MONSIEUR MON FRERE—N'ayant pu mourir au milieu de mes troupes, il ne me reste qu'a remettre mon epee entre les mains de Votre Majeste.—Je suis de Votre Majeste le bon Frere

NAPOLEON.

SEDAN, le 1er Septembre, 1870.

[Footnote 49: Lebrun, op. cit. pp. 130 et seq. for the disputes about surrender.]

The King named von Moltke to arrange the terms and then rode away to a village farther south, it being arranged, probably at Bismarck's suggestion, that he should not see the Emperor until all was settled. Meanwhile de Wimpffen and other French generals, in conference with von Moltke, Bismarck, and Blumenthal, at the village of Donchery, sought to gain easy terms by appealing to their generosity and by arguing that this would end the war and earn the gratitude of France. To all appeals for permission to let the captive army go to Algeria, or to lay down its arms in Belgium, the Germans were deaf,—Bismarck at length plainly saying that the French were an envious and jealous people on whose gratitude it would be idle to count. De Wimpffen then threatened to renew the fight rather than surrender, to which von Moltke grimly assented, but Bismarck again interposed to bring about a prolongation of the truce. Early on the morrow, Napoleon himself drove out to Donchery in the hope of seeing the King. The Bismarckian Boswell has given us a glimpse of him as he then appeared: "The look in his light grey eyes was somewhat soft and dreamy, like that of people who have lived too fast." [In his case, we may remark, this was induced by the painful disease which never left him all through the campaign, and carried him off three years later.] "He wore his cap a little on the right, to which side his head also inclined. His short legs were out of proportion to the long upper body. His whole appearance was a little unsoldier-like. The man looked too soft—I might say too spongy—for the uniform he wore."

Bismarck, the stalwart Teuton who had wrecked his policy at all points, met him at Donchery and foiled his wish to see the King, declaring this to be impossible until the terms of the capitulation were settled. The Emperor then had a conversation with the Chancellor in a little cottage belonging to a weaver. Seating themselves on two rush-bottomed chairs beside the one deal table, they conversed on the greatest affairs of State. The Emperor said he had not sought this war—"he had been driven into it by the pressure of public opinion. I replied" (wrote Bismarck) "that neither had any one with us wished for war—the King least of all[50]." Napoleon then pleaded for generous terms, but admitted that he, as a prisoner, could not fix them; they must be arranged with de Wimpffen. About ten o'clock the latter agreed to an unconditional surrender for the rank and file of the French army, but those officers who bound themselves by their word of honour (in writing) not to fight again during the present war were to be set free. Napoleon then had an interview with the King. What transpired is not known, but when the Emperor came out "his eyes" (wrote Bismarck) "were full of tears."

[Footnote 50: Busch, Bismarck on the Franco-German War, vol. i. p. 109. Contrast this statement with his later efforts (Reminiscences, vol. ii. pp. 95-100) to prove that he helped to bring on war.]

The fallen monarch accepted the King's offer of the castle of Wilhelmshoehe near Cassel for his residence up to the end of the war; it was the abode on which Jerome Bonaparte had spent millions of thalers, wrung from Westphalian burghers, during his brief sovereignty in 1807-1813. Thither his nephew set out two days after the catastrophe of Sedan. And this, as it seems, was the end of a dynasty whose rise to power dated from the thrilling events of the Bridge of Lodi, Arcola, Rivoli, and the Pyramids. The French losses on September 1 were about 3000 killed, 14,000 wounded, and 21,000 prisoners. On the next day there surrendered 83,000 prisoners by virtue of the capitulation, along with 419 field-pieces and 139 cannon of the fortress. Some 3000 had escaped, through the gap in the German lines on the north-east, to the Belgian frontier, and there laid down their arms.

The news of this unparalleled disaster began to leak out at Paris late on the 2nd; on the morrow, when details were known, crowds thronged into the streets shouting "Down with the Empire! Long live the Republic!" Power still remained with the Empress-Regent and the Palikao Ministry. All must admit that the Empress Eugenie did what was possible in this hopeless position. She appealed to that charming literary man, M. Prosper Merimee, to go to his friend, M. Thiers (at whom we shall glance presently), and beg him to form a Ministry that would save the Empire for the young Prince Imperial. M. Thiers politely but firmly refused to give a helping hand to the dynasty which he looked on as the author of his country's ruin.

On that day the Empress also summoned the Chambers—the Senate and the Corps Legislatif—a vain expedient, for in times of crisis the French look to a man, not to Chambers. The Empire had no man at hand. General Trochu, Governor of Paris, was suspected of being a Republican—at any rate he let matters take their course. On the 4th, vast crowds filled the streets; a rush was made to the Chamber, where various compromises were being discussed; the doors were forced, and amid wild excitement a proposal to dethrone the Napoleonic dynasty was put. Two Republican deputies, Gambetta and Jules Favre, declared that the Hotel de Ville was the fit place to declare the Republic. There, accordingly, it was proclaimed, the deputies for the city of Paris taking office as the Government of National Defence. They were just in time to prevent Socialists like Blanqui, Flourens, and Henri Rochefort from installing the "Commune" in power. The Empress and the Prince Imperial at once fled, and, apart from a protest by the Senate, no voice was raised in defence of the Empire. Jules Favre who took up the burden of Foreign Affairs in the new Government of National Defence was able to say in his circular note of September 6 that "the Revolution of September 4 took place without the shedding of a drop of blood or the loss of liberty to a single person[51]."

[Footnote 51: Gabriel Hanotaux, Contemporary France, vol. i. p. 14 (Eng. edit.)]

That fact shows the unreality of Bonapartist rule in France. At bottom Napoleon III.'s ascendancy was due to several causes, that told against possible rivals rather than directly in his favour. Hatred of the socialists, whose rash political experiments had led to the bloody days of street fighting in Paris in June 1848, counted for much. Added to this was the unpopularity of the House of Orleans after the sordid and uninteresting rule of Louis Philippe (1830-48). The antiquated royalism of the Elder or Legitimist branch of that ill-starred dynasty made it equally an impossibility. Louis Napoleon promised to do what his predecessors, Monarchical and Republican, had signally failed to do, namely, to reconcile the claims of liberty and order at home and uphold the prestige of France abroad. For the first ten years the glamour of his name, the skill with which he promoted the material prosperity of France, and the successes of his early wars, promised to build up a lasting power. But then came the days of failing health and tottering prestige—of financial scandals, of the Mexican blunder, of the humiliation before the rising power of Prussia. To retrieve matters he toyed with democracy in France, and finally allowed his Ministers to throw down a challenge to Prussia; for, in the words of a French historian, the conditions on which he held power "condemned him to be brilliant[52]."

[Footnote 52: Said in 1852 by an eminent Frenchman to our countryman, Nassau Senior (Journals, ii. ad fin).]

Failing at Sedan, he lost all; and he knew it. His reign, in fact, was one long disaster for France. The canker of moral corruption began to weaken her public life when the creatures of whom he made use in the coup d'etat of 1851 crept into place and power. The flashy sensationalism of his policy, setting the tone for Parisian society, was fatal to the honest unseen drudgery which builds up a solid edifice alike in public and in private life. Even the better qualities of his nature told against ultimate success. As has been shown, his vague but generous ideas on Nationality drew French policy away from the paths of obvious self-interest after the year 1864, and gave an easy victory to the keen and objective statecraft of Bismarck. That he loved France as sincerely as he believed in the power of the Bonapartist tradition to help her, can scarcely admit of doubt. His conduct during the war of 1870 showed him to be disinterested, while his vision was clearer than that of the Generals about him. But in the field of high policy, as in the moral events that make or mar a nation's life, his influence told heavily against the welfare of France; and he must have carried into exile the consciousness that his complex nature and ill-matched strivings had but served to bring his dynasty and his country to an unexampled overthrow.

* * * * *

It may be well to notice here an event of world-wide importance, which came as a sequel to the military collapse of France. Italians had always looked to the day when Rome would be the national capital. The great Napoleon during his time of exile at St. Helena had uttered the prophetic words: "Italy isolated between her natural limits is destined to form a great and powerful nation. . . . Rome will without doubt be chosen by the Italians as their capital." The political and economic needs of the present, coinciding herein with the voice of tradition, always so strong in Italian hearts, pointed imperiously to Rome as the only possible centre of national life.

As was pointed out in the Introduction, Pius IX. after the years of revolution, 1848-49, felt the need of French troops in his capital, and his harsh and reactionary policy (or rather, that of his masterful Secretary of State, Antonelli) before long completely alienated the feelings of his subjects.

