Cinco de Mayo

What connection could there possibly be between Mexico’s Cinco de Mayo celebration and the early history of the Bahá’í Faith? On May 5, 1862, 8,000 invading French forces with state-of-the-art equipment were turned back by 4,000 rustic Mexicans (albeit with a splendid cavalry) in the battle of Pueblo. The French soon pressed on to victory, installing Maximilian I (brother of Austro-Hungarian Emperor Archduke Ferdinand) as ruler for a short five year period until democrat-ically elected Benito Juarez was able to reclaim the land for the locals. Nevertheless the heroism of the Battle of Pueblo is what is celebrated every May 5th.

And who ordered this French invasion? Why, none other than Napoleon III (portrait above by Franz Xavier Winterhalter). Bahá’u’lláh addressed admonishing and prophetic letters to many of the temporal and religious leaders of the day from His exiles in Ottoman lands, instructing them in how to be enlightened leaders, announcing to them His stupendous claims, and offering them the Most Great Peace should they arise to accept Him. He also warned of dire consequences should they not heed His advice and change course. In his book The Promised Day is Come, Shoghi Effendi documents the swift and dramatic downfall of those who spurned Bahá’u’lláh’s message, including Kaiser Wilhelm I (2 assassination attempts), Emperor Franz Josef (too many disasters to list culminating in World War I), the Ottoman Sultan ‘Abdu’l-Azíz (deposition and murder, followed by the cataclysmic demise of the entire empire), the Sháh of Irán (assassinated in 1896), and Pope Pius IX (loss of papal lands and temporal authority, self-imposed imprisonment). Czar Nicholas II, who through his Foreign Minister Prince Dolgorukov (or Dolgoruki) was instrumental in freeing Bahá’u’lláh from a dreadful Tehrani dungeon, suffered a slower decline, and Queen Victoria, whom Bahá’u’lláh praised and whose response was the most favourable of all, escaped calamity altogether.

In fact, Bahá’u’lláh sent two letters to Napoleon III. The first one he was reported to have tossed behind him haughtily, exclaiming, “If this man is God, I am two Gods!” and furthermore it was laughably construed to be a veiled request for money! The second letter was more stern. It began: “O King of Paris! Tell the priests to ring the bell no longer. By God, the True One! The Most Mighty Bell hath appeared in the form of Him Who is the Most Great Name.” After several paragraphs in this vein, He confronted Napoleon regarding his hypocrisy in the Crimean War: “Thou didst say: ‘. . . the cry of the oppressed, who were drowned in the Black Sea, wakened me.’ . . . We testify that that which wakened thee was not their cry but the promptings of thine own passions, for We tested thee, and found thee wanting . . . From what thou hast done, thy kingdom shall be thrown into confusion, and thine empire shall pass from thy hands, as a punishment for that which thou hast wrought.”

His descent began within a year: in May 1870 he was confirmed in a popular vote, but corruption and dissent in the army revealed itself when by July when he declared war on Prussia as part of a scheme to install Leopold von Hohenzollern on the Spanish throne. After several ghastly and catastrophic defeats, the mighty French army received its coup de grace on September 1 at Sedan, and the Second Empire was ended in one fell swoop. Napoleon spent the remaining three years of his life in exile in England, but as a final punctuation mark, his son was killed in the Zulu Campaign in 1879.

The French agent in Palestine who translated and sent the second letter became a Bahá’í himself when he witnessed the prophecies so remarkably fulfilled.