Josephine crowned Empress, December 2, 1804, in Notre Dame Cathedral.[Illustration: Josephine crowned Empress, December 2, 1804, in Notre Dame Cathedral.From the painting by David.]
Josephine crowned Empress, December 2, 1804, in Notre Dame Cathedral.[Illustration: Josephine crowned Empress, December 2, 1804, in Notre Dame Cathedral.From the painting by David.]
Alexander had broken away from his agreement and his friendship with the emperor, and had joined the allies. So in 1812 the long-contemplated invasion of Russia began. Of the 678,000 souls recruited chiefly from conquered states, only 80,000 would ever return. Never before had Napoleon fought the elements, and never before met overwhelming defeat! The flames at Moscow, followed by the arctic cold, converted the campaign into a vast tragedy.
With indomitable courage another grand army had filled the vacant places, and was putting down a great uprising in Germany. But his star was waning. An overwhelming defeat at Leipsic was followed by a march upon Paris. And in the spring of 1814, Alexander, the young Russian emperor, the friend who was to aid him in securing an eternal peace for Europe, was dictating the terms of surrender in Paris.
Within a week Napoleon had abdicated. The title of emperor he was permitted to retain, but the empire which he was to leave to the infant son of Maria Louisa, now two years old, had shrunk to the little island of Elba, on the west coast of Italy!
The allied powers named Louis XVIII., the brother of Louis XVI., for the vacant throne, who promised the people to reign under a constitutional government.
The man who had deserted his brother in his extremity, a man who represented nothing—not loyalty to the past, nor sympathy with a single aspiration of the present—was king. As he passed under triumphal arches on the way to the Tuileries, there was sitting beside him a sad, pale-faced woman; this was the Duchesse d'Angoulême, the daughter of Louis XVI., the little girl who was prisoner in the Temple twenty years before. What must she have felt and thought as she passed the very spot where had stood the scaffold in 1793!
Almost the first act of Louis XVIII. was the removal of the mutilated remains of the king and queen and his sister Elizabeth to the royal vault in the Church of St. Denis. He then gave orders for aChapelle Expiatoireto be erected over the grave where they had been lying for two decades, and for masses to be said for the repose of the souls of his murdered relatives. Paris was full of returning royalists. Banished exiles with grand old names, who had been earning a scanty living by teaching French and dancing in Vienna, London, and even in New York, were hastening to Paris for a joyful Restoration; and Louis XVIII., while Russian and Austrian troops guarded him on the streets of his own capital, was freely talking about ruling by divine right!
That king was reigning under a liberal charter (as the new constitution was called)—a charter which guaranteed almost as much personal liberty as the one obtained in England from King John in 1215; and the palpable absurdity of supposing that he and his supporters might at the same time revive and maintain Bourbon traditions, as if there had been no Revolution, was at least not an indication of much sagacity.
But there was a very smooth surface. The tricolor had disappeared. Napoleon's generals had gone unresistingly over to the Bourbons. Talleyrand adapted himself as quickly to the new regime as he had to the Napoleonic; was witty at the expense of the empire and the emperor, who, as he said, "was not even a Frenchman"; and was as crafty and as useful an instrument for the new ruler as he had been for the pre-existing one.
But something was happening under the surface. While the plenipotentiaries were busy over their task of restoring boundaries in Europe, and the other restoration was going on pleasantly in Paris, a rumor came that Napoleon was in Lyons. A regiment was at once despatched to drive him back; and Marshal Ney, "the bravest of the brave," was sent with orders to arrest him.
The next news that came to Paris was that the troops were frantically shouting "Vive l'empereur!" and Ney was embracing his beloved commander and pledging his sword in his service.
At midnight the king left the Tuileries for the Flemish frontier, and before the dawn Napoleon was in his Palace of Fontainebleau (March 20th), which he had left exactly eleven months before. The night after the departure of the king there suddenly appeared lights passing swiftly over the Font de la Concorde; then came the tramp of horses' feet, and a carriage attended on each side by cavalry with drawn swords. The carriage stopped at the first entrance to the garden of the Tuileries, and a small man with a dark, determined face was borne into the palace the Bourbon had just deserted.
There was consternation in the Council Chamber in London when the Duke of Wellington entered and announced that Napoleon was in Paris, and all must be done over again!
Immediate preparations were made for a renewal of the war. It was easy to find men to fight the emperor's battles. All France was at his feet.
The decisive moment was at hand. Napoleon had crossed into the Netherlands, and Wellington was waiting to meet him.
The struggle at Waterloo had lasted many hours. The result, so big with fate, was trembling in the balance, when suddenly the booming of Prussian guns was heard, and Wellington was re-enforced by Blücher. This was the end. The French were defeated (June 18, 1815). Napoleon was in the hands of the English, and was to be carried a life-prisoner to the island of St. Helena.
Louis XVIII., who had been waiting at Ghent, immediately returned to the Tuileries, and to his foolish task of posing as a liberal king to his people, and as a reactionary one to his royalist adherents. The country was full of disappointed, imbittered imperialists, and of angry and revengeful royalists. The Chamber of Peers immediately issued a decree for the perpetual banishment of the family of Bonaparte from French soil; the extremists demanding that the families of the men who had consented to the death of Louis XVI. be included in the decree. Sentence of death was passed upon Marshal Ney, as a traitor to France. Some might have said that a greater traitor was at the Tuileries; but the most picturesque in that heroic group of Napoleon's marshals was shot to death.
