Posted on 06/19/2020 10:45:05 AM PDT by CheshireTheCat
On this date in 1867, a firing squad disabused a Habsburg heir of his pretensions to the throne of Mexico. A little bit loopy, a little bit liberal, and fatally short of common sense, Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph* decamped from the easy life at his still-under-construction dream palace outside Trieste for an exalted title that really meant playing catspaw for Napoleon III‘s Mexican land grab.
(To assuage the pangs of imperial adventurism upon our tender-headed hero, Maximilian had been “invited” to assume the Mexican throne by a convention handpicked to do just that.)
There the puppet emperor with the silver spoon in his mouth found himself pitted in civil war against the Amerindian peasant from the school of hard knocks: Benito Juarez, one of Mexico’s great liberal statesmen...
(Excerpt) Read more at executedtoday.com ...
I’ve been to the site of his execution, the Cerro de las Campanas (hill of the bells) in Querétaro, Mexico. It features a large stature of Benito Juárez and a chapel.
Juarez was hardly a liberal. He persecuted the church, thought about setting up his own pope in Mexico, did little or nothing for the Indians (despite being one himself).
Max could have had a great, liberal reign; instead, Mexico got the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz.
I have caught a glimpse of his palace near Trieste from the train but haven't been to it. Beautiful setting right by the sea.
His mistake was to rely on the French.
The Undefeated
“Windage and elevation Mrs. Langdon.”
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065150/
The Undefeated
Yes.
Col James Langdon (Rock Hudson) was moving his people to go live in Mexico under the hospitality of Emperor Maximillian.
Nice movie. Great cast.
Duke, Ben Johnson, Rock Hudson and others.
Yes.
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