France in the Nineteenth Century Part 21

My death will be sharp and sudden, without pain. I shall fall gloriously, like a soldier, like a conquered sovereign....

If you cannot, dearest, bear up under your load of sorrow, if G.o.d in His mercy soon reunites us by your death, I will bless His fatherly hand, which now seems very heavy upon me. Adieu, adieu!

YOUR POOR MAX.

He kissed this letter, folded into it the light silky lock of his own hair, and placed it with other letters which he had written to his mother and friends. They were all in French, and written in a clear, firm, regular hand. His n.o.ble nature shone in every line. They give the key to the irresistible personal sympathy he inspired in all who knew him. His enemies were aware of this, and no judge or general who had ever known him sat on his court-martial.

As six o'clock was striking on the morning of June 19, the door of the prison was unbarred. "I am ready," said Maximilian.

As he stepped forth from the door of the convent, he exclaimed: "What a beautiful morning! I have always fancied I should like to die in sunshine,--on a summer day."

He entered the carriage in waiting. Miramon and Mejia followed him, with the priest who attended them in their last moments. They were escorted by a body of four thousand men, and were driven to the same rocky height on which they had been captured, called the Cerro della Campana. They sat upright in the carriage during the drive, with proud smiles upon their faces. They were carefully dressed, as if for an occasion of festivity. The population of the place was all abroad to see them pa.s.s, and looked at them with silent pity and admiration. The calmness and self-possession of the emperor, about to die, touched even the most indifferent spectators.

The women freely shed tears.

Maximilian was a handsome, striking-looking man. His beautiful light hair was parted by a straight line from his forehead to the nape of his neck. His blue eyes were clear and soft, with a beseeching look in them. His hands were beautifully white, his fingers elegant and taper.

As they neared the place of execution, General Mejia suddenly turned pale, covered his face, and with a sob fell back in his place in the carriage. He had caught sight of his wife, agonized, dishevelled, with her baby in her arms, and all the appearance of a madwoman.

The party arrived at the foot of the little hill. The emperor sprang out, brushed off some dust which had settled on his clothes, and going up to the firing party, gave each man an ounce of gold. "Take good aim, my friends," he said. "Do not, if possible, hit me in the face, but shoot right at my heart."

One of the soldiers wept. Maximilian went to him, and putting his cigar-case, of silver filigree, into his hand, said: "Keep that, my friend, in remembrance of me. It was given to me by a prince more fortunate than I am now."

The non-commissioned officer then came near, and said he hoped that he would forgive him. "My good fellow," replied Maximilian, cheerfully, "a soldier has but to obey orders; his duty is to do his duty."

Then, turning to Miramon and Mejia, he said: "Let me, true friends, embrace you for the last time!" He did so, and then added: "In a few minutes we shall be together in a better world."

Turning to Miramon, he said: "General, the bravest man should have the place of honor. Take mine."

Mejia being very much cast down by the sad spectacle presented by his poor, distracted wife, Maximilian again pressed his hands, saying: "G.o.d will not abandon our suffering survivors. For those who die unjustly, things will be set right in another world."

The drums began to beat. The end was near. Maximilian stepped forward, mounted on a stone, and addressed the spectators.

"Mexicans! men of my rank and of my race, who feel as I feel, must either be the benefactors of the people over whom they reign, or martyrs. It was no rash ambition of my own that called me hither; you, you yourselves, invited me to accept your throne. Before dying, let me tell you that with all the powers I possess I sought your good. Mexicans! may my blood be the last blood that you shed; may Mexico, the unhappy country of my adoption, be happy when I am gone!"

As soon as he had resumed his place, a sergeant came up to order Miramon and Mejia to turn round. As traitors, they were to be shot in the back.

"Farewell, dear friends," said Maximilian, and crossing his arms, he stood firm as a statue.

When the command was given: "Shoulder arms!" a murmur of protestation, accompanied by threats, rose among part of the crowd, in which there were many Indians. Their national superst.i.tions and traditions had attached this simple people to the emperor. They had a prophecy among them that one day a white man would come over the seas to set them free, and many of them looked for this savior in Maximilian.

The officers in command turned towards the crowd, shaking their swords. Then came the words: "Take aim! Fire!"

"Long live Mexico!" cried Miramon.

"Carlotta! Poor Carlotta!" exclaimed Maximilian.

When the smoke of the volley had cleared away, three corpses lay upon the earth. That of the emperor had received five b.a.l.l.s. The victims were placed in coffins which lay ready near the place of execution, and, escorted as they had been before, were carried back to the convent of the Capuchins.

"The emperor being dead, we will do all honor to the corpse of the Archduke of Austria," said Colonel Miguel Palacios, to whom this care was given. The corpse was embalmed, and the body placed in a vault.

The Russian amba.s.sador, Baron Magnus, and the American commander of a United States vessel of war which layoff Vera Cruz, in vain solicited the body of the late emperor. The Austrian Vice-admiral Tegethoff (the ill.u.s.trious conqueror at Lissa) had to come and personally demand it in November of the next year. He at the same time time obtained the release of the Austrian soldiers still retained as prisoners, and of Prince Salm-Salm, lying under sentence of death since the execution of the emperor.

As for the traitor Lopez, instead of the two thousand ounces of gold that he expected, he got only seven thousand dollars. His wife refused to live with him after his treachery to Maximilian; and once when he went to see General Rincon Gallardo to request his influence to get himself restored to his former rank in the Mexican army, which he had forfeited by his connection with the Imperial Government, the answer he received was: "Colonel Lopez, if I ever recommend you for any place, that place will be under a tree, with a rope round your neck tied to one of its branches."

