Maximilian and Carlota: A Blog for Researchers

New in Kindle: El último príncipe del Imperio Mexicano and "From Mexico to Miramar or, Across the Lake of Oblivion"

2012-01-24T00:09:00.000-08:00

The Spanish edition of my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire (Unbridled Books, 2009), as El último príncipe del Imperio Mexicano, beautifully translated by Mexican poet and novelist Agustín Cadena, is now available on Kindle.

>>Watch the trailer:

Also now available on Kindle from Dancing Chiva is my long essay about a visit to Maximilian's castle in Italy, "From Mexico to Miramar or, Across the Lake of Oblivion" by C.M. Mayo, originally published in the Massachusetts Review.

Light posting on this blog for a spell because I've been busy with the publication of my trtanslation of Francisco I. Madero's Spiritist Manual and a new podcasting project that launched this month. But I will be posting here again soon; I still have a lot of research to share.

P.S. If I owe you an e-mail, my apologies, but please know I do read my e-mail and, though behind, I am doing my best to catch up.

Dr Konrad Ratz Event Today in the National Palace, Mexico City

2011-11-22T01:23:00.000-08:00

Dr Konrad Ratz has translated a profoundly important work for understanding Maximilian's Mexican adventure and unfortunate end: The reports of the Prussian Ambassador to Mexico, Baron von Magnus, to Otto von Bismarck.

Those who are aficionados of the period will know that Baron Magnus was the only diplomat who witnessed Maximilian's execution in 1867.

Dr Ratz found Magnus's reports in the archives in Berlin and has translated them into Spanish as El ocaso del Imperio de Maximiliano visto por un diplomático prusiano: Los informes de Anton von Magnus a Otto von Bismarck, 1866-1867.

It has been published by Siglo Veintiuno Editors and there will be a formal presention TODAY at 17:00 hrs in the Biblioteca Homenaje a Benito Juárez, Palacio Nacional (free and open to the public).

Dr Ratz is also the editor and translator of several (yes several) other vital and paradigm-changing works, including Tras las huellas de un desconocido and Correspondencia inédita entre Maximiliano y Carlota.

A Letter of Warning from Don Pedro Montezuma XV to Maximilian, 1864

2011-10-25T22:41:00.000-07:00

Some people have written to me asking about the letter I quote in my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, from Don Pedro Montzeuma XV, the sole legitimate descendant of the Aztec emperor, to Maximilian von Habsburg in 1864. Here is the excerpt in the novel-- my translation, edited:

French cannon have cowed some into submission; once tranquility reigns, however, there will rise up all of a sudden a terrible counter-revolution. . . Your Highness has been too precipitous in accepting the Mexican throne . . . Those who today form the regency are of the most impious stripe . . . depraved evildoers, usurpers, they rob the Treasury, they rob even the Holy Church . . . they will supplant Your Highness perhaps after a tragic end.

The actual letter is in Maximilian's archive, and a reprint can be ordered from the Austrian Staatsarchiv in Vienna. There is also a copy of this letter in the Library of Congress's Kaiser Maximilian von Mexiko archive (box 117, chalked on spine, box 118, pages 25-37).

Here is the original excerpt with original spelling and accents:

Porque el canon frances los tiene a algunas amedrentados, mas despues cuando se crea que todo se halla sozegado, estallará de repente una contrarevolucion terrible. V.A. [Vuestra Alteza or, Your Highness] me permitirá le diga que es preciso usar de otros medios que yo conozco como Mexicano, que amo deveras a mi pays y a mis patricios para llegar al fin deseado, pero V.A. ha sido demasiado precipitado en acceptar la oferta al trono de Mexico. V.A. debe refleccionar bien antes de abandonar su patria, a donde se halla feliz y respectado, para emprender su marcha a un pays enteramente desconocido, y que desde 1812 no ha habido un Gobierno ni de hecho ni de derecho, y que tan solo se ha alimentado en una continua guerra interna causada por caudillos ambiciosos y sin principios de ninguna clase; y de manera alguna clasificados para hacer la felicidad de aquellos pueblos. Puedese decir sin escrupulo que los que compenen en el dia la regencia son la estirpe la mas desapiadada y entre ellos hay algunos, o casi todos, que por pruebas autenticas se pueden calificar de malhechores, de deprarados y usurpadores, que han estafado el tesoro publico robado la hacienda ageno, y hasta el culto divino; encadenando la libertad de todo ciudadano tanto Mexicano como estranjero, insultando del modo mas infame las banderas y representantes de todas las potencias estrangeras.

V.A. antes de aceptar cargo de tanto peso, deberia estar sastifecho ue son los pueblos que lo claman que de ellos espontaneamente ha nacido la exigencia que V.A. los Gobierne; y no de tan solo un pequeño numero de aspirantes que su deseo no es mas que la ambición; y que despues de fundada una Monarquia (en caso que asi suceda) ellos mismos sean los primeros que desaprueben al Estrangero que los Gobierna para entre ellos escoger el que mas convenga a sus miras de desolacion y rapiña suplantado a V.A. quiza despues de un tragico fin.

The letter goes on for some pages, and is signed PEDRO MONTEZUMA XV, 17 feb 1864, 116, Rua de meio, Porto

For more about the descendants of Moctzeuma (modern spelling of the name), try wikipedia. Not the best source, I know. I would very much appreciate any references.

One of the highest ranking ladies-in-waiting to Carlota was also a descendant of Moctezuma, Josefa Varela. She makes a couple of brief appearances in the novel. More about her anon.

Next post: next Tuesday.

Entrevistas en el Palacio Nacional

2011-10-18T00:06:00.000-07:00

Some news re: The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire
Today, October 18th @ 5 pm, I'm doing an unusual event for my book, the Spanish translation (beautifully translated by Agustín Cadena), El último príncipe del Imperio Mexicano: a live interview by Bertha Hernández in Mexico City's National Palace (Palacio Nacional), as part of a series hosted by Random House Mandadori and SHCP about the historical novel of Mexico.

All events are free and open to the public.

Next post next Tuesday.

October 18, 2011, Interview - Entrevista en el Palacio Nacional

2011-10-11T13:31:00.000-07:00

Light blogging here because I've been away from my files and also I'm racing against the clock to prepare my introduction to and the website for my translation of Francisco I. Madero's Spiritist Manual, which was originally published in 1911, (yes, long after the Second Empire / French Intervention), and will be published this November, on its centennial, as an e-book from Dancing Chiva. I'll be reading from and discussing this very unusual book on November 10th as part of the Author's Sala Reading Series in San Miguel de Allende. (Click here for my events page.)

As for the Second Empire / French Intervention, I'll be doing a formal interview about my novel The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire / El último príncipe del Imperio Mexicano and the original research behind it on October 18th in Mexico City's Palacio Nacional, as part of the series on historical fiction.

If you can't make that event, my talk at the Library of Congress is available here, and a reader's guide is available in both English and español.

Joan Haslip's The Crown of Mexico: Maximilian and His Empress Carlota

2011-08-02T14:46:00.000-07:00

In the decades after the publication of Maximilian und Charlotte von Mexiko, Conte Corti's 1924 magnum opus, the first to rely on Maximilian's archives, several works covering the same period and personalities were published in English. The best of them is Joan Haslip's The Crown of Mexico: Maximilian and His Empress Carlota (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971).

From the dust jacket:

Joan Haslip is the daughter of the late George Ernest Haslip. M.D., the original planner of the British Health Service. She was educated privately in London and on the Continent and grew up in Florence. During the Second World War, she was editor in the Italian section of the European Service of the BBC. Miss Haslip has traveled extensively in Europe, the United States, and the Middle East and has lectured for the British Council in Italy and the Middle East. She is the author of Out of Focus, Lady Hester Stanhope, Parnell, Portrait of Pamela, Lucrezia Borgia, and The Lonely Empress.

Haslip died in Florence in 1994 at the age of 82. (Read an obituary here.)

Alas, I'm away from my files and shelves for the summer; I'll have more to say about this splendid book after Labor Day.

Next post: October 11, 2011.

The Emperor's Little Pears by Maruja González

2011-07-26T10:10:00.000-07:00

With each passing generation, whole cliff-sides worth of things and memories crumble away. Yet in 2011, many from the 1860s still survive. A friend from San Miguel de Allende, in fact one of the translators I most admire, Geoff Hargreaves, sent me this story by Maruja González (alas, untranslated). The author very kindly gave her permission for me to include it here on this blog. It is part of what she describes as a collection of family stories and anecdotes, nostalgia and criticisms, for-- my translation-- "at times I want to laugh, for you see, we are all, myself included, very provincial." It is a true story, a family story, and I am delighted to include it here not only because it made me smile, but because I believe it is representative of so many stories about Maximilian, many of which may never appear in print, but are still alive in Mexican families today.

For those who don't read Spanish: As part of his tours of his empire, in 1864, Maximilian visited San Miguel de Allende. He stayed in the house of the author's great grandparents, where a great banquet was prepared including, for dessert, a family recipe of little pears in syrup. Praised by Maximilian himself, the recipe was handed down until... one day... it was served to the author herself. I won't give away the ending! (For more about Maximilian's Mexican travels, see Ein Kaiser Unterwegs by Konrad Ratz and Amparo Gómez.)

LAS PERITAS DEL EMPERADOR

By Maruja González

…apreciamos en todo su valor los sacrificios que
Vuestras Majestades han hecho para venir a
regenerarnos; comprendemos la magnitud
de esta difícil pero gloriosa empresa…

Regidores del Ayuntamiento de San Miguel de Allende
a Maximiliano de Habsburgo en 1864
(Diario del Imperio)

Ya he hablado de lo anacrónicos que éramos y en muchos asuntos creo que seguimos siéndolo, es un mal del país y más aún de San Miguel y de mi familia aunque muchos nos creemos muy modernos y librepensadores. Qué se le va a hacer, las plumas se nos asoman a veces. Esta anacronía como forma de perduración, aunque inconsciente, se refleja en hechos de la vida cotidiana como hacer los pacholes en el metate o cerrar los ojos al salir del cine para que no nos de la gota serena que quién sabe qué será, también en el pensar, en el habla con modismos y palabras no solo pueblerinas sino arcaicas y, como ya he contado por ahí, en esa convivencia con los fantasmas añosos enredados en la trama de nuestra vida. Ya las nuevas generaciones se han librado de este lastre pero también han perdido aquella gracia tan provinciana que tenían las tías viejas (creo que yo ya ocupé el lugar de esas tías, pero sin gracia). Aún así, los jóvenes de ahora no se libran de oir de vez en cuando relatos qué, pasados por el tamiz del tiempo, han variado poco de una generación a otra.

Ahora voy a hablar de nuestra relación con Maximiliano de Habsburgo, (nótese que digo nuestra) sí, el merito Emperador austriaco que los mexicanos trajimos porque supuestamente no sabíamos gobernarnos (a lo mejor tenían razón los conservadores). Este honor que tuvimos los sanmigueleños de ser visitados por tan insigne personaje no se nos ha olvidado en más de siglo y medio de acontecido y cualquiera de mis familiares y otros paisanos entrados en años les podrán contar con gran orgullo la opinión que tuvo el Emperador al conocer la cripta de la Parroquia: patitieso y boquiabierto comentó con entusiasmo: ¡Esta cripta es digna de reyes! Yo no sé si el Archiduque austriaco era muy educado (que seguramente lo era, nomás faltaba, pero se excedió) o muy hipócrita, o adulador, para ganarse adeptos, o simplemente padecía de cataratas pero hay que visitar nuestra cripta para sospechar que alguno de estos padecimientos lo aquejaba.

Los festejos que se hicieron en San Miguel para recibir a tan importante personaje, que llegó a la una y media de la tarde del trece de septiembre de 1864, en su periplo para ser conocido y conocer sus nuevas posesiones, cuando iba de paso hacia Dolores Hidalgo a echar el Grito de Independencia (la primera conmemoración después de la arenga del Padre Hidalgo en 1810), fueron festejos muy fastuosos y todo mundo se alborotó para agasajarlo: repiques en todas las iglesias, multitudes vitoreándolo, un imponente Arco Triunfal de origen romano en la esquina de la Plaza, misa solemne, saraos, jamaicas populares, fuegos artificiales y cohetes, muchos cohetes porque esos sí nunca nos pueden faltar, los arcos romanos los dejamos de hacer pero sin el coheterío no podemos vivir, y siguieron con cuanto mitote se les ocurrió para el pobre Maximiliano que siempre estuvo muy enfermo y lo deben de haber acabado de amolar.

No sé por qué causa hospedaron a Su Majestad en la casa de mis tatarabuelos (de la familia Lambarri, en la esquina de San Francisco y Corregidora) y ahí se le hizo solemnísimo banquete con música y solistas y las señoras encopetadas lamentaron mucho la ausencia de la Emperatriz, Carlotita, como ya le decían de cariño. Todas estas señoras de la crema y nata de San Miguel se pulieron haciendo rebuscados manjares a cual más exquisito y lucidor. Una de mis tías tuvo a bien preparar unas peras en almíbar que encantaron al monarca, quien se volcó en elogios a tan maravilloso postre. Esta anécdota, como se comprenderá es otro de los orgullos de la familia junto al de la tía Tita, que componía poesías a la Virgen del Tepeyac y el de mi tía Lupe la cristera.

A mi hermana y a mí esa historia nos embobaba, era nuestro único contacto con la realeza aunque mediara un siglo entre nosotros y nos transportábamos a un cuento de hadas propio. –Un día de estos les voy a hacer las “Peritas del Emperador”—nos decía mamá y esperábamos y esperábamos y ese día tardaba en llegar. Tras muchos ruegos llegó el momento ansiado: --Hoy hay de postre “Peritas del Emperador”--.Ilusión, suspenso… Llegó a la mesa el platón con unas tristes peras de San Juan también nadando en un triste almíbar que tenían un sabor soso más triste aún. – ¿Y esto le ofrecieron a Maximiliano? -- Nos ganó una risa de no parar. Mamá se enfurruñó y nunca volvió a hacernos el cacareado platillo.

Ahora pienso que el pobre visitante real, que padecía una disentería galopante desde antes de llegar a México, debe haber estado harto de comilonas y la sencillez de las peritas le cayó muy bien al estómago y sí debe haber sido sincero en sus elogios. En los de la cripta, bueno…quizá tenga yo que ir de vuelta a visitarla uno de estos días a ver si me pasmo como el Emperador.

Next post: next Tuesday.

Dancing Chiva's Maximiliana, Richard Salvucci on How Google Disrespected Mexican History, and Catherine Clinton on Mary Chestnut

2011-07-19T00:33:00.000-07:00

This blog has been quiet lately because I've been preparing the launch this fall of several e-books, including a few works of Maximiliana, and the e-book of my novel in Spanish translation, El último príncipe del Imperio Mexicano. (View the complete catalog here and watch my brief video about e-book cover design here.) My original intention with this blog, to share my research on (most) Tuesdays, remains firm, and to be sure, I still have many books and archives and individual documents to comment on-- so be sure to check back again next Tuesday.

This Tuesday, two notes in one. First, I'd like to recommend an article by Professor Richard Salvucci about the unfortunate fate of a very important archive of Mexican newspapers. It's news in itself, but in a broader sense, it illustrates the fragility of digital archives.

Second, a note about Mary Chesnut, author of a diary, first published posthumously in 1905 in a bowlderized version as A Diary from Dixie, and later in expanded and annotated editions, including the Penguin Classics edition introduced by Catherine Clinton. While Mary Chestnut had nothing to do with Mexico, as a writer of historical fiction, I needed to immerse myself in the vocabulary and syntax of the time. Some of my characters, most notably, the American mother of the prince and Mrs Yorke (mother of Sara Yorke Steveson), would have been contemporaries of Mary Chesnut, so hers was one of and certainly the most vivid of several memoirs I read, taking careful note, as might a poet. (As I like to say, a novel is a poem.) I had long planned to make a note about Chesnut's memoir in this blog but historian Catherine Clinton's splendid essay about her, "Queen Bee of the Confederacy," came out recently in the New York Times Opinionator, so, that covered, I warmly recommend that to you... and I'll move on to other subjects. Next post: next Tuesday.

On Royalty: A Very Polite Inquiry Into Some Strangely Related Families by Jeremy Paxman

2011-05-31T21:09:00.000-07:00

When I present my novel The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, one of the inevitable questions I get is, how long did it take you to write it? It took over a decade, on-and-off, and according to my best calculations, full-time, about seven years. Why so long? Apart from actually writing it, I had to do the mountainous reading to even begin to make sense of 19th century Mexico and the French Intervention; extensive original archival research; and-- this is what surprised me the most-- get my head around the concept of royalty. And one reason it took me so long to get my head around the idea of royalty is that, for more time than I'd like to admit, I didn't realize that I needed to.

I grew up in California in the 60s and 70s, so of course, between school and the movies, I'd heard and read and seen all about the Kings and Queens of Europe, and especially, British royalty. Before our hero George Washington strode onto the colonial scene, there were the parade of Tudors, Henry VIII and those unfortunate wives, Elizabeth, and then a hop-skip-and-a-jump to wacky George III. Later, still culturally speaking very close to home, came Victoria and Albert; in the 20th century, that errant Duke of Windsor and Mrs Simpson (bless their pugs), and then of course, spanning my grandparents' latter lifetimes, my parents', and my own so far, Queen Elizabeth, always smilingly impeccable in her marshmallow-shaped hat du jour. Then came Princess Diana, her marriage, escapades, and horrifying early death. Now we have William and Kate gracing the covers of People and Hola... Never mind Americans: who on this planet isn't familiar with the British royal family?

My family background is party English but mostly Irish and Scottish with a strong tradition of, well, to put it politely, not taking royalty very seriously. In fact, my sister used to always make me laugh with jokes about the "Chuck and Di" show and, on seeing any photographs or TV on same, "Ah yes, that's why we had a revolution!" In sum, when I started my novel, I didn't think I had anything more to learn about royalty, other than the relevant dates and facts about Maximilian and Carlota, and I cannot say I felt even a shred of reverence for the institution. Alas, this was a woefully inadequate approach.

