ARTICLE VI

In consideration of the cession aforesaid, the United States agree to pay at the Treasury in Washington, within ten months after the exchange of the ratifications of this convention, to the diplomatic representative or other agent of His Majesty the Emperor of all the Russias, duly authorized to receive the same, seven million two hundred thousand dollars in gold. The cession of territory and dominion herein made is hereby declared to be free and unincumbered by any reservations, privileges, franchises, grants, or possessions, by any associated companies, whether corporate or incorporate, Russian or any other, or by any parties, except merely private individual property-holders; and the cession hereby made conveys all the rights, franchises, and privileges, now belonging to Russia in the said territory or dominion, and appurtenances thereto.

ARTICLE VII

When this convention shall have been duly ratified by the President of the United States, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, on the one part, and, on the other, by His Majesty the Emperor of all the Russias, the ratifications shall be exchanged at Washington within three months from the date thereof, or sooner if possible.

MEXICAN CHARGES AGAINST MAXIMILIAN, 1867

The accusations brought against Maximilian by the Mexican authorities are indicated in the following passage from the instruction of Juarez's Secretary of War to General Escobedo with regard to the disposal of his prisoners. Text from "American Annual Cyclopædia, 1867." New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1868, p. 489. (See page 42.)

The Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian of Hapsburg lent himself as the principal instrument in the work of iniquity which has afflicted the Republic, during five years, with all kinds of crime and every species of calamity. He came to oppress a people, pretending to destroy its constitution and laws without any other title than some votes of no value, since they were wrested by the presence and force of foreign bayonets. He came here and assumed voluntarily the most serious responsibilities, by a course condemned in the laws of all nations, and which had been foreseen and provided for in various former laws of the Republic, the last of which was that of January 25, 1862, defining crimes against the independence and safety of the nation, against the laws of nations, against personal rights, and the public peace and order. The notorious acts of Maximilian's career embrace the greater part of the liabilities specified in that law. Not only did he lend himself as an instrument of foreign intervention, but in order to wage on his own account a filibustering warfare, he brought hither other foreigners, Austrians and

Belgians, the subjects of foreign powers that were not at war with the Republic. He undertook to overthrow forever the political institutions and the government which the nation had freely set up for itself, maintaining that the supreme power had been abrogated merely by the votes of some persons appointed and delegated by the foreign invader or compelled by the presence and threats of a foreign soldiery. Through force and without any legal title he disposed of the lives, the rights, and the interests of the Mexicans. He promulgated a decree containing barbarous prescripts for the assassination of those Mexicans who were defending, or who refused to inform on those who were defending, the inde

EMPRESS CARLOTTA

pendence and the institutions of their country. He was the cause of numberless bloody executions under this barbarous decree, which he first applied to distinguished Mexican patriots who could not be presumed to have known as yet of its promulgation. He ordered his own soldiers, or at least he consented, under the false title of head of the nation, that soldiers of the foreign invasion should burn or destroy many whole towns throughout the Mexican territory, especially in the States of Michoacan, Sinaloa, Chihuahua, and Nuevo

Leon. He ordered that his own agents, or consented that the agents of the foreigners, should assassinate many thousands of Mexicans to whom the defence of their country was imputed a crime. And when the armies of the foreign power withdrew, and he beheld the whole Republic aroused against him, he gathered around himself some of the most guilty men of our civil war and made use of all means, of violence, depredation, death, and devastation, in order to sustain to the last his false title which he was still unwilling to give up until he beheld himself obliged by force and in spite of his will to abandon it.