(Happy Cinco de Mayo, everyone! To celebrate, I give you an update set in Mexico.)
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"...as many as four million people may have been in Mexico City that day for the funeral in the Cathedral of Mexico City after six days lying in state, following by its the funeral train to the Mayan-inspired mausoleum just southwest of the Chapultepec. [1] The funeral of Maximilian I of Mexico became an event that soon was as much legend as historical event in the Mexican collective memory; there was a popular story that so many flowers and vigil candles were left at the crypt that it nearly burned several times, and that a hundred thousand rosaries and crosses were collected from its steps.
The funeral on January 28, 1919 was one of those days that an entire generation of Mexicans could thus remember, even if they had not attended it themselves. The cultural shock of the passing of the Padre de Patria in the wake of the upheavals of the Maderato and then the war years left the country reeling and uncertain, looking back at an extremely uncomfortable decade that had dramatically reshaped the reality they understood and looking ahead to 1920 and beyond with trepidation. It was the exact fertile ground that a strongman like Reyes needed to continue to deepen his control over Mexican institutions, and the uncertainty many had about the ability of Louis Maximilian to serve as Emperor, despite his cautious and capable nature, certainly did not help.
The funeral of Maximilian also marked, ironically, an important sidebar in the dramatic leadup to the Central European War; delegations from all the major European powers were present to honor a long-lived Habsburg on the other side of the world, and the Spanish Infante Francisco Jose, the younger of King Carlos Jose's twin sons, made a game effort to try to cobble together in Mexico City's parlors and salons some kind of last-ditch effort to establish backchannels between French, German and Belgian attendees (Belgium honored the Empress Carlota, the aunt of their King Leopold III, by sending his eldest son and heir Prince Leopold, the most senior prince of any European power to appear), but it was for naught. The Germans maintained their view that France and Belgium was intentionally goading Austria into acquitting Prince Stephane Clement of the murder of the Bavarian Prince Franz, and that only turning over Stephane Clement to be imprisoned in Germany for the affront would be a sufficient result.
As such, this effort to find some solution, some way out of the crisis, failed rather miserably, and Maximilian's funeral indeed proved to get lost in the chaos that was to follow over the next several months..."
- El Jefe de Jefes: Luis Napoleon Morones' Mexico
[1] Say, where Los Pinos stands today...