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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 à 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'état, he emerged buoyant as ever, and took up again the rôle 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].

      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 Königgrätz, 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 (£40,000,000) 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 Saarbrück--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].

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

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