What a novel can do is give the reader the delight and the privilege of experiencing the world from someone else's point of view. Towards this end, the novelist need not ask for the reader's sympathy for the characters, but he or she does need to ask for, and earn, the reader's compassion. With a novel based on the true story of a pair of monarchs and their unlikely heir presumptive, how could I begin to construct believable characters without fully comprehending the point of view, the deeply rooted-feelings of people who were, in their blood and bones, monarchists?

And in working towards that comprehension, I believe the novelist needs to treat the characters, however imperfect they may be, with dignity for, if not, how can the reader be expected to feel the full impact of tragedy? A novel filled with nothing but snotty-silly cartoon characters is about as appetizing as a plate of sawdust. (Unless, of course, the plot, twisty puzzle, is the whole point. I don't write those kinds of novels and I don't read them either).

I don't want to write an essay here, just a blog post, so I'll wrap it up in a word: mystic. The monarch--- and by extension, all members of his or family-- play a mystic role in providing their countrymen a self of themselves. When Mexico, so briefly, was a monarchy for a second time under Maximilian von Habsburg, he and his Mexican supporters saw him as the living symbol of the nation and as such, more than a human being. In many of the histories of Mexico's Second Empire, the Empress Carlota's refusing to allow Maximilian to abdicate, even as their empire crumbled around them, is taken as evidence of her incipient madness. But I now believe, having immersed myself in reading and meditating on it for long, that given her education as not only the daughter of the King of the Belgians, but granddaughter of Louise Philippe of France, first cousin of Queen Victoria, and sister-in-law of the Kaiser Franz Josef, she understood the role, and understandably so, as far larger than her own, merely human life.

Then, shortly afterwards, Carlota did go mad, but that's another blog post.

One of the ways I found the beginnings of a path into understanding what was to me a very foreign point of view was reading contemporary British books about royalty. I'll be providing a list of those shortly. Among the most entertaining, and for me very helpful, was Jeremy Paxman's On Royalty, an affectionate, witty, and unusually perceptive meditation on the whys and wherefores of this peculiar but very human institution.

More anon.

Ciudad de México en tiempos de Maximiliano (Mexico City in the Time of Maximilian)

2011-05-11T19:56:00.000-07:00

This now rare but fact-jammed book by Torcuato Luca de Tena, the distinguished Spanish journalist and literary writer who lived in Mexico, was published in 1989 by Planeta (ISBN, 968-406-217-6). Covering everything from Mexico City's pulquerías to its flower-sellers to Maximilian's sparkling palace balls, the sophistication of the theaters, the vital role of the acqueducts and surrounding lakes, the brief but influential visit of Spanish poet José Zorilla... in sum, it's a cornucopia of stories, and so well-larded with photos, illustrations, cartoons, maps, notes, and more, it is truly indispensable for anyone writing and researching this period.

Next post next Tuesday.

On Break

2011-05-03T00:01:00.000-07:00

... until next Tuesday because of travel. Please check back again then.

La Cara Oculta, Podcasting, Kindle and iBook

2011-04-26T22:24:00.000-07:00

No blog post on research this week because I'm out of the office, in part to film an interview for Francisco Martin Moreno's program "La Cara Oculta" for TV Azteca (check out the on-line "Reader's Guide" / "Guía de lectura" to The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire for the basic story).

Another bit of business: the podcast page has been updated with substantially wider bandwidth.

Yet more business: readying the e-book (Kindle and iBook edition) of the Spanish translation, El último príncipe del Imperio Mexicano. I hope to have news about this very soon. Currently the paperback edition is available in Spanish (a superb translation by Mexican novelist and poet Agustín Cadena) from Grijalbo Random House Mondadori.

Check in again next Tuesday: more books on the period, plus a story about pears.

Rosedale, the Historic Estate in Washington DC

2011-04-19T09:22:00.000-07:00

Pictured here is my pug dog, Picadou, a little tuckered out after her walk at Rosedale, when we were visiting just the other day. Rosedale plays an important part in my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, because it was the family home of (prince) Agustín de Iturbide y Green's mother and, later, his home for many years, on and off, until it was sold in the early 20th century.

As I recount in the epilogue of my novel, "The Story of the Story or, An Epilogue by Way of Acknowledgements," when I first began researching the novel in the late 1990s, there was nothing-- and I mean absolutely nothing-- available on-line about Rosedale.

I found my way into the story by visitng the Historical Society of Washington DC, where I came upon the privately published and beautifully researched book by Louise Mann-Kenney, Rosedale: The Eighteenth Century Country Estate of General Uriah Forrest, Cleveland Park, Washington, D.C. (1989). Some other relevant works include Historic Homes in Washington: Its Noted Men and Women by Mary S. Lockwood (NY: Belford Company, 1889); Cleveland Park, an Early Residential Neighborhood of the Nation's Capital by Grace Dunlop Peter and Joyce D. Southwick, and Old Georgetown on the Potomac by Henry Ridgely Evans, Washington DC 1933, which includes the author's personal memoir of his friendship with Agustín de Iturbide y Green, beginning as boys in Georgetown in the late 1860s.

In addition, in the Historical Society of Washington DC's library and other Washingtonian libraries, I found several newspaper articles about Rosedale and the family, a few of which mentioned previously unknown details about the tangle with Maximilian von Habsburg.

My research concluded a few years ago; no doubt these libraries have many new articles about Rosedale not listed here. There was a spate of publicity a decade ago, when Elián González, a Cuban boy whose custody was in dispute, found refuge at Rosedale, though, curiously, in not one of the many articles did I find any mention of Rosedale's history with another child whose custody was in dispute: Agustín de Iturbide y Green. (Really, I find that a headshaker.) Subsequently, a few years ago, Rosedale was in the local press again when a dedicated association of neighbors saved it and a small portion of the grounds-- now a community dog park-- from development. The Rosedale Conservancy-- the organization's website-- includes many photos and more information about Rosedale.

Herewith, a list of those older articles focussing on Rosedale:

+++In the Historical Society of Washington DC Library

November 16, 1947, "The President and Mrs Cleveland" by John Clagett Proctor, The Sunday Star

September 1, 1944, "Historic Landmarks of Cleveland Park," by John Clagett Proctor, The Sunday Star

And: a large map showing "Mrs Green" (which is Rosedale) on the Defences of Washington, Extract of Military Map of N.E. Virginia, War Department, 1865

+++In the Martin Luther King Library's Washintongtonia Room

*March 27, 1932, "A Relic of Antiquity," by Gilbert G. La Gorce, The Washington Post
This article is the most detailed. It claims that Alice Green was a youngest child, but this is incorrect (according to a Green family genealogy).

April 1933 (no date), "Phillips' Lease Famous Old Home" Washington Herald

March 23, 1941, "A Might-Have Been Empress Who Lives in Georgetown," by Jane McIlvane, Times-Herald
A very detailed article based on an interview with Agustín de Iturbide y Green's widow, Louise Kearney Iturbide. Erroneously states that upon their marriage in 1915 they lived in her family home, Quality Hill in Georgetown; in fact, the house was sold almost immediately after their marriage and they lived instead at the Pelham Apartments on P St NW, near Dupont Circle.

September 25, 1950 "Cleveland Park's Charm..." by George Kennedy, The Star
A mention with a little detail.

March 28, 1953, "Gen. Forrest's Home Unchaged in 160 years" by E.R. Noderrer, Times-Herald

August 19, 1958, "RThe Rambler... Visits his Favorite House" by George Kennedy, The Star
Another mention with a little detail.

Spring 1960, Cathedral's New property, Rosedale Estate, Associated with Capital';s Earliest History" by Elizabeth Coonley Faulkner, Cathedral Age

+++Georgetown Public Library's Peabody Room

A terrific resource-- here is where I sat down and read a first edition of Henry Ridgely Evans' memoir, Old Goergetown on the Potomac. They also have a complete collection of Evans' works-- he was a prolific writer, a 33rd Degree Mason, and an expert in magic and occult phenomena.

>>To listen to the podcast of my lecture at the Historical Society of Washington DC about my book and the research behind it, click here.

This is my snapshot taken in the winter of 2000, when Rosedale was still serving as a dormitory for the Youth for Understanding Foundation. It has since been painted a rich honey-yellow and is now a privately-owned residence within the Rosedale Conservancy.

Next post next Tuesday.

On the Death of Maximilian: A rare Hungarian Newspaper Article from 1876

2011-04-12T10:54:00.000-07:00

An eyewitness memoir by Dr Szender Ede, who served with the French in Mexico from 1865, and later had quite a bit to do with the aftermath, was published in a Hungarian newspaper in 1876, and has been translated into Spanish. Warning: it's not for the timid of stomach. You can read it here.

Yes, I hope to translate it into English soon.

Pictured left is my photo of Maximilian's temporary coffin, in Querétaro. You can see more of my photos from Querétaro here.

Next post: next Tuesday.

Carlota's Piano

2011-04-05T00:41:00.000-07:00

So far readers have alerted me to a crystal flute, a saddle, a set of mirrors, and a diamond ring-- and now, Carlota's piano. A fun connection: writer John Randolph Bennett was writing to interview me about Dancing Chiva Literary Arts, my new venture in publishing, among other things, Maximiliana, and in his e-mail he wrote:

[When] I was a boy growing up in San Jose, CA, we used to buy sheet music as a store called Reid's Music. Somehow they had acquired Empress Carlotta's piano, and they displayed it on a dais in the center of their store. They called it the Empress Carlotta Grand. I remember it being ornate; it may have been painted a brassy gold. I think I got to play it once.

In response to further questioning:

"I just Googled 'Empress Carlotta Grande Piano' and found a listing in an auction house from 2010. This is how I remember the piano looking. Look at the golden color of that wood! Hard to imagine it sitting on a platform by the escalators in a big store in a shopping mall in San Jose."

Here's the result of that "google": M.S. Rau of New Orleans is offering the piano for sale for USD $225,000. From the on-line catalog:

Royal provenance and superior craftsmanship culminate in this highly important grand piano, owned by the Empress Carlota of Mexico and made by the famed London firm of Collard & Collard. The piano was given to the Empress by her brother-in-law, Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria, on the occasion of her 25th birthday in 1865.

The piano itself is a work of art. The body is crafted of luxurious birds-eye maple, polished to a sleek, smooth finish and complemented with scrolling gold gilt wood accents. Three shimmering gold gilt wood legs, hand-carved in the Rococo style, support the entire structure, which, despite its impressive size, seemingly floats in its space. Additional highlights include original ivory and ebony keys, original "certificate of authenticity" by Collard & Collard, and a plaque stating this magnificent instrument was a gift to the Empress.

This piano was housed in the Empress' private quarters in Chapultepec Castle, where she would often sit and play her favorite classical compositions. When the rule of the Empress and her husband, Emperor Maximillian I, ended in 1867, a few pieces of the castle's contents (including this piano) became the property of Mexican government officials.... CONTINUE READING

One of the very few liberties I took with historical facts in my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, had to do, precisely, with this piano. For the chapter set in September of 1865, I wanted to introduce the two grandsons of the Emperor Iturbide, Salvador and Agustín (the prince of the novel's title), apart from their family, and show the strangeness of their having been brought into Maximilian's household. I set the scene for the two boys, one an adolescent, the other only 2 and 1/2, in Chapultepec Castle, the Imperial residence, where they come upon the piano. In fact, Salvador had already been taken to school in Paris-- but this was a small liberty, and worth taking for narrative integrity, I think. I also imagined the piano being dark--wrong I was! That will be corrected in the next edition.

I'll be on a brief blog vacation, so next the post will be on Tuesday April 19th.

If you'd like news about Dancing Chiva's forthcoming ebooks on Maximiliana, we'd love to have you join the mailing list. We hate spam, too, so the newsletter goes out only 5 - 6 times a year, and you can opt out at any time.

Doña Cordelia (Otilia) Jordan de Degollado

2011-03-29T12:30:00.000-07:00

In 1923, shortly before the death of the ex-Empress Carlota in Belgium, a Mexican newspaper reporter (or perhaps a pair of them), tracked down the then elderly Doña Cordelia (Otilia) Jordan de Degollado, the American widow of the Mexican Empire's never-received ambassador to Washington. I found the newspaper clipping in the Joaquín and Mariano Degollado archive at the University of Texas, Austin. Here is my translation from the Spanish. (Alas, the article did not carry the reporter's name. It opens with mutliple subtitles, as it appears here.)

A Lady of Carlota's Court Tells How She Lived in Mexico

The sovereign is near death

Señora Cordelia Jordan de Degollado

Yesterday She Recalled the Times of the so-called Empire of Maximilian

—A VERY INTERESTING STORY—

During that Ephemeral Empire, this Lady was Maximilian's Ambassadress Near the White House

The rumors of the ex-empress Carlota's grave illness published in European newspapers and later, in the Mexican press, inspired us to interview a distinguished octogenarian resident in this capital who was a member of the court of Maximilian von Habsburg's ephemeral imperial government. We refer to the elderly Doña Cordelia Jordan, widow of Degollado, who lives in an apartment at number 41, Calle de Roma, in the Colonia Juárez, and that is where we arrived, accompanied by our photographer.

After inquiring with the concierge of this immense apartment building, we presented ourselves at the door that belongs to Degollado's widow and although at first the servants who attend her showed great reluctance in admitting us, we were finally able to obtain from the kindly señora some interesting stories about her life in the Court of the Emperor.

The apartment occupied by the widow of Degollado is soberly decorated and it seems there are furnishings, portraits and objects in the living room from that epoch of our history. The individuals in the large frames are clearly from those times; the ladies in their crinolines and luxurious dresses of taffeta, and the men in their Directory-style frock coats.

After we had a look around the small living room, where upon the table there were some elegant albums containing many antique portraits, we passed into the sitting room, where, in a wide chair, there reposed the elderly Señora Degollado.

She receives us with great kindness and invites us to sit down; her two "companions," two Mexican women dressed imppecably although with the modesty of our servants, pull up some chairs and immediately place themselves at the señora's side, while, from the little box very near the señora's feet, where it was sleeping when we arrived, a tiny chihuahua growls and threatens to bite us. Seated in her immense chair, the widow of Degollado still has some remains of her former grandeur: a fine wool poncho covers her legs and she wears a wide cream-colored and blue blouse, and, covering her white head, a delicate cap of Irish lace.

She apologizes for having not received us at first, explaining that since she lives alone, she was afraid we might rob her, as she has no more company than four servants and her housekeeper, Antonia, whom she treats with great affection. Antonia is the one who opened the door. Our distinguished interviewee explains that she has lost almost all her sight and furthermore, can no longer get up from her chair, since she suffered a serious fall some twenty years ago when, passing by in her buggy, her horse bolted, dragging her to the ground. She also tells us that in recent years she has suffered three serious episodes of pneumonia which brought her to the edge of the grave; finally, however, she has recovered, though the years have wrought havoc upon her.

SHE WAS AMBASSADRESS IN WASHINGTON

She herself tells us that she is American and was born in the state of Virginia, having married Mariano Degollado when he was just beginning his studies in a university near Washington. At that time the Jordan family lived near the university, which is how she met the young Degollado, with whom she first became friends. After a long engagement, they were married in a Catholic church in the same region. Afterwards, just after the Archduke Maximilian had been crowned Emperor, they came to Mexico and her husband directly participated in the historical developments in Mexico.

The señora tells us the story of this tragic episode in Mexico, using a clear English and very little Spanish, for, as she tells us, she doesn't speak that language well. In fact we noticed that she speaks to her servants in English and although they do not speak a word of that language, they manage to understand her.

Mariano Degollado soon became involved with the men of this government and his wife was named lady-in-waiting, while he became one of the Emperor's favorite chamberlains and, as she herself tells us, the Emperor came to have great affection for him.

REMINISCENCES OF THOSE TIMES

Bit by bit the estimable old lady begins to offer details and she tells us about some details of the life of the Court. We try to note everything that falls from her lips; it seems to us at times that history itself is speaking to us.

"Why did they kill Maximilian? Ah! I think they should not have done that. He was very good and Mexico lost the affection of the world."

Now and again the señora lets out an exclamation and it seems her deep set eyes will cloud with tears. Later she tells us that the Emperor cared very much and about others and he had a special concern to alleviate the sufferings of the poor. Carlota was the same, constantly making works of charity and in the Court there were rarely conversations about anything but some fiesta to help the less fortunate.

"I still remember very well the day we said goodbye to the Emperor, when he left for Querétaro. Those were very bitter days and since that time one could say we began to suffer great difficulties. We were truly devastated by the execution of Maximilian and his loyal generals. We could hardly believe it, and once we realized it was true, we had to emmigrate to Guatemala, where President Cerna had offered a place for all the refugees."

Then, Señora de Degollado tells us that during the Empire the city was better, more tranquil, cleaner, and the economic situation was better than it was in the years afterwards. "I don't mean to say it was better than it is now, not at all," she tells us, "because now, naturally, it has progressed very much. But there really was much more tranquility and everyone was content."

It was only some months after he had arrived in Mexico when Señor Degollado was named Imperial Ambassador to Washington, where he went, accompanied by his wife. Nevertheless, as Maximilian's government had not been recognized by that of the United States, the señora tells us that they were never received at the White House, having then departed for New York, to take charge of the Imperial Consulate of Mexico. They stayed there for some months, when they were recalled by the Emperor and, before leaving, delivered from the offices more than 20 thousand dollars in cash to a South American whose name Señora Degollado cannot recall. The fact is, very soon afterwards, that South Amerian disappeared with the 20 thousand dollars.

They continued in the Court until it was overthrown. There was a truly imperial luxury; the Empress Carlota tried to imprint upon the life of the Palace a most exaggerated luxury, similar to that of the European courts.

Later, in exile, Señor Degollado was named Governor of the Atlantic coast by the President of Guatemala, having stayed there for four years following Maximilian's execution. They were able to return to Mexico when President Juárez declared a general amnesty.

We ask Señora Jordan de Degollado what was her impression of Don Benito Juárez and if she could say anything about the men of that time; but she refused to speak about them, for she had never liked politics very much.

She also told us that she had been in Mexico for 50 years and although for much of that time she has been enclosed in her rooms, nonetheless, she knows about many episodes of our history. She has some family in the state of Virginia and never had children. Her nephews in the United States take care of her properties and periodically they send her some funds for her expenses. Her entire world in Mexico is limited to her servant Antonia, her four other servants and her "Chiquita," the little chihuahua, who, during our interview, never ceased to look at us with her shining eyes, as if wanting us to leave, for were were intruders.

