A nearer view of Versailles at this time might also have disenchanted these worshippers at the shrine of French civilization. A king absolutely indifferent to conditions in his kingdom, immersed in debasing pleasures, while Madame de Pompadour actually ruled the state—this is not the worst they would have seen! Destitute of shame, of pity, of patriotism, and of human affection, what did it mean to the king that his people were growing desperate under the enormous taxation made necessary by incessant wars and by the extravagant expenditures of the court? Louis simply turned his back upon the whole problem of administration, and left his ministers, Fleury, and later de Choiseul, to deal with the misery and the discontent and to make their way through the financial morass as best they might.

The power of Madame de Pompadour may be imagined when we learn that Maria Theresa, empress and proud daughter of the Caesars, when she needed the friendship of Louis XIV., in her struggle with Frederick of Prussia, in order to win him to her side, wrote a flattering letter to this woman.

This friendship, so artfully sought by the empress, led to another very different and very momentous alliance. A marriage was arranged between her little daughter, Marie Antoinette, and the boy Louis, who was to be the future king of France. The dauphin, the dauphiness, and their eldest child were all dead. So Louis, the second son of the dauphin, was the heir to his grandfather, Louis XV.

How should the empress of Austria, born, nurtured, and fed in the very centre of despotism, utterly misunderstanding as she must the past, the present, and the future, how should she suspect that the throne of France would be a scaffold for her child? Hapsburg and Bourbon were to her realities as enduring as the Alps.

In the meantime England and France had come into collision over their boundaries in America, and the war opened by Braddock and his young aide, Washington, had been a still further drain upon impoverished France. With the loss of Montreal and Quebec, those two strongholds in the north, the French were virtually defeated. And when the end came, France had lost every inch of territory on the North American Continent, and had ceded her vast possessions, extending from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, to England and Spain.

So while England was steadily building up a world-empire, penetrated with the forces of a modern age, France, loaded with debt, was taxing a people crying for bread—taxing a starving people for money to procure unimaginable luxuries and pleasures for Madame du Barry, who had succeeded to the place once, held by Madame de Pompadour. Did she desire a snowstorm and a sleighride in midsummer, these must be created and made possible. And one may see to-day at Versailles the sleigh in which this mad caprice was realized.

The various instructors of Louis XV. had not taught him anything about mind and soul processes. They were quite unaware that there had commenced a movement in the brain of France, which was going to liberate terrific forces—forces which would sweep before them the work of the Richelieus and the Mazarins and the Colberts as if it were chaff.

The human mind was probing, questioning doubting, everything it had once believed. And as one after another cherished beliefs disappeared, it grew still more daring. The whole religious, social, and political system was wrong. The only remedy was to overthrow it all, and crown reason as the sovereign of a new era. Such was the ferment at work beneath the surface as Louis was devising incredible extravagances for du Barry. And there was rage in men's hearts as they wrote insulting lines upon his equestrian statue in the Place Louis Quinze.

The Place Louis Quinze was soon to be the Place de la Revolution. The bronze statue was to be melted into bullets by a maddened populace, and standing on that very spot was to be the guillotine which would destroy king, queen, the king's sister, and a great part of the nobility of France.

It is said that the three great events of modern times are the Reformation, the American War of Independence, and the French Revolution. Events such as these have a lurid background, a long vista of causes behind them! A French Revolution is not the work of a day, nor of a single man. There had been a steady movement toward this event for a thousand years—in fact, ever since the dogma that labor is degrading was placed at the foundation of the social structure of France.

The direct causes which were precipitating the crisis in the closing eighteenth century were financial and economic, while the contributing causes were a remarkable intellectual movement and the War of Independence in America. It is possible that a king with a heart and a brain, and the moral sense which belongs to ordinary humanity, might have averted this tragic outburst, and at least have delayed the event by awakening hope. The Revolution was born of hopeless misery. With the reign of Louis XV. hope died, and his successor fell heir to the inevitable.

A heartless sybarite, depraved in tastes, without sense of responsibility or comprehension of his times, a brutalized voluptuary governed by a succession of designing women, regardless of national poverty, indulging in wildest extravagance—such was the man in whom was vested the authority rendered so absolute by Richelieu; such the man who opened up a pathway for the storm.

As for the nobility, their degradation may be imagined when it is said there was as bitter rivalry between titled and illustrious fathers to secure for their daughters the coveted position held by Madame de Pompadour, as for the highest offices of State.

Could the upper ranks fall lower than this? Had not the kingdom reached its lowest depths, where its foreign policy was determined by the amount of consideration shown to Madame de Pompadour? But this woman, whose friendship was artfully sought by the great Empress Maria Theresa, was superseded, and the fresher charms of Madame du Barry enslaved the king. The deposed favorite could not survive her fall, and died of a broken heart. It is said that as Louis, looking from an upper window of his palace, saw the coffin borne out in a drenching rain, he smiled, and said, "Ah, the marquise has a bad day for her journey." It may be imagined that the man who could be so pitiless to the woman he had loved would feel little pity for the people whom he had not loved, but whom he knew only as a remote, obscure something, which held up the weight of his glory.

But this "obscure something" was undergoing strange transformation. The greater light at the surface had sent some glimmering rays down into the mass below, which began to awaken and to think. Misery, hopeless and abject, was changing into rage and thirst for vengeance.

A new class had come into existence which was not noble, but with highly trained intelligence it looked with contempt and loathing upon the frivolous, half-educated nobles, Scorn was added to the ferment of human passions beneath the surface, and when Voltaire had spoken, and the restraints of religion were loosened, no living hand, not that of a Richelieu nor a Louis XIV., could have averted the coming doom. But no one seems to have suspected what was approaching.

A wonderful literature had come into existence, not stately and classic as in the age preceding, but instinct with a new sort of life. The profoundest themes which can occupy the mind of man were handled with marvellous lightness of touch and clothed with prismatic brilliancy of speech; but all was negation. None tried to build; all to demolish. The black-winged angel of Destruction was hovering over the land.

Then Rousseau tossed his dreamy abstractions into the quivering air, and the formula, "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," was caught up by the titled aristocracy as a charming idyllic toy, while princes, dukes, and marquises amused themselves with a dream of Arcadian simplicity, to be attained in some indefinite way, in some remote and equally indefinite future. It was all a masquerade. No reality, no sincerity, no convictions, good or evil. The only thing that was real was that an over-taxed, impoverished people was exasperated and—hungry.

Did the king need new supplies for his unimaginable luxuries, they were taxed. Was it necessary to have new accessions to French "glory," in order to allay popular clamor or discontent, they must supply the men to fight the glorious battles, and the means with which to pay them. Every burden fell at last upon this lowest stratum of the State; the nobility and clergy, while owning two-thirds of the land, being nearly exempt from taxation.

And yet the king and nobility of France, in love with Rousseau's theories, were airily discussing the "rights of man"—wolves and foxes coming together to talk over the sacredness of the rights of property, or the occupants of murderers' row growing eloquent over the sanctity of human life! How incomprehensible that among those quick-witted Frenchmen there seems not one to have realized that the logical sequence of the formula, "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," must be, "Down with the Aristocrats!"

And so the surface which Richelieu had converted into adamant grew thinner and thinner each day, until king and court danced upon a mere gilded crust, unconscious of the abysmal fires beneath. Some of those powdered heads fell into the executioner's basket twenty-five years later. Did they recall this time? Did Madame du Barry think of it? Did she exult at her triumph over de Pompadour, when she was dragged shrieking and struggling to the guillotine?

Five years before the close of this miserable reign an event occurred seemingly of small importance to Europe. A child was born in an obscure Italian household. His name was Napoleon Bonaparte. His birthplace, the island of Corsica, had only two months before been incorporated with France. The fates even then were watching over this child of destiny, who might, by a slight turn of events then imminent, have been born a subject of Spain, or Germany, or of George III. of England.

The impoverished Republic of Genoa was in desperate need of money. The island could be had by the highest bidder, and in 1768 it was purchased by France, just in time to make the great Corsican a French citizen.

Indeed, all the performers in the approaching drama were assembled. Three young princes, grandsons of Louis XV., who were to be successively upon the throne of France, were at Versailles: Louis the Dauphin, now twenty, and his Austrian bride, Marie Antoinette, and his two brothers, afterward successively Louis XVIII. and Charles X. Still another princeling, Louis Philippe, was at the Palais Royal, son of the Duke of Orleans, late regent, also destined to wear the French crown; and last of all that infant at Ajaccio, in whom the play was to reach its splendid climax.

In 1744 Louis XV. was stricken with small-pox, and exchanged the brilliant scenes at Versailles for the royal vault in the Church of St. Denis, where he took his place among his ancestors.



CHAPTER XV.

Louis XV. was dead, and two children, with the light-heartedness of youth and inexperience, stepped upon the throne which was to be a scaffold—Louis XVI., only twenty, and Marie Antoinette, his wife, nineteen. He, amiable, kind, full of generous intentions; she, beautiful, simple, child-like, and lovely. Instead of a debauched old king with depraved surroundings, here were a prince and princess out of a fairy tale. The air was filled with indefinite promise of a new era for mankind to be inaugurated by this amiable young king, whose kindness of heart shone forth in his first speech, "We will have no more loans, no credit, no fresh burdens on the people;" then, leaving his ministers to devise ways of paying the enormous salaries of officials out of an empty treasury, and to arrange the financial details of his benevolent scheme of government, he proceeded with his gay and brilliant young wife to Rheims, there to be crowned with a magnificence undreamed of by Louis XIV.