After the master-mind of Cavour was removed by death, (June 1861), the patriots struggled desperately, but in vain, to rid Rome of the presence of foreign troops and win her for the national cause. Garibaldi's raids of 1862 and 1867 were foiled, the one by Italian, the other by French troops; and the latter case, which led to the sharp fight of Mentana, effaced any feelings of gratitude to Napoleon III. for his earlier help, which survived after his appropriation of Savoy and Nice. Thus matters remained in 1867-70, the Pope relying on the support of French bayonets to coerce his own subjects. Clearly this was a state of things which could not continue. The first great shock must always bring down a political edifice which rests not on its own foundations, but on external buttresses. These were suddenly withdrawn by the war of 1870. Early in August, Napoleon ordered all his troops to leave the Papal States; and the downfall of his power a month later absolved Victor Emmanuel from the claims of gratitude which he still felt towards his ally of 1859.

At once the forward wing of the Italian national party took action in a way that either forced, or more probably encouraged, Victor Emmanuel's Government to step in under the pretext of preventing the creation of a Roman Republic. The King invited Pius IX. to assent to the peaceful occupation of Rome by the royal troops, and on receiving the expected refusal, moved forward 35,000 soldiers. The resistance of the 11,000 Papal troops proved to be mainly a matter of form. The wall near the Porta Pia soon crumbled before the Italian cannon, and after a brief struggle at the breach, the white flag was hoisted at the bidding of the Pope (Sept. 20).

Thus fell the temporal power of the Papacy. The event aroused comparatively little notice in that year of marvels, but its results have been momentous. At the time there was a general sense of relief, if not of joy, in Italy, that the national movement had reached its goal, albeit in so tame and uninspiring a manner. Rome had long been a prey to political reaction, accompanied by police supervision of the most exasperating kind. The plebiscite as to the future government gave 133,681 votes for Victor Emmanuel's rule, and only 1507 negative votes[53].

[Footnote 53: Countess Cesaresco, The Liberation of Italy, p. 411.]

Now, for the first time since the days of Napoleon I. and of the short-lived Republic for which Mazzini and Garibaldi worked and fought so nobly in 1849, the Eternal City began to experience the benefits of progressive rule. The royal government soon proved to be very far from perfect. Favouritism, the multiplication of sinecures, municipal corruption, and the prosaic inroads of builders and speculators, soon helped to mar the work of political reconstruction, and began to arouse a certain amount of regret for the more picturesque times of the Papal rule. A sentimental reaction of this kind is certain to occur in all cases of political change, especially in a city where tradition and emotion so long held sway.

The consciences of the faithful were also troubled when the fiat of the Pope went forth excommunicating the robber-king and all his chief abettors in the work of sacrilege. Sons of the Church throughout Italy were bidden to hold no intercourse with the interlopers and to take no part in elections to the Italian Parliament which thenceforth met in Rome. The schism between the Vatican and the King's Court and Government was never to be bridged over; and even to-day it constitutes one of the most perplexing problems of Italy.

Despite the fact that Rome and Italy gained little of that mental and moral stimulus which might have resulted from the completion of the national movement solely by the action of the people themselves, the fact nevertheless remains that Rome needed Italy and Italy needed Rome. The disappointment loudly expressed by idealists, sentimentalists, and reactionaries must not blind us to the fact that the Italians, and above all the Romans, have benefited by the advent of unity, political freedom, and civic responsibility. It may well be that, in acting as the leader of a constitutional people, the Eternal City will little by little develop higher gifts than those nurtured under Papal tutelage, and perhaps as beneficent to Humanity as those which, in the ancient world, bestowed laws on Europe.

As Mazzini always insisted, political progress, to be sound, must be based ultimately on moral progress. It is of its very nature slow, and is therefore apt to escape the eyes of the moralist or cynic who dwells on the untoward signs of the present. But the Rome for which Mazzini and his compatriots yearned and struggled can hardly fail ultimately to rise to the height of her ancient traditions and of that noble prophecy of Dante: "There is the seat of empire. There never was, and there never will be, a people endowed with such capacity to acquire command, with more vigour to maintain it, and more gentleness in its exercise, than the Italian nation, and especially the Holy Roman people." The lines with which Mr. Swinburne closed his "Dedication" of Songs before Sunrise to Joseph Mazzini are worthy of finding a place side by side with the words of the mediaeval seer:—

Yea, even she as at first, Yea, she alone and none other, Shall cast down, shall build up, shall bring home, Slake earth's hunger and thirst, Lighten, and lead as a mother; First name of the world's names, Rome.



CHAPTER IV

THE FOUNDING OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC

"[Greek: egigneto te logo men daemokratia, ergo de hupo tou protou andros archae]."

"Thus Athens, though still in name a democracy, was in fact ruled by her greatest man."—THUCYDIDES, book ii. chap. 65.

The aim of this work being to trace the outlines only of those outstanding events which made the chief States of the world what they are to-day, we can give only the briefest glance at the remaining events of the Franco-German War and the splendid though hopeless rally attempted by the newly-installed Government of National Defence. Few facts in recent history have a more thrilling interest than the details of the valiant efforts made by the young Republic against the invaders. The spirit in which they were made breathed through the words of M. Picard's proclamation on September 4: "The Republic saved us from the invasion of 1792. The Republic is proclaimed."

Inspiring as was this reference to the great and successful effort of the First Republic against the troops of Central Europe in 1792, it was misleading. At that time Prussia had lapsed into a state of weakness through the double evils of favouritism and a facing-both-ways policy. Now she felt the strength born of sturdy championship of a great principle—that of Nationality—which had ranged nearly the whole of the German race on her side. France, on the other hand, owing to the shocking blunders of her politicians and generals during the war, had but one army corps free, that of General Vinoy, which hastily retreated from the neighbourhood of Mezieres towards Paris on September 2 to 4. She therefore had to count almost entirely on the Garde Mobile, the Garde Nationale, and Francs-tireurs; but bitter experience was to show that this raw material could not be organised in a few weeks to withstand the trained and triumphant legions of Germany.

Nevertheless there was no thought of making peace with the invaders. The last message of Count Palikao to the Chambers had been one of defiance to the enemy; and the Parisian deputies, nearly all of them Republicans, who formed the Government of National Defence, scouted all faint-hearted proposals. Their policy took form in the famous phrase of Jules Favre, Minister of Foreign Affairs: "We will give up neither an inch of our territory nor a stone of our fortresses." This being so, all hope of compromise with the Germans was vain. Favre had interviews with Bismarck at the Chateau de Ferrieres (September 19); but his fine oratory, even his tears, made no impression on the Iron Chancellor, who declared that in no case would an armistice be granted, not even for the election of a National Assembly, unless France agreed to give up Alsace and a part of Lorraine, allowing the German troops also to hold, among other places, Strassburg and Toul.

Obviously, a self-constituted body like the provisional Government at Paris could not accept these terms, which most deeply concerned the nation at large. In the existing temper of Paris and France, the mention of such terms meant war to the knife, as Bismarck must have known. On their side, Frenchmen could not believe that their great capital, with its bulwarks and ring of outer forts, could be taken; while the Germans—so it seems from the Diary of General von Blumenthal—looked forward to its speedy capitulation. One man there was who saw the pressing need of foreign aid. M. Thiers (whose personality will concern us a little later) undertook to go on a mission to the chief Powers of Europe in the hope of urging one or more of them to intervene on behalf of France.

The details of that mission are, of course, not fully known. We can only state here that Russia now repaid Prussia's help in crushing the Polish rebellion of 1863 by neutrality, albeit tinged with a certain jealousy of German success. Bismarck had been careful to dull that feeling by suggesting that she (Russia) should take the present opportunity of annulling the provision, made after the Crimean War, which prevented her from sending war-ships on to the Black Sea; and this was subsequently done, under a thin diplomatic disguise, at the Congress of London (March 1871). Bismarck's astuteness in supporting Russia at this time therefore kept that Power quiet. As for Austria, she undoubtedly wished to intervene, but did not choose to risk a war with Russia, which would probably have brought another overthrow. Italy would not unsheathe her sword for France unless the latter recognised her right to Rome (which the Italian troops entered on September 20). To this the young French Republic demurred. Great Britain, of course, adhered to the policy of neutrality which she at first declared[54].

[Footnote 54: See Debidour, Histoire diplomatique de l'Europe, vol. ii. pp. 412-415. For Bismarck's fears of intervention, especially that of Austria, see his Reminiscences, vol. ii. p. 109 (English edit.); Count Beust's Aus drei Viertel-Jahrhunderten, pt. ii. pp. 361, 395; for Thiers' efforts see his Notes on the years 1870-73 (Paris 1904).]

Accordingly, France had to rely on her own efforts. They were surprisingly great. Before the complete investment of Paris (September 20), a Delegation of the Government of National Defence had gone forth to Tours with the aim of stirring up the provinces to the succour of the besieged capital. Probably the whole of the Government ought to have gone there; for, shut up in the capital, it lost touch with the provinces, save when balloons and carrier-pigeons eluded the German sharpshooters and brought precious news[55]. The mistake was seen in time to enable a man of wondrous energy to leave Paris by balloon on October 7, to descend as a veritable deus ex machina on the faltering Delegation at Tours, and to stir the blood of France by his invective. There was a touch of the melodramatic not only in his apparition but in his speeches. Frenchmen, however, follow a leader all the better if he is a good stage-manager and a clever actor. The new leader was both; but he was something more.

