Mexican Civil War (Napoleon's World)

The Mexican Civil War was a lengthy series of conflicts fought at times sporadically between 1906 and 1917, pitting populist, rural revolutionary forces often against the conservative, city-based and military-controlled government. The apex of the Mexican Civil War occurred in 1911, when the revolutionaries captured Mexico City and drove Emperor Jose Francisco I and Prime Minister Porfirio Diaz south into the Yucatan.

The war severely destabilized the Mexican state, bringing about four Emperors in a short span of time and resulting in the deaths of as many as 2,500,000 people - the most devastating conflict in Mexican history.

The war ended in 1917 with the defeat of the conservatives at Valles Rojas and the ensuing death of the military dictator Victoriano Huerta a month later, as well as thanks to American military intervention to stabilize the country and prevent a stream of fleeing refugees into Texas, New Mexico and Peninsula. The war resulted in the abdication of Emperor Juan I and the signing of the Constitution of Mexico in 1920, stripping the Emperor of much of his power. The long-term effects of the civil war was the rise of the Mexican moderates, who were opposed to radical social upheaval as well as military dictatorships, the precipitous decline of the German-descendant minority that had attempted to dominate Mexican politics for nearly a century, and the industrialization of Mexico thanks to the arrival of previously banned American corporate interests.