In the midst of these rejoicings over the new reign, and of speculative dreams of universal freedom, there was wafted across the Atlantic news of a handful of patriots arrayed against the tyranny of the British Crown. Here were the theories of the new philosophy translated into the reality of actual experience. "No taxation without representation," "No privileged class," "No government without the consent of the governed." Was this not an embodiment of their dreams? Nor did it detract from the interest in the conflict that England—England, the hated rival of France—was defied by an indignant people of her own race. There was not a young noble in the land who would not have rushed, if he could, to the defence of the outraged colonies.

The king, half doubting, and vaguely fearing, was swept into the current, and the armies and the courage of the Americans were splendidly reinforced by generous, enthusiastic France.

Why should the simple-hearted Louis see what no one else seemed to see: that victory or failure was alike full of peril for France? If the colonies were conquered, France would feel the hostility of England; if they were freed and self-governing, the principle of monarchy had a staggering blow.

In the mean time, as the American Revolution moved on toward success, there was talk in the cabin as well as the chateau of the "rights of man." In shops and barns, as well as in clubs and drawing-rooms, there was a glimmering of the coming day.

"What is true upon one continent is true upon another," say they. "If it is cowardly to submit to tyranny in America, what is it in France?" "If Englishmen may revolt against oppression, why may not Frenchmen?" "No government without the consent of the governed?—When has our consent been asked, the consent of twenty-five million people? Are we sheep, that we have let a few thousands govern us for a thousand years, without our consent?"

Poverty and hunger gave force and urgency to these questions. The people began to clamor more boldly for the good time which had been promised by the kind-hearted king. The murmur swelled to an ominous roar. Thousands were at his very palace gates, telling him in no unmistakable terms that they were tired of smooth words and fair promises. What they wanted was a new constitution and—bread.

Poor Louis! the one could be made with pen and paper; but by what miracle could he produce the other? How gladly would he have given them anything. But what could he do? There was not enough money to pay the salaries of his officials, nor for his gay young queen's fetes and balls! The old way would have been to impose new taxes. But how could he tax a people crying at his gates for bread? He made more promises which he could not keep; yielded, one after another, concessions of authority and dignity; then vacillated, and tried to return over the slippery path, only to be dragged on again by an irresistible fate.

Louis' Minister of Finance, Turgot, was a trained economist and a man of very great ability. When Louis assured the people, in the speech after his coronation, that there were to be "no more loans, no fresh burdens on the people," he did not know how Turgot was going to accomplish this miracle. He was unaware that it was to be done by cutting off the cherished privileges of the nobility, and that the proposed reforms were all aimed at the privileged classes. When this became apparent, indignation was great at Versailles. The court would not hear of economy. Turgot was dismissed, and Necker, a Swiss banker (father of Madame de Stael), called to fill his place.

Necker made another mistake. He took the people into his confidence, let them know the sources of revenue, the nature of expenditures, and measures of relief. This was very quieting to the public, but exasperating to the privileged classes, who had never taken the people into their confidence, and considered it an impertinence for them to inquire how the moneys were spent. And so Louis, again yielding to the pressure at Versailles, dismissed Necker; then, in the outburst of rage which followed, tried to retrace his steps and recall him.

But events were moving too swiftly for that now. In the existing temper of the people, small reforms and concessions were unavailing. They were demanding that the States General be called.

The critical moment had come. If Louis of his own initiative had summoned that body to confer over the situation, it would have been a very different thing; but a call of the States-General at the demand of the people was a virtual surrender of the very principle of absolutism. The work of Richelieu, Mazarin, and Louis XIV. would be undone; for it would involve an acknowledgment of the right of the people to dictate to the king, and to participate in the government of the nation. The whole revolutionary contention was vindicated in this act.

The call was issued; and when Louis, in 1789, convoked the States General, he made his last concession to the demands of his subjects.

That almost-forgotten body had not been seen since Richelieu effaced all the auxiliary functions of government. Nobles, ecclesiastics, and Tiers Etat (or commons) found themselves face to face once more. The courtly contemptuous nobles, the princely ecclesiastics were unchanged, but there was a new expression in the pale faces of the commons. There was a look of calm defiance as they met the disdainful gaze of the aristocrats across the gulf of two centuries.

The two superior bodies absolutely refused to sit in the same room with the commons. They might under the same roof, but in the same room—never.

There was an historic precedent for this refusal. The three estates had always acted as three separate bodies. So the demand in itself was an encroachment upon the ancient dignity of the two superior bodies, which they resented. But they might better have yielded. The Tiers Etat with dignity and firmness insisted that they should meet and vote together as one body, or they would constitute themselves a separate body, and act independently of the other two. This was the Rubicon. On one side compromise, and possible co-operation of the three legislative bodies; on the other, revolution, in charge of the people.

Aristocratic France was offered its last chance, and committed its last act of arrogance and folly. The ultimatum was refused by the nobles and clergy. And the Tiers Etat declared itself the National Assembly, in which was vested all the legislative authority of the kingdom. The people had taken possession of the Government of France!

The predetermined destruction of the monarchy seems evident, when at the most critical point, and at the moment calling for the most careful retrenchment and reform, fate had placed Louis XV., acting like a madman in the excesses of his profligacy; and, at the next stage, while the last opportunity still existed by main force to drag the nation back, and hold it from going over the brink, there stood the most excellent, the kindest-hearted but weakest gentleman who ever wore the name of king! When the distracted Louis gave the impotent order for the National Assembly to disperse, and for the three bodies to assemble and vote separately, according to ancient custom; and then when he gave still further proof of childish incompetency by telling the Tiers Etat they were "not to meddle with the privileges of the higher orders," kingship had become a mockery. It was a child telling the tornado not to come in that direction.

When the king's herald read to the National Assembly this foolish message, ending with the formula, "You hear, gentlemen, the orders of the king," Mirabeau sprang to his feet, saying, "Go, tell your master we are here by the will of the people, and will be only removed at the point of the bayonet," the pitiful king then yielding to this defiance, even begging the nobles and deputies of the clergy to join the National Assembly—a revolutionary assembly, which was holding its meetings in his own Palace of Versailles, and which was every day gravitating from its original lofty purpose; its rallying cry for justice and reform of abuses changing to "Down with the Aristocrats!" It was becoming alarming, so Louis ordered the body to disperse; and when soldiers stood at the door to prevent its assembling, it took possession of the queen's tennis court, and there each member took a solemn oath not to dissolve until the object they sought had been secured.

There were some among the clergy and the nobles who realized the necessity for reforms, and who would gladly have joined a movement inaugurated in a different spirit. Hence, partly from alarm, and partly impelled by other reasons and purposes, more or less pure, there was finally a secession from the two aristocratic bodies; the Duke of Orleans, cousin of the king, leading the movement in one, and three archbishops in the other. These, with their followers, appeared among the Tiers Etat as converts to the popular cause, the Marquis de Lafayette, hero of the late American War, sitting next to Mirabeau, the powerful and eloquent leader of the whole movement in its first days.

Concerning the genius of Mirabeau there is no difference of opinion. All are agreed that intellectually he towered far above every one about him. But whether he was the incarnation of good or of evil, the world is still in doubt;-and also whether he could have guided the forces he had invoked, if a premature death had not swept him off from the scene, leaving Robespierre, a man concerning whom there is no disagreement of opinion, to guide the storm.

Paris was becoming wild with excitement. Clubs and associations were in every quarter, and detachments of a Parisian mob marched and sang at night, firing the hearts of the rabble. But it was the Palais Royal, the home of the Duke of Orleans, that friend of the people, which was the heart of the whole movement. There, patriots and lovers of France, their hearts aflame with noble aspiration for their country, met with schemers without heart, more or less wicked, the Camille Desmoulins and the Marats all fused into one body under the leadership of the Duke of Orleans, cousin of the king, who, rising superior to aristocratic traditions, believed in Equality, and was the man of the people—Philippe Egalite! His young son Louis Philippe perhaps listened with wonder to the sounds of strange revelry and the wild shouts which greeted the eloquence of Camille Desmoulins and of Marat.

At last a rumor reached the Palais Royal, and from there ran through the streets like an electric current, that the king's soldiers were marching upon the Assembly to disperse it. Mad with wine and excitement, a common impulse seized the entire populace, to destroy the Bastille, that old stronghold of despotism, that symbol of royal tyranny. This prison-fortress, with its eight great round towers, and moat eighty-three feet wide, had stood since 1371, and represented more tragic human experiences than any structure in France. In an hour the doors were burst open, and before the sun went down the heads of the governor and his officials were being carried on pikes through the streets of Paris. The horrible drama had opened. The tiger in the slums had tasted blood, and would want it again.

Thus far it was only an insurgent mob, committing violence, and the National Assembly at once created a body of militia, under the direction of Lafayette, for the protection of Paris.

When the news of the fall of the Bastille reached Versailles, the king, still failing to realize the gravity of the situation, exclaimed, "Then it is a revolt!" "Sire," said the Duke de Liancourt, "it is a Revolution!"

The king found himself deserted. His terrified nobles almost in a body were fleeing from the kingdom. Bewildered, not knowing what to do, or what not to do, and desiring to assure the people that he was their friend, he appeared before the National Assembly and made the last sacrifice—accepted the Tricolor; adopted the livery of the revolutionary party! The act was received with immense enthusiasm, and the outlook became more reassuring.

Then the garrison at the palace was reenforced by a regiment from the country, and a dinner was given to welcome the new officers. The king and queen were urged to enter the room for a few moments, simply as an act of courtesy. Marie Antoinette most reluctantly consented to pass through the banqueting-hall. The officers, when they saw the beautiful daughter of Maria Theresa, sprang to their feet, and, flushed with wine, and in a transport of enthusiasm, committed a fatal act. Throwing their tricolors under the table, they drank to the toast, "The king forever!"