[Footnote 55: M. Gregoire in his Histoire de France, vol. iv. p. 647, states that 64 balloons left Paris during the siege, 5 were captured and 2 lost in the sea; 363 carrier-pigeons left the city and 57 came in. For details of the French efforts see Les Responsabilites de la Defense rationale, by H. Genevois; also The People's War in France, 1870-1871, by Col. L. Hale (The Pall Mall Military Series, 1904), founded on Hoenig's Der Volkskrieg an der Loire.]

Leon Gambetta had leaped to the front rank at the Bar in the closing days of 1868 by a passionate outburst against the coup d'etat, uttered, to the astonishment of all, in a small Court of Correctional Police, over a petty case of State prosecution of a small Parisian paper. Rejecting the ordinary methods of defence, the young barrister flung defiance at Napoleon III. as the author of the coup d'etat and of all the present degradation of France. The daring of the young barrister, who thus turned the tables on the authorities and impeached the head of the State, made a profound impression; it was redoubled by the Southern intensity of his thought and expression. Disdaining all forms of rhetoric, he poured forth a torrent of ideas, clothing them in the first words that came to his facile tongue, enforcing them by blows of the fist or the most violent gestures, and yet, again, modulating the roar of passion to the falsetto of satire or the whisper of emotion. His short, thick-set frame, vibrating with strength, doubled the force of all his utterances. Nor did they lack the glamour of poetry and romance that might be expected from his Italian ancestry. He came of a Genoese stock that had for some time settled in the South of France. Strange fate, that called him now to the front with the aim of repairing the ills wrought to France by another Italian House! In time of peace his power over men would have raised him to the highest positions had his Bohemian exuberance of thought and speech been tameable. It was not. He scorned prudence in moderation at all times, and his behaviour, when the wave of Revolution at last carried him to power, gave point to the taunt of Thiers—"c'est un fou furieux." Such was the man who now brought the quenchless ardour of his patriotism to the task of rousing France. As far as words and energy could call forth armies, he succeeded; but as he lacked all military knowledge, his blind self-confidence was to cost France dear.

Possibly the new levies of the Republic might at some point have pierced the immense circle of the German lines around Paris (for at first the besieging forces were less numerous than the besieged), had not the assailants been strengthened by the fall of Metz (Oct. 27). This is not the place to discuss the culpability of Bazaine for the softness shown in the defence. The voluminous evidence taken at his trial shows that he was very slack in the critical days at the close of August; it is also certain that Bismarck duped him under the pretence that, on certain conditions to be arranged with the Empress Eugenie, his army might be kept intact for the sake of re-establishing the Empire[56]. The whole scheme was merely a device to gain time and keep Bazaine idle, and the German Chancellor succeeded here as at all points in his great game. On October 27, then, 6000 officers, 173,000 rank and file, were constrained by famine to surrender, along with 541 field-pieces and 800 siege guns.

[Footnote 56: Bazaine gives the details from his point of view in his Episodes de la Guerre de 1870 et le Blocus de Metz (Madrid, 1883). One of the go-betweens was a man Regnier, who pretended to come from the Empress Eugenie, then at Hastings; but Bismarck seems to have distrusted him and to have dismissed him curtly. The adventuress, Mme. Humbert, recently claimed that she had her "millions" from this Regnier. A sharp criticism on Bazaine's conduct at Metz is given in a pamphlet, Reponse au Rapport sommaire sur les Operations de l'Armee du Rhin, by one of his Staff Officers. See, too, M. Samuel Denis in his recent work, Histoire Contemporaine (de France).]

This capitulation, the greatest recorded in the history of civilised nations, dealt a death-blow to the hopes of France. Strassburg had hoisted the white flag a month earlier; and the besiegers of these fortresses were free to march westwards and overwhelm the new levies. After gaining a success at Coulmiers, near Orleans (Nov. 9), the French were speedily driven down the valley of the Loire and thence as far west as Le Mans. In the North, at St. Quentin, the Germans were equally successful, as also in Burgundy against that once effective free-lance, Garibaldi, who came with his sons to fight for the Republic. The last effort was made by Bourbaki and a large but ill-compacted army against the enemy's communications in Alsace. By a speedy concentration the Germans at Hericourt, near Belfort, defeated this daring move (imposed by the Government of National Defence on Bourbaki against his better judgment), and compelled him and his hard-pressed followers to pass over into Switzerland (January 30, 1871).

Meanwhile Paris had already surrendered. During 130 days, and that too in a winter of unusual severity, the great city had held out with a courage that neither defeats, schisms, dearth of food, nor the bombardment directed against its southern quarters could overcome. Towards the close of January famine stared the defenders in the face, and on the 28th an armistice was concluded, which put an end to the war except in the neighbourhood of Belfort. That exception was due to the determination of the Germans to press Bourbaki hard, while the French negotiators were not aware of his plight. The garrison of Paris, except 12,000 men charged with the duty of keeping order, surrendered; the forts were placed in the besiegers' hands. When that was done the city was to be revictualled and thereafter pay a war contribution of 200,000,000 francs (L8,000,000). A National Assembly was to be freely elected and meet at Bordeaux to discuss the question of peace. The National Guards retained their arms, Favre maintaining that it would be impossible to disarm them; for this mistaken weakness he afterwards expressed his profound sorrow[57].

[Footnote 57: It of course led up to the Communist revolt. Bismarck's relations to the disorderly elements in Paris are not fully known; but he warned Favre on Jan. 26 to "provoke an emeute while you have an army to suppress it with" (Bismarck in Franco-German War, vol. ii. p. 265).]

Despite the very natural protests of Gambetta and many others against the virtual ending of the war at the dictation of the Parisian authorities, the voice of France ratified their action. An overwhelming majority declared for peace. The young Republic had done wonders in reviving the national spirit: Frenchmen could once more feel the self-confidence which had been damped by the surrenders of Sedan and Metz; but the instinct of self-preservation now called imperiously for the ending of the hopeless struggle. In the hurried preparations for the elections held on February 8, few questions were asked of the candidates except that of peace or war; and it soon appeared that a great majority was in favour of peace, even at the cost of part of the eastern provinces.

Of the 630 deputies who met at Bordeaux on February 12, fully 400 were Monarchists, nearly evenly divided between the Legitimists and Orleanists; 200 were professed Republicans; but only 30 Bonapartists were returned. It is not surprising that the Assembly, which met in the middle of February, should soon have declared that the Napoleonic Empire had ceased to exist, as being "responsible for the ruin, invasion, and dismemberment of the country" (March 1). These rather exaggerated charges (against which Napoleon III. protested from his place of exile, Chislehurst) were natural in the then deplorable condition of France. What is surprising and needs a brief explanation here, is the fact that a monarchical Assembly should have allowed the Republic to be founded.

This paradoxical result sprang from several causes, some of them of a general nature, others due to party considerations, while the personal influence of one man perhaps turned the balance at this crisis in the history of France. We will consider them in the order here named.

Stating the matter broadly, we may say that the present Assembly was not competent to decide on the future constitution of France; and that vague but powerful instinct, which guides representative bodies in such cases, told against any avowedly partisan effort in that direction. The deputies were fully aware that they were elected to decide the urgent question of peace or war, either to rescue France from her long agony, or to pledge the last drops of her life-blood in an affair of honour. By an instinct of self-preservation, the electors, especially in the country districts, turned to the men of property and local influence as those who were most likely to save them from the frothy followers of Gambetta. Accordingly, local magnates were preferred to the barristers and pressmen, whose oratorical and literary gifts usually carry the day in France; and more than 200 noblemen were elected. They were chosen not on account of their nobility and royalism, but because they were certain to vote against the fou furieux.

Then, too, the Royalists knew very well that time would be required to accustom France to the idea of a King, and to adjust the keen rivalries between the older and the younger branches of the Bourbon House. Furthermore, they were anxious that the odium of signing a disastrous peace should fall on the young Republic, not on the monarch of the future. Just as the great Napoleon in 1814 was undoubtedly glad that the giving up of Belgium and the Rhine boundary should devolve on his successor, Louis XVIII., and counted on that as one of the causes undermining the restored monarchy, so now the Royalists intended to leave the disagreeable duty of ceding the eastern districts of France to the Republicans who had so persistently prolonged the struggle. The clamour of no small section of the Republican party for war a outrance still played into the hands of the royalists and partly justified this narrow partisanship. Events, however, were to prove here, as in so many cases, that the party which undertook a pressing duty and discharged it manfully, gained more in the end than those who shirked responsibility and left the conduct of affairs to their opponents. Men admire those who dauntlessly pluck the flower, safety, out of the nettle, danger.

