Mexico, (French) Empire of
Substate | Defunct
1863 CE to 1867 CE
Worlds
The Far West
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Showing 10 events out of 39 total
He helps to rapidly promote rapid economic modernization, but his army battles diehard insurgents who have American support.
By 1863, French military intervention in Mexico to set up a Second Mexican Empire headed by Emperor Maximilian, brother of Franz Joseph I of Austria, is a complete fiasco.
The Mexicans fight back and after defeating the Confederacy the U.S. will demand the French withdraw from Mexico—sending fifty thousand veteran combat troops to the border to ram the point home.
The French army will go home; the puppet emperor does not leave and will eventually be executed.
Napoleon III had increased troop strength to thirty-five thousand by March of 1863, and the French army enters the capital in June.
The regency operates from Mexico City; ...
...the republican government of Juaréz operates from the northern city of San Luis Potosí.
The end of the Paraguayan War coincides with the resurgence of republicanism as disenchanted liberals cast about for a new route to power.
The 1867 collapse of the short-lived, French-sponsored Mexican monarchy of Maximilian leaves Brazil as the hemisphere's only monarchical regime, and because Argentina will appear to prosper in the 1870s and 1880s, it will serve as a powerful advertisement for republican government.
The republican ideology spreads in urban areas and in provinces, such as São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul, where the people do not believe they benefit from imperial economic policies.
The republican manifesto of 1870 proclaims that "We are in America and we want to be Americans."
Monarchy is, the writers asserted, hostile to the interests of the American states and will be a continuous source of conflict with Brazil's neighbors.
The republicans embrace the abolition of slavery to remove the stigma of Brazil's being the only remaining slave-holding country (save for Spanish Cuba) in the hemisphere.
It is not so much that they believe that slavery is wrong as that it gives the country an image distasteful to Europeans.
Abolition, which will come in 1888, does not imply that liberals want deep social reform or desire a democratic society.
Indeed, their arguments against slavery are weighted toward efficiency rather than morality.
Once in power, the republicans will look to discipline the legally free work force with various systems of social control.
Napoleon III of France had taken the imperial title in 1852, inaugurating the Second Empire and presiding over an era great industrialization, urbanization (including the massive rebuilding of Paris by Baron Haussmann) and economic growth, but his foreign policies have been less successful.
In 1854, the Second Empire had joined the Crimean War, pitting France and Britain against the Russian Empire, which had been decisively defeated at Sevastopol in 1854-1855 and at Inkerman (1854).
In 1856, France had joined the Second Opium War on the British side against China; a missionary's murder had been used as a pretext to take interests in southwest Asia in the Treaty of Tientsin.
In 1861 Napoleon III, had largely supported Maximilian in his claim to Mexico, a move that was also supported by Britain and Spain but condemned by the U.S.
This had led to the French intervention in Mexico.
The Red River Campaign begins as Union troops reach Alexandria, Louisiana, on March 10, 1864.
The Union has four goals at the start of the campaign: To destroy the Confederate Army commanded by Taylor.
To capture Shreveport, Louisiana, Confederate headquarters for the Trans-Mississippi Department, control the Red River to the north, and occupy east Texas.
To confiscate as much as a hundred thousand bales of cotton from the plantations along the Red River.
To organize pro-Union state governments in the region.
Union strategists in Washington think that the occupation of east Texas and control of the Red River will separate Texas from the rest of the Confederacy.
Texas is the source of much needed guns, food, and supplies for Confederate troops.
Other historians have claimed that the campaign was also motivated by concern regarding the twenty-five thousand French troops in Mexico sent by Napoleon III and under the command of Emperor Maximilian.
At the time, the Confederates had offered to recognize the government of Maximilian in return for French recognition of the Confederacy; the Confederates had also hoped to gain access to valuable war goods through this recognition.
However, Banks's campaign on the Texas coast during November and December 1863 had satisfied President Abraham Lincoln, who had written to Banks: "My thanks for your successful and valuable operations in Texas." (The Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress: Abraham Lincoln to Nathaniel P. Banks, Thursday, December 24, 1863 (Reply to Banks's letter of December 6; with copy of Lincoln to Banks, December 29, 1863 on verso))
Now the British Minister to Japan, Sir Rutherford Alcock, discusses with his treaty counterparts, such as American Minister Robert Pruyn, the feasibility of a joint military strike against Takachika.
They are soon making preparations for a combined show of force.
Under the wary eyes of the Japanese, fifteen British warships ride anchor alongside four Dutch vessels, while a British regiment from Hong Kong augment their display of military might.
The French maintain a minimal naval presence, with the bulk of their forces in Mexico trying to bolster Emperor Maximilian's unstable regime.
The U.S., engaged in its Civil War, limits itself to demonstrate diplomatic and minimal military support for the allies.
In the meantime, Takachika procrastinates in negotiations by requesting additional time to respond to the allied demands, a response unacceptable to the treaty powers.
The allies decide that the time for united action has arrived.
This provokes further outrage, even after a British squadron delivers a multi-national ultimatum to Takachika, threatening military force if the strait is not opened.
Troops from Chōshū Domain attempt to take control of Kyoto and the Imperial Palace in the Hamaguri rebellion of August 20, 1864, in order to pursue the objective of Sonnō Jōi (”Revere the emperor, expel the barbarians”), a Japanese political philosophy and a social movement derived from Neo-Confucianism; in the 1850s, it had become a political slogan in the movement to overthrow the Tokugawa bakufu, during the Bakumatsu ("End of Bakufu") period.
This leads to a punitive expedition by the Tokugawa government, the First Chōshū expedition.
The last land battle of the civil war, the Battle of Palmito Ranch in far south Texas on May 13, 1865, more than a month after Confederate General Lee's surrender, ends with a Confederate victory.
Why the battle happened remains something of a mystery.
The French Foreign Legion was occupying neighboring Matamoros, Mexico at the time, and was said to have reinforced the Confederate forces in Brownsville.
Theodore H. Barrett's detractors among the brigade suggested soon after the battle that he had desired "a little battlefield glory before the war ended altogether." (Marvel, William. "Last Hurrah at Palmetto Ranch." Civil War Times, January 2006 (Vol. XLIV, No. 6); p. 69)
Others theorized that Barrett needed horses for the three hundred dismounted cavalry in his brigade and for other purposes.
In Barrett's official report of August 10, 1865, he will report one hundred and fifteen Union casualties: one killed, nine wounded, and one hundred and five captured.
Confederate casualties will be reported as five or six wounded, with none killed.
Historian and Ford biographer Stephen B. Oates, however, concludes that Union deaths were much higher, numbering approximately thirty, many of whom drowned in the Rio Grande or were attacked and killed by French border guards on the Mexican side.
He likewise estimated Confederate casualties at approximately the same number.