The trial and execution of Maximilian is one of the notorious events of modern Mexican history. Benito Juárez ordered that he be tried by a military court in accordance with the law of January 25, 1862, designed to punish by death those guilty of crimes against the nation. The chief conservative generals, Tomás Mejía and Miguel Miramón, were also to be tried for traitorous collaboration with the French army. The trial was initiated at Querétaro in great haste, even before the required stamped paper had arrived. The verdict of guilty, pronounced by six junior officers, was a foregone conclusion. The three men were executed on June 19, 1867, at the Cerro de las Campanas, barely a month after Maximilian had surrendered to the triumphant Republicans. Juárez (or more likely, Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada) refused to be moved by the numerous world-wide pleas for clemency. The national integrity of Mexico had to be vindicated against those who had regarded it so lightly.
This is the most recent among several editions of the official trial record, first printed in 1867 as a part of Juan de Dios Arías’ account of the operations of the Army of the North. The reviewer must ask whether this lengthy record of what was a mere legal formality can be of use to the critical historian. The answer is not immediately evident.
What does ultimately emerge, however, is an impressive defense of the accused men, as presented by several Mexican lawyers, all presumably liberal patriots. This defense rested on two principal related points. The first was that these men should not be tried in a military court for what were political crimes; moreover, the constitution forbade inflicting the death penalty in such cases. The second point was that until 1867 Mexico was engaged in a civil war, and that the accused were merely supporting one party to the conflict and not the French invader. The defense attorneys presented a vivid characterization of this civil war, and argued for instance that Mejía and Miramón could hardly be condemned for abjuring the constitution when it had reigned effectively for only three years in its first decade of life. Mexico, said the lawyers, was torn between two equally strong partisan bands, either of which might have emerged victorious, thus calling itself patriot and the vanquished opponent traitor.
The lawyers appear to have been doing more than mouthing the sentiments of their clients. They were articulating forcefully and persuasively what may have been a more generalized private analysis of the country’s crisis by both conservatives and liberals. One must be cautious not to infer too much from a lawyer’s brief, but this evidence does suggest that there existed a franker appreciation of Mexican political realities than the formal writings of the era have revealed.
