influence to the alluring idea of "opposing the Latin race to the invasion of Anglo-Saxons" in the New World—that is, to check the supremacy of the United States upon the western continent, and establish an Empire in Mexico, which, nominally independent, would be under his own control, and thus add to the glory of the French nation.
The time was opportune, for the United States were then engrossed in a civil war, which absorbed all their resources. The government at Washington could not give its attention to affairs in Mexico, and Napoleon hoped, in the not improbable event of the success of the Southern States, that there would be no danger of interference from that quarter.
The demands of the commissioners, therefore, were but an excuse for entering the country. Relying on the representatives of the Mexican émigrés, which promised cordial support from the clerical party at home, the French advanced towards the capital of Mexico.
Meanwhile, the future Emperor had been found. Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph, Archduke of Austria, of the house of Hapsburg Lorraine, accepted the proposition secretly made him by Napoleon, to become Emperor of Mexico.
He was brother of the reigning Emperor of Austria, and they were descended from the royal house of Charles V. of Germany and I. of Spain. Maximilian was born in 1832; in 1857 he had married the daughter of the King of Belgium, Carlotta Maria Amalia. These two young persons, for the prince was but little over thirty, were at Miramar, their
