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1862, The French arrival in Mexico – A History Review
By Brenda Ruíz de Velasco Aldana
 1862, The French arrival in Mexico – A History Review
By Brenda Ruíz de Velasco Aldana
In Mexico, the scenery prior to the French intervention lies with the Three-year War (1858-1861), when power was being disputed among conservatives and liberals.
In 1858, Benito Juárez, as constitutional president, defended republican legality and proclaimed the laws of “Reforma” (1859), winning a liberal victory by the end of 1861.
In 1862, Juárez was forced to decree a two-year moratorium during which Mexico would not pay the debts it had contracted way back with Spain, France and England by the various prior governments, both liberal and conservative.
Those very same interventionist powers recognized Benito Juárez’s government by means of the La Soledad treaties; nonetheless they named an auditor at Veracruz’s customs to verify that, after a certain period, payments were carried out punctually.
By the end of 1862 the French reneged the La Soledad treaties. Though the underlying reason was to establish a zone that extended through Europe, Asia and America to stop the expansion of the United States of America. So his repudiation of the treaties served to take advantage of his troops being already in Veracruz, through which he could intervene the country’s capital.
The interventionist troops arrived in the city of Puebla on May 5th 1862; there they were stopped by the army of the orient, under the orders of general Ignacio Zaragoza with the help of the indian community’s militias such as the Zacapoaxtla.
 The 5th of May represented a victory for Mexico and great confusion for the French facing such a defeat. Notwithstanding the adversity, French troops continued to arrive to the port of Veracruz, those troops took Mexico City in June 1863. President Juárez took his legitimate government to San Luis Potosí; then he traveled from one place to another until he settled along the territory where now lies Ciudad Juárez, in the north of Mexico.
Juárez directed the movements of the Mexican armies commanded by Mariano Escobedo, Ramón Corona and Porfirio Díaz from a distance. The French and their conservative allies, in the meantime, prepared the installation of a monarchic system. A group of Mexican emigres, close to empress Eugenia, suggested to Napoleon III the possibility of placing archduke Maximillian of Austria as monarch of Mexico. The proposals of the conservative emigres coincided with the emperor’s dream of a latin hegemony he had in mind.
In 1864, Maximillian and his wife Charlotte arrived in Mexico to the applause of creole conservatives. Pressured by the United States, Napoleon III pulled his troops out of Mexico. The liberals took advantage of such an event: in june 1867 they executed Maximillian and his close generals Tomás Mejía and Miguel Miramón.
The French intervention in our country reveals an independent Mexico that was really quite fragile, as it had been shaken by overwhelming instability and violence, the result of poverty and social weakness whose more immediate causes lied in the loss of half of its national territory.
 Finally, we must mention that the imperialists were not only servile conservatives. Some of them had condemned the intervention and, if they ended up promoting it, it was mainly due to their disenchantment with republican practices that, according to them, had only paralyzed the country and divided the Mexican society.
These men adhered to the empire because they considered that maybe under that unlikely regime, the principles of justice, equality and freedom the Mexican needed so badly, could be achieved. Email to a friend
Brenda Ruíz de Velasco Aldana
Source: http://www.e-mexico.gob.mx/
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