Señora Degollado also told us about Señora Doña Guadalupe Orán, who is still living and who, with her and the Empress Carlota, are probably the last three ladies who remain from that ephemeral reign.

As recently as about ten years ago she received some letters from the Empress Carlota, but since then, she has had no news of her, only that which we announce in our visit, about her very delicate state of health.

Nothing impresses the senora Degollado anymore and we sincerely believe that she would have heard of the death of the Empress Carlota very naturally, for when she noted that both were about the same age, she added:

"Poor Carlota, she suffered very much."

We did not want to tire the elderly lady by bringing to mind such memories and so we thought it best to take our leave, and also say goodbye to Antonia, her kind and affectionate companion, as well as to "Chiquita," the loyal little dog that, with so much humilty, sleeps on her lap.

# # # To read the original version in Spanish, visit http://www.cmmayo.com/maximilian-cordelia-degollado.html

Brief Haitus until March 29

2011-03-08T06:55:00.000-08:00

This blog is updated on Tuesdays but as I'll be traveling, the next post will be on Tuesday March 29th.

Still to come: more about Gillow in Rome; the Salm-Salms; Carlota's letters; the Carlota colony, and more.

P.S. To be alerted about events and news, join my mailing list for a free, brief and informative newsletter sent out 5 - 6 times per year. (I do not share my mailing list and as I use mailchimp, a leading e-mail service, you can instantly opt out at any time.)

Miramar Castle or Il Castello di Miramare, Maximilian and Carlota's Residence in Trieste

2011-03-01T06:39:00.000-08:00

Miramar Castle or Il Castello di Miramare, in Trieste, was Maximilian and Carlota's residence before coming to Mexico. It's a very curious place, and my own visit, back in 2003, as part of my research for my novel The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire / El último príncipe del Imperio Mexicano was enormously and, to me, surprisingly, valuable.

I wrote about the visit in an essay, "From Mexico to Miramar or, Across the Lake of Oblivion," that was published a few years later, in 2006, in The Massachusetts Review. I think of "From Mexico to Miramar" as "a nonfiction novela about a fairytale." As of last week, the CD, a professionally made recording of my reading of the essay, is back in stock at CDBaby.

More Miramar links:

Official website of Miramar Castle
(In English, Italian, French and German.)

The Treaty of Miramar

Photos from my visit to Miramar, winter 2003

In the brief trailer for my book in Spanish, there is a spectacular photo (not mine-- it's istock.com) of Maximilian's sphynx, a souvenir of his visit to Egypt, in front of the towers.

Maximilien: Ópera historique en 3 actos et 9 tableaux

2011-02-22T00:05:00.000-08:00

A couple of years ago, the late great Mexican art historian Don Ricardo Pérez Escamilla very generously gave me his copy of a rare French libretto and program of the opera performed in the Académie Nationale de Musique et de Danse, Maximilien (libretto by R.S. Hoffman; adapted from the work by Franz Werfel; French adapted version by Armand Lunel; music by Darius Milhaud). The libretto was published in 1931 in Vienna.

The cast of characters (my translation):

Maximilian, Archduke of Austria, Emperor of Mexico (Baritone)

Carlota, Empress of Mexico (Soprano)

Princess Agnes Salm-Salm (Mezzo)

Chancellor Stefan Herzfeld, childhood friend of Maximilian (Baritone)

Tomás Mejía, Mexican General serving the Monarchy (Tenor)

Colonel Miguel López (Tenor)

Francois Achille Bazaine, Marshal of France, Commander-in-Chief of the Expeditionary Forces (Baritone)

Monsignor Pelagio Labastida, Cardinal of Mexico City and Puebla (Bass)

Three Mexican Republican generals reporting to Don Benito Juárez)
Porfirio Diaz (Bass)
Riva Palacio (Tenor)
Mariano Escobedo (Bass)

The Mayor (Basse)

CHORUSES

Indigenous People and Notables (Men)
Maximilian's Guests (Mixed)
The Crowd (Mixed)
Rebellious Soldiers, Indigenous People, etc. (Mixed)
The Delegantes of the Junta (2 tenors)
The Generals (2 tenors, 2 baritones)
Imperial Soldiers (Men)
The Crowd of Querétaro (Mixed)
Guards (2 tenors, 2 baritones)
An Officer and the Firing Squad - a Chaplain (Mute actors)
Republican Crowd (Mixed)

For more operas and musicals about Maximilian and Carlota, scroll down to the bottom of the Maximilian von Mexiko links page.

Next post next Tuesday.

John Bankhead Magruder: A Military Reappraisal by Thomas M. Settles

2011-02-15T23:27:00.000-08:00

As the subtitle indicates, most of Thomas M. Settles' splendid biography of John Bankhead Magruder (1807 - 1871) is dedicated to a detailed examination of his role in the U.S. Civil War, specifically, his audacious if nonetheless inevitably doomed defense of Richmond, and later, Galveston. Though this part of the narrative does not have direct bearing on Mexican history, it informs the portrait of an unusually flamboyant Confederate who, in defeat, looked south to a future in Maximilian's Mexican Empire.

Based on three decades of archival research, this biography must have been a titanic task, for Magruder left no diary and many of his most important papers were lost in a San Francisco fire. Worse, he was much maligned during his lifetime, victim of both malicious gossip from his Confederate rivals and less than sympathetic Federals-- just the sort of thing to send a biographer down blind alleys. In addition, there were misunderstandings, as when earlier historians, in recounting what appeared to be a less-than honorable leave-taking from Washington DC at the start of the Civil War, confounded Magruder with a relative.

General John Bankhead Magruder was, as Settles convincingly argues-- backing every point with what sometimes seems a forest of footnotes-- a Civil War general whose tactical ingenuity and tenacity are deserving of far greater respect than he has been accorded. Most of the book details his early military career, from West Point to a garrison duty and recruiting at various army posts from the Carolinas to Maine, until, with the invasion of Mexico in the late 1840s, his fortuntes took a radical turn. Along with many of the men who would later play major roles in the U.S. Civil War-- Grant, Lee, and McClellan, among them-- Magruder distinguished himself in several major battles against the Mexicans. (Magruder's artillery was, in fact, the first to fire upon Chapultepec Castle.) Following the U.S.-Mexican War, Magruder served in California, where in Los Angeles, briefly, he ran a saloon.

He was on a visit to Europe when recalled to Washington DC in 1861, only a month before his native state of Virginia seceded. He had not wanted to leave the U.S. Army, but as "he could not fight against his own people," he resigned, calling it "the most unhappy moment of my life." He walked across the Potomac, offered his services to the Confederacy and, in short order, was reporting to Robert E. Lee.

Settle's treatment of Magruder's return to Mexico in 1865, in the final chapter, "Postwar Odyssey," is a relatively brief one; nonetheless, it is an important contribution to understanding the nature and role of the ex-Confederates in Maximilian's government.

At the end of the U.S. Civil War, General Magruder was one of several thousand ex-Confederates who pulled up stakes for Mexico. In 1865 the French Imperial Army, considered the greatest in the world, occupied most, if not all of Mexican territory, while the ex Archduke of Austria, Maximilian, a direct descendant of the King of Spain during the Conquest, reigned as Emperor. Though by the late summer and fall of 1865, when the ex-Confederates began arriving en masse, the French occupation was beginning to fray at the edges, Maximilian and his consort, Carlota, still presided over a court and elaborate palace balls and other festivities that were, to Americans at that time, considered the height of glamor. In the words of journalist William V. Wells, this was the "high noon" of the empire, when it was impossible for many to even imagine the catastrophe that would, in only a matter of months, befall the "cactus throne."

Some ex-Confederates came to Mexico because they could not bear living in a defeated South, others, because they had expected to participate in a dynamic plantation economy under the French-backed Maximilian (who, to entice the ex-Confederate colonists, proclaimed slavery legal in Mexico). But others, such as General Magruder, simply felt pushed out. As Settles writes:

"It must have been extremely difficult for so proud a man as John Bankhead Magruder to have signed the articles surrendering the Trans-Mississippi Department. But when the Federals began arresting and imprisoning high Confederate officials, he resolutely refused to submit to such personal humiliation. He was not eligible for the amnesty proclaimed by President Lincoln on December 8, 1863, or that proclaimed by Andrew Johnson on May 29, 1865"

Although I had spent several years researching Mexico's Second Empire under Maximilian for my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, until recently, I was flummoxed as to the background of the author of the exceedingly rare English language memoir, Sketches of the Last Year of the Empire, Henry R. Magruder. It turns out he was the son of General John Bankhead Magruder and I now know, from Settles' biography, that father and son did not arrive in Mexico via the same route. General Magruder came down overland from Houston with General Shelby, while his wife, son Henry, and unmarried daughter, Kate Elizabeth, arrived via Veracruz, for they had come from Florence, Italy, where they had been residing for some years. As Settles explains,

"[B]ecause of the hardships of travel, uncomfortable living conditions, and extremes of climate found in the remote locales where magruder was stationed during his military career, [Mrs Magruder] found it more practical to live and raise her children in the comforts of Baltimore, where she could stay closer to family business interests. She remained there until 1850 when, as a consequence of [daughter] Isabella's ill health, she took her children to Europe. Mrs Magruder had relatives in Germany, but she moved to Italy, living briefly in Rome, then in Florence."

From Texas, not yet reunited with his family, Magruder headed straight down to Monterrey and then to Mexico City, arriving in the summer of 1865. Writes Settles:

"Magruder checked into a room on the first floor of the fashionable Iturbide Hotel, and there he received several distinguished visitors, including Matthew Fontaine Maury and his old friend Marshal Francois-Achille Bazaine, now in command of the imperial forces in Mexico. He also met with the British minister to Mexico, Sir Peter Campbell Scarlett, whose nephew, Lord Abinger, had married Magruder's niece, Helen Magruder, in Montreal several years earlier."

It appeared Magruder felt as at home as an American could be in Mexico City. He bought himself a new wardrobe, "'a cut-a-way suit of salt and pepper color, with a tall dove-colored hat and patent leather boots,' and then went to the palace of Montezuma [the Imperial Palace], which Scott's army had victoriously occupied eighteen years earlier."

Soon after a successful interview with Maximilian and Carlota, Magruder, now a naturalized Mexican citizen, was appointed head of Maximilian's Land Office of Colonization. The idea was to establish colonies along the main route inland from Veracruz to Mexico City, on land Juarez (under the Republic) had expropriated from the Church.

Settles covers the rapid collapse of the scheme along with Maximilian's government, and Magruder's return to the U.S. In 1867-- surprisingly, for memories of the Civil War remained fresh--- he attempted to set up a law office in New York City. His family had returned to Italy, but he remained in the U.S. to work the lecture circuit with a crowd-pleasing talk on Maximilian and Carlota. He was on that tour when, in a Houston hotel in 1871 he died of a stroke.

In sum, this is an important addition to the bibliography on Confederates in Mexico, and crucial reading for anyone who studies the U.S. Civil War, the U.S.-Mexico War, and / or Mexico's Second Empire. Highly recommended.

Next post: next Tuesday.

Confederates in Mexico: A Brief Bibliography

2011-02-08T16:04:00.000-08:00

An exotic but enduring subject of interest among U.S. Civil War history aficionados is the role played by Confederates, such as Commodore Matthew Fontaine Maury (pictured right), and later, a passel of ex-generals (Shelby, McGruder, and more), in lending, or perhaps I should say, attempting to lend prestige to Maximilian's monarchy in Mexico. After the surrender at Appomattox in 1865, an important number of ex-Confederates immigrated to Mexico, many (though not all) with the aim of establishing colonies. To war-weary ex-Confederates, Maximilian's Mexico might have appeared a delectable glass of water, but as quickly as if left out in the Mexican sun, it evaporated. In general, the ex-Confederates' stay south of the border was short, their attempts at establishing colonies intensely frustrating, and, ultimately, catastrophic, for by early 1866, Maximilian's government, bankrupt and demoralized, and having lost its French ally, was crumbling before the Juarista onslaught. Maximilian himself was captured, tried, and then executed by firing squad in June of 1867.

[Pictured right: General Joseph Shelby]

My own sense is that there is much still to be written about the ex-Confederates in Mexico, for so many of the historians of Mexico's Second Empire have lacked funding, or simply the wherewithal, to delve into the relevant Confederate archives, and vice versa--- it's nothing new that even otherwise beautifully educated Americans are more often than not woefully ignorant about Mexico and Mexican history, and, alas, the Spanish language. Serious research into the ex-Confederates in Mexico requires, at a minimum, three or more languages (Spanish and English, of course, plus French and German-- and the more German the better); deep knowledge of both Mexican politics, and Confederate politics, as well as culture, geography, terrain, mid-19th century farming practices, economics, and more. And not only all this: Mexico's Second Empire / French Intervention is an essentially transnational period, which is incomprehensible without an understanding of European and American geopolitics. Among the European actors in Mexico's French Intervention: France, of course, Austria and its dominions, Belgium, England, Spain, and-- vitally--the Vatican.

(Ay, not something to research just over a weekend! It took me more than seven years to research and write my novel about the true story of the half-American prince, Agustin de Iturbide y Green, in Maximilian's court, and I am still awed by the amount of research I could yet undertake... and I am so often tempted... )

To return to the point of this blog, which is to share my research, and so make it easier for other researchers to cover new ground:

Herewith, the major titles on the specific subject of Confederates and ex-Confederates in Mexico during the reign of Maximilian (and please leave a comment if you know of any title(s) I may have overlooked-- though, please note, with the exception of Stevenson, I am not including works that cover Maximilian and the Second Empire generally, or adventures not specifically about the Confederates, e.g., Blasio, Corti, Haslip, Niles, Pani, Ratz, Ridley, the Salm-Salms, et al. ):

Harmon, George D., "Confederate Migration to Mexico," The Hispanic American Historical Review (Nov., 1937)

Arthur, Anthony, General Shelby's March (Random House, 2010)
Note: This may be the most important recent addition to the literature on Confederates in Mexico. Alas, Arthur passed away in 2009. As soon as possible, I will make a note about this work on this blog.

Davis, Edwin Adams, Fallen Guidon: The Saga of Confederate General Jo Shelby's Expedition to Mexico (TAMU Press, 1995)

Edwards, John N., Shelby's Expedition to Mexico (Kansas City, 1872)
Note: the link is to a new edition, edited by Conger Beasely, Jr. (University of Arkansas, 2007)

Hanna, Alfred Jackson, "Role of Matthew Fontaine Maury in the Mexican Empire," An address before the annual meeting of the Virginia Historical society, January 17, 1947

Harter, Eugene C., The Lost Colony of the Confederacy (University of Mississippi Press, 1985)

McGruder, Henry R., Sketches of the Last Year of the Empire (London, 1868)
Note: The author was the son of General Magruder. The link is to my blog post about his book.

O'Flaherty, Daniel, General Jo Shelby (1954; reprint 2000)

Padgett, James A., ed., "Life of Alfred Mordecai in Mexico 1865-1866, as Told in His Letters to His Family (North Carolina Historical Review, April 1946 and January 1946)

Rister, Carl Cooke, "Carlotta, a Confederate Colony in Mexico" Journal of Southern History 11, February 1945

Mahoney, Harry Thayer and Majorie Locke Mahoney, Mexico and the Confederacy, 1860-1867 (San Francisco: Austin & Winfield, 1998),

Rolle, Andrew F., The Lost Cause: The Confederate Exodus to Mexico (University of Oklahoma Press, 1965)

Ruiz Ramón Eduardo, ed., An American in Maximilian's Mexico, 1865-1866: The Diaries of William Marshall Anderson (San Marino, 1959)

Terrell, Alexander Watkins, From Texas to Mexico and the Court of Maximilian in 1865 (Dallas, 1933).

Settles, Thomas M., John Bankhead Magruder: A Military Reappraisal (LSU Press, 2009)

Stevenson, Sara Yorke, Maximilian in Mexico: A Woman's Reminiscences of French Intervention 1862-1867 (The Century Co., 1897)
(The link goes to my blog post about this wonderful and very richly detailed eyewitness memoir.)

Williams, Frances Leigh, Matthew Fontaine Maury: Scientist of the Sea (Rutgers University Press, 1963)

+++++++++++++

>>Finally, different as they are, the novel by Elizabeth Boatright Coker, The Grasshopper King (1981), and the movie The Undefeated (1969), starring John Wayne and Rock Hudson, both have to do with the saga of the Confederates in Mexico.

>>Confederate characters appear in Fernando del Paso's novel Noticias del Imperio and, fleetingly, in my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire.

>>For a general selected bibliography of the Second Empire, please visit my "Maximilian" page.

Next post next Tuesday.

Monseñor Eulogio Gillow, the Iturbides, and the ex-Hacienda de Chautla

2011-02-01T12:29:00.000-08:00

One of the most moving and curious things about having written a book about the 19th century is that, on many an occasion, I am reminded that it wasn't all that long ago. True, everyone alive in the 1860s is long dead, but there are many people alive today who knew people who knew those people*. I'm not yet 50, and I remember my great grandmother, who grew up in the house of her uncle, William Wirt Calkins, who fought in the U.S. Civil War and wrote the magnificent History of the 104th Illinois. Several descendants of the people upon whom I based the characters in my novel have written to me; I am more grateful and touched than I can say. And there are others, who are not related, but have shared letters, documents, photographs, books, and more. One, a Mexico City editor and historian, a relative of Monseñor Eulogio Gillow, lent me a copy of Gillow's rare and very illuminating memoir, which was published, alas, obscurely, in Spanish in 1921 in Los Angeles. I had never, in all my several years of researches and reading, come upon it. (Admittedly, in the last couple of years, the google searches have begun to yield far more fruit-- google and ye shall find. Also try www.abebooks.com, the used / antiquarian on-line bookselling mega-site.)

Monseñor Gillow

But first a bit of background about Monseñor Gillow. Some 10 years ago, when I began my research into Mexico's Second Empire/ French Intervention, I did not know who he was, so when, in the Matías Romero archive at Banco de México, I came upon his circa 1890 correpondence with Romero and Porfirio Díaz about then cavalary captain Agustín de Iturbide y Green, I assumed he was an American. Wrong I was.

