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THE GREA T FRENCH WRITERS 
 From the Series Edited 
 
 By J. J. JUSSERAND 
 
 A. THIERS 
 
In Same Series. 
 
 MADAME DE STAEL. By Albert Sorel. 
 
 Others to follow. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2008 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/athiersaOOrmrich 
 
IMP CH CHARDON 
 
 .M.THIKKS 
 
 REPRODUCTION OF THE PORTRAIT BY BONNAT 
 at the Louvre-Gallery 
 
A. THIERS 
 
 P. DE R^MUSAT 
 
 K 
 
 Sinateur^ Memhre de VInstitut 
 TRANSLATED BY MELVILLE B. ANDERSON 
 
 With Portrait 
 
 T . PIS H E R U N W 1 \ 
 PATERNOSTER SQUARE 
 
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CONTENTS 
 
 ♦ 
 
 Page 
 
 Introduction 9 
 
 Chapter 
 
 I. The Restoration 13 
 
 II. The July Government 47 
 
 III. The Republic of 1848 99 
 
 IV. The Empire (1851-1863) 124 
 
 V. The Empire (1863-1870) 142 
 
 VI. The War 177 
 
 VII.. The Third Republic . ..... 200 
 
 VIII. Retirement and Death 223 
 
 Index 235 
 
 
THIERS, 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 TF the art of writing consisted merely in 
 ■*- clothing an ingenious thought in correct 
 and elegant phrases, or in running down a new 
 image, a happily chosen metaphor, there would 
 be few great writers, and it would be some- 
 thing of a paradox to place M. Thiers in their 
 select company. Critics would point out that 
 the literary style of this statesman is not always 
 perfectly correct, — that it sometimes lacks 
 elegance or rapidity or picturesqueness. Facts 
 and things, rather than words, stir his imag- 
 ination, which is not reflected in his style. 
 Strewn negligently here and there are lumber- 
 ing sentences, colourless expressions, common- 
 places of diction and thought. 
 
 Luckily, however, the qualities of the great 
 writer are of an order very much above any- 
 thing that can be taught in books of rhetoric. 
 The processes of the art of writing are as vari- 
 
lo Introduction, 
 
 ous as the minds of which that art is the most 
 splendid manifestation; and if some of the 
 quaHties that make the Racines and the Boi- 
 leaus are lacking to the historian of the Revo- 
 lution and of the Empire, as they were lacking 
 to Saint-Simon, the merits which characterize 
 him are none the less precious. Without ob- 
 vious search after effect, without apparent art, 
 he develops with breadth and clearness a vast 
 narrative which he really controls as a master, 
 while it seems to hurry him away as it hurries 
 away his reader. The profusion of detail does 
 not slacken the general movement, and this 
 majestic river — this noble Loire which rolls so 
 broad a stream — sweeps along like a torrent. 
 Under a somewhat cold colouring, the concealed 
 passion of the author for his subject animates 
 the entire work. And what a work! Ten 
 volumes on the history of the Revolution, 
 and twenty on the Consulate and the Empire ! 
 This last work is especially pervaded with that 
 hidden warmth, and may be considered as the 
 most magnificent monument of contemporary 
 literature. Deservedly has the French Acad- 
 emy crowned this work with its sanction. Per- 
 haps no writer's vigour was ever so sustained 
 throughout a quarter of a century ; indeed, 
 his last books surpass the first in energy, inter- 
 est, and inspiration. Is not all this a compen- 
 
Introduction, 1 1 
 
 sation for some redundancies, for some trite 
 moral reflections, for some deficiency in that 
 rhetorical element of which Tacitus has too 
 much? 
 
 And the speeches ! Because an opinion has 
 been pronounced in public instead of being 
 written or dictated in solitude, is it any the less 
 a literary work? Since M. Thiers' speeches, 
 in cold type, are models of clearness and of 
 excellent arrangement; since in reading them 
 we are still fascinated as when we heard them 
 issue, in Southern accent, from those thin, ex- 
 pressive lips; since the fifteen volumes pub- 
 lished under the competent editorship of M. 
 Calmon ^ form a course of judicious politics, 
 of well-balanced finance, of free and wise 
 government; and since this course is useful to 
 succeeding generations, — is it the less just to 
 point out their merits and to write their his- 
 tory, even their literary history? 
 
 The life of the man of letters is intimately 
 associated with the genesis of his works, and 
 one of the superiorities of the modern critical 
 method consists in not separating the man 
 from his works. First Voltaire, afterward 
 Villemain and Sainte-Beuve, gave us models 
 of this kind of criticism. Here its necessity 
 
 1 Discours parlementaires de M. Thiers, publics par M. 
 Calmon. 15 vols. 8^°. Paris, C. Levy, 1879-1883. 
 
1 2 Introduction. 
 
 is still more evident, for all the writings of 
 M. Thiers are at the same time actions ; he 
 not only related history, he made it. We 
 must, however, limit ourselves and resist the 
 pleasure, somewhat mingled with pain, of re- 
 lating the whole history of France for sixty 
 years. Although we are dealing with an ora- 
 tor, it is no oratorical device to say that in 
 these pages details will be given only in so far 
 as they directly concern his person or his just 
 claim to renown. Space is wanting to go be- 
 yond this and to break down the very thin 
 partition which divides the history of such 
 a man from the history of his country. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE RESTORATION. 
 
 TT was in 1823 that the name ''Thiers" first 
 -^ caught the pubHc eye; at least, it was 
 then for the first time printed on the cover of 
 a book. The title was " The Pyrenees," ^ and 
 although several passages have been adopted 
 into the guide-books as the best descriptions 
 of the vale of Argeles and of the plain of 
 Tarbes, the work was not written for tourists. 
 This narrative of a journey made in the autumn 
 of 1822 is essentially a political pamphlet 
 against the Spanish War, — a war not yet 
 begun, but for which the active preparations 
 were the signal for a great outburst of Ab- 
 solutist passions and claims. It was not until 
 the month of March, 1823, that the Duke of 
 Angoul^me set out; but there had already 
 been a great discussion in the Chambers, and 
 a ministry had fallen. The time was therefore 
 
 1 Les Pyrenees et le midi de la France pendant les mois de 
 novembre et de decembre, 1822. Par A. Thiers, 8^", Paris, 
 chez Ponthieu, 1823. This work was reprinted in 1874. 
 
14 Thiers. 
 
 favourable for a summary of the impressions 
 which the sight of the menaced regions might 
 make upon an enlightened mind. The French 
 court and the Chambers had determined to 
 re-enthrone King Ferdinand VII., who had 
 been dismissed by his subjects. This was a 
 strange undertaking at a time when consti- 
 tutional principles were beginning to prevail 
 again, — especially strange on the part of a 
 people which had more than once recognized 
 that a nation belongs to itself alone. It is true 
 that the Emigrants were loath to admit this 
 right, and that the House of Bourbon, rein- 
 stated by foreign power, saw in it an indirect 
 condemnation of their hopes and of their pro- 
 ceedings for thirty years back. The Restora- 
 tion was itself a great example of intervention, 
 but its first care should have been to make 
 men forget this. Such a care would have 
 been in harmony with justice, morality, reason, 
 and good policy, — things which, whatever 
 people may say, are very often found in agree- 
 ment. It was necessary, under the Charter, to 
 recognize in nations the right of enjoying polit- 
 ical liberty, and of using force in certain cases 
 in the service of this right. Had the question 
 been merely to support a threatened king upon 
 his throne, the policy might have been more 
 defensible. But a French army was being sent 
 
The Restoration, 15 
 
 into Spain to give back to a dethroned king 
 the absolute sovereignty of which he had been 
 deprived by his subjects. Every liberal-minded 
 man shuddered at this; and stirring debates 
 took place in the two Chambers. 
 
 The occasion was excellent for entering the 
 field of political controversy. But M. Thiers 
 attacked the projected war not as a political 
 theorist; much rather he ridiculed the ''sol- 
 diers of the faith " with graceful wit and easy 
 banter. This good-nature is a great quality 
 in a politician; M. Thiers retained it through- 
 out all the storms of his life, and to the very 
 last owed to it parliamentary and popular suc- 
 cesses. Fifty years later he was to say on a 
 certain solemn occasion, "We should take 
 everything seriously, nothing tragically." Such 
 cheerfulness is one of the forms of courage, 
 and is perhaps, together with intelligence, the 
 most marked trait of his first book. A little 
 searching discloses other qualities that are also 
 to reappear later, — a style which, if a trifle 
 lumbering, is easy and natural, and which 
 seems the proper language of good sense ; an 
 interest in everything, — art, science, the indus- 
 tries, whose processes he describes in detail. 
 There is a page, for- example, on the manu- 
 facture of soda at Marseilles, that seems a kiid 
 of prophecy of those copious explanations 
 
1 6 Thiers. 
 
 concerning tissues, metals, and raw materials, 
 which have given so much instruction to our 
 contemporaries. One would be tempted to 
 copy entire pages but for the fact that in the 
 course of this study the opportunity will fre- 
 quently present itself of citing the opinions of 
 M. Thiers in his own words, of transcribing 
 speeches characterized by a happy union of 
 practice and theory, pervaded with the noblest 
 sentiments, and strewn with brilliant, almost 
 poetical, descriptions. It was not in vain that 
 he was a child of the South; in his veins 
 flowed some drops of the blood of Andre 
 Chenier. 
 
 This was not the first writing of the young 
 graduate of the Marseilles Lyceum. Louis 
 Adolphe Thiers was born at Marseilles, April 
 15, 1797, and after a brilliant career at college 
 went to Aix, where he pursued the study of 
 the law. Scarcely had he, in 1820, attained 
 the degree of licentiate, when he competed for 
 a prize offered by the Academy of Aix. His 
 discourse, a eulogy of Vauvenargues, was pro- 
 nounced the best. But provincial academies 
 were then sometimes tainted by the coterie 
 spirit, and the Academy of Aix retained some 
 affection for the Old Regime. M. Thiers 
 could not have lived, young, active, impetuous, 
 in the circles, and perhaps too in the caf^Sf 
 
The Restoration. 17 
 
 of a little city that plumed itself upon being a 
 centre of letters and wit, without becoming 
 known and liked, nor without giving some 
 promise of talent. He was looked upon as one 
 of the Liberal leaders in a society which was 
 still stirred by the passions of 181 5. A mem- 
 ber of the Academy, M. d'Arlatan de Lauris, 
 an enlightened magistrate, having through ex- 
 cess of kindness betrayed the incognito, the 
 Academy refused, for want of sufficiently dis- 
 tinguished contestants, to confer the prize; 
 and the competition was postponed until the 
 following year. A year later M. Thiers sent 
 back the first discourse without concealing his 
 name, and composed a second, which was sent 
 indirectly from Paris and was without signature. 
 The triumphant Academy awarded the prize 
 to the second, while it put off the former and 
 better of the two with an accessit. " The Con- 
 stitutionnel " afterward gave an extract from it, 
 which we perhaps do wrong not to transcribe. 
 But these youthful works of eminent men are 
 a Httle deceptive, so wholly do we find their 
 authors in them. One would prefer to believe 
 that study, experience, life, create qualities, or 
 at least so develop as to transform them. The 
 course of existence, however, appears merely 
 to bring confidence, opportunities for the dis- 
 play of talent, sureness of expression ; and it is 
 
1 8 Thiers, 
 
 not certain that M. Thiers has at any time 
 spoken of the moralists with greater simpHcity 
 or grace. 
 
 Without dwelling upon this formative period, 
 we should from this moment place beside M. 
 Thiers his contemporary, M. Mignet. To the 
 last day he loved with unalterable affection 
 this devoted companion, — and this is rather 
 a trait of his character than an incident of his 
 biography. That mobile, active spirit which 
 is to be agitated by so many great events, 
 "whence so many passions and works shall 
 bud and blossom," this man who is to know 
 throughout half a century fortune and dis- 
 grace, exile and power, public favour and pitiless 
 unpopularity, will remain faithful to the noble 
 friendships formed in childhood and youth. 
 These he kept, as he kept unimpaired the most 
 serious of the opinions which he embraced 
 with equal warmth. In his life separations 
 and ruptures were rare. He was certainly not 
 incapable of severity toward men ; but one 
 must have very deeply offended him in order 
 to incur his ill-will. Not merely for his 
 friends, — to whom he pardoned everything, 
 permitted everything, — but for those whom 
 he had once taken into favour, for those who 
 exhibited attachment toward him for a single 
 day, he had an inexhaustible fund of indul- 
 
The Restoration. 19 
 
 gence. If he avenged himself for a betrayal 
 or for unhandsome usage, it was only by 
 some innocent epigram. A hundred examples 
 might be cited ; here is one of the slightest : 
 M. Berger (anglic^ Shepherd), an opposition 
 deputy under the July monarchy, was one of 
 his faithful ones. Throughout many years, 
 Thiers had shown and proved his friendship 
 for Berger. After the coup d'etat, when 
 Thiers was in exile, Berger chose his time to 
 go over publicly to the Empire. Not long 
 thereafter the former deputy, without precisely 
 returning to his old-time liberalism, asked a 
 common friend to find out how his former 
 patron felt, and whether it was still possible 
 to be received into favour. " Tell him that I 
 still call him my faithful shepherd," replied 
 M. Thiers ; and all was forgotten. 
 
 In M. Mignet, Thiers never had anything to 
 forget or to pardon ; antiquity has left us no 
 nobler example of friendship. The contrast 
 was great between these two men, both in 
 physical appearance and in their mental make- 
 up. But besides that natural sympathy which 
 the ablest psychologists can only affirm, not 
 explain, they had those common aims and 
 aversions which constitute, according to Cicero, 
 the first condition of friendship, — eadem velle^ 
 eadeffi nolle. Between these two so different 
 
20 Thiers. 
 
 beings the conformity of sentiment was and re- 
 mained so absolute that as they entered upon 
 life each wrote a history of the French Rev- 
 olution conceived in the spirit of the other; 
 and the octogenarian survivor was able to 
 correct with his own hand and to publish 
 the last political writing of his friend, without 
 provoking any criticism or arousing any sus- 
 picion of a single alteration in the thought or 
 intentions of the author. Pylades never did 
 as much for Orestes. 
 
 In 1820 or 1821, M. Thiers and M. Mignet, 
 already inseparable, discovered simultaneously 
 that they were not suited to the Bar, and de- 
 cided to go up to Paris. They had, however, 
 pleaded once, and in the same case ; at least 
 Thiers told the story without being disputed 
 by his friend. They were to defend a man 
 accused of arson and of murder, both crimes 
 punishable with death. On the first head, after 
 a plea by Thiers, the man was acquitted ; on 
 the second, in spite of a defence presented by 
 M. Mignet, he was condemned. He was par- 
 doned however, because, said Thiers, it was 
 proved that the judges were mistaken. Dis- 
 turbed by the pleadings, they had believed 
 him innocent where he was guilty, guilty where 
 he was innocent. Seduction had triumphed 
 over cold logic. 
 
The Restoration. 21 
 
 The account of the journey to the Pyrenees 
 was merely a collection of articles first pub- 
 lished in the " Constitutionnel," — a journal 
 whose columns were opened to Thiers through 
 the good offices of M. Manuel, his fellow-coun- 
 tryman. At the same time he wrote the polit- 
 ical bulletins for the " Tablettes Universelles," 
 — a weekly review founded by M. Coste. His 
 articles in the " Constitutionnel " were spirited 
 but serious ; those in the "Tablettes" were in an 
 entirely different tone. Were the glory for him 
 less slight, it might be mentioned that he in- 
 vented that lighter journaHsm which has flour- 
 ished so much latterly. He gave those details, 
 at that time novel, of which the daily life of 
 governments is made up, — all the little partic- 
 ulars of the secret part of public affairs, of the 
 interior movements of the ministerial council 
 and of the diplomatic conferences. These arti- 
 cles received added zest when it became known 
 that the writer drew his information from the 
 copious source which M. de Talleyrand, in his 
 irritation, had opened ; for Talleyrand had liked 
 Thiers from the first. The latter even went so 
 far as to print an ironical article on the account 
 of a journey to Brussels and Ghent which 
 King Louis XVHI. had just published, and so 
 wounded the vanity of the author, more sen- 
 sitive than that of the king. What was more 
 
22 Thiers. 
 
 delicate still, he was bold enough to invoke in 
 his polemic — though without breach of pro- 
 priety — the name of the reputed mistress of 
 the king, Madame de Cayla, whose influence 
 was then considerable. His dexterity was so 
 great that it was difficult to prosecute him. 
 Later on, we have seen Prevost-Paradol like- 
 wise escape the clutches of a harsher and 
 more formidable power than that of the Res- 
 toration. Their fates were similar: Prevost- 
 Paradol's paper was suppressed, and Coste's 
 review was bought up by the Villele ministry. 
 
 This measure was neither skilful nor effec- 
 tive. A journal is not to be sold with its 
 editors, like a plantation with its negroes. 
 Nevertheless it was an annoyance; another 
 field had to be sought for the young Liberals 
 who were just fleshing their blades. *' The 
 young guard is beaten," said Thiers, already 
 drawing his metaphors from that fertile source, 
 the Empire. But the defeat was not serious, 
 and the *' Constitutionnel " retained a more for- 
 midable arm, or rather army. For that jour- 
 nal Thiers wrote in a style as easy, clear, and 
 fascinating as ever, and perhaps more trenchant 
 and polished than that of his other writings. 
 He was not yet master of that propriety of 
 political language, that art of disposing great 
 masses of facts, that lucid and persuasive de- 
 
The Restoration. 2% 
 
 duction, more cogent, perhaps, than the logic 
 of correcter and more forcible writers, of 
 which he has since produced so many mod- 
 els. But he treated political matters frankly, 
 without invective or acrimony, overlooking 
 puerile reproaches, and locking horns with the 
 official spokesmen of the Government on the 
 great questions at issue between aristocracy 
 and democracy, emigration and patriotism, and 
 above all, between the Restoration and the 
 Revolution. Not all of his articles were direct 
 political polemics ; every subject gave oppor* 
 tunity for the expression of free and reason- 
 able opinions as held by a man of flexible, 
 clear, and serious intellect. 
 
 He even wrote for the " Globe " a series of 
 articles on the Exhibition of Paintings, in 
 1822, — articles which were then collected 
 and published in pamphlet form. He di- 
 vined the strange genius of Delacroix and 
 predicted the popularity of Horace Vernet, 
 who made his d^but at that exhibition. Here 
 is what he wrote of Gerard's picture repre- 
 senting Corinne inspired, which has been so 
 often engraved : — 
 
 "The romance of Xorinne ' is thought to be the most 
 fascinating work of a celebrated woman who aston- 
 ished her century by the strength and vivacity of her 
 organization, and especially by a boldness of thought 
 
24 Thiers, 
 
 foreign to her sex. Restless, impassioned, directed 
 by the accident of her education toward lofty aims, 
 Madame de Stael brought to these high intellectual 
 regions all a woman's nature. Filling her books 
 with warmth and with brilliant gleams of truth, 
 she satisfied the multitude, which asks only to be 
 moved and dazzled. But she never equalled the 
 deep passion of Rousseau or the gentle passion of 
 Bernardin de Saint-Pierre; she made everywhere 
 attempts that were mistaken for results, missed the 
 natural grace of the being that keeps its place, and 
 was punished for not having kept her place, by want 
 of charm, by disorder of mind, and by a celebrity 
 whose burden the strongest man could scarcely 
 bear. 
 
 " Madame de Stael's observations upon society are 
 just and penetrating, — they prove her high intelli- 
 gence \ but her poetry is false. ' Delphine ' seems to 
 me, therefore, preferable to * Corinne.' If, however, 
 it is always best to be one's self, Madame de Stael 
 should have reached perfection in ' Corinne,' which is 
 the epic of herself. But she is here too mucli her- 
 self, surrenders too freely to all the excesses of her 
 spirit. Yielding to that mystical German taste for 
 what is just now termed the ' impressive ' style, — 
 which consists not in arousing sensations, but in 
 eternally describing the sensations one feels, — 
 Madame de Stael has succeeded no better than so 
 many others in describing Italy; she has portrayed 
 her impressions rather than the land that produced 
 them. The ancients depicted things ; Bernardin dc 
 
The Restoration. 25 
 
 Saint-Pierre also depicted things, — they did not 
 count their heart-beats one by one. And this is what 
 gives their pictures such reality and life." 
 
 It is important to cite this passage, severe 
 as it is, for Thiers would at no time have dis- 
 avowed it. It was one of his peculiarities that 
 he had no taste, or rather no esteem, for femi- 
 nine genius. He had still less taste for the 
 kind of literature that he here styles " im- 
 pressif," — one of the few neologisms which 
 escaped his pen, and for which he would have 
 been more repentant than for the critique it- 
 self. Then, as later, Thiers entertained a very 
 low opinion of the literature which consists in 
 describing the impressions which things or 
 ideas have made upon an author. His own 
 method was to deal directly with things and 
 ideas. He disliked and scarcely understood 
 the subjectiveness, the psychological analysis, 
 the scrutiny of sensations, which has been so 
 greatly overdone during the last hundred 
 years, and his distaste for declamation included 
 the romantic and descriptive styles. No man 
 was ever more unlike Rene, Faust, or Adolphe '} 
 that dreamy spirit which, detaching itself from 
 all personality, occupies itself with introspec- 
 tion and self-analysis, is of the North; M. 
 
 1 Hero of Benjamin Constant's novel. — Tr. 
 
26 Thiers, 
 
 Thiers had all the clearness, security, and 
 promptness of the Southern temperament. He 
 knew no discouragement, no indecision, no 
 regret for any course once taken. Of the two 
 great families which divide the intellectual 
 world, he belonged to the family of Voltaire, 
 not to that of Rousseau. 
 
 This taste for simplicity, clearness, reality, 
 pervaded his political articles in the " Consti- 
 tutionnel." The Restoration school of journal- 
 ists was a school of statesmen. The more 
 philosophical school of the " Globe " and the 
 more practical school of the ''Constitutionnel" 
 represented the two chief currents of the 
 French Revolution. Notwithstanding recent 
 paradoxical attempts to question the useful 
 results of this Revolution, we may say that it 
 established and aimed to realize three prin- 
 ciples : First, the philosophic freedom of the 
 human understanding, — the dearest wish of 
 mankind from the time of the Renascence; 
 next, the remoulding, in accordance with the 
 principle of equality, of the mediaeval social 
 order which still existed ; finally, political 
 liberty, under the only form then or now 
 known, that of representative or parliamentary 
 government. These three principles — free- 
 dom of thought, social equality, political lib- 
 erty — were threatened at every moment by 
 
The Restoration. 27 
 
 the Restoration. There was no official public 
 defence of the first two, while the third, which 
 is the security for the two others, frequently- 
 seemed to be endangered. These principles 
 were the horror of the clergy and the nobility, 
 and these bodies arrogated to themselves a 
 preponderant influence. The Catholicism of 
 that time, less Inclined to legends and to ultra- 
 montanism than that of to-day, was more 
 counter-revolutionary, more distinctly abso- 
 lutist. It was a religion of emigrants and of 
 courtiers. Almost without exception, defend- 
 ers of the Church were enemies of freedom. 
 The nobility regretted the privileges of which 
 they had been so recently shorn. The Mon- 
 archy, especially under Charles X., would not 
 admit the permanence of the Charter, and 
 refused to regard it as the sanction of the work 
 of 1789. The presence of a Bourbon upon the 
 throne was to the Bourbon mind evidence 
 enough of the defeat of the Revolution. At 
 bottom, Charles X. had no more respect for 
 the Chambers than Louis XV. had for the 
 Parliament of Paris ; this was shown in 1830. 
 
 Even if they did not prepare a coup d'etat, 
 the court, the king, and the RoyaHsts thought 
 of it as a last resource which would be resisted 
 by none but the ambitious, the senseless, and 
 the designing, — for it is thus that partisans 
 
28 Thiers. 
 
 characterize those who may be separated from 
 them by some shade of opinion. What was the 
 Ministry during the greater part of the Resto- 
 ration, if not a party in power? Now, Thiers 
 has somewhere said of a party in power that it 
 is " a thunderbolt in the hands of a child." 
 
 The situation was a very critical one for all 
 who desired the definitive triumph of the French 
 Revolution, and every man had his own solu- 
 tion of the problem. Some, like M. de Lafay- 
 ette, looked upon the case as decided, and 
 thought that the conspiracy of the Monarchy 
 against the Charter justified conspiracy of an- 
 other kind. For M. de Lafayette any mon- 
 archy was, at bottom, merely a disagreeable 
 concession which he might feel bound to make 
 to his reason and to his country. None knew 
 better than he the Old Regime and its miseries, 
 which he had understood and condemned even 
 if he had not himself been one of the sufferers. 
 He recalled his youthful indignation when, as 
 he was walking at Chavaniac, seeing the peas- 
 ants kneeling to him as he passed, and kissing 
 his hands, he said between his teeth : " Patience ! 
 patience ! I must submit to it this once more, 
 — but it is the last time." His suspicion was 
 too well justified by his memory; and though 
 he preferred the Bourbon Monarchy to the 
 Empire, he cherished toward the Bourbons a 
 
The Restoration. 29 
 
 distrustful repugnance. Public opinion having, 
 however, accepted the legitimate king at the 
 hands of foreigners, Lafayette had consented 
 to what he regarded as a contract equally bind- 
 ing upon the king and upon himself. Accord- 
 ingly, when a reactionary ministry was formed, 
 when the rumors of a coup d^^tat became con- 
 tinual, he considered the contract void. And 
 as there was for him but a step from thought 
 to action, the moment he felt that he had a 
 right to conspire, he conspired without reckon- 
 ing the chances of success. 
 
