The Saber and Scroll Journal Volume 1, Issue 1, April 2015 | Page 44

Mexican port city of Veracruz. From there, they began the march that would end in
the president’s palace in Mexico City. 21
By 1865, the Europeans and their allies had overrun almost all of Mexico.
They forced Benito Juárez, the legally-elected president of Mexico, to flee to
Mexico’s northern border to conduct a guerilla war. It seemed as if Napoleon III’s
scheme would come to fruition until the American Civil War ended with a victory
for the Union forces. From then on in Mexico, the tables started to turn. The
Mexican Republican forces started receiving American aid, including many surplus
Civil War weapons, veteran fighters, and non-material aid that propped up the
republican cause. 22
America’s covert and overt actions countered European efforts in Mexico,
and the fact that Napoleon attempted to erect a European-led monarchy on the ruins
of the Mexican republic, called for a bold American stroke to defend the Monroe
Doctrine. What made this action so daring was that American leaders, so soon after
the bloodiest conflict in the country’s history, had the fortitude to risk a war with a
major world power to enforce a doctrine that some argued to be insignificant on the
domestic scene.
As the imperialists realized that few in their country were going to
embrace the usurpation of the elected Mexican government by foreigners and their
armies, the need arose for more European troops to arrive and firmly establish the
Second Mexican Empire by force. In total, France sent more than 38,000 French
troops, representing twenty percent of Napoleon III’s armed forces, to Mexico.
This, however, was not a strictly French affair. The Khedive of Egypt sent some
450 Sudanese soldiers. Austria sent approximately 7,000 troops, while Belgium
added about 2,000 volunteers known as “le régiment Impératrice Charlotte.” 23
Maximilian’s consort was Belgian, and he formed the Belgian volunteer regiment in
her name. Since these troops received pay for their service, they more properly
might have been called mercenaries. Whatever their label, they were part of an
international force with a common enemy: the Mexican Republican forces, regular
and guerilla, under Juárez.
Thus the United States threatened to go to war against a global coalition,
but its greatest pressure selectively targeted the French. America directed her full
diplomatic and military weight against the French forces; since without French
soldiers, the remaining soldiers of the other nationalities would evacuate without
reinforcements. When Napoleon decided at last to call his troops home in stages, he
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