Huerta And Maximilian.

New York Times 100 years ago today, May 18, 1913:
    Gen. Carranza, now the most conspicuous of Mexican revolutionists, has decreed that the law of Jan. 25, 1862, shall be enforced against Gen. Huerta and his associates when they are captured. That law provides that any attempt on the life of the Chief Magistrate, or any complicity in a seditious uprising, shall be punished with summary execution. A dispatch from Eagle Pass says that this law is called the Law of Maximilian, and that under it the Austrian usurper was put to death. Facts do not warrant that statement. Under the law of 1862 Maximilian would have been shot without the expense and delay of a protracted trial by court-martial.
    Maximilian , to whom the imperial crown was first tendered July 10, 1863, and by whom it was accepted April 10, 1864, promulgated in October, 1865, a law providing that "all partisans of the Liberal Government" (meaning all the patriotic Mexicans of that hour) "taken with arms in their hands should be treated as outlaws and summarily executed." That law was cruelly enforced. Many Mexicans were actually murdered during the remainder of Maximilian's troubled reign. That was the chief charge against him, and the one which compelled President Juarez to ignore all appeals for the dethroned Emperor's pardon. There were many other grave charges, all proved. But the decree of Oct. 3, 1865, was the significant Law of Maximilian, and it was the boomerang which in its backward flight smote him to death.
    If Carranza captures Huerta, or if Huerta captures Carranza, doubtless the victor will put the vanquished where he can do no more harm. But neither will bother much to find a historical precedent for his act.