Lopez has given his explanation of the treachery with which
he has been charged in betraying Maximilian to the Liberals. His
assertion is, in effect, that the Emperor's casa was desperate ; that the Emperor had asked for a free pass for himself and suite and the Empress's regiment ; that Lopez was sent to negotiate this, and was refused ; that after he .had given his answer to the disappointed Emperor he went the round of the lines to put his troops on their guard ; that in the confusion of his mind he fell into the enemy's hands, and was taken prisoner just before they entered Queretaro. The suspicious element in this story is that the General should have been the first man seized by the enemy, and that he has never been treated with any rigour by the Liberals, but is still kept a prisoner, without any apparent inten- tion, on their part, of trying him.
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