Gillow was a powerful Mexican cleric, a close confidant of Porfirio Díaz, the then President /dictator (not overthrown until the Revolution of 1910). Whence the name Gillow? He was the son of Thomas Gillow, an English jeweler who had come to Mexico from Liverpool. Don Tomás, as he became known in Mexico, had first married the spectaculary wealthy Mexican Marchioness of Selva Nevada, and upon her death, married her daughter, his own stepdaughter, Mara Zavalza. It was from this second marriage that Euologio was born, and so it was that Eulogio inherited the vast Hacienda de San Antonio Chautla, then one of Mexico's most important estates.

Eulogio was educated in England, joined the Church, served in the Vatican as Pope Pius IX's personal aide, and then, having returned to Mexico, as Archbishop of Oaxaca.

His Memoir,
Reminencias del Ilmo y Rmo Sr Dr D Eulogio Gillow y Zabalza, arzobispo de Antiquera (Oaxaca), Los Angeles, California, 1921

The book has two chapters of special interest for anyone researching the Second Empire / French Intervention:

Chapter X, which recounts the Empress Carlota's mental breakdown in Rome in 1866, is something very unusual. I have not seen it quoted in any of the mountain of works I've read on the Second Empire-- tell me, readers, did I miss something?-- which is astonishing, for Gillow, a Mexican, was with the Pope at the time, a "camerero secreto supernumerario" (a secret supernumerary chamberlain-- that's my guess at the proper translation.)

Chapter XIX, pp. 202-207 recounts visits from Doña Alicia de Iturbide (the American mother of Agustín de Iturbide y Green) several anedcotes about the grandsons of the Emperor Iturbide, and how Doña Alicia came to to purchase an hacienda in the neighborhood. (And there is a description of that hacienda in Fanny Chambers Gooch's Face to Face with the Mexicans.)

The Ex-Hacienda de Chautla
Long an avid adopter of the latest agricultural technologies, in the late 1890s Monseñor Gillow determined to found an agricultural college on his hacienda; the lovely little English castle served as its headquarters. It was elaboraely furnished, and had a gallery with armor and uniforms of the Pope's Swiss Guards.

It was this wonderfully detailed article in MexConnect by Tony Burton that made me determined to go see the ex-Hacienda de Chautla for myself. And, last week, on the way back to Mexico City from Puebla (where I attended the book launch for Margarita López Cano's Ópera en la Puebla Imperial, I finally did.

It's just a hop off the road from Cholula. The property, drastically reduced after the Revolution, is now owned by the state of Puebla and has been turned into a family oriented trout fishing center. The little castle, terribly neglected, and used now as a cafeteria, is much prettier seen from a distance. I arrived too late to try the trout, but I can recommend the fresh air, and the views of the volcanoes.
*More about that in my article for beatrice.com, "What Connects You to the 1860s?"

Next post next Tuesday.

Ópera y vida cotidiana en la Puebla Imperial, a new book by Margarita López Cano

2011-01-25T23:52:00.000-08:00

Professor of history and opera expert Margarita López Cano has just brought out a fascinating new book, Ópera y vida cotidiana en la Puebla Imperial ("Opera and Daily Life in Imperial Puebla"), co-published by CONACULTA and the Secretary of Culture of the State of Puebla, as part of the "Colección Bicentenario 2010."

Puebla is that Mexican city made famous by the Cinco de Mayo, the temporary but devastating defeat of the invading French Imperial Army in 1862. One of Mexico's most splendid Spanish colonial cities, Puebla is strategically situated on the route inland from Veracruz; no power could rule from Mexico City without first controlling Puebla. The French did retake Puebla a year later, however, and then Mexico City; thus, only a year later than planned, by the spring of 1864, having been crowned Emperor and Empress of Mexico in Trieste, Maximilian and Carlota were en route.

The Second Empire has a rich and staggeringly diverse soundtrack (I've written up a full playlist, from Sawerthal to Chopin to French marching songs to nursery ditties, here), but European opera-- Verdi, Bellini, et al-- alien and modern as it must have sounded to so many Mexicans at the time, reigned supreme among the elite, favored as it was by Maximilian and his court.

From the back cover text of Margarita López Cano's book (and I will follow each paragraph with my translation for those of you who don't read Spanish):

A pesar de la guerra y los periodos de crísis, en la segunda mitad del convulso siglo XIX, y específicamente durante el llamado Segundo Imperio, la ópera cobró gran importancia dentro del contexto cultural. México llegó ser uno de los escenarios más importantes del continente americano en donde se presentaron las óperas de compositores italianos, franceses, alemanes, brasileños y mexicanos. El género llegó a ser un evento "obligado" dentro del protocolo de sucesos especiales y sus representaciones fueron imprescindibles para honrar a hombre destacados, dar la bienvenida a personajes importantes y conmemorar fecha y acontecimieintos relevantes.

[My translation: In spite of war and periods of crisis, in the second half of the tumultuous 19th century, and specifically the so-called Second Empire, opera took on great importance within the cultural context. Mexico became one of the most important venues on the American continent in which operas were presented by Italian, French, German, Brazilian and Mexican composers. The genre became a "must" event within the protocol of special events and its performances considered essential to honor outstanding men, offer a welcome to dignitaries, and to commemorate relevant dates and events.]

La ópera fue parte muy importante de la cultura de los poblanos en el Segundo Imperio. Las funciones operísticas fueron escenarios privilegiados donde la sociedad se clasificó jerárquicamente de acuerdo a su estatus socioeconómico y funcioné asimismo como un instrumento de identificación de preferencias, gustos, sensibilidades y percepciones. Asistir a una función de ópera constituyó una excelente ocasión para socializar de la clase elistista y refinada, una práctica erudita, como dice Michel de Certeau.

[My translation: Opera was a very important part of cultural life for Poblanos (residents of Puebla) during the Second Empire. Opera performances were an exclusive arena, where society was classified hierarchically in accord with socioeconomic status; they also served as an instrument by which people could express their identify by their preferences, tastes, sensibilities and perceptions. As Michel de Certeau says, for the elite and refined class, attending an opera, an erudite practice, constituted an excellent opportunity to socialize.]

En este libro, Margarita López Cano analiza la presencia de la ópera durante el imperio de Maximiliano en la urbe angelopolitana y nos brinda un cuadro vivo y aleccionador de la vida social y cultural de la época.

[My translation: In this book, Margarita López Cano analyzes the importance and nature of opera during Maximilian's empire in the greater Puebla metropolitan area and offers a vivid and instructive social and cultural portrait of the period.]

I was very fortunate to be able to attend the excellent presentation in Puebla on Monday, in which Professor López Cano played some video clips from operas by Verdi and Bellini. Though these were 20th century performances with stars such as Luciano Pavarotti and Joan Sutherland, they were nontheless examples of the very operas that had been performed in Imperial Puebla.

Two more examples I found on YouTube:

Song of Oscar in Verdi's "The Masked Ball"

Joan Sutherland in Bellini's "Norma"

A write-up of the book launch appeared in today's La Jornada.

P.S. Since 2001 Professor López Cano has hosted the radio show "Los secretos del canto" (Secrets of Song). Follow her on twitter @operaparatodos and her blog, Operaparatodos.

Next post next Tuesday.

Matías Romero's Visit to Springfield in 1861

2011-01-18T13:05:00.000-08:00

Mexican and U.S. history interlace in so many complex and surprising ways. Just this morning, while perusing the New York Times on my iPad, I happened upon "Lincoln's Mexican Visitor" by Willam Moss Wilson, about President Juárez's ambassador, Matías Romero, and his visit to President-elect Lincoln in 1861.

"Matias Romero arrived in Springfield, Ill. on the evening of Jan. 18, 1861. Though late in the day, he figured it would be easy to find a room in this sleepy midwestern town. But there were no rooms available at his first choice, the American Hotel, or anywhere else: all the hotels in town were full of friends, patronage seekers and the merely curious who had come to meet President-elect Lincoln... " READ MORE

To give you a little perspective, should you require it, 1861 was but a decade and a bit beyond the end of the US-Mexican War, in which Mexico lost vast swaths of its territory. Anyone who was or who intended to rule Mexico had to take into account the still voracious and increasingly powerful neighbor to its north. This was precisely the time when Louis Napoleon was beginning to cobble together the scheme that turned into the so-called "Mexican Expedition" and, with the blessing of the Catholic Church and a not-so-small group of Mexican monarchists, the placement-- in 1864-- of Maximilian von Habsburg upon the Mexican throne.

So: 1861. Matías Romero travels to Springfield. This was no small journey. It was a very savvy political investment, and in making it, Juárez may well have established a solid foundation for later successes, in no small part with the help of the post-Civil War United States, against the Mexican Empire.

William Moss Wilson's is a fascinating article, well worth reading.

P.S. One of the key figures working against the Mexican Empire, and for the reinstatement of the Mexican Republic, was John Bigelow, who served as U.S. Minister to France during and for a brief time after the U.S. Civil War. (He also happened to play a role in the story of "prince" Agustín de Iturbide y Green's American mother's attempts to get her son back from Maximilian--- the subject of my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, which is based closely on the true story.) Bigelow's papers, in the Mansucripts Division of the New York Public Library, are an invaluable resource for anyone interested in this period. Bigelow took meticulous note of his meetings with Louis Napoleon, Drouyn de Lhuys (the French Foreign Minister), Dr Evans (the American dentist who played go-between), and E. Gould Buffum, the Paris correspondent for the NY Herald, among others. And of course, there are copies of
Bigelow's official correspondence with Secretary of State Seward, as well.

As for Matías Romero's magnificent archive: it is at the Banco de México in Mexico City and can be consulted upon request. Click here for a PDF document by archivist Guadalupe Monroy.

Resuming Next Week... Happy 2011

2011-01-11T23:49:00.000-08:00

This blog will resume next Tuesday. It's been an extra long holiday... Good wishes for 2011!

Meanwhile, if you're happening upon this blog for the first time, be sure to check out the Maximilian page, with many links to on-line articles and books, photos, bibliographies, and much more.

John Bankhead Magruder: A Military Reappraisal by Thomas M. Settles

2010-12-07T23:12:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: See the complete review posted February 15, 2011 here.

This new biography of a key 19th century military figure is crucial reading for anyone interested in the U.S.-Mexican War, the Civil War, and / or Mexico's Second Empire. My review will be published in this blog early next year.

Ein Kaiser unterwegs (An Emperor en route)

2010-11-30T23:47:00.000-08:00

Maximilian accepted the throne of Mexico without ever having seen it-- he was crowned Emperor in 1864 in his residence in Trieste (then part of Austria, now Italy). Once he arrived in Mexico, however, he made strenuous efforts to tour the country and get to know its people, its moneymen and other key players, its natural wonders and, of course, the silver mines. As anyone who tries to write about Mexico's Second Empire soon discovers, Maximilian's (and his consort Carlota's) incessant travels make any chronology of the period headscratchingly complex.

Enter the indispensable Ein Kaiser unterwegs: Die Reisen Maximilians von Mexiko 1864-1867 nach Presseberichten und Privatbriefen* by Konrad Ratz and Amparo Gómez Tepexicuapan (Vienna: Böhlau, 2007), which details Maximilian's multitude of journeys in Mexico during the Second Empire. These include his inaugural tours of 1864 and then 1865 to the silver mines; 1865 and 1866 to Cuernavaca; October 1866 through January 1867 to Orizaba and back to the capital; and the final journey to Querétaro in 1867.

A hardcover edition with many rare photographs, documents, and new maps, a bibliography, and an index of biographical names, this is an essential addition to any collection concerning the period.

About the authors: Konrad Ratz has published many works on Maximilian and the Second Empire. His most recent is Tras las huellas de un desconocido: nuevos datos y aspectos de Maximiliano de Habsburgo. Amparo Gómez Tepexicuapan is curator of documents and flags in Mexico's National Museum of History, in Chapultepec Castle.

I understand the book will be available in Spanish soon.

*I would translate this as An Emperor En Route: Maximilian of Mexico's Travels 1864-1867, from Press Reports and Private Correspondence.

Next post: next Tuesday.

Feria Internacional del Libro, Guadajara, November 27th

2010-11-23T22:05:00.000-08:00

This Saturday November 27th at 6 pm at the Feria Internacional del Libro in Guadalajara, I will be presenting my novel, El último príncipe del Imperio Mexicano (Grijalbo Random House Mondadori), which is the magnificent translation by Agustín Cadena of my novel The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire (Unbridled Books).

(Last year, I presented the English version, and blogged about the fair here and here--- and also about Literal, its editor, my amiga Rose Mary Salum, and a little literary history including about Tameme and El corno emplumado. One of the people I was especially happy to see last year was Spanish and Ladino translator Trudy Balch, who, alas, passed away last month in New York. Read Trudy's fascinating guest-blog post about Mexican activist Gaby Brimmer here.)

The two writers who will be presenting my novel at FIL are Carlos Pascual (author of La insurgenta, winner of the Grijalbo award for best bicentennial historical novel), and historian Alejandro Rosas. (Alejandro also presented the English version of the novel in Mexico City last year.)

P.S. Carlos is also an actor; I think he may read a section of the novel.

The details / Los detalles:
27/11/2010
Presentación del libro
El último príncipe del imperio mexicano por C.M. Mayo
Presentan:
Carlos Pascual, Alejandro Rosas
Horario:
18:00 a 18:50
Salón Elías Nandino, planta alta, Expo Guadalajara

The event is free and open to the public.

More anon.

My Recollections of Maximilian by Marie de la Fère: A Rare English Language Eyewitness Memoir

2010-11-16T23:30:00.000-08:00

The historian Robert Ryal Miller mentioned this rare manuscript, a circa 1910 English language handwritten eyewitness memoir of Maximilian, in a letter to me some years ago. He had found it at the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, and was preparing an edited and annotated version for publication. Alas, Miller died in 2004 without, as far as I know, having published it. I have not seen what Miller wrote, I am sad to say, for I understand he had identified the author whose name was not — as I too, immediately suspected -- "Marie de la Fère." When I visited the Bancroft as part of my own research for my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, I dutifully looked up this manuscript. I was glad I did, for, among so many other things, it gave me insight into the strong feelings of the monarchists and Maximilian's character.

After Miller's death, as I felt this memoir deserved more readers than we intrepid few who have eyes for microfiches, I wrote to the Bancroft for permission to print it here. This was granted in 2006.

Would that I could offer a more detailed introduction, but this extraordinary memoir has been waiting in my files long enough. (For those of you looking for a basic introduction to Maximilian and the Second Mexican Empire, I can suggest my book, as well as others on the "Maximilian" webpage's links and my own bibliography. Also, Robert Ryal Miller's Mexico: A History gives a brief but fine and very readable overview of the French Intervention / Second Empire.) I have corrected some misspellings and punctuation, though in some places, where it reveals the author's charming linguistic melange, I have left it intact. A few notes appear in brackets rather than footnotes, for ease in reading on-line. In a few places the handwriting was unreadable; these I have noted with brackets around a question mark.

Aside from such very minor blemishes, here, dear reader, is a true literary treasure of the Second Empire.

It seems almost impossible that forty three years have passed since I was a witness and participator in the events connected with Maximilian's reign three brief years in Mexico. My father was a retired American banker and while traveling in Mexico had met and married my mother, who is of Spanish and French descent. When Maximilian landed at Veracruz, I was but seventeen years old. I was old enough to realize and know that Mexican affairs both political and financially were in terrible straights. My father conversed very freely to us in English regarding the status of affairs. His money he trusted to no Mexican bank; everything we had was in New Orleans and he lived on the income accruing from his investments there. When Juarez left the city and we learned that the French troops were steadily advancing in [?] first Orizaba, Puebla and were almost in Mexico City, father wished us to all leave and embark either for New Orleans or Europe, but my mother would not listen to it. Monseñor Labastida, who was always a welcome visitor, had thoroughly imbued her with his ideas of Mexico's coming greatness as soon as the Church party got control of affairs and she was determined to see it out. And again a letter from France notified us that our relative, Mama's uncle, an officer, was coming with the "Interventionists."

On June 10th 1863 my father came home in a hurry saying that the French troops were entering the city, which he had scarcely finished before the cannon commenced their salutes, also the bells of all the churches began ringing, the crowds in the streets were [?] Triumphal arches with pictures of Napoleon and Eugenia wreathed in flowers were in Plateros and San Francisco streets at the Cathedral a Te Deum was chanted in honor of the entrance of General Forey and Saligny with the French troops. In the evening a large reception was given by the Ayuntamiento at the Nacional [sic] Palace in honor of the French officers. CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING

Henry R. Magruder's Woodcuts of Mexico in 1866

2010-11-09T19:31:00.000-08:00

All ten of Henry R. Magruder's woodcuts from his memoir, Sketches of the Last Year of Mexican Empire, are now on-line at my Maximilian on-line reading page. (Once there, if you click on an image, the link will take to you the high res 300 dpi of same.) Henry R. Magruder was the son of ex-Confederate John Magruder who came to Mexico to Mexico in 1866. More about the Confederates soon...

Read my previous post about the author and his memoir here.

Next post next Tuesday.

Dr. J. Marion Sims (January 25, 1813 - November 12, 1883)

2010-11-02T23:09:00.000-07:00

One of the enduring mysteries of Mexico's Second Empire is why, after several years of marriage, Maximilian and Carlota could not have children. In my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, which is based on the true story of the scandal of Maximilian's "adoption" of the Emperor Iturbide's grandsons, I leave the reader to continue contemplating the mystery, for there were (and are), so many contradictory theories, many from murky sources and / or clearly and merely malicious gossip and propaganda, and not one of them do I find completely convincing.

That said, there is a theory I favor. I found it in the personal diary of John Bigelow, 1882, which I consulted in the Manuscripts Division of the New York Public Library. The U.S. Minister to France during Mexico's Second Empire / French Intervention, Bigelow later visited Mexico City as a tourist, and there he interviewed Doña Alicia Green de Iturbide, the mother of Agustín de Iturbide y Green, the "last prince." She told Bigelow that Maximilian had tried to engage a Dr Sims of New York to come to Mexico and perform an operation on Carlota, but Dr Sims asked for 30,000 dollars, a staggering sum at that time, and General Almonte refused to support such an expenditure.

