Karl Marx

Mexican Imbroglio

From the English.

[“New-York Daily Tribune,” No. 6530, March 10, 1862]

London, February 15, 1862

The Blue Book just published on the intervention in Mexico contains a most damning exposure of modern English diplomacy, with all its sanctimonious hypocrisy, its savage fury against the weak, its grovelling before the strong, and its complete disregard for international law. I must reserve for another article the task of furnishing, by a close analysis of the despatches exchanged between Downing Street and the British representatives in Mexico, the irrefutable proof that the present imbroglio is of English origin, that England took the initiative in bringing about the intervention, and that she did so upon pretexts too flimsy and contradictory to conceal the real but unavowed motives of her proceedings. This infamy, with which the abominable means were employed to launch the Mexican intervention, is only surpassed by the senile mental feebleness in which the British Government pretends to be taken by surprise and shrinks from the execution of the disgraceful enterprise it has itself planned. I shall first deal with the last-mentioned side of the question.

On December 13, 1861, Mr. Isturiz, the Spanish ambassador in London, laid before John Russell a note containing the instructions which the Captain-General of Cuba had sent to the Spanish commanders at the head of the Mexican expedition. John Russell left the note unnoticed and wrapped himself in silence. On December 23, Mr. Isturiz addresses another note to him, explaining the reasons that had induced the Spanish expedition to leave Cuba before the arrival of the English and French troops. John Russell again takes no notice of the note and remains silent. Mr. Isturiz, anxious to make sure whether this unusually protracted silent reserve on the part of the otherwise so loquacious scion of the House of Bedford might possibly portend mischief, presses for a personal interview, which is granted and takes place on January 7. John Russell had by then been informed, for more than a month, of the unilateral opening of Spain’s operations against Mexico. Almost a month had passed since the event had been officially communicated to him by Mr. Isturiz. Despite all this, John Russell does not, in his personal interview with the Spanish ambassador, utter a single word that would have indicated the slightest displeasure or astonishment at “the precipitate steps taken by General Serrano,” and his remarks leave Mr. Isturiz with not the slightest impression that everything was wrong and that the Spanish action was disapproved by the British Government. Mr. Isturiz’s Castilian pride naturally does not allow the thought that Spain’s powerful allies were merely playing with him and making a mere tool of him. But the time for the meeting of Parliament was approaching, and John Russell now had to draft a series of despatches intended not for international concerns, but specifically for parliamentary use. Thus he writes on January 16 a despatch in which, in rather angry tones, he inquires about the unilateral initiative taken by Spain. Doubts and scruples that had slumbered within him for more than a month and had not shown even symptoms of their existence during the personal interview with Mr. Isturiz on January 7 suddenly disturb the serene dream of this trustful, sincere and guileless statesman. Mr. Isturiz feels thunderstruck and, in his reply dated January 18, somewhat ironically reminds His Excellency of the opportunities he had missed to give vent to his belated resentment. Indeed, he pays His Excellency back in his own coin when, in his justification of the initiative taken by Spain, he assumes the same air of naïveté that Lord John Russell had displayed in his demand for an explanation. “The Captain-General of Cuba,” says Mr. Isturiz, “came too early because he feared arriving too late at Veracruz.” “Moreover,” – and here he bestows a side-thrust on Lord John – “the expedition had long been ready in every respect,” although the Captain-General, up to the middle of December, “did not know the details of the treaty and the point fixed for the meeting of the squadrons.” The treaty had not been concluded before November 20. If, therefore, the Captain-General had his expedition “ready in every respect” long “before the middle of December,” the orders originally received by him from Europe for the commencement of the expedition had not waited for the treaty. In other words, the original arrangement between the three Powers and the steps undertaken for its execution did not wait for the treaty and differed in their “details” from the stipulations of the treaty, which from the outset was intended not as an instruction for action, but only as a decent formula necessary to reconcile public opinion with the infamous plan. On January 23, John Russell replies to Mr. Isturiz in a rather brusque note, giving him to understand that “the British Government is not fully satisfied with the explanation given,” but at the same time it would not credit Spain with the stupid audacity of being so presumptuous as to act against England and France. Lord John Russell, who had been so drowsy, so inactive for a whole month, becomes completely alive and wide awake as the parliamentary session quickly approaches. There is no time to be lost. On January 17, he has a personal interview with Comte Flahault, the French ambassador in London. Flahault brings him the bad news that his master considers it necessary “to send an additional armed force to Mexico,” that Spain, through its precipitate initiative, has spoilt the affair; that

“the allies must now advance upon the interior of Mexico, and not only would the agreed forces prove insufficient for the operation, but the operation itself would assume such a character that Louis Bonaparte could not allow the French troops to be placed in a position worse than that of the Spaniards, or to run the risk of being compromised.”

