Books I consulted for this post include Shelby’s Expedition To Mexico by John N. Edwards, General Jo Shelby’s March by Antohny Arthur, Fallen Guidon by Edwin Adams Davis, and The Lost Cause: The Confederate Exodus to Mexico by Andrew F. Rolle, from University of Oklahoma Press.
Episode 7 Panem Et Circenses
The Brigade remains at the Sabinas River for nearly a week as the wounded are nursed back to health. Shelby keeps up the routine and discipline of an army camp with drills. Some men grumble but their general knows the farther they go into the hazardous country the more they will have to fight together as a unit.
After leaving the banks of the Sabinas, they climb into the foothills of the Sierra de Santa Madre Oriental. Tensions rise with the altitude as the column encounters cold weather and rain. After a week of howling storms, the horses of the expedition begin catching fevers. Bandits flank the column and try to stampede the horses at night.
One foggy morning a band of bandits and Indians, led by a renegade priest named Juan Anselmo and a Cuban named Antiono Flores, slip past the sentries. Hand-to-hand fighting breaks out in the camp as knife blades flash in the mist. A charge by the Missourians drives the bandits back at the cost of seventeen wounded and eleven killed. Seventy-one of the guerrillas are killed, including their leaders, Anselmo and Flores. Their bodies are left where they fell while the Missourians are buried on the banks of a small mountain stream. The bugle calls “Boots and Saddles” and Shelby leads his men into the town of Lampazos.
A fandango is taking place in the town square as the brigade enters. The people used to armed bands roaming the countryside after years of war, pay them no mind. The Missourians camp outside the town, where Shelby orders them to remain. However, some of the men sneak past the pickets and enter the town to enjoy the party, drinks, dances, and women.
As three of the men return to camp, drunk and filling the air with off-tune love songs of the Old South, one of them named Crockett spots a young woman standing in a doorway. The two exchange what pleasantries they can across the language barrier. Then he tries kissing her, causing her shawl to fall, exposing her bosom for a moment before it is covered by her long black hair. She screams and men come running from the village. They shoot and stab Crockett’s companions. Crockett and the two wounded men escape to the camp.
However, they are followed by the girl’s brother, who demands satisfaction. At first, Shelby forbids a duel, but the brother persists. Finally, since Crockett had disobeyed orders and behaved ungentlemanly toward a woman, Shelby consents. The brother chooses the knife. A circle is formed, lit by torches. Crockett is bigger than the Mexican, but the brother is more skilled. The brother hits Crocket in the shoulder. Then the Missourian buries his blade deep into the Mexican’s chest, killing him. The body is borne back to the village and all night Shelby listens to the wails of the mother while contemplating that his command is degenerating into what Rome was in its final days, with gladiators and circuses.
Episode 8 Between Two Fires
Shelby and the Iron Brigade leave Lampazos and ride on to Monterrey. The French commander there, Pierre Joseph Jeanningros, has threatened to hang the Missourians for selling their artillery to the Juaristas. Shelby faces a dilemma. He could march up to the gates and play Jeanningros’ hand or he could return across the wilderness to Piedras Negras to recruit a larger force and then march back and attack Monterrey.
Shelby and his men are within a mile of Monterey when he sends two officers, John Thrailkill, and Rainey Kinney, to see if Colonel Jeanningros will allow their entrance. Shelby asks if it would be peace between him and Jeanningros. Or if not, “I propose to attack you immediately.” Jeanningros admires the spunk of the Missourian as he watches him arraign his thousand men in battle formation outside the city to challenge the four thousand legionnaires inside. Several ex-Confederates already inside the city like Kirby Smith intercede with Jeanningros, who decides to allow the entrance of Shelby and his men.
Monterrey is full of Southern exiles. Shelby meets up with several state governors, including governors Moore and Allen of Louisiana. Generals Walker, Smith, and Preston are booking passage for Cuba, while Magruder, Price, and Hindman are resting before continuing their journey to Mexico City. Texas Governor Murrah also made it to the city but has died of tuberculosis.
A squadron of a hundred men commanded by Frank Moore of Alabama serve in a contra-guerillas regiment commander by Colonel Francois Achille Dupin. Known as “The Tiger of the Tropics,” he has a reputation for making art out of brutality. He amputates the arms and legs of captured Juaristas, then releases them into enemy territory so that two or three fighters will be taken from the field to provide them care.
