[rolling_stone]

The French were there because the Mexican Government had decided to welch on paying back the money France loaned them.

Yeah and the French lost the battle of Puebla but captured Mexico City and won the war..thus Maximiliano.

[Verginius Rufus]

Maximilian was an Austrian Habsburg, the younger brother of the Kaiser Franz Joseph, put in place by the French emperor Napoleon III who was really of Italian ancestry. None of it makes much sense. Maximilian should have left with the French troops and gone back to Austria to enjoy his villa outside of Trieste overlooking the Adriatic...instead he was shot.