There was, in fact, a determined purpose to undo all the work of the Revolution; to restore the supremacy and the property of the Church, and the power of the nobility. In the meantime, the people, perfectly aware that the returned exiles were impoverished, were paying taxes to maintain foreign troops which were in France for the sole purpose of enabling the king's government to accomplish these things!
Here was material enough for discord in a troubled reign which lasted nine years. Louis XVIII. died September 16, 1824; and the Count of Artois, the brother of two kings, was proclaimed Charles X. of France.
If there had been any doubt about the real sentiments of Louis XVIII., it must have been dispelled by the last act of his reign, when, at the bidding of the Holy Alliance, he sent French soldiers to put down the Spanish liberals in their fight for a constitution.
But Charles X. did not intend to assume the thin mask worn by his brother. He had marked out a different course. All disguise was to be thrown aside in a Bourbon reign of the ante-revolutionary sort. The press was strictly censored, the charter altered, the law of primogeniture restored; and when saluted on the streets of Paris by cries of "Give us back our charter!" the answer made to his people by this infatuated man was, "I am here to receive homage, not counsel."
One wonders that a brother of Louis XVI., one who had been a fugitive from a Paris mob in 1789—if he had a memory—dared to exasperate the people of France.
On the 29th of July a revolt had become a Revolution, and once more the Marquis de Lafayette was in charge of the municipal troops, which assembled at St. Cloud and other defensive points.
The Revolution of July 28, 1830.[Illustration: The Revolution of July 28, 1830.From the painting by Delacroix.]
The Revolution of July 28, 1830.[Illustration: The Revolution of July 28, 1830.From the painting by Delacroix.]
In vain did Charles protest that he would revoke every offensive ordinance, and restore the charter. It was too late.
Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, was appointed lieutenant-general of the kingdom. When he appeared at the Hôtel de Ville wearing the tricolor, his future was already assured.
There was only one thing left now for Charles to do: he formally abdicated, and signed the paper authorizing the appointment of his cousin to the position of lieutenant-general; and ten days later, Louis Philippe, son of Philippe Égalité, occupied the throne he left.
The note struck by this new king was the absolute surrender of the principle of divine right. He was a "citizen king"; his title being bestowed not by a divine hand, but by the people, whose voice was the voice of God! The title itself bore witness to a new order of things. Louis Philippe was not King of France, but "King of the French." King of France carried with it the old feudal idea of proprietorship and sovereignty; while a King of the French was merely a leader of the people, not the owner of their soil. The charter and all existing conditions were modified to conform to this ideal, and on the 9th of August the reign of the constitutional king began.
It was the middle class in France which supported this reign; the class below that would never forget that he was, after all, a Bourbon and a king; while the two classes above, both royalists and imperialists, were unfriendly, one regarding him as a usurper on the throne of the legitimate king, and the other as a weakling unfit to occupy the throne of Napoleon.
When Charles X. tried to secure the banishment of the families of the men who had voted for the death of Louis XVI., he may have had in mind his cousin, the son of Philippe Égalité, the wickedest and most despicable of the regicides. Whatever his father had been, Louis Philippe was far from being a wicked man. Whether teaching school in Switzerland, or giving French lessons in America, he was the kindest-hearted and most inoffensive of gentlemen. The only trouble with this reign was that it was not heroic. The most emotional and romantic people in Europe had a common-place king. Only once was there a throb of genuine enthusiasm during the eighteen years of his occupancy of the throne, and that was when the remains of their adored Napoleon were brought from St. Helena and placed in that magnificent tomb in the Hôtel des Invalides by order of the king, who sent his son, the Prince de Joinville, to bring this gift to the people. The act was gracious, but it was also hazardous. Perhaps the king did not know how slight was his hold upon this imaginative people, nor the possible effect of contrast.
Under the new order of things in a constitutional monarchy the king does not govern, he reigns. He was chosen by the people as their ornamental figure-head. But what if he ceased to be ornamental? What was the use of a king who in eighteen years had added not a single ray of glory to the national name, but who was using his high position to increase his enormous private fortune, and incessantly begging an impoverished country for benefits and emoluments for five sons?
An excellent father, truly, though a short-sighted one. His power had no roots. The cutting from the Orleans tree had never taken hold upon the soil, and toppled over at the sound of Lamartine's voice proclaiming a republic from the balcony of the Hôtel de Ville.
When invited to step down from his royal throne, he did so on the instant. Never did king succumb with such alacrity, and never did retiring royalty look less imposing than when Louis Philippe was in hiding at Havre under the name of "William Smith," waiting for safe convoy to England, without having struck one blow in defence of his throne.
But three terrible words had floated into the open windows of the Tuileries. With the echoes of 1792 still sounding in his ears, "Liberty," "Equality," and "Fraternity," shouted in the streets of Paris, had not a pleasant sound!
Republicanism was an abiding sentiment in France, even while two dull Bourbon kings were stupidly trying to turn back the hands on the dial of time, and while an Orleans, with more supple neck, was posing as a popular sovereign. During all this tiresome interlude the real fact was developing. A Republican sentiment which had existed vaguely in the air was materializing, consolidating, into a more and more tangible reality in the minds of thinking men and patriots.
