ONCE more a National Assembly met for the now unpleasantly familiar task of giving a Constitution to France. It was at least the eleventh time since 1789 that the duty of recasting the Government had been performed, and never under less hopeful auspices than in 1871. It was not until 1875 that the Assembly was to complete its task even partially, and for many years thereafter its work was to be counted as merely provisional and transitory. Yet it was this Assembly, elected under the shadow of Prussian invasion, which was to create the Third Republic: the Government which has lasted longer than any other French Government since 1792, and which confronted the might of the German Titan in 1914 and emerged the victor. In 1871 France still seemed reaching out into the dark for the system that could give her honor and security abroad, simultaneously with the ardently loved domestic liberty, equality, and fraternity.
Bismarck had declined to accept a peace signed only by the self-appointed Government of the National Defense. He demanded that the treaty be ratified by a body freely elected and entitled to speak for the whole of France. After the capitulation of Paris, late in January, it was necessary to hold the elections in a very great hurry in order to liquidate the war. The voting took place February 8, 1871. Seven hundred and fifty deputies were chosen and a mere plurality among the voters sufficed to elect. Paris, the Southeast departments, and the invaded districts chose mostly Republicans of varying degrees of radicalism; but the great masses of the peasantry above all things desired peace. Now Gambetta, the most prominent Republican, had done his uttermost to continue the war. The peasants, therefore, elected in the main men of one or the other type of Monarchists.
The Assembly thus met at Bordeaux with a decided majority in favor of setting up some kind of a king. It would not proclaim the Republic. It simply named Thiers, the most prominent statesman of the day, as "Chief of the Executive Power." The truth was, the Monarchists were very loath to have any new reign begin with the humiliation of signing a disastrous peace with Germany. They expected to discredit the Republicans by forcing that responsibility upon them. The second great fact was that while the Monarchists had a nominal majority, they were still sorely divided among themselves. There were still a few Bonapartists, despite the general execration of the fallen Empire. The plurality of the Monarchists were probably Orléanists but there were enough "Legitimists" (old Bourbon adherents) to make it impossible for the friends of the July Monarchy to force the issue with the Republicans. The Monarchists were at first, therefore, quite willing to spin matters along until they could compose their own differences.
The man of the occasion was Louis Adolphe Thiers. He was of a Marseilles bourgeois family and was already (in 1871) no less than seventy-four years old. He had been famous for decades alike as an historian and a politician. He had been minister and then prime minister to Louis-Philippe, but had fallen out with the "Citizen-King" because he insisted that the monarch should not try to play the personal autocrat. From 1840 to 1863 he had devoted most of his time to literature, but during the wane of the Second Empire he had reëntered political life and soon began to exercise a great influence in the debates of the Chamber. In 1870 he had refused to be swept off his feet by De Gramont's call for war, and was one of the small minority among the deputies who voted against breaking with Prussia. Now that resistance had ceased, he was hailed as the most prominent Liberal in France. More than twenty districts honored him by choosing him as their representative. He preferred to sit for Paris; and almost immediately the Assembly forced on him the dubious honor of being "Chief of the Executive Power" for the period of transition, with the melancholy task of concluding the negotiations with Bismarck, and of putting down with machine-guns and cannon the Paris Commune.
Thiers had hitherto ranked as a leader of considerable, but one could not say of remarkable, ability. He now in his old age came forward as possessing a talent close to genius: he became one of the true saviors and builders of France. Hitherto he had failed to work well with colleagues, because of a constitutional inability to take orders from anybody else. Now, however, responsible only to his conscience, the Assembly, and the nation, he came to the rescue of his afflicted country and served her with all his ripened but not decadent powers. He therefore won a just place "in what is perhaps the highest, as it is certainly the smallest class of statesmen – the class of those to whom their country has had recourse in a great disaster, who have shown in bringing her through the disaster the utmost constancy, courage, devotion, and skill, and who have been rewarded by as much success as the occasion permitted."