 An old-fashioned party of this kind was cer- 
 tainly the least dangerous of all to the Bourbon 
 Monarchy ; for rarely has an unorganized band 
 of malcontents prevailed against the power and 
 organization of a government. This party was 
 scarcely represented in the press ; in the Cham- 
 ber it was represented only by M. de Lafayette, 
 M. d'Argenson, and M. Manuel. It worked 
 chiefly by means of secret societies composed 
 of intrepid young men, among whom were some 
 Buonapartists. Speaking of this party, Madame 
 de Simiane, a stanch royalist, said to M. de 
 Lafayette: **The honest men of your party 
 have no superiors. Your ^lite is much better 
 than ours, but our rank and file are as good 
 as yours, and your scoundrels are worse than 
 ours." 
 
30 Thiers. 
 
 Another opposition was represented in the 
 Tribune by M. Royer-Collard, M. Camille Jor- 
 dan, M. de Serre sometimes, and Duke Victor 
 de Broglie ahvays. Their arms were more for- 
 midable than conspiracies: in the first place, 
 oratory; then the *' Globe" newspaper, which 
 was edited by young men whose names still 
 occur to every mind when one speaks of wri- 
 ters who have honored the vocation of journal- 
 ism, — Vitet, Duchatel, Dubois, Sainte-Beuv.e, 
 Duvergier de Hauranne, de Remusat. Feeling 
 neither love nor hatred for the Restored Mon- 
 archy, these men contented themselves with 
 expressing opinions of absolute liberalism in 
 philosophy, in politics, in literature. All that 
 they asked of the Monarchy was the applica- 
 tion of these principles ; and they accepted in 
 advance any government, monarchy or repub- 
 lic, which would respect their opinions. It was 
 not at all difficult to perceive that, of all gov- 
 ernments, the one least capable of practising 
 their theories was precisely the one which 
 styled itself " legitimate," — that is to say, 
 superior and anterior to every constitution, — 
 but this inference from their writings they did 
 not care to make explicit. M. de Broglie, who 
 figured in the first rank among them, said in 
 his " Memoirs " that they were " Revolution- 
 ists in ideas, Jacobins in meditations, applying 
 
The Restoration. 31 
 
 to ideas the motto of the Revolution, * Make 
 way for me ! '" ^ But in poHtics, as in Nature, 
 opinions are represented by men, and systems 
 by governments. From a revolution in opin- 
 ion to a revolution in practice is but a step. 
 The Emperor Napoleon was not mistaken in 
 regarding theorists as dangerous. Yes, they 
 are dangerous ; for they make men understand 
 and hate tyranny, and point out to nations the 
 safeguards of freedom ! ^ ^- 
 
 M. Thiers, by his very origin hostile to the 
 Old Regime, almost a Buonapartist at college, 
 prepossessed against clergy and aristocracy, 
 had received his first political emotion from 
 the spectacle of the double invasion of France 
 and from the experience of the reaction of 
 181 5 in the South. He brought to the Paris 
 press the opinions of the French Revolution, 
 whose cause he purposed resolutely to uphold, 
 without hatred or wrath, without weakness or 
 concession. His first articles in the "Constitu- 
 tionnel " show that his opposition was founded 
 upon the necessity of the case rather than 
 upon the authority of principles. Never for a 
 moment was he anarchical; from the outset 
 his spirit of freedom was restrained by the 
 
 1 Souvenirs du feu d-uc de Broglie, ii. 137. 
 
 2 A page, dealing a little more in detail with the attitude 
 of the Doctrinaire party, is here omitted. —Tr. 
 
32 Thiers, 
 
 spirit of government. Less practically revolu- 
 tionary than the deputies of the extreme Left, 
 and less theoretically so than the writers for the 
 ** Globe," he had drawn from the Constituent 
 Assembly, from the Convention, and from the 
 Empire, a middle conclusion, — that of the 
 necessity of a constitutional monarchy. But 
 " he had a love for realities ; " more than this, 
 he had respect for facts. Taking counsel of 
 history, he sought the type of this normal gov- 
 ernment where it in fact existed, — that is, in 
 England, — and what he advocated was merely 
 to shape the result of the French Revolution 
 upon the model of the English. This was at 
 bottom a new policy, although admiration for 
 English liberty was then as now part of the 
 Liberal tradition. 
 
 This policy he consistently supported, first 
 in the " Constitutionnel," later in the " Na- 
 tional," a paper which he founded after the 
 failure, on account of minor differences, of a 
 plan of union with the " Globe." The Doc- 
 trinaires, innovators in every field, were econo- 
 mists and romanticists. Already Thiers had 
 his rooted dislike of free trade and of politi- 
 cal economy, which he irnpeYtinently styled 
 '* wearisome literature." ^ But wherever he 
 
 1 La littSrature emtuyeuse. Carlyle's "dismal science" 
 may be merely a free translation of this. — Tr. 
 
The Restoration. 33 
 
 wrote, he appeared convinced that the cruel 
 memories of ?he Revolution were too present 
 to men's minds to admit the possibiHty of the 
 Repubhc. He kept himself free from the illu- 
 sions of Lafayette, while .at the same time he 
 feared lest the absolute principles of the Doc- 
 trinaires might bring about too radical a 
 change of political organization. With a saga- 
 city of which he was to give many a proof, he 
 saw that the obstacle to freedom was neither 
 the Charter, nor centralization, nor even the 
 monarchical form ; it was the principle of le- 
 gitimacy. This principle concealed a power 
 forever dangerous to the nation and its institu- 
 tions ; and a sovereign who should lay claim to 
 no prior and superior right would give all the 
 necessary pledges. Thus a revolution might 
 be accomphshed in a spirit of construction 
 rather than of destruction. The thought was 
 simple, strong, and nevertheless quite novel. 
 
 Such a government, founded on the ruins of 
 the personal monarchy of divine right, must 
 have a king who could accept and love the 
 principles of the French Revolution, who 
 should be sufficiently exalted in rank to have 
 no rivals or equals, and sufficiently detached 
 from the House of Bourbon never to unite 
 with it. These qualifications could be actually 
 recognized in a prince who stood upon the 
 3 
 
34 Thiers. 
 
 steps of the throne. Without foreseeing that 
 his accession would be the logical result of the 
 political combinations of a young journalist 
 from Provence, without in any way conspiring, 
 this prince, taking counsel only of the mem- 
 ories of his family and of his youth, did noth- 
 ing to render impossible the part he was to 
 play. The Duke of Orleans, liberal, popular, 
 in disgrace at court, was not an Emigrant, and 
 had taken no part in the errors of the depart- 
 ure and the return of the royal house. He 
 had served in the army of the Republic, and 
 his father had given but too many pledges to 
 the French Revolution. 
 
 These various circumstances tended to ren- 
 der the Revolution of 1830 acceptable to a 
 public which is not very open to mere reason- 
 ing and theory. Nevertheless it was theory, — 
 without which, said Royer-Collard, "it is im- 
 possible to know what we say when we speak, 
 or what we do when we act" — that had guided 
 Thiers in the choice of his opinion, and had 
 brought him so near the standpoint of M. 
 Guizot, who was to be so long his rival. The 
 latter, without directly urging imitation, fre- 
 quently cited the example of England. Thiers 
 said very distinctly, "We must cross the 
 Channel, not the Atlantic." In all his articles 
 he supported a rational Orleanism ; he threw 
 
The Restoration. 35 
 
 all the flexibility and fertility of his mind upon 
 the task of proving this the only practicable 
 means of securing the triumph of the Revolu- 
 tion, and of terminating it, as it had begun, by 
 the reality of parliamentary government. He 
 advocated these principles for eight years with 
 alternations of haste and patience, according as 
 the ever-expected coup d'etat seemed more 
 or less imminent. Notwithstanding the great 
 boldness of the thought, the expression was so 
 carefully kept within bounds that he was never 
 prosecuted, while M. Mignet, who afterward 
 became so prudent, and the scrupulous M. 
 Dubois, were condemned in the police court. 
 
 The general spirit of these articles does 
 honor to the moderation and perspicacity of 
 Thiers, and their result went beyond all his 
 hopes. It was a policy of reason formulated 
 in anticipation of the mistakes of the gov- 
 ernment; its success required moderate rev- 
 olutionists, bold conservatives, fearless lib- 
 erals, a brave and wise people, a prudent and 
 unprejudiced prince, statesmen of various 
 parties uniting in a common work. And the 
 astonishing thing about this policy is that it 
 succeeded. A day cWe when King Charles 
 X., who, according to the apt phrase of M. 
 Mole, was "rather rash than resolute," gave 
 the long expected if not long sought oppor- 
 
36 Thiers. 
 
 tunity by conspiring against his own govern- 
 ment, and thus made way for the pure Revo- 
 lution of 1830. 
 
 PoHtical writing did not exhaust Thiers' 
 activity. He wrote, for example, a biography 
 of Miss Bellamy of Covent Garden Theatre, an 
 article on Boisseree's book, one on Cologne 
 Cathedral, and a study of John Law, — the 
 first and almost the only article of a '' Progres- 
 sive Encyclopaedia" which had been announced 
 with great parade. In an article on the me- 
 moirs of Marshal Gouvion Saint-Cyr ^ appears 
 the first trace of that taste for battles, and of 
 that talent for describing their fortunes, for 
 which he was afterward to be so famous. This 
 passage had the singular fate of being trans- 
 lated almost word for word by Mr. Disraeli, 
 and inserted without acknowledgment in his 
 panegyric on the Duke of Wellington. More- 
 over, M. Littre, with all his penetration, failed 
 to recognize Thiers in it, and printed it in his 
 edition of the works of Armand Carrel.^ It 
 begins : — 
 
 " It would be difficult to persuade men, especially 
 those of a generation like ours, which has seen so 
 many soldiers, that of all the arts, the art of war gives 
 
 ^ ReVue fran9aise, November, 1829, p. 196. 
 
 2 CEuvres politiques et litteraires d'Armand Carrel, v. 132. 
 
The Restoration. 37 
 
 the greatest exercise to the mind. Nevertheless, this 
 is true ; and the greatness of the art consists in the 
 fact that it demands character as well as intellect, 
 that it brings into play the entire man. In this 
 respect the art of governing is the only art which is 
 like it or equal to it. Consider, in fact, the works of 
 the most renowned poets, scholars, orators, — even 
 their finest works shall never reveal to you the tem- 
 per of their souls. Consider, on the contrary, the 
 actions of generals and of statesmen, — invariably 
 you shall read in these actions the character as well 
 as the mind of the doer, for a man governs and a 
 man fights with his whole soul. Be it understood, 
 however, that governing does not here mean admin- 
 istering a province, and that fighting means more 
 than charging at the head of a regiment. Otherwise 
 this assertion would involve the ascription of mind 
 and soul to too many men." 
 
 It will be profitable to quote also an article 
 written in response to M. de Montlosier. M. 
 Sainte-Beuve has already printed it in his " Con- 
 temporary Portraits ; " but how is it possible to 
 speak of the literature of this century without 
 following in the footsteps of this critic? . 
 
 " No ! before '89 we had not all that we have since 
 had ; for it would have been madness to rebel with- 
 out motive, and a whole nation does not become in 
 a moment insane. Those concessions which you call 
 boons, and which I call restitutions, were extorted by 
 
( 
 
 38 Thiers. 
 
 the Revolution alone. This one word recalls them 
 all, and the contrasting word recalls the lack of them. 
 Reflect that before '89 we had no annual represen- 
 tation, no right to vote taxes, no equality before the 
 law, no eligibility to office. You maintain that all 
 these things were in men's minds ; but the Revolution 
 was required in order to realize them in laws. 
 
 " I can be as frank as you, and I admit that our 
 party as well as yours is made up of men, and is 
 moved by the passions of men ; the only difference 
 between us is that of the justice of the cause. 
 Among us, as among you, there may be vanities and 
 wild passions ; plebeians born in our ranks might have 
 made war upon the fatherland ; but you must con- 
 cede, on the other hand, that nobles born in your 
 ranks might have served in the Committee of Public 
 Safety. We are all men, and our condition is hard. 
 All parties have their good men and their bad men ; 
 they differ only in aim. But you will agree that, 
 between a Bailly dying with head and heart full of 
 truths, and a d'^pr^mesnil dying full of infatuation, 
 although the sacrifice is the same the merit is not the 
 same. Each died for his cause, but which one for 
 the truth?" 
 
 I This is the opinion of the French Revolution 
 that Thiers expressed in his history, — a his- 
 tory which would alone suffice to give him a 
 place among great writers. In four years 
 (1823 to 1827), besides his other works and 
 in spite of his youth, of which he must have 
 
The Restoration. 39 
 
 had to hear much, he succeeded in publishing 
 ten vokimes, covering the history of France 
 from 1789 to the i8th Brumaire. He had 
 been obliged to associate with himself M. 
 Bodin. This protecting name had been in- 
 sisted upon by the publisher, who feared he 
 would not be able to cover the expenses of 
 the work, and who gained a fortune from it. 
 After the third volume (1824), M. Bodin dis- 
 appeared, and Thiers alone confronted the 
 public judgment. 
 
 It was in fact a bold and serious enterprise, 
 to relate, in the presence of those who had 
 themselves been actors or sufferers, the story 
 of a time so confused, so varied, so generous 
 and so base, involving so many men and so 
 many deeds. One might write the history of 
 a whole century without finding so great a 
 number of original characters to delineate and 
 so many explanations to seek for doubtful 
 actions. More than once the historian must 
 have paused to ask himself what choice he 
 woul^ have made among the diverse factions 
 of the time; more than once he must have 
 perceived what his own experience afterward 
 taught him, that in time of revolution the 
 great difficulty is not always to do, but to 
 know, one's duty. Moreover, the path had 
 then been in no wise marked out. To-day we 
 
40 Thiers, 
 
 have at our disposal contemporary narratives, 
 memoirs of all kinds, summaries which enable 
 the mere schoolboy to form an opinion. At 
 that time the historian had access only to the 
 most impassioned testimonies bristling with 
 apologies and recriminations ; and witnesses in 
 a court of justice, subject as they are to error 
 and prejudice, are far superior to historical 
 witnesses. He who first said : " I am not sure 
 of this circumstance, for I have it from an eye- 
 witness," was surely thinking of the spectator 
 of a political occurrence. Contemporary his- 
 tory is merely a theme for declamation. 
 
 M. Thiers, who was in the course of his life 
 to teach the French people many things which 
 they have not wholly forgotten, began by 
 teaching them the good they ought to think 
 of their own history and of themselves. Was 
 he cajoling them? Few critics said so then, 
 and fewer still have thought so since. It has, 
 however, been said, with some show of reason, 
 that he lacked indignation against the crimes 
 that stained the Revolution; and in such a 
 case, to lack indignation would be to lack im- 
 partiality. The reproach would be just if it 
 related to a dramatic history, such as Lamar- 
 tine's " History of the Girondins," and the like. 
 But Thiers' history is a simple narrative, the 
 author of which does not profess to instruct 
 
The Restoratio7t. 41 
 
 the reader what he should think. Neverthe- 
 less, it would be easy to cite more than one 
 page where misfortunes and errors are set 
 forth in a manner calculated to move the 
 reader. Who should feel the wounds inflicted 
 upon humanity and justice, if not those who 
 love the Revolution only for its generous ori- 
 gin and its beneficent results? It was the 
 Moderate party, the Liberal party, what is 
 called in the jargon of the Assembly the Left 
 Centre, — the party of which M. Thiers be- 
 came the leader, — which suffered most from 
 that deviation from the principles of humanity 
 and justice during one of the periods of the 
 Revolution. Who, more than the Liberals, have 
 had reason to deplore the fact that two years 
 of the refined and just eighteenth century 
 should have deserved that sinister name, the 
 Terror? What stain of blood has this party, 
 save its own, shed in the cause? Was it not 
 the sufferer by all these crimes? While all 
 political factions in turn have invoked against 
 it these bloody memories as titles either to pity 
 or to admiration, it alone has always averted 
 its eyes from them with horror. To this day 
 we are the victims of this fatal inconsistency 
 of a nation which simply wished to raise itself 
 from bondage. At the end of a hundred 
 years the imaginations of men are still haunted 
 
42 Thiers. 
 
 by the Terror : it renders some too timid to de- 
 mand or to accept the freedom they long for ; 
 it renders others more impassioned for hcense, 
 v/hich is only one of the forms of oppression. 
 The red flag in politics, like the purple rag 
 brandished by the torero in the arena, serves 
 at once as an excitant and as a bugbear. It is 
 one of the most potent arguments of the ene- 
 mies of freedom, right and left, and nothing is 
 more fatal to the necessary balance of men's 
 minds. 
 
 But though he is not insensible to the suffer- 
 ings of humanity, Thiers takes much more 
 pains to understand men than to judge them. 
 He indulges in no paradoxes about the Jaco- 
 bins, like those which M. de Lamartine, twenty- 
 five years later, so inexcusably set forth with 
 his splendid colouring. Thiers endeavours, not 
 to justify them, but to touch the springs that 
 moved them. " We find ourselves transported 
 with him," wrote Sainte-Beuve, " to that dread- 
 ful mountain which we had beheld from a 
 distance, veiled with storms and lurid with 
 lightning; we ascend its chffs, we explore it 
 as we should an extinct volcano, and we come 
 to understand that things could not have ap- 
 peared from its summit as they appeared from 
 below. Without clearing the guilty, we are 
 led to account for them," 
 
The Restoration. 43 
 
 Thiers, like M. Mignet, is an impassioned 
 partisan of the French Revolution \ and for 
 such writers private misfortunes are swallowed 
 up in the greatness of the result. Thiers is 
 like a general in battle, who cannot lament 
 every wound because his eyes are fixed upon 
 his aim, — victory. Individual conflicts, suffer- 
 ings, death, seem inevitable, and he is led to 
 something that resembles fatalism ; how can 
 the historian quite guard against this? How 
 resist the impulse to make one fact spring from 
 another, to give to events and to men a more 
 logical character than belongs to them, to 
 deem their vicissitudes unavoidable? The 
 better the story is told, the more that idea pre- 
 dominates, the less one perceives that events 
 might have taken a different turn, or that it is 
 possible to imagine a more probable course of 
 things. It would be very convenient to think 
 public misfortunes mere accidents, easily avoid- 
 able. But no ; events must have taken place 
 in such an order and in no other. If this im- 
 pression be natural in a well-constructed 
 narrative, how should Thiers escape the stum- 
 bling-block? In his purely narrative manner 
 he frequently omits to draw conclusions ; the 
 reader is left to reason for himself, and to con- 
 struct a philosophy of history as he goes 
 along. The author is the victim of his ex- 
 
44 Thiers. 
 
 treme clearness, which exhibits facts in a bright 
 light, and gives to all the character of evi- 
 dence, of rigorous logic. But this logic is 
 never used to justify excesses. 
 
 His style is original by dint of being simple. 
 It is in some sense the style of Voltaire ; but 
 Voltaire, more elegant, sharpens his wit and 
 makes it felt, while the satirical side in Thiers 
 does not appear until later, in his speeches. 
 In his history, the effort is to exhibit nothing 
 except the facts. But the effort is not felt; 
 these facts, so numerous, so complicated, show- 
 as through pellucid glass (the comparison is 
 by Thiers himself), and not only facts and men, 
 but all the details of administration and of 
 modern war. Too frequently historians are 
 thoroughly acquainted with only some features 
 of their subject, and to these features they 
 sacrifice the rest, concealing their embarrass- 
 ment by suppositions or declamations. Here 
 everything is in an equal light ; by intelligent 
 and assiduous labour the historian has mastered 
 all the documents, all the State papers, all the 
 negotiations at home and abroad. Not only 
 was it the first time that the history of the 
 Revolution had been written, it was the first time 
 that life had thus been infused into historical 
 writing. The author is not merely a historian,, 
 but a strategist, a financier, a statesman. 
 
The Restoration, 45 
 
 The style is so easy that one does not at 
 first sight feel all its merit. It must be borne 
 in mind that down to the present century, in 
 France at least, history had been written only 
 by literary men, who related it, as a pupil in 
 rhetoric composes a Latin or a French dis- 
 course, without reality, without ever having 
 lived, and without understanding wfiat Hfe is, in 
 the world where the fates of empires are deter- 
 mined. Historians surveyed their subject from 
 below,. sometimes,Sn the case of superior minds, 
 from above ; but it is on a level with his sub- 
 ject that Thiers stands. In his " History of 
 Charles XIL" Voltaire had given historians a 
 lesson, and had shown them that the scope of 
 their subject has widened immensely, ^ — that 
 it requires more precision than formerly, more 
 attention to customs, morals, law, commerce. 
 But what a difference between a short and bril- 
 liant biography of a hero, and that entire world 
 of writers, of orators, of generals, of stormy 
 assemblies, which lives again on the pages of 
 Thiers ! As we read these pages, we feel that 
 the robust intelligence of the author fits him 
 not merely to relate the destinies of France, 
 but to shape them. 
 
 When King Charles X. realized the gloom- 
 iest predictions of his enemies by issuing the 
 Ordinances of July, 1830, he opened to Thiers 
 
46 Thie7'S, 
 
 the career of the statesman. France replied 
 to the Ordinances by the triumphant insurrec- 
 tion which was so promptly appeased by the 
 organization of the Government of the Duke 
 of Orleans under the happily chosen name of 
 Louis Philippe, — a name recalling neither the 
 Louises nor the Charleses nor the Philips, and 
 severing at a single stroke the link between 
 the monarchy of the present and that of the 
 past. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE JULY GOVERNMENT. 
 
 'T^HE Monarchy of July had no luck. In 
 -*- the first place it fell, — and to fall is 
 always bad for a government, — and after its 
 fall its principles were but feebly defended by 
 those who had served it, and even by those 
 who had founded it. Moreover, the later 
 writers who have dealt with it have had their 
 prepossessions, and have attacked it now 
 from the conservative and again from the 
 revolutionary standpoint. Like the Protestant 
 religion, exposed to the anathemas of the 
 Catholics against free investigation, and to the 
 strictures of the critics who condemn that 
 investigation as not being free enough, the 
 revolutionary Monarchy has been fusiladed 
 from every side. 
 
 Very few, in fact, ever loved the July Gov- 
 ernment in and for itself, and for the double 
 reason that it was both the antithesis to the 
 Restoration and the antithesis to Jacobinism. 
 King Louis Philippe was one day complaining 
 
48 Thiers, 
 
 of his Prime Minister, M. Mole ; and when his 
 interlocutor replied that the minister was greatly- 
 attached to the Government, the king retorted : 
 " Not so, for he is not before everything else 
 an anti-legitimist." What defender of the 
 Orleans Monarchy would speak thus to-day? 
 After the fall of that fragile edifice it was natu- 
 ral that every one, according to his nature, 
 should revert to his former faith, — some be- 
 coming Legitimists or Fusionists; others, who 
 had no taste for the pomp and circumstance 
 incident to monarchy, accepting or even seek- 
 ing a republic. After 1848, M. Guizot, for 
 example, could not fail to turn to the Right, 
 M. Dufaure and M. de Tocqueville to the Left. 
 Those who were long inspired by the spirit 
 of 1830 are rare. Rarer still are the publicists 
 who have defended or even understood the 
 constitutional theory of a government which 
 had nothing of monarchy but the name, in 
 which the national sovereignty was recognized, 
 the king subject to the laws, and in which the 
 casting vote belonged to the people. It must 
 be admitted that this Monarchy, though based 
 upon a revolution, is as legitimate as if it had 
 descended in a direct* line from Louis XIV. 
 It is not a chance power, but a government 
 with the same rights as others, and perhaps 
 greater duties. One of the most distinguished 
 
The ytily Government. 49 
 
 historians of that epoch, M. Thureau-Dangin, 
 has recently received the sanction of the 
 French Academy. He is not absolutely an 
 enemy; and yet the system that grew out of 
 the Revolution of 1830 seems to him quite 
 foreign and hateful. Of the government and 
 of the personages of that time he has con- 
 structed an image that has but little semblance 
 to the reality. Whenever M. de Broglie or 
 M. Guizot takes some liberal or popular meas- 
 ure, he is ready to accuse them of weakness or 
 apostasy. Whenever, on the other hand, M. 
 Thiers signs a government bill or performs a 
 conservative act, — an easy thing for him, — 
 M. Thureau-Dangin takes care to remark that 
 he is violating all his principles. He seems 
 almost to regard Thiers as one of those bri- 
 gands turned policemen by whom, according 
 to M. Renan, social order was first founded. 
 He fails to see that both classes were merely 
 conforming to the consequences of the Revo- 
 lution which had triumphed in July, 1830. 
 