The ablest men in the country stood with plans matured, ready to meet this crisis. A republic was proclaimed; M. de Lamartine, Ledru-Rollin, General Cavaignac, M. Raspail, and Louis Napoleon were rival candidates for the office of President.
The nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, and son of Hortense, was only known as the perpetrator of two very absurd attempts to overthrow the monarchy under Louis Philippe. But since the remains of the great emperor had been returned to France by England, and the splendors of the past placed in striking contrast with a dull, lustreless present, there had been a revival of Napoleonic memories and enthusiasm. Here was an opportunity to unite two powerful sentiments in one man—a Napoleon at the head of republican France would express the glory of the past and the hope of the future.
The magic of the name was irresistible. Louis Napoleon was elected President of the second Republic, and history prepared to repeat itself.
A revolution scarcely deserving the name had made France a second time a republic. The Second French Republic was the creation of no particular party. In fact, it seemed to have sprung into being spontaneously out of the soil of discontent.
Its immediate cause was the forbidding of a banquet which was arranged to take place in Paris on Washington's birthday, February 22d, 1848. M. Guizot, who had succeeded M. Thiers as head of the ministry, knowing the political purpose for which it was intended, and that it was a part of an impending demonstration in the hands of dangerous agitators, would not permit the banquet to take place.
This was the signal for an insurrection by a Paris mob, which immediately led to a change in the form of government—a crisis which the nation had taken no part in inaugurating. Revolution had been written in French history in very large Roman capitals! But when the smoke from this smallest of revolutions had curled away, there stood Louis Napoleon—son of the great Bonaparte's brother Louis and Hortense de Beauharnais—who had been elected president by vote of the nation.
France did not know whether she was pleased or not. Inexperienced in the art of government, she only knew that she wanted prosperity, and conditions which would give opportunity to the genius of her people. Any form of government, or any ruler who could produce these, would be accepted. She had suffered much, and was bewildered by fears of anarchy on one side and of tyranny on the other. If she looked doubtfully at this dark, mysterious, unmagnetic man, she remembered it was only for four years, and was as safe as any other experiment; and the author of those two ridiculous attempts at a restoration of the empire, made at Strasbourg and at Boulogne, was not a man to be feared.
The overthrow of monarchy in France had, however, been taken more seriously in other countries than at home. It had kindled anew the fires of republicanism all over Europe: Kossuth leading a revolution in Hungary, and Garibaldi and Mazzini in Italy, where Victor Emmanuel, the young King of Sardinia, was at the moment in deadly struggle with Austria over the possession of Milan, and dreaming of the day when a united Italy would be freed from the Austrian yoke.
The man at the head of the French Republic was surveying all these conditions with an intelligence, strong and even subtle, of which no one suspected him, and viewed with satisfaction the extinguishment of the revolutionary fires in Europe, which had been kindled by the one in France to which he owed his own elevation!
The Assembly soon realized that in this prince-president it had no automaton to deal with. A deep antagonism grew, and the cunningly devised issue could not fail to secure popular support to Louis Napoleon. When an assembly is at war with the president becauseitdesires to restrict the suffrage, andheto make it universal, can anyone doubt the result? He was safe in appealing to the people on such an issue, and sure of being sustained in his proclamation dissolving the Assembly.
The Assembly refused to be dissolved. Then, on the morning of December 2, 1851, there occurred the famouscoup d'état, when all the leading members were arrested at their homes, and Louis Napoleon, relying absolutely upon their suffrages, stood before the French nation, with a constitution already prepared, which actually bestowed imperial powers upon himself. And the suddenness and the audacious spirit with which it was done really pleased a people wearied by incompetency in their rulers; and so, just one year later, in 1852, the nation ratified thecoup d'étatby voluntarily offering to Louis Napoleon the title, Napoleon III., Emperor of the French.
His Mephistophelian face did not look as classic under the laurel wreath as had his uncle's, nor had his work the blinding splendor nor the fineness of texture of his great model. But then, an imitation never has. It was a marble masterpiece, done in plaster! But what a clever reproduction it was! And how, by sheer audacity, it compelled recognition and homage, and at last even adulation in Europe!—and what a clever stroke it was, for this heavy, unsympathetic man to bring up to his throne from the people a radiant empress, who would capture romantic and aesthetic France!
It was a far cry from cheap lodgings in New York to a seat upon the imperial throne of France; but human ambition is not easily satisfied. A Pelion always rises beyond an Ossa. It was not enough to feel that he had re-established the prosperity and prestige of France, that fresh glory had been added to the Napoleonic name. Was there not, after all, a certain irritating reserve in the homage paid him? was there not a touch of condescension in the friendship of his royal neighbors? And had he not always a Mordecai at his gate—while theFaubourg St. Germainstood aloof and disdainful, smiling at his brand-new aristocracy?
War is the thing to give solidity to empire and to reputation! So, when invited to join the allies in a war upon Russia in defence of Turkey, Louis Napoleon accepted with alacrity. France had no interests to serve in the Crimean War (1854-56); but the newly made emperor did not underestimate the value of this recognition by his royal neighbors, and French soldiers and French gun-boats largely contributed to the success of the allied forces in the East.
The little Kingdom of Sardinia, as the nucleus of the new Italy was called, had also joined the allies in this war; and thus a slender tie had been created between her and France at a time when Austria was savagely attacking her possessions in the north of Italy.
