Execution of Emperor Maximilian (1867): End of Mexico's Empire

The execution of Emperor Maximilian took place on 19 June 1867, when a Mexican Republican firing squad shot Maximilian I, the Austrian archduke who had ruled as emperor of Mexico since 1864, on a hill outside Querétaro. His death ended the Second Mexican Empire, a monarchy created by French intervention, and restored the republic of Benito Juárez. The event shocked Europe and inspired a famous series of paintings by Édouard Manet.

Background: the French intervention

Mexico emerged from the Reform War of 1857-1861 between Liberals and Conservatives bankrupt. In July 1861 President Benito Juárez suspended payments on foreign debts. Britain, Spain and France sent troops to Veracruz to press their claims, but Britain and Spain soon withdrew when it became clear that France had larger ambitions.

Emperor Napoleon III, who had seized power in France in the coup of 1851, hoped to build a Catholic, Latin empire in the Americas allied to France, while the United States was distracted by its Civil War. His army was defeated at the Battle of Puebla on 5 May 1862, but reinforcements captured Mexico City in June 1863. Juárez’s government retreated northward and kept fighting.

Maximilian’s empire

Mexican conservatives and Napoleon III offered the crown to Ferdinand Maximilian of Habsburg, the younger brother of Austria’s Emperor Franz Joseph. Maximilian accepted at his castle of Miramare near Trieste on 10 April 1864 and landed at Veracruz with his wife Charlotte of Belgium, known in Mexico as Carlota, in May 1864.

Maximilian was idealistic and in some ways liberal. He refused to return Church lands confiscated by the Liberals, angering his conservative supporters, and promoted laws to protect labourers. But his rule depended on French troops. In October 1865, believing that Juárez had left the country, he signed the so-called Black Decree, ordering that Republicans captured under arms be executed within 24 hours. Many prisoners were shot under it, though estimates of the number vary widely.

Collapse of the empire

After the American Civil War ended in 1865, the United States demanded French withdrawal, citing the Monroe Doctrine, and sent troops to the Rio Grande border. At the same time Napoleon III faced the rising power of Prussia in Europe. In 1866 he announced the withdrawal of his army, and the last French troops sailed in March 1867. Carlota went to Europe to plead for help from Napoleon III and Pope Pius IX, failed, and suffered a mental breakdown from which she never recovered.

Maximilian refused advice to abdicate. In February 1867 he went to Querétaro with several thousand loyal troops. Republican armies under Mariano Escobedo besieged the city from March. On 15 May 1867 Querétaro fell, after Colonel Miguel López let Republican troops into the La Cruz convent; whether López acted on Maximilian’s orders or as a traitor is still debated.

Trial and execution

Maximilian was tried by a court-martial in Querétaro’s Iturbide Theatre in June 1867 and sentenced to death with Generals Miguel Miramón and Tomás Mejía. Appeals for clemency poured in from European monarchs, the United States government, Victor Hugo and Giuseppe Garibaldi. Juárez refused, arguing that the law and the security of the republic demanded the sentence.

Early on 19 June the three men were taken to the Cerro de las Campanas. According to witnesses, Maximilian gave each soldier of the firing squad a gold coin and asked them to aim at his heart, and his last words included a wish for Mexico’s independence. He was 34 years old. His body was embalmed and, after long negotiations, returned to Austria aboard the warship Novara and buried in the Imperial Crypt in Vienna in January 1868.

Juárez returned to Mexico City on 15 July 1867 and was re-elected president later that year. The Restored Republic that followed saw Liberal reforms consolidated, though political divisions remained deep.

Manet’s paintings

The French painter Édouard Manet was deeply affected by the news. Between 1867 and 1869 he produced three large canvases, an oil sketch and a lithograph. In the later versions the firing squad wears uniforms resembling those of the French army, an implied accusation that Napoleon III had abandoned Maximilian. The French authorities refused permission to exhibit the final painting or print the lithograph. The versions are now in Boston, London, Copenhagen and Mannheim.

Timeline

• 1861, July: Juárez suspends payments on Mexico’s foreign debt.
• 1862, 5 May: Mexican forces defeat the French at Puebla.
• 1864, 10 April: Maximilian accepts the Mexican crown at Miramare.
• 1865, 3 October: Maximilian signs the Black Decree.
• 1867, March: The last French troops leave Mexico.
• 1867, 15 May: Querétaro falls and Maximilian is captured.
• 1867, 19 June: Maximilian, Miramón and Mejía are executed.

Why it matters

The execution of Maximilian ended the last attempt by a European power to impose a monarchy in the Americas. It strengthened Mexico’s republic and made Benito Juárez a national hero, while damaging Napoleon III’s prestige shortly before the fall of his own empire in 1870.