 This is not all ; the July Monarchy has suf- 
 fered the further misfortune of being disliked, 
 despised, traduced, by imaginative writers. 
 And these writers are not without influence 
 upon the opinions and especially upon the 
 impressions of posterity. This Government 
 based upon a philosophical theory, whose found- 
 
50 Thiers, 
 
 ers were men of letters, whose ministers were 
 members of the academies, under which power 
 was gained by literary and oratorical talent, in 
 which men rose by intelligence alone, has been 
 relentlessly scouted by those who owed their 
 freedom of speech to the victims of their sar- 
 casms. Except Casimir Delavigne, Scribe, 
 and Alfred de Musset, all the writers of the 
 time — Balzac, George Sand, Frederic Soulie, 
 Eugene Sue, Charles de Bernard, Lamartine, — 
 affected to scoff at the bourgeois Government 
 which aimed to give power to merit alone. 
 Victor Hugo himself, although a peer of 
 France, did but tardy justice to it when, much 
 later, he drew a just portrait of King Louis 
 Philippe in "Les Misdrables." 
 
 The cause of this strange aberration of liter- 
 ary sentiment is far to seek. It might be sup- 
 posed that young lords of the Old Regime or 
 socialistic workingmen are the only men ca- 
 pable of fascinating the artless heroines of 
 Balzac and of George Sand. This, however, is 
 not necessarily true. M. Sardou has given the 
 Engineer an enviable place in his novels and 
 comedies and this Engineer may be justly sus- 
 pected of entertaining Republican sentiments, 
 without ceasing to be loved. In judging these 
 writers we must take into account their natural 
 disposition to carp. Literature adheres to its 
 
The July Government. 51 
 
 traditional attacks upon power, even when that 
 power has itself become literary. Perhaps 
 when statesmen had no longer any claim to 
 power save that of being men of intellect, 
 rivalry necessarily arose. Down to the French 
 Revolution there had been a gulf between men 
 of letters and statesmen. The former looked 
 up from beneath to the masters of the world, 
 whom they made no attempt to equal or even 
 to rival. Modern society grants power on the 
 same conditions as literary fame ; it would seem 
 that letters had been dignified, but literary men 
 have preferred to believe the contrary. It is 
 a weakness of human nature that it does not 
 greatly respect what it does not fear ; that this 
 weakness tends to disappear, is a fact which 
 does honour to our time. But, to take the case 
 of a very excellent and fair-minded man of 
 letters, it is not improbable that M. M^rimee 
 bore more easily the heavy yoke of an em- 
 peror's nephew and of an inglorious minister 
 chosen by the favour of the master, than he had 
 borne the authority, liberal as it was, of one 
 of his confreres of the Academy, who had no 
 claim to power save that of having written the 
 History of Civilization, or the History of the 
 Consulate, — works whose style is inferior to 
 that of *' The Etruscan Vase." 
 
 Thus the July Revolution, which was in- 
 
52 Thiers. 
 
 tended to establish the reign of reason, — and 
 what is more intellectual than that ? — became 
 a target for the raillery of the new literature. 
 Under the Restoration the purely literary men, 
 whether vaudeville-writers or novelists, from 
 M. fitienne to M. de Chateaubriand, made 
 every effort to transform themselves into jour- 
 nalists, and the first ambition of every one 
 who could hold a pen was to write a politi- 
 cal pamphlet. The new generation took an 
 opposite course. Weariness, the need of in- 
 novation, the scepticism that treads upon the 
 heels of revolutions, the unexampled develop- 
 ment of the imagination, — a faculty that had 
 been long benumbed in France, — all con- 
 tributed to make men seek in the art of 
 writing the forms and the effects of style. The 
 theories of art for art's sake led young men to 
 think that literature has no aim beyond itself, 
 and that it is the privilege of talent to repudiate 
 its debt to ideas. The most beautiful phrase 
 was to be that which contained the least 
 meaning. Every one knows what dexterity 
 Theophile Gautier displayed in this game. 
 Accordingly, it was deemed original and con- 
 venient to exclude from the Republic of 
 Letters all who made a useful application of 
 their art, especially those who employed it in 
 writing or speaking upon politics, — above all 
 
The yuly Government. 53 
 
 the moderate, liberal politics for which artists 
 of all classes expressed their contempt by the 
 term bourgeois. 
 
 It must, however, be admitted that if the 
 men of letters could not pardon the Govern- 
 ment for giving them the freedom for which 
 they should have been eager, the politicians 
 repaid them with an equal disdain. The late 
 Duke of Broghe characterized the literature 
 of his time as *' toad's broth." One of the 
 first journalists of our age, M. John Lemoinne, 
 has related that during the Insurrection of 
 1 87 1 M. Thiers asked him one day concerning 
 M. de Sacy. *' He is growing old in peace," 
 was the reply, " consoling himself for present 
 evils by reading the classics." " Ah ! he is 
 quite right," cried M. Thiers ; " Romanticism 
 is the Commune ! " 
 
 The month of July, 1830, presented to the 
 world the noble spectacle of a nation sure of its 
 position, revolting against arbitrary authority, 
 awakening against it, to cite the famous words 
 of the Duke of Broglie, '' that delicate and 
 dreadful right which slumbers at the feet of 
 all human institutions as their sad and final 
 safeguard." The still blood-stained people of 
 Paris contented themselves with a moderate 
 solution, which was in entire harmony with the 
 national opinion. According to some sages 
 
54 Thiers, 
 
 of to-day this moderation was the effect of 
 fear. France was Hke a boy who, having 
 climbed too high, clings to a branch that he 
 may not fall and perish. On the contrary, it 
 was like a squadron which has been ordered 
 to occupy a given position, and which takes 
 and holds that position. The bold and rea- A 
 sonable spirit of Thiers seems to have pre- j 
 sided over these events. We know by many J 
 witnesses how great was the part he played; 
 it was he who went to Neuilly to bring back 
 the Duke of Orleans. But before relating the 
 ast act, the first must not be forgotten, — the 
 protest of the journalists which inaugurated 
 this Revolution. 
 
 In the office of the " National," St. Mark 
 Street, was held a meeting of writers, who 
 were more immediately affected than other 
 citizens by the July Ordinances, for the pur- 
 pose of considering, not armed resistance, 
 which was not anticipated, but a protest the 
 form of which was still to be determined. M. 
 Leon Pillct, editor of the ''Journal de Paris," 
 proposed to draw up a collective protest which 
 those might sign who would. This proposition 
 being eagerly accepted, M. Thiers, with Messrs. 
 Chatelain, Cauchois-Lemaire, and Remusat, was 
 selected to write the paper, but it was Thiers 
 V^^^ ^ho composed the whole of it. This is not 
 
 c 
 ( 
 
 se 
 
The July Government. 55 
 
 the only opportunity he had to protest against 
 arbitrary acts or infringements of the national 
 sovereignty. It is interesting to see how well 
 he measured the force of his style with the 
 gravity of the deed, and to compare this 
 memorial with his words nearly fifty years 
 later, apropos of the i6th of May, 1877. But 
 the times were very different. In 1830 matters 
 were very serious, and M. de Broglie said on 
 that very evening to one of the signers, think- 
 ing him not sufficiently alive to his danger, 
 
 ,. " Do not be deceived ; those people will be 
 
 '\ extremely cruel." 
 
 For Thiers this manifesto marks the transi- 
 
 / tion from the career of the journalist to that of 
 
 ( the statesman, from the article to the action. 
 
 ^Before he spoke in the Chamber he published 
 a pamphlet ^ defending the Revolution and the 
 resultant Monarchy. This brochure sets forth 
 the principles of the new Constitution as pub- 
 licists had beforehand explained them and as 
 the friends of this Monarchy accepted them. 
 In order to understand the July Government, 
 we must bear in mind the conflict between dif- 
 ferent classes of its friends, — between those 
 who had heartily favoured Louis Philippe and 
 those who had merely accepted the situation, 
 
 1 La Monarchic de 1830, par A. Thiers, depute des Bouches- 
 du-Rhone. 8^0, Paris. A. Mesnier, 1831. 
 
56 Thiers, 
 
 as in a shipwreck one takes the first frail bark 
 that comes along. The one class, whose chief 
 care was to keep intact the party of progress, 
 desired to make the Revolution bring forth an 
 abundant harvest of freedom and reform ; the 
 others attached themselves to the past, and 
 sought to make good their alliance with the 
 friends of the Old Regime. During the first 
 years the difference was not very obvious, both 
 parties being occupied in defending the men- 
 aced social order; but the dissension was to 
 develop into open hostility. 
 
 Never have circumstances appeared better 
 suited to satisfy philosophers and to throw 
 light upon an exposition of the doctrines of 
 constitutional law. The example of resorting 
 to force in order to change institutions, with- 
 out valid motive, without wise reflection, had 
 been set by the Bourbon Government itself, so 
 that the favourable role of resistance had fallen 
 to society. But reasonable and gentle as this 
 resistance was, it was a revolution, — the swift 
 work of passion and force ; and both in passion 
 and in force there is a danger difficult to sup- 
 press. Their greatest danger lies in the fact 
 that they offer a spectacle which disturbs the 
 conscience and the reason. It was to re-estab- 
 lish tranquillity in France, to show the people 
 their victory, and to teach them not to abuse it 
 
The yuly GovernmetiL 57 
 
 that Thiers' pamphlet aimed. After a revolu- 
 tion the statesman has to deal with three classes 
 of people : first, those who regret the past sim- 
 ply because it is the past; secondly, those who 
 wish to profit by circumstances to carry the 
 movement beyond its legitimate results ; finally, 
 the class — not the least dangerous nor the least 
 numerous — who are frightened by the move- 
 ment after having themselves encouraged it. 
 This reaction of fear is the most formidable of 
 all; we have encountered it more than once 
 in the course of this century. 
 
 It would be going beyond the scope of this 
 very intelligent and practical brochure to in- 
 quire how far the Government of 1830, or the 
 succeeding Republic, was capable of fulfilling 
 the wishes which the French people have en- 
 tertained for the past hundred years. Both the 
 Charter and the Constitution of 1875, with the 
 difference of an intervening half-century and 
 of universal suffrage, have realized what the 
 French Revolution could not accomplish, but 
 made possible. The failure of that Revolution 
 was due solely to its sins against humanity, 
 justice, and liberty, and all its lessons are 
 favorable to the liberal poHcy. The conclu- 
 sion must ever be that society and govern- 
 ment, being human inventions, are subject to 
 the great law of human affairs, and that poli- 
 
58 Thiers. 
 
 tics is therefore governed by morality. In 
 politics the relations of deed and law, passion 
 and reason, are the same as elsewhere, and 
 nothing is right that is not righty just that is 
 notjust. Now under absolute power, whether 
 it be that of the Old Regime or of modern 
 dictatorship, human nature is never intact and 
 pure, absolute power acting necessarily by in- 
 timidation or corruption. It is political free- 
 dom alone that leaves man his moral freedom ; 
 it alone can serve as the corner-stone of legiti- 
 mate authority, and the art of constitutions is 
 to make reason prevail and to get it freely 
 acknowledged. 
 
 Under the Restoration, Thiers, being in 1830 
 but thirty-three years old, would have been 
 obliged to Avait seven years longer before he 
 could become a deputy; but the legal age was 
 lowered by the new Constitution. Even before 
 his election, in 1830, by the Electoral College 
 of Aix, he took part in the deliberations of the 
 Assembly in the capacity of Under-Secretary 
 of State in the Finance Ministry, a post which 
 he held under two successive ministers, — M. 
 Louis and M. Laffitte. Before he had actually 
 spoken, his method was familiar, the second of 
 these Ministers having read from the Tribune 
 expositions of financial policy which were by 
 Thiers, and which, by their sagacity and sim- 
 
The July Government. 59 
 
 plicity, had pleased the House. His friends 
 were therefore not so anxious about what he 
 might say, as about his manner. His enemies 
 noted his short stature, his bearing, his eyes 
 hidden behind his spectacles, his Southern ac- 
 cent, which, however, soon wore off as his voice 
 became intense and animated. For it must be 
 admitted that he had enemies. Even then he 
 had to suffer from the injustice of public opin- 
 ion, from the violence of the press, from the 
 ill-will of those who dislike new-comers or who 
 fear rivals, from the contemptuous aversion of 
 men of affairs for men of letters whose intelli- 
 gence alone makes them politicians. 
 
 It was his enemies who were pleased by his 
 first two speeches on finance in the autumn of 
 1830. He spoke with monotonous diffuseness, 
 with hesitating and incorrect copiousness, and 
 seemed incapable of effectively repelling the 
 insults of the opposition journals. Never was 
 a debut more deceptive. The Ministry was 
 disliked by the deputies, who overwhelmed 
 it with attacks of all sorts. It appeared to 
 them — though the idea now seems very ex- 
 aggerated to a reader of these speeches — 
 that Thiers was trying to imitate the Girondins 
 and the orators of the Mountain, and that, 
 having through his historical studies become 
 familiarized with Mirabeau, he had some am- 
 
6o Thiers. 
 
 bition to resemble that Revolutionary orator. 
 Distant as was the imitation, the effect of it was 
 bad. In political assemblies it is dangerous to 
 imitate any one. Of all kinds of oratory, par- 
 liamentary eloquence is that which demands the 
 most absolute sincerity and naturalness. A 
 man may write otherwise than as he thinks or 
 speaks, creating in himself an artificial talent 
 which may be bold in a timid person, sentimen- 
 tal in a hard and selfish person. Even a preacher 
 in the pulpit, a lawyer at the bar, may, without 
 offending, speak with an impassioned violence 
 which contrasts strongly with his ordinary slug- 
 gishness; but before the House a man must 
 appear as he is. One may certainly be a 
 declaimer like M. Berryer, if declamation 
 be, as in him, a second nature. M. Guizot 
 was bound to express himself from the Tri- 
 bune after the fashion of a doctrinaire pro- 
 fessor, M. de Lamartine as a harmonious poet. 
 In order to succeed, it was necessary that 
 Thiers should hit upon a tone thoroughly in 
 keeping with his person, his voice, his talent. 
 The simplest borrowed phrase rings false from 
 the Tribune. The Chambers are full of dis- 
 tinguished men who have broken down as 
 speakers for want of having struck the key 
 suited to their personality. 
 > A few months after this partial check M. 
 
The July Governmeiit. 6i 
 
 Thiers had happily triumphed, not only over 
 his physical difficulties, but over the contempt 
 and prejudice with which- his maiden efforts 
 were orreeted. His first success was in the dis- 
 cussion of the Address to the throne, shortly 
 after the accession to power of M. Casimir 
 Perier (March 13, 1831). The Perier Ministry 
 was completely in harmony with the principles 
 of the late Revolution ; what distinguished it 
 from the preceding administrations was the 
 firmness with which these principles were sup- 
 ported. Force and decision succeeded weak- 
 ness and shuffling indecision. This change 
 was certainly not of a character to displease 
 Thiers, who was nevertheless embarrassed by 
 the obligation of defending at times the Min- 
 istry in which he had served. This he did, 
 notably in reply to M. Humann, who in an 
 exposition of the state of the treasury had 
 been very aggressive. It was on this occasion 
 that Thiers made his celebrated complaint 
 against *' the art of grouping figures." 
 
 He was also somewhat distrustful of M. Casi- 
 mir Perier, fearing lest the outspoken language 
 of this minister might provoke a European war. 
 It is well known how the great powers treated 
 the Government of the House of Orleans. 
 Metternich's Memoirs, unkind as they are, 
 give but a faint idea of it ; for the prince, hos- 
 
62 Thiers. 
 
 tile as he was to France, to constitutionalism, to 
 liberalism, to all the ismSy as he called them, 
 had received the Revolution with the equanim- 
 ity of a man who has foretold an event, who 
 is dissatisfied with those who have rendered 
 it inevitable, and who does not suffer from it 
 himself. 
 
 The other conservative powers were more 
 threatening, and the anxiety arising from this 
 cause delayed Thiers' adhesion to a Minis- 
 try which appealed to him in so many ways. 
 At last his confidence in the wisdom of the 
 king, in the firmness of General Sebastiani, 
 Minister of Foreign Affairs, in the good-will 
 of England, and especially his own reflections 
 (for ideas seldom came to him from without), 
 all united to banish his distrust, and in the de- 
 bate of August, 1 83 1, he made a speech on 
 foreign affairs which was an event. Its merit 
 was enhanced by its unexpectedness. The 
 members of the former House could not be- 
 lieve that this was the same man whom they 
 had condemned to silence for the rest of his 
 life. The speech has indeed some faults, but 
 it shows also his best qualities, — order, clear- 
 ness, precision, the art of making everything 
 accessible, tangible, decisive. Its somewhat 
 incorrect eloquence is animated by a warmth 
 and a feeling which impart even to common- 
 
The yuly Government. 63 
 
 places something of the originality of the 
 speaker. It was at once perceived that he 
 would rival Guizot as a master of the Tribune. 
 Some years older than Thiers, Guizot had 
 spoken in the last parliament of the Res- 
 toration, and had likev/ise rapidly recovered 
 himself after a first attempt which had fallen 
 short of the hopes of the admirers of his great 
 mind, his noble features, and his sonorous 
 voice. It was certainly not by the last two 
 qualities that Thiers distinguished himself; in 
 fact, it is perhaps impossible to give an idea 
 of him to those who have never heard him. 
 There is in the orator's art something that 
 must escape posterity, and for this very reason 
 it is just that we should not be chary of our 
 admiration for speeches which, even without 
 the personal magic of the speaker and the 
 responsive thrill of the audience, remain good 
 and useful works. All speeches, even those 
 of Thiers, gain by the author's delivery. His 
 half-hidden gray eyes would flash with pro- 
 found shrewdness, while his set features and 
 his short hair made him resemble certain Ro- 
 man busts to which energy and intelligence 
 lend a kind of beauty. Grand ideas, deep 
 sentiments, transfigured his countenance, his 
 accent became graver, and then his head would 
 assume a noble attitude. One may say, with- 
 
64 Thiers, 
 
 out a paradox, that although his figure, his 
 face, his bearing, his voice, were all unpromis- 
 ing, none of them was an embarrassment to 
 him even in the Tribune. 
 
 Thiers became Minister of the Interior in 
 the Cabinet of the nth of October, 1832, 
 under the presidency of Marshal Soult, the 
 Duke of Broglie being Minister of Foreign 
 Affairs. A month later Thiers was selected 
 to explain the policy of the Cabinet, and this 
 new success seemed greater than the former. 
 The speech began with one of those rapid 
 summaries of the history of France since the 
 French Revolution, — summaries which he was 
 so often to repeat with such truth and variety 
 that his hearers never wearied of them. Space 
 fails wherein to cite even fragments, as also to 
 enumerate and discuss the changes of minis- 
 tries with which parliamentary governments 
 are so often reproached, and which constitute 
 one of their inevitable drawbacks. The enu- 
 meration of them can be read in the histories 
 of the epoch, and still better in the short pref- 
 aces which M. Calmon has supplied to each of 
 the speeches published by him. They form 
 an excellent history and a convenient running 
 commentary. This commentary and these 
 speeches bear witness to the immense activity 
 of a mind able to master and elucidate not only 
 
The yuly Government. 65 
 
 questions of government, but those of finance, 
 of war, of administration. Like the great 
 English ministers, Walpole, Pitt, Robert Peel, 
 Thiers could grapple with all subjects and 
 could speak of business affairs as well as of 
 politics. In the treatment of every subject 
 he exhibited the same attractive lucidity, the 
 same solidity of discussion, all the marks of 
 technical knowledge and thorough competence, 
 without a trace of pedantry. 
 
 His faults must also be mentioned, for the 
 sake of completeness. His copiousness some- 
 times runs over into prolixity, and his simple 
 manner now and then borders upon vulgarity. 
 His arguments are not always as strong as 
 they seem plausible. He sometimes mistakes 
 clearness for evidence, overstates his case, 
 under-estimates the validity of objections. He 
 takes too much satisfaction in instructing, but 
 it must be admitted that he never fatigues. 
 Like Voltaire, he has been accused of being 
 superficial. Neither he nor Voltaire has much 
 regard for ideas that cannot be popularized; 
 that is, grasped by the unaided power of 
 common-sense. Like Voltaire, also, he was 
 little inclined to innovation, and when he erred 
 it was never on the side of rashness. Strangely 
 enough, his timidity in the matter of reform 
 was most marked when he was in opposition. 
 5 
 
66 Thiers, 
 
 In power his boldness was greater, and in this 
 his was truly an executive talent, for he did not 
 dread responsibility. He would take a course 
 that he would not have ventured theoretically 
 to advise. 
 
 In action he took his course boldly, pro- 
 vided he had time to reflect, — for his mind, 
 keen as it was, was a little slow in grasping 
 new ideas. One might say that he was at 
 once bold and timid, temporizing and urgent. 
 In ordinary times the companions of his strug- 
 gles complained of his delays, of his hesitation, 
 of the difficulty of getting him to sacrifice his 
 tastes or even his pleasures, of his repugnance 
 to entering into combinations which he had 
 not devised. But the moment he saw a politi- 
 cal necessity, he gave up everything, — rest, 
 health, work; his weariless activity begrudged 
 nothing ; and when his mind was made up, his 
 somewhat solitary fashion of thinking and act- 
 ing independently of others gave him singu- 
 lar strength and confidence. He knew neither 
 discouragement nor doubt. Thus if all his 
 qualities had their reverse side, his faults had 
 their good side. So it is with superior men ; 
 and in describing such a man one is tempted 
 to recall the scene in Moliere's " Bourgeois 
 Gentilhomme," ^ wherein Covielle sets forth the 
 
 1 Act iii. Scene 9. M. de Rdmusat makes some judicious 
 omissions. — Tr. 
 
The Jitly Government, 67 
 
 defects of Lucile, while Cleonte, affecting to 
 agree, suggests the corresponding merit : — ■ 
 
 " Covielle. To begin with, her eyes are small. 
 
 Cleonte. Yes, it is true, but they are full of fire, the 
 most sparkling, the most searching in the world. 
 
 Covielle, As to her figure, she is not tall. 
 
 Cleonte. No, but she is well shaped. 
 
 Covielle. She affects a certain carelessness in her 
 speech and actions. 
 
 Cleonte. True, but all that is becoming to her, and 
 her manners are engaging, — they have an indescrib- 
 able charm that fascinates the heart. 
 
 Covielle, As to her intelligence — 
 
 Cleonte, Ah, Covielle ! her intelligence is most re- 
 fined and delicate. 
 
 Covielle. Her conversation — 
 
 Cleonte. Her conversation is charming." 
 
 This last applies even better than the rest to 
 M. Thiers, whose conversation has been much 
 praised. To tell the truth, it was not precisely 
 a conversation, but rather a fluent monologue, 
 full of sallies, anecdotes, historical parallels. 
 It was very much like one of his speeches; 
 indeed it often was the speech itself, or a frag- 
 ment of the speech, which he was about to 
 pronounce. It exhibited the talent of com- 
 position, one of the best gifts of the orator ; he 
 would follow a logical deduction for a whole 
 evening throughout interruptions of all kinds, 
 
68 Thiers, 
 
 returning to it after the most unforeseen and 
 the most prolonged digressions. Here, as in 
 the House, he paid sHght heed to objections, 
 his own ideas appearing so clear to him that 
 those of others remained a little obscure. He 
 seemed not to hear them at the time ; but it 
 was not unusual to see him return of his own 
 accord to an idea which he had at first re- 
 jected. He needed to wait until an idea, de- 
 posited in his brain, had germinated in the 
 particular form which his own ideas assumed. 
 So his friends seldom interrupted him, and this 
 not only out of deference, but because it was 
 useless ; they found compensation in the charm 
 of his facile, copious talk, full of fire without 
 declamation, of unstudied grace, of unpretend- 
 ing images. 
 
 Thus it was, at least, in the last twenty years 
 of his life ; and M. Doudan tells us in one of 
 his letters^ that we should have found him 
 the same in early life. 
 
 Paris, April lo, 1840. 
 
