Part 7
Notwithstanding the liberal provisions of the _Charte constitutionelle_, drawn up on the 27th of May, 1814, the restored monarchy returned so promptly to all its old abuses that in ten months it had exhausted the public patience and brought about the return from Elba. On the second restoration, after the Hundred Days, it was so vindictive, as we have seen, adding even religious persecution to political, that it also has been given in history its reign of terror, _la Terreur blanche_. In 1824 the king was succeeded by the Comte d'Artois, under the title of Charles X, a typical Bourbon, who had "learned nothing, forgotten nothing," who considered himself called to revive all the powers and privileges of the ancient monarchy, and who did not hesitate to violate the prescriptions of the Charte when he found them in his way. Consequently, the nation, with Paris at its head, at the end of its patience and finding its constitutional opposition about to be encountered with a _coup d'État_, got up the bloody revolution of July, 1830, in the streets of the capital, and the last of the Bourbon kings took the road to permanent exile,--let us hope.
The Chamber of Deputies replaced him by the head of the younger branch of the Bourbons, the Duc d'Orléans, who assumed the title of Louis Philippe I, Roi des Français. The new monarch affected certain airs of bourgeois simplicity, not unmixed with bourgeois prudence. He declined to take up his lodging in the Tuileries until all traces of the devastation attending the exit of the late tenant had disappeared, and not even then until the windows opening on the garden had been protected by a ditch, bordered with lilacs and with an iron railing. "I do not wish," he said, "that my wife should be exposed to the risk of hearing all the horrors that Marie-Antoinette heard there for the space of three years." "The new royalty," writes M. de Saint-Amand, "adopted a demi-etiquette which occupied a position half-way between the customs of absolute power and those of democracy. The sovereign assumed the uniform of a general of the National Guard. He had neither écuyers, nor chamberlain, nor préfet of the palace, but there were aides-de-camp and _officiers d'ordonnance_. The bourgeois element increased greatly in the fêtes of the Tuileries. Nevertheless, for those who observed this court of the July monarchy, there was a sensible tendency to return to the methods of the past."
[Illustration: THE FRENCH DANCES THROUGHOUT THE AGES. DECORATION FOR THE GRANDE SALLE DE FÊTES IN THE NEW HOTEL DE VILLE.
Painted by Aimé-N. Morot.]
This tendency gradually became accentuated in the successive ministries which the king called to his aid; the republican and liberal aspirations on the one hand and the Bonapartist and Imperial souvenirs--greatly strengthened by the imposing ceremonial attending the return of the ashes of Napoleon to the capital in December, 1840--combined to make difficult the task of the government. Paris, which, in the words of M. Duruy, "loves to _fronder_ as soon as it ceases to be afraid," was entirely given over to the opposition. At the opening of the session of the Chambre in 1848, the ministers persuaded the king to declare in a discourse that a hundred of the deputies were enemies of the throne. The republicans planned a great reunion at a banquet to be given in the twelfth arrondissement, the ministry forbade the assembly, the conflicts began in the streets between the citizens and the soldiers, the préfet de police, who, in his daily reports, was able to dispose of the 12th of February in this paragraph: "Order and tranquillity continue to prevail in Paris: no extraordinary agitation is to be observed," was obliged, ten days later, to conclude a long account of the manifestations in the capital by a recommendation to hold the army in readiness for an organized attack "in case the insurrection recommences." It did recommence, that night, and the next day Marshal Gérard announced to the insurgents in the Palais-Royal the abdication of the king.
He abdicated in favor of his grandson, the Comte de Paris, with the Duchesse d'Orléans for regent, and the duchess was left in the Tuileries when the king, taking off his grand cordon and his uniform, depositing his sword on a table, arrayed himself with his wife's assistance in a bourgeois costume and took his departure for Saint-Cloud. The duchess, with her two sons, was escorted to the Chamber, where the president declared that her regency should be proclaimed by that body, and Lamartine was in the midst of a speech advising the constitution of a provisory government for that purpose when he was interrupted by the invasion of a revolutionary mob shouting: "A bas la Régence! Vive la République! A bas les corrompus!" The little Comte de Paris was seized by the throat by one of these demonstrative citizens, and only saved from being choked by the intervention of a national guardsman. The provisional government proclaimed the Republic; before the Hôtel de Ville, Lamartine, in a burst of eloquence, repelled the proposition of the mob to adopt the red flag and secured the adoption of the tricolor, and the provinces, following the lead of the capital, seemed to accept the Republic.
