Maximilian I was the very picture of European chivalry—but his story ended in greed, disgrace, and betrayal. Maximilian would do anything to gain power, and in order to inch closer and closer to a ...

In 1869, artist Édouard Manet finished his painting of The Execution of Emperor Maximilian, depicting the death, by firing squad, of Maximilian and two of his generals in 1867, in Querétaro, Mexico.

In the early 1860s, the “puffed-up” French emperor Napoleon III conceived what he believed to be “a brilliant wheeze”, said Justin Marozzi in The Sunday Times. He would command his troops to invade ...

"Maximilian of Mexico before the Execution," by Jean-Paul Laurens (Wikimedia Commons) It was the greatest challenge to the Monroe Doctrine until the Cuban missile crisis exactly 100 years later. In ...

On the 150th anniversary of the installation of Austria’s Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian von Habsburg as emperor of Mexico , McAllen (I Would Rather Sleep in Texas) offers an authoritative, detailed, ...

Carlota tried to rule Mexico with her husband Maximilian I before their empire fell, breaking her heart and her mind. Empress Carlota, painted in 1865 by Albert Gräfle, took a very active interest in ...

Who was Archduke Maximilian? Join us as we examine the brief and contentious reign of the last emperor of Mexico, a complex member of the powerful Habsburg family, from his royal childhood to his role ...

The French-backed Emperor Ferdinand Maximilian of Mexico was losing the raging civil war. In 1865, this prompted him to issue a savage decree: all armed opponents of his rule were to be executed ...