The Reconquista


   In North America, before the war, there were many conflicts being waged between the soon to be belligerents. The most well known of these was the arms race that developed during the eighties between the United States and the Confederacy. At the same time another conflict was being waged and it is one that almost completely escaped the notice of the press. Despite the fact that it was rarely recorded in the public record it was probably of far more importance than how many guns could be produced in factories. Fortunately for historians, the bureaucracies kept meticulous records of what was an “arms race” in the very literal sense. After all, how can one manufacture a rifle without the man to build it, hold it, and eventually wield it in battle. This race was one of immigration.
All four major belligerents, in North America, had spent the last half of the 19th century in a race to see who could coax the most number of disenfranchised Europeans to their shores. The United States was the undisputed winner in this race. The allure of America proved to be more than enough to encourage hundreds of thousands of people from any region in Europe that had an unfortunate turn of events. Famine in Ireland, Italy, Austria-Hungry, and Russia drove many while political and ethnic dissatisfaction encouraged much emigration from regions that were relatively well off. The US population exploded more from this migration than from it’s own birth rate. With the loss of it’s south eastern states, with it’s predominate stock of Scotch-Irish, the US was becoming quite a polyglot society. What was even more important was that the US had both the agriculture and industry to provide for this exploding population.
One has to wonder why the Confederacy did not seem to prosper from this old world migration. No one ever bothered to ask any immigrants why they found the US to be a superior choice but, there are some hints as to why the Confederacy failed to attract immigrants. The main reason seems to be that the Confederacy did not really try. There was some immigration to the Confederacy in the years between 1865 and 1898 but, this seems to be largely confined to Irish Catholics. While the records are unclear, the pattern of where they settled (very concentrated and in a few specific cities) seems to suggest that the majority of the immigration was due to the fact that the immigrants already had relatives living in the Confederacy. Most of those families had probably moved there before the American 61.
The city of Savannah, Georgia is very typical many Irish enclaves in the Confederacy. Most of the immigrants came to dominate entire neighborhoods, work in the same industries, same professions, and showed little interest in leaving. The numbers that arrived in Savannah would greatly boost it’s population, and productivity, transforming the city into a serious economic rival, as a leading port, to Charleston that had so dominated the region up till that point. Savannah’s Irish heritage would become a permanent point of pride to the city which, to this very day, still celebrates it’s heritage. Unfortunately for the Confederacy, Savannah was an exception to the rule and it’s influence would not spread.
The Confederate failure to attract new citizens was only slightly worse than that of Canada. The main reason here seems to be far less of a mystery in that immigration was completely controlled by the British Empire. London was only interested in settling the region to a point and all of the factors governing the policy were all dictated by strategic concerns. Britain was not interested in, what they saw as, a flood of malcontents from the continent overrunning one of their possessions. The fact that Canada was no longer, legally speaking, their possession was irrelevant to that point of view. Britain did encourage many from Scotland and Ireland to immigrate to Canada but, kept the numbers very small so that the population would not grow to an unmanageable size.
What goes unnoticed is that Mexico, under the policies of Maximilian, actually came in a very close second, to the United States, in snapping up the excess masses of Europe. Maximilian had actually began his policies as soon as he came to the throne but, it was only after the French garrisons were gone and his regime stabilized that the policies began to show some fruition. In truth, Maximilian seems to have only wanted to attract European aristocrats to Mexico. By the eighteen eighties he had met with some limited success here. Maximilian seems to have been completely unaware of the fact that this trickle of nobility was slowly turning into a tidal wave of commoners, mostly Hungarian, Polish, and German.
This migration made late 19th century Mexico a very odd place indeed. It was not very apparent to outsiders but, Mexico was not unlike many nations of that day, in that it was very multi-ethnic in nature and that was before the new Europeans began showing up in noticeable numbers. While it was common (indeed it still is) to refer to Mexicans as “Hispanic,” in truth, the term had a very different meaning in Mexico. If a Mexican were to refer to his fellow citizen as a “Hispanic” then he usually meant the person in question had pale skin, was probably descended from Spanish aristocracy, and most likely lived in a big city. That might suggest that the dividing line meant there was one other group but, even that was not true. Rural Mexicans were more likely to refer to themselves by what ever pre-Columbian group they were born too. Outsiders could not even see a difference but, too Mexicans, the differences were vast and important.
From the very day that Mexico became an independent nation, these differences hindered it’s development in more ways than one. More often than not, the rivalries between the various ethnic groups, and the economic classes, would cause Mexico to trip over it’s own feet  just as it seemed to be getting ahead. These internal divisions created a power vacuum that was constantly filled by a line of dictators, most of whom could trace their lineage back to the Spanish overlords who ruled by decree from Madrid.
That was not to say that Maximilian was all that different from many who came before him. He was not and many of the policies set by his government did not flourish because of anything that he did. Quite often they succeeded simply because he was not competent enough to stop more talented subordinates from carrying out plans that he personally opposed. The primary difference here was what Maximilian did not have to worry about and many of his predecessors did.