 M. Thiers dined here on Monday. He talked of 
 Africa with a vivacity that charmed Albert, among 
 others, saying that it gives us the only instinct in the 
 least disinterested or heroic that remains to our 
 country ; pointing to the Atlas Mountains as a kind 
 
 1 Melanges et lettres de M. Doudan, i. 307, 308. 
 
The July Government, 69 
 
 of military school where all the officers of our army 
 are inured to danger, to vigilance, to presence of 
 mind; proving from all his military souvenirs that 
 there can be no better soldiers than those who have 
 served against the light-horse. He made us see the 
 Arabs galloping down the African hillsides, and the 
 unyielding French infantry scattering that mountain- 
 storm with its regular fire. And then the memories 
 of the Army of Egypt, the curved sabres and tur- 
 bans of the Mamelukes, the names of Heliopolis and 
 of the Pyramids, and the fray between the Roman 
 Legion and the Numidian horsemen. M. d'Hau- 
 bersart seemed not in the least moved by all this, and 
 persisted, in spite of the Numidians, in spite of the 
 days of Heliopolis and Tabor, in reckoning upon his 
 fingers how many soldiers we had in Africa, how 
 many we had lost within ten years by fever, how 
 many on the road to Constantine and to Mascara. 
 And M. Thiers, with a kind of Gallic frenzy, led 
 against him all the invincible armies trained in Africa, 
 with their beautiful tattered battle-flags waving in that 
 dazzling sunshine, and all the noble company of 
 heroes bred in war ; and still M. Duvergier insisted 
 tliat it was a very expensive military school. . . . M. 
 de Canouville listened in silence to all this tumult, 
 and after the departure of the President of the 
 Council he said to me : " It 's very odd ; I am not 
 of his opinion, but this little man reminds me of the 
 emperor's manner and vivacity of speech on the 
 days when he was not quite reasonable." 
 
70 Thiers. 
 
 Nothing could be more lifelike than this 
 picture, except the last touch, which is evi- 
 dently inserted for effect; for M. Doudan, a 
 great enemy of the Empire, and M. de Canou- 
 ville, formerly the emperor's quartermaster- 
 general, knew very well what Napoleon was 
 like when he was " not quite reasonable." 
 Apropos of Algeria a characteristic anecdote 
 used to be told. Its conquest dated back to 
 the Restoration, and was completed after the 
 Revolution of 1830. Of course there was a 
 discussion whether we should not abandon it, 
 as we are accustomed to do whenever a colony 
 has been gained by dint of some hardship and 
 heroism. The ministers decided that it must 
 be retained. " It is a school of patience," re- 
 marked M. Guizot. ** It is a school of war," 
 retorted M. Thiers, " At all events, it is a 
 school," concluded M. de Broglie. 
 
 As to the analogy between Thiers and the 
 Emperor Napoleon, one can scarcely imagine 
 any except their common vivacity, their sen- 
 sitiveness to impressions and their power of 
 forcibly rendering these impressions, their in- 
 exhaustible, imaginative improvisation, their 
 sometimes blind irritation against obstacles, — 
 all characteristics of Voltaire also ; for it is by 
 their defects that the spoiled children of genius 
 and fortune resemble one another. Napoleon 
 
The yuly Government 71 
 
 had a certain conformity with Thiers in his 
 way of looking at great social institutions, — 
 the clergy, the university, administration, the 
 courts, commerce. On all these points Thiers' 
 manner of interpreting the Revolution differed 
 little from that of the First Consul ; it was by 
 an effort of mind and by his clear view of prac- 
 tical needs that Thiers became a defender of 
 a free press and of parliamentary govern- 
 ment. To put it differently, he did not pre- \ 
 cisely love freedom, — there is the analogy ; 
 but he loved a free constitution, — there is the 
 difference. 
 
 But let us return to the eloquence of Thiers. 
 He left little to the intelligence of his hearers, 
 and did not fail to repeat his arguments and 
 to explain by the card the origin and the his- 
 tory of every question. This fault was so 
 agreeably hit off in a famous novel of that time, 
 that we must quote a page of it. Jerome 
 Paturot, who has become a deputy, is telling 
 his own story : ^ — 
 
 " There was another orator of the first rank, and 
 him I took as my model. I could not enough ad- 
 mire his rapid rise. In order to conquer a great 
 place in the House, he had had to contend against 
 
 1 Jerome Paturot a la recherche d'une position sociale, par 
 Louis Reybaud. Paris, i8"'", 1842. 
 
72 Thiers, 
 
 physical obstacles, — his voice, his stature, his insig- 
 nificant appearance. The men of brilliant success in 
 the Tribune had the advantage of him in these re- 
 spects. He had overcome these difficulties by dex- 
 terity of speech, by fertility of resources, by flexibility 
 of talent. He was my idol, the master of my choice. 
 Whenever he climbed the marble staircase of the Tri- 
 bune, I pulled myself together, like one who is about 
 to receive a lesson. I must do him the justice to say 
 that he was not niggardly of his lessons ; he gave me 
 all the time I needed to imbue myself with his man- 
 ner and inspire myself with his method. What es- 
 pecially pleased me in him was that he began with 
 the rudiments of every question, which he did not 
 leave until he had exhausted it. He always took it 
 for granted — Heaven knows how justly ! — that the 
 House was ignorant of the very alphabet of things ; this 
 showed a profound study of the human heart. Thanks 
 to him, I came within an ace of understanding the 
 Eastern question ; one speech more, and I should 
 have grasped the problem. Unhappily I stopped 
 short with a four hours' lesson. This was too little ; 
 but what I know of the subject I owe to the orator 
 who was my star. Through his efforts I learned that 
 there is upon th© Bosphorus a city named Constanti- 
 nople, where the Turks are in the majority. It will 
 hardly be denied that this is a notion very essential 
 to any lasting solution of the Eastern question. A 
 few lessons more, and I should have learned some- 
 thing about Egypt and Syria, countries famous in 
 antiquity." 
 
The July Government. 73 
 
 This method of teaching — of sacrificing 
 everything to clearness, of impressing the 
 hearer by sheer force of fact and argument, 
 of holding the whole attention in order to 
 convince — often impelled Thiers to assume 
 the incorrect tone of conversation; but what 
 seems like negligence was sometimes an arti- 
 fice. When he was not addressing the Jerome 
 Paturots of his time, he could change his tone, 
 and recollect that he was a great writer as well 
 as a popular orator. On the 20th of June, 
 1833, while still in office, he was elected a 
 member of the French Academy. Out of 
 twenty-five votes his competitor, Charles No- 
 dier, obtained six, and there were two white 
 balls. On the 13th of the following Decem- 
 ber M. Thiers was received by M. Viennet. 
 After having spoken with taste and measure 
 of the youth and early works of Andrieux, 
 whose place he took, and then of those pretty 
 tales and comedies, which would now be 
 thought a little insipid, the new academician 
 took an opportunity to make the customary 
 survey of the age in which his predecessor 
 had lived : — 
 
 " What times, what things, what men, between that 
 memorable year 1789 and that no less memorable 
 year 1830 ! The ancient French society of the 
 eighteenth century, so refined but so ill-regulated. 
 
74 Thiers, 
 
 ends amid a dreadful storm. A crown falls by vio- 
 lence, dragging down the august head that wore it. 
 Likewise, and without reprieve, fall the most precious 
 and the most illustrious heads ; genius, youth, hero- 
 ism are victims of the wrath of factions, embittered 
 by all that is delightful to men. Out of this bloody 
 chaos suddenly rises an extraordinary genius who 
 seizes this society with his powerful hands, gives it 
 stability, gives it glory, gives it civil equality, — the 
 most pressing of its needs, — postpones the freedom 
 which would have been but an embarrassment, and 
 bears to all parts of the world the prevailing truths 
 of the French Revolution. One day his tricolor 
 banner flashes upon the heights of Mount Tabor, an- 
 other day upon the Tagus, a last day upon the Borys- 
 thenes. And then he falls, leaving the world full of 
 his labors, the human mind full of his image. The 
 most active of mortals goes to die of inaction upon 
 an island of the great ocean ! 
 
 " Such, gentlemen, are the grandeurs we have 
 witnessed. Whatever be our age, many of us have 
 seen a part, some of us have seen all. When, in 
 our childhood, we were taught the annals of the 
 world; they talked to us of the storms of the an- 
 tique forum, of the proscriptions of Sulla, of the 
 tragic death of Tully ; they repeated the stories of 
 unhappy kings, of the misfortunes of Charles I., of 
 the blindness of James II., of the prudence of AVil- 
 liam III. j they told us also of the genius of great 
 captains, of Alexander, of Csesar, until, fascinated by 
 the tale of their greatness, we wished that we might 
 
The July Government 75 
 
 have seen with our own eyes those potent and im- 
 mortal men. 
 
 " Gentlemen, our eyes have really seen, our hands 
 have really touched, all these things and these men. 
 We have seen as bloody a forum as that of Rome ; we 
 have seen the heads of orators displayed from the 
 Tribune whence they had spoken; we have seen 
 kings as unhappy as Charles I., more miserably blind 
 than James II. ; we behold every day the prudence 
 of William ; and we have seen Caesar, Caesar himself ! 
 Among you who hear me are men who have had the 
 honor to approach him, to meet his flashing eye, to 
 hear his voice, to receive orders from his mouth, and 
 to fly to execute them amid the smoke of battle." 
 
 M. Guizot, so long his rival, was elected the 
 next year. Starting from very different points, 
 and very different in their methods of reason- 
 ing, these two thinkers had arrived at the same 
 practical conclusion, — the engrafting of the 
 English government upon French society. 
 During the foundation period when this gov- 
 ernment had to be defended from subversive 
 attacks, their agreement was almost complete. 
 Fatal consequences have been attributed to 
 their later disunion, just as the causes of that 
 disunion have been sought in a rivalry of tal- 
 ents and influence, in a mean jealousy, in all 
 those lower human sentiments to which they 
 were strangers. Both of them were very early 
 
76 Thiers, 
 
 convinced that they had no need to be jealous 
 of any one.^ 
 
 The greatest enemy of the July Government 
 was M. Berryer. M. Thiers said of him that 
 this definition of oratory should have been in- 
 vented for his benefit, — *' It is a body speaking 
 to a body; " and added : ** With my voice and 
 figure I need truth on my side; I succeed 
 only with truth, while Berryer is the orator of 
 falsehood." At that time the saying was very 
 just ; but later, under the Empire, M. Berryer 
 showed that he also knew how to plead for the 
 truth. He had the good fortune to end his 
 days as member of an opposition which, ac- 
 cording to M. Thiers, was right at all points, — 
 a rare thing for oppositions, for governments, 
 or for humanity. 
 
 In the time of Louis Philippe the case was 
 different, especially the case of M. Berryer, 
 who was the spokesman of an opposition 
 wrong at all points, since it was bound to be 
 at once Legitimist and Liberal, to attack and 
 insult not merely conspiracies, but the natural 
 defence of an oppressed nation, and, in the 
 
 1 A long quotation at this point, from a eulogy upon elo- 
 quence, pronounced by the author's father on the occasion 
 of the reception of Jules Favre to the French Academy, is 
 spared the reader. There is mention in it of several orators, 
 but of neither Thiers nor Guizot, though they seem to be 
 referred to with discreet academical allusiveness. — Tr, 
 
The July Government. 77 
 
 name of princes enthroned by foreign hands, 
 to accuse of weakness abroad a government 
 that had just raised the tricolor flag. More 
 than once he drew upon himself a bitter re- 
 sponse from Thiers, who on these occasions 
 seemed to borrow weapons from his adversary. 
 Any one who takes the trouble to read over 
 his speeches of December 31, 1834, and of 
 January 22, 1835, will find that Thiers knew 
 how to forsake the tone of racy conversa- 
 tion, and to rise to a more classical form 
 of eloquence. For example, he said to the 
 Royalists : — 
 
 " Legitimacy ! What security did it give us ? Re- 
 flect : it thrice permitted the legitimate throne to 
 fall. Was Louis XVI. not legitimate? Was Louis 
 XVIII. not legitimate? Was Charles X. not so? 
 But a single breath of Revolution sufficed, in 1789, 
 in 1 8 15, in 1830, to overthrow their legitimate throne. 
 Such is the security that you promise us. What then 
 is this power which thrice failed to save its own 
 throne, letting it fall before the first popular breath ? 
 If this is your boasted security, away with you ; for 
 to have faith in it we had need forget the history of 
 our own time. . . . Security you could not give, for 
 you fell thrice; clemency? you shed blood and 
 denied the prayers of mothers; dignity? you put 
 yourselves into the keeping of strangers. How can 
 you ask the country to expect anything from that 
 
yS Thiers, 
 
 principle of legitimacy which was able to assure it 
 against no storm, which gave it neither security, nor 
 clemency, nor dignity?" 
 
 It is a pity to be forced to confine one's self 
 to a few short quotations, since one of the 
 beauties of his speeches is their simple and 
 excellent arrangement. Enough has perhaps 
 been quoted to show his ability to cope with 
 M. Berrycr, even when the latter had the 
 choice of ground and weapons. And yet 
 Berryer was the most perfectly gifted of men 
 for that oratorical action which the ancients 
 valued so highly. His open and expressive 
 countenance, his broad chest, his powerful 
 voice, his bearing at once noble and animated, 
 that precious gift of remaining natural in the 
 midst of declamation, of working up a passion 
 without apparent art, of hiding a great deal of 
 shrewdness under a frank exterior, made it 
 impossible to forget him once one had heard 
 him, even when he was enfeebled with age. 
 
 The years when the Government of the 
 House of Orleans had to defend itself only 
 against revolutionists — Radicals as we say to- 
 day, Carlists as they were then called — was 
 not precisely a golden age, for blood too fre- 
 quently flowed in the streets ; nevertheless, it 
 was an era very honorable to the nation and 
 to its chiefs. It was the easy moment of a 
 
The July Government. 79 
 
 government, when it is still supported by all 
 the forces that have created it, when the party of 
 the past has not yet plucked up courage, and 
 when what calls itself the party of the future 
 has not yet begun to hope. On either hand 
 there is a period of expectation, and it is then 
 the duty of the founders to do all they can to 
 confirm the freedom and the strength which 
 they have gained. Then it is logical that di- 
 vision should arise. Government is not an 
 end in itself, but a means either of accomplish- 
 ing reforms or simply of furthering the public 
 weal ; and as soon as the Monarchy appeared 
 settled, it was inevitable that the counter- 
 currents of conservatism and liberalism should 
 begin to flow. 
 
 An incident contributed to deky this in- 
 evitable moment. For reasons that cannot 
 be given here, the king had been led, after 
 various trials, to call M. Mole to the presi- 
 dency of the Council,^ and to form the Minis- 
 try of the 15th of April, 1837, — a strange 
 Ministry which satisfied nobody, in which sat 
 none of '' the princes of the Tribune, the grand 
 vassals of representative government '* (the 
 expression is Sainte-Beuve*s). Solely by rea- 
 son of its origin and composition, this Cabi- 
 
 1 Mole succeeded Thiers on the 6th of September, 1836. 
 Guizot went into opposition on the 15th of April, 1837. — Tr. 
 
8o Thiers. 
 
 net had formidable enemies. Under the rep- 
 resentative system a ministry of this kind is 
 reduced to impotence, and can have no higher 
 ambition than merely to prolong its own exist- 
 ence. This is, however, not enough ; and many 
 people are found, especially outside of the min- 
 istry, who fail to see the necessity for its exist- 
 ence, and who make that existence difficult. 
 Opposed from every side, M. Mole made it a 
 point of honor to maintain himself in power. 
 Not being a great speaker, he was obliged, in 
 order to succeed, to endeavor to postpone 
 the discussion of important questions ; to win 
 if not to corrupt individuals ; to scatter discord 
 in political parties ; in short, to bring to bear 
 upon the Assembly the diplomacy of the con- 
 clave. Such a course seriously detracts from 
 the advantages of parliamentary government; 
 and it was natural that those who were at- 
 tached to this form of government should be 
 dissatisfied, and that, separated as they were 
 by shades of opinion, they should be drawn 
 into union. Hence the Coalition. 
 
 Nothing would have been more legitimate, 
 had party chiefs not taken advantage of the 
 situation to exaggerate their grievances, and 
 had they preserved an attitude of sufficient 
 moderation toward a government which they 
 did not wish to overthrow, but simply to warn. 
 
The yuly Governmefit. 8i 
 
 This is a delicate art, wherein our parHamentary 
 leaders have often failed; their failure in it 
 contributed to bring about the Revolution of 
 1848. Our liberty was not, perhaps is not yet, 
 the robust freedom of England. Parliamen- 
 tary wranglers should not forget that they 
 are before a public which may be tempted to 
 treat them with no more consideration than 
 they show for one another. This caution was 
 especially important in the time of restricted 
 suffrage. Notwithstanding all the respect in- 
 spired by the name of Guizot, it must be ad- 
 mitted that in this struggle he was the hottest 
 and the most abusive. He has expressed his 
 regrets for this in a page of his Memoirs.^ 
 
 Thiers did not at once associate himself with 
 the Coalition, of which Guizot was the head. 
 Either through a sentiment of moderation, or 
 because he felt that the opinions of Minister 
 Mole were little more at variance with his own 
 than those of Guizot were coming to be, he 
 for some time refrained from any attack upon 
 the Ministry. In January, 1839, however, 
 when the Address was up for discussion, he 
 rose like the rest to enumerate his grievances 
 against M. Mold ; and it must be admitted that 
 Thiers had only too good reason to reproach 
 the Minister with his timidity, his inaction 
 
 1 M^moires pour servir i I'histoire de mon temps, iv. 287. 
 6 
 
82 Thiers, 
 
 through fear of taking any risks, his exclusive 
 concern for material interests, and with his for- 
 eign poHcy, which led him to abandon Spain, 
 to neglect England, and to evacuate Ancona. 
 
 It is certain that this debate was a serious 
 blow to parliamentary government. As at the 
 end of the first act of Victor Hugo's drama 
 the lords successively reproach Lucrezia Bor- 
 gia with all her crimes, so here each party 
 chief, Guizot, Thiers, Berryer, Barrot, one after 
 another ascended the Tribune to enumerate, 
 with evident exaggeration, the faults of the 
 Government. The public took them at their 
 word, and passed judgment, at once severely 
 and unjustly, upon the regime and upon the 
 king himself, whom they had imprudently ex- 
 posed. Minister Mole's opinions could not be 
 popular, but he sustained the unequal struggle 
 with so much grace and dignity that people 
 took pity upon him, and a certain discredit fell 
 upon the alliance of men of talent who so 
 bitterly attacked him. Guizot had closed one 
 of his speeches by applying to courtiers this 
 phrase of Tacitus : Omnia servilitcr pro domi- 
 natione. M. Mole immediately began his reply 
 with the words: '* Tacitus said that not of, 
 courtiers but of the ambitious." And even in 
 the House the success was with the Minister. 
 
 Ambitious! Was Thiers ambitious? It is 
 
The yiily Goveritment. 83 
 
 an insult to a public man to say that he is not 
 so in a certain degree ; it implies that he has 
 too little confidence in his ideas to desire to 
 apply them. Thiers certainly wished to real- 
 ize his ideas, nor did he distrust his own ade- 
 quacy to the task. But he did not love power 
 for itself, nor even for the pleasure of com- 
 manding, nor yet for the importance that it 
 confers. With little eagerness for advancement, 
 jealous of his freedom and of his leisure, he 
 often desired power in order to act; but he 
 could not keep it long, precisely because 
 he wielded it to some purpose. He loved 
 only his favourite pursuits, and often took a dis- 
 like to affairs for which he felt no special in- 
 clination. Even as President of the Republic 
 he was very sincere in his willingness to resign, 
 and very eager to regain the freedom of his 
 time and of his tastes. 
 
 In these somewhat tumultuous debates of 
 1839, Thiers took his permanent stand as the 
 defender of all progress compatible with the 
 July Government, while Guizot became the un- 
 disputed leader of the timorous conservatives. 
 Henceforward there were in France Whigs and 
 Tories ready to contend for influence, if not 
 for the ministry. At bottom, the difference 
 was not very great, and need not be so. Both 
 were Liberals, devoted to the Monarchy of 
 
84 Thiers. 
 
 1830; but while the one endeavored to con- 
 ciliate those whom the late Revolution had 
 offended, the other undertook to satisfy and to 
 unite the deputies and the electors who were 
 more exacting in the matters of democracy 
 and reform. Not that Guizot was absolutely 
 hostile to reforms ; his superior mind admitted, 
 understood them all ; but he believed that they 
 could be carried out by none except conser- 
 vatives. All his speeches during those eigh- 
 teen years are eloquent variations of this theme. 
 He lauded repose, wealth, peace, timidity in 
 everything, confidence in governmental initia- 
 tive. He showed extreme art in concealing 
 the background of distrust, fear, scepticism, 
 which disfigured this policy. He said one day 
 that M. Odilon Barrot displayed great talent 
 in " putting breeches {culottes^ upon opinions 
 that wanted them ; " it might have been said 
 of Guizot that he was accustomed to drape 
 with the toga opinions which had only a 
 citizen's costume. 
 
 Thiers' repugnance to novelties was so well 
 known that he has been taxed with under- 
 valuing the usefulness of railways. The ac- 
 cusation is quite baseless ; notwithstanding 
 some things which he let drop in conversation, 
 it was in fact during his ministry that the 
 first railroad bills were passed. In foreign 
 
The July Government. 85 
 
 politics, in electoral reform, in everything, he 
 was more inclined to a bold policy than Guizot. 
 Thiers thought, in flat opposition to his rival, 
 that a conservative policy should be carried 
 out by Liberals, and that men of the most 
 advanced opinions should be intrusted with 
 power. The separation of the two policies 
 and of the two men was brought about by the 
 Cabinet of the 1st of March, 1840. The for- 
 mation of this Ministry was a difficult task, 
 for Thiers found himself at the mercy of a 
 disaffected conservative party, and of a dis- 
 satisfied liberal party. It was, however, with 
 reference to Eastern affairs rather than to 
 domestic policy that the dissent betrayed itself. 
 The question was not one of choice between 
 war and peace, but of judging how far bold- 
 ness might go without becoming rashness. 
 Thiers was Minister of Foreign Affairs, and 
 Guizot his Ambassador to England. The 
 latter, like the king and the Chamber, deemed 
 the game too hazardous. It may have been 
 so; if fifty years ago the question was hard 
 to answer, how much more difficult would it 
 be to-day ! What sacrifices could Europe be 
 asked to make? To what extent could a mon- 
 archy improvised by a popular insurrection 
 impose its will? The Crimean War proved 
 that Russia was not invincible, and this glorious 
 
86 Thiers, 
 
 war was fought by the army of the Monarchy, 
 — the army organized by the generals in 
 Africa and by the princes of Orleans, who 
 must not be forgotten when we speak of the 
 good that was done between 1830 and 1848. 
 But the condition of Europe was less alarming 
 in 1855 than in 1840, and the war which suc- 
 ceeded at the later date, though without great 
 advantage to France, might have failed had it 
 been undertaken sooner. It was this question 
 that brought about the fall of Thiers and the 
 formation of the Guizot Ministry (October 29, 
 1840), which was to lead from the Monarchy 
 to the Republic. / 
 
 Thiers and his friends were thrown into an 
 opposition which was certainly not a factious 
 one. Their criticisms, rarely bitter, were soft- 
 ened by the sincerest declarations of respect 
 for the Constitution. Their speeches are 
 models of constitutional opposition, though 
 it may be difficult to believe this, so frankly 
 revolutionary have opposition parties calling 
 themselves moderate since become. As to 
 the numerous points at issue between the Op- 
 position and the Government, it would be 
 irksome to recount them. But there were 
 two questions which this constitutional Oppo- 
 sition had especially at heart, and which drew 
 from the National Guard the cry, "Vive la rd- 
 
The yuly Government, 87 
 
 forme ! " — a cry so far from being revolution- 
 ary that it is the safeguard of free governments 
 when they listen to it in time. 
 
 The reform in question comprised two modi- 
 fications of the state of things brought about 
 by the Revolution of 1830, — the extension of 
 the suffrage, and the diminution of the number 
 of ofhce-holders in the Chamber of Deputies. 
 In 1830 the amount of the assessment that 
 every citizen had to pay in order to exercise 
 the right of suffrage had been reduced. In 
 view of the spread of education and intelligence 
 its further reduction now became natural and 
 necessary. A still simpler method of extend- 
 ing the foundations of our free institutions ap- 
 peared in the proposal to convert the exercise 
 of one of the liberal professions into an elec- 
 toral qualification. Strangely enough, under 
 a government claiming to be in the hands of 
 the middle class {la bourgeoisie), neither law- 
 'yers nor physicians, the very flower of the 
 French middle class, were admitted to the 
 suffrage. To accede to such a proposition 
 would seem an easy and an honorable way to 
 satisfy an opposition party. Yet in resistance 
 to this, Minister Guizot delivered one of his 
 most admirable speeches (March 26, 1847), 
 insisting upon the deep gulf that separates 
 intelligence and capacity. 
 
