EDITO 18
Mexico,
Behind Camerone, the Imperial Illusion
By Louis Perez y Cid
Some battles enlighten, and others blind.
At the Battle of Camerone, the French Foreign Legion etched a memory of loyalty and sacrifice. No doubt about it. Nothing to take back.
But by focusing so intently on this incandescent point, we almost forget to look around. What was France doing in Mexico?
Officially, it wasn't alone. The expedition began as a coalition: France, Spain, and the United Kingdom landed in 1861 to force Mexico to honor its debts. A matter of creditors, almost commonplace in the 19th century of empires.
But very quickly, everything changed.
The Spanish and the British understood that the real objective went far beyond financial recovery. They withdrew. France, however, stayed. Why?
Because behind the accounting operation lay a political project, that of Napoleon III. Establishing a Catholic, Latin empire in America, capable of counterbalancing the rising power of the United States. A strategic idea, almost brilliant on paper. But disconnected from reality.
Mexico wasn't waiting for a throne. It was emerging from a civil war. It was riddled with deep divisions. And above all, it already had a president, Benito Juárez, who had no intention of ceding his country to a European construct. So France was sinking, and with it, an illusion.
For this expedition also carried a more personal, almost ideological dimension. Eugénie de Montijo's role was not insignificant. Deeply Catholic, marked by a romantic vision of the monarchy, she actively supported the idea of a restored Mexico centered on a sovereign.
Eugénie wasn't the originator of the Mexican project. But she gave it a character, a direction, almost a justification. Eugénie de Montijo didn't think in terms of the balance of power. She thought as the heir to a world under threat. A Catholic, educated in a Spain still torn between tradition and liberalism, she saw in Mexico something more than an unstable territory: a potential kingdom, a continuity to be restored.
Around her, voices circulated. Exiles, conservatives, clergymen, from Spain or Mexico, all saying the same thing: a country given over to disorder, a Church under attack, an authority to be revived. Some wrote, others spoke. Nothing official. Nothing decisive on their own. But an insistence.
And this is how lasting errors are born, not in the secrecy of a conspiracy, but in the repetition of a conviction. Napoleon III hesitated, calculated, adjusted. Eugénie, however, believed. And sometimes, in history, it is not calculations that sway the decision, but certainties. This sovereign would be Maximilian I. An Austrian archduke parachuted into a country he doesn't understand, carried by a foreign army, and abandoned as soon as the tide turns.
For the tide does turn. The Civil War ends. The United States can once again look south and firmly reiterate its rejection of any European presence. The pressure mounts. France withdraws. Maximilian stays and is executed by firing squad in 1867. Then Camerone takes on a different meaning. It is no longer simply a feat of arms. It is a fixed point in the midst of a misguided movement. Absolute loyalty committed to an undertaking that was itself not. Perhaps this is the true vertigo of this campaign. Irreproachable men, serving an uncertain ideal.
And a question remains: can an army be great when the policy that guides it is in the wrong world? There is something in this Mexican affair that is unacceptable. A power sure of itself. A country she believes to be fragile, and this certainty that all it takes is persistence for history to yield.
In the 19th century, France misjudged the world.
In the 21st, the United States persists, facing Iran, as elsewhere.
Always the same mistake: mistaking a regime for a country, and a country for prey.
In Mexico, it ends against a wall, with Maximilian I facing the guns.
Elsewhere, it becomes bogged down, more slowly, more expensively, more protracted. But the underlying issue remains the same.
Empires believe they are writing history. They forget that they too are part of it, and that it closes in on itself.
So Camerone remains. Not as a legend, but as a boundary.
The boundary that separates the loyalty of men from the error of those who commit them.
Some battles enlighten, and others blind.
At the Battle of Camerone, the French Foreign Legion etched a memory of loyalty and sacrifice. No doubt about it. Nothing to take back.
But by focusing so intently on this incandescent point, we almost forget to look around. What was France doing in Mexico?
Officially, it wasn't alone. The expedition began as a coalition: France, Spain, and the United Kingdom landed in 1861 to force Mexico to honor its debts. A matter of creditors, almost commonplace in the 19th century of empires.
But very quickly, everything changed.
The Spanish and the British understood that the real objective went far beyond financial recovery. They withdrew. France, however, stayed. Why?
Because behind the accounting operation lay a political project, that of Napoleon III. Establishing a Catholic, Latin empire in America, capable of counterbalancing the rising power of the United States. A strategic idea, almost brilliant on paper. But disconnected from reality.
Mexico wasn't waiting for a throne. It was emerging from a civil war. It was riddled with deep divisions. And above all, it already had a president, Benito Juárez, who had no intention of ceding his country to a European construct. So France was sinking, and with it, an illusion.
For this expedition also carried a more personal, almost ideological dimension. Eugénie de Montijo's role was not insignificant. Deeply Catholic, marked by a romantic vision of the monarchy, she actively supported the idea of a restored Mexico centered on a sovereign.
Eugénie wasn't the originator of the Mexican project. But she gave it a character, a direction, almost a justification. Eugénie de Montijo didn't think in terms of the balance of power. She thought as the heir to a world under threat. A Catholic, educated in a Spain still torn between tradition and liberalism, she saw in Mexico something more than an unstable territory: a potential kingdom, a continuity to be restored.
Around her, voices circulated. Exiles, conservatives, clergymen, from Spain or Mexico, all saying the same thing: a country given over to disorder, a Church under attack, an authority to be revived. Some wrote, others spoke. Nothing official. Nothing decisive on their own. But an insistence.
And this is how lasting errors are born, not in the secrecy of a conspiracy, but in the repetition of a conviction. Napoleon III hesitated, calculated, adjusted. Eugénie, however, believed. And sometimes, in history, it is not calculations that sway the decision, but certainties. This sovereign would be Maximilian I. An Austrian archduke parachuted into a country he doesn't understand, carried by a foreign army, and abandoned as soon as the tide turns.
For the tide does turn. The Civil War ends. The United States can once again look south and firmly reiterate its rejection of any European presence. The pressure mounts. France withdraws. Maximilian stays and is executed by firing squad in 1867. Then Camerone takes on a different meaning. It is no longer simply a feat of arms. It is a fixed point in the midst of a misguided movement. Absolute loyalty committed to an undertaking that was itself not. Perhaps this is the true vertigo of this campaign. Irreproachable men, serving an uncertain ideal.
And a question remains: can an army be great when the policy that guides it is in the wrong world? There is something in this Mexican affair that is unacceptable. A power sure of itself. A country she believes to be fragile, and this certainty that all it takes is persistence for history to yield.
In the 19th century, France misjudged the world.
In the 21st, the United States persists, facing Iran, as elsewhere.
Always the same mistake: mistaking a regime for a country, and a country for prey.
In Mexico, it ends against a wall, with Maximilian I facing the guns.
Elsewhere, it becomes bogged down, more slowly, more expensively, more protracted. But the underlying issue remains the same.
Empires believe they are writing history. They forget that they too are part of it, and that it closes in on itself.
So Camerone remains. Not as a legend, but as a boundary.
The boundary that separates the loyalty of men from the error of those who commit them.