Second French intervention in Mexico
The second French intervention in Mexico, also known as the Second Franco-Mexican War, was a military invasion of the Republic of Mexico by the French Empire of Napoleon III, purportedly to force the collection of Mexican debts in conjunction with Great Britain and Spain. Mexican conservatives supported the invasion, since they had been defeated by the liberal government of Benito Juárez in a three-year civil war. Defeated on the battlefield, conservatives sought the aid of France to effect regime change and establish a monarchy in Mexico, a plan that meshed with Napoleon III's plans to re-establish the presence of the French Empire in the Americas. Although the French invasion displaced Juárez's Republican government from the Mexican capital and the monarchy of Archduke Maximilian was established, the Second Mexican Empire collapsed within a few years. Material aid from the United States, whose four-year civil war ended in 1865, invigorated the Republican fight against the regime of Maximilian, and the 1866 decision of Napoleon III to withdraw military support for Maximilian's regime accelerated the monarchy's collapse.
The intervention came as a civil war, the Reform War, had just concluded, and the intervention allowed the Conservative opposition against the liberal social and economic reforms of President Juárez to take up their cause once again. The Catholic Church, conservatives, much of the upper-class and Mexican nobility, and some indigenous communities invited, welcomed and collaborated with the French empire to install Maximilian as Emperor of Mexico. However, there was still significant support for republicanism in Mexico. Mexican society was most resistant to European models of governance, including monarchies, during and after the French intervention. The emperor himself however proved to be of liberal inclination and continued some of the Juárez government's most notable measures. Some liberal generals defected to the empire, including the powerful, northern governor Santiago Vidaurri, who had fought on the side of Juárez during the Reform War.
The French army landed in January 1862, aiming to rapidly take the capital of Mexico City, but Mexican republican forces defeated them in the Battle of Puebla on 5 May 1862, delaying their march on the capital for a year. The French and Mexican Imperial Army captured much of Mexican territory, including major cities, but guerrilla warfare by republicans remained a significant factor and Juárez himself never left the national territory. The intervention was increasingly using up troops and money at a time when the recent Prussian victory over Austria was inclining France to give greater military priority to European affairs. The liberals also never lost the official recognition of the United States of America in spite of their ongoing civil war, and following the defeat and surrender of the Confederate States of America in April 1865 the reunited country began providing material support to the republicans. Invoking the Monroe Doctrine, the U.S. government asserted that it would not tolerate a lasting French presence on the continent. Facing a mounting combination of domestic political discontent, diplomatic pressure and the growing military threat of Prussia on the borders of Metropolitan France itself, French units in Mexico began to redeploy to Europe in 1866. Without substantial French support, the Second Mexican Empire collapsed in 1867. Maximilian and the two conservative generals Miguel Miramón and Tomás Mejía were executed by firing squad on 19 June 1867, ending this period of Mexican history.
Background
Some Mexican conservatives had hopes of restoring Mexico to a monarchical form of government, as it had been pre-independence and at its inception in 1821, the First Mexican Empire of Agustín I. Through his Spanish wife, empress Eugénie de Montijo, the French emperor Napoleon III came into contact with monarchist exiles José María Gutiérrez de Estrada and José Manuel Hidalgo y Esnaurrízar, who exposed him to their decades long effort to import a European prince to ascend a Mexican throne. Napoleon III was initially not interested, due to the inevitable opposition that the effort would invite from the United States, but the outbreak of the American Civil War provided an opportunity. After the Mexican–American War, the country was weakened and politically fragmented. Power was divided between central and peripheral elites, and elite rebellions, secessionist attempts, and major uprisings by opposition factions were recurrent under both federalist and centralist constitutions. The 1857 coup led by conservative forces that deposed President Ignacio Comonfort deepened the instability, leaving Mexico trapped in a virtual stalemate between rival elites. Only the eventual victory over the French would end this cycle of endemic political anarchy in Mexico.Napoleon III would also claim that the military adventure was a foreign policy commitment to free trade and that the establishment of a European-derived monarchy in Mexico would ensure European access to Mexican resources, particularly French access to Mexican silver. However, his choice emperor Maximilian would later disagree on Mexican resources going to anyone but Mexicans. More importantly, a French-dependent Mexico would restrain the growing power of the United States, and replace it with French influence in Mexico and the rest of Latin America.
The support for monarchism in Mexico would also inspire strong resistance against European visions of modernity which were frequently accompanied or driven by imperial campaigns. Many Mexicans would question claims to power and the use of gruesome militaristic violence as a means to progress civilization.
Multinational intervention
The pretext for intervention came in July 1861, when Mexican president Benito Juárez placed a moratorium on foreign debt payments and expelled all Spanish diplomats from the country, accusing Spain of having supported the Conservatives in the Reform War. In response, Spain, France, and a reluctant United Kingdom agreed to the Convention of London to ensure that debt repayments would be forthcoming. On 14 December, Spanish general Juan Prim occupied Mexico's main port, Veracruz, with 6,200 Spanish soldiers from Cuba. 2,000 French and 700 British forces joined them on 7 January 1862. Historians have considered Prim, who was given powers as minister plenipotentiary to negotiate with the Mexican government, an unusual choice to lead the intervention. While well-regarded by the people and in military circles for his experience as governor of Puerto Rico, observer in the Crimean War, and leader in the Moroccan War, he was also of liberal tendency and married to a Mexican citizen, Francisca de Agüero, who was related to a member of Juárez's government.On 10 January, Prim issued a manifesto disavowing rumors that the allies had come to conquer or to impose a new government. It was emphasized that the three powers merely wanted to open negotiations regarding their claims of damages. On 14 January, a bill of claims was presented to the government in Mexico City. Foreign Minister Manuel Doblado invited the commissioners to travel to Orizaba with two thousand of their own troops for a conference while requesting that the rest of the tripartite forces embark from Veracruz. The proposal to embark most troops was rejected, but negotiations then resulted in an agreement, ratified on 23 January, to move the forces inland and hold the conference at Orizaba. The agreement also officially recognized the government of Juárez along with Mexican sovereignty.