It was not until May 10, 1871, that Thiers was able to bring the war with Germany officially to a close by the final treaty signed at Frankfort-on-Main. Of course the struggle with the Commune did not cease until nearly three weeks later. The Germans were still in the Northeastern departments and were not to retire until, by installments, the huge war indemnity was paid. The first task of Thiers's Government was therefore financial. France must pull herself together economically both for the sake of the home situation and to be able to buy the retirement of the Teutons.
To stabilize his position, in August, 1871, Thiers induced the Assembly to pass the so-called "Rivet" law (named for its mover) giving to him the title of "President of the Republic" and the status of a "parliamentary king." The President was supposed to select ministers agreeable to the majority of the Assembly, but to it he was also himself responsible. Thiers always said that the moment the Assembly clearly desired it, he would resign. He took pains, nevertheless, not to be obliged to resign without due cause. He would appear in person on the tribune before the deputies, overpower them with his eloquence, and dominate their debates. The Monarchists soon began to distrust him. On his past record he had been considered a very liberal, but a sincere, Royalist. He was on notoriously bad terms personally with the radical chief, Gambetta. Yet he began presently to show disquieting signs of regarding the divisions in the monarchical parties as insuperable. "The Republic is the Government which divides us the least!" was one of his famous sayings. The majority of the Assembly, therefore, grew very anxious under his leadership; but the national situation was so serious, and Thiers was so indispensable, that for a long time they had to bend to his eloquent proposals and dared not overthrow him.
As stated, the first great task was to pay off the Germans. There were grave doubts as to the ability of France to discharge the debt and to ransom her soil. Bismarck had reckoned on seeing France economically crippled for at least a decade. But Thiers appealed to the solid peasantry and bourgeois of the country, and he did not appeal in vain. Never had the proverbial thrift, the famous "stockings," of the unpretentious classes stood their nation in better stead. France was obligated to pay one billion francs in 1871. She paid two billion. She paid off the remaining three billion by the earlier part of 1873. In September, 1873, the last German soldier quitted the invaded soil. The national loans had been a great success. The second loan had been oversubscribed by four times; and for the final three billions required, the public offered the Government fortythree billions. Such evidences alike of substantial prosperity and of trust in the national future, of course added enormously to the prestige of France abroad and to the self-respect and confidence of the nation at home. The only possible mutterings were in Germany. The debt had been too promptly, too easily discharged! From this time until 1914 are heard the suggestions of the Prussian militarists, and of the later Pan-Germans, that Bismarck had been too lenient and that in the confidently predicted "next war" the Teutons must take pains to "bleed France white."
The other great practical task before Thiers was to reorganize the army. Until the French war-machine was put on a modern scientific basis the country was completely at the mercy of its recent conquerors. The proposals for universal military service, which had been so disastrously refused by the Chambers under the Second Empire, were now brought forward and improved, with much belated willingness to learn from Germanic precept and example. The "Military Law of 1872" was the foundation for that magnificent fighting engine which, under Joffre, Pétain, and Foch, was to stand between world-civilization and barbarism on so many desperate occasions from 1914 to 1918. By this statute all Frenchmen from twenty to forty were liable to personal military service. The active army, the "active reserve," the territorial army, and the "territorial reserve" were all carefully established and delimited. The period of active service was at that time set at five years, but at first there were a good many exemptions for teachers, clergymen, and the sole supporters of families. Also young men who were qualified substantially for university studies need only serve one year. These exemptions were presently to be for the most part canceled, and the actual term was later reduced to three years, and then for a short time to two years. On the eve of the Great War it was to be restored to three years. In any case the principle of the nation trained for arms was never lost. In no country was military service more general than in France during the forty years following 1872. In no country was the discipline more democratic, the relations of officers and men more friendly. In no country were the army and the nation more inseparable. Yet it was to be the army for the service of the nation, and not in the final issue dominating its politics.
What the value of this truly Republican army was to be to the world was not demonstrated until forty-two years after the passage of the military law; but the thanks of America, England, and Italy no less than of France were one day to be tendered the memory of the sage old statesman who saw through the enactment of the army legislation.