Finally, the influence of one commanding personality was ultimately to be given to the cause of the Republic. That strange instinct which in times of crisis turns the gaze of a people towards the one necessary man, now singled out M. Thiers. The veteran statesman was elected in twenty-six Departments. Gambetta and General Trochu, Governor of Paris, were each elected nine times over. It was clear that the popular voice was for the policy of statesmanlike moderation which Thiers now summed up in his person; and Gambetta for a time retired to Spain.

The name of Thiers had not always stood for moderation. From the time of his youth, when his journalistic criticisms on the politics, literature, art and drama of the Restoration period set all tongues wagging, to the day when his many-sided gifts bore him to power under Louis Philippe, he stood for all that is most beloved by the vivacious sons of France. His early work, The History of the French Revolution, had endeared him to the survivors of the old Jacobin and Girondin parties, and his eager hostility to England during his term of office flattered the Chauvinist feelings that steadily grew in volume during the otherwise dull reign of Louis Philippe. In the main, Thiers was an upholder of the Orleans dynasty, yet his devotion to constitutional principles, the ardour of his Southern temperament,—he was a Marseillais by birth,—and the vivacious egotism that never brooked contradiction, often caused sharp friction with the King and the King's friends. He seemed born for opposition and criticism. Thereafter, his conduct of affairs helped to undermine the fabric of the Second Republic (1848-51). Flung into prison by the minions of Louis Napoleon at the time of the coup d'etat, he emerged buoyant as ever, and took up again the role that he loved so well.

Nevertheless, amidst all the seeming vagaries of Thiers' conduct there emerge two governing principles—a passionate love of France, and a sincere attachment to reasoned liberty. The first was absolute and unchangeable; the second admitted of some variations if the ruler did not enhance the glory of France, and also (as some cynics said) recognise the greatness of M. Thiers. For the many gibes to which his lively talents and successful career exposed him, he had his revenge. His keen glance and incisive reasoning generally warned him of the probable fate of Dynasties and Ministries. Like Talleyrand, whom he somewhat resembled in versatility, opportunism, and undying love of France, he might have said that he never deserted a Government before it deserted itself. He foretold the fall of Louis Philippe under the reactionary Guizot Ministry as, later on, he foretold the fall of Napoleon III. He blamed the Emperor for not making war on Prussia in 1866 with the same unanswerable logic that marked his opposition to the mad rush for war in 1870. And yet the war spirit had been in some sense strengthened by his own writings. His great work, The History of the Consulate and Empire, which appeared from 1845 to 1862—the last eight volumes came out during the Second Empire—was in the main a glorification of the First Napoleon. Men therefore asked with some impatience why the panegyrist of the uncle should oppose the supremacy of the nephew; and the action of the crowd in smashing the historian's windows after his great speech against the war of 1870 cannot be called wholly illogical, even if it erred on the side of Gallic vivacity.

In the feverish drama of French politics Time sometimes brings an appropriate Nemesis. It was so now. The man who had divided the energies of his manhood between parliamentary opposition of a somewhat factious type and the literary cultivation of the Napoleonic legend, was now in the evening of his days called upon to bear a crushing load of responsibility in struggling to win the best possible terms of peace from the victorious Teuton, in mediating between contending factions at Bordeaux and Paris, and, finally, in founding a form of government which never enlisted his whole-hearted sympathy, save as the least objectionable expedient then open to France.

For the present, the great thing was to gain peace with the minimum of sacrifice for France. Who could drive a better bargain than Thiers, the man who knew France so well, and had recently felt the pulse of the Governments of Europe? Accordingly, on the 17th of February, the Assembly named him Head of the Executive Power "until it is based upon the French Constitution." He declined to accept this post until the words "of the French Republic" were substituted for the latter clause. He had every reason for urging this demand. Unlike the Republic of 1848, the strength of which was chiefly, or almost solely, in Paris, the Republic was proclaimed at Lyons, Marseilles, and Bordeaux, before any news came of the overthrow of the Napoleonic dynasty at the capital[58].

[Footnote 58: Seignobos, A Political History of Contemporary Europe, vol. i. p. 187 (Eng. edit.).]

He now entrusted three important portfolios, those for Foreign Affairs, Home Affairs, and Public Instruction, to pronounced Republicans—Jules Favre, Picard, and Jules Simon. Having pacified the monarchical majority by appealing to them to defer all questions respecting the future constitution until affairs were more settled, he set out to meet Bismarck at Versailles.

A disadvantage which almost necessarily besets parliamentary institutions had weakened the French case before the negotiations began. The composition of the Assembly implied a strong desire for peace—a fact which Thiers had needlessly emphasised before he left Bordeaux. On the other hand, Bismarck was anxious to end the war. He knew enough to be uneasy at the attitude of the neutral States; for public opinion was veering round in England, Austria, and Italy to a feeling of keen sympathy for France, and even Russia was restless at the sight of the great military Empire that had sprung into being on her flank. The recent proclamation of the German Empire at Versailles—an event that will be treated in a later chapter—opened up a vista of great developments for the Fatherland, not unmixed with difficulties and dangers. Above all, sharp differences had arisen between him and the military men at the German headquarters, who wished to "bleed France white" by taking a large portion of French Lorraine (including its capital Nancy), a few colonies, and part of her fleet. It is now known that Bismarck, with the same moderation that he displayed after Koeniggraetz, opposed these extreme claims, because he doubted the advisability of keeping Metz, with its large French population. The words in which he let fall these thoughts while at dinner with Busch on February 21 deserve to be quoted:—

If they (the French) gave us a milliard more (L40,000,000) we might perhaps let them have Metz. We would then take 800,000,000 francs, and build ourselves a fortress a few miles further back, somewhere about Falkenberg or Saarbrueck—there must be some suitable spot thereabouts. We should thus make a clear profit of 200,000,000 francs. [N.B.—A milliard = 1,000,000,000 francs.] I do not like so many Frenchmen being in our house against their will. It is just the same with Belfort. It is all French there too. The military men, however, will not be willing to let Metz slip, and perhaps they are right[59].

[Footnote 59: Busch, Bismarck in the Franco-German War, vol. ii. p. 341.]

A sharp difference of opinion had arisen between Bismarck and Moltke on this question, and the Emperor Wilhelm intervened in favour of Moltke. That decided the question of Metz against Thiers despite his threat that this might lead to a renewal of war. For Belfort, however, the French statesman made a supreme effort. That fortress holds a most important position. Strong in itself, it stands as sentinel guarding the gap of nearly level ground between the spurs of the Vosges and those of the Jura. If that virgin stronghold were handed over to Germany, she would easily be able to pour her legions down the valley of the Doubs and dominate the rich districts of Burgundy and the Lyonnais. Besides, military honour required France to keep a fortress that had kept the tricolour flying. Metz the Germans held, and it was impossible to turn them out. Obviously the case of Belfort was on a different footing. In his conference of February 24, Thiers at last defied Bismarck in these words: "No; I will never yield Belfort and Metz in the same breath. You wish to ruin France in her finances, in her frontiers. Well! Take her. Conduct her administration, collect her revenues, and you will have to govern her in the face of Europe—if Europe permits[60]."

[Footnote 60: G. Hanotaux, Contemporary France, vol i. p. 124 (Eng. edit.). This work is the most detailed and authoritative that has yet appeared on these topics. See, too, M. Samuel Denis' work, Histoire Contemporaine.]

Probably this defiance had less weight with the Iron Chancellor than his conviction, noticed above, that to bring two entirely French towns within the German Empire would prove a source of weakness; beside which his own motto, Beati possidentes, told with effect in the case of Belfort. That stronghold was accordingly saved for France. Thiers also obtained a reduction of a milliard from the impossible sum of six milliards first named for the war indemnity due to Germany; in this matter Jules Favre states that British mediation had been of some avail. If so, it partly accounts for the hatred of England which Bismarck displayed in his later years. The Preliminaries of Peace were signed at Versailles on February 26.

One other matter remained. The Germans insisted that, if Belfort remained to France, part of their army should enter Paris. In vain did Thiers and Jules Favre point out the irritation that this would cause and the possible ensuing danger. The German Emperor and his Staff made it a point of honour, and 30,000 of their troops accordingly marched in and occupied for a brief space the district of the Champs Elysees. The terms of peace were finally ratified in the Treaty of Frankfurt (May 10, 1871), whereby France ceded Alsace and part of Lorraine, with a population of some 1,600,000 souls, and underwent the other losses noted above. Last but not least was the burden of supporting the German army of occupation that kept its grip on the north-east of France until, as the instalments came in, the foreign troops were proportionately drawn away eastwards. The magnitude of these losses and burdens had already aroused cries of anguish in France. The National Assembly at Bordeaux, on first hearing the terms, passionately confirmed the deposition of Napoleon III.; while the deputies from the ceded districts lodged a solemn protest against their expatriation (March 1). Some of the advanced Republican deputies, refusing to acknowledge the cession of territory, resigned their seats in the Assembly. Thus there began a schism between the Radicals, especially those of Paris, and the Assembly, which was destined to widen into an impassable gulf. Matters were made worse by the decision of the Assembly to sit, not at the capital, but at Versailles, where it would be free from the commotions of the great city. Thiers himself declared in favour of Versailles; there the Assembly met for the first time on March 20, 1871.