Dupin informs Shelby that Colonel Mosby M. Parsons of Missouri and five members of his party who had been trying to catch up with Shelby’s column had been ambushed, captured, and then murdered by Juaristas. The guerrillas had taken pleasure in shooting the men one at a time so that the others had to wait in agonizing slowness for their executions. Frank Moore’s squadron, with some of Shelby’s men, pursued the guerrillas to the village of Las Flores and massacred them.
Meanwhile, Shelby and Jeanningros discuss the leadership of Emperor Maximilian. The colonel says that the Austrian is more of a “scholar than a king, a god in botany, a poet on occasions….believing more in manifest destiny than drilled battalions… his faith is too strong in the liars who surround him, and his soul too pure for the deeds that must be done…he knows nothing of diplomacy. In a nation of thieves and cut-throats, he goes devoutly to mass, endows hospitals…” But then the Frenchman checks himself as his ramblings led to predictions of defeat for the French endeavor and their puppet emperor.
To counter these predictions, Shelby offers to take his men and secure ports on the northwest shore of Mexico where the Union military was less of a threat. From these ports, he would draw thousands of former Confederate soldiers and southern exiles.
This plan is inspired by William M. Gwin, who after his plantation was destroyed by the Yankees, traveled to France, and proposed a northern colony in Mexico. As a buffer state between the United States and The French Empire, former Confederate soldiers paid and armed by the emperor would fortify and garrison strategic spots along the border. Maximilian had turned out to be a better judge of character than those who judged his character and did not approve of Gwin’s scheme.
Jeanningros, however, permits Shelby to march toward the Pacific Coast. But first Shelby will march to Saltillo, then across the Sierra Madre Oriental to the French Outpost at Parras. There he would receive confirmation from the post commander that permission had been approved by François Achille Bazaine, commander of French and foreign forces in Mexico.
Shelby leaves Monterrey with fewer men than with whom he arrived. Alonzo Slayback has fallen ill and is left behind with an attending soldier. Ben Elliot, close to Shelby in age and one of his best commanders, strikes out ahead of Shelby with fifty men. Little do either of them know that they will not see each other again for twelve years. Kirby Smith is already heading for Mexico City. Other soldiers having grown bored with the inaction in Monterrey have left to join the Liberal General Antonio Corona, or headed to California, to British Honduras, to Brazil, or to enlist in the American company under Colonel Dupin.
The route that Shelby’s remaining men take passes through battlefields of the Mexican-American War. Close to the site of the Battle of Buena Vistas guerrillas attack Shelby’s pickets during a thunderstorm. As the Missourians push the guerrillas away from their picket line, they hear firing inside their camp. The main attack has been a feint, and the bandits are now in their rear trying to get the horses. “The very clouds are raining Mexicans tonight,” Edwards records someone remarking during the fight. Shelby orders countermarch and in the melee, dozens of Mexicans were killed half a dozen Americans killed, and three times that wounded, some due to friendly fire. It has been the most persistent and bloody fighting of the expedition.
A few days later Shelby’s column reaches Parras, where waiting ex-Confederates are ready to refill his ranks. Here the half-drunk ill-tempered French commander Colonel Marguerite Jacques Vincent du Preuil meets Shelby coldly, refusing to offer him a seat or pour him a glass of the brandy he is drinking. Hot words are exchanged, de Preuil accusing the Americans of doing nothing but robbing, killing, and plundering. Shelby refuses to remove his hat and accuses the commander of being ungentlemanly, a coward, and a slanderer. Shelby challenges de Preuil to a duel. The Frenchman chooses to use swords but then changes the weapon to pistols when he realizes that would put Shelby at a disadvantage. However, Colonel Jeanningros hears of the duel and forbids it just in time, placing the colonel under arrest.
That Shelby would break his own rule forbidding dueling shows just how much strain he was under. For eight weeks he and his men had been on the trail under constant attack. Despite continuous drilling, unit discipline and cohesion are coming undone. The men are angry that Shelby will not let them pursue and exact vengeance on the guerrilla bands that constantly harass them.
While in Parras, orders arrive from Marshal Bazaine for Shelby to stay away from the northwest ports of Mexico. The Missourians are either to turn aside to Mexico City or return to the United States. Shelby decides they will head toward Mexico City.