When Napoleon was privately sounded by Count Cavour, he named as his price for intervention in Italy two things: the cession to France of the Duchy of Savoy, and the marriage of his cousin, Jerome Bonaparte, with Clotilde, the young daughter of Victor Emmanuel. Savoy was the ancestral home of the king, and the only thing he loved more than Savoy was his daughter Clotilde, just fifteen years old. The terms were hard, but they were accepted.
When Louis Napoleon entered Italy with his army in 1859, it was as a liberator—dramatically declaring that he came to "give Italy to herself"; that she was to be "free, from the Alps to the Adriatic"! The victory at Magenta was the first step toward the realization of this glorious promise; quickly followed by another at Solferino. Milan was restored, Lombardy was free, and as the news sped toward the south the Austrian dukes of Tuscany, Modena, and Parma fled in dismay, and these rejoicing states offered their allegiance, not to the King of Sardinia, now, but to the King of Italy. There were only two more states to be freed, only Venetia and the papal state of Rome, and a "United Italy" would indeed be "free from the Alps to the Adriatic."
Then the unexpected happened. The dramatic pledge was not to be kept. Venetia was not to be liberated. The Peace of Villafranca was signed. Austria relinquished Lombardy, but was permitted to retain Venice. Cavour, white with rage, said, "Cut loose from the traitor! Refuse Lombardy!" But Victor Emmanuel saw more clearly the path of wisdom; and so, after only two months of warfare, Napoleon was taking back to France Savoy and Nice as trophies of his brilliant expedition.
This liberator of an Italy which wasnotliberated, would have liked to restore the fleeing Austrian dukes to their respective thrones in Florence, Modena, and Parma; but he did what was more effectual and pleasing to the enemies of a united Italy: he garrisoned Rome with French troops, and promised Pius IX. any needed protection for the papal throne.
One can imagine how Garibaldi's heart was wrung when he exclaimed, "That man has made me a foreigner in my own city!" And so might have said the king himself.
The emperor and the empire had been immensely strengthened by the Italian campaign. France was rejoicing in a phenomenal prosperity, reaching every part of the land. There was a new France and a new Paris; new boulevards were made, gardens and walks and drives laid out, and a renewed and magnificent city extended from the Bois de Vincennes on one side to the Bois de Boulogne on the other. With the building of public works there was occupation for all, resulting in the repose for which France had longed.
The Empress Eugénie was beautiful and gracious, and her court at Versailles, Fontainebleau, and the Tuileries compared well in splendor with the traditions of the past.
The emperor's ambitions began to take on a larger form. Under the auspices of the government, M. Lesseps commenced a transisthmian canal, which would open communication between the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. Then, in 1862, a less peaceful scheme developed. An expedition was planned to Mexico, against which country France had a small grievance.
The United States was at this time fighting for its life in a civil war of gigantic proportions. The time was favorable for a plan conceived by the emperor to convert Mexico into an empire under a French protectorate. The principle known as the Monroe Doctrine forbade the establishment of any European power upon the Western hemisphere; but the United States was powerless at the moment to defend it, and by the time her hands were free, even if she were not disrupted, an Empire of Mexico would be established, and French troops could defend it.
In a few months the French army was in the city of Mexico, and an Austrian prince was proclaimed emperor of a Mexican empire.
This ill-conceived expedition came to a tragic and untimely end in 1867. The civil war ended triumphantly for the Union. Napoleon, realizing that, with her hands free, the United States would fight for the maintenance of the Monroe Doctrine, promptly withdrew the French army from Mexico, leaving the emperor to his fate. A republic was at once established, and the unfortunate Maximilian was ordered to be shot.
The finances of France and the prestige of the emperor had both suffered from this miserable attempt. At the same time, something had occurred which changed the entire European problem in a way most distasteful to Louis Napoleon. Prussia, in a seven weeks' war, had wrenched herself free from Austria (1866). Instead of a disrupted United States, which he had expected, there was a disrupted German Empire which he did not expect!
The triumph of Protestant Prussia was a triumph of liberalism. It meant a new political power, a rearrangement of the political problem in Europe, with Austria and despotism deposed. This was a distinct blow to the Emperor's policy, and to the headship in Europe which was its aim. Then, too, the Crimea, Magenta, and Solferino looked less brilliant since this transforming seven-weeks' war, behind which stood Bismarck with his wide-reaching plans.
His own magnificent scheme of a Hapsburg empire in Mexico under a French protectorate had failed, and now there had suddenly arisen, as if out of the ground, a new political Germany which rivalled France in strength. The thing to do was to recover his waning prestige by a victory over Prussia.
The Empress Eugénie, devoutly Catholic in her sympathies, saw, in the ascendancy of Protestant Prussia and the humiliation of Catholic Austria, an impious blow aimed at the Catholic faith in Europe. So, as the emperor wanted war, and the empress wanted it, it only remained to make France want it too; for war it was to be.
Only one obstacle existed: there was nothing to fight about! But that was overcome. In 1870 the heart of the people of France was fired by the news that the French Ambassador had been publicly insulted by the kindly old King William. There had been some diplomatic friction over the proposed occupancy of a vacant throne in Spain by a member of the Hohenzollern (Prussian) family.
