Bad Political Idea Have Consequences: Maximilian of Mexico

Bad Political Idea Have Consequences: Maximilian of Mexico May 5, 2016

Rest in peace.
Rest in peace.

Whenever I believe good intentions are enough, I recall standing at the tomb of Maximilian of Mexico.

There have been many worse political ideas than making a mildly liberal archduke of Austria the Emperor of Mexico with French arms, but few that worked out so badly for everyone.

The Hapsburg family was decaying in power by the middle of the nineteenth century, but still had a reputation as a defender of Catholic Europe. Mexico was a mess and owed several European powers a great deal of money. The Emperor Napoleon III used the American Civil War as an opportunity to dabble in empire building with a humanitarian twist. He would send the Catholic people of Mexico an enlightened monarch in his own image. The Belgian royal family was delighted since this would put one of their number on the throne as Empress . . . and get her unstable personality out of Europe.

This ended with Maximilian dead and his wife, Carlota, mad. More important, many Mexican lives were lost in a useless civil war. Perhaps surprisingly to some, Maximilian ended up more sympathetic to the rights of First Peoples than many contemporaries . . . an impulse that alienated many wealthy supporters. He also wasted time with court protocol, though his personal commitment to Mexico cannot be questioned. It killed him.

There is a warning here.

Idealism coupled with power politics is a recipe for the worst kind of disaster. Napoleon III was a schemer, not a dreamer. Maximilian was at his best a mildly progressive noble in the retrograde Austrian Empire. Put the two of them together and nothing was going to go well. The Empire of Mexico was utterly dependent on French arms, but Maximilian wanted to be Mexican. He resented the French and the French naturally resented his refusal to simply be a front for their political and financial demands. Like many dreamers, the new Mexican fell in love with a Mexico that he dreamed up, not the nation as it was and ended up dying uselessly.

Any Christian is by necessity a dreamer. We do not, quite, live in this age, but look to the age to come. We know (or should know) what is, but care more about what should be. As a result, we can never be perfectly comfortable with mere power. We need not be unwise or imprudent (as Max was), but we can only compromise so much. Napoleon III was a con artist, trading on his Uncle’s legacy to build a hollow empire full of bluff and balderdash. He was a grifter and a man who could not be trusted and Maximilian was a fool to put his safety in the hands of such a man.

Naturally the people of Mexico resented imperialism only fifty years after winning independence. In parts of Mexico and in some of the US, today is celebrated as a day when the French were defeated by Mexicans. . . though the civil war had much longer to go. The French eventually would abandon Max and he would end up shot after being captured.

Idealists should not try to work with Napoleon. We end up fools, dead, and having harmed thousands of people we came to “help.”

God save us from the fate of Maximilian of Mexico. May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed rest in peace.

 


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