How long would France be able to hold Mexico as a puppet?

how long could France have held on to Mexico before having to pull out, or could france have kept a puppet state there till the present day?
 
Only so long as they can afford to maintain troops in the country. That doesn't last beyond the Prussian wars in European. Otherwise Mexico can only be governed by and with the consent of French-allied Mexican conservatives.
 
I dont see why not as long as they have the consent of other great powers and the forces to occupy the country
 
how long could France have held on to Mexico before having to pull out, or could france have kept a puppet state there till the present day?

At most, maybe eight or ten years at the very maximum. The French would eventually pull out of Mexico and their little Austrian puppet Maximilian is going to get a bullet through his skull.
 
United States did not want a French protectorate on their border

I is my understanding that the United States did not want a French protectorate on their border. In other threads, it was mentioned that the US "lost" a great deal of weapons which later were found in the hands of the Mexican army fighting the French.

Also, I believe that General Phil Sheridan was sent to the Mexican borders with troops to send the message that the US did not want a French protectorate on their borders. Please remember that a fair number of Confederates had fled to Mexico. I have often wondered if the USA was concerned about a French controlled Mexico become a place for die hard Confederates to regroup. While I have not seen anything to that effect, I have always wondered.

Regards

Stubear1012
 
Depends.

One of the biggest problems for the Second Mexican Empire was that Maximillian was to liberal for the Conservatives and to conservative for the Liberals and of course the hardcore Republican minority would never be OK with him period, plus centralizing the country and breaking the 23 States into 50 Departments did'nt help things either.

In my opinion the best bet for a long-term SME is for Maximillian to try and court the Liberals more while providing some concessions to the Conservatives to keep them from doing more than grumbling while more or less adopting a Constitution based on the 1857 one sans the aforementioned concessions and establishing a Constitutional Monarchy.

Making goodwill gestures towards the U.S. like deporting any Confederates found back to it would probably help to.
 
even if they managed to keep Maximillian on the throne, he wouldve eventually turned on them himself...he was a bit of a oddity in sticking puppet monarchs on foreign thrones in that he considered himself Mexican, he wanted to do what was best for Mexico, rather than the interests of those that put him into power....a bit like Louis Bonarparte, Koning Lodewijk I of Holland as he prefered to be called, who put interests of Holland above those of his brothers
 
Top