As Shelby’s men head toward Mexico City, they pass through the land of Don Luis Enrico Rodriguez. Don Luis does not visit Shelby’s camp as is customary for the local hacendados. Instead that night a peon meets Yandell Blackwell and James Wood in secret and informs them that Don Luis runs the area with the cruelty of the old conquistadors. Furthermore, many years before he had killed an American and taken his beautiful daughter, Inez Walker, captive. Rodriguez keeps her captive in a tower in his hacienda surrounded by thirty guards. Even though her hair had turned white, the servants still regarded her as a spirit from Heaven.
Rescuing a lady from captivity was too much of a romantic notion for Blackwell and Wood to ignore. However, they would not tell Shelby, who would most likely forbid the excursion. In secret, they gather eighteen volunteers, including Crockett from the infamous duel at Lampazos. Under cover of darkness, they batter down the gates of the hacienda. Then they rush the doors of the mansion while the guards rain hell from on high from windows and doorways. Rodriguez shows himself at one window but quickly ducks back as a dozen men fire at him.
Then the bugle from Shelby’s camp sounds.
“Make haste,” orders Wood. “Make haste, men, for in twenty minutes we will be between two fires!”
Finally, the doors to the mansion were down. The Americans storm the rooms in total darkness. They could only tell each other apart by their rebel yells. Then they reach the great hall, where once again they had to batter down the doors. Inside the fighting turns to blade and hand-to-hand combat, driving back the Mexicans. The Americans rush toward the tower, securing the ladder. When they hear Rodrigues’s voice calling down God’s vengeance on the gringos, a dozen shots silence him. Now it was the guards’ turn to race across the courtyard under a hail of fire.
Now Shelby was in the hacienda, demanding to know the meaning of the raid. Five of his men were dead, including Crockett and a large German nicknamed Matterhorn. Shelby’s anger cools when Wood and Blackwell bring forth Inez Walker. She speaks up in defense of the men and Shelby is at her command. She will accompany the column in a carriage on their journey to Mexico City.
Episode Nine: Lead Us On And We Will See
There are few bandit attacks upon Shelby’s men after the raid on Rodriguez’s hacienda, their fierce reputation spreading among the bands like wildfire. As Shelby’s men make their way toward their next stop of Matehuala, they can hear the roar of cannons.
Shelby has four detachments fan out and scout the roads heading to the city. From their observation and a few prisoners that they take in a skirmish, they realize that the outnumbered French garrison will soon be wiped out by the two thousand besieging Juaristas.
Shelby once again makes a speech to his men. “…We may have to fight a little. Are you tired of fighting?”
“Lead us on and we will see,” replied the brigade.
Shelby needs two volunteers to make their way into the city and communicate with the commander of the garrison, Major Henri Pierron. He ”volunteers” James Cundiff and Elias Hodge. The two men make their way into the city and contact Pierron to coordinate Shelby’s attack. Pierron sends them back with forty Cuirassiers.
The next morning Shelby leads his men and the Cuirassiers in a formation using the same tactics the brigade used in Arkansas and Missouri. In columns of four, they will fire from right to left as they dash in among the Mexicans. Shelby will lead from the front. Maurice Langhorne wants to ride beside him. “It is my pleasure to receive the first fire of you all,” Shelby says and orders Langhorn back to his company. Then with a “Gallop-March,” he leads his men toward the three-line deep Mexican infantry, aiming for their artillery. Caught between the fire of the Missourians and the French, the Mexicans freeze, then panic and flee. The siege of Matehuala is lifted.
The victory was celebrated with several days of feasting and recruiting Americans in the city. Then when orders came for the Missourians to proceed towards to Tampico on the tropical coast to hunt down bandits led by a chief named Luis Figueroa, there were many sad goodbyes. As they travel to Tampico, Shelby receives new orders to march to Mexico City, now only two hundred miles away.
On the final leg of the journey, the greatest obstacle Shelby faces is not bandits, Juaristas, or Indians, but disorder among his own men. When he hears that the captain in charge of the ambulance corps left behind a blacksmith and some wounded when a wagon broke down, Shelby sends him back with orders to “fight for them, get killed if need be, but bring or send them back to me.” He will wait a day and a half. The Missourians retrieve the wounded men and the blacksmith from the village. They have to fight off an attack by bandits at a bend in the road but make it back safely to Shelby.
