Very contradictory accounts have been received of the fate of
the Emperor Maximilian. On the one hand, the Mexican Embassy at Vienna professes to have received news that the Republicans before Queretaro had been completely defeated,. but there is a suspicious want of dates and details about this information. On the other hand, the New York journals announce positively the capture of Queretaro by the Republicans on May 15, and that
Mejia, and Miramon were prisoners. The San idOtlid Potosi Journal states that the Republicans had ordered Maximilian and his officers to be shot, but Lord Stanley speaks of both these. stories as "mere newspaper reports." San Louis Potosi is about 150 miles north of Queretaro, and its newspaper is likely enough to have picked up sensational reports on very little foundation. At Tampico, on the 27th April, it was known that Escobedo had been heavily defeated before Queretaro, and was in terrible need of reinforcements, which Juarez had summoned to go to Escobedo's aid in vain. If that was the condition of things on the 27th of April, it is not very likely that Queretaro was taken on the 15th May. Both the Imperial and the Republican reports seem untrustworthy. But if Maximilian has really been shot, the Emperor of the French would be placed in a very uncomfortable position. The Mexican expedition would have ended in the atter discomfiture of the " Latin " Empire of the New World, and in the execution of the Emperor Napoleon's protege.
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