MEXICO - part 4

 ITURBIDE
    Augustin de Iturbide had first come to the notice of the mighty as a young hotshot counterrevolutionary.  He was not in any sense an important figure during most of the campaign, though his troops were the ones who pushed Morelos out of Valladolid in 1812.  He later got kicked out of the army for extortion.  Seems he was asking for "insurance fees" from mine owners whose pack trains he was escorting.  A likable fellow, he found himself in 1820 courted for his military connections by a group of conservatives who were plotting a coup against the Viceroy, who had just been ordered by Madrid to apply the revived Spanish liberal constitution to Mexico.  Perish the thought that there should be any kind of popular representation!  Enough was enough, they would get rid of the Viceroy and perpetuate thus their monopoly of power.
    Iturbide got himself hired by the Viceroy to exterminate the rebels in the south.  After a mauling at the hands of rebel commander Vicente Guerrero, he sent over a parley and proposed a deal.  Why not combine forces in favor of independence under the so-called "Three Guarantees":
 1. Fernando in Spain would be king,
 2. There would be no first and second class citizenship,
 3. The Roman Catholic church would be "recognized,"
 A fourth critical guarantee was not so widely trumpeted:
 4. All property rights would be respected.
    Guerrero was cagey, but Iturbide got carried away by the force of his own enthusiasm, and, amazingly, he carried the country.  Within a year New Spain was in the hands of the "Trigarantine" army, and when the new Viceroy came over from Spain in 1821 there was nothing left to do but sign the papers.
    Well, actually the last Viceroy accomplished more than that, negotiating the peaceable departure of loyalists with their movable assets, a provision that deprived the new country of a major portion of its talent and capital.
    The new powers in the country: Iturbide and his army, the Catholic church, and the Constituent Assembly (composed mostly of upper crust money people) were too busy defending their own positions to deal with national policy.  The situation deteriorated.  In the Spring of 1822 Iturbide mounted a comic opera coup.  A Mexico City mob was arranged to beg him to accept a crown as emperor of Mexico, after which the Congress was bullied into ratifying the accession.
    Iturbide proceeded to pretend to be Napoleon, at least in the style of his parties.  Unfortunately, partying was all he did, spending enormous sums on what was basically theater for the capital city.  Not even the army was paid.  The economic situation deteriorated to the point that paper money, formerly unheard of, and devalued practically on issue, was cranked out.  After a year a republican rebellion attracted the army, and Iturbide, bereft of his power base, slunk into exile aboard a British warship.
    Iturbide issued coins in copper, silver, and gold.  The coppers are very hard to find.  His silver ranges from uncommon to rare, and his gold is rare to very rare.

REPUBLIC
The first four decades of the Republic are the story of one disaster after another.  The politics consisted of blustering extremists shouting at each other, incompetent presidents being overthrown by incompetent dictators, and catastrophic foreign interventions.  Finances were all negative, with the deficits being made up by loans at ruinously high rates.  These were paid in
Mexican silver dollars, which, like their colonial predecessors, greased the skids of commerce the wide world around.
    It is tediously fascinating to contemplate the vicissitudes of the early Republic, but limitations of space foreclose a closer look.  None of the turbulence is reflected in the coinage, and it is interesting to note that throughout the upheavals the total output of the various mints remained enormous, at least as far as the internationally traded dollars went.  These coins were exported in bulk, and there are plenty of high grade 8 reales floating around, shipped out to China or somewhere in casks and deposited in foreign basements for 100 years.  Chopmarked cap-and-rays are common.
    The silver minors, on the other hand, were made for local use, and the average grade is distinctly lower.  Indeed, the "dollars" are much, much more common than any minor denomination, to the point that while there are wholesale 8 reales deals all the time, there really aren't any quantities of the minors floating around.
    The gold escudo coinage is all scarce or rare.  Mexico was never a big gold country, and original mintages were fairly low.  Pretty much they're just as scarce in low grade, or even damaged, as in high grade.  Look at the gold at the big shows; there are bowls of British sovereigns, French 20 francs, and so forth, and maybe one or two Mexicans.  And this in contrast with the couple of hundred 8 reales that might get traded among the dealers.
    Collecting the early coppers is pretty much of a hit or miss proposition as well.  In what must have been a continuation of the ancient tradition the bullion was a monopoly of the state, while the base copper, "not worth bothering with," was left for the locals to coin or not, as they wished.  Even those "Federal" coppers are just tokens for the capital.  Shades of Iran and
Afghanistan!
    So there are these crude pieces struck by state and even city governments, which were circulated to death alongside the ubiquitous Mexican tokens.  Average grade for these things is "wretched."  Dealers with a sense of humor will not fail to describe high grade examples as "lovely, exquisite VG."  Most of what you find in this series is the federal octavos of 1850 and 1861 and the 1860s quarters of Chihuahua.  Lots of die varieties, contemporary counterfeits, etc.  Impossible series to complete.  But check out those beautiful Zacatecas pieces, or the wonderfully primitive early Chihuahuas!  Definitely worth keeping your eyes out for.