At Dolores Hidalgo, where the Mexican Revolution was birthed in 1810, ten men mutiny, refusing to stand picket. Shelby, backed by twenty armed men, faces down the drunken men who cower into submission. Then two rear guards, Dick Collins and Ike Berry, fell asleep and are captured by guerrillas. Only by convincing the Mexicans that they are not French and later overpowering their captives and escaping are they able to survive.
One hundred sixty miles north of Mexico City, John Thrailkill, who had ridden with the infamous border ruffian Willaim Quantrill, is sitting around swapping war stories with other old soldiers. One man, Anthoney West, expresses disbelief in Thrailkill’s tall tales. Thrailkill stands up and slaps West and asks him if that is real. A duel is challenged for sunset the next day.
The next day members of the brigade attend a rooster fight. During the fight, Thrailkill loses all his bets. As he is leaving, West’s second, Captain James Gillett, stops him, asking where and why he was going so early. When Gillett learns that Thrailkill has lost all his wagers, he offers to loan him some of his while trying to talk him out of killing West in the duel. Thrailkill refuses Gillett’s offer.
Thrailkill and West meet that evening. Somehow the duel has been kept secret from Shelby. The command to fire is given. Thrailkill throws up his revolver. West does not. Thrailkill looks at his fellow soldier whose eyes show no fear. Thrailkill fires his weapon into the air out of respect.
Episode 10: No For Occupation or Conquest
On September 3, 1865, the Iron Brigade ride into Mexico City. The men have plenty of time to tour the place, attend operas, and catch up with old friends like Allen, Price, Polk, Perkins, and “Prince John” Magruder
After relieving the French garrison at Matehuala and rescuing Inez Walker, Shelby has little doubt that Maximilian would accept him in his court. Already Matthew Maury, “The Pathfinder of the Seas,” was in the emperor’s inner circle, trying to encourage southern immigration to Mexico and recruitment of Confederate soldiers from the planter class who would help enrich the economy and secure the country. The emperor’s advisor, Marshal Bazaine, a veteran soldier, skilled in the craft of administration, has his doubts. He worries that with the war finished in the United States, Secretary of State Steward will insist on the rigorous enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine and militarily intervene in Mexico.
Shelby meets the emperor, whom he tells he can recruit forty thousand Americans to replace the French who are leaving, develop the resources, and hold the country until the Mexican people reconcile themselves to the Anglo-Saxon-French way of thinking. At first, the emperor cannot make Shelby out, so he calls a council of his officers. They fear the Southerners might be a Trojan horse. Furthermore, Maximillian is trying to establish friendly relations with the United States, believing that they would side with him once he convinced President Andrew Johnson that he was trying to enlighten the Mexicans with Western ideals and elevate the nation to that of European states.
Meanwhile, Inez Walker departs from the column upon reaching Mexico City and takes up a friendship with an American woman, Agnes Elisabeth Winona Leclerc Joy, married to Prince Felix zu Salm-Salm, a Prussian adventurer who had fought for the Union during the war. One day a Belgian officer insults Princess Salm-Salm in a café. With the prince out fighting Juaristas, Doctor Hazel from South Carolina stands up for the princess, challenging the Belgian to a duel. James Wood makes the arrangements. The Belgian and Dr. Hazel meet outside the city and have a coin toss to see who would face the sun. The doctor loses the toss. Both adversaries miss on their first shots. On his second shot, Hazel wounds the Belgian in the shoulder. Upon his return, the prince who had formerly fought against the South was unceasing with his thanks to the Southerners for vindicating his wife’s honor.
After consulting with his advisors, Maximilian turns down the services of Shelby and his troops. On September 5, 1865, Shelby forms the Iron Brigade up for their last review. For the first time in four years, they are not in danger of losing their lives. Now they are not wanted. They have no duties, no obligations. Those who had fought for principle have nothing to gain in a war for conquest or occupation. Their wish for war between the United States and France has not come. Then Shelby breaks the tension by asking how many know enough Spanish so that they can get a wife and start a farm. “We cannot starve, boys,” he adds.
