The idea of intervention was not only born at the initiative of Napoleon III . Before the landing of the French imperial troops, the conservatives, who had been defeated in the completed Reform War , had contacted numerous courts in Europe to offer the country to a European prince [1], and their requests were well received by the french emperor Apart from financial reasons, Paris embarked on this enterprise for two other not insignificant reasons: the first, the French leader wanted to engage his country in a civilizing mission, something typical of the imperialism and colonialism that was beginning to emerge at the time. ; The second, the United States was immersed in its own civil war and the time was right to establish a French protectorate in Mexico and eliminate the growing North American influence.
The original French expedition had 2,400 soldiers, compared to the 800 men deployed by the British and 5,600 Spaniards under the orders of Juan Prim [2] . With the withdrawal of these two powers, France decided to take over the Mexican capital. The army, reinforced with troops from Europe, was placed under the command of General B2B Email List Charles Ferdinand Latrille , better known as the Count of Lorencez. With the reinforcements arriving from the metropolis, the French forces would reach approximately 6,000 troops, a mix of colonial and metropolitan units among which there were formations that had recently fought in Crimea and Italy, so they had great experience.
Count Lorencez and Napoleon III thought that this expeditionary army would be enough to subdue the new Mexican government, and it was not unreasonable since the social and, above all, economic conditions of the country predicted a rapid advance towards the capital, Mexico City, from its base in Veracruz. And they were not without allies, as members of the ousted conservative party formed a parallel government that supported intervention. However, the Mexican army responded quickly to try to stop the French aggression, whose advance, after some skirmishes and previous combats, was stopped in the town of Puebla , in a battle that would remain etched in the national collective imagination.