These were noteworthy achievements. Thiers was hailed as "Liberator of the Land" when the last Prussians crossed the frontiers. His popularity was very great. Furthermore, it was evident, from the various elections to fill vacancies in the Assembly, that the drift of national feeling was decidedly in favor of a republic. All this, however, made the Royalists in the Assembly feel that they must act speedily or the "Provisional President" would become a "Constitutional President" in very truth. Thiers could not count on the support of the extreme radicals. The survivors of the old Communist elements hated him bitterly for the way he had handled them in 1871. The President on his part had not the least sympathy with propositions for making a "republic" merely the basis for wholesale social and economic reconstruction. "The Republic," he said pithily, "will be conservative or it will cease to be." And when Gambetta made speeches in favor of "the coming into politics of a new social stratum," Thiers promptly called the policy of the other anti-Monarchist chief that of a "raving lunatic." Under these conditions his tenure of power became increasingly uncertain.
However, he charged boldly onward and particularly requested the Assembly to begin on what was its supposedly chief duty – to establish the regular form of government (1872). This the Monarchists were by no means ready to do. They understood well enough that any king who might be enthroned, save by pretty general popular consent, was likely to have a short, turbulent reign and to discredit the whole Royalist cause. The Assembly, therefore, procrastinated and declined to take any real action save to vote that Thiers should henceforth communicate with it only by message, not by mingling freely in the debates. Thiers submitted, although protesting that to ask for a "speech from the throne" from a "little bourgeois" like himself was an absurdity. He ordered his ministers, however, to begin bringing in bills which, if accepted, would have put the Republican Government on a permanent basis. At the same time local elections in Paris seemed to show that the radicals there were again getting the upper hands. The Monarchists took fright, and on May 24, 1873, by a small majority they carried a resolution implying the censure of the Government. Thiers, in accordance with his pledge to the Assembly, did not defy it, although the country was probably upon his side. He retired gracefully. His great work was accomplished. He had restored law, order, and peaceful prosperity to France; had ransomed her soil from the alien; had given her again a formidable army; and had set her along the road to Republicanism, however much against the wishes of the Assembly. He could now sit back and see the Royalists weave their own shroud.
The Monarchist factions now united sufficiently to elect Marshal MacMahon as Provisional President. This general had been considered more unfortunate than blameworthy in the disaster at Sedan. He was a man of upright morals of the old school, an honorable aristocrat in his habits, and sincerely convinced that royalty of some form was the best government for France. The idea, of course, was that he should aid the Assembly to shape events so that a "king" could return, peacefully and amid general acclamations, once more to the throne of St. Louis.
On the side of the Monarchists was all the tremendous Clerical influence. The Church as a political factor had been at a low ebb under the July Monarchy. Under the Second Empire it had again recovered enormous strength. It now found itself bitterly opposed to the "atheistical" Republicans. The French Clericals also had felt terribly outraged by the action of the Italian Government in 1870 in overthrowing the temporal dominion of the Pope at Rome. Armed intervention to restore the Pontiff to his alleged rights in Italy was vehemently agitated, and it was freely suggested that, with a pious "son of the Church" upon a refurbished throne, French armies could be found for the purpose. Clericalism and Monarchism thus entered again into a political alliance, for which the former at least was to pay extremely dearly.