When this was reported in Paris the storm burst anew. A thousand terrible women, led by one still more terrible than the rest, started for Versailles. This crowd of base and degraded beings, re-enforced on the way by all that is worst, arrived at the palace, and the howling mob encamped outside in the rain all night. Entrance at last was found by someone, and they were inside and at the queen's door; she barely escaping by a hidden passageway leading to the king's room.

"The king to Paris!" was the cry; and in the morning the wretched Louis appeared upon the balcony and indicated his willingness to go to Paris as they desired. And then the queen, hoping to touch their hearts, also appeared upon the balcony, holding in her arms the dauphin, with the tricolor on his breast. And with this horrible escort they did go back to Paris, leaving Versailles forever, and were virtually prisoners at the Tuileries.

The position of Lafayette at this time is a singular one: an agent of the National Assembly, protecting the king from the Jacobins, and saying to Robespierre and Marat, "If you kill the king to-day, I will place the dauphin on the throne to-morrow."

But the currents of a cataract nearing the fall are difficult to guide. Three parties were forming in the National Assembly: the Girondists, the party of genius and eloquence and of moderation; the Jacobins, the party of the extremists and radicals; and a third party, undecided, waiting to see what was safest and best.

All that was noble and true and fine in the French Revolution was in the party of the Girondists. Dreamers, idealists, their dream was of a republic like the one in America, and their ideal an impossible perfection of condition in which human reason was supreme. The excesses of the Revolution they did not approve, but were willing to sacrifice the king and even the royal family, if necessary. They did not realize the forces with which they were airily playing, nor that the time was at hand when the Girondists would vainly strive to restrain the horrible excesses; that, after they had sacrificed the royal family, the Jacobins would sacrifice them; the slayers would be slain!

Lafayette, neither a Girondist nor a Jacobin, was a loyal Frenchman and patriot, with the American ideal in his heart, vainly trying to mediate between a feeble king and a people who had lost their reason. The time was near when he would give up the hopeless task and flee to escape being himself engulfed.

A wretchedly planned attempt at the escape of the royal family aggravated the situation. They were recognized at Varennes, brought back with great indignity, and placed under closer surveillance than before. On the 10th of August, 1792, the mob attacked the Tuileries. The royal family fled to the National Assembly for protection, while their Swiss guards vainly defended the palace with their lives.

This was the end of the monarchy. Louis, the brave queen and her children, and Princess Elizabeth, sister of the king, were removed from the Assembly to the prison in "The Temple," and the National Convention formally declared France a republic.

The grim prison to which they were taken, with its central square tower flanked by four round towers, had stood since the time of Philip Augustus. It was built for the Knights Templar, and was chateau, fortress, prison, all in one, and was the home of the grand master and those others who were burned when Philip IV. ruthlessly destroyed the order. The central tower, one hundred and fifty feet high, had four stories. The king and the dauphin were imprisoned in the second story, and the queen, her young daughter, and the Princess Elizabeth in the story above.

The power swiftly passed from Girondists to Jacobins, and a Revolutionary Tribunal was created in charge of the terrible triumvirate—Robespierre, Marat, and Danton.

An awful travesty upon a court of justice was established in that historic hall in the Palais de Justice. Its walls, which had looked down upon generations of Merovingian, Carlovingian, and Capetian kings, now beheld the condemnation of the most innocent and well-intentioned of all the kings of France.

The king was arraigned at this court upon the charge of treason, convicted, and condemned to die on the 21st of January, 1793. He was allowed to embrace for the last time his adored wife and children. At the scaffold he tried to speak a last word to his people. The drums were ordered to drown his voice, and an attendant priest uttered the words, "Fils de Saint Louis, montez au ciel!"—Son of Saint Louis, ascend to heaven!—and all was over. The kindest-hearted, most inoffensive gentleman in Europe had expiated the crimes of his ancestors.

More and more furious swept the torrent, gathering to itself all that was vile and outcast. Where were the pale-faced, determined patriots who sat in the National Assembly? Some of them riding with dukes and marquises to the guillotine. Was this the equality they expected when they cried, "Down with the Aristocrats"?

Did they think they could guide the whirlwind after raising it? As well whisper to the cyclone to level only the tall trees, or to the conflagration to burn only the temples and palaces.

With restraining agencies removed, religion, government, king, all swept away, that hideous brood born of vice, poverty, hatred, and despair came out from dark hiding-places; and what had commenced as a patriotic revolt had become a wild orgy of bloodthirsty demons, led by three master-demons, Robespierre, Marat, and Danton, vying with each other in ferocity.

Then we see that simple girl thinking by one supreme act of heroism and sacrifice, like Joan of Arc, to save her country. Foolish child! Did she think to slay the monster devouring Paris by cutting off one of his heads? The death of Marat only added to the fury of the tempest, and the falling of Charlotte Corday's head was not more noticed than the falling of a leaf in the forest.

The slaughter of the people had been reduced to an admirable system. The public prosecutor, Fouquier-Tinville, went every day to the "Committee of Public Safety" to procure the list of the proscribed, who were immediately placed in the Conciergerie to await trial. This list was then submitted to Robespierre, who with his pencil marked the names of those who would be executed on the morrow.

The mockery of the trial of Charlotte Corday was not delayed. This girl belonged to a family of the smaller nobility. In her secluded life in the country, a mind of superior quality had fed upon the new philosophy of the period. An enthusiasm for liberty, and a horror of tyranny, had taken possession of her. In passionate sympathy with the early purposes of the Revolution, Marat seemed to her a monster, the incarnation of the spirit which would defeat the cause of Liberty. It was believed that his list of the proscribed was not confined to Paris, but that the names of thousands of victims all over France were already designated. In that extraordinary scene at her trial, when questioned, she impatiently said, "Yes, yes, I killed him. I killed one man to save a hundred thousand!"

Nothing was lacking to make this, with one exception, the most dramatic incident of the Revolution. Her eloquent address, to the French people, found pinned to the waist of her dress after her execution, and her splendid courage to the end, rounds out the picturesque story of her useless martyrdom. A Girondist waiting in the Conciergerie, when he heard of her crime and end, exclaimed: "It will kill us! But she has taught us how to die!"

The end did not come so swiftly for the queen, who, after being removed from the Temple, spent seventy-two days and nights in the dark cell in that abode of horrors, the Conciergerie. Then came the trial, the inquisitorial trial, lasting all through the night in the gloom of that dimly lighted hall. And at half-past four in the morning she heard without a tremor the terrible words, "Marie Antoinette, widow of Louis Capet, the Tribunal condemns you to die." Not for a moment did this intrepid woman quail; and a small detail brings before us vividly her wonderful calmness. As she reached the stairs in her pitiful return to her cell, she said simply to the lieutenant of the gendarmes, who was at her side, "Monsieur, I can scarcely see (Je vois a peine); will you lead me?"

In another half hour the drums were beating in every quarter in preparation for the event; and at ten o'clock she started upon her last ride. And how bravely she met her awful fate! We forget her follies, her reckless extravagances, in admiration for her courage as she rides to her death, with hands tied behind her, sitting in that hideous tumbril, head erect, pale, proud, defiant, as if upon a throne (October 16, 1793).

The search-light of scrutiny has been turned upon this unfortunate woman for more than a century, and all that has been discovered is that she was pleasure-loving, indiscreet, and absolutely ignorant of the gravity of her responsibility in the position she occupied.

In the days of her power and splendor she lived as the average woman of her period would have done under the same circumstances—not better, and not worse. But when the time came to try her soul and test her mettle, she evinced a strength and dignity and composure surpassing belief.

If there had been any evidence of the truth of the story of the diamond necklace—a story which no doubt hastened the revolutionary crisis—it would certainly have been used at her trial; but it was not. It will be remembered that this necklace was one of the fatal legacies from the reign of Louis XV., who had ordered for du Barry this gift which was to cost a sum large enough for a king's ransom. The king died before it was completed, and the story became current that Marie Antoinette, the hated Austrian woman who was ruining France by her extravagance, was negotiating for the purchase of this necklace while the people were starving!

A network of villainy is woven about the whole incident, in which the names of a cardinal and ladies high in rank are involved. The mystery may never be uncovered, but every effort to connect the queen's name with this historic scandal has failed.

Probably of all the cruelties inflicted upon this unhappy woman, none caused her such anguish as the testimony of her son before the Revolutionary Tribunal, that he had heard his mother say she "hated the French people." Placed under the care of the brutal Simon after his father's removal from the Temple, the child had become a physical and mental wreck. The queen, in her last letter to her sister the Princess Elizabeth, makes pitiful allusion to the incident, begging her to remember what he must have suffered before he said this; also reminding her how children may be taught to utter words they do not comprehend. His lesson, no doubt, had been learned by cruel tortures; and, rendered half imbecile, it was recited when the time came. None but his keeper was ever permitted to see the boy. His condition, final illness, and death are shrouded in mystery. In June, 1794, eight months after his mother's execution, it was announced that he was dead. It would be difficult to prove this event before a court of justice. There were no witnesses whose testimony would have any weight. No one was permitted to see the child who was put into that obscure grave; and many circumstances give rise to a suspicion that the boy, who might have been a source of political embarrassment in the rehabilitation of France, was disposed of in another way—dropped into an obscurity which would serve as well as death.

There was a surfeit of killing, and a waning Revolution. We are far from saying that such a thing happened. But ambitious royalists might have thought their money well expended in removing the son of the murdered king from the scene. The claim of the American dauphin, Eleazer Williams, may have been fanciful, or even false; but what safer and more effectual plan could be devised than to drop the half-imbecile heir to a throne into the heart of a tribe of Indians in an American wilderness?

