. He turned his ankle to inspect the polish on his boot. A suggestion of a smile came to his lips. He said, looking out the window again, “It could ululate like a Berber woman.”

  “Ulu—?”

  “Never heard that?”

  “No, sir.”

  The look in the general’s eye was very far away. “You haven’t lived, son. You haven’t lived.”

  It seemed to Captain Blanchot that the general was going to say something more, but he rubbed his hand over his face, then plugged his cigar back between his teeth.

  “Proceed,” he said.

  March 4, 1866

  RÍO FRÍO

  The Belgians had enjoyed their visit to Mexico City immensely. Although it had not gone unremarked (feathers were ruffled) that Maximilian remained in Cuer
navaca, and that certain senior French officers did not attend the entertainments, in all, they judged their mission a success. They were proud of Charlotte—their own princess—“swan of our Old World gifted to the New,” as one of their members toasted her, after having imbibed a few too many cups of champagne (and made some tasteless remarks about “our ginger-colored protéges.”) Also, they had seen an exotic land; they’d had a true-blue adventure and their steamer trunks and valises were crammed with the souvenirs to prove it. Of the delegation, no single member was more satisfied, more inspired, more, well, overflowing with joie de vivre about the whole thing than Baron Charles d’Huart.

  An intimate friend and officier d’ordonnance of Charlotte’s brother Philippe, duke of Flanders, Baron d’Huart might have been described as dashing had he not developed a paunch and double chin. Since departing Ostend in late January, he had been unable to maintain his regime of fencing and hunting. The crossing had been brutal. For days, frigid gales had tossed the ship like a firkin in a tub; some feared they’d be shipwrecked off the Azores. Unlike the others, confined to their cabins with nausea, Baron d’Huart often joked he must have Viking blood and went on eating and drinking without pause.

  By the time they docked in Veracruz, he had consumed prodigious quantities of foie gras, bonbons, and champagne. And in Mexico, well, was there anything more delicious than a humble taco of beans with this marvelous sprig of an herb called the epazote? And he indulged in the candies—dulces de cacahuates, the cigar-shaped camotes, lime-skins stuffed with sugared lard, and the almond nougat “buttons” soaked in honey—baskets of candies were left in his quarters and replenished each day. At the farewell dinner at Chapultepec Castle, under his cummerbund, he had to leave the waist of his trousers undone.

  The round of balls and dinners had been intense. All of the Belgians, and especially Baron d’Huart, were limp with relief to finally get out of court dress: the coats bristling with decorations and epaulettes, the clanking swords, the hats with feathers. This morning, for this first leg of the journey home, he’d thrown on his roomiest breeches and favorite deerskin jacket.