A conflict between this monarchical Assembly and the eager Radicals of Paris perhaps lay in the nature of things. The majority of the deputies looked forward to the return of the King (whether the Comte de Chambord of the elder Bourbons, or the Comte de Paris of the House of Orleans) as soon as France should be freed from the German armies of occupation and the spectre of the Red Terror. Some of their more impatient members openly showed their hand, and while at Bordeaux began to upbraid Thiers for his obstinate neutrality on this question. For his part, the wise old man had early seen the need of keeping the parties in check. On February 17 he begged them to defer questions as to the future form of government, working meanwhile solely for the present needs of France, and allowing future victory to be the meed of that party which showed itself most worthy of trust. "Can there be any man" (he exclaimed) "who would dare learnedly to discuss the articles of the Constitution, while our prisoners are dying of misery far away, or while our people, perishing of hunger, are obliged to give their last crust to the foreign soldiers?" A similar appeal on March led to the informal truce on constitutional questions known as the Compact of Bordeaux. It was at best an uncertain truce, certain to be broken at the first sign of activity on the Republican side.

That activity was now put forth by the "Reds" of Paris. It would take us far too long to describe the origins of the municipal socialism which took form in the Parisian Commune of 1871. The first seeds of that movement had been sown by its prototype of 1792-93, which summed up all the daring and vigour of the revolutionary socialism of that age. The idea had been kept alive by the "National Workshops" of 1848, whose institution and final suppression by the young Republic of that year had been its own undoing.

History shows, then, that Paris, as the head of France, was accustomed to think and act vigorously for herself in time of revolution. But experience proved no less plainly that the limbs, that is, the country districts, generally refused to follow the head in these fantastic movements. Hence, after a short spell of St. Vitus' activity, there always came a time of strife, followed only too often by torpor, when the body reduced the head to a state of benumbed subjection. The triumph of rural notions accounts for the reactions of 1831-47, and 1851-70. Paris having once more regained freedom of movement by the fall of the Second Empire on September 4, at once sought to begin her politico-social experiments, and, as we pointed out, only the promptitude of the "moderates," when face to face with the advancing Germans, averted the catastrophe of a socialistic regime in Paris during the siege. Even so, the Communists made two determined efforts to gain power; the former of these, on October 31, nearly succeeded. Other towns in the centre and south, notably Lyons, were also on the brink of revolutionary socialism, and the success of the movement in Paris might conceivably have led to a widespread trial of the communal experiment. The war helped to keep matters in the old lines.

But now, the feelings of rage at the surrender of Paris and the cession of the eastern districts of France, together with hatred of the monarchical assembly that flouted the capital by sitting at the abode of the old Kings of France, served to raise popular passion to fever heat. The Assembly undoubtedly made many mistakes: it authorised the payment of rents and all other obligations in the capital for the period of siege as if in ordinary times, and it appointed an unpopular man to command the National Guards of Paris. At the close of February the National Guards formed a Central Committee to look after their interests and those of the capital; and when the Executive of the State sent troops of the line to seize their guns parked on Montmartre, the Nationals and the rabble turned out in force. The troops refused to act against the National Guards, and these murdered two Generals, Lecomte and Thomas (March 18). Thiers and his Ministers thereupon rather tamely retired to Versailles, and the capital fell into the hands of the Communists. Greater firmness at the outset might have averted the horrors that followed.

The Communists speedily consulted the voice of the people by elections conducted in the most democratic spirit. In many respects their programme of municipal reforms marked a great improvement on the type of town-government prevalent during the Empire. That was, practically, under the control of the imperial prefets. The Communists now asserted the right of each town to complete self-government, with the control of its officials, magistrates, National Guards, and police, as well as of taxation, education, and many other spheres of activity. The more ambitious minds looked forward to a time when France would form a federation of self-governing Communes, whose delegates, deciding matters of national concern, would reduce the executive power to complete subservience. At bottom this Communal Federalism was the ideal of Rousseau and of his ideal Cantonal State.

By such means, they hoped, the brain of France would control the body, the rural population inevitably taking the position of hewers of wood and drawers of water, both in a political and material sense. Undoubtedly the Paris Commune made some intelligent changes which pointed the way to reforms of lasting benefit; but it is very questionable whether its aims could have achieved permanence in a land so very largely agricultural as France then was. Certainly it started its experiment in the worst possible way, namely, by defying the constituted authorities of the nation at large, and by adopting the old revolutionary calendar, and the red flag, the symbol of social revolution. Thenceforth it was an affair of war to the knife.

The National Government, sitting at Versailles, could not at first act with much vigour. Many of the line regiments sympathised with the National Guards of Paris: these were 200,000 strong, and had command of the walls and some of the posts to the south-west of Paris. The Germans still held the forts to the north and east of the capital, and refused to allow any attack on that side. It has even been stated that Bismarck favoured the Communists; but this is said to have resulted from their misreading of his promise to maintain a friedlich (peaceful) attitude, as if it were freundlich (friendly)[61]. The full truth as to Bismarck's relations to the Commune is not known. The Germans, however, sent back a force of French prisoners, and these with other troops, after beating back the Communist sortie of April 3, began to threaten the defences of the city. The strife at once took on a savage character, as was inevitable after the murder of two Generals in Paris. The Versailles troops, treating the Communists as mere rebels, shot their chief officers. Thereupon the Commune retaliated by ordering the capture of hostages, and by seizing the Archbishop of Paris, and several other ecclesiastics (April 5). It also decreed the abolition of the budget for Public Worship and the confiscation of clerical and monastic property throughout France—a proposal which aroused ridicule and contempt.

[Footnote 61: Debidour, Histoire diplomatique de l'Europe, vol. ii. p. 438-440.]

It would be tedious to dwell on the details of this terrible strife. Gradually the regular forces overpowered the National Guards of Paris, drove them from the southern forts, and finally (May 21) gained a lodgment within the walls of Paris at the Auteuil gate. Then followed a week of street-fighting and madness such as Europe had not seen since the Peninsular War. "Room for the people, for the bare-armed fighting men. The hour of the revolutionary war has struck." This was the placard posted throughout Paris on the 22nd, by order of the Communist chief, Delescluze. And again, "After the barricades, our houses; after our houses, our ruins." Preparations were made to burn down a part of Central Paris to delay the progress of the Versaillese. Rumour magnified this into a plan of wholesale incendiarism, and wild stories were told of petroleuses flinging oil over buildings, and of Communist firemen ready to pump petroleum. A squad of infuriated "Reds" rushed off and massacred the Archbishop of Paris and six other hostages, while elsewhere Dominican friars, captured regulars, and police agents fell victims to the rage of the worsted party.

Madness seemed to have seized on the women of Paris. Even when the men were driven from barricades by weight of numbers or by the capture of houses on their flank, these creatures fought on with the fury of despair till they met the death which the enraged linesmen dealt out to all who fought, or seemed to have fought. Simpson, the British war correspondent, tells how he saw a brutal officer tear the red cross off the arm of a nurse who tended the Communist wounded, so that she might be done to death as a fighter[62]. Both sides, in truth, were maddened by the long and murderous struggle, which showed once again that no strife is so horrible as that of civil war. On Sunday, May 28, the last desperate band was cut down at the Cemetery Pere-Lachaise, and fighting gave way to fusillades. Most of the chiefs perished without the pretence of trial, and the same fate befel thousands of National Guards, who were mown down in swathes and cast into trenches. In the last day of fighting, and the horrible time that followed, 17,000 Parisians are said to have perished[63]. Little by little, law reasserted her sway, but only to doom 9600 persons to heavy punishment. Not until 1879 did feelings of mercy prevail, and then, owing to Gambetta's powerful pleading, an amnesty was passed for the surviving Communist prisoners.

[Footnote 62: The Autobiography of William Simpson (London, 1903), p. 261.]

[Footnote 63: G. Hanotaux, Contemporary France, p. 225. For further details see Lissagaray's History of the Commune; also personal details in Washburne's Recollections of a Minister to France, 1869-1877, vol. ii. chaps, ii.-vii.]