When Louis XVIII. occupied his brother's throne, in 1814, and erected over the dishonored graves of his family that beautiful Chapelle Expiatoire, he also gave orders for masses to be said for the repose of the souls of his murdered kindred, whom he designated by name: Louis XVI., king; Marie Antoinette, queen, and the Princess Elizabeth, his sister. If it is true, as has been said, that the name of the dauphin was not included in this list, it is a most suggestive omission. Technically, this boy was king from the moment of his father's death until his own, and on the lists of sovereigns is called Louis XVII. Then why was there no mention of him as one of that martyred group?

Twenty-two of the Girondists who had helped to dethrone the king on that 10th of August, and later consented to his death, were now facing the same doom to which they had sent him only six months before, and by a strange fatality were under the same roof with the queen. Only a few feet, and two thin partitions, separated them; and in her cell she must have heard their impassioned voices during that dramatic banquet, the last night of their lives. And the next day this group of extraordinary men—men singularly gifted and fascinating—were all lying in one tomb, at the side of Louis XVI.

Philip Egalite, the Duke of Orleans, was to meet his Nemesis also. Brought a prisoner to that grim resting-place, he occupied the adjoining cell to that which had been the queen's, and, it is said, had assigned to him the wretched cot she no longer needed. His desperate game had failed. No elevation would come to him out of the chaos of crime, and the reward for scheming and voting for the death of his cousin, the king, would be a scaffold, not a throne. His name had been upon the list of the proscribed for some time; but the end was precipitated by an act of his young son, Louis Philippe, then Duke de Chartres, and aide-de-camp to Dumouriez, who was defending the frontier from an invasion of Austrian troops. After the execution of the queen, Dumouriez refused longer to defend France from an invasion the purpose of which was to make such horrors impossible. He laid down his command, and, with his aide, Louis Philippe, joined the colony of exiles in Belgium, while the Austrian troops were in full march upon Paris from Verdun.

This was treason—whether justifiable or not this is not the place to discuss.

Philip Egalite knew that he no longer had the confidence of the leaders, and that they also knew that he was an aristocrat in disguise. So when this defection of Dumouriez came, and was shared by his own son, he tried to get out of the country. He was arrested at Marseilles, brought to the Conciergerie, that half-way house to the scaffold, and was soon following in the footsteps of his king and queen, through the Rue St. Honore, passing his own Palais Royal on his way to the Place de la Revolution.

The Revolution, beginning with a patriotic assembly, in a measure sane, had made a rapid descent, first falling apart into Girondist and Jacobin, moderate and extremist, the Girondist with a shudder consenting to the execution of the king. Then, the power passing to a so-called "Committee of Public Safety" and a Triumvirate, in order to sweep away the obstructive Girondist; and then an untrammelled Terror, in the hands of three, and, finally, one. Such had been its mad course. But with the death of the king and queen, the madness had reached its height, and a revulsion of feeling set in. There was a surfeit of blood, and an awakening sense of horror, which turned upon the instigators. Danton fell, and finally, when amid cries of "Death to the tyrant!" Robespierre was dragged wounded and shivering to the fate he had brought upon so many thousands, the drama which had opened at the Bastille was fittingly closed.

The great battle for human liberty had been fought and won. Religious freedom and political freedom were identical in principle. The right of the human conscience, proclaimed by Luther in 1517, had in 1793 only expanded into the large conception of all the inherent rights of the individual.

It had taken centuries for English persistence to accomplish what France, with such appalling violence, had done in as many years. It had been a furious outburst of pent-up force; but the work had been thorough. Not a germ of tyranny remained. The incrustations of a thousand years were not alone broken, but pulverized; the privileged classes were swept away, and their vast estates, two-thirds of the territory of France, ready to be distributed among the rightful owners of the soil, those who by toil and industry could win them. France was as new as if she had no history. There was ample opportunity for her people now. What would they do with it?

What would they build upon the ruins of their ancient despotism? What would be the starting-point for such a task—every connecting link with an historic past broken, and the armies of an indignant Europe pressing in upon every side? Could they ever wipe out the stain which had made them odious in the sight of Christendom? Would they ever be forgiven for disgracing the name of Liberty?

It was the power and genius of a single man which was going to make the world forget her disgrace, and cover France with a mantle more glorious than she had ever worn.



CHAPTER XVI.

The Revolution over, France, sitting among the wreckage of the past, found herself disgraced, discredited, and at war with all of Europe. Austria, naturally the leader in an effort to stop the atrocities which threatened a daughter of her own royal house, had been joined finally by England, Holland, Spain, and even Portugal and Tuscany, these all being impelled, not by the personal feeling which actuated Austria, but by alarm for their own safety. This revolutionary movement was a moral and political plague spot which must be stamped out, or there would be anarchy in every kingdom in Europe.

It was the difficulty in recruiting troops to fight this coalition which had embarrassed and finally broken the power of the revolutionary government. If the states of Europe had really acted in concert, the life of the new republic would have been brief. But Austria was jealous of Prussia, and Prussia afraid of the friendship which was forming between Austria and England, and Catharine, the empress of Russia, keeping all uncertain about her designs upon Poland—with the result that the war upon France was conducted in a desultory and ineffectual manner.

In the organization of the new French republic, the executive power was vested in a Directory, composed of five members, chosen by two houses of legislature.

A disagreement over some details of the new constitution led to a heated quarrel, and this to an insurrection in Paris, October 5, 1795, which Napoleon Bonaparte, a young officer who had acquired distinction at Toulon, was summoned to quell. The vigor and the success with which the young leader used his cannon in the streets of Paris struck precisely the right note at the right moment. Law and order were established. A delighted Directory yielded at once to the suggestion of a campaign against Austria which should be conducted in Italy, in combination with an advance upon Vienna from the Rhine.

With the instinct of genius, Napoleon Bonaparte saw the path to power. The air was vibrating with the word Liberty. If he would capture France—which was what he intended to do—he must move along the line of political freedom. The note to be struck was the liberation of the oppressed. Where would he find chains more galling, more unnatural, than in Italy, held by the iron hand of Austria? And was not Austria the leader of the coalition against France?

Without money or supplies, and with an unclothed army, he obeyed the inspiration, audaciously planning to make the invaded country pay the expenses of the war waged against it. Pointing to the Italian cities, he said to his soldiers: "There is your reward. It is rich and ample, but you must conquer it!" Like Caesar, he knew how, in words brief and concise, to address his followers, and to inspire enthusiasm as few have ever done before or since. He also knew how to confound the enemy with new and unexpected methods which made unavailing all which military science and experience had taught them.

With the suddenness of a tornado he swept down upon the plains of Lombardy. The battles of Lodi, Arcola, Rivoli, were won, and in ten months Napoleon was master of Italy. By the treaty of Campo Formio, October 17, 1797, northern Italy was divided into four republics, with their capitals respectively at Milan, Genoa, Bologna, and Rome. And in return for her acquiescence in this redistribution of her Italian territory, Austria received Venice. After fourteen centuries of independence, Venetia, the queen of the Adriatic, was in chains!



Not satisfied with this, Napoleon intended that Paris should wear the jewels which had adorned the fair Italian cities. The people whose chains he had come to break were at once required to surrender money, jewels, plate, horses, equipments, besides their choicest art collections and rarest manuscripts. In a private letter to a member of the Directory he wrote: "I shall send you twenty pictures by some of the first masters, including Correggio and Michael Angelo." A later letter said: "Join all these to what will be sent from Rome, and we shall have all that is beautiful in Italy, except a small number of objects in Turin and Naples." Pius VI., without a protest, surrendered his millions of francs, and ancient bronzes, costly pictures, and priceless manuscripts.

Austria had lost fourteen battles, and all her Italian possessions were grouped together into a Cisalpine republic! Another Helvetic republic was set up in Switzerland, and still another republic created in Holland under a French protectorate.

In other words, this man had accomplished in Italy precisely what he was going to accomplish later in Germany. He had broken down the lingering traces of mediaevalism, and prepared the soil for a new order of things.

The peace of Campo Formio was the most glorious ever made for France. The river Rhine was at last recognized as her frontier, thus placing Belgium within the lines of the republic. Napoleon had captured not alone Italy, but France herself? What might she not accomplish with such a leader? The delighted Directory discussed the invasion of England. Napoleon, knowing this would be premature, dramatically conceived the idea of crippling England by threatening her Asiatic possessions, and led an army into Egypt (1798). Although Nelson destroyed his fleet, he still maintained the arrogance of a conqueror.

No king, no military leader, had brought as much glory to France. Du Guesclin, Turenne, Conde, all were eclipsed. And so were Marlborough and Prince Eugene. What would not France do at the bidding of this magician, who by a single sweep of his wand had raised her from the dust of humiliation and made her the leading power on the Continent!

The young officer, now so distinguished, had married in the early part of his career the widow of M. de Beauharnais, one of the victims of the Reign of Terror. During his absence in Egypt, the Directorate, and the Legislature, and the people had all become embroiled in dissensions. Things were falling again into chaos, with no hand to hold them together. Discontent was rife, and men were asking why the one man, the little dark man who knew how to do and to compel things, and to maintain discipline, why he was sent to the Nile and the Pyramids!

Josephine, from Paris, kept Napoleon informed of these conditions. So, leaving his army in charge of Kleber, he unexpectedly returned. He knew what he was going to do; and he also knew he could depend upon the army to sustain him. By political moves as adroit and unexpected as his tactics on the field, the Directorate was swept out of existence, and Napoleon was first consul of France.

It was a long step backward. The pendulum was returning once more toward a strong executive, and to centralization. From this moment, until he was a prisoner in the hands of the English, Napoleon Bonaparte was sole master of France.

The early simplicity of the republic was disappearing. The receptions of the first consul at the Tuileries began to recall the days at Versailles. Josephine, fascinating, and perfect in the art of dress, knew well how to maintain the splendor of her new court; as also did Bonaparte's sisters, with their beauty and their brilliant talents. But outside of France, and across the channel, the consul was only a usurper, and Louis XVIII. was king—an uncrowned but legitimate sovereign!

