* See above, "foreign legion." ** Now Prince Khevenhuller. *** Colonel Hammerstein was killed in the trenches during the siege of Mexico on May 25, 1867. He commanded the defense of the western approach to the city by Vallejo and San Lazaro, as well as Peralvillo to the north, facing Guadalupe, In his defense of the latter position he was supported by General O'Horan, who was at a later date taken and put to death by order of President Juarez. In the beginning of January, 1867, the marshal, under orders received from Paris, issued a circular withdrawing the consent of the French government to these enlistments, and offering to all such enlisted soldiers and officers the means of returning to France. A few days later, on the 11th, this offer was extended to all French subjects, and even to the Austro-Belgian auxiliaries should they wish to avail themselves of it. In his circular the marshal recalled the law which deprives any Frenchman serving under a foreign flag of his rights as a French citizen. This placed in the position of deserters French soldiers and officers who in good faith had accepted service in the new Mexican army. It practically forced them to break their oath of allegiance to Maximilian, and to despoil the treasury of the premium received and already spent, or to become outlaws in the eyes of their own country. The false position in which these men were placed was, a few weeks later, cruelly emphasized when General Escobedo, after his victory over Miramon at San Jacinto, took advantage of the legal quibble thus offered him, and caused French prisoners to be shot as declared outlaws under Marshal Bazaine's circular. Notwithstanding all this, out of the remainder of the Cazadores a battalion was formed, and eventually placed under the command of Prince Salm-Salm, and later under that of the Austrian commander Pitner. These did magnificent service at Queretaro.* * See above, "Cazadores de Mejico." After the departure of the French army, an effective force of some five hundred men was organized of French deserters and such Frenchmen as, for some cause or other, had remained in Mexico. This formed a contre-guerilla, which, under the orders of Commandant Chenet, eventually did good service in the defense of Mexico. But the marshal's circular, by removing the better element among the officers of the newly enrolled corps, ruthlessly broke up the organization of the little army of twenty thousand men so laboriously collected by Maximilian, and became the latter's bitterest and perhaps best-founded grievance against his former allies. Urged by General Castelnau, the marshal was steadily concentrating his troops. The foreign representatives were fast leaving the country. Unmistakable symptoms of a final collapse were everywhere visible, and all who had been in any way conspicuous in their sympathy with the intervention or the empire were anxiously preparing for the catastrophe. V. THE END OF THE FRENCH INTERVENTION