Maximilian I of Mexico

Maximilian was the younger brother of Austria's Emperor Franz Joseph I, a Habsburg who commanded the small Austrian navy and briefly served as viceroy of Lombardy–Venetia before being dismissed. Mexican conservatives, having lost a brutal civil war to the liberals in 1861, sought a European monarch to restore their power with French military backing. Maximilian, a descendant of Charles V who once ruled Mexico as part of the Spanish Empire, seemed ideal — but he misread everything. He accepted the crown on 10 April 1864 after a rigged referendum, pledged French troops at his back, and promptly…