Is it true? In all my forays in the archives, I have been unable to find any correspondence with Dr Sims (nor anyone else) on such a matter. However, it can be said that Doña Alicia de Iturbide is a far more credible source than most, for she knew General Almonte (he was the guest honor at her wedding to Angel de Iturbide in 1855, and, in Paris in the summer of 1866, the Almontes and the Iturbides would have been hovering together around the Grand Hotel, in wait for Carlota) and, of course, Doña Alicia herself signed the contract in which the childless Maximilian took custody of her son and nephew in 1865.

In a visit to the New York Historical Society, I did find out this: had Carlota needed surgery, the ideal candidate would have been, indeed, Dr. Sims of New York, for he was the leading gynecologist of his time, well known in Brussels, Vienna, and Paris. Originally from the south, Sims had moved to New York for his health. During the Civil War, he sided with the Confederacy and spent the duration in Paris, where one of his patients was none other than the Empress Eugenie.

Further reading about Dr. J. Marion Sims:

American National Biography, vol. 20, pp. 25-26, Oxford University Press, 1999

The Story of My Life by J. Marion Sims, edited by his son, H. Marion Sims (1884); republished in 1968 with a new preface by C. Lee Burton

Sexual Surgery and the Origins of Gynecology: J. Marion Sims, His Hospital and His Patients, by Deborah Kuhn McGregor, 1990

Women's Surgeon: The Life Story of J. Marion Sims, by Seale Harris, 1950.

And here is a photo and some information about his statue in New York's Central Park.

More anon.

Researcher of a Different Empire: Roger Mansell 1935 - 2010

2010-10-26T12:03:00.000-07:00

After a long battle with cancer, Roger Mansell, my dad, passed away early in the morning on October 25. He was a great father and he also left the legacies of his research, archive, and encouragement and example. After a career in business (mainly in the printing industry) he dedicated himself to researching the Allied POWs under the Japanese during WWII. He was never a POW himself; he had served as a lieutenant in Korea in the late 50s. It was his love of history and the opportunity to be of service that prompted him to dedicate more than twenty years to compiling an unprecedented data base on the POWs under the Japanese. He also dedicated many of his days to helping other researchers, both professional and amateur, including many family members of POWs who were trying to find out what had happened to their fathers, grandfathers, uncles, and friends.

The data base, with its camp rosters and much more, is at www.mansell.com.

His forthcoming book, The Forgotten Men of Guam, is being edited by historian Linda Goetz Holmes. It tells the story of what happened to the military men and civilians (mainly Pan Am Clipper crews) who were captured on Guam after Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Over the years he had amassed a magnificent archive of World War II-era research materials consisting of more than fifteen linear feet of documents, including memoirs and interviews with survivors, some fifteen hours of video recordings, and approximately four hundred published titles (many extremely rare), which he donated to the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, last month. (Click here to read about the archive.)

Please visit www.rogermansell.com, the website I created for him, to read about his work, which I hope may continue to help people researching this period, and to tell this terrible story of the POWs, which had been so long buried in inaccessible archives.

As for Mexico's Second Empire / French Intervention, as many of you know, there are still hundreds of untold stories, just waiting for researchers and translators. Though he researched a different period and part of the world, my dad has been a great inspiration, both to me, and to so many others.

More next Tuesday.

How Mad was Carlota?

2010-10-19T22:21:00.000-07:00

Over the past year I've done several interviews about the research behind my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, which came out in 2009. While most this fall have been in Spanish (apropos of the Spanish translation, El último príncipe del Imperio Mexicano), a couple of new ones are on-line in English, one at Maria Ferrer's Latinabookclub.com and the other at Margaret Donsbach's historicalnovels.info.

And here is some Q & A about Carlota, from an unpublished section of an interview by David Heath apropos of 2009's "Fall for the Book" festival:

David Heath: History forms a definite frame for the story, but between the conflicting accounts and gossip, much is left for the reader to decide. How mad was Empress Carlota, for example? After all, someone really was drugging her coffee, and Maximilian’s thoughts about how to help her made me think of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story “The Yellow Wallpaper.”

C.M. Mayo: Yes, he said, she said, they said . . . there are many different “realities” floating around in there. To give one example, according to the memoirs and other documents I’ve seen, the party close to the Emperor Maximilian insisted that General Bazaine, head of the French forces in Mexico, was a corrupt brute, while the people close to General Bazaine held him in high esteem as a valiant soldier and capable administrator and they considered Maximilian lost in the clouds. Needless to say, Maximilian and Bazaine were at loggerheads.

As for Carlota, I think she was what we could call bipolar, and in the fall of 1866, she suffered a severe psychotic breakdown. According to her biographers, including one of her own family members, Prince Michael Greece, who had access to the family archives, she experienced psychotic episodes throughout her life, some quite violent, until she died in Belgium at the age of 86.

The bit about someone drugging her: according to an 1866 letter from Joaquín Velázquez de Léon, Maximilian’s acting consul in Rome, her doctor, Bohuslavek, alarmed by her severe anxiety (hysteria, they would have called it then), was dosing her coffee with a sedative. Well, if you were already stressed, under terrific pressure — at this time she was in Europe, desperately seeking help for the collapsing Mexican Empire — and you drank coffee but then felt oddly sleepy, wouldn’t that reinforce your paranoia?

One of the things few people realize about her is that, as the daughter of the King of the Belgians, first cousin of Queen Victoria and, most importantly, granddaughter of King Louis-Philippe of France (who abdicated after the insurrection of 1848), Carlota would have been acutely aware of the unfortunate history of the Empress Josephine. Empress Josephine, as you will recall, was considered an enemy of the State by many people, including some close to her husband, Napoleon Bonaparte, because she was too old to produce an heir. Josephine was terrified that she would be poisoned. In the end, no one killed her; Napoleon divorced her to marry an Austrian Archduchess who was, by the way, one of Maximilian’s aunts. (Yes, these royal genealogies are a tangle!)

So, Carlota’s paranoia about being poisoned was not unfounded. Furthermore, by this time there had been a number of attempts to assassinate Maximilian—and, by the way, Queen Victoria and Louis Napoleon and Maximilian’s older brother, Kaiser Franz Joseph. No doubt there were people who would have been glad to kill Carlota, though I doubt they would have bothered at this late stage (1866). Add to that the terrific stress she was under, both politically and personally. The family members closest to her, her father and her grandmother, had recently died; she was an orphan, in her mid-20s, and terribly isolated. And she was always supremely conscious of the need to maintain imperial prestige—which meant an elaborate etiquette, including the strict rule that no one could touch her, nor speak to her without her first speaking to them. No doubt this added to her sense of personal isolation.

How mad was Carlota? In the early 1880s, Alice de Iturbide, mother of the prince, openly said to Bigelow (I found that in his diaries also) that Carlota was not so mad as they made out. Well, let’s remember, Alice did not see Carlota after 1866. That said, someone who is bipolar can behave quite normally at times. And Alice was quite right that Carlota’s brother, King Leopold, famously avaricious, would have wanted control over her substantial personal fortune. But I don’t think it’s all that big a mystery. It’s just tremendously sad. Carlota was a person who had a splendid education, many talents, and an enormous capacity for hard work. She was dedicated heart and soul but, alas, to a project that shouldn’t have been launched in the first place. What I wonder is whether her mental health would have remained stable had she refused the call to Mexico. Perhaps so. We’ll never know.

Next post next Tuesday.

Sketches of the Last Year of the Mexican Empire by Henry R. Magruder

2010-10-12T19:40:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: Mystery solved. See my review (February 15, 2011) of Thomas M. Settles' new biography of General John Bankhead Magruder.

Who was Henry R. Magruder? His Sketches of the Last Year of the Mexican Empire (London: 1868-- and I understand there is a different edition printed by Charles Ritter, Wiesbaden), a generously vivid memoir of a visit to Mexico in 1866, does not say. A reasonable guess, from the quality of the prose and the meetings and scenes the author describes, might be that he was a well-connected American in Mexico City on Church business, for the book is dedicated "with sentiments of profound respect" to His Holiness Pope Pius IX (Pio Nono, none other). In the final pages, however, he mentions his "own appointment ceasing with the departure of the French Troops," and that he left shortly before they did, which would have been at the end of 1866 or early 1867.

A few years ago, when I first came across this rare--- and indeed rarely included in bibliographies of the Second Empire--- 135-page memoir with its several woodcuts apparently by the author himself, I did a google search on the author's name and came up with nothing, except John B. Magruder, who was the ex-commander-in-chief of Confederate forces in Texas and came to Mexico as one of Maximilian's colonists. I wasn't sure what the relationship, if any, might have been between John and Henry Magruder. No doubt rolling up one's sleeves and delving into the works on the Confederates and perhaps an archive or three could solve the mystery... but for my purposes, now, happily, there are a few notes on genealogy forums. From one entry dated May 26, 2008:

The Washington (DC) Herald, 3 FEB 1907, p. 11, report had the headline: "Feared Burial Alive. Henry MAGRUDER Asked That Limbs Be Cut by Surgeon. Made Request In His Will. Former Baltimore Man Who Dies in Rome Leaves Gold Sword and Silver Pitcher to Smithsonian Institute. He Had Lived in Italy for More Than Forty Years."

"Special to the Washington Herald. Baltimore, Md., Feb. 2--The will of Henry R. MAGRUDER, a native of this city, who died in Rome, Italy, on January 31, was admitted to probate in the Orphans' Court to-day. He provided that $700 be given to the owners of the Allari Protestant Cemetery in Florence, Italy, for the preservation of the graves of his mother, sister, and himself, directing that the graves be decorated on All Saints' Day and April 25, each year, the latter date being the anniversary of the death of his sister.

"The testator showed in the document a great fear of being buried alive. He directed that the body be taken in charge by the American consul at Florence, who, after leaving the body in the church for forty-eight hours, must cut deep into his leg and arm, insuring that he is dead. A post-morten must then be ordered, after which the body is to be placed in the Allari Cemetery. For his trouble the American counsel is to receive $200.

"To the United States government, for the Smithsonian Institution, Mr. MAGRUDER left the gold sword and silver pitcher given his father by the State of Virginia and the State of Maryland; the portrait of his sister in pastel; a porcelain plate containing the picture of 'Jo,' with interpretation by his sister, and his decotration of Mexico and diploma belonging thereto. Should the government refuse the bequest it is provided that his nephew, Dr. Thomas BUCKLER, and one of the nieces of the testator designate some museum to receive the gifts... He left his household effects to Dr. BUCKLER and the four nieces of the testator.

"Mr. MAGRUDER had lived in Italy for the past forty years, though he was born in this city. His father was the late Gen. John Bankhead MAGRUDER, of the Confederate army. At the beginning of the civil war Mr. MAGRUDER and his family moved to Italy, living in Rome during the winter and at Florence in the summer. The MAGRUDER houses, both in Florence and Rome, were visited by many prominent Americans during their sojurn in Italy."

And now-- with a another google search-- I find there is a new biography of John B. Magruder by Thomas Settles, recently published by LSU Press. (As soon as amazon.com ships that one to my door, I'll check the index for Henry R.)

Back to Sketches of the Last Year of the Mexican Empire. Henry R. Magruder arrived in Mexico in the winter of 1866, just days before the murder of the Belgian envoy Baron Frederic Victor d'Huart-- a personal friend of the Empress Carlota's brother, the Duke of Flanders-- at Rio Frio, shot in the head by bandits. Politically, for Maximilian's government, this, though not the first, was the definitive slip down the fatal slope. As Sara Yorke Stevenson writes in her memoir, Maximilian in Mexico, "The news of this tragedy, when it reached Europe, must have cast a lurid light upon the true condition of the Mexican Empire."

Slowly and with several dangerous mishaps, Magruder made his way inland from Veracruz. For anyone looking for a description of the brutal and spectacular journey by stagecoach (diligencia), his memoir is one of the most detailed I've yet come across. Here he comes over the mountains nearing Puebla:

Certain portions of the road appeared almost perpendicular, having at the same time no parapet to prevent accidents, consequently if the mules had made a single false step the diligence would have been dashed down precipices the frightful height of which, caused one to shudder. Occasionally we stopped to rest the mules, and the driver would then rush to the rear of the stage to place a stone under the wheel, and thus relieve the poor over-driven mules from the great weight...

... Beneath us could be seen as far as the eye could reach, the "Tierra Caliente" with its peculiar red and grey soil, covered here and there by fields of Maguey plant, in form and colour like an enormous cactus, on all sides the valley, or rather plain, is bounded by tremendous mountains of varied shape, their appearance plainly showing their volcanic origin...

And sometime later:

... The road we had had been traveling over now lay hundreds of feet below and could be easily distinguished by the long train of dust, raised by the passing diligences. We met numerous waggons laden with merchandise on their way to the city of Mexico, some having as many as forty or fifty mules and horses harnessed to them; it appeared quite wonderful how the drivers managed them.

The descriptions of the food, lodging and rural poverty, make less than appetizing reading. But once in Mexico City, the scene could not be more different.

A brief digression. As I've noted in the epilogue of my book, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, which is based on the true story of Agustin de Iturbide y Green, the grandson of the Emperor Iturbide who was made an Imperial Highness and incoporated into Maximilian's court, in almost all the works on the Second Empire, the Iturbide affair is told only vaguely, or with serious errors and sometimes bizarre distortions. There are many reasons for this, but to focus on the book at hand: Magruder's is one of the very few to give the Iturbides a mention, and if not much detail, at least more than usual, and it appears that he met with Princess Iturbide (Josefa de Iturbide, daughter of the Emperor and aunt to the little prince). It is possible he or some of his family may have known the Iturbides in Washington DC. Certainly, Princess Iturbide would have shared Magruder's ardent feelings about the Pope.

Here is Magruder's description of what must have been one of the last of the court balls-- and his sympathies are blazingly clear:

...The toilettes of the Mexican ladies are strikingly splendid one suprassing the other; the jewels worn by them magnificent. At about half past eight o'clock the ladies took their positions along one side of the ball-room, whilst the gentlemen remained standing on the opposite side. Their Imperial Majesties entered at the upper end, followed by the gentlemen of the court and the dames d'honneur, prominent amongst whom was the Señorita Varela a pure Indian, said to be the sole living descendant of the Montezumas. The Court passed through the allée formed by the crowd. The Emperor and Empress were gracious and condescending to all, stopping now and then to speak in their own language to those who had been presented to them. The Emperor's appearance was all that could be desired in a man, tall, with a commanding and at the same time graceful figure, and far taller than all the splendid cavaliers who surrounded him, his face is amiable, and an ethusuiast might be forgiven for saying, angelic. But for his figure one could have mistaken him for a beautiful woman, so full of genial kindness and perfect refinement was the face; he was a man once seen never forgotten.

(For more about Maximilian, visit the Maximilian von Mexiko page; for more about the court balls, see the article by William Wells for the Overland Monthly.)

How quickly things changed for Maximilian. Out of money, out of political support, both in Mexico and abroad, Maximilian was defenseless against Louis Napoleon's decision to withdraw his troops. Writes Magruder:

Nearly every day large bodies of troops entered the Capital, it was interesting to see them pass and one could but pity them all covered with dust burnt almost black and apparently wearied out by the long and fatiguing marches; baggage waggons drawn by long teams of mules, and ambulance waggons conveying the sick, these ambulances are simple two-wheeled carts with a light canvas awning and without springs. Some of them conveyed whole families flying before the vengeance of the Liberals to seek safety in the Capital. Many of the horses and mules had pannier-saddles, which were occupied by the sick, who looked sadly forlorn and sallow.

If you know more about Henry R. Magruder, please be sure to leave a comment.

More next Tuesday.

UPDATE: I've posted all ten of Magruder's woodcuts here.

Maximilian in Mexico: A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862 - 1867 by Sara Yorke Stevenson

2010-10-05T06:19:00.000-07:00

Of all the English language memoirs of the Second Empire / French Intervention, Sara Yorke Stevenson's Maximilian in Mexico: A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862 - 1867 is the most lucid, informed, and balanced. That said, she introduces her book with this caveat:

[M]y aim is not to write a historical sketch of the reign of Maximilian of Austria, nor is it to give a description of the political crisis through which Mexico passed during that period. My only desire is to furnish the reader with a point of view the value of which lies in the fact that it is that of an eyewitness who was somewhat more than an ordinary spectator of a series of occurrences which developed into one of the most dramatic episodes of modern times.

Academic histories can be a bit dry and, as Yorke puts it, too often the personalities of a period, puppet-like, seem to appear "before the footlights of a fulfilled destiny."

During the brief reign of Maximilian, the author was a young girl living with her family in Mexico City. Every country's capital is a small town, in a sense, but in the 1860s, Mexico City was so small, both literally and figuratively, that this young girl, whose parents were well-connected in both and French and Confederate circles, became acquainted with many of the leading political and military personalities.

She writes, "to those who lived with them when they were MAKING history, these actors are all aglow with life. They are animated by its passions, its impulses," and indeed, she renders them beautifully, compellingly into life.

Before rejoining her family in Mexico City, in Paris, through her guardian, M. Achille Jubinal, a literary figure, antiquarian, and deputy in the Corps Legislatif, she happened to meet none other than the Duke of Morny, Louis Napoleon's half-brother and a key player in the tragedy that was Mexico's Second Empire.

One day in March 1862... M. Jubinal invited me to accompany him to the Hotel des Ventes, Rue Drouot, where an important collection of tapestries and other objects of art was on view to be sold.... My companion was pointing out to me the beauties of a piece which he particularly coveted when some one came behind us and called him by name. We both turned around and faced a middle-aged man whose dress, manner, and general bearing showed him to be a personage of some importance. M. Jubinal, who evidently knew him well, addressed him as "M. le Duc," and his strong likeness to the Emperor [Louis Napoleon], as well as a few stray words, soon led me to guess, even before my guardian had gone through the form of an introduction, that he was no less a personage than the Duc de Morny.

