to civil authority. Consequently, in a time of stress he nagged the generals and interfered, and gave free rein to Freycinet to do the same. They upset plans made by experienced generals, and sent civilians to spy over them, with power to retire them from command. They were, moreover, trying to thrust a republic down the throats of a hostile majority of the population, for a large proportion of those not Bonapartists were in favor of a monarchy. The wonder is, therefore, that France was able to do so much. M. de Freycinet was not boasting when he wrote later, "Alone, without allies, without leaders, without an army, deprived for the first time of communication with its capital, it resisted for five months, with improvised resources, a formidable enemy that the regular armies of the Empire, though made up of heroic soldiers, had not been able to hold back five weeks."[3]

CHAPTER III

THE ADMINISTRATION OF ADOLPHE THIERS

February, 1871, to May, 1873

The elections were held in hot haste. The short time allowed before the convening of the Assembly made the usual campaign impossible. It met at Bordeaux on February 13, 1871. The peace party was in very considerable majority, and though Gambetta received the distinction of a multiple election in nine separate districts, Thiers was chosen in twenty-six. The radicals and advocates of guerilla warfare and of a "guerre à outrance" found themselves few in numbers. Many of the representatives had only local or rural reputation. They were new to parliamentary life, and in the majority of cases were averse to a permanent republican form of government. They would have preferred a monarchy, but they were ready to accept a provisional republic which would incur the task of settling the war with Germany and bear the onus of defeat. They were especially suspicious of Paris, and hostile to it as the home of fickleness, of irresponsibility, and of mob rule. They were largely provincial lawyers and rural landed gentry, conservative and clerical, who felt that too much importance had been usurped by the Parisian Government of National Defence.

ADOLPHE THIERS

The new Assembly, therefore, gradually fell into several groups. On the conservative side came the Extreme Right, made up of out-and-out Legitimists, believing in absolutism and the divine right of kings; the Right, composed of monarchists desirous of conciliating the old régime with the demands of modern times and of making it a practical form of government; the Right Centre, consisting of constitutional monarchists and followers of the Orléans branch of the house of Bourbon. Among the anti-republicans the Bonapartists were almost negligible. Next came the Left Centre of conservative Republicans, the republican Left, and the radical Union républicaine, partisans of Gambetta and advanced "reformers."

At the first public session of the Assembly Jules Grévy was chosen presiding officer. A former leader of the opposition to the Empire, he had not participated in affairs since the Fourth of September, and, therefore, had not yet identified himself with any set. Among the Republicans he was averse to Gambetta and remained so even when the latter became moderate. On February 17, Adolphe Thiers, the "peace-maker," was by an almost unanimous vote elected "Chief of the Executive Power of the French Republic." It was he who, thirty years before, had fortified Paris that had now fallen only by famine, who had opposed the war when it might yet have been averted, who had travelled over Europe to defend the interests of France, who had been elected representative by the choice of twenty-six departments.

M. Thiers formed a coalition cabinet representing different shades of political feeling, and in one of his early speeches, on March 10, he formulated a plan of party truce for the purpose of national reorganization. This plan was acquiesced in by the Assembly and bears in history the name of the Compact of Bordeaux (pacte de Bordeaux). France was to continue under a republican government, without injury to the later claims of any party. Thiers, himself, as a former Orléanist, advocated, at least in his relations with the monarchists, a Restoration, with the sine qua non that an attempt should be made at a fusion of the Legitimists and the Orléanists. Meanwhile he was the chief executive official of a republic.

But, even before the formulation of the truce of parties, Thiers was in eager haste to settle the terms of peace with Germany before the expiration of the armistice. The preliminaries were discussed between Thiers and Bismarck at Versailles. The Germans were almost as anxious as the French to see the end of the war, and the objections and delays of Bismarck were partly tactical. Brief successive prolongations of the armistice were obtained, and finally the preliminaries were signed on February 26. Thiers made herculean efforts to keep for France Belfort, which Bismark claimed, and finally succeeded on condition that the German army should occupy Paris from March 1 to the ratification of the preliminaries by the Assembly. France was to give up Alsace and a part of Lorraine, including Metz, and pay an indemnity of five billion francs. German troops were to occupy the conquered districts and evacuate them progressively as the indemnity was paid. The peace discussions afterwards continued at Brussels, and the final treaty was signed at Frankfort on May 10, 1871.

No sooner were the preliminaries signed than Thiers returned post-haste to Bordeaux, and obtained an almost immediate assent (March 1), so that the Germans were obliged to forego a large part of their plans for a triumphal entry into Paris and a review by the Emperor. Only one body of thirty thousand men marched in through one section and, two days later, evacuated the city.

The same meeting which ratified the preliminaries of peace officially proclaimed the expulsion of the imperial dynasty and declared Napoleon III responsible for the invasion, the ruin and dismemberment of France. The same day also beheld the pathetic withdrawal of the representatives of Alsace and of Lorraine, turned over to the conqueror.