The Paris Commune affords the last important instance of a determined rising in Europe against a civilised Government. From this statement we of course except the fitful efforts of the Carlists in Spain; and it is needless to say that the risings of the Bulgarians and other Slavs against Turkish rule have been directed against an uncivilised Government. The absence of revolts in the present age marks it off from all that have preceded, and seems to call for a brief explanation. Obviously, there is no lack of discontent, as the sequel will show. Finland, portions of Caucasia, and all the parts of the once mighty realm of Poland which have fallen to Russia and Prussia, now and again heave with anger and resentment. But these feelings are suppressed. They do not flame forth, as was the case in Poland as late as the year 1863. What is the reason for this? Mainly, it would seem, the enormous powers given to the modern organised State by the discoveries of mechanical science and the triumphs of the engineer. Telegraphy now flashes to the capital the news of a threatening revolt in the hundredth part of the time formerly taken by couriers with their relays of horses. Fully as great is the saving of time in the transport of large bodies of troops to the disaffected districts. Thus, the all-important factors that make for success—force, skill, and time—are all on the side of the central Governments[64].

[Footnote 64: See Turkey in Europe, by "Odysseus" (p. 130), for the parallel instance of the enhanced power of the Sultan Abdul Hamid owing to the same causes.]

The spread of constitutional rule has also helped to dispel discontent—or, at least, has altered its character. Representative government has tended to withdraw disaffection from the market-place, the purlieus of the poor, and the fastnesses of the forest, and to focus it noisily but peacefully in the columns of the Press and the arena of Parliament. The appeal now is not so much to arms as to argument; and in this new sphere a minority, provided that it is well organised and persistent, may generally hope to attain its ends. Revolt, even if it take the form of a refusal to pay taxes, is therefore an anachronism under a democracy; unless, as in the case of the American Civil War, two great sections of the country are irreconcilably opposed.

The fact, however, that there has been no widespread revolt in Russia since the year 1863, shows that democracy has not been the chief influence tending to dissolve or suppress discontent. As we shall see in a later chapter, Russia has defied constitutionalism and ground down alien races and creeds; yet (up to the year 1904) no great rising has shaken her autocratic system to its base. This seems to prove that the immunity of the present age in regard to insurrections is due rather to the triumphs of mechanical science than to the progress of democracy. The fact is not pleasing to contemplate; but it must be faced. So also must its natural corollary: that the minority, if rendered desperate, may be driven to arm itself with new and terrible engines of destruction in order to shatter that superiority of force with which science has endowed the centralised Governments of to-day.

Certain it is that desperation, perhaps brought about by a sense of helplessness in face of an armed nation, was one of the characteristics of the Paris Commune, as it was also of Nihilism in Russia. In fact the Communist effort of 1871 may be termed a belated attempt on the part of a daring minority to dominate France by seizing the machinery of government at Paris. The success of the Extremists of 1793 and 1848 in similar experiments—not to speak of the Communistic rising of Babeuf in 1797—was only temporary; but doubtless it encouraged the "Reds" of 1871 to make their mad bid for power. Now, however, the case was very different. France was no longer a lethargic mass, dominated solely by the eager brain of Paris. The whole country thrilled with political life. For the time, the provinces held the directing power, which had been necessarily removed from the capital; and—most powerful motive of all—they looked on the Parisian experiment as gross treason to la patrie, while she lay at the feet of the Germans. Thus, the very motives which for a space lent such prestige and power to the Communistic Jacobins of 1793 told against their imitators in 1871.

The inmost details of their attempt will perhaps never be fully known; for too many of the actors died under the ruins of the building they had so heedlessly reared. Nevertheless, it is clear that the Commune was far from being the causeless outburst that it has often been represented. In part it resulted from the determination of the capital to free herself from the control of the "rurals" who dominated the National Assembly; and in that respect it foreshadowed, however crudely, what will probably be the political future of all great States, wherein the urban population promises altogether to outweigh and control that of the country. Further, it should be remembered that the experimenters of 1871 believed the Assembly to have betrayed the cause of France by ceding her eastern districts, and to be on the point of handing over the Republic to the Monarchists. A fit of hysteria, or hypochondria, brought on by the exhausting siege and by exasperation at the triumphal entry of the Germans, added the touch of fury which enabled the Radicals of Paris to challenge the national authorities and thereafter to persist in their defiance with French logicality and ardour.

France, on the other hand, looked on the Communist movement at Paris and in the southern towns as treason to the cause of national unity, when there was the utmost need of concord. Thus on both sides there were deplorable misunderstandings. In ordinary times they might have been cleared away by frank explanations between the more moderate leaders; but the feverish state of the public mind forbade all thoughts of compromise, and the very weakness brought on by the war sharpened the fit of delirium which will render the spring months of the year 1871 for ever memorable even in the thrilling annals of Paris.



CHAPTER V

THE FOUNDING OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC (continued)

The seemingly suicidal energy shown in the civil strifes at Paris served still further to depress the fortunes of France. On the very day when the Versailles troops entered the walls of Paris, Thiers and Favre signed the treaty of peace at Frankfurt. The terms were substantially those agreed on in the preliminaries of February, but the terms of payment of the indemnity were harder than before. Resistance was hopeless. In truth, the Iron Chancellor had recently used very threatening language: he accused the French Government of bad faith in procuring the release of a large force of French prisoners, ostensibly for the overthrow of the Commune, but really in order to patch up matters with the "Reds" of Paris and renew the war with Germany. Misrepresentations and threats like these induced Thiers and Favre to agree to the German demands, which took form in the Treaty of Frankfurt (May 10, 1871).

Peace having been duly ratified on the hard terms[65], it remained to build up France almost de nova. Nearly everything was wanting. The treasury was nearly empty, and that too in face of the enormous demands made by Germany. It is said that in February 1871, the unhappy man who took up the Ministry of Finance, carried away all the funds of the national exchequer in his hat. As Thiers confessed to the Assembly, he had, for very patriotism, to close his eyes to the future and grapple with the problems of every day as they arose. But he had faith in France, and France had faith in him. The French people can perform wonders when they thoroughly trust their rulers. The inexhaustible wealth inherent in their soil, the thrift of the peasantry, and the self-sacrificing ardour shown by the nation when nerved by a high ideal, constituted an asset of unsuspected strength in face of the staggering blows dealt to French wealth and credit. The losses caused by the war, the Commune, and the cession of the eastern districts, involved losses that have been reckoned at more than L614,000,000. Apart from the 1,597,000 inhabitants transferred to German rule, the loss of population due to the war and the civil strifes has been put as high as 491,000 souls[66].

[Footnote 65: They included the right to hold four more Departments until the third half milliard (L20,000,000, that is, L60,000,000 in all) had been paid. A commercial treaty on favourable terms, those of the "most favoured nation," was arranged, as also an exchange of frontier strips near Luxemburg and Belfort. Germany acquired Elsass (Alsace) and part of Lorraine, free of all their debts.

We may note here that the Anglo-French Treaty of Commerce arranged in 1860 with Napoleon largely by the aid of Cobden, was not renewed by the French Republic, which thereafter began to exclude British goods. Bismarck forced France at Frankfurt to concede favourable terms to German products. England was helpless. For this subject, see Protection in France, by H.O. Meredith (1905).]

[Footnote 66: Quoted by M. Hanotaux, Contemporary France, vol. i. pp. 323-327.]

Yet France flung herself with triumphant energy into the task of paying off the invaders. At the close of June 1871, a loan for two milliards and a quarter (L90,000,000) was opened for subscription, and proved to be an immense success. The required amount was more than doubled. By means of the help of international banks, the first half milliard of the debt was paid off in July 1871, and Normandy was freed from the burden of German occupation. We need not detail the dates of the successive payments. They revealed the unsuspected vitality of France and the energy of her Government and financiers. In March 1873, the arrangements for the payment of the last instalment were made, and in the autumn of that year the last German troops left Verdun and Belfort. For his great services in bending all the powers of France to this great financial feat, Thiers was universally acclaimed as the Liberator of the Territory.

Yet that very same period saw him overthrown. To read this riddle aright, we must review the outlines of French internal politics. We have already referred to the causes that sent up a monarchical majority to the National Assembly, the schisms that weakened the action of that majority, and the peculiar position held by M. Thiers, an Orleanist in theory, but the chief magistrate of the French Republic. No more paradoxical situation has ever existed; and its oddity was enhanced by the usually clear-cut logicality of French political thought. Now, after the war and the Commune, the outlook was dim, even to the keenest sight. One thing alone was clear, the duty of all citizens to defer raising any burning question until law, order, and the national finances were re-established. It was the perception of this truth that led to the provisional truce between the parties known as the Compact of Bordeaux. Flagrantly broken by the "Reds" of Paris in the spring of 1871, that agreement seemed doomed. The Republic itself was in danger of perishing as it did after the socialistic extravagances of the Revolution of 1848. But Thiers at once disappointed the monarchists by stoutly declaring that he would not abet the overthrow of the Republic: "We found the Republic established, as a fact of which we are not the authors; but I will not destroy the form of government which I am now using to restore order. . . . When all is settled, the country will have the liberty to choose as it pleases in what concerns its future destinies[67]." Skilfully pointing the factions to the future as offering a final reward for their virtuous self-restraint, this masterly tactician gained time in which to heal the worst wounds dealt by the war.