When he learned that her brother had killed by bandits on the highway in Mexico, and she would therefore be leaving France to rejoin her family there, the Duke said: "Lorencz is there now; our army will then be in the city of Mexico; the roads will be quite safe, have no fear." Aficionados of Mexican history will know that this was, in fact, two months before Cinco de Mayo, the massive, humiliating defeat of the French at the city of Puebla.

Her journey from France to Mexico, on an "old patched-up ship," was a sobering one. She writes:

There were only forty passengers on board, and, comparatively speaking, little of the animation that usually precedes the outgoing of an ocean steamer. I found without difficulty the French banker and his Mexican wife who had kindly consented to chaperon me during my lonely journey; and I soon discovered that she and I were the only women passengers on board.

Our fellow travelers were uninteresting-- mostly commercial agents or small tradesmen representing the old-established petty commerce with Mexico. The new order of things was suggested, somewhat ominously, only by the presence of two young surgeons on their way to increase the effective force of the military hospital in Vera Cruz.

Evidently the predicted exodus to El Dorado had not yet begun. Where was the advance-guard of the great army of emigrant capitalists now about to start, and of which I had heard so much?

This was the first serious disillusion of my life, and it left a deep and permanent impression upon my mind.

Later, of her new life in the Mexico City of Maximilian's Second Empire, she writes:

We then lived at Tacubaya, a suburb of Mexico [City] reached by the Paseo, where the marshal [General Bazaine]rode everyday for exercise. Our house was built at the foot of a long hill, at he top of which stood a large old mansion, the yellow coloring of which had won for it the name of the Casa Amarilla. It had been rented by Colonel Talcott of Virginia, who lived there with his family. Dr. Gwin was their guest; and it was arranged that the marshal , when taking his usual afternoon ride with his aide-de-camp, should call upon us one day, and leaving their horses in our partio with his orderlies, should join us in a walkup the hill, casually dropping in en passant at the Casa Amarilla.

The plan had the double advantage of being a simple one and of providing the marshal, who did not speak English, with suitable interpreters. The interview was a long one. The marshal listened to what the American had to say. Indeed, there was little to be said on his own side, as the Mexican ministry was absolutely opposed to the project, and any change of policy must depend upon a change in the imperial cabinet.

His Excellency, however, seemed in high good humor. As we came out, he merrily challenged us to run downhill, much to the astonishment of the few leperos whom we happened to meet. The Mexican Indian is a sober, rather somber creature, not given to levity; his amusements are of a dignified, almost sad nature. He may be sentimental, bigoted, vicious, cruel, but he is never vulgar, and is seldom foolish. Indeed, well might they stare at us then, for it was no common sight in the lanes of Tacubaya to see a commander-in-chief tearing downhill, amid peals of laughter, with a party of young people, in utter disregard of age, corpulence, and cumbersome military accoutrements!

In The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, my novel based on the true story, Sara and her mother, Mrs. Yorke, appear as minor characters in scenes set in the house of Doña Juliana de Gómez Pedraza, widow of the ex-president of Mexico, aunt of Pepita de la Peña (wife of General Bazaine) and landlady to Don Angel and Doña Alicia de Iturbide (parents of Agustín de Iturbide y Green). (Did I mention, Mexico City was a small town?) Alas, much as I nudged it, my narrative didn't find its wendy-way to Sara's pell-mell trot with General Bazaine. But the fact that Bazaine would do such a such thing informed my portrait of him. For this, as well as so many other portraits, vignettes, and more, I am much obliged to Sara Yorke Stevenson's treasure of a memoir.

Sara Yorke Stevenson went on to make what was then a very unusual career as an archeologist, a leading Egyptologist, and newspaper columnist, which you can read about here.

There is also a page about her on Wikipedia (caveat: it's a wiki).

More next Tuesday.

The Junta de los Notables Coin

2010-09-28T18:59:00.000-07:00

A guest-blog post this week, from my Austrian correspondent in Los Angeles.

An Early Example of Merchandising in the Second Mexican Empire: The 1863 Commemorative Medal by the Junta de los Notables for Maximilian of Austria

By H.M. Brindl

Not too long ago, in a flea market in Los Angeles, I found an odd little gem of a medal which supposedly bears the image of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico. A couple of dollars later, I made my way back home with this little medal in my pocket, to find out more about this mysterious piece of Mexican history.

If you try to value it by its precious metal content, you will be disappointed, because there is none; it is made of copper. Even the size, about that of a nickel, isn’t “Imperial” at all. The true value, for me, speaking as an Austrian who is deeply interested in Mexico under Maximilian, comes from the history and the irony that surrounds this medal of Maximilian, who, oddly, enough is not even portrayed on the medal commemorated to him by the Junta De Los Notables or "Assembly of Notables."*

As for the ironies: First, the medal remarks the beginning of the end of Maximilian’s reign as Emperor in Mexico; second, it also serves as a early metaphor for what has to became yet realty and the norm in Maximilian’s Imperio Mexicano ---already, from the beginning , nothing was quite as it was supposed to be or as it might have looked like; and last but not least, the medal shows us very clearly how both the Austrian Archduke and his future Mexican loyal subjects were uninformed and irrational about each other in many ways.

Following are scans of this rare medal and the results on my research on it.

From the American Journal of Numismatics, July 1880 (pp. 15-16):

“Taking up the Mexican Medals, we have first to call attention to one, size 13-1/2,** bearing date 1863, which leads in point of time. During that year there was a junta formed, comprising many Mexicans who were leaders in wealth at least, having for its object the formation of the Empire, placing Maximilian on the throne, of which this medal is commemorative."

Obverse, MAXIMILIANO DE AUSTRIA; a head to left (which did not in the least resemble him)

To left, "Maximiliano," and to right, "De Austria," all surrounded by a border of small pellets.

Reverse, JUNTA DE LOS NOTABLES MEXICO 6 DE JULIO 1863 (the date of resolution or invitation), brass; this piece is noticed in the American Journal of Numismatics, XIII, p. 22. It has probably never appeared in any American sale." [Note: This article was published in 1880; of course, since then there have been medals of this type up for sale. The article goes on to describe and discuss various other Maximilian coins and medals.]

American Journal of Numismatics, and Bulletin of American and Archaeological Societies, July, 1880. Volume XV, No. 1, Whole Number 89. American Numismatic and Archaeological Society.

Besides this coin which commemorates the Assembly of Notables in Mexico City, and another commemorating Maximilian's acceptance of the throne and the coronation at Miramar, there are also medals issued as awards for military and civic merit; for the encouragement of the arts and sciences; and for proficiency in school exercises; others are of a religious and personal character; and finally, there are the mortuary memorials of the closing tragedy at Querétaro on the 19th of June, 1867 [Maximilian's execution by firing squad.]

So, given that the image on the medal does not look at all like Maximilian, whose image is it? If you are an Austrian you might know already. For those who are not, I will reveal the mystery by translating a passage from fellow Austrian Dr. Konrad Ratz, an expert on Mexico's Second Empire. Konrad Ratz published in 1998 two epic books called Maximilian und Juarez, Volume I (The Second Mexican Empire and The Republic) and Volume II (The Queretaro Chronicle). Konrad Ratz, notes about the medal that an image of it was given to him by Senior Eduardo Rabell Urquiola from Querétaro; further on he writes (page 137 Volume I, my translation from German):

“As a matter fact the notables that offered Archduke Max the Mexican thrown, had not the slightest idea who the younger brother of Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria was. When the Assembly of Notables, followed by the advice of Napoleon III, proclaimed the Archduke Maximilian as Emperor, they were not in the possession of a picture of him. The commemorative medal, minted to make the future Emperor popular with Mexicans, shows the profile of a man with a strong roman nose and with a hairstyle worn during the Middle Ages, which did not at the least resemble Maximilian of Mexico. One might suspect that the artist reproduced the portrait of Maximilian I, "the last knight," imagining that a future Maximilian I of Mexico must be a look like of his Habsburg ancestor…”***

Maximilian vs Maximilian:

Had both something more in common besides being Habsburgs and the name Maximilian? There is one thing that came to my attention: both were popular monarchs (at least at times) and keen supporters of the arts and sciences, and surrounded themselves with scholars. One has to admit that Maximilian I* was the more competent ruler; Maximilian of Mexico did not inherited many of the talents of his ancestor. Maximilian I created a huge empire mostly through political marriages which were summed up in the following Latin elegiac couplet:

Bella gerant aliī, tū fēlix Austria nūbe/ Nam quae Mars aliīs, dat tibi regna Venus,
"Let others wage war, but thou, O happy Austria, marry; for those kingdoms which Mars gives to others, Venus gives to thee."

Maximilian of Mexico’s attempts to create a huge South American Imperio, never left the early stages of wishful thinking. He wanted his younger brother Archduke Ludwig Victor to marry Isabel, Princess Imperial of Brazil. Maximilian and his wife Charlotte did not have any children. So Ludwig should succeed him. It was Maximilian's plan to rule over Mexico and Brazil one day - on condition that Ludwig and Isabel were married, but Ludwig refused. In 1865 Maximilian "adopted"**** Agustín de Iturbide y Green and Salvador de Iturbide y de Marzan, grandsons of Agustín de Iturbide y Arámburu), an earlier "Emperor of Mexico" who reigned from 1822 until 1823. They gave two-year-old Agustín the title of "His Highness, the Prince de Iturbide" -– similar imperial titles were accorded various members of the child's extended family -– and, apparently, intended to groom him as heir to the throne. The explosive events of 1867, however, dashed such hopes, and, having renounced all rights to the defunct Mexican throne, Agustín de Iturbide y Green went on to serve in the Mexican army, and eventually established himself as a professor in Washington, D.C.

On the other hand, Maximilian I was succeeded as Holy Roman Emperor by his grandson Charles V under whose reign, the territories in New Spain were considerably extended by conquistadores like Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro, who caused the Aztec and Inca empires to fall in little more than a decade.

Irony has it that what started with a Habsburg hundreds of years earlier ended with a Habsburg. Maximilian of Mexico stated once, “I want to die on the top of a hill,” in June 1867 at Queretaro, he stood at the Cerro De Las Campanas (The Hill of Bells) facing a firing squad, looked up in the magnificent, cloudless Mexican sky and said:

“What a glorious day! I have always wanted to die on just such a day.”

Austrians still call out on sunny days with cloudless blue sky’s like on June 19, 1867:

“Heute haben wir Kaiserwetter!” Which translates as, “Today we have Emperors weather -– an Emperor Day!”

Isn’t it ironic?!

FOOTNOTES

*Established in 1863 by the head of the French forces in Mexico, General Elie Forey, the Assembly of Notables consisted of 215 Mexican citizens, called upon to decide the future government of the country. The assembly proclaimed that Mexico would be a hereditary monarchy with a Catholic prince as emperor. The chosen candidate, previously selected by Napoleon III, was the Austrian Archduke, Ferdinand Maximilian von Habsburg. In October 1863, a delegation headed by José María Gutierrez de Estrada offered the crown to Maximilian. He accepted the offer on the condition that the Mexican people should vote in favor of the offer.
Maximilian’s reply:

“I am profoundly grateful for the wishes expressed by the Assembly of Notables. It cannot be otherwise than flattering to our house that the thoughts of your countrymen turn to the descendants of Charles V. It is a proud task to assure the independence of Mexico under the protection of free and lasting institutions. I must, however, recognize the fact—-and in this I entirely agree with the Emperor of the French, whose glorious undertaking makes the regeneration of Mexico possible--- that the monarchy cannot be established in your country on a firm and legitimate basis, unless the whole nation shall confirm by a free manifestation of its will the wishes of the capital. My acceptance of the throne must then depend upon the result of the vote of the whole country. Further, a sentiment of the most sacred duties of the sovereign requires that he should demand for the proposed empire every necessary guaranty to secure it against the dangers which threaten its integrity and its independence I beg of you to communicate these my intentions, frankly expressed, to your countrymen, and to take measures to obtain from the nation an expression of its will as to the form of government it intends to adopt."

After this, Marshal Achille Bazaine, who had replaced Forey as French Commander in Chief, masterminded the infamous favorable plebiscite.

**13 1/2 is not a reference to millimeters; it is an archaic numismatic sizing system. Size 13 is about the size of a nickel.

***The German king and Holy Roman emperor (1493 – 1519). Eldest son of Emperor Frederick III and a member of the Habsburg dynasty, Maxmilian I retook most of the Habsburg lands in Austria from the Hungarians by 1490, and, after being crowned Holy Roman emperor, drove the Turks from the empire's southeastern borders. He fought a series of wars against the French, and, through his childrens' marriages, acquired Spain for the Habsburgs.

****[Editor's note: "Adoption" is probably the closest word in English; nonetheless, this was not precisely an adoption as we would normally understand it. Maximilian understood it as more or less analogous to the relationship between Louis Napolean, the Emperor of France, and the Murat Princes. Basically what Maximilian was saying was, I grant the Iturbides the status of Highnesses; as such they join my house. So he did not think of the child as his own but rather as a kind of cousin, a member of an extended family under his leadership and protection. In the contract with the Iturbide family, Maximilian assumes the responsibilities of the education of the grandsons of Iturbide, along with Josefa de Iturbide, the boys' spinster aunt. ---C.M. Mayo]

--- H.M. Brindl

Next post next Tuesday.

Countess Paula Kollonitz's Eine Reise Nach Mexiko im Jahre 1864

2010-09-21T08:00:00.000-07:00

Eine Reise nach Mexiko im Jahre 1864, pictured left, is an extraordinary memoir by one of the Empress Carlota's ladies-in-waiting. It has been translated-- as far as I know-- into Italian (by Marchesa Dondi-Dall' Orolagio as Un Viaggio al Messico, Florence, 1868); Spanish (by Neftali Beltrán, from the Italian, as México en 1864, FCE, 1984); and English (by Joseph Earle Ollivant as The Court of Mexico, London, 1868), and certainly it deserves to be translated into many more languages. In my novel, I based much of the description of Maximilian's voyage from Europe to Mexico on Countess Kollonitz's vivid descriptions. To quote from her memoir (Ollivant's translation):

... we went at eleven p.m. to the Coliseum. The moon shone clear and beautiful, when we arrived there: the first impression was overpowering, but soon a thick fog settled upon those gigantic remains of Roman splendour, of Roman pride; and when we had toiled up all the steps, a thick veil hid from us the view which we expected. I, however, was seized with giddiness, all beneath me rocked and moved as if I still had that uncertain, fluctuating element under my feet, which I had left only a few hours before...

Some ways into the journey...

Upon deck, where we were sheltered, when there was a lack of wind, from the rays of the sun by an awning, a splendid, pure, fresh air breathed around us. It enticed even the Empress out of her handsome, comfortable cabin, in which she ceaslessly read and wrote, on to the deck, where she made her uniform promenade, and continued her occupations in the fresh air. Even in the evening, when the rest of us were deep in contemplation of the setting sun, she paid but little attention to its glory, and remained faithful to her books and to her writing tables by the pale light of the ship's lanterns. During a solitary and earnest childhood, her delight in study, her joy in books, and her capability iof mastering quickly what she had read had been highly developed and, at the same time, she displayed a stern industry, and a power of abstract attention, which was much assisted by an excellent memory. She was very quick at languages and can write and speak German, English, Italian, and Spanish grammatically, and without the least hesitation.

(Carlota was working, among other things, on the thick tome that is the Reglamento de la corte.)

Then, out in open ocean, nearing Mexico:

Even the moon had changed her wonted aspect; her light is more golden, more ruddy, and the position of the crescent is different; it does not stand upright as with us, but lies horizontally, whether waxing or waning. Never shall I forget the calm splendour of these evenings, of these nights,--- the world of divine, exalted poetry, unlike aught else.

Neither did our our days fail in interests, in little variations; the sea, which for a long time seemed to us uninhabited, at length became animated. We were often guided on our way by dolphins, which with their bodies half out of the water, chased past us in their wanton sports with incredible speed; and as we looked down through the clear waves we could see the sea-hyena, or dog-fish, following us on its greedy look-out for prey. Swarms of flying-fish were frightened into the air by the ship; they hovered like flakes of snow at a little height above the sea, and then sank again, hardly pressed by their pursuers, to whom they serve as food. The seamen of the south of France give them the name blé de la mer.

Kollonitz also provides copious descriptions (alas, with all the clichés one might expect from a mid-19th century European tourist) of Veracruz, Orizaba, Mexico City, and environs.

There's a bit about the countess on the Mexico Desconocido website.

Later in life she had a brief and unhappy marriage to Felix Eloin, the Belgian engineer who had been Maximilian's chef du cabinet. (Click here to visit the webpage for his archives at Rice University in Houston.)

Countess Kollonitz does not appear in my novel, however, as she departed Mexico just before the action began. I would have liked to include her, but the cast of characters is already quite a crowd!

More next Tuesday.

15 of September in Mexico of 1865

2010-09-14T12:33:00.000-07:00

This year marks both the centennial of Mexico's Revolution and the bicentennial of its Independence from Spain, the latter traditionally celebrated with "El Grito" (the shout) on the evening of September 15th, with a militrary parade and more celebrations to follow on the 16th. (Many Americans confuse Cinco de Mayo with Independence. In fact, Cinco de Mayo celebrates a temporary victory over the invading French Imperial Army at the city of the Puebla on May 5, 1862.)

A little awkwardly for a Republic, not one of the first but the definitive leader of Mexico's Independence was Agustin de Iturbide, known as "the Liberator" who crafted the Plan of Iguala, and then set himself up as emperor. As he was unable to pay the army (among other challenges), he had to abdicate soon thereafter and, to make a labyrinthical story short, he was executed by a firing squad in 1824.

For much of the past century, when modern Mexico was remaking its image in the wake of the Revolution of 1910, Iturbide was widely considered an embarrassment, almost a cartoon character-- an emperor, with a crown?! And it's not uncommon even today in Mexico to mention his name and get a chuckle. But in the 19th century, when Mexico was embroiled in revolutions and foreign invasions--- this a time when the monarchical form of government was still, and certainly in Europe, widely (if not unanimously) considered the most viable and stable model of government--- many people, and in particular, conservatives, and including the leadership of the Catholic Church, considered the martyred Iturbide a hero.

Ironically then, when Maximilian von Habsburg accepted the throne of Mexico-- with the support of the Church, not a few Mexican conservatives, and the backing of the French Imperial Army-- one of the first things he did, in 1865, was celebrate Mexico's Independence!