But a stable administration of the city and the nation seemed more unattainable than ever. The new government had to suppress popular uprisings in the streets of Paris in March, in May, and in June; the new Assemblée Nationale, elected by universal suffrage,--nine millions of electors, instead of 220,000, as under the late monarchy,--made haste to organize a new government consisting of a single president, to be elected, and a single legislative body. The new president, elected by an overwhelming majority, was Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, a nephew of the Emperor. He was given power to nominate all the innumerable employés of the government, to negotiate treaties, and to organize the army, but he could not take command of the latter nor dissolve the Assemblée, and he was not eligible for re-election. The two chief powers of the government were not long in coming into collision; the legislative body, divided into numerous factions, lacked decision and initiative, and it lost in popular favor by the law of the 31st of May, 1850, which struck three millions of electors from the lists by restricting the suffrage to those only who could prove a continuous residence of three years in the canton. The President, seizing his opportunity, demanded the repeal of this law (November 4, 1851), and on the 2d of December following, by a series of summary nocturnal arrests, succeeded in putting all the chiefs of the various parties in the Assemblée, and all his most formidable opponents, under lock and key. "I have broken out of the way of legality," said he, "to re-enter that of the right;" and the nation, by 7,437,216 votes against 640,737, accepted the new constitution which he proposed for it, the renewal of his power for ten years, the abolition of the law of the 31st of May, and the dissolution of the Assemblée Nationale. The Empire followed naturally, a year later, and was ratified by the nation by an even more overwhelming majority.
So much obloquy has been attached to the person and the reign of this sovereign, he has been made the object of such unlimited denunciation, deserved and undeserved, at home and abroad, that it will doubtless come as a surprise to many of our readers to find how liberal and enlightened were at least many of the aims of his administration, and how enthusiastically he was supported by the people that have since found no terms too strong to express their detestation. "Napoleon III," says M. Duruy, "at the very moment that he took possession of the throne, had promised that liberty should one day crown the new political edifice. After Solferino, he endeavored to introduce her again into our institutions. He began this work by the decree of the 24th of November, 1860, which associated the Corps Législatif more directly with the politics of the government. He continued it by the sénatus-consulte of the 2d of December, 1861, which deprived the Emperor of the power of decreeing extraordinary credits in the intervals of the sessions; by the letter of the 19th of January, 1867, which gave the ministers the right of appearing before the Chambers, in order that they might at any moment render an account of their acts to the nation; by the laws on the press, which was restored to its natural privileges, and on the popular assemblages, of which a few were useful and a great many detestable (11th of May and 6th of June, 1868). Finally, at the period when, abroad, the unfortunate issue of the expedition to Mexico, and the menacing position assumed in Germany by Prussia, after her victory of Sadowa over the Austrians; in the interior, the progress of public intelligence, favored by the general prosperity, had developed stronger desires for freedom which the elections of 1869 made evident, the Emperor renounced his personal authority, and by the sénatus-consulte of the 20th of April, 1870, proposed to the French people the transformation of the autocratic Empire into the liberal Empire. On the 8th of May, 7,300,000 citizens replied _yes_ to this question, against 1,500,000 who replied _no_."
Thus this dignified and candid historian does not hesitate to lay the responsibility of the war of 1870-71, "most certainly, on the ministers, the deputies, and the unreasoning folly of Paris." "Paris," says another writer, an eye-witness, "was inflamed with a peculiar fever, and even words changed their meaning. Workmen were maltreated on the Boulevard des Italiens for having traversed it crying: '_Vive la Paix, vive la Travail!_' ['Give us Peace! Hurrah for Labor!'] The courts themselves interfered, and citizens were condemned to prison for having uttered publicly this seditious cry: '_Vive la Paix!_'" The latest historian of the war, the Commandant Rousset, who "has summed up, with more clearness and force than any other, the political and military considerations which explain its issue," in the opinion of the critics, defines as one of the three principal causes of its disasters after the 4th of September, the excessive importance attributed to the capital. The necessity of delivering Paris paralyzed all the efforts of the armies of the provinces, in depriving them of all liberty of action. "Enough can never be said of the fatal incubus which weighed upon us in the shape of the specious theory which certain pontiffs of the high strategy had erected upon the abstract value of positions, and of entrenched camps, nor of the amount of profit which the German army derived from the disdain which it entertained for this theory." This inordinate importance of the capital, as we have already seen in many instances, is one of the most striking facts in the history of France.
[Illustration: "THE PROGRESS OF MUSIC." PLAFOND OF THE GRANDE SALLE DES FÊTES IN THE NEW HOTEL DE VILLE.
Painted by H. Gervex.]
The capital once more effected a change in the government, and by the familiar methods,--on the 4th of September, 1870, the mob invaded the Chamber and overturned the Empire. In the civil war that followed the withdrawal of the Germans--brought about by the _Commune_ and the _Internationale_, the former, with the pretext of restoring to the city its legitimate rights by giving back to it the election of its municipal officers, and the second, a socialism which was practical anarchy, repudiating patriotism, denouncing capital as theft, aiming to overthrow all society--it was again the capital which acted. In the private correspondence of one of those leaders of revolt, the nihilist Bakounine, lately published, he writes to his confidant: "What do you think of this desperate movement of the Parisians? Whatever the result may be, it must be confessed that they are brave enough. That strength which we have vainly sought in Lyon and in Marseille has been found in Paris. There is there an organization, and men determined to go to the bitter end. It is certain that they will be beaten, but it is equally certain that there will be henceforth no salvation for France outside the social revolution. The French state is dead, and cannot be revived."