88 Thiers. 
 
 The effect of parliamentary reform, the 
 grounds for which seemed peremptory, would 
 have been equally prompt. It was proposed, 
 not to forbid every office-holder to be a deputy, 
 but to limit the number of office-holders in 
 the Chamber, of which a clear majority were 
 Councillors of State, Attorneys of the king. 
 Justices of the Royal Court. Here was a man- 
 ifest abuse, an official tie that appeared to 
 diminish the authority of the votes of the 
 Chamber. Independence of fortune or position 
 does not, indeed, guarantee men from all weak- 
 ness. An anecdote was in those days current 
 of the reply made by a very rich lord to a poor 
 deputy who had reproached him with some 
 compliant vote : " It is very easy for you to 
 quarrel with the Administration ; but suppose, 
 like myself, you had ten thousand acres of 
 woodland!" When, in 1863, Thiers entered 
 the Corps Legislatif, Guizot remarked to much 
 the same effect: "Ah! M. Thiers used to 
 complain of a Chamber of office-holders; he 
 will now find out what it is to deal with a 
 Chamber of proprietors." But under the Em- 
 pire, the manner in which the deputies were 
 elected was the regrettable thing, and the im- 
 perial Corps L6gislatif can be compared to no 
 other parliamentary body. It defies compari- 
 son ! For all that, the composition of the 
 
The ytdy Government. 89 
 
 Chamber furnished a pretext for pointing out 
 the abuses of parHamentary government, and 
 it is difficult to cry out upon the abuses of a 
 thing without somewhat discrediting the thing 
 itself. In avoiding this last difficulty, however, 
 Thiers and his friends displayed admirable 
 talent, and a moderation that would be dis- 
 puted only by the blindest adversaries; and 
 M. Odilon Barrot maintained a similar attitude. 
 The reforms then urged by the extreme Left 
 were of a narrower compass than the liberties 
 of Englishmen, and did not go beyond what 
 had been taught by the publicists of the Res- 
 toration period. Harmony was really, there- 
 fore, no impossible thing between the liberal 
 leaders of a conservative party and so conser- 
 vative an opposition. 
 
 Perhaps the foregoing remarks sufficiently 
 explain why this harmony was not brought 
 about. Another reason worthy of note seems 
 to have escaped attention. The conservative 
 leaders, M. Guizot, M. Duchatel, M. Vitet, 
 were a hundred-fold more disposed to con- 
 cession than their party ; and to grant what was 
 asked for would have necessitated on their 
 part an effi)rt as difficult and as meritorious as 
 that which Sir Robert Peel was making at 
 about the same time in England. They were 
 not mistaken in thinking that a part of the 
 
90 Thiers. 
 
 Chambers, and even of the country, was grow- 
 ing alienated from the purely liberal spirit in 
 which the Revolution had been carried out 
 and the government founded. Peace and the 
 accompanying growth in wealth, which was 
 favoured by wise laws and an enlightened ad- 
 ministration, left to a considerable fraction of 
 the middle class no interests save purely ma- 
 terial ones. Doubts, suspicions, fears of all 
 kinds, were gradually taking possession of the 
 reactionary party, and this party pushed the 
 Government toward timidity and distrust of 
 reform, — toward the side, to quote Guizot's 
 own words, *' on which governments fall." At 
 a time when it was necessary to be enterpris- 
 ing and bold, to counteract both the turbulent 
 agitation of hostile parties and the apathy of 
 friends by means of a fruitful activity, the 
 Ministry seemed disposed to set up a half- 
 hearted prudence as a political theory. They 
 retreated even from the positions they had 
 taken. A law concerning secondary instruc- 
 tion defended by Messrs. de Broglie, Cousin, 
 Villemain, and Guizot, had been passed in 
 1 844 by the Chamber of Peers. An excellent 
 report upon it was laid before the Chamber of 
 Deputies by Thiers. But the Ministry dared 
 not accept its discussion, for the reason that 
 it was too favourable to the University, too un- 
 
The yuly Government, 91 
 
 clerical. Not that alone : the University, whose 
 members were and are the best supports of 
 freedom and the rule of reason, was oppressed 
 and humbled. It was thought thus to win over 
 the clergy and the Legitimists. This weak- 
 ness did not prevent them from illuminating 
 their Faubourg St. Germain on the evening of 
 the 24th of February, 1848, nor did it make 
 M. de Montalembert one whit the less implaca- 
 ble in his war upon the Government.^ 
 
 Finally, in the elections between the years 
 1842 and 1845, the composition of the major- 
 ity of the Chamber was considerably modified 
 and by no means improved. New deputies 
 appeared, whom it must have been surprising 
 to find among the supporters of a government 
 the chief defect of which was that, by reason 
 of its origin and the character of its founders, 
 it was too prone to treat men as pure intelli- 
 gences. In order to appreciate this, we must 
 return to the literature of the period. As we 
 have seen, literature had exhibited an impas- 
 sioned hostility to this government by men of 
 letters. Nor is this all : a famous author en- 
 dowed with a creative faculty whose power has 
 perhaps never been equalled, being out of con- 
 ceit with the virtuous political society of his 
 
 1 An invective quoted from Montalembert is here omit- 
 ted. —Tr. 
 
92 Thiers. 
 
 time, conceived the plan of creating a society 
 to his own taste, if not in his own image. 
 With marvellous relief, reality, and life, he 
 painted a fantastic world filled with all sorts of 
 people, whose sole thought is to give them- 
 selves the greatest sum of pleasures, of amours, 
 and of money, and who employ to these 
 ends all the resources and all the facilities of 
 power. This imaginary world stood in no re- 
 lation to the living world. The heroes of Bal- 
 zac were very different men from the publi- 
 cists, the historians, the orators, who discussed 
 in the Assembly and disputed the power from 
 1830 — or even from 1815 — to 1848. In 
 order to find politicians like Balzac's we should 
 be obliged to go back to the time of Louis XV., 
 and to Louis XV. himself, — for even his min- 
 isters had opinions, and for them pleasures 
 were the privilege of power, not its aim. 
 These novels were nevertheless so fascinating, 
 the author's talent, realistic in everything save 
 the general conception, was so superior, the 
 public mind was so perverted, that people 
 were found who took this imaginary society 
 as their model. Literature was no longer the 
 portraiture of society, but society began to 
 pattern after the fictions of literature. Then it 
 was that tliere arose in the Chamber a race of 
 young, audacious men for whom politics was 
 
The July Government, 93 
 
 merely another field for jobbery, for gambling, 
 or for amusement. Fortunately none of them 
 attained to power under the July Monarchy ; 
 their hopes were not to be fulfilled until some 
 years afterward. But this mock aristocracy, 
 this foam upon the surface of the middle class, 
 — an aristocracy which, according to a saying 
 of the time, " had not, like the ancient nobility, 
 conquered the Gauls, had not, like the impe- 
 rial nobility, conquered Europe," which, bor- 
 rowing from the society of the past the spirit 
 of frivolity, and from modern society the spirit 
 of calculation, entered upon politics not to 
 acquire seriousness but to win the delights of 
 sensuality and of vanity, — contributed to give 
 to the final years of the Orleans Monarchy the 
 unfortunate character that its enemies would 
 attribute to the whole regime. Needless to say, 
 men of this species have no place in the liberal 
 ranks. They are the forlorn hope of the con- 
 servative party. 
 
 This has taken us very far from Thiers, who 
 did not read Balzac, and was totally unlike 
 Maxime de Trailles. His taste inclined him 
 to give no heed to the unjust accusations 
 against the majority, which were incessantly 
 repeated. He had himself been so often slan- 
 dered that he was loath to believe anything of 
 this kind. He confined himself to the poHcy 
 
94 Thiers. 
 
 of defending the principles of 1830 in speeches 
 on the University, the Jesuits, the Budget, and 
 on the subject of reform. Do these speeches 
 show an unfaiHng grasp of the situation? Cer- 
 tainly his opinions, had they been carried out, 
 would have given a new lease of life to the 
 Monarchy. But he seems to have been blind 
 to an obscure movement of the time, an anx- 
 ious, vague expectancy, a confused but widely 
 penetrative feeling that political reforms were 
 of less importance than a social revolution. 
 He did not, however, carry this illusory confi- 
 dence so far as M. de Barante, who wrote, in 
 the Address to the king from the Chamber of 
 Peers, thirty days before the catastrophe : 
 
 " Opinions subversive of social order and detes- 
 table souvenirs have agitated rather than perturbed the 
 public mind. Sucli agitations are powerless against 
 the social order. Yes, Sire, the union of the great 
 powers of the State, the action of law and of public 
 reason, will suffice to preserve the repose of the 
 country." 
 
 Nor would he have written as did Guizot to 
 Prince Metternich (May 18, 1847) : — 
 
 " France is now favourable to the policy of conser- 
 vation. She has long since reached her goal and 
 taken her footing. Many oscillations yet, but weaker 
 and shorter, like those of a pendulum swinging to a 
 halt. No profound and turbulent fermentation with 
 
The July Government, 95 
 
 respect either to home or to foreign affairs. There 
 are at present two counter-currents in France, — one 
 at the surface, and apparently still revolutionary; 
 the other below, and in reality strongly conservative. 
 The deeper current will prevail." 
 
 But although they had too much confidence 
 in the solidity of the Monarchy, neither Thiers 
 nor his friends would have anything to do with 
 the campaign of banquets. This well-known 
 movement was to reveal the rash imprudence 
 of some, the no less imprudent confidence of 
 others, and the brittleness of the Constitution. 
 Toward the close of the year 1847 the Ministry 
 had declared that the meetings, or banquets, 
 held by the candidates were illegal, and that 
 they could be interfered with, even when held 
 in a private house. Nothing would have been 
 easier than to reduce the dispute to the dimen- 
 sions of an interpellation, and to leave the de- 
 cision to the Chamber. Instead of this, the 
 Government hit upon the device of proposing 
 an opposition banquet at Paris, — the same 
 Paris where no review of the National Guard 
 had been ventured for seven years. This ban- 
 quet was to be broken up by a police officer, 
 and the matter was to be carried before the 
 courts. Few governments could with impu- 
 nity assume such a risk at such a time. Had 
 
g6 Thiers, 
 
 the proposal emanated from the Opposition, it 
 would have looked like a trap. But no ! The 
 Opposition, even the Republican wing led by 
 M. Odilon Barrot, lent themselves to the scheme 
 with repugnance. 
 
 To this scheme Thiers was frankly hostile. 
 Although rather irritated than alarmed, he 
 thought such a demonstration would be use- 
 less to the cause of reform, and that it would 
 present a favourable opportunity for insurrec- 
 tion, or at least for disturbances. The Govern- 
 ment, even if not shaken, would then have a 
 pretext for an energetic appeal to the solici- 
 tude of conservatives. Such is the attitude of 
 the moderate party on occasions of this kind : 
 it is to overshoot the mark, to permit one's 
 attacks upon a government to arouse the fears 
 of the friends of the social order. Abuses of 
 freedom have done less harm by stimulating 
 the audacity of extremists than by exciting the 
 dread of the indifferent. 
 
 Thiers' apprehension was much increased by 
 a secret incident of which he latterly some- 
 times spoke. He often received anonymous 
 letters, especially from an unknown corre- 
 spondent whose advice had always seemed 
 to him judicious. On the 2ist or 22d of 
 February, 1848, he found, on his return to 
 his house, a long and able letter from this 
 
The yidy Government. 97 
 
 correspondent, reproaching him with his care- 
 less confidence, his inactivity. The situation 
 was graver than he thought; we were near- 
 ing the crisis of a great democratic movement 
 to which he ought to ally himself; he would 
 do better to commit himself, to compromise 
 himself a little, were it only for the purpose 
 of moderating and guiding the movement, of 
 making it more innocent and more useful; 
 he was losing time in the gratification of his 
 artistic and social tastes, and was limiting his 
 political activity to mere conversations with 
 Remusat,^ that ermine who, for fear of soiling 
 his line robes, would meddle with nothing. 
 This letter impressed Thiers, and he remarked 
 that very evening to the man whom he was 
 reproached with listening to, " It may be that 
 we must resign ourselves, every fifteen years, 
 to see democracy make some great forward 
 stride." Nevertheless, he was incHned to re- 
 gard the demonstration then in preparation as 
 too insignificant to be dangerous. This was 
 his disposition with respect to affairs in which 
 he took no part. "Take care," he had said 
 to some of the ringleaders, " if you miss the 
 chance to make yourselves odious, not to miss 
 the chance to make yourselves ridiculous." 
 
 1 Francois Marie Charles, Comte de Remusat (1797-1875), 
 father of Paul. — Tr. 
 
 7 
 
98 Thiers, 
 
 He, however, warned the Ministers, but they 
 thought that the demonstration would be a 
 pitiful failure, that the masses would take no 
 interest in it, and that the Opposition would 
 be weakened by it. 
 
 Those who favoured the movement persisted 
 in expecting a demonstration which, without 
 seriously disturbing the peace, should exhibit 
 the state of public opinion in so formidable a 
 way that the Ministry would be forced to retire. 
 The Ministry indeed fell, and the Monarchy 
 with it. Thiers, who was summoned only the 
 night before the king's flight, had not time to 
 take a single measure or to sign an order ; the 
 decree making him Minister was not even 
 written. He had hardly time to advise the 
 king to leave Paris without abdicating, and to 
 await the event at a distance at the head of 
 faithful troops. But it was too late to carry 
 out or even to discuss the plan which, twenty- 
 three years later, was to save the Republic. 
 Thiers could only witness, with a sinking 
 heart, the flight of the king whom he had 
 served, a democratic Revolution which he 
 had done everything to avert, and the rise 
 of a new power that was more than all else 
 to transform the conditions of government in 
 France, — universal sufii'age. 
 
CHAPTER in. 
 
 THE REPUBLIC OF 1 848. 
 
 THE moralist is bound to think that the 
 February Revolution lacked two things : 
 a great cause and a sufficient grievance. When 
 force is the only recourse against injustice, 
 when the weight of the complaints equals the 
 gravity of the enterprise, not only revolution 
 but sometimes murderous conspiracy is ab- 
 solved by history. It does not appear that the 
 present case is one of those which justify an 
 act blamable in itself. The July Monarchy, 
 if not '* the best of repubHcs," was neverthe- 
 less really a very habitable republic, moderate, 
 open to reform, and capable of being made 
 more liberal and more democratic every day. 
 It was to the public interest that progress 
 should go forward slowly, and that we should 
 not pass at a bound from a too restricted elec- 
 toral body to a nation of voters. The Republic, 
 based upon universal suffrage and so soon to be 
 threatened by it, arose among a people poorly 
 prepared for self-government, and greatly sur- 
 
ioo Thiers, 
 
 prised by what had been forced upon them by 
 the Parisians. This restless population of Paris, 
 always ready for the fiery defence of an idea 
 or of a man, without scrutinizing too closely 
 the value and the seriousness of the idea or of 
 the man, had also been somewhat surprised by 
 this easy victory. The obscure but real social- 
 ist movement was scarcely apparent outside 
 the circle of secret societies and professional 
 revolutionists. Very few deputies, perhaps 
 few ministers, had read the works of Fourier, 
 of Saint-Simon, of Considerant, which dis- 
 turbed the imaginations of the simple at a 
 time when more positive minds were inflamed 
 by Lamartine's " Girondins." 
 
 The fundamental opinions of Thiers and his 
 friends were such that they could hardly have 
 had any absolute* repugnance for the Repub- 
 lic. What they had desired from their youth 
 up was a balanced government, wherein the 
 casting weight should belong to the nation. 
 They could not believe with the extreme Right 
 that the Republic meant universal ruin, nor 
 with the extreme Left that monarchy could 
 exist only by the humiliation of the masses. 
 The Duke of Broglie, M. Duvergier de Hau- 
 ranne, and many others, have often declared 
 that liberal France may choose between a re- 
 public which borders upon constitutional mon- 
 
The Republic of 1848, loi 
 
 archy, and a monarchy which is a repubHc in 
 everything but name. Political liberty, that is, 
 the participation of the people in their own 
 government, is better subserved by a republic 
 than by legitimate monarchy. In one of his 
 last speeches in the Chamber (February 2, 
 1848), Thiers had gone even beyond these 
 principles: — 
 
 " I am no Radical, gentlemen ; the Radicals know 
 this very well, — one has but to read their journals 
 to be convinced. But understand me well : I am of 
 the party of the Revolution, both in France and in 
 Europe. I wish the government of the Revolution 
 to remain in the hands of moderate men, and shall 
 do what in me lies to keep it in such hands. But 
 even if this government passes into the hands of men 
 less moderate than myself and my friends, into the 
 hands of passionate men, even of the Radicals them- 
 selves, I shall not on this account abandon the cause ; 
 I shall always belong to the party of the Revolution." 
 
 These sentiments were shared by the ma- 
 jority of the men who had labored to establish 
 the July Government. They objected to the 
 Republic merely because they perceived the 
 difficulty of making it permanent; indeed, their 
 absolute want of faith in the conventional 
 traditions upon which are based the majesty 
 and the very existence of monarchy inclined 
 them to accept the Republic. Such was the 
 
I02 Thiers. 
 
 feeling of moderate Opposition deputies like 
 M. Dufaure and M. de Tocqueville. The latter, 
 having studied democratic government in the 
 only country where it existed, had early broken 
 with the Legitimate Monarchy to which his 
 family was attached, and had at no time shown 
 any confidence in the July Monarchy. 
 
 But Thiers was no mere theorist ; he was 
 also a man of feeling and a statesman. His 
 conduct was rarely guided by absolute prin- 
 ciples ; the affections and personal impressions 
 always materially influenced his decisions. 
 How could he witness without emotion the 
 flight of the king whom he had loved? How 
 could he help regretting the Monarchy which 
 he had created in his mind, founded with his 
 own hands, whab though it had perished for 
 not heeding his counsels? Had he not de- 
 fended this Government as the only safeguard 
 against the return of the heirs of Charles X., 
 and against the dangerous dreamers who 
 wished to go beyond the revolutionary mon- 
 archy? He had always advocated a middle 
 government, that should satisfy not only what 
 Guizot called the '* governing classes," not 
 only what Odilon Barrot called " the people," 
 but the nation ; and in explaining these words 
 to the Chamber of Deputies one day, Thiers 
 produced at once an article for a dictionary of 
 
The Republic of 184.8, 103 
 
 politics and a profession of faith. Berard, in 
 his " Course in Physiology," explains that 
 between muscular inertia and violent contrac- 
 tion there is a peculiar muscular state which 
 he calls the force of *' fixed situation." This 
 force was displayed by Milo of Crotona when 
 he pressed a pomegranate in his palm, so 
 gently as not to crush it, yet so powerfully that 
 no one could force his hand open. Thiers' 
 opinions show some analogy with this force 
 exerted to preserve. In 1848 the pomegranate 
 was not crushed, but the protection invented 
 by doctrinaires for freedom and society was 
 injured. The hand had been violently opened, 
 and the delicate fruits of civilization were en- 
 dangered. Thiers, as a politician, was never 
 insensible to the spectacle of force; perhaps 
 he was somewhat over-impressed by it, and his 
 first impulse would be either to take possession 
 of it or to resist it. This latter impulse first 
 seized him upon the advent of universal suf- 
 frage, and controlled his conduct throughout 
 the following years. 
 
 The first care of all good citizens was the 
 maintenance of peace. To those who under 
 the Monarchy had dreaded the cruel extremity 
 of war, it seemed that a democratic revolution 
 must revive the fears, excite the v/rath, and 
 rally the forces of all the absolutist parties in 
 
I04 Thiers, 
 
 Europe. The Provisional Government and all 
 serious politicians were haunted by spectral 
 coalitions. This fear of war had the good 
 effect of rallying military men round the 
 banner of a Revolution which they disliked, 
 because it had been for them a kind of de- 
 feat. Happily these apprehensions were not 
 to be realized, and justice must be done to M. 
 de Lamartine. Between lyric democracy and 
 monarchy done into heroics, there was no 
 room in his soul for the epic; military glory 
 found him very disdainful. 
 
 But there were solider pledges of peace. 
 Liberal England had her grievances against 
 the Guizot Ministry, and hastened to give the 
 Republic the benefit of the principle of non- 
 intervention. The Emperor of Russia was too 
 great a partisan of the Old Regime to anathe- 
 matize a revolution that had dethroned a 
 usurper and had exiled the worst enemies of 
 legitimate monarchy. There was every indi- 
 cation that he would be more indulgent to 
 the Republic than he had been to the Orleans 
 Government. The Pope had been compelled 
 to promise the Romans a constitution. There 
 was an insurrection at Milan, a victorious up- 
 rising at Berlin, the Republic was proclaimed at 
 Venice, and Metternich, the inveterate enemy 
 of the House of Orleans and of France, had 
 
The Republic of 184.8. 105 
 
 fled to cover. Peace was assured, and with 
 a little more boldness and presence of mind 
 the Provisional Government might have turned 
 the situation to better account. The February 
 revolution, by heartening the peoples and dis- 
 heartening the kings, had totally changed the 
 European status. 
 
 Reassured on this head, Thiers resolved to 
 devote himself to the rescue of the nation from 
 social perils. This he could do only by enter- 
 ing the Legislative Assembly, which was to 
 be elected on the 19th of April. He was not 
 sanguine with respect to this future Assembly, 
 and was disposed to think that he would 
 be relegated to a Girondin minority destitute 
 either of influence or of authority. Pie drew 
 this inference from the general state of men's 
 minds, from the course of the Government, 
 from that perversion of reason often produced 
 by revolutions in those who make them, as 
 well as in those who suffer them. Thiers had 
 at first refused a candidature at Marseilles, the 
 success of which appeared equally improbable 
 and undesirable ; afterward he consented, and 
 here is the letter he wrote to a friend : — 
 
 Paris, March 3, 1848. 
 I had hoped for a while that my electors of 
 Bouches- da-Rhone would relieve me from standing. 
 I counted upon the clergy to reject me. I am but 
 
io6 Thiers, 
 
 half reassured, and I still fear to be elected, notwith- 
 standing my circular, which has had, I freely confess 
 to 'you, a very great effect. No speech of mine has 
 been so favourably received, 
 
 I am very sorry that I did not refuse the seat from 
 the outset. I take a dark view of things. For this 
 I have good reasons, too long to relate. I am dis- 
 gusted with things without exception, with men with 
 very few exceptions, and I dream only of a lodging 
 in a little house at Rome. Should I be fortunate 
 enough to escape election in Bouches-du-Rhone, my 
 mmd is made up ; I shall renounce the living world, 
 and pass the remnant of my life in a corner, labouring 
 — at what ? At the history of the world, which has 
 been my dream from childhood. I shall not write it, 
 but I shall have the pleasure of studying it. Thus 
 I shall have more men to include in my sweeping 
 judgment. Verily there must be something behind 
 the screen whereon the events of this world are 
 painted ; otherwise the mockery would be too great. 
 They say freedom is triumphant to-day, and here we 
 are almost proscribed for having defended our Gov- 
 ernment against itself. Such is justice ! 
 
 M. Thiers failed without regret at the gen- 
 eral election, but he did not carry out his 
 plan of retirement. Both he and the electors 
 changed their minds, and on the 8th of June he 
 offered himself to five constituencies at once. 
 He was returned everywhere, even from Paris, 
 where he was placed upon an oddly matched 
 
The Republic of 1848. 107 
 
 ticket alongside of General Changarnier, and 
 of Messrs. Victor Hugo, Pierre Leroux, 
 Caussidiere, and Louis Buonaparte. 
 
 As he was walking to the Chamber for the 
 first time, one of the loungers of the Place de 
 la Concorde accosted him, as is usual on such 
 occasions, with, ** Whatever you do, don't give 
 us America ! " To which Thiers made the 
 sensible retort : " If you won't have North 
 America, mind you don't get South America !" 
 It is between these two Americas that France 
 had, and still has, to choose. 
 
 Thiers got himself put on the Finance Com- 
 mittee, where there seemed likely to be less 
 prejudice against his advice than in the purely 
 political committees. The elections had turned 
 in favour of moderate counsels, and the Consti- 
 tuent Assembly was very prudent. Perhaps he 
 saw the danger too exclusively on the financial 
 and economical side. He and his friends re- 
 proached the last ministers of the Monarchy 
 for having had eyes only for the reactionary 
 movement, 'and they themselves suffered an 
 opposite illusion of the same kind. The 
 events of February made the hitherto some- 
 what limited reaction much more marked, and, 
 so long as political rights were not imperilled, 
 Thiers favoured it. Until the practical demon- 
 stration of this peril by the conspiracies of 
 
io8 Thiers. 
 
 Prince Louis Buonaparte in 1851, Thiers re- 
 mained the most impassioned of Conserva- 
 tives, taking this much abused word in its 
 best sense. 
 
 One of his great services to this cause was 
 his '* Defence of Property,"^ published in Sep- 
 tember, 1848. The book is amusing, clear, 
 copious, a bit superficial, and the only very 
 original thing about it is the author. The 
 reader is constantly drawn on by the attrac- 
 tion of a strong and lively individuality. How 
 is it possible to reflect that the ideas are not 
 very new when they are so evidently new to 
 the writer, who sets them forth by the unbor- 
 rowed light of his own mind? He has the con- 
 viction of a man who has been at the pains to 
 discover his ideas, and who makes even com- 
 monplaces his own. He does not dream of 
 inquiring into the metaphysical principle of 
 the right of property ; yet it does not appear 
 that the more technical philosophers who 
 plume themselves upon their rigorous accu- 
 racy have ever seen in it anything more than 
 a consequence of human freedom, or rather 
 freedom itself in one of its forms, — in short, a 
 necessity of civilized society. Is this not solid 
 ground upon which to b^e a right? Thiers 
 develops this thought in his usual spirited 
 1 De la Propriete, par A. Thiers. 8^°, Paris, 1848. 
 