You might be shaking your head over this. Backed by the French Army, the ex-archduke of Austria celebrates Mexico's Independence?

But this was, in Maximilian's mind at least, a savvy politcal move, for he was also also celebrating Agustin de Iturbide--- that is to say, the hero of Mexican conservative nationalists--- and--- more irony--- Morelos, one of the original leaders of Independence (not an ally of the more conservative Iturbide, to be sure).

Why did Maximilian celebrate Morelos? Here's a key: Morelos's illegitimate son, Juan Nepomuceno Almonte, a general and ex-ambassador to the United States, had been a prime mover behind the offer of the throne. (Once the French occupied Mexico City, in the year before Maximilian arrived, Almonte had served as President of the Regency. When Maximilian arrived, Almonte became his Gran Mariscal de la Corte and his wife, chief lady of honor to the Empress Carlota.) In sum, Maximilian owed his position in Mexico, in part, to Almonte, and Almonte's ongoing support was necessary to keep the Mexican Imperial Army in line.

Maximilian's celebration of September 1865 was an elaborate one and it included a solemn ceremony in which the children and two grandsons of Agustin de Iturbide were elevated to the status of Imperial Highnesses.

Childless himself, Maximilan made a contract --- negotiated, though not signed, by none other than his wife, the Empress Carlota--- with the Iturbide family, in which the two grandsons of Iturbide would be handed over to his custody. Maximilian was to be "co-tutor" along with Josefa de Iturbide, a spinster aunt. The parents of one grandson, Salvador, had both died, and as Salvador was a teenager, he was sent to school in France. The parents of the two-and-a-half year old Agustin de Iturbide y Green, Angel de Iturbide (second son of the Emperor Iturbide) and Alice Green de Iturbide, an American from a prominent Washington DC family, were exiled, much against their will. They immediately went to Washington, to meet with Secretary of State Seward, and then to Paris, to lobby with U.S. Minister John Bigelow to try to get their son back from Maximilian.

Those of you have been following this blog know that the resulting international scandal is the subject of my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire. To read all about it--- as well as my extensive original research in the Emperor Iturbide and Iturbide archives in Washington DC--- I invite you to visit my webpage which includes videos, podcasts, genealogies, photos, a bibliography, and an extensive Reader's Guide.

This week also marks the publication of the novel in Spanish, translated by Mexican novelist Agustín Cadena as El último príncipe del Imperio Mexicano. It will be in bookstores in Mexico City this weekend, and in the rest of the Republic the week after that. The publisher is Grijalbo (Random House-Mondadori).

Here is the 3 and 1/2 minute trailer (double click to view the larger screen):

More next Tuesday.

El último príncipe del Imperio Mexicano por C.M. Mayo

2010-09-07T12:30:00.000-07:00

Just in time for Mexico's 200th anniversary of Independence, the Spanish version of my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, as El último príncipe del Imperio Mexicano, translated by Mexican novelist and poet Agustín Cadena, will be published by Random House Mondadori (Grijalbo) this month. I understand it will be in bookstores in Mexico City next weekend, and in the rest of the Republic a week after that.

I couldn't be more delighted about the translation. Of course, after some two decades of living in Mexico, I speak Spanish fluently, but as my Spanish is not at the same level as my English, and as this is a story that is part of Mexico's national narrative, I felt it was very important that a Mexican novelist do the translation. I have long admired--- and translated--- Agustín Cadena, so it was a great honor that he agreed to undertake the project. An added benefit: Cadena is an expert on 19th century literature.

A fun synchronicity: Cadena is also the translator of Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, which, it so happens, John Bigelow--- then U.S. minister to France (and a major character in this novel)--- rescued. It had originally been published in a French translation from an unrevised manuscript. Bigelow purchased the original manuscript in France and then brought out the first reliable version in 1868.

For more about El último príncipe del Imperio Mexicano, including podcasts (some in Spanish), I invite you to visit the book's Spanish language webpage at http://www.cmmayo.com/espanol-el-ultimo-principe-del-imperio-mexicano.html

More anon.

A Court Ball at the Palace of Mexico by William Wells, Overland Monthly (1868)

2010-08-31T00:01:00.000-07:00

Only a few years ago it was no casual undertaking to secure an 1868 magazine article. But now we have an cornucopia of digital material at our fingertips, and among the wonders, many gems, such as this one, William V. Wells' "A Court Ball at the Palace of Mexico." Published in the Overland Monthly in 1868, sometime after the event itself--- winter of 1865--- Wells' article recounts his experience as a guest at what was, without doubt, one of the most astonishing entertainments yet offered in the Americas. I've been researching this period for several years and I have yet to come upon as fine and detailed a memoir of any one of Maximilian's palace balls as this one.

Wells (1826 - 1876) also published a lengthy and entertaining article on an ascent of Popocatepetl (Mexican volcano) in November 1865 for Harper's. Read that one here.

P.S. In the bibliography for my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, I only had room to list "selected books consulted," so, alas, "A Court Ball" does not appear there, though I relied heavily on it (as well as others and the Reglamento) for the scene in chapter three. However, as a tip of the cap, I brough Mr Wells in as a character in the opening chapter, one of the journalists at the U.S. Minister Corwin's rooftop entertainment when the French troops marched into Mexico City in 1863. The scene with Alice Green de Iturbide (the American mother of the "last prince", then a tiny baby) and Mr Wells is fictional--- I don't know whether Wells was there or not. But I do know, from a family memoir I found an the Agustin de Iturbide Green archive at Catholic University in Washington DC that, indeed, Alice de Iturbide held the baby in her arms as she and her husband, Angel de Iturbide, witnessed the French troops marching in, from the vantage point of the roof of the U.S. Legation.

As for Mr Corwin, the ex-Senator from Ohio, and ex-Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, he was a popular minister (ambassador) in Mexico because of his well-known and adamant opposition to the U.S. invasion of Mexico in 1846. Shortly after the French occupied Mexico City, Corwin was recalled to Washington DC; the United States refused to recognize a French-supported monarchy in Mexico. Notably, Corwin served as one of the pallbearers in President Lincoln's funeral.

More next Tuesday.

Kaiser Maximilian von Mexiko archive in the Library of Congress

2010-08-24T21:22:00.000-07:00

There was a period in the summer and fall of 1866 when Maximilian was seriously considering abdicating. Actually, "waffling" would be more apt. The Empress Carlota having left Mexico for Europe in July to plead with Louis Napoleon for more money, the Mexican Imperial Treasury drier than a sun-bleached bone, and the Juaristas ever-stronger, Maximilian--- and his French advisors, as well as some of his close friends--- saw no way out but to abdicate. On the other hand, his wife, and many of his most ardent conservative supporters viewed abdication as so dishonorable as to be unthinkable.

That October, Maximilian, still undecided, went so far as to pack up his archive and have it loaded onto the ship for Europe. Only his corpse made it on board, several months later--- but that's another story. Today his papers are in the Haus, Hof, und Staasarchiv in Vienna, Austria. A partial copy of this substantial archive was made in 1929 for the Library of Congress in Washington DC. (Missing, notably, is the files of correspondence with the Iturbide family.) To hear more about this archive and what I learned from it about the Maximilian and the Iturbide family, listen in to this podcast, from my lecture at the Library of Congress back in July of last year.

One of the things that most fascinated me was seeing the handwriting. Of course many letters were simply transcribed by secretaries (there are scads of official reports and bread-and-butter letters), but many are in Maximilian's hand (wildly, nearly illegibly arabesque), as well as Carlota's (school girl perfect), General Bazaine's (rapid, vigorous), and Father Fischer's (cramped, jagged, intense).

P.S. I aim to post a more detailed note about the archive in the Library of Congress on the Maximilian page soon. For anyone who wants to look it up at the Library of Congress, note that it is listed under the German title, "Kaiser Maximilian von Mexiko."

Next post next Tuesday.

Reglamento y ceremonial de la corte (Maximilian and Carlota's book of court etiquette)

2010-08-17T23:56:00.000-07:00

To a modern republican sensibility, one of the most ridiculous things about Maximilian's short-lived Imperial Court was its elaborate etiquette, and to many historians, a sure sign of Maximilian's superficiality his concern with such trivia as whose bench should be cushioned in velvet, what color stockings the lackeys should wear for a third-class dinner, & etc. Read the Reglamento y ceremonial de la Corte and I can guarantee some eye rolling and chuckles. But in context, the 1860s, when rigorous court etiquette was widely, from Austria to Spain to France and England, considered a crucial instrument to maintain the stability of the State-- and this when the upheavals of 1848 were a fresh memory for so many--- the Reglamento begins to look more sad than nonsensical.

It is still possible to find copies of the Reglamento y ceremonial de la corte in antiquarian bookstores, especially in Mexico City. I have seen an original--- it had been inherited, over the generations, by the daughter of a friend. It was crisply printed on luxuriously heavy paper, and beautifully bound in a faded scarlet linen cover. My first thought: this must have cost a fortune and a half to print.

My own copy of the Reglamento, which I came upon in Mexico City's antiquarian bookstore, the marvelous Libreria Madero, is not an original, but a xerox copy bound--- and this in itself is revealing--- in the heaviest, finest and extravagantly tooled sea-blue Morocco leather.

Important note: there are two editions of the Reglamento: the first, which was speedily written by Maximilian and Carlota in 1864, while en route to Mexico, and a second, published in 1866, which includes an all new chapter with elaborate detail about the Iturbide princes, whom Maximilian had elevated to the status of "Imperial Highnesses" in September of 1865. I aim to post a transcription of that 1866 chapter shortly. At this time I have a few bits transcribed, as well as some jpgs of selected chapters, and the index, on-line at my "Maximilian" page.

Here's the flashback in my novel when the Princess Iturbide (Pepa) recalls receiving her copy:

On her bedside table, next to a dish with the coil of rosary beads, is the Reglamento y ceremonial de la Corte, big as a Bible. It is being reprinted with an all-new Chapter One, "On the Iturbide Princes," specifying their rank, which is above all others with the exception of Imperial Princes (of which there are none); Cardinals; those rare few, such as General Almonte, upon whom the emperor has bestowed the medal of the order of the Mexican Eagle; and Their Majesties. Princess Iturbide may make visits in society and leave her card; however, she need not return visits except to Cardinals, Mexican Eagles, Ambassadors, Ministers of State, and their wives. When Their Majesties are on their thrones, she must place herself at their feet, on the first step, to the left of the empress. In church, her place is in the first row, and the bench covered in velvet. But she shall not be presented with the holy water. There is so much to study, too much to remember. But God will help.

"Please," said the Master of Ceremonies when he brought her this book, together with the loose manuscript pages of Chapter One. "I am at your service."

"I am obliged to you," Pepa had answered, but with the firm intention of making questions unnecessary.

But the Master of Ceremonies, rather than put the book in her hands, took a slight step backwards. Holding this tome as a waiter does his tray, he lifted the cover and then slid his glove over the small square of a certificate that had been pasted on the inside. "Please," he said, "you will see here that this book is for your personal use, however, it remains, now and always, the property of His Majesty."

Pepa had put on her spectacles. The Master of Ceremonies could have, but did not turn the book around for her to be able to read the certificate.

"Each book," he went on, "has a registration number."

"I see."

His tongue pushed against the inside of his cheek. It seemed the Master of Ceremonies was going to say something more; but no. With an air of infinite reserve, he closed the lid of the book and, dipping his head slightly, presented it to her.

It was so heavy she'd had to carry it with both hands.

More next Tuesday.

New Website Design for "Maximilian"

2010-08-10T23:38:00.000-07:00

Just revamped the website design for the Maximilian page. This is the original webpage I started a few years ago as a handy bucket-list of links, but it has grown so large that it made sense to break it up into several subpages: my works; photos; on-line articles and books; bibliography; podcasts, and links. No doubt it will morph further (the links can be broken down into various categories as well). Until next Tuesday...

An Albany Engineer Dines with the Emperor Maximilian

2010-08-03T07:59:00.000-07:00

A curious article from June 1865 reprinted on-line at the New York Times.

The Maximilian Diamond

2010-07-27T08:02:00.000-07:00

Warmest thanks to my Austrian correspondent in Los Angeles, who sends this news about a most interesting auction. See the Christies announcement in full here, and see my comments at the end of this post in italics.

"The Emperor Maximilian" was auctioned of at Christie's New York on April 22nd, 2010 as a lot in Jewels: The New York Sale, with The Catherine the Great Emerald Brooch and The Emperor Maximilian Diamond. The Estimate $1,000,000 to $1,500,000. Price Realized $ 1,762,500. That Friday at Christie’s was the first time the Emperor diamond had been on display to the public since 1982.

SHAPE & CUTTING STYLE: Cushion Brilliant
Measurements: 23.22 × 20.29 × 12.35 mm
Weight: 39.55 Carats
PROPORTIONS
Depth: 60.9%
Table: 59%
Girdle: Medium to slightly thick, Faceted
Culet: Large
FINISH
Polish - Very Good
Symmetry - Good
CLARITY GRADE: VS1
COLOR GRADE: I
Fluorescence - Very Strong Blue

History of the Diamond:

Maximilian of Habsburg held a burning desire to visit the New World. In 1860, he journeyed to the tropical forests of Brazil on a botanical expedition. While in Brazil he acquired two exceptionally large diamonds which were to be named for him, the Emperor Maximilian and the Maximilian II.

The first was a 41.94-carat diamond with a strong blue fluorescence which gives the diamond a soft luminosity in daylight. The second diamond was of a greenish-yellow tint and weighted 33 carats. After his return to Europe, Maximilian presented the smaller diamond to his wife, who wore it mounted as a pendant. The Maximilian II is therefore sometimes called the "Carlota" Diamond. (Not to be confused with the pear-shaped pink stone of the same name.)

When Carlotta left Mexico during the summer of 1866, she left behind the 33-carat greenish-yellow diamond, which her husband had given her.

Legend holds that Maximilian was wearing the Emperor Maximilian Diamond in a small satchel tied around his neck when he faced the firing squad.* Following the execution, his remains were sent to Vienna and the Emperor Maximilian Diamond returned to Charlotte. Upon news of his death, Charlotte’s condition worsened and she shut herself off from the outside world. The diamond was subsequently sold to help pay for expenses during Charlotte’s illness and it disappeared for over three decades until, in 1901, two Mexicans attempted to smuggle it into the United States. It was seized by Customs and auctioned by the U.S. Government later the same year for $120,000, a quite large sum for a yellow diamond, even a larger one, in those days. In 1919, the Emperor Maximilian Diamond was purchased by a Chicago gem dealer, Ferdinand Holtz and was displayed in the 1934 Chicago World’s Fair as the highlight of the 'Century of Progress' exhibition, which reproduced a South African Diamond mine in operation with native laborers. Despite several offers to buy it, Mr. Holtz refused to sell the diamond and it remained in his possession until his death in 1946. It was subsequently sold to a private collector in New York. The name of the new owner has never been revealed and the diamond remained in her possession, mounted in a ring by Cartier, until Christie’s auctioned it in New York in 1982.

It was expected that diamond would fetch $330,000 but it eventually sold for $726,000 to Laurence Graff, the London jeweler, who has a vast collection of notable and historic diamonds. In January 1983, Graff sold The Emperor Maximilian, together with two other important diamonds, in a single transaction to the same buyer, Madame Imelda Marcos, wife of the President of the Philippines. Subsequently, it was sold and re-cut in the 1990’s, to its current weight of 39.55 carats, and finally it was acquired by the present owner.

According to the staff at Christie’s, the stone is believed to be a Golconda diamond but that cannot be proven conclusively. Golconda’s are absolutely exquisite stones. While many of the stones that end up on the auction block at places like Christie’s and Sotheby’s are top-notch Ds or Es, the Emperor diamond is actually only an I-color stone.

The stone’s strong blue fluorescence actually makes it look a few color grades better and, besides, there is for sure no denying this is one stone with a rich history.

View the Christies Video about The Emperor Maximilian Diamond.

*C.M. notes: This is quite a story! I should note, however, that I have developed a healthy skepticism for so-called "legends." I sincerely doubt Maximilian wore such a thing around his neck at the time of his execution. Never in all my years of research have I come across anything in a primary source about such a diamond being returned by the Mexicans to Carlota, and I find it extremely unlikely. There is in the Maximilian von Mexiko Archive in Vienna a copy of the detailed inventory taken when Maximilian was captured in Querétaro which includes everything, and it wasn't much, down to the last teaspoon. The Christies video talks about his liberal sentiments, but well... to give an idea of things, after an extensive trial in 1867, Maximilian was found guilty of several crimes against the Mexican nation, the most grevious--- and the one upon which his sentence of death was based--- for having signed into law the "Black Decree" of October 1865, in which anyone found in Mexican territory with a weapon could be treated, not as an enemy combatant, but as a common criminal and shot without trial. In 1865 and 1866, hundreds of people were executed by Mexican Imperial troops and by French troops under this "law." And this "Black Decree" was certainly not something trotted out at the last minute in a kangaroo court. John Bigelow, the U.S. minister in Paris, protested vociferously to the French authorities about the barbaric "Black Decree" just as soon as he heard about it. Even Carlota's own uncle, Joinville, wrote to her objecting to such drastic and cruel measures. (And Maximilian's tussles with the Iturbide family, the subject of my novel, which is based on extensive original research, shows no small degree of moral confusion on his part. Suffice it to say he had Alice Green de Iturbide, the distraught mother of the prince he "adopted," arrested and forcibly exiled. The entire, sad, file on that subject is perserved in own archive in Vienna.) After Maximilian was executed by the firing squad, his body did not fit into the temporary coffin, so, not feeling beholden to delicacy, the Mexicans broke the legs to make it fit. The embalming of the body was another grotesque fiasco--- also well documented by multiple observers (read the memoir of an eyewitness here). So again, I find this story of the Mexicans, clearly not in a mood for charity, returning any such diamond to Carlota very difficult to believe.

But who knows? History is often stranger than fiction.