In the number of the _Contemporary Review_ for March, 1898, may be found an admirable condensation of the history of France for the last hundred years (quoted, without comment, in a Parisian journal), in the shape of a résumé of the various street cries heard in Paris during that period. (It is probably scarcely necessary to explain that _A bas_ is "Down with" and _Conspuez_, practically, "Spit upon.") In 1788, the people cried: _Vive le roi! Vive la noblesse! Vive le clergé!_ In 1789: _A bas la noblesse! A bas la Bastille! Vivent Necker et Mirabeau! Vivent d'Orléans et le clergé!_ In 1791: _A bas les nobles! A bas les prêtres! Plus de Dieu!_ [No more God!] _A bas Necker! Vivent Bailly et Lafayette! A bas Bailly!_ In the first half of 1793: _A bas Louis Capet! A bas la Monarchie et la Constitution de 1791! Vive la République! Vivent la liberté, l'égalité, la fraternité! Vivent les Girondins!_ In the second half of the same year: _A bas les nobles, les riches et les prêtres! Vivent les Jacobins! Vive Robespierre! Vive Marat, l'ami du peuple! Vive la Terreur!_ In 1794: _A bas les Girondins! Vive la Guillotine!_ In 1794 and 1795: _A bas la Terreur et ses exécuteurs! A bas Robespierre!_ From 1795 to 1799: _Vive le Directoire! Vive Bonaparte! A bas le Directoire! Vive le Premier Consul! A bas la République! Vive Napoléon empereur! Hourrah pour la guerre et la Legion d'honneur! Vive la Cour! Vive l'impératrice Joséphine!_ From 1809 to 1813: _A bas le Pape! A bas Joséphine! Vive Marie-Louise! A bas Napoléon, l'oppresseur, le tyran! A bas les Aigles! Vive le Roi légitime! Vive les Alliés!_ In March, 1815: _A bas les Alliés! A bas les Bourbons et les Légitimistes! Vive Napoléon!_ In June of the same year: _A bas l'aventurier corse!_ [the Corsican adventurer!] _A bas l'armée! A bas les traitres Ney et Lavalette! Vive le roi Louis le Desiré!_ From 1816 to 1830: _Vive Charles X le Bien-aimé! A bas Charles X et les Bourbons! Vive Louis-Philippe, le roi citoyen!_ In 1848: _A bas Louis-Philippe! Vive Lamartine!_ In 1849: _A bas Lamartine! Vive le Président! A bas la liberté de la Presse et les Clubs!_ In 1850: _Vive Napoléon!_ In 1851: _A bas l'Assemblée! Vive l'Empereur!_ In 1852: _A bas la République! Vive l'Empire!_ In 1855: _A bas la Russie!_ In 1859: _A bas l'Autriche! Vive l'Italie! Vive Garibaldi!_ In 1869: _A bas l'Empire autoritaire! Vive l'Empire parlementaire! Vive Ollivier!_ In May, 1870: _Vive la Constitution! Vive la Dynastie impériale!_ In July: _A Berlin! A Berlin!_ In September: _A bas l'Empire! Vive la République! Vive Trochu!_ In October: _A bas Trochu! Vive la Commune! Vive Gambetta!_ In 1871: _Vive Thiers! A bas Gambetta!_ In March: _Vive la Commune! A bas Thiers!_ In May: _Vive Thiers! Vive Mac-Mahon! A bas la Commune!_ In 1872: _Vive Thiers! Vive la République!_ In 1873: _Vive Mac-Mahon!_ In 1874: _Vive l'Amnistie! A bas Mac-Mahon!_ In 1879: _Vive Grèvy! A bas Gambetta!_ In 1881: _Vive Gambetta! A bas Grèvy! Vive Lesseps!_ In 1887: _Vive Carnot! Vive Boulanger!_ In 1889: _A bas les Panamistes! A bas Boulanger!_ In 1895: _Vive le Tsar!_ In 1898: _Vivent la liberté, égalité, la fraternité! A bas les Juifs! Vive l'Armée! Conspuez Zola!_
And in the latter part of the same year may be added: _Vive Picquart_, _Vive la Révision! Vive Zola!_ and, naturally, _A bas!_ and _Conspuez!_ all three.
