Cinco de Mayo: What is Everybody Celebrating?

Mexicans had just finished a civil war that went from 1858 to 1860. President Benito Juarez had just been in office for six months in July of 1861. Leaders of the failed opposition forces had fled to France. They had emptied Mexico's treasury as they left, and the incoming Juarez government was all but bankrupt and simply could not pay its international debts. At about the same time, rebel forces from the south defeated the northern union forces in the bloody Battle of Bull run. In Paris, ...