Whether true or false, the rumor served the desired purpose. France was in a blaze of indignation, and war was declared.
Not a shadow of doubt existed as to the result as the French army moved away bearing with it the boy prince imperial, that he might witness the triumph. Not only would the French soldiers carry everything before them, but the southern German States would welcome them as deliverers, and the new confederation would fall in pieces in their hands. The birthday of Napoleon I., August 15th, must be celebrated in Berlin!
This was the way it looked in France. How was it in Germany? There was no North and no South German. Men and states sprang together as a unit, under the command of Moltke and the Crown Prince Frederick William.
The French troops never got beyond their own frontier. In less than three weeks they were fighting for their existence on their own soil. In less than a month the French emperor was a prisoner, and in seven weeks his empire had ceased to exist.
The surrender of Metz, August 4th, and of Sedan, September 2d, were monumental disasters. With the news of the latter, and of the capture of the emperor, the Assembly immediately declared the empire at an end, and proclaimed a third republic in France.
Two hundred and fifty thousand German troops were marching on Paris. Fortifications were rapidly thrown about the city, and the siege, which was to last four months, had commenced.
The capitulation, which was inevitable from the first, took place in January, 1871. The terms of peace offered by the Germans were accepted, including the loss of Alsace and Lorraine, and an enormous war indemnity.
The Germans were in Paris, and King William, the Crown Prince (Unser Fritz), Bismarck, and Von Moltke were quartered at Versailles; and in that place, saturated with historic memories, there was enacted a strange and unprecedented scene. On January 18, 1871, in the Hall of Mirrors, King William of Prussia was formally proclaimed Emperor of a new German Empire. Ludwig II., that picturesque young King of Bavaria, in the name of the rest of the German states, laid their united allegiance at his feet, and begged him to accept the crown of a united Germany.
Moved by his colossal misfortunes, and perhaps partly in displeasure at having a French republic once more at her door, England offered asylum to the deposed emperor. There, from the seclusion of Chiselhurst, he and his still beautiful Eugénie watched the republic weathering the first days of storm and stress.
Immediately after the deposition of the emperor a third Republic of France was proclaimed. A temporary government was set up under the direction of MM. Favre, Gambetta, Simon, Ferry, Rochefort, and others of pronounced republican tendencies.
This was speedily superseded by a National Assembly elected by the people, with M. Thiers acting as its executive head.
During the siege of Paris an internal enemy had appeared, more dangerous, and proving in the end far more destructive to the city than the German army which occupied it.
What is known as the Paris Commune was a mob of desperate men led by Socialistic and Anarchistic agitators of the kind which at intervals try to terrorize civilization to-day.
The ideas at the basis of this insurrection were the same as those which converted a patriotic revolution into a "Reign of Terror" in 1789, and Paris into a slaughter-house in 1792-93.
Twice during the siege had there been violent and alarming outbreaks from this vicious element; and now it was in desperate struggle with the government of M. Thiers for control of that city, which they succeeded in obtaining. M. Thiers, his government, and his troops were established at Versailles; while Paris, for two months, was in the hands of these desperadoes, who were sending out their orders from the Hôtel de Ville.
When finally routed by Marshal MacMahon's troops, after drenching some of the principal buildings with petroleum they set them on fire. The Tuileries and the Hôtel de Ville were consumed, as were also portions of the Louvre, the Palais Royal, and the Palais de Luxembourg, and the city in many places defaced and devastated.
The insurrection was not subdued without a savage conflict, ten thousand insurgents, it is said, being killed during the last week; this being followed by severe military executions. Then, with some of her most dearly prized historic treasures in ashes, and monuments gone, Paris, scarred and defaced, had quiet at last; and the organization of the third republic proceeded.
The uncertain nature of the republican sentiment existing throughout France at this critical moment is indicated by the character of the Assembly elected by the people. More than two-thirds of the members chosen by France to organize her new republic weremonarchists!
The name monarchist at that time comprehended three distinct parties, each with a powerful following, namely:
The LEGITIMISTS, acting in the interest of the direct Bourbon line, represented by theCount of Chambord, the grandson of Charles X., called by his partyHenry V.
The ORLEANISTS, the party desiring the restoration of a limited monarchy, in the person of theCount of Paris, grandson of Louis Philippe.
The BONAPARTISTS, whose candidate, after the death of the Emperor Louis Napoleon in 1873, was the youngPrince Imperial, son of Napoleon III. [Napoleon II., the Duke of Reichstadt, had died in 1832.]
M. Thiers had not an easy task in harmonizing these various despotic types with each other, nor in harmonizing them all collectively with the republic of which he was chief. He abandoned the attempt in 1873, and Marshal MacMahon, a more pronounced monarchist than he, succeeded to the office of president, with the Duc de Broglie at the head of a reactionary ministry. It began to look as if there might be a restoration under some one of the three types mentioned. The Count of Paris generously offered to relinquish his claim in favor of the Count of Chambord (Henry V.), if he would accept the principles of a constitutional monarchy, which that uncompromising Bourbon absolutely refused to do.
In the meantime republican sentiment in France was not dead, nor sleeping. Calamitous experiences had made it cautious. Freedom and anarchy had so often been mistaken for each other, it was learning to move slowly, not by leaps and bounds as heretofore.