MAXIMILIAN
To outsiders there might seem to be some element of tragicomedy to the French intervention.  Indeed, with about a century and a half of hindsight the dominant element of the regime of Napoleon III looks like pretentious buffoonery.  But the world at the time saw him simultaneously as an economic magician and a sinister loose cannon in diplomacy.  In the end all his schemes came to naught in seas of blood, but for most of his reign the French thought he was the cat's meow.
    He was always poking his nose into other countries, looking for something interesting to do.  Since he was the romantically dashing proponent of autocracy at the time, it was natural for royalists and reactionaries everywhere to court his pleasure.  He, of all people, might have  an interest in the cherished royalist hopes of a sector of the Mexican upper classes, who maintained a
continuous lobbying group in Europe.  Napoleon, that enthusiast for a Panama canal, found himself becoming more interested.
    In 1861, the reformist Mexican government of Benito Juarez felt it must suspend payments on the foreign debt, temporarily, it loudly added.  French interests were large in Mexico, and though there were deals that were "unauthorized" and others that were crooked, French policy was to back all claims.  In one notable swindle a Mexican government functionary got a few hundred thousand short term dollars in return for guarantees to underwrite about fifteen million dollars of bonds.  There was no way Mexico could make good on that promise, at least in the short term, but the French government decided to press the point.
    Napoleon went ranting to the other major interested parties, Britain and Spain, about an intervention.  Britain was cool.  They were busy mucking around in India.  Spain had already been thinking of Mexico in forceful terms, and, well, the USA was about to be out of the picture for a while with its Civil War.  The time was ripe, and, well, the sort of put together an "expeditionary force," and sent it over to the New World to get some satisfaction.
    The French emperor had meanwhile been sounding out European royalty about the possibility of lending him a prince to be the figurehead of his proposed "Mexican Empire."  His choice narrowed to Maximilian, the brother of Austrian emperor Franz-Josef.  He svengalied the young archduke with dreams of glory, and over the course of the tripartite intervention Maximiliam found himself, against his better judgment, becoming infected with the project.
    Back at the front, the Tripartite allies, realized, on landing in January, 1862, that their leaders had neglected to build a joint policy, so no proper demands could be made of the Mexican government.  The troops sat in Veracruz, yellow fever capital of Mexico, while their leaders conferred.  The French demand ended up being for $27 million, an obscene inflation of any
possible real figure.  Britain and Spain refused to back those claims. There was no agreement.
    In the end they asked the Mexican government if they couldn't quarter their troops in a more healthy location, and negotiations were set to begin.
    Meanwhile, reinforcements had been secretly dispatched by Napoleon, and on their arrival the French began to become bellicose.  Britain and Spain got cold feet and left in April, 1862.
    Freed from diplomatic restraints, the French army marched on Puebla, which was successfully defended.  The date of that first Mexican victory, May 5, has become a national holiday.
    Napoleon was irritated.  Emperors are supposed to win.  He sent a full scale invasion force over to Mexico, which took almost a year.  But after the army got going it took advantage of a few opportunities, and by June, 1863, they had the capital.
    Next came one of those great productions of political theater in the Napoleonic tradition.  A rump assembly was thrown together to abolish the Republic and establish a Mexican Empire.  Archduke Maximilian was begged to accept the throne.
 To his credit, Max dithered an embarrassing two months.  He kept trying to get the British to okay the plan, but London kept "studying the issue."  Eventually he gave in to the courtiers, and in January, 1864 he accepted the Mexican crown.
    What is completely amazing to me is that he was never presented with the paperwork by which "his" empire was to be created.  He must of known that he was a functionary in a French scheme, mustn't he?  Well, anyway, the deal turned out to be that the French army would supply the security for his regime until 1867, and , but he was going to have to pay for it, at luxury rates.
    nd France was giving about $40 million for startup, but the Mexican Empire was to pay all the old French assessments, plus the costs of the invasion, about $50 million, and quickly.  No one told until he'd agreed that it was all about money.
    Installed in Mexico Maximilian worked on social life and architecture while the French army mopped up.  By 1865 the entire country was effectively occupied.
    Politics never jelled in Maximilian's empire.  The emperor alienated the church by refusing to rescind the confiscations carried out by the Republic during the 1850s.  And the Republicans were maintaining low level but widespread guerrilla activity, on the suppression of which money had to be spent.  Payments were not made.  Paris was not amused.  It wasn't supposed to turn out this way.
    And then the American Civil War ended.  With the huge federal army still mobilized, the Americans demanded the withdrawl of the French troops.  The situation changed in Europe too, with Prussia growing mighty.  In January, 1866 he wrote to his puppet emperor to inform him that he was pulling out.
    The French troops took their time leaving, and it was February, 1867 before the last boarded ship.  Everywhere, as they left, Republican troops stepped in.
    Maximilian's wife had gone back to Europe to see if something could be done, but nothing was, and in the midst of the stress she suffered a mental breakdown from which she never recovered.  In the end, the puppet emperor was himself seized with something like a mania of romantic exaltation, gathered some 10,000 adherents about him and fought until he was betrayed
on May 14.  A month later he was tried by a military court marshal, condemned, and shot.  So much, said the Mexican Republic to the world, for foreign intervention.
    An example of Maximilian's coinage is about twice as easily found as one of the other earlier "emperor," but they're not common.  I'd say the 1866-Mo peso is most common, followed by the 1867-Mo peso, and then maybe an "M" mintmarked 10¢.  The other coins are scarce and rare.

more on Mexico