it was a clerical town, and one of his most ardent supporters, while the political capital might prove treacherous.
The Republicans surrounded it. Batteries were planted on the hill down which the diligence plunges; on a headland next to it, across a broad and deep cañon; and the third on Sierra de los Campanas, or Hill of the Bells, a knob of not much height, rising out of the meadows to the north-west of the town. He was in the Church of the Cross, with huge gardens attached, surrounded by a high wall, making a fortress of especial strength. One of his generals betrayed that fortress of a church, and he was captured. Tried by court-martial, he is condemned for publishing a cruel edict, two years before, which outlawed all Republicans, and caused the murder of many. He is ordered to be shot, with two associates, Miramon, ex-President of the republic, and Tomas Majia, a general. They are marched out to the Hill of the Bells, and in front of its fort, high up the hill-side, the three men fall by the bullets of the government. With them fell the Church Power in Mexico. It was her last battle. For twenty years she had plotted, and raised rebellions, and introduced a foreign prince and a foreign army. Miramon was her Mexican leader, Pius IX. her European.
A favorite picture on the parkor walls of devout Romanists here is Maximilian and Carlotta visiting the pope. He sits on a daïs, holding converse with them about Mexico. They were blessed by him, and urged on their dim and perilous way. He was the real centre of the imperial movement; Napoleon was only his military director. All of it was Romanism, and Romanism only.
When America finished her war, Mr. Seward put sixty thousand men on the Mexican frontier, and sent a polite note to the French minister suggesting that the French troops be recalled from this continent. Napoleon saw that his stay in Mexico was at an end, and gracefully withdrew his troops. Maximilian should have gone with him. But he fancied he could win alone. He trusted the Church party. They were weak and weaker every day. Juarez, inspired by the United States, moved on him and drove him hither, captured, condemned, shot him.