Gambetta, the republican leader, once so fiery, had also grown cautious. A patriot and a statesman, he was the one man who seemed to possess the genius required by the conditions and the time, and also the kind of magnetism which would draw together and crystallize the scattered elements of his party.
It was the stimulus imparted by Gambetta which made the government at last republican in fact as well as in name; and as reactionary sentiment increased on the surface, a republican sentiment was all the time gathering in volume and strength below.
The death of the prince imperial, in 1879, in South Africa, was a severe blow to the imperialists, as the Bonapartists were also called, who were now represented by Prince Victor, the son of Prince Napoleon.
Although these rival princes occupied a large place upon the stage, other matters had the attention of the government of France, which moved calmly on. The establishing of a formal protectorate over Algeria belongs to this period.
Ever since the reign of Louis XIV. the hand of France had held Algeria with more or less success. The Grand Monarch determined to rid the Mediterranean of the "Barbary pirates," with which it was infested, and so they were pursued and traced to their lairs in Algiers and Tunis. From this time on attempts were made at intervals to establish a French control over this African colony. During the reign of Louis Philippe the French occupation became more assured, and under the Republic a formal protectorate was declared.
In 1881 Tunis also became a dependency of France; a treaty to that effect being signed bestowing authority upon a resident-general throughout the so-called dominions of the bey.
The fact that in 1878 France participated in the negotiations of the Congress at Berlin, shows how quickly national wounds heal atthe top! And further proof that normal conditions were restored, is given by the Universal Exposition, to which Paris bravely invited the world in that same year.
In 1879 M. Grévy succeeded Marshal MacMahon. It was during M. Grevy's administration that England and France combined in a dual financial control over Egypt, in behalf of the interests of the citizens of those two countries who were holders of Egyptian bonds.
But the event of profoundest effect at this period was the death of Gambetta in 1882. The removal of the only man in France whom they feared, was the signal for renewed activity among the monarchists, which found expression in a violent manifesto, immediately issued by Prince Napoleon. This awoke the apparently dormant republican sentiment. After agitated scenes in the Chamber, Prince Napoleon was arrested; and finally, after a prolonged struggle, a decree was issued suspending all the Orleans princes from their military functions.
Almost immediately after this crisis the Count of Chambord (Henry V.) died at Frohsdorf, August, 1883, by which event the Bourbon branch became extinct; and the Legitimists, with their leader gone, united with the Orleanists in supporting the Count of Paris.
A small war with Cochin-China was developed in 1884 out of a diplomatic difficulty, which left France with virtual control over an area of territory, including Annam and Tonquin, in the far East.
In 1885 M. Grévy was re-elected. This was, of course, construed as a vote of approval of the anti-monarchistic tone of the administration. So republicanism grew bolder.
There had been an increased activity among the agents of the monarchist party, which found expression in demonstrations of a very significant character at the time of the marriage of the daughter of the Count of Paris to the Crown Prince of Portugal. The republicans were determined to rid France of this unceasing source of agitation, and their power to carry out so drastic a measure as the one intended is proof of the growth which had been silently going on in their party.
The government was given discretionary power to expel from the country all actual claimants to the throne of France, with their direct heirs.
The Count of Paris and his son, the Duke of Orleans, Prince Napoleon and his son, Prince Victor, were accordingly banished by presidential decree, in June, 1886. And when the Duke of Aumale violently protested, he too was sent into banishment.
In 1887 M. Grévy was compelled to resign, on account of an attempt to shield his son-in-law, who was accused of selling decorations, lucrative appointments, and contracts. M. Sadi-Carnot, the grandson of the Minister of War of the same name, who organized the armies at the revolutionary period, was a republican of integrity and distinction, and was elected by the combined votes of radicals and conservatives.
Another crisis was at hand—a crisis difficult to explain because of the difficulty in understanding it.
The extraordinary popularity of General Boulanger, Minister of War, a military hero who had never held an important command, nor been the hero of a single military exploit, seems to present a subject for students of psychological problems; but his name became the rallying-point for all the malcontents in both parties. A talent for political intrigue in this popular hero made it appear at one time as if he might really be moving on a path leading to a military dictatorship.
The firmness of the government in dealing with what seemed a serious crisis, was followed by the swift collapse of the whole movement, and when Boulanger was summoned before the High Court of Justice upon the charge of inciting a revolution, he fled from the country, and the incident was closed.
In one important respect the Third Republic differs from the two preceding it. A constitution had hitherto been supposed to be the indispensable starting-point in the formation of a government. No country had been so prolific in constitutions as France, which, since 1790, is said to have had no less than seventeen; while England, since her Magna Charta made her free in 1215, had had none at all.
An eloquent and definite statement of the rights of a people once seemed as indispensable to a form of government as a creed to a religious faith. Perhaps the world, as it grows wiser, is less inclined to definite statements upon many subjects! Our own Constitution, probably the most elastic and wisest instrument of the kind ever created, has in a century required sixteen amendments to adapt it to changing conditions.
What is known in France as the Constitution of 1875, is, in fact, a series of legislative enactments passed within certain periods of time; these, as in England, serving as a substitute for a Constitution framed like our own.
The French may have done wisely in trying the English method of substituting a body of laws, the growth of necessity, for a written constitution. But this system, reached in England through the slowly moving centuries, was adopted in France, not with deliberate purpose at first, but in order to avoid the clashing of opposing views among the group of men in charge of the republic in its inception; men who, while ruling under the name of a republic, really at heart disliked it, and were, in fact, only enduring it as a temporary expedient on the road to something better. And so the republic drifted. There are times when it is well to drift; and in this case it has proved most satisfactory.