Shelby walks down the line, shaking the hand of every man, patting shoulders, answering to nicknames, and recalling old incidents. Martin Kritzer’s bugle calls for one last time. The commands “Prepare to Mount “ and “Mount” are given one last time. The brigade passes in review one last time. The brigade gallops one last time. The rebel yell, echoing among the ancient buildings of the Mexican capital, is given one last time. And the guidon is folded one last time.
The men of the Iron Brigade are now free to pursue their own destinies as individuals. Bazaine gave out $50 to each man of the brigade for their troubles in coming to Mexico City. Some went to a colony named Carlota in the state of Vera Cruz where farms and plantations would be hewed out of the land like their pioneer forbearers had done in Arkansas and Missouri. Some went to California, a few to Hawaii and the Sandwich Islands, and others to Japan and China. A half-dozen went pirate hunting in the Pacific, others in search of gold. Fifty men joined the turban-wearing Third Zouaves under Major Perrion whom Shelby saved at Matehuala. A few even traveled northward to join the forces of Juarez.
Episode 11: Carlota
Shelby and Edwards go to the Carlota Colony where land confiscated from the Catholic Church by Juarez in Cordova, then taken by Maximillian, has been given to American emigrants along the Mexican Imperial Railroad. This land in the Cordoba Valley is good for growing cotton and sugar cane.
Shelby starts farming 12 acres of pineapple fields and groves of fruit trees while Edwards helps edit Henry Watkins Allen’s English language newspaper The Mexican Times. Allen’s paper included diatribes against Horace Greeley for his attacks on the Mexican colonies and calls for Sterling Price to lead an attack on Sheridan’s troops at the Rio Grande. According to Edwards, Price is too busy jockeying for a new position of power to lead such an attack.
Magruder and Maury are in charge of the Colonization Land Office with hopes of starting a colony called New Virginia. However, their hope of tens of thousands of Southerner immigrants from the finest families never comes to fruition. Fewer than 5,000 came and did not stay very long.
In October 1865 Shelby’s wife and two boys arrive in Carlota. Mrs. Shelby is surprised that Shelby did not have gray hair on his head.
Other Southerners include former Tennessee governor Islam Harris, the mayor of Carlota, for whom the Reconstruction governor of the Volunteer State has an arrest warrant. Thomas Hindman, the former chief justice of Texas, Willaim Oldhman, a Kentucky clergyman, T. E. Holeman, who refused to perform a wedding for a “Yankee man and a Secesh gal,” and several former members of the Iron Brigade. At a hotel called The Confederate, they drink Kentucky Bourbon while reading New Orleans newspapers full of accounts of carpetbaggers destroying what was left of their homeland.
Shelby’s decision to stay in Mexico is cemented by stories of men who served with him in the war dying of illness in prison after surrendering. One man, Lieutenant Charles Brownlee, is executed for having spied during the war. Jefferson Davis is still imprisoned, awaiting a trial that will never come.
Little does anyone know that the high-water mark of the French occupation of Mexico is mid-summer 1865.
On October 3, 1863, Marshal Bazaine persuades Maximilian to sign the infamous Black Decree. Meant to deal with the growing problem of Juarez-supporting guerrillas and bandits fanning support for the “little Indian,” the decree would require death for any Mexican actively opposing the emperor with arms or oratory. The order was partly a response to atrocities committed by the forces of Juarez which were dampening the morale of the French troops, many of whom were deserting. Soon Juarez has his own foreign legion, including some of Shelby’s former cavalrymen. The marshal is tired of pursuing guerrillas and Maximilian’s quixotic quest to win Mexican loyalty through charity and liberalism.
Instead of decreasing resistance, the order emboldens the guerrillas. Shelby knew this would happen, and warned Bazaine against the decree, reminding him that Union general Thomas Ewing’s Order No. 11 in Missouri, forcing civilians out of the “burnt district,” had only enflamed passions among Confederate guerrillas. In a scene similar to the titular character in The Outlaw Josey Wales seeking out the American Indian Ten Bears to declare a separate peace, Shelby finds the local Juarista guerrilla, Don Miguel Rodriguez. He distances himself from the oppression of Maximilian and Bazaine and offers to pay protection tribute. Edwards records that after the drums at the French fort only a mile away had played tattoo, Rodriguez would come out of the hills and visit with Shelby.