MacMahon appointed as premier an Orléanist nobleman, the Duc de Broglie, with a policy of keeping the Republic from being consolidated and of doing nothing to offend the Church. To clear the way for a return to royalty, De Broglie proceeded to "purify" the public service, to displace prefects and all lesser functionaries who were not after the reactionaries' own hearts. Meantime from a thousand pulpits, and in ten thousand fashionable sitting-rooms, the priests and the pious laity began to extol the coming reign of "Henry V"; that is of the Comte de Chambord, the Bourbon-line pretender. The Monarchists were, indeed, making a remarkable effort to forgive and forget their feuds, and to unite on a single candidate. That candidate was the grandson of Charles X, the Comte de Chambord, born in 1820, who had spent a long life in luxurious exile, mostly at villas owned by the Bourbon family in the Tyrol. The Count was without children, and his next heir would presumably be the Comte de Paris, the successor to the Orléanist claims of Louis- Philippe. Under these circumstances there seemed little to gain by continuing family quarrels. Chambord was becoming an elderly man. Upon his death (if he were king) the Orléanists were bound to come into their own. The Comte de Paris, therefore, in 1873 made a solemn visit to Frohsdorf, in Austria, to announce his formal reconciliation, and to salute Chambord as "the head of the House of France and the sole representative of the Monarchical Party."
This was all very well, although Chambord showed himself decidedly stiff to his kinsman, and the reconciliation was more formal than genuine. However, difficulties soon arose over the character of "Henry V" himself. The pretender, brought up in a narrow circle of Royalist devotees, took his case with enormous seriousness. He was full of high notions worthy of Charles X or even of Louis XIV. He was not willing to take the crown save under conditions which would make him a genuine king in the traditional sense of the term. Nevertheless, the Royalists of the Assembly believed that he would prove amenable. A committee of nine of their party negotiated with him. Hopeful progress was made. The "King" was not to be elected, but the Assembly was to call him to the throne as of hereditary right. He was to have a constitution presented to him by the Assembly, andaccepted graciously by him as King. It was to be a fairly liberal constitution, a considerable improvement over the discarded "Charter" of 1814-48. Everything seemed ready. The Republicans were out of power and seemed helpless. Whether, however, "Henry V" would have had a long reign no man may tell, for now he came to the rescue of his dearest enemies.
It was well understood, so the Orléanist politicians fondly thought, that Chambord would accept the Tricolor flag and not insist on the old white-with-lilies of the Bourbons. All was ready for the solemn entry of the "King" into Paris. The lamps and lanterns for the illumination of the aristocratic mansions and hotels were being manufactured. The state carriages "for their Majesties" were ready. And then Chambord, center of all this devotion, turned and ruined his supporters. The pretender had earlier balked and protested at the idea of being "King of the Revolution," as he said would be the case if he used the Tricolor in his reign. In October, 1873, to the consternation of all his warmest adherents, he issued a letter in which he solemnly declared that he could not under any circumstances take the throne unless it were under the white flag of Henry IV: "received as a sacred deposit from the old king, his grandfather, dying in exile."
The confirmation of this assertion shook the Royalist cause to its foundations. The Tricolor, as all experienced politicians knew, was the symbol for the French people of all that the nation had achieved since 1789. Its removal would create a perfectly gratuitous handicap for the Monarchy. The army would never endure the suggestion. As MacMahon angrily said, "Before the white flag the chassepots [army rifles] will go off of themselves." Besides, the whole incident went far to prove that Chambord was a stubborn, self-willed man, who, like Charles X, would and could learn nothing of what had happened in France, and that he would in any case prove so unamenable to advice as to make a new revolution a certainty. The pretender himself seems to have realized his own limitations, and to have been resolved never to attempt to be king except under wholly favorable conditions. As he stated later in a conversation, "If I had made all the concessions asked of me, I might have recovered the crown, but I should not have remained on the throne six months." This is very possibly true.
The Monarchists were, therefore, very reluctantly thrown back upon themselves. There were vain and disloyal hopes that Chambord would die – the Comte de Paris would then prove very much more possible! But Chambord retained excellent health, and only died in 1883, when the Republic had become firmly established. In disgust, therefore, the majority of the Assembly tried to prolong the Provisional Government in the vain expectation that something lucky would turn up. In MacMahon they had, indeed, a reliable President and they determined to keep him in power as long as possible. Late in 1873 they declared him elected President for seven years (the Septennate), a time sufficient, they hoped, to disentangle the personal snarls in the dynasties.
