Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"The liberals decreed the Lerdo Law (1856), abolishing collective landholding. The Lerdo Law struck primarily at the Church, which would now have to sell off its vast properties, but its secondary effect was to jeopardize the communal lands of indigenous villages. . . . The Reform lasted for only a few years before a conservative general seized the presidency and dissolved Congress in 1858. A fullscale civil war then erupted. Fleeing toward the liberal strongholds in the mestizo mining towns of the Mexican north, the reformers chose Benito Juárez to command their forces. . . . The Juárez government soon retook Mexico City, but the liberals’ troubles were not over. The civil war had bankrupted the Mexican state, and Juárez suspended payment on foreign debt. France, Spain, and Britain retaliated by collectively occupying Veracruz. At first, this occupation seemed simply another episode of gunboat diplomacy. The French, however, had an ulterior motive. In desperation, defeated Mexican conservatives had reached for their secret weapon: a monarch. Napoleon III of France wanted to expand French influence in Latin America."