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HISTORY] recent for the youthful promise of his heir to be regarded as having any connexion with the future fortunes of France, except by the small group of Bonapartists. Thiers remained the centre of interest. Much as the monarchists disliked him, they at first shrank from upsetting him before they were ready with a scheme of monarchical restoration, and while Gambetta’s authority was growing in the land. But when the Left Centre took alarm at the return of radical deputies at numerous by-elections the reactionaries utilized the divisions in the republican party, and for the only time in the history of the Third Republic they gave proof of parliamentary adroitness. The date for the evacuation of France by the German troops had been advanced, largely owing to Thiers’ successful efforts to raise the war indemnity. The monarchical

majority, therefore, thought the moment had arrived when his services might safely be dispensed with, and the campaign against him was ably conducted by a coalition of Legitimists, Orleanists and Bonapartists. The attack on Thiers was led by the duc de Broglie, the son of another minister of Louis Philippe and grandson of Madame de Staël. Operations began with the removal from the chair of the Assembly of Jules Grévy, a moderate republican, who was chosen president at Bordeaux, and the substitution of Buffet, an old minister of the Second Republic who had rallied to the Empire. A debate on the political tendency of the government brought Thiers himself to the tribune to defend his policy. He maintained that a conservative Republic was the only régime possible, seeing that the monarchists in the Assembly could not make a choice between their three pretenders to the throne. A resolution, however, was carried which provoked the old statesman into tendering his resignation. This time it was not declined, and the majority with unseemly

haste elected as president of the Republic Marshal MacMahon, duc de Magenta, an honest soldier of royalist sympathies, who had won renown and a ducal title on the battlefields of the Second Empire. In the eyes of Europe the curt dismissal of the aged liberator of the territory was an act of ingratitude. Its justification would have been the success of the majority in forming a stable monarchical government; but the sole result of the 24th of May 1873 was to provide a definite date to mark the opening of the era of anti-republican incompetency in France which has lasted for more than a generation, and has been perhaps the most effective guardian of the Third Republic.

The political incompetency of the reactionaries was fated never to be corrected by the intelligence of its princes or of its chiefs, and the year which saw Thiers dismissed to make way for a restoration saw also that restoration indefinitely postponed by the fatal action of the legitimist pretender. The comte de Paris went to Frohsdorf to abandon to the comte de Chambord his claims to the crown as the heir of the July Monarchy, and to accept the position of dauphin, thus implying that his grandfather Louis Philippe was a usurper. With the “Government of Moral Order” in command the restoration of the monarchy seemed imminent, when the royalists had their hopes dashed by the announcement that “Henri V.” would accept the throne only on the condition that the nation adopted as the standard of France the white flag—at the very sight of which Marshal MacMahon said the rifles in the army would go off by themselves. The comte de Chambord’s refusal to accept the tricolour was

probably only the pretext of a childless man who had no wish to disturb his secluded life for the ultimate benefit of the Orleans family which had usurped his crown, had sent him as a child into exile, and outraged his mother the duchesse de Berry. Whatever his motive, his decision could have no other effect than that of establishing the Republic, as he was likely to live for years, during which the comte de Paris’ claims had to remain suspended. It was not possible to leave the land for ever under the government improvised at Bordeaux when the Germans were masters of France; so the majority in the Assembly decided to organize another provisional government on more regular lines, which might possibly last till the comte de Chambord had taken the white flag to the grave, leaving the way to the throne clear for the comte de Paris. On the 19th of November 1873 a Bill was passed

which instituted the Septennate, whereby the executive power was confided to Marshal MacMahon for seven years. It also provided for the nomination of a commission of the National Assembly to take in hand the enactment of a constitutional law. Before this an important constitutional innovation had been adopted. Under Thiers there were no changes of ministry. The president of the Republic was perpetual prime minister, constantly dismissing individual holders of portfolios, but never changing at one moment the whole council of ministers. Marshal MacMahon, the day after his appointment, nominated a cabinet with a vice-president of the council as premier, and thus inaugurated the system of ministerial instability which has been the most conspicuous feature of the government of the Third Republic. Under the Septennate the ministers, monarchist or moderate republican, were socially and perhaps intellectually of a higher class than those who governed France during the last twenty years of the 19th century. But the duration of the cabinets was just as brief, thus displaying the fact, already similarly demonstrated under the Restoration and the July Monarchy, that in France parliamentary government is an importation not suited to the national temperament.

The duc de Broglie was the prime minister in MacMahon’s first two cabinets which carried on the government of the country up to the first anniversary of Thiers’ resignation. The duc de Broglie’s defeat by a coalition of Legitimists and Bonapartists with the Republicans displayed the mutual attitude of parties. The Royalists, chagrined that the fusion of the two branches of the Bourbons had not brought the comte de Chambord to the throne, vented their rage on the Orleanists, who had the chief share in the government without being able to utilize it for their dynasty. The Bonapartists, now that the memory of the war was receding, were winning elections in the provinces, and were further encouraged by the youthful promise of the Prince Imperial. The republicans had so improved their position that the duc d’Audiffret-Pasquier, great-nephew of the chancellor Pasquier, tried to form a coalition ministry with M. Waddington, afterwards ambassador of the Republic in London, and other members of the Left Centre. Out of this uncertain state of affairs was evolved the constitution which has lasted the longest of all those that France has tried since the abolition of the old monarchy in 1792. Its birth was due to chance. Not being able to restore a monarchy, the National Assembly was unwilling definitively to establish a republic, and as no limit was set by the law on the duration of its powers, it might have continued the provisional state of things had it not been for the Bonapartists. That party displayed so much activity in agitating for a plebiscite, that when the rural voters at by-elections began to rally to the Napoleonic idea, alarm seized the constitutionalists of the Right Centre who had never been persuaded by Thiers’ exhortations to accept the Republic. Consequently in January 1875 the Assembly, having voted the general principle that the

legislative power should be exercised by a Senate and a Chamber of Deputies, without any mention of the executive régime, accepted by a majority of one a momentous resolution proposed by M. Wallon, a member of the Right Centre. It provided that the president of the Republic should be elected by the absolute majority of the Senate and the Chamber united as a National Assembly, that he should be elected for seven years, and be eligible for re-election. Thus by one vote the Republic was formally established, “the Father of the Constitution” being M. Wallon, who began his political experiences in the Legislative Assembly of 1849, and survived to take an active part in the Senate until the twentieth century.

The Republic being thus established, General de Cissey, who had become prime minister, made way for M. Buffet, but retained his portfolio of war in the new coalition cabinet, which contained some distinguished members of the two central groups, including M. Léon Say. A fortnight previously, at the end of February