Unfortunately for the Monarchists the country was clearly growing away from them. The memories of the Commune were ceasing to scare the well-to-do. Gambetta was becoming studiously moderate in his speeches and was showing friendship for the Thiers type of conservative Republicans. The Assembly had been elected to give a permanent government to France. In 1874, and still more loudly in 1875, was arising the question, Was that body a lasting dictatorship in commission? Did it not intend to discharge its sworn duty and then to disband? The Royalist prime minister, De Broglie, indeed, did all that he could to help his cause and curb the Republicans. The vast powers of the centralized administration at Paris were invoked. The nomination of the mayors of communes was taken away from the local councils and again (as before 1871) entrusted to the ministers; that is, to the Royalists. Republican journals were prosecuted on all possible pretexts, and between November, 1873, and November, 1874, no fewer than two hundred such newspapers were punished, something which the continuation of the proclamation of "the state of siege" enabled the Government to do very readily. The word "republic" was stricken from official documents. It was only proper to speak of the "French nation." Nevertheless, as the situation dragged along, the pressure on the Assembly to enact the fundamental laws became irresistible, and with very ill grace at last the deputies acted.
What forced the issue was largely the remarkable tour which Gambetta made in 1874 through France, as "The Traveling Agent for the Republicans," and the signs that he was gaining the sympathy, not merely of the radical working-men, but of the solid bourgeois; and finally the impression made by the elections to the municipal councils held all over the country late in that same year. The results were overwhelmingly pro-Republican; in fact they amounted to the decision of a national plebiscite against the Monarchists. As an additional handicap to the Royalists came the fact that the incessant clamor of the clericals for intervention in behalf of the Pope meant an unprovoked war with Italy, which, under conditions then existing in Europe, might well mean a new war with Germany.
Thus coerced, the Assembly in February, 1875, passed two constitutional laws upon the "Organization of the Senate," and the "Organization of the Public Powers." In July it followed with one upon the "Relations of the Public Powers." These three laws formed what has been often, if improperly, called the "Constitution of 1875." They were slightly modified in 1884, but otherwise they remained the organic law of France up to the time this book was written. The Royalists fought hard against so much as introducing the word "republic" into any one of these highly important documents; but on January 30, 1875, after a fierce debate the so-called Walloon amendment was carried by one vote, using the much-disliked word in the title of the "President of the Republic." By so narrow a margin was the final chasm cleared.
These arrangements of 1875 had the great advantage over earlier French constitutions that they did not represent an elaborate scheme drawn up by political scientists, to present an ideal and immutable system for the government of the nation. They were prepared by men of practical experience; and the Royalists (hoping for a change in the tide later) kept them just as simple as possible. They were a mere stop-gap, their makers expected, before a new arrangement, and consequently they were also left very easy to amend. And yet this system, adopted by haphazard methods, and voted for reluctantly by the majority of those who endorsed it officially, was to outlast by far all the highly articulated creations of the men of 1791, 1795, and 1848.
This book is of course not a treatise on comparative governments; it is enough to state very briefly the main points in the government of the Third Republic.
1. The President of France was to be elected for a term of seven years by the Senate and Chamber of Deputies meeting together in a single "National Assembly" for the purpose. His powers were nominally very large – command of the army, handling of diplomacy, right to propose legislation, to pardon, to negotiate treaties, etc. But he was stripped of nine tenths of the reality of these powers by the requirement that nothing he did was valid save on the counter-signature of ministers responsible collectively and singly to the Chambers. The President thus occupied a position of great dignity, and he represented France on ceremonial occasions, but his direct political influence was almost nil. His main opportunities would come when a cabinet resigned and a new one was forming. If the party groups demanding a share in the new Government were not very well organized, the President could probably have considerable influence in selecting the new list of ministers. But when once a ministry was solidly in power, the President was almost helpless, and it was not the President, but the majority of the lower Chamber, which could dictate a ministerial change. As a British writer said with some sarcasm: "The King of England reigns, but does not govern. The President of the United States governs, though he does not reign. The President of France neither reigns nor governs."
