MEXICO. 



555 



exterminate this element of resistance. Influ- 

 enced partly by hatred of the invaders, but 

 principally by a desire for plunder, the guerrillas 

 pursued their devastations with little regard for 

 friend or foe, and were not unfrequently guilty 

 of atrocities too shocking to relate. Utterly 

 without discipline, they were easily scattered 

 by an inferior force of trained soldiery ; but if 

 driven from one locality, it was only to appear 

 suddenly in another with apparently no diminu- 

 tion of force, and, if possible, with increased 

 vindictiveness, until it may be said no road in 

 the country, which was not lined with troops, 

 was safe from their attack. Strange as it may 

 appear, the road between the capital and Vera 

 Cruz, the most important and perhaps the most 

 travelled in the country, and that by which the 

 imperial army received its chief supplies, was 

 frequently the scene of guerrilla outrages, against 

 which no precautionary measures seemed to 

 avail. The guerrillas, when captured, were of 

 course summarily shot, as were also all persons 

 suspected of sympathizing with or harboring 

 them ; but such severity was totally ineffectual 

 to lessen their numbers or their atrocities, and 

 the first year of Maximilian's reign found the 

 country in a more unsettled and unhappy con- 

 dition than ever before, notwithstanding upward 

 of sixty thousand veteran troops, commanded 

 by officers of experience, were employed in the 

 work of reconstruction. Under these circum- 

 stances European intervention could scarcely be 

 called a success, and those who had submitted 

 to it, as a means of peace and security, began 

 to doubt whether these ends could now be ob- 

 tained. Of hearty, undoubted supporters the 

 government of Maximilian possessed but few 

 among the native population. The republicans, 

 if subdued for the time, hated it not less than 

 at the landing of the first detachment of French 

 troops; while the Church or reactionary party, 

 which had helped to build it up, turned against 

 it with fierce but impotent rage when the Em- 

 peror announced his intention to confirm the 

 decrees for the secularization of ecclesiastical 

 property, promulgated under the former repub- 

 lican administration. Utter weariness of the 

 anarchy under which the country groaned, and 

 a disposition, for the sake of peace, to side with 

 the stronger party, alone made the imperial 

 rule tolerable to liberals or reactionists. 



The final rupture between the Church party 

 and the Emperor was related in the previous 

 volume of this work, but the former now found 

 to its dismay that its power to injure the 

 imperial cause was miserably small. With 

 the promulgation of the decree of March 9, 

 1865, expired the last lingering hope that 

 Maximilian would restore to the Church its 

 confiscated possessions, and with them its once 

 enormous power. By this instrument the 

 Council of State was authorized to revise all 

 the operations of the amortization and natural- 

 ization of ecclesiastical property, executed in 

 consequence of the laws of the 25th of June, 

 1859 ; to remedy excesses and injustice commit- 



ted by fraud, and confirm all lawful operations, 

 executed without fraud, and in accordance with 

 the laws cited ; and these acts of the Council 

 were declared to be irrevocable. Such trans- 

 actions as might be found irregular or fraudu- 

 lent and declared null and void, could be revised 

 " on condition that they be brought forward in 

 accordance with the terms of the law of the 13th 

 July, 1859 ; that there is paid into the Treasury 

 in money a fine of twenty-five per cent, on the 

 total value of the estate or capital adjudged ; 

 and that no loss is caused to a third party 

 by rights acquired previous to the revision of 

 the claim." Other articles provided for the- 

 protection of the interests of the parties who 

 had acquired Church property under the re- 

 form laws, and which might be affected by tho 

 revision of the proceedings under which they 

 acquired claims ; and further provided for the 

 establishment of an office to be called "The 

 Administration of Nationalized Property," 

 which is to assist in the revision of claims, and 

 put into practice the administrative and eco- 

 nomical operations contingent on each act of 

 revision. The following are four of the most 

 important articles of the decree : 



ART. 17. All the funds or capital of nationalized 

 property that may not have been transferred or 

 redeemed; those which are recovered by revision, 

 and those which proceed from the transfer of estates 

 which were afterwards made, shall be in the charge 

 of the office of nationalized property, which will see 

 that they are properly administered, and collect their 

 rents while carrying out their functions. 



ART. 18. No right which directly or originally pro- 

 ceeds from mortmain transactions or nationalization 

 shall be exercised or be made of any value, judicial or 

 extra-judicial, while it is not shown in due and proper 

 form that the operation whence it proceeded has 

 been properly and correctly revised. 



ART. 19. Although their revision may not be com- 

 plete, if it be shown in due form that the process to 

 obtain it has been presented, the rights to which the 

 previous article refers may be exercised ; but those 

 who obtain it for them must give security to the satis- 

 faction of the Chief Judge (Jurez deprimera insfancia) 

 or keep the matter in judicial course until the revision 

 is complete. 



ART. 20. Nor shall any right or privilege, judicial 

 or extra-judicial, be exercised in relation to nation- 

 alized estates which may not have been included in 

 operation of mortmain or nationalization, or which 

 may have been returned to ecclesiastical corpora- 

 tions. The possessors or detainers of these estates 

 must show cause within two months in the form pre- 

 scribed by the enactments of this law. 



Before the promulgation of this decree the 

 Church party was suspected of having aided 

 with money and supplies the republican troops 

 in the southern States, with whom hatred of a 

 common enemy caused them to be temporarily 

 affiliated; and in the early part of 1865 they 

 even made some abortive attempts at open re- 

 sistance to the Imperial Government. These 

 were easily quelled, and the men organizing 

 them, despairing of success in independent oper- 

 ations, goon became merged in that party which 

 maintained its contest against the empire from 

 more patriotic motives than disappointed ambi- 

 tion or the lust of power. The despoilment of 

 the Church no longer formed the burden of the 



