The plan was to offer their services to Emperor Maximilian as a "foreign legion". Maximilian declined to accept the ex-Confederates into his armed forces, but he did grant them land for the New Virginia Colony, an American settlement in Mexico near Veracruz. The grant was revoked two years later following the collapse of the empire and Maximilan's execution. The memory of Shelby and his men as "The Undefeated" is used as a basis for the 1969 John Wayne–Rock Hudson film by the same name.