Perhaps it is not too much to say that nothing in Napoleon's career has left such enduring traces, and so permanently influenced civilization, as two acts performed at this period: the creation of that monumental work of genius the codification of the laws of France and the sale of Louisiana to the United States. Spain had ceded this large territory to France in 1763, and Bonaparte realizing that he was not in a position to hold it now, if attacked, sold it to the United States (1803), in order to keep it out of the hands of England.

The goal to which things were tending was realized by some. A conspiracy against the life of the consul was discovered. Napoleon suspected it to have originated with the Bourbons; and the death of the young Duke d'Enghien, a son of the Prince of Conde, without pity or justice, was intended to strike with terror all who were plotting for his downfall. The swiftness with which it was done, the darkness under the walls of Vincennes, the lantern on the breast of the victim, and the file of soldiers at midnight, all conspired to warn conspirators of the fate awaiting them. It was the critical moment at hand which turned Bonaparte's heart to steel.

Only a few days after this tragedy at Vincennes a proposition was made in the Tribunate to bestow upon the first consul the title of hereditary Emperor of the French!

This new Charlemagne did not go to the pope to be crowned, as that other had done in the year 800; but at his bidding the pope came to him. And when on the 2d of December, 1804, the crown of France was placed upon his head, the great drama commenced in 1789 had ended. Rivers of blood had flowed to free her from despotism, and France was held by a power more despotic than that of Richelieu or of Louis XIV.

At war with all of Europe, Napoleon swiftly unfolded his great plan not only to conquer, but to demolish—not one state, but all. He was going to create an empire out of a federation of European kingdoms all held in his own hand, and to tear in pieces the old map of Europe, precisely as he had the map of Italy. He was going to break down the old historic divisions and landmarks, and create new, as he had created a kingdom of Italy out of Italian republics. So, while he was fighting a combined Europe, Bavaria, Wurtemberg, and Saxony had become kingdoms, and the West German States, seventeen in number, were all merged in a Confederation of the Rhine, "the Rheinbund," under a French Protectorate.

Then Austria felt the weight of his hand. Francis Joseph wore the double crown created by Charlemagne a thousand years before, and was Emperor of Rome as well as of Germany. It had become an empty title; but it was the sacred tradition of a Holy Roman Empire, the empire which had dominated the world during the Middle Ages, and while Europe was coming into form. Napoleon was ploughing deep into the soil of the past when he told Francis Joseph he must drop the title of Emperor of Rome! And it is a startling indication of his power that the emperor unresistingly obeyed; the logical meaning, of course, being that he, already King of Italy, was the successor to Charlemagne and the head of a new Roman Empire.

England, never having felt the touch of this insolent conqueror upon her own soil, was still the bitterest of all in the coalition, and was more indignant over the humiliation of Germany than she seemed to be herself. Prussia, at last reluctantly opposing him, was defeated at Jena, 1806, a time during which the beautiful Queen Louise was the heroine, and the one brave enough to defy him; and then the peace of Tilsit, 1807, completed the humiliation of the kingdom created by the great elector.

It would seem that the people as well as the armies of Germany were captured by this man, when we hear that ninety German authors dedicated their books to him, a servile press praised him, and one of Beethoven's greatest sonatas was inspired by him. But a man so colossal and dazzling could only be accurately measured at a distance. Even yet we are too near to him for that, and the world has not yet come to an agreement concerning him, any more than as to the true analysis of the character of Hamlet.

There was now scarcely an uncrowned head in Napoleon's family. His brother Louis, who had married his step-daughter, Hortense Beauharnais, was king of Holland. His brother-in-law Murat he made king of Naples; Eugene Beauharnais, his step-son, viceroy of Italy; his brother Jerome, King of Westphalia; and then his brother Joseph was placed upon the throne of Spain, from which an indignant people drove him ingloriously away.

In an hour's interview with Alexander, Emperor of Russia, Napoleon had by the magic of superiority secured that emperor's friendship and co-operation in his plans against England. All this excellent man was fighting for was the peace of Europe! And he disclosed to Alexander his plan that they two should be the eternal custodians of that peace; which was to be secured by restraining the arrogance of England, and that was to be done by ruining the commercial prosperity of that nation of shop-keepers. There was to be organized a continental blockade against England. Europe was to be forbidden to trade with that country.

A plan was forming in the mind of Napoleon which was destined as the turning-point in his astonishing career. It was of vast importance to him that he should have an heir to the great inheritance he was creating. By repudiating Josephine, and marrying the daughter of Francis Joseph, there might be an heir who would also be the legitimate descendant of the Caesars; thus immensely fortifying the empire after his own death.

When this thought took possession of his mind, the psychological moment had arrived. The tide had turned toward disaster. The marriage with Maria Louisa took place at Paris in 1810. The marriage of Napoleon with a Hapsburg was not pleasing to the French people, who took pride in the simple origin of their emperor and empress. This hero of Marengo, and Austerlitz, and Jena, and Wagram, the man before whom Europe trembled, was he not, after all, only a crowned citizen? And was this not a triumph for the revolutionary principle which offset the existence of an empire, as its final result?



Alexander had broken away from his agreement and his friendship with the emperor, and had joined the allies. So in 1812 the long-contemplated invasion of Russia began. Of the 678,000 souls recruited chiefly from conquered states, only 80,000 would ever return. Never before had Napoleon fought the elements, and never before met overwhelming defeat! The flames at Moscow, followed by the arctic cold, converted the campaign into a vast tragedy.

With indomitable courage another grand army had filled the vacant places, and was putting down a great uprising in Germany. But his star was waning. An overwhelming defeat at Leipsic was followed by a march upon Paris. And in the spring of 1814, Alexander, the young Russian emperor, the friend who was to aid him in securing an eternal peace for Europe, was dictating the terms of surrender in Paris.

Within a week Napoleon had abdicated. The title of emperor he was permitted to retain, but the empire which he was to leave to the infant son of Maria Louisa, now two years old, had shrunk to the little island of Elba, on the west coast of Italy!



CHAPTER XVII.

The allied powers named Louis XVIII., the brother of Louis XVI., for the vacant throne, who promised the people to reign under a constitutional government.

The man who had deserted his brother in his extremity, a man who represented nothing—not loyalty to the past, nor sympathy with a single aspiration of the present—was king. As he passed under triumphal arches on the way to the Tuileries, there was sitting beside him a sad, pale-faced woman; this was the Duchesse d'Angouleme, the daughter of Louis XVI., the little girl who was prisoner in the Temple twenty years before. What must she have felt and thought as she passed the very spot where had stood the scaffold in 1793!

Almost the first act of Louis XVIII. was the removal of the mutilated remains of the king and queen and his sister Elizabeth to the royal vault in the Church of St. Denis. He then gave orders for a Chapelle Expiatoire to be erected over the grave where they had been lying for two decades, and for masses to be said for the repose of the souls of his murdered relatives. Paris was full of returning royalists. Banished exiles with grand old names, who had been earning a scanty living by teaching French and dancing in Vienna, London, and even in New York, were hastening to Paris for a joyful Restoration; and Louis XVIII., while Russian and Austrian troops guarded him on the streets of his own capital, was freely talking about ruling by divine right!

That king was reigning under a liberal charter (as the new constitution was called)—a charter which guaranteed almost as much personal liberty as the one obtained in England from King John in 1215; and the palpable absurdity of supposing that he and his supporters might at the same time revive and maintain Bourbon traditions, as if there had been no Revolution, was at least not an indication of much sagacity.

But there was a very smooth surface. The tricolor had disappeared. Napoleon's generals had gone unresistingly over to the Bourbons. Talleyrand adapted himself as quickly to the new regime as he had to the Napoleonic; was witty at the expense of the empire and the emperor, who, as he said, "was not even a Frenchman"; and was as crafty and as useful an instrument for the new ruler as he had been for the pre-existing one.

But something was happening under the surface. While the plenipotentiaries were busy over their task of restoring boundaries in Europe, and the other restoration was going on pleasantly in Paris, a rumor came that Napoleon was in Lyons. A regiment was at once despatched to drive him back; and Marshal Ney, "the bravest of the brave," was sent with orders to arrest him.

The next news that came to Paris was that the troops were frantically shouting "Vive l'empereur!" and Ney was embracing his beloved commander and pledging his sword in his service.

At midnight the king left the Tuileries for the Flemish frontier, and before the dawn Napoleon was in his Palace of Fontainebleau (March 20th), which he had left exactly eleven months before. The night after the departure of the king there suddenly appeared lights passing swiftly over the Font de la Concorde; then came the tramp of horses' feet, and a carriage attended on each side by cavalry with drawn swords. The carriage stopped at the first entrance to the garden of the Tuileries, and a small man with a dark, determined face was borne into the palace the Bourbon had just deserted.

There was consternation in the Council Chamber in London when the Duke of Wellington entered and announced that Napoleon was in Paris, and all must be done over again!

Immediate preparations were made for a renewal of the war. It was easy to find men to fight the emperor's battles. All France was at his feet.

The decisive moment was at hand. Napoleon had crossed into the Netherlands, and Wellington was waiting to meet him.

The struggle at Waterloo had lasted many hours. The result, so big with fate, was trembling in the balance, when suddenly the booming of Prussian guns was heard, and Wellington was re-enforced by Bluecher. This was the end. The French were defeated (June 18, 1815). Napoleon was in the hands of the English, and was to be carried a life-prisoner to the island of St. Helena.

