Agnes LeClerc Joy was the 23-year-old wife of Prince Felix Salm Salm, a Prussian mercenary who had distinguished himself serving as a captain in the Union Army during the U.S. Civil War.
After the war he volunteered his services to Emperor Maximilian in Mexico. Agnes, a former circus performer, had accompanied him to Mexico and been the lady-in-waiting for Empress Carlota. In 1866, she was back in Washington and quite famous in Capitol Hill circles, having many tales to tell of her days in Mexico.
The Princess in the U.S.
Prior to her time there, she had been known to all Union generals as a nurse serving during some of the most intense battles of the war, even stealing bandages or medicines from field officers’ supply wagons to help wounded enlisted men. Using her charm, bribes and chicanery to make sure the soldiers were taken care of, she was a thorn in the side of General Grant and his quartermasters. Once, at the end of the terrible Battle of Antietam in 1862, she even demanded the white shirt of her husband as he rested after a cavalry attack, so that she could tear it up and use it for bandages for bleeding soldiers.
When President Abraham Lincoln toured the Union camps in Falmouth, Virginia, the then-18-year-old princess saw him and remarked to General Daniel Sickles, “General, he is a dear, good man, we want to kiss him, would it do any harm?” Sickles thought she was joking and made no comment. However, that evening when Lincoln appeared at dinner in the general’s headquarters, she and some other ladies surrounded the president. Then Agnes boldly stepped forward, according to reports, and kissed him once on each cheek, and a third time on the lips. Lincoln, looking both helpless and confused, laughed and seemed touched by this public expression of admiration.
Mrs. Lincoln had stayed behind at General Joseph Hooker’s headquarters for the Army of the Potomac and was not present when this occurred. When word of the episode reached her, she was not amused. According to a female confidant, Mrs. Julia Butterfield, the president and Mary Todd Lincoln could be heard fighting in the room later that evening. According to Mrs. Butterfield, the president pleaded with her, “But, mother, hear me …” “Don’t mother me,” replied Mary Todd, “and as for General Sickles, he will hear what I think of him and his lady guests. It was well for him that I was not there.”
The Princess & Juárez
As soon as Princess Agnes learned of the plight of the Imperialist troops in Querétaro and the capture of Maximilian and her husband in the spring of 1867, she immediately boarded a steamer for New Orleans, went to Veracruz and then travelled overland by coach to Mexico City. She arrived shortly in the capital after the military tribunal had sentenced Maximilian and her husband Felix to death for treason.
She immediately went to the various European embassies and begged for funds so that she could bribe the jailers and effect their escape. Her pleas fell on deaf ears. The Austrians, Belgians, Prussians – even the English – were unwilling to get involved for fear of antagonizing the Republican president, should word get back to him, jeopardizing their diplomatic missions. Desperate, Princess Agnes contacted General Díaz, Mexico City officials, and Juarista advisers to see if she could get an interview to request a last-minute reprieve from the president himself. The interview was granted. A painting by the Mexican artist Manuel Ocaranza commemorates the pitiful scene. Agnes, using all her dramatic skills, fell to her knees before Juárez and implored him to save the life of Maximilian.
Juárez told her: “Madam, I am very sorry to see you on your knees before me; but even if all the queens and kings of Europe were in your place, I still wouldn’t be able to save his life. I’m not the one who takes it, it’s the people who rule his life and mine.”
Subsequently, she planned a second escape for the emperor and her husband. Her plan was to get two Mexican colonels to escort Maximilian to Veracruz and on to Austria. Agnes had offered them each a promissory note for 100,000 pesos which would be honored by Maximilian’s brother, Franz Joseph. But the escape plan fell through when the officers suspected the plan had been overheard by an eavesdropper. Maximilian was executed by a firing squad on June 19, 1867.
Luckily for Agnes, Juárez found a legal loophole for her husband since he was not guilty of treason but merely of serving as a paid foreign advisor. Prince Felix was escorted by troops to Veracruz and deported by ship to Europe. Princess Agnes was sent back to Washington. They would be reunited within the year in Prussia and publish their combined journals describing the “Last Days of the Emperor Maximilian.” No sooner had Prince Felix finished that project when he would be off to war again. He would be felled by a cannonball in the Franco-Prussian War, leaving Agnes a widow with little support from her old friends. She would die penniless and obscure, but with rich memories of an adventurous and action-filled life.
Michael Hogan, PhD, is the author of the best-selling books “Abraham Lincoln and Mexico” and “The Irish Soldiers of Mexico.”