Not alone the rulers, but the nation itself, was in doubt as to the sort of government it wanted, or how to attain it after it knew. It was experimenting with that most difficult of arts, the art of governing. An art which England had been centuries in learning, how could France be expected to master in a decade? And when we consider the conditions and the elements with which this inexperience was dealing, the dangerous element at the top and the other dangerous element beneath the surface, the ambitions of the princes, and the volcanic fires in the lowest class; and when we think of the waiting nation, hoping, fearing, expecting so much, with a tremendous war indemnity to be paid, while their hearts were heavy over the loss of two provinces; when we recall all this, we wonder, not that they made mistakes and accomplished so little, but that the government moved on, day by day, step by step, calmly meeting crises from reactionaries or from radicals, until the confidence of the world was won, and the stability of republican France assured.
From 1893 to 1896 was a period of colonial expansion for France. The Kingdom of Dahomey in Africa was proclaimed a French protectorate. Madagascar was subjugated, and in 1895 the Province of Hiang-Hung was ceded by China.
In the year 1894 Sadi-Carnot was assassinated in the streets of Lyons by an anarchist, and M. Faure succeeded to the presidency.
A political alliance between France and Russia was formed at this time. It was also during the presidency of M. Faure that the agitation commenced in consequence of what is known as theAffaire Dreyfus.
Captain Alfred Dreyfus, an Alsatian and an artillery officer upon the general staff, was accused of betraying military secrets to a foreign power (Germany). He was tried by court-martial, convicted, sentenced to be publicly degraded, having all the insignia of rank torn from him, then to suffer perpetual solitary imprisonment on the Isle du Diable, off the coast of French Guiana.
The life of the French Republic was threatened by the profound agitation following this sentence, in which the entire civilized world joined; the impression prevailing that a punishment of almost unparalleled severity was being inflicted upon a man whose guilt had not been proven.
It was the general belief that the bitter enmity of the French army staff was on account of the Semitic origin of the accused officer, and that his being an Alsatian opened an easy path to the accusation of treasonable acts with Germany.
The trial of Captain Dreyfus was conducted with closed doors, and the sentence was rigorously carried out.
As time passed, the agitation became so profound, and the public demand for a revision of the case so imperative, that the French court of appeal finally took the matter under consideration.
The ground upon which this revision was claimed related to an alleged confession and to the authorship of thebordereau, the document which had been instrumental in procuring a conviction. Upon these grounds it was claimed that the judgment pronounced in December, 1894, should be annulled.
The court was compelled to yield, and an order was issued for a second trial—a trial which resulted in revelations so damaging to the heads of the French army that a revolution seemed imminent.
The accused man, wrecked by the five years on the Isle du Diable, again appeared before his accusers in the military court at Rennes. His leading counsel, Labori, was shot while conducting his case, but, as it proved, not fatally. The conduct of the trial was such that the dark secrets of this sinister affair were never brought from their murky depths. And with neither the guilt nor the innocence of the victim proven, the amazing verdict was rendered, "Guilty, with extenuating circumstances."
Such was the verdict of the French military court. That of public opinion was different. It was the unanimous belief among other nations that the case against this unfortunate man had completely collapsed. But in order to protect the French army from the disgrace which was inseparable from a vindication of Dreyfus, he must be sacrificed.
The sentence pronounced at the conclusion of the second trial was imprisonment in a French fortress for ten years.
This sentence was remitted by President Loubet; and, with the brand of two convictions and the memory of his "degradation" and of Devil's Island burned deep into his soul, a broken man was sent forth free.
Not the least dramatic incident in this affair was the impassioned championship of M. Zola, the great novelist, who hurled defamatory charges at the court, in the hope of being placed under arrest for libel, and thus be given opportunity to establish facts repressed by the military court. By the French law, the accused must justify his defamatory words, and this was the opportunity sought.
The heroic effort was not in vain. Zola was found guilty and sentenced to a year's imprisonment, which he avoided by going into exile. But light had been thrown upon the "Affaire." And he was content.
Upon the sudden death of M. Faure in 1899, Emile Loubet, a lawyer of national reputation, was chosen to succeed him, and his administration commenced while this storm was reaching its final culmination.
With the release of Captain Dreyfus the agitation subsided. But before very long another storm-cloud appeared.
A conflict between clericalism and the Government of France is not a new thing. Indeed, it was at its height as long ago as the thirteenth century, when Philip IV. and Pope Boniface had their little unpleasantness, resulting in Philip's taking the popes into his own keeping at Avignon, and in the issuance of a "Pragmatic Sanction," which defended France from papal encroachments.
The old conflict is still going on, and will continue until the last frail thread uniting Church and State is severed.
The particular contention which agitates France to-day, inaugurated by the late Minister Waldeck-Rousseau, and continued by his successor, M. Combes, had its origin in an act called the "Law of Associations," the purpose of which was to restrict the political power of the Church by means of the suppression of religious orders of men and women upon the soil of France.
This was considered an act of extreme oppression and tyranny on the one side, and as a measure essential to the safety of the republic on the other.
