Maximilian I of Mexico
Maximilian of Habsburg accepted a Mexican crown offered by French bayonets and a rigged plebiscite, reigned three years, and was shot on a hill outside Querétaro. Born in 1832, the younger brother of the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph, he was liberal by the standards of his family, commanded the Austrian navy, built a castle at Miramare near Trieste, and was viceroy of Lombardy-Venetia for two years until his brother removed him for being too conciliatory. Napoleon III's invasion of Mexico supplied him with a throne. A group of Mexican conservative exiles, wanting a European monarch to settle the country against the liberals, and the French emperor, wanting a client state in the Americas while the United States was occupied with its civil war, offered him the crown on the evidence of a plebiscite nobody believed. He arrived in 1864 and immediately disappointed the people who had brought him. He confirmed Juárez's confiscation of church property, upheld religious toleration, restricted working hours and abolished debt peonage, which alienated the conservatives and the church without gaining him a single liberal. He also issued the Black Decree in 1865, ordering the summary execution of anyone captured in arms, which is what was cited at his own trial. The French withdrew in 1866 under American pressure and the demands of the coming war with Prussia, and Maximilian refused to go with them. He was besieged at Querétaro, betrayed by an officer, and shot on 19 June 1867 with two Mexican generals, having asked the firing squad not to hit his head. Manet painted it four times.
- Lived: 1832 CE – 1867 CE
- Nationality: Austrian
- Roles: emperor, head_of_state
