Bazaine, François Achille (1811–1888)

François Achille Bazaine (b. 13 February 1811; d. 23 September 1888), French military commander in Mexico (1863–1867). Born near Metz, Bazaine joined the French Foreign Legion in 1832, serving in Algeria and Spain. He served with General Élie-Frédéric Forey in the Crimea (1854–1856) and in the Italian campaign (1859). Bazaine took North African troops with him to Mexico in 1863, and Napoleon III appointed him on 16 July 1863 as supreme commander of French Intervention forces, replacing Forey.

In Mexico, Bazaine's aim was to reconcile the various factions and win over moderate opinion to the empire. He disliked the Mexican Conservatives and followed Napoleon's policy of blocking any reversal of the Reform Laws. He became critical of Emperor Maximilian's indecision. The peak of Bazaine's career was the Oaxaca campaign of 1865. With 8,000 men he took the city on 9 February and captured Porfirio Díaz, the Liberal military commander. He put into effect Napoleon's evacuation policy during 1866 and left Mexico on the last convoy on 12 March 1867, returning to France without military honors, since Mexico had already become an embarrassment to Napoleon.

At the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, Bazaine commanded the 103,000 men of the Third Army Corps, with headquarters at Metz. Although he held down a Prussian army in Lorraine, he was unjustly accused of treason for surrendering Metz in October 1870 after a seventy-day siege. After returning from captivity in Germany and seventeen months of house arrest, he was court-martialed on 6 October 1873 and sentenced to twenty years on the prison island of Sainte Marguerite, from which he escaped on 10 August 1874. He spent the last years of his life in Spain.

See alsoFrench Intervention (Mexico); Miramón, Miguel.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Jack Autrey Dabbs, The French Army in Mexico, 1861–1867 (1963).

Alfred. J. Hanna and Kathryn A. Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico: American Triumph over Monarchy (1971).

                                       Brian Hamnett