In support of their contention the republican party claimed that the French clergy had always been in alliance with every reactionary movement, and that every agitation and intrigue against the life of the Third Republic had had clericalism as its origin and disturbing cause. Hence, the expulsion of the religious orders was declared to be essential to the safety of the republic.
But the Law of Associations was only preliminary to the real end in view, which was accomplished in December, 1905, when a bill providing for the actual separation of Church and State was passed by the French Senate. There was a time when a measure so revolutionary would have opened the flood-gates of passion, and let loose torrents of invective; and the calmness with which it was debated in the French Parliament makes it manifest that the highest intelligence of the nation had become convinced of its necessity. The bill provides for the transfer to the government of all church properties. This change of ownership necessitated the taking of inventories in the churches, which many simple and devout people, incapable of understanding its political meaning, believed was a religious persecution, and resisted by force. The bill recently passed is aimed not at the Church, but at "Clericalism," a powerful element within the Church, which has been determined to make it a political as well as a spiritual power. With the passage of this bill there no longer exists the opportunity for political and ecclesiastical intrigues, which have made the Church a hatching-ground for aristocratic conspiracies. The severance now accomplished is not complete as with us. Money will still be appropriated from the public treasury for the maintenance of churches in France. But the power derived from the ownership of valuable estates is no longer in the hands of men in sympathy with the enemies of the existing form of government.
Another matter which for a time seemed to threaten the peace of France has been happily adjusted. At an international conference held at Algeciras, for the purpose of considering the demoralized conditions existing in the State of Morocco, France and Germany came so sharply in collision that serious consequences seemed imminent, consequences which might even involve all of Europe.
France, with her territory adjoining the disturbed state, and her long Algerian coast-line to protect, naturally felt that she was entitled to special recognition; while Germany, having invited the conference, claimed a position of leadership. It was over the special privileges desired by each that the tension between these two states became so acute; and finally the one question before the conference was whether France or Germany should be the custodian of Morocco, insure the safety of its foreign population, have charge of its finances, and be responsible for the policing of its coast. Of course the nation assigned to this duty would hold the predominant influence in North African affairs, and it was this large stake which gave such intensity to the game. The final award was given to France, and Germany, deeply aggrieved but with commendable self-control, has accepted the decision.
The elections recently held in France have afforded an opportunity to discover the sentiment of the nation concerning the policies, radical and almost revolutionary, which have made the concluding days of M. Loubet's incumbency an epoch in the life of France. The result has been an overwhelming vote of approval. In M. Fallières, who has been elected to the presidency, there is found a man even more representative of a new France than was his predecessor. A man of the people, the grandson of a blacksmith, a lawyer by profession, M. Fallières has been identified with every important movement since he was first elected Deputy in 1876; has been eight times Minister; was President of the Senate during the seven years of President Loubet's term of office; and January 17, 1906, was elected to the highest position in the state. The appointment of M. Sarrien, with his well-known sympathies, to the office of Prime Minister, sets at rest any doubt as to the policy initiated by M. Waldeck-Rousseau, and consummated by M. Combes.
With each succeeding administration France has gained in strength and stability, and in the self-control and calmness which make for both. The government and the people have learned that the spasmodic way is not a wise and effectual way.
The monarchist party has disappeared as a serious political factor. There is peace, external and internal. And there is prosperity—that surest guarantee of a continued peace.
One source of the phenomenal prosperity of France in this trying period since 1871 has been her mastery in the art of beauty. Leading the world as she does in this, her art products are sought by every land and every people. The nations must and will have them; and so, with an assured market, her industries prosper, and there is content in the cottage and wealth in the country at large.
What a change from the time less than four decades ago, when, with military pride humbled in the dust, with national pride wounded by the loss of two provinces, and loaded down with an immense war indemnity, the people set about the task of rehabilitation! And in what an incredibly short time the galling debt had been paid, financial prosperity and political strength restored.
For thirty-four years the republic has existed. Communistic fires, always smouldering, have again and again burst forth—demagogues, fanatics, and those creatures for whom there is no place in organized society, whose element is chaos, standing ready to fan the flames of revolt: with Orleanist, Bonapartist, Bourbon, ever on the alert, watching for opportunity to slip in through the open door of revolution.
Phlegmatic Teutons and slow-moving Anglo-Saxons look in bewilderment at a nation which has had seven political revolutions in a hundred years!
But France, complex, mobile, changeful as the sea, in riotous enjoyment of her new-found liberties, casts off a form of government as she would an ill-fitting garment. She knows the value of tranquillity—she had it for one thousand years! Thepeople, who have only breathed the upper air for a century—the people, who were stifled under feudalism, stamped upon by Valois kings, riveted down by Richelieu, then prodded, outraged, and starved by Bourbons, have become a great nation. Many-sided, resourceful, gifted, it matters not whether they have called the head of their government consul, emperor, king, or president. They are a race of freemen, who can never again be enslaved by tyrannous system.
There may be in store for France new revolutions and fresh overturnings. Not anchored, as is England, in an historic past which she reveres, and with a singularly gifted and emotional people who are the sport of the current of the hour, who can predict her future! But whatever that future may be, no American can be indifferent to the fate of a nation to whom we owe so much. Nor can we ever forget that in the hour of our direst extremity, and regardless of cost to herself, she helped us to establish our liberties, and to take our place among the great nations of the earth.