Without question, the terms Minister Compton had laid out were not something the Mexican Republican Government could accept. Of the three choices, they dared choose none.
If they could have compromised on the issue of monarchy, why had President Juárez led men in rebellion in the first place? One had to know that when Maximilian I took the throne, he had pardoned political prisoners and even promised Juárez a high position.
If they accepted Maximilian I's restoration now, it would amount to a complete denial of the past ten years of revolution. This uprising would no longer be anti-imperial or anti-feudal—it would become nothing more than a political power grab.
There was no need even to consider reparations. If they had that much money, the Republicans would long since have crushed the domestic opposition by force. Why would they still need to compromise?
Going to war with the Austrians was likewise beyond what the Republican Government could bear. Having fought the French, President Juárez knew perfectly well what the armies of the great powers were capable of.
Under normal circumstances, ten thousand French troops would chase down a hundred thousand or more insurgents. The sight was simply too dreadful to behold. Except under special circumstances, the insurgents had scarcely won any respectable victories.
The numbers made it clear enough. From the French invasion in 1861 until the French withdrawal in 1871, the two sides fought hundreds of battles, yet French deaths never even exceeded ten thousand.
The so-called heavy blows dealt to France, the claims that the insurgents had beaten the French into a rout—those were all necessities of political propaganda. In reality, the French had always been pressing them down and beating them.
Napoleon III had merely run out of patience. Having seen through Maximilian I's true nature—that he