(Dec. 1853), the other by Count Raousset de Boulbon in Sonora
(July 1854)—added to the general disorder.
The provisional president, General Carrera, proving too Centralist, was replaced by Alvarez (Sept. 24, 1855), two of whose ministers are conspicuous in later history—Ignacio Comonfort, minister of war, and Benito Juarez, minister of finance. Juarez (b. 1806) was of unmixed Indian blood. The son of a Zapotec peasant in a mountain Benito Juarez. village of Oaxaca, he was employed as a lad by a bookbinder in Oaxaca city, and aided by him to study for the priesthood. He soon turned to the law, though for a time he was teacher of physics in a small local college; eventually went into politics, and did excellent work in 1847 as governor of his native state. Juarez almost immediately secured the enactment of a law (Ley Juarez, Nov. 23, 1855) subjecting the clergy and the army to the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts. “Benefit of clergy” was the curse of Mexico. Officers and soldiers could be tried only by courts-martial, the clergy (including numbers of persons in minor orders, who were practically laymen) only by ecclesiastical courts. The proposed reform roused the Clericals to resistance. Alvarez gave place (Dec. 8, 1855) to his war minister Comonfort, who represented the less anti-Clerical Liberals. He appointed a commission to consider the question of draining the Valley of Mexico, which adopted the plan ultimately carried out in 1890–1900; suppressed a Clerical rising in Puebla (March 1856), which was punished by a considerable confiscation of church property; sanctioned a law releasing church land from mortmain, by providing for its sale, for the benefit, however, of the ecclesiastical owners (called after its author Miguel Lerdo de Tejada, brother of the subsequent president), and a new draft constitution, largely modelled on that of the United States (Feb. 5, 1857). The clergy protested violently, and the Plan of Tacubaya (Dec. 17, 1857), which made Comonfort dictator, provided for the construction of a new constitution under his auspices. He was presently displaced by a thorough reactionary, General Zuloaga, and expelled from Mexico early in 1858; and for three years Mexico was a prey to civil war between two rival governments—the Republicans at Vera Cruz under Juarez, who, as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, succeeded Comonfort; and the reactionaries at the capital. The latter were at first presided over by Zuloaga, who, proving incompetent, was replaced at the end of 1858 by Pezuela, who early in 1859 gave place to Miguel Miramon, a young, able and unscrupulous soldier who was shortly afterwards accepted as “constitutional” president by his party. The Juarists were defeated outside the city of Mexico twice, in October 1858 and on the 11th of April 1859, On the second occasion the whole body of officers,Miramon. who had surrendered, were shot with Miramon’s authority, if not by his express orders, together with several surgeons (including one Englishman, Dr Duval) (the fifty-three “martyrs of Tacubaya”). This atrocity caused great indignation in Mexico and abroad: the reactionists were divided; their financial straits were extreme, as the Juarists held all the chief ports. Juarez was recognized by the United States, and allowed to draw supplies of arms and volunteers thence; and in July 1859 he published laws suppressing the religious orders, nationalizing ecclesiastical property (of the estimated value of $45,000,000), establishing civil marriage and registration, transferring the cemeteries to civil control, and, in short, disestablishing the church. But the apparent hopelessness of any ending to the conflict, together with the frequent outrages of both parties on foreigners, afforded strong reasons for foreign intervention. Early in 1859 President Buchanan had recommended the step to Congress, which did not respond. On the 12th of December 1859 the M‘Lean-Juarez treaty was concluded, which gave the United States a sort of disguised protectorate over Mexico, with certain rights of way for railroads over the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and between the Rio Grande and Pacific. The American Senate, however, did not ratify the treaty, and a motion for its reconsideration late in 1860 came to nothing, owing to the approach of the War of Secession.
When Napoleon III. was in captivity at Ham he dreamed of a Central America civilized and opened up to modern enterprise by a transoceanic canal: and the clerical refugees in Paris, among them Labastida, archbishop of Mexico, easily influenced the Empress Eugenie, herself a Spaniard, to interest her husband in the cause of centralized monarchy and the church: it is said that even in 1859 they had thoughts of setting up the Archduke Maximilian as ruler of Mexico.
The question of a joint intervention of Great Britain, France,
Spain and Prussia was mooted between those powers in 1860.
Early in 1859 the outrages on British subjects had
caused the British minister to break off diplomatic
relations. Forced contributions had been levied by
both sides on goods or bullion, being European property, the
Overthrow
of Miramon, 1860.
reactionaries being the worst offenders; and there were numerous
cases of murder and robbery of Europeans. At last, on the
17th of November 1860, Miramon, under the plea of necessity,
seized $630,000 in specie which had been left under seal at the
British Legation and was intended for the bondholders. On
the 22nd of December 1860 his forces were routed by the Juarist
general Ortega at Arroyozarco, and his government was overthrown.
Juarez entered Mexico City on the 11th of January 1861. He soon found that his government was held responsible to Europe for the excesses of its rival as well as its own. Miramon’s government had violated the British Legation; the Spanish minister, the papal legate and the representatives of Guatemala and Ecuador were expelled from the country for undue interference on behalf of the reactionaries; the payments of theEuropean Intervention, 1861. British loan were suspended by Juarez’s Congress in 1861; and various outrages had been committed on the persons and property of Europeans for which no redress could be obtained. The French chargé d’affaires, Dubois de Saligny, who had been sent out in November 1860, urged French intervention, and took up the Jecker claims. Jecker, a Swiss banker settled in Mexico, had lent Miramon’s government in 1859 $750,000 (subject, however, to various deductions): in return, Miramon gave him 6% bonds of the nominal value of $15,000,000 which were ingeniously disguised as a conversion scheme. Jecker had failed early in 1860, Miramon was overthrown a few months later. Jecker’s creditors were mostly French, but he still held most of the bonds, and there is reason to believe that he won over Dubois de Saligny by corrupt means to support his claims. Intercepted correspondence (since confirmed from the archives of the Tuileries) showed that the Duc de Morny promised Jecker his patronage in return for 30% of the profits (De la Gorce, Hist. du Second Empire, IV. c. 1). An imperial decree naturalized Jecker in France, and Napoleon III. took up his claim. A convention between Great Britain, France and Spain for joint interference in Mexico was signed in London on the 31st of October 1861. A separate arrangement of the British claims was negotiated by Juarez, but rejected by the Mexican Congress, November 1861; and the assistance of the United States with a small loan was declined, Mexican territory being demanded as security. On the 14th of December Vera Cruz was occupied by Spanish troops under General Prim; the French fleet and troops arrived soon after, with instructions to seize and hold the Gulf ports and collect the customs for the three Powers till a settlement was effected; Great Britain sent ships, and landed only 700 marines. In view of the unhealthiness of Vera Cruz, the convention of Soledad was concluded with the Mexican government, permitting the foreign troops to advance to Orizaba and incidentally recognizing Mexican independence. But as the French harboured leaders of the Mexican reactionaries, pressed the Jecker claims and showed a disposition to interfere in Mexican domestic politics, which lay beyond the terms of the joint convention, Great Britain and Spain withdrew their forces in March 1862.
More troops were sent from France. Their advance was checked by Zaragoza and Porfirio Diaz in the battle of Cinco de Mayo, on the 5th of May 1862; and in September of that year 30,000 more French troops arrived under General Forey. Wintering at Orizaba, they recommenced their advance