The Republic of 184.8. 109 
 
 way, dwelling upon nothing which is not 
 accessible to mere common-sense. His own 
 common-sense was a keenly whetted instru- 
 ment, a weapon most effective against dan- 
 gerous Utopias. In a speech of the 6th of 
 May, 1834, he had said of it: — 
 
 " A statesman should be possessed of good sense, 
 a primary political quality ; and its fortunate possessor 
 needs a second quality, — the courage to show that 
 he has it. What I am saying is widely applicable to 
 the times in which we live. People of good sense 
 are not lacking ; the quality is not so rare, since it 
 goes by the name of common sense. What we lack, 
 is men who dare prove their possession of it." 
 
 This courage and good sense were never less 
 lacking to Thiers than on the occasion when he 
 refuted Socialistic theories by the report of a 
 committee appointed to examine Proudhon's 
 propositions concerning the reorganization 
 of taxation, public credit, mortgage loans, 
 paper money, and the right to labour.^ Here 
 Thiers shows his mastery of that attractive 
 and convincing method, in which he has 
 never been excelled, of bringing practical 
 truths home to the minds of an Assembly 
 always prone to inattention. It is well known 
 how easily he triumphed over his antagonist 
 
 1 Report of July 26, Speeches of August 2, September 
 13, October 10, 1848. 
 
no Thiers » 
 
 in a Chamber which had been elected under 
 the influence of the February gale. M. Proud- 
 hon, who seems to have been neither a thought- 
 ful seeker after truth nor an inflexible sectary, 
 but rather a writer for eflect, a retailer of para- 
 doxes, found but one person (M. Greppo) to 
 share his defeat. 
 
 The slight support which the enemies of 
 society found in the Republican Assembly, 
 and the less easy victory of General Cavaignac 
 over the bloody Insurrection of June, 1848, 
 ought to have convinced the public that the 
 greatest danger was over, and that our dis- 
 ease was not so desperate as to warrant a des- 
 perate cure. But, as has happened more than 
 once in human history, the peril averted by 
 the eloquence of some and by the heroism of 
 others began to appear greater, once it had 
 been encountered. Memory seems to be more 
 timid than Imagination. After having victo- 
 riously defended itself, society began to look 
 about for a saviour. Moreover, the name of 
 Buonaparte had come up at the May elections 
 (1848), and throughout the first half of the 
 century that name retained a magical power. 
 When it was spoken, the nation seemed unable 
 to listen to reason. What a series of misfor- 
 tunes and mistakes have been required in order 
 to break its spell ! Prince Louis Buonaparte 
 
The Repiiblic of 1848. 1 1 1 
 
 elected in several departments, gave and took 
 back his resignation several times, got himself 
 re-elected by the most various constituencies, 
 surrounded himself with several outcasts from 
 fortune and from politics, succeeded in inspir- 
 ing so much faith in his duplicity that no- 
 body believed his RepubHcan protestations, — 
 played, in short, the part of a pretender. He 
 became the most serious rival of General Ca- 
 vaignac, whose candidacy seemed to be pro- 
 claimed by events, and whose great heart was 
 worthy of such a fortune. M. Ledru-RolHn 
 figured as the representative of the Socialists 
 and the Jacobins. 
 
 The greater number of Thiers' political 
 friends, Messrs. Dufaure, de Tocqueville, de 
 Lasteyrie, de R^musat, declared for General 
 Cavaignac. Without foreseeing the extreme 
 consequences of the success of the rival can- 
 didate, they distrusted that predestined race ; 
 and their foresight, which was perhaps as in- 
 stinctive as the enthusiasm of the masses, at- 
 tached them to the Republic. Thiers, on the 
 other hand, believed that the French people 
 were at that time little disposed to accept a 
 master. Of the two chief preoccupations of 
 the statesman, order and freedom, the latter 
 seemed to him assured; he was more inclined 
 to fear anarchy than despotism. He hesi- 
 
112 Thiers* 
 
 tated long, however, for the reputation of the 
 Boulogne and Strasburg conspirator was not 
 precisely such as to inspire confidence. Fi- 
 nally, he made up his mind to vote for the 
 Prince. He thought that a supreme interest 
 commanded all good citizens to unite in de- 
 fence of the social order, and that the establish- 
 ment of the Republic would take away both 
 the desire and the power of stirring up a new 
 revolution. He was to make the same attempt 
 later on, under conditions more tragic, and, in 
 some respects, more favourable. But now, not 
 believing in the success either of General Ca- 
 vaignac or of the Prince of Joinville, he wished 
 to strengthen the conservative party with the 
 popular power represented by the name of 
 Buonaparte. As the prince in whom this power 
 was invested had been the hero of no expedi- 
 tion to Egypt, of no Italian campaign, there 
 was some chance that he would not be found 
 altogether infatuated, and deaf to good advice. 
 His election was certain, and it might seem 
 imprudent to array the friends of social order 
 against the national will. 
 
 Thiers represented at that moment an im- 
 portant section of public opinion, which he 
 did much to mould and restrain. He reas- 
 sured and held in check the once liberal mid- 
 dle class, which was then inclined to sacrifice 
 
The Republic of 184.8. 113 
 
 its principles to an exaggerated need of secu- 
 rity, and to push conservatism to absolutism, 
 Catholicism to Ultramontanism. M. de Falloux 
 has published interesting "Memoirs," which 
 recall a memorable personality and a Machia- 
 vellism that is not without its artlessness. He 
 seems to wonder that Thiers did not fear the 
 social peril so much as to rally to the House 
 of Bourbon. What an aberration of party 
 spirit! Apart from the fact that such an 
 amende honorable would have been a sacrifice 
 such as Thiers could hardly have made with 
 dignity, no reason appears why he should 
 have been expected to make it. He was seek- 
 ing some force to set against the roaring tide 
 of demagogy. He could find points of sup- 
 port in a parliament, in eloquence, in well- 
 considered laws, in modifications of universal 
 suffrage, in the name of Buonaparte, in the 
 magistracy, the clergy, the army. But the 
 claim to reign by hereditary right over a peo- 
 ple that had so often denied the right, — what 
 could it be but a source of weakness to a gov- 
 ernment? It was important to make broad 
 the forehead of resistance, and M. Falloux and 
 his friends proposed to restrict it to the narrow 
 regal fillet. They would have appealed to all 
 citizens, not in the name of order and of con- 
 servative principles, but in the name of the 
 3 
 
114 Thiers > 
 
 Count of Chambord, in the name of a principle 
 constantly rejected, in the name of a flag that 
 had long been a symbol of defeat. How many 
 honest men would not have given over the de- 
 fence, had they not felt that in fighting for order 
 they were fighting for the Republican order ! 
 
 Prince Louis Buonaparte's success went be- 
 yond all anticipations. Less than a year after 
 the fall of parliamentary government in the 
 most delicate of its forms, after an appeal so 
 direct and unreserved to the national will, the 
 Chief Magistracy became lodged in the hands 
 of a representative of the unlimited power of 
 a single man. The popularity of a name, 
 the witchcraft of distant memories, the per- 
 petual illusion of the Monarchists, the coali- 
 tion of the discontented, the hopes of the out- 
 cast, — all had combined to give unexpected 
 strength to the anti-Liberal movement. The 
 mark was certainly overshot, and the new 
 Chamber soon aggravated the situation. The 
 Constituent Assembly had won distinction for 
 its courage, its good sense, its honesty. It was 
 one of the best legislatures that France has 
 had. In the Legislative Assembly that suc- 
 ceeded it, the moderate party hardly existed ; 
 the Republic was represented only by a scarped 
 and rugged Mountain. The more or less con- 
 servative majority was made up of dismissed 
 
The Republic of 1848. 115 
 
 officials, of disappointed politicians, of demoral- 
 ized Liberals, of angry capitalists, of confident 
 Legitimists, of Buonapartists who were already 
 almost conspirators. These partners of a day 
 would have sacrificed everything to the double 
 purpose of resisting the Reds and of reacting 
 against the February Revolution. 
 
 Thiers' first speech in this Assembly, which 
 was to live so brief a span and to die so op- 
 portunely, had but one aim, — peace. The 
 Revolution, which had acted upon France as a 
 narcotic, had acted as a stimulant abroad, and 
 the name of Buonaparte was not calculated to 
 allay uneasiness. In June, 1849, Thiers accord- 
 ingly rose to defend the Government's Italian 
 policy and to favor the credits for the Roman 
 expedition. This action was a considerable 
 pledge to the conservative opinion of Europe, 
 — a pledge that cost Thiers little, for he had 
 always been favourable to the Holy See and 
 even to the temporal power. " What next, 
 now that the Pope plays the Liberal?" Met- 
 ternich was saying at about this time. But 
 what so irritated Metternich, made it easier for 
 the French Liberals to come to an understand- 
 ing with the Catholics. As to the temporal 
 power, Thiers had more than once advanced 
 the ingenious and very disputable opinion that 
 if it be true that nations have the right of self- 
 
ii6 Thiers, 
 
 government, this right was not infringed in the 
 case of the Romans. The States which bear 
 that name, he contended, belong to all the 
 Catholics, who constitute their sovereign peo- 
 ple, and this people wills the supremacy of 
 the Pope and has the right to impose it. 
 
 This service to the majority of the Catholics 
 put that party in a humour to ask other services, 
 and Thiers was found very willing to render 
 them. He had been greatly struck, at the time 
 of the February Revolution, with the attitude of 
 the clergy toward the Orleans Monarchy. Gui- 
 zot had said from the Tribune, " The clergy was 
 not exiled with Charles X., but it was dethroned 
 with him." Even so moderate a revolution as 
 this could not, however, be well received by a 
 dominion-loving hierarchy. The clerical party 
 had been dissatisfied even with the Restoration 
 Government, which had in its service more of 
 the indifferent than of the faithful, and had been 
 treated by the Government of Louis Philippe 
 with respect rather than with favour. Ac- 
 cordingly, it is widely believed that from 1830 
 to 1848 the priests were persecuted. Readers 
 will recall the exclamation of the old monk 
 who, having lost in the cloister the notion of 
 time and of revolutions, was expelled from his 
 monastery in 1881 : " Will this Louis Philippe 
 never cease to persecute us? '* Thiers was too 
 
The Republic of 184.8, 117 
 
 just to reproach the Guizot Government with 
 the measures which he himself had helped de- 
 fend ; but he saw in the clerical party one of the 
 forces that perhaps contributed to the fall of 
 the Monarchy, and that had more than once 
 compelled it to yield. Having been formidable 
 adversaries, they would be useful auxiliaries. 
 He therefore received Falloux's propositions 
 kindly, almost eagerly. The only thing the 
 clergy and their friends could ask was precisely 
 what had been denied them under monarchical 
 governments, — the right of instruction, and a 
 definitive victory in their conflict of centuries 
 against the University. 
 
 The sentiments of the University were pretty 
 much the same as those which had actuated the 
 authors of the July Revolution. It was but a 
 few years since the most eminent statesmen of 
 the time had defended the University in the 
 Chamber of Peers against Montalembert. Out 
 of this discussion grew the Bill of 1844, upon 
 which Thiers had made a very favourable re- 
 port to the lower House. What was asked of 
 him was therefore really a concession ; still, he 
 had never exhibited much zeal for the diffu- 
 sion of education, and was inclined to regard 
 it as an impracticable dream of the doctrinaires, 
 especially of Guizot. Thiers reproached the 
 professors with having too readily received the 
 
1 1 8 Thiers, 
 
 new ideas ; he found fault with the extension 
 given to scientific studies ; he even complained 
 that too much time was given to Greek, — not 
 because, as Cousin with friendly insolence 
 taunted him, he did not know Greek, but be- 
 cause he preferred the stern and practical 
 genius of ancient Rome. And indeed if the 
 professors were a little inclined toward the 
 Left, the mass of the teachers had passed to 
 the extreme Left, and threatened to wield a 
 dangerous influence upon the elections. 
 
 All this made less unpleasant the conces- 
 sion which he was asked to make to the public 
 interest. Nevertheless, his support of the 
 Law of 1850 has been characterized as a re- 
 cantation and as a conversion, — two words of 
 sinister sound to the ears of a public man. In 
 an able speech he exonerated himself from the 
 charge of instability by the only method that 
 satisfies a serious man at such a time, — not 
 by denying any change, but by explaining it 
 on the ground of changed circumstances. In 
 reading this speech, one perceives that he had 
 made every effort to save all that could be 
 saved of the interests of knowledge and reason. 
 But he could not completely defend the radical 
 defect of a law which delivered our youth and 
 our society over to the contention of two op- 
 posite forces, from whose collision a shock 
 
The Republic of 1848. 1 1 9 
 
 was as certain a^ from the collision of two 
 clouds oppositely charged with electricity. 
 If parties have since that day hardened into 
 sects, the embodiment of the Falloux prin- 
 ciples in the Law of 1850 has had its share in 
 the result. It is scarcely necessary to add that 
 nobody was satisfied, perhaps not even the 
 authors of tlie Bill. Guizot attacked it in the 
 " Journal des D6bats," M. Jules Simon in his 
 " Freedom of Thought," M. Barthelemy Saint- 
 Hilaire from the Tribune, in the name of the 
 University. On the other hand, the Ultramon- 
 tane press and the hierarchy showered their 
 anathemas upon M. de Falloux. It was a gen- 
 uine compromise. 
 
 This and other sacrifices to the spirit of the 
 time have often been regretted. What a time, 
 and what a spirit ! The President of the Re- 
 public made it his business to bring to nought 
 the most intelligent efforts, and would have 
 broken up the most united of parties. In 
 order to foil him it would have been necessary 
 to foresee his course. His policy consisted in 
 promising the democratic party a government 
 more in harmony with their wishes than that 
 of the Assembly, and in promising the mid- 
 dle class a repose untroubled by agitations, 
 interpellations, and ministerial crises. To this 
 some Royalists added, of their own accord, the 
 
i 20 Thiers. 
 
 hope that the Prince would yield the supreme 
 power to their king. The policy was much 
 the same as that of the first Buonaparte, minus 
 the greatness. 
 
 The conflict between the two powers arose 
 in the simplest way in the world. The com- 
 mander of the army at P^ris was General 
 Changarnier, who, although but slightly de- 
 voted to the Republic, was looked to as the 
 defender of law, and consequently of the As- 
 sembly. This position, together with his worth 
 and real dignity of character, made him a con- 
 siderable personage. His relation to the Presi- 
 dent recalled that of the Duke of Guise to 
 Henry HI. The General also said, " He would 
 not dare ! " when a possible dismissal was spoken 
 of. The future Napoleon HI. did, however, 
 dare to dismiss him abruptly, and the Assem- 
 bly felt keenly the insult and the danger. It 
 was on the occasion of the interpellation pro- 
 voked by this first act of the conspiracy that 
 Thiers delivered one of his ablest speeches. 
 He resumed the place which he had aban- 
 doned in favour of a public interest whose 
 pressing importance he had exaggerated, and 
 became once more the undisputed leader of 
 the Liberal party, — a place which he thence- 
 forward retained to the last. 
 
 His speech was a model of the prophetic 
 
The Republic of 1848. 1 2 1 
 
 good-sense in which he was unequalled. He 
 made a detailed history of the aid and support 
 given by the Chamber to the President, whom 
 he reproached with offensive ingratitude, and 
 closed with the following memorable words : — 
 
 " Permit me this remark : when one of two powers 
 in the State has encroached on the other, it is indeed 
 annoying to the encroaching power to yield ; but if 
 it be the invaded power that yields, its weakness is 
 made so patent to all eyes that it is lost. I add but 
 one word : there are to-day in our Government but 
 two powers, the executive power and the legislative 
 power. If the Assembly yields to-day, there will 
 remain but one. And from the moment when there 
 shall be but one power in the State, the form of the 
 government will be changed. The name, the title, 
 may come when it will; that matters little to me. 
 But the thing that you say you do not wish, you 
 will obtain this very day if you yield. There remains, 
 then, but one power, I repeat ; the name will come 
 in time. The Empire is established ! " 
 
 This was not Thiers' last speech in that 
 Assembly, but these were his last political 
 counsels. They display a sentiment compati- 
 ble even with the Republic of 1848, but in- 
 compatible with anything looking toward a 
 dictatorship. They are the expression of a 
 slowly formed, definitive opinion to which he 
 
122 Thiers. 
 
 remained faithful. He took no part in dis- 
 cussing the proposed revision of the Constitu- 
 tion, — a plan devised by shrewd fomenters of 
 disorder, who saw that it would be easier to 
 suppress the Republic by process of law than 
 to overthrow it by force. An article in the 
 Constitution made a two-thirds majority neces- 
 sary for revision ; and as more than a third of 
 the Assembly was composed of Republicans 
 who would not take part in the perilous game, 
 the measure could not be carried. But the 
 proposition was a blow to the Constitution; 
 it excused — almost exonerated beforehand — 
 those who should violate the Constitution ; it 
 called in question the organization, and there- 
 fore the very existence, of the Republic. The 
 measure failed by nearly a hundred votes, but 
 the legal basis of the Republic was shaken. 
 
 This legal basis was once more supported 
 by Thiers in the sitting of Nov. 17, 185 1. 
 The discussion turned upon the then famous 
 proposition of the Questors, who claimed for 
 the Assembly the right of calling out the army 
 in order that the legislative body should not 
 be at the mercy of its enemies. No sober man 
 would deem hesitation possible touching this 
 legitimate and modest proposal; nevertheless, 
 it was rejected. The Assembly was so bitterly 
 divided, that each faction suspected its neigh- 
 
The Republic of 1848, 123 
 
 hour of an intention to make illegal use of this 
 legal force, and so a strange coalition was orga- 
 nized against the only means of safety. These 
 are the evil days of parliaments, when they 
 make good all the slanders of their enemies ; 
 when rage, rancour, rivalry, cloud all notions of 
 justice and of foresight. But these occasional 
 faults of parliaments are permanent in absolute 
 governments. This was shown a few weeks 
 later. The coup d'etat was accomplished, and 
 free discussion, — the pledge of all security and 
 of all freedom, — political morality, real order 
 (for order is not another name for silence), 
 solid and lasting peace, everything that makes 
 for the honour of a nation, disappeared in a 
 night. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 THE EMPIRE (1851-1863). 
 
 THIERS felt the woes of France as other 
 men feel the heart-breaking sorrows of 
 private life. He has been known to shed tears 
 in the Tribune over the distresses of his con- 
 quered country. By the side of his grief at 
 the defeat of freedom, exile and imprisonment 
 were trifles. This unexpected proscription 
 could not in the least further the plans of the 
 author of the coup d'etat. Of what avail was 
 mere eloquence against material force? The 
 Assembly once dissolved, Thiers was but a 
 helpless, inoffensive citizen. He received, how- 
 ever, precisely the same treatment as the heads 
 of the army. Early in the morning of the 
 2d of December, 1851, he was taken from his 
 house in St. George Place, and sent under es- 
 cort, first to the prison of Mazas, then to that 
 of Ham, finally to Brussels, where he received 
 notification of his exile. Messrs. de Lasteyrie, 
 de Remusat, Duvergier de Hauranne, Baze, 
 Roger, after a week at Mazas, were by the 
 
The Empire (iS^i-iSSj). 125 
 
 same decree exiled from France. The exile 
 of the Princes of Orleans was at the same time 
 confirmed, and aggravated by the confiscation 
 of their estates. This, according to M. Dupin, 
 who soon became Attorney-General at the 
 Court of Appeals, was ** the first flight of the 
 eagle." 
 
 The exiles passed the first months — some- 
 times together, sometimes dispersed — at Brus- 
 sels, at London, in Switzerland. In July, as 
 Thiers was preparing to set out for Italy, he 
 suddenly learned from the " Moniteur Officiel" 
 of a decree authorizing the victims of the for- 
 mer arbitrary decree to return to their homes. 
 The same whim that had shut the doors of 
 France opened them again, and no attempt 
 at an explanation broke the universal silence. 
 This was the beginning of that illogical series 
 of shocks which characterized the policy of the 
 next eighteen years. With more or less eager- 
 ness every one took advantage of this permis- 
 sion, with all the gratitude which we owe, said 
 Thiers, "to the man who returns a watch that 
 he has stolen." 
 
 "Augustus re-established order, which is only 
 another name for lasting servitude ; for when 
 a usurper has seized the sovereignty of a free 
 State, the name of law is given to whatever 
 tends to confirm the unbounded authority of a 
 
1 26 Thiers, 
 
 single man, and the name of disturbance, disr 
 sension, misgovernment, to whatever tends to 
 maintain the honorable freedom of subjects." 
 These words of Montesquieu describe in a mas- 
 terly way the spectacle awaiting the exiles at 
 their return ; for if the manifestations of free- 
 dom are always new, the proceedings of des- 
 potism are extremely monotonous. Rarely, 
 however, has a country so quickly and com- 
 pletely forgotten all the principles for which it 
 had fought and suffered. Like Balzac's Ras- 
 tignacs and Marsays, the masters of France had 
 seen a speculation upon Change as well as a 
 coup d'itat in the complot whereby they had 
 risen to power ; and Thiers must have felt as 
 Lafayette did on his return from captivity at 
 Olmiitz, — that France had become dwarfed 
 since his departure. 
 
 If by the aid of some historical reminis- 
 cences and of some contempt for human kind, 
 it was possible to explain the profound calm 
 which had succeeded the agitations of a free 
 country, the boldest invention would have been 
 taxed to imagine how quickly this calm was to 
 be disturbed by the very man whose interests 
 it seemed to subserve. The assumption ap- 
 peared reasonable that President Louis Buona- 
 parte, who had made himself Emperor under 
 the singularly chosen name of Napoleon III,, 
 
The Empire (18^1-1863). 127 
 
 would give absolute repose to a country which 
 no longer found scope either for its imagination 
 or for its vanity in the cultivation of politics. 
 This seemed the more probable, inasmuch as the 
 master himself had little taste for affairs, and a 
 real passion for pleasure. But observers reck- 
 oned without that peculiar trait of the Buona- 
 partes, — the desire to make themselves felt 
 in the affairs of the world; a desire which, 
 after all, makes them great, and separates them 
 from vulgar adventurers. The nation wished to 
 sleep ; it was promptly awakened. Men were 
 looking forward to a peaceful and sluggish life 
 under a moderate despotism, when suddenly, 
 after having formed an Imperial Court, which 
 was displeasing enough to an equality-loving 
 people, the Emperor contracted a marriage of 
 love, which cut him off from all the rest of the 
 crowned heads. Having promised peace, he 
 set about making war everywhere, and on all 
 pretexts, — in the Crimea, in Syria, in China, 
 in Mexico, in Italy; he even threatened Eng- 
 land with invasion. And every day brought 
 some unexpected official address, some edict of 
 the Senate, some amendment to the Consti- 
 tution, some imperial journey abroad or to 
 Algiers, some revolution in the palace, or, 
 what was much the same thing, some change 
 of ministry. 
 
1 28 Thiers. 
 
 Worse yet, even the boasted safeguard 
 against social disturbances seemed at times 
 ready to disappear. The report was suddenly 
 circulated that the Emperor was a socialist. 
 Banks, treasuries, economic novelties of all 
 kinds, were proposed by him, and made the 
 subjects of protracted discussions by the great 
 deliberative bodies of the State. These pro- 
 jects would disturb the public for a while, 
 only to be pigeon-holed by functionaries more 
 addicted to routine, perhaps wiser, than their 
 masters. And the good people who, thinking 
 themselves well rid of troublesome discussions, 
 had rejoiced at the dissolution of the Assem- 
 bly, were obliged to hear from a loftier tribune 
 phrases announcing the most frightful inten- 
 tions. For example, when the Emperor's aid 
 was called for against the seditious demagogues 
 of the great cities, he said to them, " My fibre 
 answers to yours," — a phrase as distasteful to 
 linguistic as to political conservatives. 
 
 Thiers used to relate that one day the Duke 
 of Wellington, wearied at the Council-board 
 by the lengthy harangues of Lord Harrowby, 
 exclaimed, " My Lord, you have too much 
 education for your intelligence ! " It may be 
 said that the Emperor had too much imagina- 
 tion, not for his intelligence, but for his power 
 of concentration, — too many ideas for his ex- 
 
The Empire (18^1-1863). 129 
 
 ecutive faculty. As Thiers said, he frequently 
 confused the verb dream {river) with the verb 
 reflect. Now France has the habit of mistaking 
 both the proposals of its deputies and the lucu- 
 brations of its sovereigns for dangerous reali- 
 ties ; and thus real difficulties are increased by 
 imaginary apprehensions. Here, all was not a 
 dream; this mental activity of Napoleon III., 
 by arousing curiosity, criticism, attention, dis- 
 turbed the slumber that every despot must be 
 anxious to produce ; and when, finally, he was 
 compelled to grant some shadow of freedom, 
 he had to encounter all the hatred of the first 
 day, embittered by all the errors of more than 
 a decade. 
 