[Footnote 67: Speech of March 27, 1871.]

But it was amidst unending difficulties. The Monarchists, eager to emphasise the political reaction set in motion by the extravagances of the Paris Commune, wished to rid themselves at the earliest possible time of this self-confident little bourgeois who seemed to stand alone between them and the realisation of their hopes. Their more unscrupulous members belittled his services and hinted that love of power alone led him to cling to the Republic, and thus belie his political past. Then, too, the Orleans princes, the Duc d'Aumale and the Prince de Joinville, the surviving sons of King Louis Philippe, took their seats as deputies for the Oise and Haute-Marne Departments, thus keeping the monarchical ideal steadily before the eye of France. True, the Duc d'Aumale had declared to the electorate that he was ready to bow before the will of France whether it decided for a Constitutional Monarchy or a Liberal Republic; and the loyalty with which he served his country was destined to set the seal of honesty on a singularly interesting career. But there was no guarantee that the Chamber would not take upon itself to interpret the will of France and call from his place of exile in London the Comte de Paris, son of the eldest descendant of Louis Philippe, around whom the hopes of the Orleanists centred.

Had Thiers followed his earlier convictions and declared for such a Restoration, it might quite conceivably have come about without very much resistance. But early in the year 1871, or perhaps after the fall of the Empire, he became convinced that France could not heal her grievous wounds except under a government that had its roots deep in the people's life. Now, the cause of monarchy in France was hopelessly weakened by schisms. Legitimists and Orleanists were at feud ever since, in 1830, Louis Philippe, so the former said, cozened the rightful heir out of his inheritance; and the efforts now made to fuse the claims of the two rival branches remained without result, owing to the stiff and dogmatic attitude of the Comte de Chambord, heir to the traditions of the elder branch. A Bonapartist Restoration was out of the question. Yet all three sections began more and more to urge their claims. Thiers met them with consummate skill. Occasionally they had reason to resent his tactics as showing unworthy finesse; but oftener they quailed before the startling boldness of his reminders that, as they constituted the majority of the deputies of France, they might at once undertake to restore the monarchy—if they could. "You do not, and you cannot, do so. There is only one throne and it cannot have three occupants[68]." Or, again, he cowed them by the sheer force of his personality: "If I were a weak man, I would flatter you," he once exclaimed. In the last resort he replied to their hints of his ambition and self-seeking by offering his resignation. Here again the logic of facts was with him. For many months he was the necessary man, and he and they knew it.

[Footnote 68: De Mazade, Thiers, p. 467. For a sharp criticism of Thiers, see Samuel Denis' Histoire Contemperaine (written from the royalist standpoint).]

But, as we have seen, there came a time when the last hard bargains with Bismarck as to the payment of the war debt neared their end; and the rapier-play between the Liberator of the Territory and the parties of the Assembly also drew to a close. In one matter he had given them just cause for complaint. As far back as November 13, 1872 (that is, before the financial problem was solved), he suddenly and without provocation declared from the tribune of the National Assembly that it was time to establish the Republic. The proposal was adjourned, but Thiers had damaged his influence. He had broken the "Compact of Bordeaux" and had shown his hand. The Assembly now knew that he was a Republican. Finally, he made a dignified speech to the Assembly, justifying his conduct in the past, appealing from the verdict of parties to the impartial tribunal of History, and prophesying that the welfare of France was bound up with the maintenance of the Conservative Republic. The Assembly by a majority of fourteen decided on a course of action that he disapproved, and he therefore resigned (May 24, 1873).

It seems that History will justify his appeal to her tribunal. Looking, not at the occasional shifts that he used in order to disunite his opponents, but rather at the underlying motives that prompted his resolve to maintain that form of government which least divided his countrymen, posterity has praised his conduct as evincing keen insight into the situation, a glowing love for France before which all his earliest predilections vanished, and a masterly skill in guiding her from the abyss of anarchy, civil war, and bankruptcy that had but recently yawned at her feet. Having set her upon the path of safety, he now betook himself once more to those historical and artistic studies which he loved better than power and office. It is given to few men not only to write history but also to make history; yet in both spheres Thiers achieved signal success. Some one has dubbed him "the greatest little man known to history." Granting even that the paradox is tenable, we may still assert that his influence on the life of France exceeded that of many of her so-called heroes.

In fact, it would be difficult to point out in any country during the Nineteenth Century, since the time of Bonaparte's Consulate, a work of political, economic, and social renovation greater than that which went on in the two years during which Thiers held the reins of power. Apart from the unparalleled feat of paying off the Germans, the Chief of the Executive breathed new vigour into the public service, revived national spirit in so noteworthy a way as to bring down threats of war from German military circles in 1872 (to be repeated more seriously in 1875), and placed on the Statute Book two measures of paramount importance. These were the reform of Local Government and the Army Bill.

These measures claim a brief notice. The former of them naturally falls into two parts, dealing severally with the Commune and the Department. These are the two all-important areas in French life. In rural districts the Commune corresponds to the English parish; it is the oldest and best-defined of all local areas. In urban districts it corresponds with the municipality or township. The Revolutionists of 1790 and 1848 had sought to apply the principle of manhood suffrage to communal government; but their plans were swept away by the ensuing reactions, and the dawn of the Third Republic found the Communes, both rural and urban, under the control of the prefets and their subordinates. We must note here that the office of prefet, instituted by Bonaparte in 1800, was designed to link the local government of the Departments closely to the central power: this magistrate, appointed by the Executive at Paris, having almost unlimited control over local affairs throughout the several Departments. Indeed, it was against the excessive centralisation of the prefectorial system that the Parisian Communists made their heedless and unmeasured protest. The question having thus been thrust to the front, the Assembly brought forward (April 1871) a measure authorising the election of Communal Councils elected by every adult man who had resided for a year in the Commune. A majority of the Assembly wished that the right of choosing mayors should rest with the Communal Councils, but Thiers, browbeating the deputies by his favourite device of threatening to resign, carried an amendment limiting this right to towns of less than 20,000 inhabitants. In the larger towns, and in all capitals of Departments, the mayors were to be appointed by the central power. Thus the Napoleonic tradition in favour of keeping local government under the oversight of officials nominated from Paris was to some extent perpetuated even in an avowedly democratic measure.

Paris was to have a Municipal Council composed of eighty members elected by manhood suffrage from each ward; but the mayors of the twenty arrondissements, into which Paris is divided, were, and still are, appointed by the State; and here again the control of the police and other extensive powers are vested in the Prefet of the Department of the Seine, not in the mayors of the arrondissements or the Municipal Council. The Municipal or Communal Act of 1871, then, is a compromise—on the whole a good working compromise—between the extreme demands for local self-government and the Napoleonic tradition, now become an instinct with most Frenchmen in favour of central control over matters affecting public order[69].

[Footnote 69: On the strength of this instinct see Mr. Bodley's excellent work, France, vol. i. pp. 32-42. etc. For the Act, see Hanotaux op. cit. pp. 236-238.]

The matter of Army Reform was equally pressing. Here, again, Thiers had the ground cleared before him by a great overturn, like that which enabled Bonaparte in his day to remodel France, and the builders of Modern Prussia—Stein, Scharnhorst, and Hardenberg—to build up their State from its ruins. In particular, the inefficiency of the National Guards and of the Garde Mobile made it easy to reconstruct the French Army on the system of universal conscription in a regular army, the efficiency of which Prussia had so startlingly displayed in the campaigns of Koeniggraetz (Sadowa) and Sedan. Thiers, however, had no belief in a short service system with its result of a huge force of imperfectly trained troops: he clung to the old professional army; and when that was shown to be inadequate to the needs of the new age, he pleaded that the period of compulsory service should be, not three, but five years. On the Assembly demurring to the expense and vital strain for the people which this implied, he declared with passionate emphasis that he would resign unless the five years were voted. They were voted (June 10, 1872). At the same time, the exemptions, so numerous during the Second Empire, were curtailed and the right of buying a substitute was swept away. After five years' service with the active army were to come four years with the reserve of the active army, followed by further terms in the territorial army. The favour of one year's service instead of five was to be accorded in certain well-defined cases, as, for instance, to those who had distinguished themselves at the Lycees, or highest grade public schools. Such was the law which was published on July 27, 1872[70].

[Footnote 70: Hanotaux, op. cit. pp. 452-465.]