Louis XVIII., who had been waiting at Ghent, immediately returned to the Tuileries, and to his foolish task of posing as a liberal king to his people, and as a reactionary one to his royalist adherents. The country was full of disappointed, imbittered imperialists, and of angry and revengeful royalists. The Chamber of Peers immediately issued a decree for the perpetual banishment of the family of Bonaparte from French soil; the extremists demanding that the families of the men who had consented to the death of Louis XVI. be included in the decree. Sentence of death was passed upon Marshal Ney, as a traitor to France. Some might have said that a greater traitor was at the Tuileries; but the most picturesque in that heroic group of Napoleon's marshals was shot to death.

There was, in fact, a determined purpose to undo all the work of the Revolution; to restore the supremacy and the property of the Church, and the power of the nobility. In the meantime, the people, perfectly aware that the returned exiles were impoverished, were paying taxes to maintain foreign troops which were in France for the sole purpose of enabling the king's government to accomplish these things!

Here was material enough for discord in a troubled reign which lasted nine years. Louis XVIII. died September 16, 1824; and the Count of Artois, the brother of two kings, was proclaimed Charles X. of France.

If there had been any doubt about the real sentiments of Louis XVIII., it must have been dispelled by the last act of his reign, when, at the bidding of the Holy Alliance, he sent French soldiers to put down the Spanish liberals in their fight for a constitution.

But Charles X. did not intend to assume the thin mask worn by his brother. He had marked out a different course. All disguise was to be thrown aside in a Bourbon reign of the ante-revolutionary sort. The press was strictly censored, the charter altered, the law of primogeniture restored; and when saluted on the streets of Paris by cries of "Give us back our charter!" the answer made to his people by this infatuated man was, "I am here to receive homage, not counsel."

One wonders that a brother of Louis XVI., one who had been a fugitive from a Paris mob in 1789—if he had a memory—dared to exasperate the people of France.

On the 29th of July a revolt had become a Revolution, and once more the Marquis de Lafayette was in charge of the municipal troops, which assembled at St. Cloud and other defensive points.



In vain did Charles protest that he would revoke every offensive ordinance, and restore the charter. It was too late.

Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, was appointed lieutenant-general of the kingdom. When he appeared at the Hotel de Ville wearing the tricolor, his future was already assured.

There was only one thing left now for Charles to do: he formally abdicated, and signed the paper authorizing the appointment of his cousin to the position of lieutenant-general; and ten days later, Louis Philippe, son of Philippe Egalite, occupied the throne he left.

The note struck by this new king was the absolute surrender of the principle of divine right. He was a "citizen king"; his title being bestowed not by a divine hand, but by the people, whose voice was the voice of God! The title itself bore witness to a new order of things. Louis Philippe was not King of France, but "King of the French." King of France carried with it the old feudal idea of proprietorship and sovereignty; while a King of the French was merely a leader of the people, not the owner of their soil. The charter and all existing conditions were modified to conform to this ideal, and on the 9th of August the reign of the constitutional king began.

It was the middle class in France which supported this reign; the class below that would never forget that he was, after all, a Bourbon and a king; while the two classes above, both royalists and imperialists, were unfriendly, one regarding him as a usurper on the throne of the legitimate king, and the other as a weakling unfit to occupy the throne of Napoleon.

When Charles X. tried to secure the banishment of the families of the men who had voted for the death of Louis XVI., he may have had in mind his cousin, the son of Philippe Egalite, the wickedest and most despicable of the regicides. Whatever his father had been, Louis Philippe was far from being a wicked man. Whether teaching school in Switzerland, or giving French lessons in America, he was the kindest-hearted and most inoffensive of gentlemen. The only trouble with this reign was that it was not heroic. The most emotional and romantic people in Europe had a common-place king. Only once was there a throb of genuine enthusiasm during the eighteen years of his occupancy of the throne, and that was when the remains of their adored Napoleon were brought from St. Helena and placed in that magnificent tomb in the Hotel des Invalides by order of the king, who sent his son, the Prince de Joinville, to bring this gift to the people. The act was gracious, but it was also hazardous. Perhaps the king did not know how slight was his hold upon this imaginative people, nor the possible effect of contrast.

Under the new order of things in a constitutional monarchy the king does not govern, he reigns. He was chosen by the people as their ornamental figure-head. But what if he ceased to be ornamental? What was the use of a king who in eighteen years had added not a single ray of glory to the national name, but who was using his high position to increase his enormous private fortune, and incessantly begging an impoverished country for benefits and emoluments for five sons?

An excellent father, truly, though a short-sighted one. His power had no roots. The cutting from the Orleans tree had never taken hold upon the soil, and toppled over at the sound of Lamartine's voice proclaiming a republic from the balcony of the Hotel de Ville.

When invited to step down from his royal throne, he did so on the instant. Never did king succumb with such alacrity, and never did retiring royalty look less imposing than when Louis Philippe was in hiding at Havre under the name of "William Smith," waiting for safe convoy to England, without having struck one blow in defence of his throne.

But three terrible words had floated into the open windows of the Tuileries. With the echoes of 1792 still sounding in his ears, "Liberty," "Equality," and "Fraternity," shouted in the streets of Paris, had not a pleasant sound!

Republicanism was an abiding sentiment in France, even while two dull Bourbon kings were stupidly trying to turn back the hands on the dial of time, and while an Orleans, with more supple neck, was posing as a popular sovereign. During all this tiresome interlude the real fact was developing. A Republican sentiment which had existed vaguely in the air was materializing, consolidating, into a more and more tangible reality in the minds of thinking men and patriots.

The ablest men in the country stood with plans matured, ready to meet this crisis. A republic was proclaimed; M. de Lamartine, Ledru-Rollin, General Cavaignac, M. Raspail, and Louis Napoleon were rival candidates for the office of President.

The nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, and son of Hortense, was only known as the perpetrator of two very absurd attempts to overthrow the monarchy under Louis Philippe. But since the remains of the great emperor had been returned to France by England, and the splendors of the past placed in striking contrast with a dull, lustreless present, there had been a revival of Napoleonic memories and enthusiasm. Here was an opportunity to unite two powerful sentiments in one man—a Napoleon at the head of republican France would express the glory of the past and the hope of the future.

The magic of the name was irresistible. Louis Napoleon was elected President of the second Republic, and history prepared to repeat itself.



CHAPTER XVIII.

A revolution scarcely deserving the name had made France a second time a republic. The Second French Republic was the creation of no particular party. In fact, it seemed to have sprung into being spontaneously out of the soil of discontent.

Its immediate cause was the forbidding of a banquet which was arranged to take place in Paris on Washington's birthday, February 22d, 1848. M. Guizot, who had succeeded M. Thiers as head of the ministry, knowing the political purpose for which it was intended, and that it was a part of an impending demonstration in the hands of dangerous agitators, would not permit the banquet to take place.

This was the signal for an insurrection by a Paris mob, which immediately led to a change in the form of government—a crisis which the nation had taken no part in inaugurating. Revolution had been written in French history in very large Roman capitals! But when the smoke from this smallest of revolutions had curled away, there stood Louis Napoleon—son of the great Bonaparte's brother Louis and Hortense de Beauharnais—who had been elected president by vote of the nation.

France did not know whether she was pleased or not. Inexperienced in the art of government, she only knew that she wanted prosperity, and conditions which would give opportunity to the genius of her people. Any form of government, or any ruler who could produce these, would be accepted. She had suffered much, and was bewildered by fears of anarchy on one side and of tyranny on the other. If she looked doubtfully at this dark, mysterious, unmagnetic man, she remembered it was only for four years, and was as safe as any other experiment; and the author of those two ridiculous attempts at a restoration of the empire, made at Strasbourg and at Boulogne, was not a man to be feared.

The overthrow of monarchy in France had, however, been taken more seriously in other countries than at home. It had kindled anew the fires of republicanism all over Europe: Kossuth leading a revolution in Hungary, and Garibaldi and Mazzini in Italy, where Victor Emmanuel, the young King of Sardinia, was at the moment in deadly struggle with Austria over the possession of Milan, and dreaming of the day when a united Italy would be freed from the Austrian yoke.

The man at the head of the French Republic was surveying all these conditions with an intelligence, strong and even subtle, of which no one suspected him, and viewed with satisfaction the extinguishment of the revolutionary fires in Europe, which had been kindled by the one in France to which he owed his own elevation!

The Assembly soon realized that in this prince-president it had no automaton to deal with. A deep antagonism grew, and the cunningly devised issue could not fail to secure popular support to Louis Napoleon. When an assembly is at war with the president because it desires to restrict the suffrage, and he to make it universal, can anyone doubt the result? He was safe in appealing to the people on such an issue, and sure of being sustained in his proclamation dissolving the Assembly.

The Assembly refused to be dissolved. Then, on the morning of December 2, 1851, there occurred the famous coup d'etat, when all the leading members were arrested at their homes, and Louis Napoleon, relying absolutely upon their suffrages, stood before the French nation, with a constitution already prepared, which actually bestowed imperial powers upon himself. And the suddenness and the audacious spirit with which it was done really pleased a people wearied by incompetency in their rulers; and so, just one year later, in 1852, the nation ratified the coup d'etat by voluntarily offering to Louis Napoleon the title, Napoleon III., Emperor of the French.

His Mephistophelian face did not look as classic under the laurel wreath as had his uncle's, nor had his work the blinding splendor nor the fineness of texture of his great model. But then, an imitation never has. It was a marble masterpiece, done in plaster! But what a clever reproduction it was! And how, by sheer audacity, it compelled recognition and homage, and at last even adulation in Europe!—and what a clever stroke it was, for this heavy, unsympathetic man to bring up to his throne from the people a radiant empress, who would capture romantic and aesthetic France!