Episode 12 Let Us Remember Only As Brave Men
1866 begins with Shelby happy to see his friend Slayback who had to be left behind during the march due to illness. Matthew Maury pays a visit to Mexico City and returns to report that the emperor is rudderless, spending most of his time chasing butterflies at his estate. Only the Empress Carlota sees what must be done. Under pressure from the United States, many of the positions of the former Confederates and even entire departments are abolished, officially due to budgetary reasons to hide the betrayal of the the Southerners.
Allen dies on April 22, 1866. He is mourned by many of the local Mexicans to whom he had been charitable. There is controversy with the United States Embassy over his being buried in the American Cemetery in Mexico City in his dress uniform covered by a Confederate flag, so his fellow exiles bury him in his fatigue uniform coat instead.
On May 15, 1866, the guerrilla that Shelby had been sent to hunt the year before, Luis Figueroa, raid the Confederate colonies at Omealco. These settlers were not affiliated with Shelby and did not pay protection. Figueroa marches them to Veracruz without food and water and forces them to sail back to America.
June 9, 1866, see the first and a much larger, raid on Carlota. Homes and storehouses are burned and looted. Several men are shot and others, some in their sickbeds, are taken to the hills as prisoners. After seven days the battered and bruised men are released. Among those whose houses were burned is Price. His wife is very distressed over his health and finances, and by January 1867 he is back in Missouri. In some ways, Shelby is glad to see the general, whose blunders had made so many widows and orphans, leave.
The French are also leaving. Intrigue in the Maximilian court abounds. The Empress Carlota turns the emperor against Bazaine and eventually banishes him from the court. She leaves in July 1866 to persuade Napoleon, the Pope, and the Austrian emperor to send Maximilian support.
Despite the colony failing from guerilla raids and lazy Americans, Shelby remains. Betty gives birth to Benjamin Gratz Shelby in July 1866. Shelby sends them to Mexico City for their safety. Around the same time, he became involved in the freighting industry.
In July 1866 while delivering eighty wagons to an outpost, Shelby finds himself surrounded by hundreds of Juaristas. He drives the wagons to the ruins of a hacienda, circles them, and uses bags of corn meal and sandbags to make barricades. Among the teamsters are former members of the Iron Brigade, including James Kirtley. Shelby sends him and a few other soldiers for reinforcements.
The Mexican commander sends a flag of truce, saying that he has 500 men, and no harm would come if the Americans surrendered. Shelby, even with only seventeen men, refuses. All day Shelby’s men hold off the attackers. Then as dusk approaches, Chasseurs d’Afriue, guided by Kirtley, arrive and charge. The demoralized Juaristas give way.
Then Shelby learns that ten miles away the same de Preuil, who had once challenged him to a duel is under attack. Shelby leaves the wagons under guard and leads a force through the darkness to “exact his revenge.” De Preuil is forced to abandon the outpost and asks Shelby if he should leave his artillery behind. Shelby, who had never left his guns behind during the War Between The States, advises against such action, and the artillery is saved by the Frenchmen as they make their way to Mexico City through a sixty-mile-long ambush. Once the fighting is finished Shelby and de Preuil agree to bury the past and to “Let us remember each other only as brave men.”
Shelby is still set against going back to America. Jefferson Davis is still in prison and the Union government is still refusing to try him for treason. Shelby embarks on another colonization venture, this time in Tuxpan.
Meanwhile, Maximilian’s empire is collapsing. Carlota writes him letters encouraging him not to abdicate his throne. While she might be more politically shrewd, she is, like the Mexican countryside, quickly emotionally descending into madness.
In November 1866 “Prince John” Magruder carries a message to Sherman who is in Havana, Cuba. “The moral influence of the United States has destroyed the Empire, and thus the obligation rests upon the United States to keep Mexico from anarchy and protect the thousands of foreigners there. Ten or fifteen thousand American troops properly distributed through northern Mexico and a similar number of French soldiers, all working together, would do the trick.” After years of fearing the presence of Union generals on the border, Southerners like Magruder were asking for their help. Sherman did not give in to their requests while others like Philp Sheridan were still obsessed with thwarting Shelby’s colonization threats, arresting his agents in New Orleans.