Maximilian did not have to worry about being ousted in a coup, lined up on a wall, and shot. A Confederate/British army would show up should that happen and after the Franco-Mexican War, not many wanted to tempt another foreign invasion. This gave Maximilian some breathing room and he used it to ignore men that might otherwise have been political rivals. Fortunately for Max, many of these men turned out to be both competent and rich. Many were willing to invest money in a land that, for the first time since it’s birth, showed signs of becoming politically stable.
That is not to say that Mexico had reached that point yet. Before the Great War broke out, Mexico was fighting a much smaller civil war of it’s own. This war was largely an extension of the rivalry between the Confederacy and the US. It pitted Maximilian’s primarily European Army, backed by British money and Confederate guns, against an assortment of rebels that ruled large tracks of Chihuahua and Sonora as their own private countries. These rebels were quite often described in British newspapers as “bandit kingdoms” and while this was definitely propaganda it was not too far from the truth.
The two most prominent of these “bandit kings” was a very young teenager who went by the name of Pancho Villa and the man who used to be his boss, Ignacio Parra. Both men were noted as thieves and outlaws before the civil war began in earnest. There are those who will dispute these claims and whether or not they are hero or villain, greatly depends on who you ask. What is certain about these men is that, by 1896, Villa had eclipsed Parra in reputation and firepower. Parra would splinter off with his core supporters and later be killed in an ambush near Hermosillo less than a year later.
It is often suggested that Villa set up his former boss and, while this can never be proven, there is some circumstantial evidence that makes one wonder. The man who led the ambush was an ardent Maximilian supporter by the name of Alvaro Obregon Salido. Despite his political allegiances it was discovered some time after the war that Obregon had more than a few casual dealings with Villa that were of mutual benefit to both men.
No matter what the circumstances of Parra’s death, after 1897 it left Villa in firm control of the rebel forces in Northern Mexico. Villa also had a card to play that he wasted no time in doing. He quickly accepted guns and money from the United States. With brand new support he was able to go over to the offensive and by the outbreak of general hostilities, in 1898, he had managed to effectively shut down any real control that Maximilian had of the countryside of Chihuahua and, to an extent, Sonora. What Villa could not do was take even the smallest cities where Maximilian’s garrisons remained strongly entrenched and, despite Villa’s best efforts, were able to be re-supplied.
Such was the state of affairs in Mexico when she entered the war in 1899. By spring of 1900, nothing had really changed. Up till this point, Mexico had been involved in very little fighting, all of which had been contained in the regions of it’s most northern states. All of it was little more than a continuation of the war that had been going on before hand. The only real difference was that the United States was more directly involved now and even this did not seem to change the situation.
Mexico’s inactivity was becoming less practical. The final straw was the deterioration of the situation on the Canadian front. As Britain began to lean more on the Confederacy to put pressure on the US, the Confederacy began to lean on Maximilian. By this point the Confederates found themselves hard pressed to launch a major offensive along their 1500 mile long front. So far, all of them had resulted in little more than long lists of casualties and nothing had been gained in return. The Confederate General Staff was under no illusions about their ability to capture anything vital. They were no longer even sure they could distract the United States from it’s invasion of Canada. That did not mean they were without a plan though.
The Confederacy looked at it’s military options and decided on a two part operation. The goal was to kick the US hard enough to make them blink and give the British some breathing room in Canada. In order to do this, they realized they would have to go after the US in places that were not only vital but, that the Yankee’s were weak. The first part of the plan would come later but, the second is what we are most interested in here. For this they turned south towards Mexico City and Emperor Maximilian.
When the Emperor and his generals were introduced to the Confederate plan, they were not very enthusiastic. Colonel Max Weygand was present at this series of meetings between the Confederate and Mexican militaries. His appraisal of the plan was that it was ludicrous and, strangely enough, Weygand noted that it was not for any military reason. He simply did not believe that Mexico had the resources to sustain the kind of campaign the Confederates were suggesting.
It’s not clear if Weygand understood the political realities of Mexico but, his objection to the Confederate war plan seems to suggest that he did. The primary obstacle to fully mobilizing the Mexican nation was not her lack of resources. Despite the rampant poverty, the Mexican economy was booming before the war. Even under the strain that was created by the raiding on international shipping, Mexico was still fairly well off. She had plenty of raw materials, manpower, and even a developing industrial base. The problem was getting the various and diverse Mexican classes to cooperate long enough to harness all of that. Weygand seemed to fully understand this problem.
Apparently Maximilian did as well. He had to find a cause that would appeal to the old Spanish Nobility, the Church, the indigenous pre-Columbians groups, and the newly arrived immigrants. Most of those groups would be just as happy shooting at each other as they would the enemies of nations like the Confederate States and Great Britain. There was very little love for the CSA or UK and they were viewed no differently than the English speaking whites of the US. One has to wonder how Maximilian came up with his plan but, for better or worse, it seems to have worked. Mexico’s tacit support for it’s allies was about to become a holy crusade. When Mexican and Confederate forces invaded New Mexico, Emperor Maximilian I proudly announced, the Reconquista had begun.