Mexican expedition, French (1861-7), an attempt to counter Protestant Anglo-Saxon influence in the Americas that gave birth to the term ‘Latin America’, and which included the battles of Puebla and Camerone, anniversaries still celebrated by Mexico and the French Foreign Legion.
Wracked by civil wars, Mexico suspended payment on its international loans in 1861 and in retaliation a joint Anglo-Spanish-French force seized Vera Cruz. The others withdrew when they realized that Napoleon III had wider plans involving his dream of a ‘Latin League’, encouraged by his Spanish wife, by exiled Mexican conservatives, and by US preoccupation with its own civil war. Although much of Juárez's army was tied up by conservative forces elsewhere, the first French advance towards Mexico City was stopped at the Puebla pass on 5 May 1862, where about 5, 000 men commanded by Zaragoza repelled a rash attack by an élite force of 6, 500. This was the first Mexican victory over a foreign enemy since independence, and stands as the moment when a truly national identity first began to take form.
Napoleon III dispatched 30, 000 reinforcements under Forey, who besieged a Mexican army of 20, 000-25, 000 men at Puebla. After it capitulated on 17 May, large-unit resistance ended and Forey marched into the capital on 10 June. He directed an assembly of conservative and clerical ‘Notables’ to issue an invitation to the Habsburg Archduke Maximilian, Napoleon III's handpicked candidate, to become emperor of Mexico. He then returned to France, leaving Bazaine with the thankless task of pacifying a people with a long tradition of guerrilla warfare. Maximilian was duly installed in mid-1865 while Bazaine's troops chased Juárez in the north and Porfirio Díaz in the south. The French controlled the cities, but in the countryside their authority was limited to where they stood. In anticipation of this, from 1863 they countenanced the operations of a ruthless irregular force of mercenaries under Dupin and attempted to recruit bandit gangs. These added little to military effectiveness and greatly to the suffering of the Mexican people.
The original pact between Napoleon III and Maximilian specified a force of 10, 000 European troops to remain as the nucleus of a new Mexican army, and consideration was given to transferring the Foreign Legion. But the occupation proved costly and with the end of the American civil war it became a serious liability, underlined when Juárez took refuge against the border beneath the protection of an ‘army of observation’ under the aggressive Sheridan. In February 1866 Napoleon III agreed to withdraw his troops by November 1867, but the growing threat from Prussia in Europe advanced the date and in March 1867 an embittered Bazaine embarked his 29, 000 men for return to France, destroying supplies to deny them to Maximilian. The hapless Habsburg felt honour-bound to make a last stand at Querétaro with a small Austrian contingent and an unreliable Mexican conscript army. Betrayed, he and his two remaining Mexican generals were shot on 14 June 1867.
Bibliography
- Garfías, Gen Luis, La intervención francesa en México (México, 1988)
— Hugh Bicheno