 During the first epoch of the Empire, Thiers 
 took no part in politics. He limited himself 
 to some bit of advice, rarely followed, touching 
 foreign affairs, or to some warning to one of 
 the diplomatists who frequented Parisian soci- 
 ety as well as the ministerial bureaux. This 
 society was at that time very brilliant. That 
 portion, especially, which rather insolently 
 styles itself the grand monde was then, despite 
 the misfortunes of the time, thoroughly amus- 
 ing. Talleyrand used to say that one who had 
 not seen the salons oi 1789 could not know the 
 pleasure of living. This judgment was doubt- 
 less partly due to the fact that Talleyrand was 
 
 9 
 
1 30 Thiers. 
 
 then young, but also quite as much to the cir- 
 cumstance that good society was then unani- 
 mous in its taste for free government and 
 enlightened philosophy. Likewise in 1852, 
 Parisian society was very hostile to the revived 
 Empire. Everybody agreed in cursing despot- 
 ism, and academicians who had seen so many of 
 their fellows arrested ; partisans of the royal fam- 
 ilies whose princes were proscribed and ruined ; 
 parliamentarians in mourning for freedom of 
 speech; men of the middle class irritated by 
 the pretensions of the Court; aristocrats who 
 ridiculed that vulgar Court with its petty mag- 
 nificence ; members of the liberal professions 
 who felt oppressed or threatened, — all united 
 to exchange those sarcasms, those anecdotes, 
 which are the delight of the salon. At no 
 time, perhaps, has French society been more 
 divorced from the government, and one might 
 frequent it for a long time without meeting a 
 partisan of the established regime. If, as he 
 alleged, the Emperor had saved society, the 
 claim was not acknowledged by good society. 
 Here all were irreconcilable: Legitimists, Re- 
 publicans, Orleanists, Liberals, gave one another 
 the hand. It was then that "the Liberal 
 Union " was formed. This was neither a secret 
 society nor an organization ; the members were 
 bound by no positive engagement, but by the 
 
The Empire (1851-1863). 131 
 
 simple understanding that when the mistakes 
 of the Empire should cause its inevitable 
 downfall, its enemies should all stand shoulder 
 to shoulder, whatever the free government that 
 might succeed, whether republic or monarchy. 
 It is possible to see some trace of this dispo- 
 sition in the first deliberations of the National 
 Assembly of 1871. 
 
 M. Thiers took a brilliant part in the racy 
 conversations of the elite of Paris, and it was at 
 this time that he most freely gratified his social 
 tastes. As a natural result of his mode of life, 
 his conversation had become refined, his habits 
 had grown more delicate and more elegant, 
 while at the same time society had accustomed 
 itself to whatever was peculiar or original in 
 his manners. Two things are requisite to suc- 
 cess in the salon : one must be like others, and 
 yet one must have some note of distinction 
 from others. From the social standpoint, it is 
 as fatal to be like everybody as to be like no- 
 body ; and superior men, along with the rest, 
 are subject to this law. It is needless to say 
 that in Thiers the element of originality was 
 very marked. Nevertheless, he was thoroughly 
 amiable in his relations with men, and he ex- 
 hibited a delicate gallantry toward women. 
 To this gallantry it cannot be said that all 
 were entirely insensible. 
 
l3^ Thiers. 
 
 Thiers carried into society — no easy thing 
 — a jealous patriotism. Before the interests 
 of France all party zeal died out in him, and 
 he never in the slightest degree shared the 
 feeling of an hnigr^. During the Crimean War 
 no one wished more heartily for the success of 
 our arms ; and the Emperor felt this so strong- 
 ly that he referred to Thiers in a public dis- 
 course as " the illustrious national historian." 
 It was not merely as a patriot, however, that 
 Thiers took an interest in the war; he saw 
 his plans of 1840 being realized by that same 
 army of the July Government whose most dis- 
 tinguished captains were now in exile. He 
 occupied himself very much with the matter, 
 and his opinions sometimes reached the impe- 
 rial ear. M. Merimee, who had been drawn to 
 the Empire by his opinions, and still more by 
 his affections, was one of the few who saw both 
 parties. This Saint-Evremond of our century 
 deserved this exceptional position by his free- 
 dom of mind and his trustworthiness. One 
 evening in 1855, when Merimee chanced to 
 be present in the salon of St. George Place, 
 Thiers warmly pointed out certain measures 
 that should be taken and certain things that 
 should be said, in the critical situation in which 
 France then stood. Merimee, thinking to be 
 useful to both, repeated the conversation to the 
 
The Empire (18^1-1863), 133 
 
 Emperor. ** You will thank M. Thiers," returned 
 the Emperor, " but he is not at the centre of 
 the situation. He is accustomed to address a 
 Chamber actuated by patriotic sentiments and 
 opinions ; we live in different times ! " 
 
 The epigrams of the salons and a few bits of 
 political advice were mere trifles in the mental 
 activity of a man who had erewhile filled Eu- 
 rope with his policy and with his deeds. Before 
 speaking of the great work upon which he was 
 engaged, it must be added that he acquired 
 at this time a taste for the sciences. He had 
 learned little of them in his youth, the colleges 
 of the First Empire having been weak on this 
 side. At times, however, his alert curiosity 
 had turned him in that direction ; even under 
 the Restoration he had taken lessons in alge- 
 bra. He now turned his attention chiefly to the 
 natural sciences and to astronomy. Sometimes 
 he spent the whole night star-gazing at the 
 Observatory, and he followed the researches 
 of Pasteur at the Normal School. He even 
 caused Plateau's fine experiment on the forma- 
 tion of the world to be repeated. His mind 
 certainly gained in severity by these attempts, 
 and some trace of this discipline is to be found 
 in his speeches. But science cannot be cul- 
 tivated without those preliminary studies for 
 which he had neither taste nor time; and 
 
134 Thiers, 
 
 to the fruitful invention of scientific ideas, a 
 thorough acquaintance with what others have 
 thought is indispensable. Now, Thiers cared 
 little to know what others had thought; intel- 
 lectually, others scarcely existed for him. It 
 was therefore not very safe for him to venture 
 upon this new ground. In the natural and 
 physical sciences, more than elsewhere, it is 
 necessary to be on one's guard against the 
 desire for clearness. That which seems ex- 
 tremely clear and neat is very apt not to be 
 true. Although Voltaire's science is not to be 
 despised, one feels that he prefers the risk of 
 seeming superficial to that of not being under- 
 stood ; and Thiers is open to much the same 
 reproach. He wrote, however, a book upon 
 these subjects, demonstrating to his own satis- 
 faction the theory of necessary ideas in scien- 
 tific philosophy; and one of his speeches, a 
 few years later, set forth the analogous theory 
 of necessary liberties. This work is not suffi- 
 ciently finished to be published and exposed 
 to the criticism of professional scholars, who 
 have but little indulgence for amateurs. Cham- 
 fort has an anecdote of a Genevan law pro- 
 fessor, who concluded a rapturous eulogy of 
 Voltaire's universality with the remark, *' It is 
 only in public law that I find him a bit defi- 
 cient." **And for my part," said Dalemberg, 
 
The Empire (1851-1863). 135 
 
 " It is only in geometry that I find him a bit 
 deficient." 
 
 Thiers' best diversion during these years was 
 the completion of his '* History of the Con- 
 sulate and the Empire." ^ Sainte-Beuve had 
 spoken of the first volumes with an admiration 
 that was more than justified by the later ones, 
 — the chances and changes of the author's life 
 having brought him the deeper knowledge of 
 men and affairs for which we pay so dear. It 
 has been asserted that he inferred too much 
 from his own experience ; that the coup d^ctat 
 of December 2 (1851) led. him to scan with 
 greater suspicion that of the i8th Brumaire; 
 that Napoleon III. opened his eyes concerning 
 Napoleon I. ; and that he thenceforward judged 
 the First Empire in the light of the Second. 
 If experience — which in spite of popular 
 prepossessions is so rarely instructive — had 
 led him to think of these two sovereigns what 
 Tacitus said of Augustus, Cwictafessa recepit, — 
 " The Commonwealth being exhausted, he took 
 command of it," — there would have been no 
 great harm. But the truth is, that if there be 
 
 1 The first five volumes appeared in 1845 ; the sixth and 
 seventh, in 1847 ; the eighth and ninth, in 1S49 ; the tenth, 
 eleventh, and tv.elfth, in 1851 ; the thirteenth and fourteenth, 
 in 1856; the fifteenth and sixteenth, in 1857; the seventeenth 
 and eighteenth, in i860; and the last two, in 1861 and 1863. 
 
1 36 Thiers, 
 
 any difference in Thiers' judgments before and 
 after 185 1, the Emperor himself is to blame, 
 rather than his nephew. Can it be maintained 
 that Napoleon is the same man from the first 
 days of the Consulate to the last days of the 
 Empire? How could the author treat in the 
 same manner the great captain who gave lustre 
 to the French name, and the indefatigable gam- 
 bler who constantly set our destinies at stake 
 on the bloody gaming-table of the battlefield? 
 General Buonaparte, as Chief Magistrate, was 
 irreproachable; such was the opinion of his 
 country and of impartial Europe. He was not 
 only a moderate restorer, — he was able and 
 fertile, original and brilliant He made France 
 live in an atmosphere of security, of hope, and 
 of admiration. The origin of his power, the 
 forms of his government, the means by which 
 he sustained it, certainly do not commend them- 
 selves to liberal opinion. But historians are 
 not doctors of constitutional law. The histo- 
 rian must take men as they are, and judge 
 them according to their times. The Govern- 
 ment of the First Consul was incomparably 
 humaner, juster, more regular, than either the 
 Old Rdgime or the Convention, — the sources 
 whence came all the barbarism that still clung 
 to it. 
 
 The opposite reproach — that of loving his 
 
The Empire (i8^i-i86j). 137 
 
 hero too much — has been more frequently 
 raised, and seems better justified. A volume 
 could indeed be made up of passages contain- 
 ing condemnations, in sharp, stern terms, of 
 the Emperor's faults. But it is true that Thiers 
 passionately admires his hero ; that he loves 
 even when he chastens. He keeps back none 
 of the faults, but these faults sadden him, and 
 he suggests all that can be said in extenuation 
 of genius gone astray. 
 
 Even those who have never been carried 
 away by this passion cannot deny that it is 
 a powerful source of interest. The current of 
 feeling that bears the reader through the wind- 
 ings of this immense work is strengthened by 
 the seduction of which the author is himself a 
 victim, and it is hard to wish him less prepos- 
 sessed. Nevertheless, this disposition tends to 
 give Napoleon, as he appears in this book, a 
 somewhat conventional character. The Em- 
 peror is a despot, but the author will have it 
 that he is the ideal despot. Napoleon had too 
 much wit not to know how to charm and win 
 over, when it suited his ends to do so ; but it 
 does not follow that this morose and haughty, 
 distrustful and irritable person, was the most 
 amiable of men. His practical and statesman- 
 like spirit made him averse to needless cruelty 
 when his power was not at stake ; at times he 
 
1 38 Thiers. 
 
 exhibited some emotion upon counting the 
 slain. But is it possible to admit that hu- 
 manity and pity were habitual to this great 
 consumer of human life? Thiers inclines to 
 attribute to Napoleon the gentler qualities of 
 his own heart. The historian sees works of 
 genius in the battles he describes so well, but 
 he could not have witnessed these battles with- 
 out being stirred to compassion. So, in his 
 narrative, war resembles a chess-game, and in 
 order to defend his hero he endeavors to sepa- 
 rate him into two different beings. " In war, 
 the Emperor was prompted by his genius ; in 
 politics, by his passions." A great poet has 
 likewise said, '' It was not Rolla who con- 
 trolled his life, it was his passions ! " ^ But 
 do not the passions and the genius of a man 
 make up the man himself? The responsi- 
 bility lies neither with his passions nor with 
 his genius, but with the whole being called 
 Napoleon. 
 
 An incomplete analysis of the Emperor's 
 character ; an almost complete forgetfulness of 
 what was going on abroad, especially in Eng- 
 land ; blindness to the quite genuine movement 
 of independence and hostility, even in the very 
 circle of the sovereign after 18 12; too much 
 indulgence for the unjustifiable return from 
 
 1 Alfred de Musset, " Rolla," ii. 
 
The Empire {^1851-1863). 139 
 
 Elba, — these are the faults which are atoned 
 for by such great qualities. To the last page 
 the author shows unabated zeal and attention 
 to detail. Twenty years of his life were de- 
 voted to this work. For a professional his- 
 torian the time would not be excessive, and 
 the task becomes prodigious when one reflects 
 that during one half this time the author was 
 a busy public man overtaken by two revolu- 
 tions, and during the other half a man of the 
 world beguiled by a thousand artistic and 
 scientific fancies. Yet this history is distin- 
 guished from the great models by its more 
 faithful and more intelligible account of the 
 way in which public business is transacted. It 
 pictures political action. This colder side of 
 history is never tiresome, — what we under- 
 stand well is seldom so. In this, Thiers was an 
 innovator, for he alone was capable of giving 
 life to the bureaucratic side of human affairs. 
 He treats everything with winning and com- 
 municative vivacity, and even when his thought 
 is not very new, all that he thinks strikes him 
 so keenly as to give the reader a sense of great 
 freshness and novelty. What others appropri- 
 ate he seems to discover ; so that if he remarked, 
 for example, that fortune is inconstant, you 
 would think that you heard it for the first time. 
 It is from himself that all the value and effect 
 
140 Thiers. 
 
 of what he says proceeds ; this personal ele- 
 ment gives life to masses of the dullest details, 
 and renders readable a style which is too often 
 lacking in reHef and distinction. In the pref- 
 ace to his twelfth volume he himself sets forth 
 the conditions of the historic style, — condi- 
 tions which he reduces to the single requisite of 
 transparency. Style should resemble the best 
 plate-glass; whatever renders it perceptible is 
 a flaw. 
 
 In laying down the laws of the historic style, 
 Thiers naturally described his own, just as 
 Boileau in his " Poetic Art " set forth the rules 
 of his own composition. This does not neces- 
 sarily imply that there is but one way of writ- 
 ing history, — that it is not permitted to dis- 
 play the talents of a romancer like Augustin 
 Thierry, of a poet like Lamartine, of a physi- 
 ologist like Michelet. But the truth is that the 
 political history of our century is best writ- 
 ten with simplicity, with detail, with lucidity, 
 and that it cannot be otherwise conceived 
 without violating the condition of scrupulous 
 exactitude. Did Thiers conform to this indis- 
 pensable condition? In this respect, critics 
 have done him the most uniform justice. They 
 have noted divergencies of opinion rather 
 than deviations from fact, and confirmation 
 has often come from the most unexpected 
 
The Empire (i8^i~i86j). 141 
 
 quarters. Thus Prince Metternich wrote to 
 Lady Westmoreland : ^ — 
 
 " I had never expected to find in a French book 
 a veracious account of the course of Austrian policy 
 in the years 18 12 and 18 13, — least of all from the 
 pen of M. Thiers, whom I have never met except 
 briefly on two occasions, and whose decided adver- 
 sary I have been throughout his different ministries. 
 Latterly I have often been asked by men of impor- 
 tance, * Are you not writing ? ' My uniform reply 
 has been, ' All that I could write is laid away in the 
 archives for the use of the historians of the fu- 
 ture.' To-day I can refer those who may be curious 
 to inform themselves, to the fifteenth volume of 
 M. Thiers' History." 
 
 1 April 4, 1857. Memoirs, viii. 417. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE EMPIRE (1863-1870). 
 
 WHILE these years of free labour and 
 well-employed leisure were passing so 
 pleasantly for Thiers, and while France was 
 losing sight of the orator in the writer, a great 
 change announced itself. The Emperor, per- 
 haps wearied with warlike expeditions, per- 
 haps yielding to some secret instinct which 
 told him that the French were again pos- 
 sessed by the passion for change, took it into 
 his head to propose and consequently to 
 carry out (for he was the sole master) certain 
 modifications in the Constitution of 1852. 
 This Constitution was simply organized des- 
 potism: no freedom of the press, no electo- 
 ral liberty, no parliamentary freedom. The 
 Emperor alone addressed the Chambers, which 
 had not even the right to present an address 
 in reply. The Budget and the laws were 
 voted by the deputies, it is true, but they had 
 the right neither to modify the Budget nor 
 to amend the laws. Worse still, the reports 
 
The Empire (1863-18^0). 143 
 
 of the sessions were not published. There 
 appeared only an abbreviated analysis of the 
 proceedings in the Official Journal, written 
 in the third person by the editor, who was 
 a mere clerk. When some one happened 
 to speak to the Emperor of the orators of 
 the Corps Legislatif, he remarked ironically, 
 "Why, I know of but one, — M. Denis La- 
 garde." ^ The ministers did not sit in the 
 Assembly, and had neither responsibility nor 
 solidarity. 
 
 To educe from these elements a liberal 
 Constitution would have been difficult, nor 
 did the Emperor think of it. He did not 
 make the electors free, he hardly modified 
 the press-laws, he permitted the ministers to 
 be dependent upon no power save his favour ; 
 but he permitted the deputies to speak and 
 even to reply to him with a respectful address. 
 He appointed a special minister, without a 
 cabinet and without responsible authority, 
 whose function was to defend the active min- 
 isters without taking any part in their pro- 
 ceedings. So a lawyer who pleads for a 
 criminal before the police court is cognizant 
 of the facts only after the offisnce. This was 
 a first step in the direction of parliamentary 
 government, toward which all civilization 
 1 The clerk-editor in question. — Tr. 
 
144 Thiers. 
 
 tends or to which it returns. The objections 
 to the system are obvious: an opposition 
 Chamber would easily have unmasked the 
 real author behind his attorney, just as the 
 police justice punishes the accused; and 
 the attorney would not have been long sup- 
 ported by a ministry whose plans had been 
 shipwrecked in the Assembly. But the con- 
 ception, strange as it was, constituted a step 
 forward, and the public interest required that 
 Liberal leaders should not be too exacting. 
 The opportunity was a tempting one to speak 
 to France of her rights and interests, without 
 too narrowly scrutinizing the rectitude of the 
 mind that had conceived these reforms. Ac- 
 cordingly, upon the announcement of the 
 general elections of 1863 (the first since the 
 Reform), there was a conference, at the house 
 of the late Duke of Broglie, of the leaders of 
 the several parliamentary parties. They dis- 
 cussed the opportunity of entering the Corps 
 Legislatif, and of trying their chances before 
 the few constituencies where success was 
 possible. 
 
 The step was a serious one. There was in 
 the Chamber an opposition group made up of 
 distinguished orators, who were styled the Five : 
 Messrs. Picard, Jules Favre, Emile Ollivier, 
 Darimon, and Henon ; they were for the most 
 
The Empire (i86j-i8'/o), 145 
 
 part young men who had given hostages to 
 none of the old parties, and who had been 
 neither exiled nor arrested by the Empire. 
 Thus they could take oath without scruple, and 
 could discuss every question upon its merits. 
 The representatives of the old parties, as they 
 were called, General Cavaignac and M. Carnot, 
 had hitherto sought in the elections only an 
 opportunity for protesting and for refusing the 
 oath. The Broglie Conference had therefore 
 to decide upon an important change of front 
 on the part of the public men present. If 
 they became deputies, they would be obliged 
 to relinquish the attitude of absolute, uncom- 
 promising opponents of the Empire. Apart 
 from the not very agreeable formality of the 
 oath, honour commands those who by entering 
 the Assembly assume a share in the govern- 
 ment, not only to abstain from conspiring 
 against that government, but not to attempt in 
 any wise to overturn it, to regard themselves 
 as no longer strangers to power, — in a word, 
 to limit themselves to a constitutional oppo- 
 sition. Their conscience binds them to vote 
 only for laws which they would propose were 
 they members of the Ministry. If their opin- 
 ions prevail in the Chamber, they may not 
 refuse, if called upon, to attempt to carry them 
 out in action. 
 
 10 
 
146 Thiers. 
 
 In the Broglie Conference some declared 
 this effort to be beyond the strength of their 
 impartiality. They could be nothing but eter- 
 nal enemies of the Empire, and could be sat- 
 isfied by nothing short of its fall. The major- 
 ity thought, however, that the useful task of 
 spreading the truth, of discussing the Budget 
 and the laws, and, by means of Constitutional 
 Amendments of which the Emperor had first 
 set the example, of attaining the government 
 of the people by the people, was sufificient to 
 justify the sacrifice of some grudges and of 
 some hopes. After a serious discussion the 
 acceptance of candidatures was agreed upon. 
 
 Thiers was not present at the Conference. 
 He approved its resolutions, but was at first 
 averse to the thought of himself carrying them 
 out, and thus sacrificing his leisure, his tastes, 
 his freedom of speech, perhaps his friendships. 
 He was now sixty-six years old ; would he feel 
 at home in the Tribune, the steps of which he 
 had not mounted since he was fifty-four? He 
 decided, however, to set the example, and ac- 
 cepted two candidacies, one at Valenciennes 
 and one at Paris. He was elected only at 
 Paris, for electoral liberty did not exist in 
 the provinces, and scarcely any of his friends 
 were elected with him. Paris has never better 
 justified her claim to be a refuge for the Oppo- 
 
The Empire {i86j-i8'/o). 147 
 
 sition, and M. de Persigny's violent proceed- 
 ings tended to make the election a personal 
 defeat for the Emperor. This placed Thiers 
 in a false light, for he was always respectful 
 even to mere de facto governments. 
 
 It was a great day for France and for the 
 intellectual world, and many young hearts beat 
 faster, when Thiers rose for the first time in the 
 Imperial Parliament. He did not ascend the 
 Tribune, which was reserved for the Imperial 
 Advocate. He spoke from his place in the 
 House, and all eyes were fastened upon that 
 well-known face. His eyes gleamed with 
 shrewdness, and appeared, as he looked over 
 his spectacles, to strike to the very souls of 
 his hearers. They remarked his attitude, fa- 
 miliar but serious, and his white hair which 
 bore witness to a long and glorious past. 
 With what feelings they heard his voice and 
 caught that Provengal accent which lends pi- 
 quancy to the commonest words ! Everything 
 about him suggested that he had been con- 
 jured up from another age to redeem us from 
 the sombre future we already foreboded. 
 France, silent for a dozen years, had found a 
 voice again in the most French of her children, 
 and the fire and force of her spokesman were 
 unabated by age. With his accustomed art 
 he adapted himself to a new situation, to a 
 
148 Thiers. 
 
 suspicious power which must not be irritated, 
 to unknown and distrustful auditors quick to 
 take alarm, to an outside public difficult to 
 please in the matter of opposition. 
 
 This political manifesto (Jan. 14, 1864) be- 
 gins with an account of our revolutions and 
 of the mistakes of the past, and ends with an 
 enumeration of the conditions indispensable to 
 any government. These conditions are simply 
 and happily described as *' the essential liber- 
 ties," — freedom of the press, electoral liberty, 
 parliamentary freedom, and ministerial respon- 
 sibiHty. The Empire was very far from realizing 
 these liberties ; yet there is nothing revolution- 
 ary in the demand for them. An enlightened 
 conservative might subscribe to it. To prove, 
 however, that his intention was not to destroy 
 but to build up, he described his own attitude 
 toward what were then called " the old parties," 
 and toward the past which he was accused of 
 wishing to revive. Shall we not find here a 
 good lesson in personal dignity and in political 
 morality? 
 
 "The French soil is covered with the wrecks of 
 these governments. There live men who are termed 
 the representatives of the old parties. I am one of 
 these representatives ; and I ask you, in the name of 
 our common country, for permission to put aside 
 every veil. I have observed our country, and I think 
 
The Empire (iSdj-iSyo), 149 
 
 I know her well. What mission has she intrusted to 
 these representatives of the old parties? She has 
 given them the mission of studying public affairs, of 
 discussing these affairs with sincerity and impartiality, 
 but also of probing them. She has given them the 
 mission of watching over the public good, of watching 
 over the progressive and continuous development of 
 our institutions ; for the good administration of pubKc 
 affairs is bound up in good institutions. Such is the 
 mission which she has given to the representatives of 
 the old parties. Should these representatives, instead 
 of devoting themselves to this task, show any inten- 
 tion to substitute one form of government for an- 
 other, one dynasty for another, they would instantly 
 become weak ; for they would be going beyond their 
 authority. 
 
