Maximilian I reigned as Mexico’s president for just over three years, despite having been born in Austria. Much of his support rested upon the presence of a French army that withdrew following the conclusion of the American Civil War. Napoleon III did not want to risk opposition from a victorious veteran American army, while he also faced the rise of Prussia back in Europe. Maximilian, however, remained defiant in Mexico and, despite the pleas of various European royalists and other luminaries from Victor Hugo to Giuseppe Garibaldi that Maximilian be spared, his enemies executed him by firing squad.
