By ten o'clock all was over. The Mexican empire, inaugurated with so much pomp and glitter exactly three years before, had wearily reached a miserable ending. The curtain then falling upon its closing scene was a death-pall; and of the young sovereigns who only a short time before had regarded themselves as the anointed of Heaven, sent by a higher power to strengthen the church and to uphold the principles of monarchy, one had gone mad, and the other now stood an expiatory victim about to be offered up to republican resentment. It would seem that Maximilian had at first no thought that his life was in peril. This is shown by his attempts to make terms with General Escobedo on behalf of his foreign followers, requesting that they and himself should be safely conducted to the coast and embarked; in exchange for which he pledged himself nevermore to interfere in Mexican affairs, and to issue orders for the disarmament and immediate surrender of all strongholds now in the power of his followers. Soon, however, he was removed to the convent of the Capuchins, where he could be more securely guarded; and the feeling began to grow that he must pay with his life for his brief enjoyment of the Mexican crown. Brought up for trial on June 13 before a military tribunal composed of six captains and one lieutenant-colonel, which held its court on the stage of a public theater, he was ably defended by Mexico's foremost lawyers, Messrs. Mariano Riva-Palacio, Martinez de la Torre, Eulalio Ortega, and Jesus-Maria Vazquez; but his doom was already sealed. On June 14, at eleven o'clock at night, he was sentenced to death. Every effort was made by his lawyers and by the foreign representatives whom he had summoned to his side to obtain from the republican government a mitigation of the sentence. The Queen of England, the government of the United States, begged for mercy. Baron Magnus, Baron Lago, and M. de Hoorickx, in the names of the European monarchs allied to the prince by ties of relationship, moved heaven and earth to influence the president. Princess Salm-Salm cleverly used every means in a woman's power to accomplish the same end. In vain. President Juarez could well afford to be magnanimous; but under the existing social conditions in Mexico, who, knowing all the facts, could blame if stern justice was allowed to take its course?