It was a far cry from cheap lodgings in New York to a seat upon the imperial throne of France; but human ambition is not easily satisfied. A Pelion always rises beyond an Ossa. It was not enough to feel that he had re-established the prosperity and prestige of France, that fresh glory had been added to the Napoleonic name. Was there not, after all, a certain irritating reserve in the homage paid him? was there not a touch of condescension in the friendship of his royal neighbors? And had he not always a Mordecai at his gate—while the Faubourg St. Germain stood aloof and disdainful, smiling at his brand-new aristocracy?

War is the thing to give solidity to empire and to reputation! So, when invited to join the allies in a war upon Russia in defence of Turkey, Louis Napoleon accepted with alacrity. France had no interests to serve in the Crimean War (1854-56); but the newly made emperor did not underestimate the value of this recognition by his royal neighbors, and French soldiers and French gun-boats largely contributed to the success of the allied forces in the East.

The little Kingdom of Sardinia, as the nucleus of the new Italy was called, had also joined the allies in this war; and thus a slender tie had been created between her and France at a time when Austria was savagely attacking her possessions in the north of Italy.

When Napoleon was privately sounded by Count Cavour, he named as his price for intervention in Italy two things: the cession to France of the Duchy of Savoy, and the marriage of his cousin, Jerome Bonaparte, with Clotilde, the young daughter of Victor Emmanuel. Savoy was the ancestral home of the king, and the only thing he loved more than Savoy was his daughter Clotilde, just fifteen years old. The terms were hard, but they were accepted.

When Louis Napoleon entered Italy with his army in 1859, it was as a liberator—dramatically declaring that he came to "give Italy to herself"; that she was to be "free, from the Alps to the Adriatic"! The victory at Magenta was the first step toward the realization of this glorious promise; quickly followed by another at Solferino. Milan was restored, Lombardy was free, and as the news sped toward the south the Austrian dukes of Tuscany, Modena, and Parma fled in dismay, and these rejoicing states offered their allegiance, not to the King of Sardinia, now, but to the King of Italy. There were only two more states to be freed, only Venetia and the papal state of Rome, and a "United Italy" would indeed be "free from the Alps to the Adriatic."

Then the unexpected happened. The dramatic pledge was not to be kept. Venetia was not to be liberated. The Peace of Villafranca was signed. Austria relinquished Lombardy, but was permitted to retain Venice. Cavour, white with rage, said, "Cut loose from the traitor! Refuse Lombardy!" But Victor Emmanuel saw more clearly the path of wisdom; and so, after only two months of warfare, Napoleon was taking back to France Savoy and Nice as trophies of his brilliant expedition.

This liberator of an Italy which was not liberated, would have liked to restore the fleeing Austrian dukes to their respective thrones in Florence, Modena, and Parma; but he did what was more effectual and pleasing to the enemies of a united Italy: he garrisoned Rome with French troops, and promised Pius IX. any needed protection for the papal throne.

One can imagine how Garibaldi's heart was wrung when he exclaimed, "That man has made me a foreigner in my own city!" And so might have said the king himself.

The emperor and the empire had been immensely strengthened by the Italian campaign. France was rejoicing in a phenomenal prosperity, reaching every part of the land. There was a new France and a new Paris; new boulevards were made, gardens and walks and drives laid out, and a renewed and magnificent city extended from the Bois de Vincennes on one side to the Bois de Boulogne on the other. With the building of public works there was occupation for all, resulting in the repose for which France had longed.

The Empress Eugenie was beautiful and gracious, and her court at Versailles, Fontainebleau, and the Tuileries compared well in splendor with the traditions of the past.

The emperor's ambitions began to take on a larger form. Under the auspices of the government, M. Lesseps commenced a transisthmian canal, which would open communication between the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. Then, in 1862, a less peaceful scheme developed. An expedition was planned to Mexico, against which country France had a small grievance.

The United States was at this time fighting for its life in a civil war of gigantic proportions. The time was favorable for a plan conceived by the emperor to convert Mexico into an empire under a French protectorate. The principle known as the Monroe Doctrine forbade the establishment of any European power upon the Western hemisphere; but the United States was powerless at the moment to defend it, and by the time her hands were free, even if she were not disrupted, an Empire of Mexico would be established, and French troops could defend it.

In a few months the French army was in the city of Mexico, and an Austrian prince was proclaimed emperor of a Mexican empire.

This ill-conceived expedition came to a tragic and untimely end in 1867. The civil war ended triumphantly for the Union. Napoleon, realizing that, with her hands free, the United States would fight for the maintenance of the Monroe Doctrine, promptly withdrew the French army from Mexico, leaving the emperor to his fate. A republic was at once established, and the unfortunate Maximilian was ordered to be shot.

The finances of France and the prestige of the emperor had both suffered from this miserable attempt. At the same time, something had occurred which changed the entire European problem in a way most distasteful to Louis Napoleon. Prussia, in a seven weeks' war, had wrenched herself free from Austria (1866). Instead of a disrupted United States, which he had expected, there was a disrupted German Empire which he did not expect!

The triumph of Protestant Prussia was a triumph of liberalism. It meant a new political power, a rearrangement of the political problem in Europe, with Austria and despotism deposed. This was a distinct blow to the Emperor's policy, and to the headship in Europe which was its aim. Then, too, the Crimea, Magenta, and Solferino looked less brilliant since this transforming seven-weeks' war, behind which stood Bismarck with his wide-reaching plans.

His own magnificent scheme of a Hapsburg empire in Mexico under a French protectorate had failed, and now there had suddenly arisen, as if out of the ground, a new political Germany which rivalled France in strength. The thing to do was to recover his waning prestige by a victory over Prussia.

The Empress Eugenie, devoutly Catholic in her sympathies, saw, in the ascendancy of Protestant Prussia and the humiliation of Catholic Austria, an impious blow aimed at the Catholic faith in Europe. So, as the emperor wanted war, and the empress wanted it, it only remained to make France want it too; for war it was to be.

Only one obstacle existed: there was nothing to fight about! But that was overcome. In 1870 the heart of the people of France was fired by the news that the French Ambassador had been publicly insulted by the kindly old King William. There had been some diplomatic friction over the proposed occupancy of a vacant throne in Spain by a member of the Hohenzollern (Prussian) family.

Whether true or false, the rumor served the desired purpose. France was in a blaze of indignation, and war was declared.

Not a shadow of doubt existed as to the result as the French army moved away bearing with it the boy prince imperial, that he might witness the triumph. Not only would the French soldiers carry everything before them, but the southern German States would welcome them as deliverers, and the new confederation would fall in pieces in their hands. The birthday of Napoleon I., August 15th, must be celebrated in Berlin!

This was the way it looked in France. How was it in Germany? There was no North and no South German. Men and states sprang together as a unit, under the command of Moltke and the Crown Prince Frederick William.

The French troops never got beyond their own frontier. In less than three weeks they were fighting for their existence on their own soil. In less than a month the French emperor was a prisoner, and in seven weeks his empire had ceased to exist.

The surrender of Metz, August 4th, and of Sedan, September 2d, were monumental disasters. With the news of the latter, and of the capture of the emperor, the Assembly immediately declared the empire at an end, and proclaimed a third republic in France.

Two hundred and fifty thousand German troops were marching on Paris. Fortifications were rapidly thrown about the city, and the siege, which was to last four months, had commenced.

The capitulation, which was inevitable from the first, took place in January, 1871. The terms of peace offered by the Germans were accepted, including the loss of Alsace and Lorraine, and an enormous war indemnity.

The Germans were in Paris, and King William, the Crown Prince (Unser Fritz), Bismarck, and Von Moltke were quartered at Versailles; and in that place, saturated with historic memories, there was enacted a strange and unprecedented scene. On January 18, 1871, in the Hall of Mirrors, King William of Prussia was formally proclaimed Emperor of a new German Empire. Ludwig II., that picturesque young King of Bavaria, in the name of the rest of the German states, laid their united allegiance at his feet, and begged him to accept the crown of a united Germany.

Moved by his colossal misfortunes, and perhaps partly in displeasure at having a French republic once more at her door, England offered asylum to the deposed emperor. There, from the seclusion of Chiselhurst, he and his still beautiful Eugenie watched the republic weathering the first days of storm and stress.



CHAPTER XIX.

Immediately after the deposition of the emperor a third Republic of France was proclaimed. A temporary government was set up under the direction of MM. Favre, Gambetta, Simon, Ferry, Rochefort, and others of pronounced republican tendencies.

This was speedily superseded by a National Assembly elected by the people, with M. Thiers acting as its executive head.

During the siege of Paris an internal enemy had appeared, more dangerous, and proving in the end far more destructive to the city than the German army which occupied it.

What is known as the Paris Commune was a mob of desperate men led by Socialistic and Anarchistic agitators of the kind which at intervals try to terrorize civilization to-day.

The ideas at the basis of this insurrection were the same as those which converted a patriotic revolution into a "Reign of Terror" in 1789, and Paris into a slaughter-house in 1792-93.

Twice during the siege had there been violent and alarming outbreaks from this vicious element; and now it was in desperate struggle with the government of M. Thiers for control of that city, which they succeeded in obtaining. M. Thiers, his government, and his troops were established at Versailles; while Paris, for two months, was in the hands of these desperadoes, who were sending out their orders from the Hotel de Ville.

When finally routed by Marshal MacMahon's troops, after drenching some of the principal buildings with petroleum they set them on fire. The Tuileries and the Hotel de Ville were consumed, as were also portions of the Louvre, the Palais Royal, and the Palais de Luxembourg, and the city in many places defaced and devastated.

The insurrection was not subdued without a savage conflict, ten thousand insurgents, it is said, being killed during the last week; this being followed by severe military executions. Then, with some of her most dearly prized historic treasures in ashes, and monuments gone, Paris, scarred and defaced, had quiet at last; and the organization of the third republic proceeded.