2. The system, tried in 1848, of having only one legislative body had not approved itself. The men of 1875, therefore, created an "Upper House" partly on the model of the British Peers, partly on that of the American Senate. The French Senate contained 300 members. Seventy-five of these were originally chosen for life, the vacancies to be filled by the survivors themselves; but after 1884 all members were declared elective. The remaining senators in any case were chosen for nine years, one third retiring every three years. The election for senators was to take place, not by immediate popular vote, but by a council made up of electors chosen by the local councils of the various communes in a given department. Each of the regular departments was entitled to at least two senators; the larger were entitled to more: Paris (Department of the Seine) received ten. The Senate soon developed into a dignified and influential body. Among its members were not merely prominent politicians, but men distinguished in literature and science. It has been on the whole a most excellent stabilizing force in France, not subject to the sudden shifts and gusts of the lower Chamber and far more sedate and less tumultuous in its proceedings. It has never, however, become the dominant half of the legislature. Ministries are not responsible to it, and seldom have resigned on account of an adverse vote. In a long struggle with the deputies it is practically bound to yield. Nevertheless, the whole influence of the Senate has been good. It has been a distinct force for the better government of the Republic.
3. The Chamber of Deputies contained 597 members (later 610) elected by small districts (arrondissements), by the votes of all adult male citizens. A new election was required every four years, and the Chamber could be dissolved and a general election precipitated by the action of the President of the Republic, although only after winning the consent of the Senate. The Chamber of Deputies was, of course, the mainspring of the Government of France. It had the right to initiate laws, and a ministry suffering from its adverse vote was obliged to resign instantly. The law required that it (of course, along with the Senate) should meet annually in January, and sit for at least five months. The President could adjourn it if he wished, but only for one month; and if he found it needful to proclaim a state of siege (that is, martial law) the Chambers were obliged to assemble almost immediately to head off a possible coup d'état.
The situation, therefore, created by the laws of 1875 was really to lodge the highest political influence in France in the Chamber of Deputies: as a competent writer wisely says, "The separation of executive and legislative authority is only apparent; and the Chambers, especially that of the Deputies, which represents most directly the country, possesses in fact all the power." From this time onward, therefore, France may be said to have become a strictly parliamentary government, her system differing in detail, but not in democratic genius, from the government of Britain by the House of Commons.
The Constitutional Assembly adjourned on the 31st of December, 1875. The elections for the new Senate and Deputies took place early in 1876. Thanks to the more complicated system of voting and the creation of life members, the Monarchists obtained a feeble majority in the Senate, but all the efforts of their ministers could not prevent the return of a Republican majority of nearly 200 to the lower House. MacMahon had to bow to the storm and appoint a Republican ministry to fall in with the popular demand.
But the Monarchists were anything but ready to throw up their game. The Clericals, desperate now for intervention in Rome to restore the Papal Government, strained every nerve in their behalf. The new Republican ministers presented certain bills to curtail the control of the Church over education. The Clericals retaliated with a solemn petition to MacMahon asking him to support the Pope against the Italian Government. In the Chamber of Deputies a resolution was thereupon passed denouncing ultra-clerical agitation, and during the debate Gambetta used the phrase, long famous in all the conflicts between French liberal and French churchman: "Clericalism – there's the enemy!" This resolution brought matters to a climax. The Monarchists were utterly alarmed. They had lost the deputies. The approaching municipal elections might shake their weak hold on the Senate. They had still the presidency and they used their power over MacMahon to induce him to spring what was known as the "Parliamentary Coup d'État" of May 16,1877.
The prime minister was the Republican Jules Simon. He and MacMahon esteemed one another personally. "What a pity," the President is alleged to have told Simon, "that you persist in governing with the Chamber. If you would only consent to do without it, affairs would go on better, and I would keep you as minister just as long as I remained as President.""I am a Republican," answered Simon; "I govern with Parliament and with my party. Otherwise I would not be here.""I know it," said the Marshal – "very unlucky!" Now, however, when all the Monarchists' hopes seemed coming to grief, and when the Papal Nuncio (ambassador) was informing the President that the Vatican would break diplomatic relations with France unless the ministry was changed, MacMahon acted sharply. On this famous "16th of May" he drove Simon from office, and proceeded to summon to power the Duc de Broglie, the darling of the Monarchists and Clericals: thus, of course, deliberately casting defiance into the teeth of the majority of the deputies.
