Maximilian (Spanish: Maximiliano; born Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph; 6 July 1832 – 19 June 1867) was the only monarch of the Second Mexican Empire. He was a younger brother of the Austrian emperor Francis Joseph I. After a distinguished career in the Austrian Navy, he accepted an offer by Napoleon III of France to rule Mexico. France (along with the United Kingdom and Spain, who both withdrew the following year after negotiating agreements with Mexico’s democratic government) had invaded Mexico in the winter of 1861, as part of the War of the French Intervention. Seeking to legitimize French rule in the Americas, Napoleon III invited Maximilian to establish a new Mexican monarchy for him. With the support of the French army, and a group of conservative Mexican monarchists hostile to the liberal administration of new Mexican President Benito Juárez, Maximilian traveled to Mexico. Once there, he declared himself Emperor of Mexico on 10 April 1864.

The Empire managed to gain recognition by major European powers including Britain, Austria, and Prussia. The United States however, continued to recognize Juarez as the legal president of Mexico. Maximilian never completely defeated the Mexican Republic; Republican forces led by President Benito Juárez continued to be active during Maximilian’s rule. With the end of the American Civil War in 1865, the United States (which had been too distracted by its own civil war to confront the Europeans’ 1861 invasion of what it considered to be its sphere of influence) began more explicit aid of President Juárez’s forces. Matters worsened for Maximilian after the French armies withdrew from Mexico in 1866. His self-declared empire collapsed, and he was captured and executed by the Mexican government in 1867. His wife, Charlotte of Belgium (Carlota), had left for Europe earlier to try to build support for her husband’s regime; after his execution, she suffered an emotional collapse and was declared insane.

Born: Dec 18, 1934 · Marylebone, England
Died: 1981
Children: George Bingham, 8th Earl of Lucan (Son) · Lady Frances Bingham (Daughter)
Parents: George Bingham, 6th Earl of Lucan (Father)
Education: Eton College

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Highlights

• 1960: In 1960 he met Stephen Raphael, a rich stockbroker who was a skilled backgammon player.


• 1964: Two months after the wedding, on 21 January 1964, the 6th Earl of Lucan died of a stroke.


• 1972: The combined pressures of maintaining their finances, paying for Lucan’s gambling addiction and Veronica’s weakened mental condition took their toll on the marriage; two weeks after a strained family Christmas in 1972, Lucan moved into a small property in Eaton Row.


• 1972: Lucan told his friends that nobody would work for Veronica (she sacked the children’s long-term nanny, Lillian Jenkins, in December 1972).


• 1974: The last confirmed sighting of Lucan was at about 1:15 am on 8 November 1974 as he exited the driveway of the Maxwell-Scott property, in his friend’s Ford Corsair.


• 1974: A warrant for Lucan’s arrest, to answer charges of murdering Sandra Rivett, and attempting to murder his wife, was issued on Tuesday 12 November 1974.

Russia offered to sell Alaska to the United States in 1859, believing the United States would off-set the designs of Russia’s greatest rival in the Pacific, Great Britain. The looming U.S. Civil War delayed the sale, but after the war, Secretary of State William Seward quickly took up a renewed Russian offer and on March 30, 1867, agreed to a proposal from Russian Minister in Washington, Edouard de Stoeckl, to purchase Alaska for $7.2 million. The Senate approved the treaty of purchase on April 9; President Andrew Johnson signed the treaty on May 28, and Alaska was formally transferred to the United States on October 18, 1867. This purchase ended Russia’s presence in North America and ensured U.S. access to the Pacific northern rim.

For three decades after its purchase the United States paid little attention to Alaska, which was governed under military, naval, or Treasury rule or, at times, no visible rule at all. Seeking a way to impose U.S. mining laws, the United States constituted a civil government in 1884. Skeptics had dubbed the purchase of Alaska “Seward’s Folly,” but the former Secretary of State was vindicated when a major gold deposit was discovered in the Yukon in 1896, and Alaska became the gateway to the Klondike gold fields. The strategic importance of Alaska was finally recognized in World War II. Alaska became a state on January 3, 1959.

By the Treaty of Fez (Arabic: معاهدة فاس‎‎), signed March 30, 1912, Sultan Abdelhafid made Morocco a French protectorate, resolving the Agadir Crisis of July 1, 1911.

Germany recognised the French protectorate in Morocco, receiving in return territories in the French Equatorial African colony of Middle Congo (now the Republic of the Congo). This land, known as Neukamerun, became part of the German colony of Kamerun, part of German West Africa, although it only lasted briefly until it was captured by the allies in World War I. As part of the treaty, Germany ceded France a small area of territory to the south-east of Fort Lamy, now part of Chad.

Spain also gained a zone of influence in Northern Morocco which became Spanish Morocco. By the agreement signed with France and Spain in November that year, Spain gained a zone of influence in the Rif and the Cape Juby areas, where the sultan remained nominally the sovereign and was represented by a vice regent under the control of the Spanish high commission.

Private agreements among the United Kingdom, Italy and France in 1904, eg the Entente Cordiale, made without consulting the sultan, had divided the Maghreb into spheres of influence, with France given Morocco. In Morocco, the young sultan Abdelaziz acceded in 1894 at the age of ten, and Europeans became the main advisors at the court, while local rulers became more and more independent from the sultan. The sultan was deposed in 1908. Moroccan law and order continued to deteriorate under his successor, Abdelhafid, who abdicated in favour of his brother Yusef after signing the Treaty of Fez.

The Treaty of Fez granted the concession for exploitation of the iron mines of Mount Uixan to the Spanish Rif Mines Company, which was also given permission to build a railroad to connect the mines with Melilla.

The treaty was perceived as a betrayal by Moroccan nationalists and led to the 1912 Fez riots and the War of the Rif (1919–26) between the Spanish and the Moroccan Rif and the Jebala tribes. Their leader became Abd el-Krim, who, after driving back the Spanish, founded a short-lived nationalist Republic of the Rif.

Date: Mar 30, 1981