The uncertain nature of the republican sentiment existing throughout France at this critical moment is indicated by the character of the Assembly elected by the people. More than two-thirds of the members chosen by France to organize her new republic were monarchists!

The name monarchist at that time comprehended three distinct parties, each with a powerful following, namely:

The LEGITIMISTS, acting in the interest of the direct Bourbon line, represented by the Count of Chambord, the grandson of Charles X., called by his party Henry V.

The ORLEANISTS, the party desiring the restoration of a limited monarchy, in the person of the Count of Paris, grandson of Louis Philippe.

The BONAPARTISTS, whose candidate, after the death of the Emperor Louis Napoleon in 1873, was the young Prince Imperial, son of Napoleon III. [Napoleon II., the Duke of Reichstadt, had died in 1832.]

M. Thiers had not an easy task in harmonizing these various despotic types with each other, nor in harmonizing them all collectively with the republic of which he was chief. He abandoned the attempt in 1873, and Marshal MacMahon, a more pronounced monarchist than he, succeeded to the office of president, with the Duc de Broglie at the head of a reactionary ministry. It began to look as if there might be a restoration under some one of the three types mentioned. The Count of Paris generously offered to relinquish his claim in favor of the Count of Chambord (Henry V.), if he would accept the principles of a constitutional monarchy, which that uncompromising Bourbon absolutely refused to do.

In the meantime republican sentiment in France was not dead, nor sleeping. Calamitous experiences had made it cautious. Freedom and anarchy had so often been mistaken for each other, it was learning to move slowly, not by leaps and bounds as heretofore.

Gambetta, the republican leader, once so fiery, had also grown cautious. A patriot and a statesman, he was the one man who seemed to possess the genius required by the conditions and the time, and also the kind of magnetism which would draw together and crystallize the scattered elements of his party.

It was the stimulus imparted by Gambetta which made the government at last republican in fact as well as in name; and as reactionary sentiment increased on the surface, a republican sentiment was all the time gathering in volume and strength below.

The death of the prince imperial, in 1879, in South Africa, was a severe blow to the imperialists, as the Bonapartists were also called, who were now represented by Prince Victor, the son of Prince Napoleon.

Although these rival princes occupied a large place upon the stage, other matters had the attention of the government of France, which moved calmly on. The establishing of a formal protectorate over Algeria belongs to this period.

Ever since the reign of Louis XIV. the hand of France had held Algeria with more or less success. The Grand Monarch determined to rid the Mediterranean of the "Barbary pirates," with which it was infested, and so they were pursued and traced to their lairs in Algiers and Tunis. From this time on attempts were made at intervals to establish a French control over this African colony. During the reign of Louis Philippe the French occupation became more assured, and under the Republic a formal protectorate was declared.

In 1881 Tunis also became a dependency of France; a treaty to that effect being signed bestowing authority upon a resident-general throughout the so-called dominions of the bey.

The fact that in 1878 France participated in the negotiations of the Congress at Berlin, shows how quickly national wounds heal at the top! And further proof that normal conditions were restored, is given by the Universal Exposition, to which Paris bravely invited the world in that same year.

In 1879 M. Grevy succeeded Marshal MacMahon. It was during M. Grevy's administration that England and France combined in a dual financial control over Egypt, in behalf of the interests of the citizens of those two countries who were holders of Egyptian bonds.

But the event of profoundest effect at this period was the death of Gambetta in 1882. The removal of the only man in France whom they feared, was the signal for renewed activity among the monarchists, which found expression in a violent manifesto, immediately issued by Prince Napoleon. This awoke the apparently dormant republican sentiment. After agitated scenes in the Chamber, Prince Napoleon was arrested; and finally, after a prolonged struggle, a decree was issued suspending all the Orleans princes from their military functions.

Almost immediately after this crisis the Count of Chambord (Henry V.) died at Frohsdorf, August, 1883, by which event the Bourbon branch became extinct; and the Legitimists, with their leader gone, united with the Orleanists in supporting the Count of Paris.

A small war with Cochin-China was developed in 1884 out of a diplomatic difficulty, which left France with virtual control over an area of territory, including Annam and Tonquin, in the far East.

In 1885 M. Grevy was re-elected. This was, of course, construed as a vote of approval of the anti-monarchistic tone of the administration. So republicanism grew bolder.

There had been an increased activity among the agents of the monarchist party, which found expression in demonstrations of a very significant character at the time of the marriage of the daughter of the Count of Paris to the Crown Prince of Portugal. The republicans were determined to rid France of this unceasing source of agitation, and their power to carry out so drastic a measure as the one intended is proof of the growth which had been silently going on in their party.

The government was given discretionary power to expel from the country all actual claimants to the throne of France, with their direct heirs.

The Count of Paris and his son, the Duke of Orleans, Prince Napoleon and his son, Prince Victor, were accordingly banished by presidential decree, in June, 1886. And when the Duke of Aumale violently protested, he too was sent into banishment.

In 1887 M. Grevy was compelled to resign, on account of an attempt to shield his son-in-law, who was accused of selling decorations, lucrative appointments, and contracts. M. Sadi-Carnot, the grandson of the Minister of War of the same name, who organized the armies at the revolutionary period, was a republican of integrity and distinction, and was elected by the combined votes of radicals and conservatives.

Another crisis was at hand—a crisis difficult to explain because of the difficulty in understanding it.

The extraordinary popularity of General Boulanger, Minister of War, a military hero who had never held an important command, nor been the hero of a single military exploit, seems to present a subject for students of psychological problems; but his name became the rallying-point for all the malcontents in both parties. A talent for political intrigue in this popular hero made it appear at one time as if he might really be moving on a path leading to a military dictatorship.

The firmness of the government in dealing with what seemed a serious crisis, was followed by the swift collapse of the whole movement, and when Boulanger was summoned before the High Court of Justice upon the charge of inciting a revolution, he fled from the country, and the incident was closed.

In one important respect the Third Republic differs from the two preceding it. A constitution had hitherto been supposed to be the indispensable starting-point in the formation of a government. No country had been so prolific in constitutions as France, which, since 1790, is said to have had no less than seventeen; while England, since her Magna Charta made her free in 1215, had had none at all.

An eloquent and definite statement of the rights of a people once seemed as indispensable to a form of government as a creed to a religious faith. Perhaps the world, as it grows wiser, is less inclined to definite statements upon many subjects! Our own Constitution, probably the most elastic and wisest instrument of the kind ever created, has in a century required sixteen amendments to adapt it to changing conditions.

What is known in France as the Constitution of 1875, is, in fact, a series of legislative enactments passed within certain periods of time; these, as in England, serving as a substitute for a Constitution framed like our own.

The French may have done wisely in trying the English method of substituting a body of laws, the growth of necessity, for a written constitution. But this system, reached in England through the slowly moving centuries, was adopted in France, not with deliberate purpose at first, but in order to avoid the clashing of opposing views among the group of men in charge of the republic in its inception; men who, while ruling under the name of a republic, really at heart disliked it, and were, in fact, only enduring it as a temporary expedient on the road to something better. And so the republic drifted. There are times when it is well to drift; and in this case it has proved most satisfactory.

Not alone the rulers, but the nation itself, was in doubt as to the sort of government it wanted, or how to attain it after it knew. It was experimenting with that most difficult of arts, the art of governing. An art which England had been centuries in learning, how could France be expected to master in a decade? And when we consider the conditions and the elements with which this inexperience was dealing, the dangerous element at the top and the other dangerous element beneath the surface, the ambitions of the princes, and the volcanic fires in the lowest class; and when we think of the waiting nation, hoping, fearing, expecting so much, with a tremendous war indemnity to be paid, while their hearts were heavy over the loss of two provinces; when we recall all this, we wonder, not that they made mistakes and accomplished so little, but that the government moved on, day by day, step by step, calmly meeting crises from reactionaries or from radicals, until the confidence of the world was won, and the stability of republican France assured.

From 1893 to 1896 was a period of colonial expansion for France. The Kingdom of Dahomey in Africa was proclaimed a French protectorate. Madagascar was subjugated, and in 1895 the Province of Hiang-Hung was ceded by China.

In the year 1894 Sadi-Carnot was assassinated in the streets of Lyons by an anarchist, and M. Faure succeeded to the presidency.

A political alliance between France and Russia was formed at this time. It was also during the presidency of M. Faure that the agitation commenced in consequence of what is known as the Affaire Dreyfus.

Captain Alfred Dreyfus, an Alsatian and an artillery officer upon the general staff, was accused of betraying military secrets to a foreign power (Germany). He was tried by court-martial, convicted, sentenced to be publicly degraded, having all the insignia of rank torn from him, then to suffer perpetual solitary imprisonment on the Isle du Diable, off the coast of French Guiana.

The life of the French Republic was threatened by the profound agitation following this sentence, in which the entire civilized world joined; the impression prevailing that a punishment of almost unparalleled severity was being inflicted upon a man whose guilt had not been proven.

It was the general belief that the bitter enmity of the French army staff was on account of the Semitic origin of the accused officer, and that his being an Alsatian opened an easy path to the accusation of treasonable acts with Germany.

The trial of Captain Dreyfus was conducted with closed doors, and the sentence was rigorously carried out.

As time passed, the agitation became so profound, and the public demand for a revision of the case so imperative, that the French court of appeal finally took the matter under consideration.

The ground upon which this revision was claimed related to an alleged confession and to the authorship of the bordereau, the document which had been instrumental in procuring a conviction. Upon these grounds it was claimed that the judgment pronounced in December, 1894, should be annulled.

The court was compelled to yield, and an order was issued for a second trial—a trial which resulted in revelations so damaging to the heads of the French army that a revolution seemed imminent.