The only thing now possible was an appeal to the electors, unless, indeed, MacMahon was ready for a military revolution, and he was not sure enough of his ground for that. About everything short of sheer military coercion was attempted, however. The Chamber was dissolved, the elections were put off till the last possible moment to allow all kinds of chicanery to be used to catch Royalist votes, and as Edmond About remarked, "The masterpiece of the Broglie Cabinet was to have concentrated in five months all the arbitrary exercise of power which the Imperial despotism had exercised in eighteen years."
MacMahon and Broglie acting together removed civil officials at every turn to get submissive helpers: they prosecuted Republican newspapers on every possible pretext; suspended Republican municipal councils; and (unhappy imitation of the Second Empire) presented "official candidates." As Mac- Mahon announced in a formal proclamation, "My Government will designate to you among the candidates those who alone may make use of my name"; and in another manifesto, "The struggle is between order and disorder; you will vote for the candidates I recommend." This was quite in the style of Charles X or Napoleon III. The clergy rallied behind the official candidates, with all the ardor of Peter the Hermit preaching his crusade. The Republicans were denounced in every circle of the pious; and so once more, to its great sorrow, the Catholic Church of France cast in its lot with a strictly political cause and party – to suffer the inevitable consequences if that cause were beaten.
In the face of the common danger the Republicans forgot their factions and closed their ranks. They now boasted that they were the true conservatives, defending the rights of the sovereign people against the revolutionary schemes of the President and the Clericals. Gambetta threw out the famous warning to MacMahon, "When the country shall have spoken, he must either submit or resign!" Despite frantic Royalist manifestoes, ecclesiastical thunders, and downright official coercion, the answer of the country could not be mistaken. Three hundred and eighteen Republicans were returned, giving that party a firm control of the lower Chamber. MacMahon saw the futility of further resistance. He dismissed De Broglie and called in Republican ministers. The new Chamber promptly quashed the elections of over fifty members, on the ground that the seats had been obtained by unlawful ministerial or clerical pressure. Thus passed the Royalists' last real chance. They were to have a gleam of hope ten years later in the Boulanger incident, but they were never to tighten their fingers upon the Government of France again.
In 1878 the Republicans gained a majority of about fifty in the Senate. MacMahon was now an isolated and disappointed man. He had been an honest and high-minded believer that a limited monarchy was the best government for the nation, and now the nation had clearly repudiated him. Nevertheless, like a stout soldier, he was loath to desert his post. When, however, in 1879 the Republican minister began presenting for his signature decrees punishing certain prominent generals for their acts in 1877, he absolutely refused. The officers, he said, had simply been obeying his own orders, and "if I were to sign, I should not dare to kiss my children afterwards." There was only one thing left for him to do. His term had not expired, but he promptly resigned the presidency (January 30, 1879), and the National Assembly (both Chambers sitting together) promptly elected in his place Jules Grévy, an old Republican chief, while Gambetta was elected president of the lower Chamber. The Republicans were now in complete control of the Government, and in no immediate danger of losing it unless they committed gross blunders. One of their first acts was to decree the immediate transfer of the Chamber from Versailles back to Paris.
Thus, then, very ingloriously, and thanks, to a large extent, to the absurd obstinacy of Chambord, the over-zealousness of the Clericals, and to the ability of about all the Monarchists to make wholesale blunders, the Third Republic was born. It came into power with less éclat possibly than any other government France had witnessed since 1789; its speedy downfall was continually predicted; it was to have many anxious days and discreditable episodes; but it was to weather all the gales, it was even to endure through the Great War, and it was to witness the consolation and glory of France in 1918.