More Confederates were leaving. Only Shelby, Edwards, Reynolds, and Hindman remained at Carlotta. Then in January 1867, the final rift between Maximilian and Marshal occurs. Bazaine leaves Mexico City with most of the soldiers and weapons. Military supplies he can not take are destroyed. He marches the last regiments of the French expeditionary force out of Mexico City on February 5, 1867. Most of the colonists leave with him on February 18, and March 11. Maximilian is left to defend himself with a few thousand Austrian volunteers and a Mexican Imperial Army of questionable loyalty against sixty thousand Juaristas. Instead of abdicating, he flees to one of his country estates where Thomas Reynolds and Prince Salm-Salm urge him to fight on.
Shelby plans for Betty and his sons to leave for New Orleans. He then evacuates the colony at Tuxpan. Soon afterwards an overwhelming attack by guerrillas and Indians destroy every structure in less than an hour. Two schooners he has charted are also attacked. Some of the crews fight back and are killed, their bodies thrown to the sharks while the ships burn.
A former Confederate officer, W. W. Burwell, tries to open a port at Guaymas for Maximilian’s escape but that attempt fails. When the foreigners flee Monterey only 11 of Jeanningros’ seventy-two Zouaves escaped. Despite the best efforts of Prince Salm-Salm and Thomas Reynolds, Maximilian is betrayed by one of his officers. Despite pleas from world leaders, including President Johnson, he is executed on June 19, 1876. Carlota spends her life in a deleterious mental state until her death in 1927.
Then some good news. Jefferson Davis is released from prison without being tried for treason. If the president of the Confederate States of America could go home, so could Shelby. The ship he boards in Veracruz, the Tacony, is holding an infamous prisoner, the seventy-three-year-old butcher of the Alamo, Santa Anna. He has returned to wrestle power out of the anarchy, but the US will not back him. Even though the self-proclaimed “Napoleon of the West” is released on condition that he does not enter Mexico, the captain of the ship is still afraid the Mexican ships in the harbor might prevent the Tacony from leaving to revenge their national honor. Shelby offers his services to the captain in case there is a boarding attempt. Thus, in the irony of the last holdout of the Confederacy being both under the protection of the United States flag and offering to protect a United States ship, Shelby leaves Mexico.
Postscript: Nearly all of the Confederates eventually leave Mexico. Only one man of Shelby’s, Yandell Blackwall, remains in Mexico until his death in the early 20th century. In 1882 Shelby sits down for a drink with Union general Philip Sheridan. A reporter from the New York Herald records their conversation in which Sheridan expresses disappointment that he never received orders to pursue the Missourians into Mexico. “I wish you had got them,” replies Shelby. “For we found it mighty lonesome over there for two years.” Sheridan replied that he believed, “Every man who went through our war felt lonesome for two or three years after it was over.” Echoes of Josey Wales’ “I reckon so. I guess we all died a little in that damn war.”
Despite the popular trope of ex-Confederates in Mexico in Western media and literature, there is only one novel about Shelby’s expedition, West of Appomattox by Harley Duncan. Despite the subheading “A novel based on the extraordinary story of General Joseph O. Shelby and the Confederate army, he took with him to Mexico after the Civil War,” it mainly focuses on the mano a mano, backstabbing, and soap-operatic romance between fictional characters who join Shelby in San Antonio. It does feature the sinking of the Confederate flag in the Rio Grande, the crossing of the Rio Sabinas, and the relief of the French garrison at Matehuala, but other than that it isn’t that interesting.
I believe a miniseries based on Shelby’s journey through Texas and into Mexico based on John N. Edward’s account would best capture the excitement of the expedition and the emotional stakes of the relationships between Shelby, his men, other exiles, French, and Mexicans made along the way. Twelve episodes would give the creators enough time to build the world of post-war Texas and French-occupied Mexico. The developing and then deteriorating relationships as the obstacles, both man versus man and man versus nature, would continue to rise and keep audiences tuned in. If written and directed in the tradition and with the maturity of David Lean, John Milius, and Kevin Reynolds, it could be a classic that blends action and adventure with thought-provoking lessons in the futility of nation-building, the arrogance of imperialism, and the empty self-defeatism of refusing to know when to give up, surrender, forgive and bury the past. If told right, Shelby’s Expedition into Mexico could be a healing journey.
Because it is an exciting Western adventure filled with many subtle meanings is why I believe General Joseph Shelby and His Iron Brigade’s Expedition into Mexico Should Be A Western Miniseries.
