History as a Movie Script

I remember when I was a kid, I watched the movie "Juarez" on the Late Show on TV.  The black and white film was made in 1939, and had an all-star cast... Bette Davis, Paul Muni, Brian Aherne, Claude Rains, John Garfield, Gale Sondergaard, among others.  (I suppose that most young people today would ask, "Who are they????"... with the possible exception of Bette Davis.)  In spite of the title, the movie centers more upon the ill-fated Maximillian and Carlota (Aherne and Davis) than the Mexican President Juárez (Muni).

(images taken from the internet)

Emperor Napoleon III of France (the bad guy played by Claude Rains) invades Mexico, and the legitimate President, Benito Juárez, flees the capital and directs the guerilla warfare against the foreign invaders.  Napoleon asks the Austrian Archduke Maximillian von Hapsburg to rule Mexico as its Emperor.  (Of course, Napoleon intends for Max to be his puppet, ruling in France's interests.)  The well-meaning Maximillian is duped into believing that the Mexican people really want him as their ruler.  So, he and his wife, the Belgian princess Carlota, sail to Mexico and rule for a few years in imperial splendor.  However, the fight against the Mexican guerillas proves to be a drain on France's resources.  Furthermore, the U.S., once the North has won the Civil War, demands that Napoleon remove his troops.  Carlota rushes back to Europe to demand that the French Emperor honor his commitments to her husband, but to no avail.  Without French support, Maximillian is defeated, captured and executed before a firing squad.  Carlota has a nervous breakdown, goes insane, and is locked up in a Belgian castle where she believes that she is still the Empress of Mexico.

Unfortunately, the movie is not available on DVD.  I suppose that if I were to see it again, I would find the acting stilted and overdone.  However, at the time I was fascinated with the story, and it sparked an interest in Mexican history.

That movie came to mind because I recently finished reading a book entitled "The Last Emperor of Mexico" by British historian Edward Shawcross. 

The book is a serious and well researched history.  But the subject matter is so dramatic that it is not dry reading at all.  In fact, it reads almost like a historical novel.  Of course, I already knew the story very well, but this book provided plenty of additional details.

Maximillian was a pitiful person... naive, indecisive, incompetent and a spendthrift.  Rather than dealing with the problems that he faced, he spent his time writing a book on court etiquette, decorating his home at Chapultepec Castle, and taking royal tours of his realm.  He was a very liberal person for his time.  He issued decrees, which were never enforced, that were even more progressive than those of Juárez. This infuriated Mexican conservatives who had hoped that Maximillian would repeal the despised Reform Laws of Juárez.  At the end, Maximillian had the opportunity to abdicate, and in fact, when he learned of Carlota's illness, he had made plans to do so and return to Europe.  However, he dithered away his chances because he did not want to act dishonorably.  As you read the book, you want to slap him and say, "Get the heck out of Mexico, you fool."

Carlota was an extremely intelligent and well-educated woman. However, her ambition to do more with her life than sit around in a Hapsburg castle got the best of her.  It was she who pushed the indecisive archduke to accept the role of Mexican Emperor.  In the end, her fate was perhaps more tragic.  She lived for sixty years after Maximillian's death, drifting in and out of sanity, until she passed away at the age of 86 in 1927.