The sight of a nation taking on itself this heavy blood-tax (heavier than that of Germany, where the time of service with the colours was only for three years) aroused universal surprise, which beyond the Rhine took the form of suspicion that France was planning a war of revenge. That feeling grew in intensity in military circles in Berlin three years later, as the sequel will show. Undaunted by the thinly-veiled threats that came from Germany, France proceeded with the tasks of paying off her conquerors and reorganising her own forces; so that Thiers on his retirement from office could proudly point to the recovery of French credit and prestige after an unexampled overthrow.

In feverish haste, the monarchical majority of the National Assembly appointed Marshal MacMahon to the Presidency (May 24, 1873). They soon found out, however, the impossibility of founding a monarchy. The Comte de Paris, in whom the hopes of the Orleanists centred, went to the extreme of self-sacrifice, by visiting the Comte de Chambord, the Legitimist "King" of France, and recognising the validity of his claims to the throne. But this amiable pliability, while angering very many of the Orleanists, failed to move the monarch-designate by one hair's-breadth from those principles of divine right against which the more liberal monarchists always protested. "Henri V." soon declared that he would neither accept any condition nor grant a single guarantee as to the character of his future rule. Above all, he declared that he would never give up the white flag of the ancien regime. In his eyes the tricolour, which, shortly after the fall of the Bastille, Louis XVI. had recognised as the flag of France, represented the spirit of the Great Revolution, and for that great event he had the deepest loathing. As if still further to ruin his cause, the Count announced his intention of striving with all his might for the restoration of the Temporal Power of the Pope. It is said that the able Bishop of Orleans, Mgr. Dupanloup, on reading one of the letters by which the Comte de Chambord nailed the white flag to the mast, was driven to exclaim, "There! That makes the Republic! Poor France! All is lost."

Thus the attempts at fusion of the two monarchical parties had only served to expose the weaknesses of their position and to warn France of the probable results of a monarchical restoration. That the country had well learnt the lesson appeared in the bye-elections, which in nearly every case went in favour of Republican candidates. Another event that happened early in 1873 further served to justify Thiers' contention that the Republic was the only possible form of government. On January 9, Napoleon III. died of the internal disease which for seven years past had been undermining his strength. His son, the Prince Imperial, was at present far too young to figure as a claimant to the throne.

It is also an open secret that Bismarck worked hard to prevent all possibility of a royalist Restoration; and when the German ambassador at Paris, Count Arnim, opposed his wishes in this matter, he procured his recall and subjected him to a State prosecution. In fact, Bismarck believed that under a Republic France would be powerless in war, and, further, that she could never form that alliance with Russia which was the bugbear of his later days. A Russian diplomatist once told the Duc de Broglie that the kind of Republic which Bismarck wanted to see in France was "une Republique dissolvante."

Everything therefore concurred to postpone the monarchical question, and to prolong the informal truce which Thiers had been the first to bring about. Accordingly, in the month of November, the Assembly extended the Presidency of Marshal MacMahon to seven years—a period therefore known as the Septennate.

Having now briefly shown the causes of the helplessness of the monarchical majority in the matter that it had most nearly at heart, we must pass over subsequent events save as they refer to that crowning paradox—the establishment of a Republican Constitution. This was due to the despair felt by many of the Orleanists of seeing a restoration during the lifetime of the Comte de Chambord, and to the alarm felt by all sections of the monarchists at the activity and partial success of the Bonapartists, who in the latter part of 1874 captured a few seats. Seeking above all things to keep out a Bonaparte, they did little to hinder the formation of a Constitution which all of them looked on as provisional. In fact, they adopted the policy of marking time until the death of the Comte de Chambord—whose hold on life proved to be no less tenacious than on his creed—should clear up the situation. Accordingly, after many diplomatic delays, the Committee which in 1873 had been charged to draw up the Constitution, presented its plan, which took form in the organic laws of February 25, 1875. They may be thus summarised:—

The Legislature consists of two Assemblies—the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, the former being elected by "universal" (or, more properly, manhood) suffrage. The composition of the Senate, as determined by a later law, lies with electoral bodies in each of the Departments; these bodies consist of the national deputies for that Department, the members of their General Councils and District Councils, and delegates from the Municipal Councils. Senators are elected for nine years; deputies to the Chamber of Deputies for four years. The President of the Republic is chosen by the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies sitting together for that purpose. He is chosen for seven years and is eligible for re-election; he is responsible to the Chambers only in case of high treason; he enjoys, conjointly with the members of the two Chambers, the right of proposing laws; he promulgates them when passed and supervises their execution; he disposes of the armed forces of France and has the right of pardon formerly vested in the Kings of France. Conformably to the advice of the Senate he may dissolve the Chamber of Deputies. Each Chamber may initiate proposals for laws, save that financial measures rest solely with the Chamber of Deputies.

The Chambers may decide that the Constitution shall be revised. In that case, they meet together, as a National Assembly, to carry out such revision, which is determined by the bare majority. Each arrondissement, or district of a Department, elects one deputy. From 1885 to 1889 the elections were decided by each Department on a list, but since that time the earlier plan has been revived. We may also add that the seat of government was fixed at Versailles; four years later this was altered in favour of Paris, but certain of the most important functions, such as the election of a new President, take place at Versailles.

Taken as a whole, this Constitution was a clever compromise between the democratic and autocratic principles of government. Having its roots in manhood suffrage, it delegated very extensive powers to the head of the State. These powers are especially noteworthy if we compare them with those of the Ministry. The President commissions such and such a senator or deputy to form a Ministry (not necessarily representing the opinions of the majority of the Chambers); and that Ministry is responsible to the Chambers for the execution of laws and the general policy of the Government; but the President is not responsible to the Chambers, save in the single and very exceptional case of high treason to the State. Obviously, the Assembly wished to keep up the autocratic traditions of the past as well as to leave open the door for a revision of the Constitution at any time favourable to the monarchical cause. That this Constitution did not pave the way for the monarchy was due to several causes. Some we have named above.

Another and perhaps a final cause was the unwillingness or inability of Marshal MacMahon to bring matters to the test of force. Actuated, perhaps, by motives similar to those which kept the Duke of Wellington from pushing matters to an extreme in England in 1831, the Marshal refused to carry out a coup d'etat against the Republican majority sent up to the Chamber of Deputies by the General Election of January 1876. Once or twice he seemed on the point of using force. Thus, in May 1877, he ventured to dissolve the Chamber of Deputies; but the Republican party, led by the impetuous Gambetta, appealed to the country with decisive results. That orator's defiant challenge to the Marshal, either to submit or to resign (se soumettre ou se demettre) was taken up by France, with the result that nearly all the Republican deputies were re-elected. The President recognised the inevitable, and in December of that year charged M. Dufaure to form a Ministry that represented the Republican majority. In January 1879 even, some senatorial elections went against the President, and he accordingly resigned, January 30, 1879.

In the year 1887 the Republic seemed for a time to be in danger owing to the intrigues of the Minister for War, General Boulanger. Making capital out of the difficulties of France, the financial scandals brought home to President Grevy, and his own popularity with the army, the General seemed to be preparing a coup d'etat. The danger increased when the Ministry had to resign office (May 1887). A "National party" was formed, consisting of monarchists, Bonapartists, clericals, and even some crotchety socialists—in fact, of all who hoped to make capital out of the fell of the Parliamentary regime. The malcontents called for a plebiscite as to the form of government, hoping by these means to thrust in Boulanger as dictator to pave the way for the Comte de Paris up to the throne of France. After a prolonged crisis, the scheme ignominiously collapsed at the first show of vigour on the Republican side. When the new Floquet Ministry summoned Boulanger to appear before the High Court of Justice, he fled to Belgium, and shortly afterwards committed suicide.

The chief feature of French political life, if one reviews it in its broad outlines, is the increase of stability. When we remember that that veteran opportunist, Talleyrand, on taking the oath of allegiance to the new Constitution of 1830, could say, "It is the thirteenth," and that no regime after that period lasted longer than eighteen years, we shall be chary of foretelling the speedy overthrow of the Third Republic at any and every period of Ministerial crisis or political ferment. Certainly the Republic has seen Ministries made and unmade in bewilderingly quick succession; but these are at most superficial changes—the real work of administration being done by the hierarchy of permanent officials first established by the great Napoleon. Even so terrible an event as the murder of President Sadi Carnot (June 1894) produced none of the fatal events that British alarmists confidently predicted. M. Casimir Perier was quietly elected and ruled firmly. The same may be said of his successors, MM. Faure and Loubet. Sensible, businesslike men of bourgeois origin, they typify the new France that has grown up since the age when military adventurers could keep their heels on her neck provided that they crowned her brow with laurels. That age would seem to have passed for ever away. A well-known adage says: "It is the unexpected that happens in French politics." To forecast their course is notoriously unsafe in that land of all lands. That careful and sagacious student of French life, Mr. Bodley, believes that the nation at heart dislikes the prudent tameness of Parliamentary rule, and that "the day will come when no power will prevent France from hailing a hero of her choice[71]."