Louis Napoleon was no fool, and France in this era could not be taken lightly either, so Franz had never relaxed his suppression of France.
The collapse of the rule of Ahmed, Bey of Tunisia, would inflict severe losses on France's financial sector. At the same time, it would be the final straw that blocked France's colonial dream.
Although France had retaken its Central American colonies with the tacit consent of the Austrian Empire, Guatemala and Salvador had already been infiltrated beyond recognition by Mexico and Britain.
The entire Central American colony was a pure liability for the French Second Empire. Not only could Napoleon III not bleed the colony dry, he had to pump blood back into it to hold on to the land.
Yet this was not the most absurd thing France faced at the moment. Santa Anna intended to purchase Guatemala from France.
That was right—the very Mexico so deeply in debt that it could not possibly extricate itself. To date, Mexico still owed the Austrian Empire 1.3 billion pesos. More precisely, however, the buyer was Mexico's president.
1.3 billion pesos was equivalent to 271 million pounds sterling. In other words, Mexico, with a population of barely over six million, bore a debt of more than 200 pesos per person.
Santa Anna was willing to pay 30 million francs for France's Guatemalan colony. In a sense, the wheel had come full circle.
Back then, France had bought Texas from Mexico. Today, Santa Anna was buying Guatemala from France.
With Mexico's debt so staggering, what gave it the right to buy a colony from France? If it had money, should it not pay back its debts first?
This was where the strange thing about debt came in: national debt and President Santa Anna's personal debts were separate. Mexico