Maximilian will live in history as a good man and a martyred sovereign.

Long after his death, the Indians in Queretaro would not put up an adobe hut without inserting in it a pebble from the hill on which he was executed.

On the very day of his death an order signed by him was received in Europe, not for rifled cannon, not for needle-guns, but for two thousand nightingales, which he desired to have purchased in the Tyrol to add to the attractions of his empire.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _EMPEROR NAPOLEON III._]

CHAPTER XI.

THE EMPEROR AND EMPRESS AT THE SUMMIT OF PROSPERITY.

The visit paid by the Emperor Napoleon and the Empress Eugenie to Queen Victoria at Windsor in 1856 was returned in 1857.

It was on the 18th of August that the queen, her husband, the Prince of Wales, then a boy of fourteen, and the Princess Royal landed at Boulogne. The royal yacht had been in sight since daybreak, the emperor anxiously watching it from the sh.o.r.e; but it was two P. M. before it was moored to the _quai_. There can be no better account of this visit than that given by Queen Victoria. The following extracts are taken from her journal:--

"At last the bridge was adjusted, the emperor stepped across. I met him half-way, and embraced him twice, after which he led me on sh.o.r.e amid acclamations, salutes, and every sound of joy and respect. The weather was perfect, the harbor crowded with war-ships, the town and the heights were decorated with gay colors."

The delay in getting up to the wharf postponed the queen's entrance into Paris, and greatly disappointed the crowds who waited for her coming. They were also disappointed that the greatest lady in the world exhibited no magnificence in costume. But the queen herself was greatly impressed by her first view of Paris:--

"The approaching twilight rather added to the beauty of the scene; and it was still quite light enough when we pa.s.sed down the Boulevard de Strasbourg (the emperor's own creation) and along the Boulevards by the Porte Saint-Denis, the Madeleine, the Place de la Concorde, and the Arch of Triumph, to see the objects round us."

They drove through the Bois de Boulogne in the dusk to the palace of Saint-Cloud; but all the way was lined with troops, and bands playing "G.o.d Save the Queen," at intervals. The queen was particularly impressed by the Zouaves, "The friends," she says (for the Crimean War was then in progress), "of my dear Guards in the Crimea."

The birth of the Prince Imperial being an event in prospect, the empress was not allowed to fatigue herself, and first met the queen on the latter's arrival at Saint-Cloud. "In all the blaze of lamps and torches," says the queen, "amidst the roar of cannon, and bands, and drums, and cheers, we reached the palace. The empress, with Princess Mathilde and the ladies, received us at the door, and took us up a beautiful staircase, lined with magnificent soldiers....

I felt quite bewildered, but enchanted."

At dinner General Canrobert, who was fresh from the Crimea, was placed next to her Majesty, and gave her his war experiences. Next day the royal party went to the Exposition Universelle, then going on in Paris, and afterwards, while the queen was receiving the amba.s.sadors, the emperor drove the Prince of Wales through the streets of Paris; he afterwards took his older guests sight-seeing in his capital. "As we crossed the Pont de Change," writes the queen, "the emperor said, pointing to the Conciergerie, 'That is where I was in prison." He alluded to the time when he was brought from Strasburg to Paris, before being shipped for Rio Janeiro.

"Strange," continues the queen, "to be driving with us as emperor through the streets of Paris in triumph!"

They visited Versailles (where the queen sketched), and afterwards went to the Grand Opera. They saw Paris illuminated that night as they drove back to Saint-Cloud, the emperor and Prince Albert recalling old German songs; and the queen says: "The emperor seems very fond of his old recollections of Germany. There is much that is German, and very little--nothing, in fact--markedly French in his character."

One day all the royal party went out in a hack carriage, with what the queen calls "common bonnets and veils," and drove incognito round Paris. Sometimes they talked politics, sometimes they seem to have joked and laughed with childish glee and enjoyment; and one night the emperor took the queen by torchlight to see the tomb of his great uncle at the Invalides. A guard of old warriors who had served under Napoleon, with Santini, his valet at St. Helena, at their head, escorted the queen of England to the chapel where stood Napoleon's coffin, not yet entombed, with the sword of Austerlitz lying upon it. The band in the chapel was playing "G.o.d Save the Queen," while without raged a sudden thunder-storm.

The mornings were devoted to quiet pleasures and sight-seeing, the evenings to operas, state dinners, and state b.a.l.l.s. The great ball given on this occasion in the galleries of Versailles was talked of in Paris for years after. "The empress," says the queen, "met us at the top of the staircase, looking like a fairy-queen or nymph, in a white dress trimmed with bunches of gra.s.s and diamonds, a beautiful _tour de corsage_ of diamonds round the top of her dress, and all _en riviere_; the same round her waist, and a corresponding headdress, and her Spanish and Portuguese orders.

The emperor said when she appeared: 'Comme tu es belle!'"

Next day, as the emperor drove the queen in an open carriage, they talked of the Orleans family, whose feelings had been greatly hurt by a recent sequestration of their property. The emperor tried to make excuses for this act,--excuses that seemed to the queen but tame,--and then he drove to the chapel built over the house where the Duke of Orleans had died on the Avenue de Neuilly. The emperor bought her two of the medals sold on the spot, one of which bore the likeness of the Comte de Paris, with an inscription calling him the hope of France.

The visit ended after eight delightful days, and the emperor escorted his guests back to Boulogne.

Prince Albert, the queen confesses, was not so much carried away by the fascinations of their new friend as herself; but the empress secured his entire commendation.

The queen and the emperor continued to correspond, and subsequently met several times, at Osborne House or at Cherbourg.