Page:Historical Essays and Studies.djvu/283

Rh of such tremendous reverses. He had left Versailles in November, believing that the Germans would have restored Metz, on condition of levelling the works, and would have been content with taking £120,000,000. Three months of war had doubled the indemnity, and the generals would not hear of losing Metz. It is remarkable that M. Thiers appealed to England for aid in reducing not the demand for territory, but the demand for money. A telegram from Count Bernstorff arrived at the critical moment, and £40,000,000 sterling were struck off the indemnity.

The end of war is peace; but in France the proclamation of the peace was the signal for civil war. The conspirators who control the fierce democracy of Paris repudiated a Government which was imposed on the artisans of cities by the peasant proprietors of France. Two months after the last Prussian gun had been discharged, Thiers was battering down the walls which he himself had built, and Favre was throwing shells into the city in which he had so lately learnt the terrors of bombardment. The provinces, which had failed to deliver the capital from the German armies, were striving to reconquer it from the Revolution. But the victory of the lawful Government over the dreaded enemy who must always remain within the walls and cannot be got rid of, cannot end in a settlement compatible with freedom. No absolute republic can reconcile the conflict between wealth and labour in arms, for it must lead to the domination of one class of society and the economic subjugation of the other. The Revolution is destroying the Republic, and France is once more drifting on a resistless current towards Monarchy. The House of Orleans has not stood above the parties, but was identified with that dominion of the middle class which is the main cause of Socialism. This has produced the unexpected influence of the Legitimists, of that party whose monarch claims the crown on abstract principle, and not by virtue of any positive interests, and causes thousands who are not Legitimists to wish for the