On 9 April, agreements at Orizaba between the allies broke down, as France made increasingly clear that it intended to invade Mexico and interfere in its government in violation of previous treaties. Prim consulted with the British and the two armies agreed to retire from Mexico after securing that 80% of custom revenues passing through Veracruz would be used to settle debts with foreign nations. Though the British and Spanish agreed to depart at the same time, the general perception was that Prim had precipitated the issue and decided, without the Spanish government's authorization, to put an end to what had been a Spanish-led project from the beginning.
Prim's decision angered France, who had counted on Spanish support to ease their conquest of Mexico, much like how the French were being helped by Spanish forces and bases in the Philippines in their ongoing conquest of Cochinchina. It also angered the Spanish Captain-General of Cuba Francisco Serrano, who refused to provide Prim with additional ships for the evacuation, and Spanish conservatives who saw the affair as Prim abandoning a former Spanish colony, betraying Spain's allies and Mexican conservatives sympathetic to Spain. Prime Minister Leopoldo O'Donnell was ambivalent. He did not want to alienate the French, but he didn't like their plan to install an Austrian monarch in Mexico, because the Austrian Empire had supported the Carlists during the First Carlist War and had been one of the last European states to recognize Isabel II as queen of Spain. "France was an ally of Spain, but Austria was not." Likewise the queen, who had long hoped to install one of her own relatives as monarch in Mexico, prohibited O'Donnell to take any disciplinary action against Prim.
French invasion
On 11 April, Minister Doblado made it known to the remaining occupant, the French government, that its intentions would lead to war. Certain Mexican officers had been sympathetic to the Europeans since the beginning of the intervention. On 16 April, the French issued a proclamation inviting Mexicans to join them in establishing a new government. The next day, Mexican general Juan Almonte, who had been foreign minister of the conservative government defeated in the Reform War, and who was brought back to Mexico by the French, issued his own manifesto, assuring the Mexican people of benevolent French intentions.A French force of 6,500 men began advancing toward Mexico City in early 1862. The French defeated a small Mexican force at Escamela and captured Orizaba. Mexican Generals Porfirio Díaz and Ignacio Zaragoza retreated to El Ingenio, north of Orizaba, and headed towards Puebla. Almonte now attempted to consolidate the Mexican pro-French movement. The town council of Orizaba joined him and so did Veracruz and Isla del Carmen. Colonel Gonzáles, Manuel Castellanos, Desiderio Samaniego,,, and General Antonio Taboada arrived in Orizaba to support Almonte. On 28 April, French forces headed towards Puebla.
On 5 May, Mexican forces commanded by Ignacio Zaragoza and Porfirio Díaz won a major victory against the French at the Battle of Puebla, in which a Mexican force of about 5,000 men confronted 6,000 French troops as they tried to climb steep terrain towards the city. Although costly, the Mexican defense of the Cerro de Guadalupe became a symbolic victory. The French suffered 476 casualties against 227 Mexican losses. This triumph strengthened President Benito Juárez’s political position, attracted some conservative officers to the republican cause, and stirred a new sense of national unity and resistance. The French retreated to Orizaba to await reinforcements, pausing their push to capture Mexico City and delaying the French conquest campaign for a year. The celebration of Cinco de Mayo commemorates the Mexican victory.
Nevertheless, conservative Mexican Generals Florentino López, Leonardo Márquez, and Juan Vicario still sought to join the French, and Mexican republicans suffered defeats at Barranca Seca and Cerro del Borrego in the vicinity of Orizaba.
In response to the French defeat at Puebla, Napoleon III sent 30,000 troops under the command of Élie Frédéric Forey on July. The Emperor gave Forey instructions laying out France's occupation policy, directing him to work with Mexican supporters in the pursuit of both military and political goals. The aim was to establish a new government friendly to French interests, and preventing the United States from becoming too powerful in the Americas was also emphasized. Forey reached Orizaba on 24 October 1862, and began planning another siege of Puebla, the defense of which had now passed on to Jesús González Ortega after Zaragoza died of typhoid on 8 September.
On 10 January 1863, a French squadron bombarded the Pacific port of Acapulco and on 3 February, Forey finally set out for Puebla. González Ortega had been building up the town's fortifications, and on 10 March he declared martial law. The French arrived on 16 March and began the Siege of Puebla.
On 8 May, François Achille Bazaine and Leonardo Márquez defeated a force of new recruits under former Mexican president Ignacio Comonfort at the, when he was coming to reinforce Puebla. Comonfort then retreated to Mexico City. Having run out of munitions and food, González Ortega held a council of war and agreed to surrender on 17 May, after destroying the remaining armaments. All officers were taken prisoner and intended to be transported to France, but González Ortega and Porfirio Díaz managed to escape.