The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1897-05-22

| Trieste, April Ia, 1864, on a CONVOY of
twelve steamers, and, accompanied bv a
retinue of French, Mexican and Austrian
officers of high rank There were procla-
nations and speeches when they landed
at Vera Cruz, and an imposing pageant
attended their entrance into the capital of
! the country. Historic Chapultepec was
chosen as the royal residence, and court
life under the new empire opened with
splendor and gaiety. Macmillan speedily
found that the task he had set for him
self was by no means an easy one Rio
tous elements surrounded him on every
hand-haughty hidalgos, dark and sullen
Indians, ignorant and fanatical priests,
brigands. freebooters and gentlemen adj
venturers, and fierce and unyleldlng
radicals, like Benito Quarez, determined
that no king should rule IN Mexico. But
his wife was not without genius Tor
affairs, and, confident in the prayers OF
the Pope and the soldiers OF his good
cousin of France, he Numbered along.
There was just chance that he mlght
give the lie to Baron Won Gagern' pre-
diction, and get safely back to Mlramar,
when he was persuaded-much against
his will, to his credit be 1t said-to sign
what has become known in history as the
BLACK Decree. This unlucky docu-
ment decreed that all the liberals who
were in revolt under Juarez were to be
treated as criminals, outlaws and brig
ands. If captured, these republicans
fighting under the national flag against
an alien usurper We're to be shot within
twenty-four hours. In signing the
Black Decree" Macmillan signed his
own death warrant.
Without delay the slaughter began,
slaughter SO brutal that his foreign
soldiers, trained in no gentle school, re-
yolted against it. Over 200 of his Belgian
officers protested against the decree and
the ubiquitous war" but wholesale exc
cutions did not stay the progress OF hber-
alism, and Juarez's forces grew daily in
numbers and power At this moment,
a fatal one for Macmillan, the civil war
in the United States came to an end. The
doctrine adopted by Monroe could now
receive proper enforcement by the govern
ment at Washington, and Napoleon was
peremptorily ordered to take his hands off
Mexico. A mighty army stood ready to
back up this order, and, with triding
show of hesitancy, he obeyed it. With the
withdrawal of the French troops, the
heroic strain in Maximilian' nature, the
knightly Hapsburg blood which flowed in
his veins, came to the front. In the face
of the brutal urgency to resign of Bazaine
then as always a traitor; in spite of his
brothers offer to restore him to the right
of succession to the Austrian throne; in
the face of liberal victories and Juarez' S
refusal of amnesty, he resolved to remain
in Mexico and battle for his sovereignty,
his honor and his friends.
The Empress Carlotta saw his peril
and determined to go to Europe and
seek aid wherever it could be found. In
July, 1866, she set out on her journey.
Her father, Leopold I. Of Belgium, had
died the year before, leaving behind him
one of the most substantial private for
tunes of his time. This fortune, it was
naturally enough supposed, would be
mainly divided between his two children
King Leopold H., his successor, and the
Empress of Mexico. In the millions thus
devolving upon her the Empress saw, as
she thought, providential windfall
which would enable her to give immedi-
ate and most important material aid to
the fnftpriY1O of hon. h11ch ho
made up her mind, when the news of her
fathers death reached her in Mexico, to
Proceed to Europe, take possession Of her
great inheritance, and apply it ALL with
a woman's unhesitating energy and devo-
ton, to the reorganization of the imperial
cause. The possession of it she felt sure
would strengthen her also in last effort
to keep Napoleon to his promises What
must her feelings then have been when
she was met upon her arrival at Brest
by a communication which informed
her that the control of her fortune was in
the hands of her brother, and that he had
fully made up his mind that she should
not be allowed to divert it to the object
which she had at heart. Worn out with
the long sea voyage, and exhausted by the
strain under which she had lived for
months before her departure from Vera
Cruz, the unhappy lady was unable to
resist this bitter and unexpected blow.
She broke down completely under it, and
rained curses and imprecations upon her
brothers head. She regained sufficient
control of herself to proceed in day or
two to Paris, but she was never really
herself again. She fell in a dead faint at
the end of an interview with Napoleon at
the Tuileries, in which he told her that it
was no longer possible for him to aid her
husband, and little later, while break
fasting with the Pope at the Vatican,
became suddenly and hopelessly insane,
in the presence of His Holiness again
denouncing her brother in the bitterest
terms. From Italy, with mind and
memory gone, she was removed in due
time to Miramar, the beautiful home near
Trieste, in which she had lived with her
husband before his departure for Mexico
Meanwhile, in the latter country, the
curtain ri tba