Flahault’s reasoning, however, was anything but convincing. If Spain had violated the treaty, a single note from the quarters of St. James’s and the Tuileries would have sufficed to warn it of its preposterous pretensions and to refer it to the modest role imposed on it by the convention. But no, because Spain has broken the convention – a purely formal breach and without any consequence, since its premature arrival at Veracruz alters nothing in the avowed aim and purpose of the expedition – because Spain had dared to cast anchor before Veracruz in the absence of the English and French troops, no other course remained for France than to follow in Spain’s footsteps, likewise to break the convention, and not only to increase its expeditionary forces, but to change the whole character of the operation. Of course, no pretext was needed for the allied Powers to let the cat out of the bag and, right at the start of the expedition, to throw to the winds the pretexts and purposes for the sake of which it had supposedly been undertaken. Hence John Russell, although he “regrets” the step taken by France, approves it by informing Comte Flahault that “he, on behalf of Her Majesty’s Government, has no objection to the validity of the French argument.” In a despatch of January 20, he transmitted to Lord Cowley, the English ambassador in Paris, the account of this interview of his with Comte Flahault. The day before, on January 19, he had drawn up a despatch to Sir F. Crampton, the English ambassador in Madrid; this is a strange mixture of sanctimonious hypocrisy, addressed to the British Parliament, and veiled hints to the court of Madrid as to the real value of the liberal language that he was so openly allowing himself. “Marshal Serrano’s proceedings,” he says, “will probably provoke some uneasiness,” not only because of the premature departure of the Spanish expedition from Havana, but also “because of the tone of the proclamation issued by the Spanish Government.” But at the same time the good man suggests to the court of Madrid a plausible excuse for the apparent breach of the convention. He is fully convinced that the court of Madrid has no evil intention; but commanders far from Europe are sometimes “rash” and must be “very carefully watched.” Thus the good Russell voluntarily offers his services to shift the responsibility from the court of Madrid onto the shoulders of indiscreet Spanish commanders “at a distance” and even beyond the reach of the good Russell’s preachings. No less curious is the second part of his despatch. The allied forces are not to hinder the Mexicans in their right to “choose their own government,” by which he gives to understand that “no government” exists in Mexico, and that, on the contrary, not only new members of government, but even “a new form of government” must be elected under the guidance of the allied invaders. The “constitution of a new government” would “please” the British Government; but of course the military forces of the invaders must not break the universal suffrage that they intend to recommend to the Mexicans for the installation of a new government. It is, of course, left to the commanders of the armed invasion to judge which form of the new government is “incompatible with the feelings of Mexico” and which is not. In any case, the good Russell washes his hands in innocence. He sends foreign soldiers to Mexico to compel the people there to “elect” a new government; but he hopes the soldiers will carry out their task gently and very carefully examine the political sentiments of the country they have invaded. Is it necessary to dwell even for a moment on this transparent farce? Read, independently of the good Russell’s despatches, the Times and the Morning Post of October, six weeks before the conclusion of the sham convention of November 30, and you will find in the English Government organs exactly the same unwelcome events predicted that Russell pretends to discover only at the end of January and ascribes to the “rashness” of some Spanish emissaries far from Europe.

The second part of the farce that Russell had to play was to put forward the Archduke Maximilian of Austria, whom England and France had in mind, as the Mexican king.

On 24 January, about ten days before the opening of Parliament, Lord Cowley writes to Lord Russell that not only is Paris gossip extensively occupied with the Archduke, but that even the officers who went to Mexico with the reinforcement troops are asserting that the object of the expedition is to make Archduke Maximilian King of Mexico. Cowley thinks it necessary to interpellate Thouvenel on this delicate subject. Thouvenel replies that it is not the French government but Mexican emissaries, “who have come to Vienna for that reason”, who have initiated these negotiations with the Austrian government.

They finally expect now that the guileless John Russell, who only five days earlier in a despatch to Madrid had been harping on the conditions of the Convention, and who even later, in the Speech from the Throne on 6 February, had announced the “redress” of the wrong which, as the European subjects claimed, was the exclusive motive and aim of the intervention – they finally expect now that he will fall into a rage and spew venom and gall at the mere idea that such an appallingly wicked trick has been played on his good-natured trust. Nothing of the sort! The good Russell accepts Cowley’s twaddle on 26 January, and on the following day he hastens to draft a despatch in which he voluntarily offers his protection to the candidature of Archduke Maximilian for the Mexican throne.

He informs Sir C. Wyke, his representative in Mexico, that the French and Spanish troops will “immediately” march to the capital of Mexico, that Archduke Maximilian “is supposedly the idol of the Mexican people”, and that, if this is the case, “there is nothing in the Convention that could prevent his accession to the throne of Mexico”.

Two things are remarkable in these diplomatic revelations: first, how Spain is being made a fool of, and secondly, how Russell never even thinks of the fact that he cannot wage a war against Mexico without a prior declaration of war, and that he cannot form a coalition with foreign powers for this war except on the basis of a treaty binding on all parties. These are the very people who have tired us out for two months with their sanctimonious hypocrisy about the sanctity of the strict rules of international law and their reverence for them!