As for Carlota, she had suffered her psychotic breakdown in while on a mission to Paris and Rome in September 1866, more than six months before Maximilian's death (read an eyewitness account in José Luis Blasio's Maximiliano íntimo, and see the letters of Maximilian's consul in Rome at the CONDUMEX archive in Mexico City) and was taken back to Miramar Castle in Trieste and kept under guard until her family took her back to Belgium. For the rest of her long life, insane, (possibly bipolar and later, so it seems, suffering from senile dementia) she lived in a castle in Belgium with a highly vigilant entourage, including ladies-in-waiting and a doctor. Her personal wealth was sustantial, but most historians concur that her fortune must have disappeared into the hands of her brother, Leopold II, King of the Belgians.

Comments? More information?

José Luis Blasio, author of Maximiliano íntimo (Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico)-- a few notes and reflections

2010-07-20T07:03:00.000-07:00

Having just finished reading María del Carmen Cuevas Pérez's splendid 1998 thesis for the Universidad Nacional Autónomo de México's Department of History, "Don José Luis Blasio y Prieto: Historia de vida a través de documentos personales", a few notes and reflections:

José Luis Blasio (1842 - 1923) was the author of Maximiliano íntimo, a memoir of his years as the Emperor Maximilian's private secretary (and also, an intermediate period, serving the Empress Carlota in Europe in 1866, which coincided with her spectacular psychotic breakdown).

Published in Mexico City and Paris in 1905 and in English nearly three decades later as Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico (Yale University Press, 1934), Blasio's lushly vivid memoir is, without a doubt-- and never mind its less-than-correct political stance-- one of the literary treasures of Mexico.

As Bernal Díaz's True History is to the Conquest, so Blasio's Maximiliano íntimo is to Mexico's Second Empire. Yes, it's that good.

In Mexico's Second Empire (1864 - 1867), as in all periods of history, many people witnessed events of importance, or found themselves close to key personalities, but never, even if they lived into the ripest of lucid old age, bothered to share them in a memoir. ("Who has time?" they probably said. "Why should I care what people I don't know think?" "When I'm dead, I'm dead." & etc.) As for those who managed to put pen to paper, most cobbled together something useful for the interpid researcher but, alas, boring, and / or shot though with displays of personal vanity. Blasio opens his heart, but with the most gentlemanly consideration for the reader, and it is this informative spirit, this deep generosity, elegant in its simplicity, that lifts Maximiliano intimo into a realm beyond that of the other memoirs of the period.

To be fair, I should note two other superb memoirs: Sara Yorke Stevenson's Maximilian in Mexico and Charles Blanchot's L'Intervention Française au Mexique.

Just to give a taste of Blasio's memoir, here is his description of the Moorish room in the small castle on the grounds of Maximilian's Miramar Castle in Trieste, which Blasio visited in 1866 (my translation):

"[It] was upholstered in dark damask and its walls almost literally covered with exotic weapons that the emperor had collected and catalogued with his exquisite taste. The walls also had verses of the Koran handwritten in gold. In the center of the room a beautiful fountain played almost to the ceiling, a thin crystalline thread of water that refreshed that residence worthy of an oriental magnate. From the ceiling hung a canopy made of ostrich eggs enclosed within nets of green silk; the seats were plump pillows of red velvet, and the floor was covered with Turkish carpets of many colors. Everywhere magnificent censers let out plumes of perfumed smoke, and there within the visitor's easy reach, were to be seen long Arab pipes, the kind used by those refined smokers of the Orient."

Blasio's memoir informed many scenes in my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, among them, the chapters set in Mexico City in November 1865, Cuernavaca in January 1866, and Rome in September 1866. Blasio himself appears as a minor character in these chapters. As for Blasio's treatment of the subject of my novel, Agustin de Iturbide y Green, the toddler Maximilian made an Imperial Higness and brought into his Court: alas, Blasio makes some serious mistakes, mainly, that the child was 5 (he was only 2 1/2 years old), and that his father was dead. In fact, the child's parents, Angel and Alicia de Iturbide, were both quite alive and, after the mother changed her mind about the arrangement, wild with grief at having been separated from her child, Maximilian's response was to arrest her and have her and her husband expelled from Mexico. From Washington DC and Paris, they got up quite an intrigue against Maximilian, which is amply documented in various archives, including the Iturbide family archive in the Library of Congress (click here for a podcast about that research), the Agustin de Iturbide y Green archive at Catholic University, and in Maximilian's own archive in Vienna, which contains a file of letters from the Iturbides, including the child's father, Angel de Iturbide. My guess is that Blasio did not know much about it, as Maximilian's correspondence with the Iturbide family was direct-- without an intervening secretary-- or else through Castillo, who handled the Civil List. Blasio would have handled official correspondence, and I suppose, neither then nor later did he have the wish or the wherewithal to investigate this ugly episode.

But this is a mere quibble.

Until Cuevas Pérez's thesis, little was known about Blasio other than what he himself wrote about his few years in Maximilian and Carlota's service, which ended with Maximilian's execution by firing squad in Querétaro in June of 1867.

Cuevas Pérez's thesis is based on her research into Blasio's personal archive, which had been inherited by her father, who had been all of ten years old when Blasio died in 1923. They had lived under the same roof, for Blasio, a childless widower, found lodging with his distant cousin, Cuevas Perez's paternal grandmother. As Cuevas Pérez writes (my translation from the Spanish):

"When I was a little girl, my father, Ernesto Cuevas Alvarado, always told me about a man named José Luis Blasio, who had been the godfather at his baptism and, many years before that, had served as the private secretary for Maximilian von Habsburg, for almost the entire time he was emperor. At that young age, it seemed to me a story and after a few years, it didn't make sense because I couldn't see the people of that time in relation to my father. It was not until I was in highschool that I began to wonder, and then, when I began to major in history at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and moreso when I began my studies as an archivist at the Iberoamerican University, that I truly understood the importance of this archive, which my father had so carefully guarded. I decided to write my thesis based on these papers that no one, other than my father and Blasio himself, had read. And now I began to read.... "

María del Carmen Cuevas Pérez describes her own father's memories of Blasio, as told to herself (my translation):

"He was affable, with great political and social tact. Despite his well-known versatility, he never entered into any place, even if he found the door open, for he was very reserved, very polite and above all, noble and above rancor and vanity. He was an impeccably well dressed man. He would not go out to the street without his top hat, cane, jacket or frockcoat, or his most formal suit."

Epecially notable is Blasio's correspondence with his cousin, the Mexican diplomat and novelist Federico Gamboa (1864-1939). Writes Cuevas Pérez (my translation):

"Jose Luis Blasio and Federico Gamboa were very close; they were more than family; they were very close friends... From Washington [Gamboa sent Blasio] congratulations for having finished his work about Maximilian von Habsburg and told him how sorry he was to not have been able to offer his help with as a writer, and that he was very happy that, having advised him many times to write the book, he had finally conceded."

Ah, the labyrinths of literary fame. Here I couldn't help thinking of Guiseppe di Lampedusa's relationship with his cousin, close friend and and literary colleague, the poet Lucio Piccolo. In their lifetime, Piccolo was the senior on the literary scene. Guiseppe di Lampdusa, of course, was the author of one book, the beloved and now classic novel of the fall of Sicily's 19th century aristocracy, Il Gatorpardo (The Leopard).

In Cuevas Pérez's thesis, which you can read on-line here, there is more detail about Blasio's subsequent career as a bookkeeper for the Ferrocarril Mexicano (Mexican Railroad), the Blasio family, his spouse Adela, friends, and other details about his years in Mexico City after the fall of the Empire and up until his death in 1923. Cuevas Pérez's also includes a complete catalog of the archive, extensive notes, and a bibliography.

More anon.

Originally posted at Madam Mayo blog.

Marcel Wick's Musical, "Carlota: A Serpentine Crown"

2010-07-20T06:03:00.000-07:00

Warmest congratulations to Marcel Wick, whose musical, "Carlota: A Serpentine Crown", is now on-line here. There is also a Dutch version here.

Susanne Igler's Carlota de México

2010-07-20T05:01:00.000-07:00

Carlota de México, Dr Susanne Igler's excellent biography of Mexico's Empress Carlota was published in Spanish by Planeta in 2002 as part of the Grandes protagonistas de la historia Mexicana series edited by Mexican historian José Manuel Villalpando. It offers a complete overview of Carlota's life, from her childhood as the princess of Belgium; her marriage to the Austrian Archduke Maximilian; brief reign as Empress of Mexico; psychotic breakdown in the Vatican; and the long years of her widowhood as a mad yet coddled recluse in Belgium. Igler's biography opens thus (my translation):

A Fairytale Princess

Mexican history is rich in surprising, dramatic, and even grotesque personalities, yet few have so excited the imagination, both collective and artistic, as the woman who, for a fleeting moment, was the Empress of Mexico. Today, more than 130 years after the Mexican State's struggle to define itself, there is abundance of films, soap operas, artistic testimonies, novels, plays, historical debates and -- yes!--- even restaurants named apropos of Maximilian's empire; more than the fleeting and superficial nature of this historical episode would suggest...

The work is amply illustrated with reproductions of portraits (including a charming one of Carlota as an toddler by Winterhalther), and photographs, and includes a chronology and bibliography. This is an important addition to any collection on the Second Empire.

P.S. A bibliography for The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, my novel about the Second Empire, is here.

Originally posted at Madam Mayo blog.

Maximilian's Saddle Auctioned Off for $200,000 Dollars

2010-07-13T08:03:00.000-07:00

From my Austrian correspondent in Los Angeles:

"A fabulous saddle made for the last Emperor of Mexico, Maximilian I sold at auction on January 30, 2010. The stunning Imperial saddle, consigned by the heirs of the Julius Skilton family who acquired it shortly after Maximilian's execution by the forces of Benito Juarez in 1864, was lavishly adorned with multiple imperial crests and sold for a record setting $200,000 (estimate $100,000 - $150,000) propelled by animated bidding from the audience and all six telephone lines."

Watch the three minute video of the auction:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by583D7NBwc
(The first two minutes are a bit boring, then-- just when I was tempted to turn it off-- it gets wild. At the end of the video you'll see a close up of the saddle.)

P.S. Read my previous blog post with more information about this saddle and its previous owner, Dr Julius Skilton.

Originally posted in Madam Mayo blog.

Plan Ahead for the 150th Anniversary of the Battle of Puebla, May 5, 2012

2010-07-13T08:01:00.000-07:00

Don Miles, author of the highly-praised history, Cinco de Mayo, has put together an excellent website for the upcoming festivities including a reenactment in Austin, Texas in 2012, which mark the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Puebla. No, Cinco de Mayo is not Mexico's Independence Day (that's in September), but a celebration of a temporary but astonishing victory of the Mexicans over the French Imperial Army at Puebla in 1862. Read a fascinating, detail-packed interview with Don Miles about Cinco de Mayo here.

Koningsdrama in Mexico by Arthur van den Elzen

2010-07-13T07:59:00.000-07:00

Isn't this cover striking? Archduke of Austria Maximilian von Habsburg and his then fiancee, Charlotte, Princess of the Belgians, some years before they came to Mexico as Emperor and Empress, backed by the French Imperial Army. Alas, I cannot read Dutch, but I do know how to select, copy and paste, so herewith a description of this new book about Maximilian and Carlota by Arthur van den Elzen:

ARTHUR VAN DEN ELZEN :
KONINGSDRAMA IN MEXICO
ISBN: 9789059119253
Verschijningsdatum: maart 2010
Prijs: €24.95
OVER DIT BOEK:
Van 1864 tot 1867 regeerde een jong Europees koningspaar over Mexico, te weten Maximilian von Habsburg, de jongere broer van de laatste grote keizer van Oostenrijk Franz Joseph, en zijn echtgenote Charlotte, de eerste prinses van het jonge België. Vol idealen waren ze vertrokken naar hun droomzetel in de “Nieuwe Wereld”. Hun zit op Moctezuma´s troon was vanaf de start echter gedoemd te mislukken en uiteindelijk ontliepen beiden het noodlot niet. Maximilian werd na een felle eindstrijd en een showproces in het noorden van Mexico geëxecuteerd. Charlotte zou haar “Max” bijna zestig jaar overleven. Waanzinnig - zich nog altijd keizerin van Mexico wanende - sleet ze het lange resterende deel van haar leven tussen de koude muren van de kastelen rondom Brussel. Dit boek vertelt hun levensverhaal, een waargebeurd drama.

Originally posted at Madam Mayo blog.

Tras las huellas de un desconocido (In the Footsteps of an Unknown) by Dr Konrad Ratz

2010-07-06T08:02:00.000-07:00

Tras las huellas de un desconocido [In the Footsteps of an Unknown](Mexico City: Siglo XXI / Conaculta / INAH, 2008), is a crucially important new work by Dr. Konrad Ratz, Austrian expert on Mexico's Second Empire. Covering a wide range of previously unknown or only superficially explored subjects relevant to Maximilian's life and brief rule in Mexico, Tras las huellas de un desconocido is a both fascinating and entertaining read. As Dr. Ratz writes in his introduction (my translation):

"This book does not attempt to rewrite the complete history of Mexico's Second Empire, but it does aim to fill several gaps in Mexican historiography by bringing forth accounts translated from the German, which because of the language barrier, have not been considered in Mexico. These are not only memoirs and diaries of the period, but also recent monographs, both published and unpublished, in German.

In 1974, the Austrian historian Adam Wandruska (1914-1997) professor at the University of Vienna and a leading expert on the history of the Habsburgs, formed a interdisciplinary group of researchers for an exhibit on "Maximilian of Mexico" at Hardegg Castle in Lower Austria. This had been the property of prince Karl von Khevenhueller, who had fought for Maximilian as commander of the Austrian hussars. Subsequently he became a friend of Porfirio Diaz. This lifelong friendship, apart from various extraofficial diplomatic contacts, greatly contributed to the resumption, in 1901, of diplomatic relations between Mexico and Austria, which had been severed in 1867...
... [In addition to these contributions by Professor Wandruska and his group of researchers, this work] covers the unpublished memoirs of the gardener and botanist Wilhelm Knechtl; the diary of Johann Stefan, first engineer on the Novara; published works on the Austrian Volunteer Corps by Edmund Daniek and on the Mexican Austrian Volunteer Corps by Felix Gamillscheg; the research by Norbert Stein on Father Fischer; a brief but essential and richly detailed work by Johann Lubienski on government institutions under Maximilian, and Felix Wilcek's thesis on Maximilian's income and expenditures in Austria.... [And] in a final chapter I have added a biographical sketch of Egon Cesar Corti, biographer of Maximilian and several other European sovereigns and dignitaries. Unfortunately, given the lack of biographical information and misunderstandings with the University of Vienna, which never offered him a professorship, the 50th anniversary of his death in 1953 went unnoticed in Mexico as well as his native country."

As Mexican historian Patricia Galeana writes in her prologue (my translation),

"...Konrad Ratz's work has great value for Mexican as well as Austrian and European historiographies on the Second Empire. He brings us new details and in such clear prose with short chapters that we may read it as a novel, though it is based on solid foundations thanks to meticulous historical research.... we discover the weaknesses and strengths of Maximilian, the romatic politician who dreamed of being the new Quetzatcoatl, Mexico's savior."

Tras las huellas de un desconocido has my highest and most enthusiastic recommendation. Indeed, no bibliography of Maximilian and the Second Empire would be complete without it.

This blog post originally appeared in a slightly different version in my blog, "Madam Mayo".

The Memoirs of Charles Blanchot, General Bazaine's Aide-de-camp

2010-07-06T08:01:00.000-07:00

Another Maximilian bibliography note: Mémoires: L'Intervention Française au Mexique by Charles Blanchot. Published in 1911, this very rare memoir by Charles Blanchot, aide-de-camp to General Bazaine, Supreme Commander of French Forces in Mexico during Mexico's Second Empire, took me several years to find. Year after year, I "googled" it until finally it showed up on the page of an antique book dealer in Paris. The price was, in Euros, the equivalent of 700 dollars. I'll admit I waffled. But I am glad indeed that I bought it--- or rather, the 3 volume set with its pages uncut (I had to use a steak-knife to slit them open--- quite an operation).

There is so much in here that has never seen light in either Spanish or English, for instance: the powerful if behind-the-scenes role of Doña Juliana de Gómez Pedraza, widow of Manuel Gómez Pedraza, and the vicious if, as Blanchot suggests, unfounded rumors circulating in Mexico City about Bazaine in 1866-7. Blanchot, who married an American of French origin in Mexico City, also offers a detailed and lively portrait of Mexico City society at the time.

His memoirs informed several scenes in my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, in particular, the chapters "March 1, 1866: Basket of Crabs" which includes the mention of the very suspicious and sudden death of French financial expert Monsieur Langlais and "March 4, 1866: Rio Frio," about the murder of Baron d'Huart. Not in my novel but fascinating and sad reading is the chapter on his arrival with General Bazaine in Toulon, France.

This blog post was first published in a slightly different version on my blog, "Madam Mayo."

Welcome to Maximilian - Carlota, a Resource for Researchers of Mexico's Second Empire or "French Intervention" of the 1860s

2010-07-06T08:00:00.001-07:00

Welcome! Think of this blog as a kind of bulletin board, pointing out information elsewhere on the web that may of use or interest to you. I'll be updating it every Tuesday, so come back next week-- or, easier yet, subscribe using the orange "feed" button on the sidebar.

I've been researching this strange and tumultuous period of Mexican history for more than a decade, all with the aim of writing my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire (Unbridled Books, 2009), which is based on the true and very strange story of the half-American, half-Mexican child who was taken into Maximilian's Court in 1865. (Read all about it in the Reader's Guide.) The Spanish translation of my novel, by Mexican poet and novelist Agustín Cadena, El Último príncipe del Imperio Mexicano, will be published in Mexico by Random House Mondadori in the fall of 2010. (Yes, I speak fluent Spanish, but I translate from Spanish into English, not vice versa.)

Why this blog, if my book has already been published? By happenstance and from correspondence with readers and other researchers, I continue to learn about books, articles, documents, websites, photos, songs, artworks, and more about the period, and I'd like to share some these treasures here. I also plan to highlight items from my long-standing Maximilian von Mexiko webpage, which is, like this blog, dedicated to resources for researchers on this richly fascinating period. In addition, I will be reposting selected book reviews and other notes from my writer's blog, Madam Mayo.