As to the administration of the Third Republic, it may be illustrated with tolerable exactness, and without too much malice, by two extracts from the _Figaro_ of the summer of 1898, in which will be recognized certain great theories of universal aptitude on the part of its citizens not at all unlike those which prevail on the part of the public functionaries of our own beloved country. The first of these articles appeared at the period when the precarious Brisson ministry was in process of formation, after several ineffectual attempts on the part of other statesmen summoned to this task by the President of the République. It may be premised that the care taken to identify M. Durand by the department which he represents is rendered necessary by the fact that his family is as prevalent in France as Smith or Jones in English-speaking lands.
"At noon, M. Peytral requested Durand (of the Loir) to enter his cabinet and offered him the portfolio of Minister of the Finances.
"Durand, who had never been minister, accepted with _empressement_.
"'I am acquainted with our financial system from the bottom up,' he said. 'This is, therefore, excellent.'
"'Truly,' replied Peytral. 'I was not aware of it.'
"But about half-past one of the afternoon, in consequence of the refusal of one of the members of the future cabinet, M. Peytral was obliged to change the combination. He summoned again M. Durand (of the Loir) and said to him:
"'My dear colleague, I appeal to your patriotism. I have need of the portfolio of the finances. Will you be good enough to do me the friendly office to accept the Public Works?'
"M. Durand reflected a second.
"'I came near being an engineer,' he replied, 'I believe that I could be able to render great service to the country in this new ministry.'
"And after having been Minister of the Finances from noon to half-past one, he was Minister of Public Works from half-past one to three.
"At two o'clock, M. Peytral sent a _petit bleu_ [telegram, so called from the color of the official paper] to Durand (of the Loir) to invite him to call for the third time.
"'I have just perceived, my dear colleague,' he said to him, 'that my combination is not workable. It is not the Public Works that you require, nor the Finances, it is the Marine.'
"And Durand accepted the Marine, which he preserved up to half-past five, the hour at which the political necessities threw him upon the Public Instruction and Religion.
[Illustration: TYPE OF THE GARDE MUNICIPALE. MILITARY OF THE CITY OF PARIS. After a drawing by L. Marchetti.]
"But rivalries suddenly sprang up. It was necessary to make new arrangements in order to appease the Isambert group. Durand left the Public Instruction.
"He was, during twenty minutes, Minister of War; he had the Post-Office and Telegraphs three-quarters of an hour; he was Minister of Foreign Affairs at a quarter to seven.
"Finally, at seven o'clock, M. Peytral convoked him once again and said to him:
"'My dear colleague, I appeal in this moment to all your republican energy and to your patriotic disinterestedness. My cabinet is constituted. You are no longer a member of it.'
"'Good,' replied Durand, coldly. 'I hereby give notice of my intention to interpellate the government.'"
The second of these contemporary documents professes to relate actual facts. "We announced, the other day, that the ex-deputy Fabérot, not re-elected at the late elections, had philosophically resumed his former occupation of journeyman hatter.
"Another victim of universal suffrage, the barber Chauvin, has also returned to his dear razors. Is it quite certain, moreover, that he ever left them, even in the Chamber of Deputies?
"However this may be, he has just reopened his shop. Only, M. Chauvin has abandoned his former quarter of the Rue des Archives, and has established himself in Passage Tivoli, near the Gare Saint-Lazare, where, in the most democratic fashion, he will shave you for twenty centimes and cut your hair for six sous.
"This melancholy return to former surroundings has, moreover, nothing in it but what is very honorable,--only, it is necessary that the customers should be notified.
"Which we hereby do."
The great question of the army, of its relations with the civil authority and of the apparent hopelessness of any attempt to reconcile its maintenance and effectiveness with the democratic evolution of the age,--never a more burning question in France than at the present day,--scarcely admits of any of these pleasantries. But seldom have the amenities of discussion more completely disappeared than in the polemics now raging over the trial for treason of an officer of the general staff. One of the more recent of these dispassionate studies of the military problem appears in an article by M. Sully-Prudhomme in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, and the failure of his attempt to solve the antinomy is striking. "To say, with Renan," he prefaces, "that 'war is essentially a thing of the ancien régime,' is to say that it is not of the essence of the new one; and as formerly war would be considered as destitute of any cause in the case where there were no enemies, that is equivalent to supposing that to-day no people have enemies. Such an assertion assuredly does not express Renan's meaning. He intended to say, doubtless, that in our day the use of force to decide international conflicts is in contradiction with the moral principles professed by civilized nations; in other terms, that, logically, they should never have enemies.
"Would to God that it were so! Unfortunately, we know only too well that in reality this is not so. Therefore, no people, having a due regard for their preservation and their independence, can reasonably diminish their military forces, nor even risk diminishing them, unless other peoples do as much. For any one who has informed himself in this respect as to the dispositions of the greater number of them, this simple remark will suffice to condemn in any one of them any attempt at individual reform in its military laws in any manner tending to compromise its security in the midst of the others."