 "As concerns myself, I have served an august 
 family, to-day unfortunate. I owe it the respect 
 which we cannot refuse to gieat sorrows nobly borne. 
 I owe it the affection we cannot but feel for those 
 with whom we have passed the best portion of our 
 lives. There is something which I do not owe, and 
 which it does not ask, but which the pride of my soul 
 willingly gives, — this is to live in retirement, and not 
 let my old masters see me aspiring to the splendour 
 of authority while they pine in exile. But there is 
 one thing which — I call Heaven to witness ! — they 
 do not ask of me, which they will never ask, and I 
 shall never give, and that is, to sacrifice to them the in- 
 terests of my country. I therefore here declare as an 
 honest man, that if this essential freedom is granted 
 
1 50 Thiers. 
 
 us, for my part I shall accept it, and shall take my 
 place among the submissive and grateful citizens of 
 the Empire. But if it be our duty to accept, permit 
 me to say to you that it is the duty of the Govern- 
 ment to give. Let it not be supposed that I speak 
 the language of arrogant exaction ! No ; I know- 
 that in order to obtain, one must ask with respect. 
 It is therefore with respect that I ask it. But gentle- 
 men must beware ! Our fiery country, to-day half 
 asleep, whose exaggerated desires are so prone to 
 flame up, — this country which permits me to-day to 
 ask in her behalf in the most deferential tone, will 
 perchance one day require." 
 
 The last words were bold, and he alone 
 could pronounce them; but the dexterity of 
 the entire discourse will be noted, and its gra- 
 dations in substance and in form. By dint of 
 thus skilfully weighing his words, Thiers was 
 enabled, throughout the remainder of the Em- 
 pire, to ally a very keen opposition with opin- 
 ions as moderate and as statesmanlike as ever. 
 Inflexible as to the essential conditions of 
 parliamentary government, hostile to personal 
 power, he is often found in agreement with the 
 sentiments — especially the concealed ones — 
 of members of the majority, touching our for- 
 eign policy, Italy, the temporal power, the pro- 
 tectionist system. It cost him neither effort 
 nor sacrifice to be agreeable to the timid or 
 
The Empire (1863-1870), 151 
 
 the prudent, while the frankness and vivacity of 
 his assertions of right gave genuine strength to 
 liberal France ; and the authority of his name, 
 the solidity and clearness of his arguments, 
 forced the Government to reply more seriously 
 and more definitely. The public which he 
 addressed had been stirred to a certain vague 
 anxiety by the renewed caprices of an auto- 
 cratic master. Having indulged the thought 
 that this master would make no mistakes, the 
 public had been willing not to see the mistakes 
 which he really made. But the time was com- 
 ing when no one was sorry to see these mis- 
 takes pointed out and prevented, even at the 
 risk of the modest liberties the value of which 
 was beginning to be felt. 
 
 Thiers' very compromising attitude some- 
 times ruffled his friends of the Left, — for he 
 was happily not alone in the Corps Legislatif 
 There was M. Ernest Picard, that bright and 
 sensible speaker; M. Jules Favre, a satirical, 
 impassioned, correct improviser; M. Emile 
 Ollivier, whose southern eloquence gradually 
 became coloured with the neutral tints of a 
 liberal Empire ; M. Berryer, whose thrilling 
 voice had not lost its deep accents ; M. Jules 
 Simon, as witty and as dramatic as any, eager 
 to defend not only political truths, but those 
 of morals and humanity. They could not all 
 
152 Thiers, 
 
 follow Thiers in his forbearance toward the 
 Government, and declared themselves more 
 irreconcilable than he. They trusted to the 
 natural mobility of our nation, which is rather 
 prompt to overturn than able to reform, and 
 to the inconsistency of imperial institutions 
 with freedom. 
 
 For seven years Thiers gave his countrymen 
 lessons in home and foreign politics in these 
 speeches permeated with lucid good-sense. 
 His limpid exposition would alone have 
 made him practically influential as an orator. 
 Never has a speaker succeeded better in ac- 
 centuating positive reason, in giving point to 
 commonplace. His anxiety to instruct is too 
 obvious, and he is sometimes prolix; but his 
 prolixities are delightful episodes, or ingenious 
 historical parallels of which no hearer could 
 ever have been weary. 
 
 Though rhetorical precepts and examples 
 have never been of much use to any one, it 
 is interesting to know Thiers' method of pre- 
 paring a speech. After having laid out the 
 general plan, he devoted his hours to the 
 most assiduous researches, sparing neither 
 time nor trouble, questioning speciahsts per- 
 sistently and hearing them patiently, collect- 
 ing a mass of materials sufficient for the 
 composition of a book. Next he considered 
 
The Empire (iSdj-iSyo). 153 
 
 and winnowed his notes, distributing them to 
 the various divisions of his subject. He wrote 
 out, not the speech, but the order of his ideas ; 
 and then began the strangest preparation. In 
 the evening, when his friends were gathered 
 in his drawing-room, he turned the conversa- 
 tion to the subject with which he was occu- 
 pied. This was an easy matter, for wherever 
 he talked, the conversation was not apt to be 
 discursive. Without throwing off the familiar 
 tone, he tried a fragment of his proposed 
 speech upon his companions, and gauged its 
 interest by their attention and their remarks. 
 It was in this first improvisation that parallels 
 and episodes occurred to him. It will be seen 
 that the method is an easy one. 
 
 It is very difficult to give an account of his 
 speeches; the true and interesting way to 
 judge them is to read them. One can do this 
 without fatigue in M. Calmon's excellent edi- 
 tion, with its clear and impartial '* arguments," 
 the ability of which justifies the important 
 part played by the editor in our Assemblies 
 during the last twenty years. As we must 
 choose some passages, let us leave on one side 
 the developments of the essential liberties 
 (commonplaces to-day), the Roman Question, 
 the discussions of the Budget and of the 
 merchant marine service; let us even pass 
 
/ 
 
 1 54 Thiers. 
 
 over many charming pages like the following 
 definition of a free country: — 
 
 " While discussing the true principles of political 
 science, Machiavelli raises the question whether 
 nations or princes are the more liable to err, and he 
 reaches a conclusion which can be reduced to these 
 words : Yes, a nation is liable to err, but less so than 
 a man. And for the following reason. The individ- 
 ual makes mistakes. Why ? Because, being master 
 of his own actions, not being compelled to deliber- 
 ate, to examine the pros and the cons, he allows him- 
 self to be swayed by his inclinations. Then he goes 
 astray, and if he hold in his hands the fate of a 
 nation, he may plunge it into grievous woes. But 
 a free nation is a multiple and collective being; a 
 free nation cannot form a decision without assem- 
 bling, deUberating, weighing the pros and the cons ; 
 and thus it has that God-given security against 
 error, — the obligation of consulting its reason. So 
 having long reflected and often asked myself, in the 
 course of a life already long, what is the true defini- 
 tion of a free nation, I have reached this one, which 
 I leave to your meditations : a free nation is a being 
 that thinks before it acts." 
 
 We must pass over all that is merely de- 
 lightful or useful in these speeches, in order 
 to recall that which is politic, prudent, almost 
 prophetic. Thiers entered the Chamber in 
 order to defend not only freedom but peace. 
 
The Empire (1863-1870). 155 
 
 — peace which is always endangered by an 
 imprudent policy. On this point he was an 
 absolute conservative. In his speech of April 
 13, 1865, he said: — 
 
 " In speaking of domestic affairs, it is quite cor- 
 rect to say that there is a new policy. Kings have 
 been compelled to share their authority with their 
 people. Upper classes have been compelled to 
 share their influence with middle or lower classes. 
 And for all this new forms were indispensable. But 
 in the matter of a foreign policy, whether I go back 
 to the most political of ancient historians, Polybius, 
 or to the most political of modern historians, Guic- 
 ciardini, I find everywhere that foreign policy is 
 simply the old-time prudence of a vigilant State, 
 which never takes its eye off its neighbours, which 
 hinders small States from growing great, great States 
 from growing greater, or in any way becoming a 
 source of apprehension; it is always, I say, the 
 same old prudence and the same vigilance." 
 
 From this point of view Thiers must have 
 been struck by what was taking place before 
 his eyes. If the Holy Alliance of his youth, 
 which had paralyzed our foreign policy, was 
 somewhat weakened by the events of 1848, the 
 Emperor's turbulent European policy tended 
 to revive it under another form. At the very 
 moment of the entrance of the new deputies to 
 the Corps Legislatif, the Mexican expedition, 
 
1 56 Thiers. 
 
 characterized by M. Rouher as *' the finest 
 thought of the reign," was being pushed for- 
 ward for the sake of realizing a dangerous 
 theory based upon ethnography, imagination, 
 and operations at the Bourse. All this was 
 far from reassuring to the positive spirit of 
 Thiers, who was very severe toward the 
 dreamy, romantic, and somewhat German side 
 of Napoleon III. This remarkable personage 
 has been described as a man of " unrecognized 
 incapacity; " but he was unknown rather than 
 unrecognized. Even his duplicity, the wonder 
 and envy of the other sovereigns, was overdone. 
 He got credit for his silence; it was believed 
 that he was hatching some great design, when 
 he was simply concealing himself He was a 
 sphinx who frequently had no enigma. 
 
 Reducing the Imperial foreign policy to its 
 simplest terms, we can say that it was pre- 
 cisely the reverse of the opinions of Thiers, 
 who would have permitted the formation of 
 no great neighbouring States. If, however, in 
 spite of him, such States had been formed, 
 he would have taken care to keep the peace 
 with them until he had organized a strong 
 army. Simple as this is, it is diametrically 
 opposed to the policy of the Empire as ex- 
 pounded by M. Rouher. The upshot of that 
 policy was to favour the creation of powerful 
 
The Empire (1863-1870), 157 
 
 States, and then to pick dangerous quarrels 
 with them, while sacrificing the strength and 
 organization of the army for the sake of popu- 
 larity. Thiers opposed the formation of the 
 kingdom of Italy, notwithstanding his admi- 
 ration and friendship for Cavour, and the satis- 
 faction of seeing a great liberal monarchy 
 beyond the Alps. He strongly advised inter- 
 vention, in 1864, with reference to the question 
 of the duchies, of which Lord Palmerston said : 
 " But two persons thoroughly understood the 
 question of the duchies, — Prince Albert, who 
 is dead, and I, who have forgotten it." This is 
 a sufficient reason for not entering upon the 
 subject here. 
 
 Was it wise, in 1866, to allow Austria to be 
 conquered, and to rejoice over this sad presage 
 of our misfortunes? Here, again, Thiers felt a 
 disabling thrust at France, which would com- 
 pel her, one day, to make a heroic effort to 
 repair the injury thus permitted. He foresaw 
 that dire extremity, the inevitable consequence 
 of so many mistakes, but he feared it too much 
 not to wish to postpone it. He therefore ex- 
 pressed himself so guardedly as not to irritate 
 the susceptibilities of France. To this double 
 aim his speech of March 14, 1867, was devoted. 
 The Liberals of that time have been accused 
 of counselling war, because they pointed out 
 
158 Thiers, 
 
 the danger of the mistakes that had been made, 
 and the way to lessen the consequences of 
 these mistakes. The reader of this memorable 
 speech sees how little justification there is for 
 such a reproach, and how many catastrophes 
 would have been averted had its clairvoyant 
 counsels been followed. In this address, which 
 is as literary as it is political, Thiers describes 
 how he has been gradually liberalized by 
 public events, and how his political education 
 has been completed by a very near view of 
 the workings of freedom and of absolutism, 
 ** the one redeeming France, the other com- 
 promising her ! " 
 
 It is impossible to deny one's self the pleas- 
 ure of transcribing a graceful passage from one 
 of his speeches on Italy (April 13, 1865) • 
 
 '* For my part I have always regarded Italy as the 
 Greece of the Middle Ages, and Florence as a true 
 Christian Athens not inferior to the ancient city ; and 
 when one considers all that took place from the year 
 1000 to the year 1600, in that epoch so brilliant, so 
 fruitful, so admirable, what is there in common, I ask 
 you, between Venice, the mediaeval queen of the sea, 
 Venice more Asiatic than European, sharing none of 
 the passions of Italy where she had scarce a foothold, 
 and, after a long career of opulence, falling asleep in 
 the arms of aristocracy and of pleasure, leaving us 
 an imperishable memorial of her magnificence in the 
 
The Empire (1863-18 70). 159 
 
 thousand-tinted art of Titian and of Veronese,-^ 
 what is there in common between this aristocratic 
 Venice and democratic Florence : Florence, stretched 
 in the beautiful plains of the Arno, richer still by her 
 manufactures than was Venice by her ships ; Florence, 
 impelled by the pride of wealth to combat the feudal 
 aristocracy of the Ghibellines, and breathing into Italy 
 the Guelf passions with which she was fired ; Florence, 
 ending in the despotism of the Medici, those Caesars 
 of peace, and destined to show forever the striking 
 features of the genius of civil war in her palaces, 
 which are merely embellished fortresses, in Dante's 
 deep and pathetic song inspired by the sorrows of 
 exile, in MachiaveUi's solid knowledge wrung from the 
 experience of revolutions, in Michael Angelo's sternly 
 sublime art, so different from the colouring of Titian?" 
 
 The times were becoming darker. There 
 had been reason to believe that the elections 
 of 1869 would result in an entirely new Corps 
 Legislatif, which should prevent the final mis- 
 take, — "the only one that remained to be com- 
 mitted." Unhappily, the electoral oppression 
 was as stringent as ever, and the Emperor 
 could only " deceive himself again " by univer- 
 sal suffrage, as M. Ernest Picard put it. Few 
 opposition candidates succeeded in passing the 
 meshes of the official net. At Paris, Thiers 
 was elected only at a second ballot. But 
 Paris has seldom supported reform ; it drives 
 
1 60 Thiers, 
 
 straight at revolution. In the provinces there 
 was little numerical gain ; but Messrs. Gambetta, 
 Jules Ferry, Grevy, Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, 
 Horace de Choiseul, were important accessions 
 to the Liberal ranks. The movement of the 
 popular mind was, however, so evident, the 
 number of votes for opposition candidates so 
 considerable, the discussion of the ratification 
 of powers so unfavorable to the Administration, 
 that the Emperor saw it was necessary to yield 
 something. He accordingly prepared to grant a 
 parliamentary Ministry. After much legislation 
 he appointed M. Ollivier President of the Coun- 
 cil and Minister of Justice, M. Buffet Minister 
 of Finance, and M. Daru Minister of Foreign 
 Affairs. This was indeed much. The late Duke 
 of Broglie remarked, "We are at least out 
 of the woods." The adhesion of others was 
 less qualified. M. Masson became Prefect of 
 the Department of the Nord, and M. Prevost- 
 Paradol Minister to the United States. Both 
 were to die upon seeing their hopes of free- 
 dom disappointed. 
 
 Never was a Reform Ministry better received. 
 Thiers went so far as to say, in his speech of 
 Jan. 27, 1870, "My opinions are to be found 
 upon the Ministerial benches." Indeed, he 
 and his friends were bound to rally to the 
 support of any government that opened the 
 
The Empire (1863-1870), 161 
 
 door to popular liberties. Those who still 
 harboured some distrust took care to dissemble 
 it. Everything indicates the Emperor's sin- 
 cerity ; but he was weak, and his deputies, his 
 high officials, his Court, his very household 
 continued to be borne along by the stream 
 upon which they had so long floated. How 
 could the limpid waters of freedom mingle with 
 this turbid stream without defilement? Of this 
 new freedom there was no guarantee, the Min- 
 istry not having the right to dissolve a hostile 
 Chamber where they were received with re- 
 spectful antipathy. The Emperor, yielding to 
 his old habits of mind, — or rather to his former 
 friends and their perilous counsels, — could not 
 fail to revert to his fancy for a plebiscite. He 
 became infatuated with the plan of submitting 
 to universal suffrage, by yes or no, a Consti- 
 tution in forty-five articles, without, of course, 
 permitting any choice among the articles. 
 M. Buffet's austere parliamentary spirit being 
 stirred at this, he promptly resigned, followed 
 closely by M. Daru. 
 
 How could M. Emile Ollivier fail to see, as 
 they saw, that this plebiscite impaired his au- 
 thority, that the partisans of absolutismwould be 
 emboldened by it, and that the politicians, who 
 were somewhat coldly yielding to the liberal 
 Empire, would be quite dissatisfied and discour* 
 II 
 
1 62 Thiers. 
 
 aged? Full of confidence in the Emperor and 
 in himself, he thought he could brave every- 
 thing, and continue a parliamentary govern- 
 ment between a small minority on the Left, and 
 a majority on the Right which only sought an 
 opportunity to regain the Imperial favour. In 
 this session Thiers seldom spoke. His greatest 
 speech is that of January 27, beginning upon 
 the commercial treaties and ending upon gen- 
 eral politics, under the influence of interrupt- 
 ers whose violence was a prelude to that of 
 the latter days. He closed with these words : 
 *' I maintain that neither in public economy 
 nor in politics do you exactly represent the 
 country." This opinion was supported by 
 only thirty-two votes against two hundred and 
 twelve official deputies, — an excellent con- 
 firmation ! For six months he relapsed into 
 silence; but on the 30th of June he hotly 
 demanded the contingent of ninety thousand 
 men, which some of his opposition colleagues 
 opposed, and which the Government aban- 
 doned. He would have preferred a levy of a 
 hundred thousand men, as in the preceding 
 years; and he pointed out that, without any 
 thought of aggression, Government was bound 
 to take into account the changes going on in 
 Europe. By means of treaties of alliance, 
 offensive and defensive, with the South Ger- 
 
The Empire (1863-1870). 163 
 
 man powers, Prussia — till recently a popula- 
 tion of nineteen millions — now controlled 
 upwards of forty millions. In this entirely 
 pacific speech he said : — 
 
 "You will not see that Sadowa has doubled the 
 Prussian power; you will not see that instead of a 
 Germany all-powerful for defence, but powerless for 
 aggression, — for the two principal monarchies, Prus- 
 sia and Austria, could never agree upon a question 
 of ambition, — you will not see that, instead of this 
 inoffensive Germany, you have a formidable military 
 Germany, which, to do it justice, does not seek to 
 disturb the world, — for at its head is a superior man, 
 a lover of peace, — but which makes it necessary for 
 you to organize a more considerable military force, in 
 order to be able to restrain any ambitious plans that 
 might arise. " 
 
 It is hardly possible to imagine words more 
 moderate and more prudent. And what are 
 we to think of a government which, the situa- 
 tion being understood, made bold to pick a 
 quarrel with Germany, or, if you will, failed 
 to prepare to defend itself in the event of a 
 quarrel sought by the other side? In either 
 aspect the blunder is equally culpable. 
 
 M. Daru was succeeded by the Duke of Gra- 
 mont, who was thus unexpectedly placed in 
 a Ministry whose opinions he did not at all 
 share. Two days after Thiers' remarks, news 
 
164 Thiers, 
 
 was received that Marshal Prim had offered the 
 crown of Spain to the Prince of HohenzoUern, 
 a relative of the King of Prussia. The Minis- 
 ter was asked to inform the Chamber. Gra- 
 mont confirmed the news, and, much more, 
 declared that France would not permit a 
 prince of his dynasty to ascend the throne of 
 Charles V. He announced further that, the 
 business being so serious, he would keep the 
 Chamber informed from day to day. This 
 was a declaration of war, or at least a piece of 
 "hussar-diplomacy," to quote Doudan's ex- 
 pression. Thus Prussian self-respect was in- 
 terested in an affair that would have been so 
 easy to adjust quietly. Much worse ; as if it 
 had been feared that Bismarck's prudent pol- 
 icy might foil these warlike plans, the king 
 himself was directly addressed, so that a politi- 
 cal question was more and more completely 
 converted into a personal matter, — a danger- 
 ous course at any time. 
 
 In reply to the question addressed to him, 
 the King of Prussia answered that he had seen 
 no political bearing in the affair, and that it 
 was as head of a family, and not as sovereign, 
 that he had granted the permission to Prince 
 Leopold. Almost at the same time it was 
 learned that Spain did not insist, that the 
 Prince renounced his claim, and that the King 
 
The Empire (iSdj-iSjo), 165 
 
 of Prussia approved the renunciation. The 
 King even made an official statement of this 
 approbation. This was peace, and even a suc- 
 cess for an imprudently conducted negotiation. 
 
 Strictly speaking, the Government might 
 have plumed itself upon this unlooked-for 
 success. But, by a fluctuation sufficiently ex- 
 plained by the intrigues of the Court and with- 
 in the Ministry, and by the already morbid 
 indecision of the Emperor, the Government 
 bethought itself to demand of King William 
 a new concession. He was asked to pledge 
 himself, in the event of any change of mind on 
 the part of Spain or of the Prince, never in any 
 case to authorize the candidature of a Hohen- 
 zollern. This would have been a painful en- 
 gagement for a haughty and powerful sovereign, 
 surrounded by a court of soldiers who desired 
 v/ar. The King, vexed by these demands, — 
 which, to crown all, were addressed to him 
 personally, — replied that he could not pledge 
 himself forever, and that he reserved his free- 
 dom of action. 
 
 The French Ambassador, M. Benedetti, one 
 of the few able men of the Imperial diplomatic 
 service, thought this reply no more than what 
 was to be expected. The Minister, however, 
 required of him an additional step. Having 
 taken this step, the Ambassador was not of- 
 
1 66 Thiers. 
 
 fended when the King replied through an aide- 
 de»-camp that, having nothing new to communi- 
 cate, he did not wish to resume the interview, 
 and that the business was concluded. This 
 was also the opinion of M. Benedetti, who 
 would not believe that these conversations 
 could result in war, without the interposition, 
 at a single point, of Bismarck and the Prussian 
 Ministry. It is only in tragedies that business 
 is transacted in this way between two sover- 
 eigns, or between a sovereign and an envoy. 
 Alas ! on this occasion there ensued a tragedy 
 indeed, and a bloody one. 
 
 At this critical moment the Chamber was 
 "asked, on the 15th of July, to vote a credit for 
 war expenses, and war was thus declared. It 
 was a triumph for the purely Buonapartist party, 
 which M. Emile Ollivier immediately joined, 
 either because he saw a real insult in the King's 
 attitude, or because he felt that he could not 
 desert the Emperor at such a conjuncture. 
 Perhaps he thought himself able to play the 
 dangerous game of snatching arms from his 
 adversaries' hands, and conceived the hope of 
 crowning the brow of the liberal Empire with 
 a halo of glory borrowed from the absolute 
 Empire. 
 
 Thiers could lend himself to none of these 
 schemes. He had long foreseen that the Em- 
 
The Empire (1863-1870), 167 
 
 peror's blunders, the very existence of the Em- 
 pire, the disproportionate growth of Prussia, the 
 inevitable rivalry of warlike nations, our hum- 
 bled pride, all portended war ; and he exerted 
 all his efforts to avert it, to delay it, to seek 
 alliances for France, to put her in the right in 
 the event of a conflict, and especially to organ- 
 ize an army worthy of France. This declara- 
 tion of war, improvised upon a frivolous pretext 
 by an imprudent Minister, took Thiers by sur- 
 prise. He knew that no preparations had been 
 made for this terrible conflict ; that our army 
 was small, ill-drilled, and ill-equipped. He 
 saw his country thoughtlessly dragged into an 
 enterprise of which the authors suspected 
 neither the difficulties to be overcome nor the 
 dangers to be faced. And what a task to say 
 all this in public, without compromising France 
 and himself! It required a stoical devotion 
 to truth, to duty, to the Fatherland. He well 
 knew that his aims would be misinterpreted, his 
 person insulted. What hope could he cherish 
 of persuading a Chamber which was but too 
 happy to avenge itself in the name of a feigned 
 patriotism? What chance of averting the mis- 
 fortune ? He was certain to encounter not only 
 insincere outrages, but the frank indignation, 
 the insulting suspicions, of ignorant adversaries. 
 One must be a parliamentary veteran in order 
 
1 68 Thiers, 
 
 to realize how difficult is the courage neces- 
 sary to openly resist a Representative Assem- 
 bly when it is fired, even without absolute 
 sincerity, by a sentiment of national honour. In 
 great public bodies there is a kind of physical 
 action of man upon man that renders true for 
 them the view which they vociferate. And it 
 was Thiers, whose name had stood throughout 
 half a century quite as much for the suscepti- 
 bility of French honour as for political liberty, 
 who, actuated by a patriotism too lofty to be 
 understood, was to lead the forlorn hope. 
 
 The violence and vulgarity of the Chamber 
 in that sitting of July 15, 1870, was unprece- 
 dented. The aim evidently was to prevent 
 Thiers from speaking. This speech is there- 
 fore not to be cited as a model of oratorical 
 art; it is merely the cry of the patriot and 
 statesman. Through the storm of insult the 
 following broken utterances were scarcely 
 heard : — 
 
 " If there was ever a day, an hour, when it might be 
 said without exaggeration that the Genius of History 
 had her eyes fixed upon us, it is this day and this 
 hour; and surely such a reflection ought to make 
 every one serious. . . . When war shall once be de- 
 clared, no one will be more zealous, more eager than 
 I to gi-ant to Government all the means necessary to 
 secure victory. . . . We cannot exaggerate the gravity 
 
The Empire (i86j-i8yo), 169 
 
 of the conjuncture. Remember that your decision 
 may result in the death of thousands of men. . . , 
 Remember the 6th of May, 1866 ! You then refused 
 to hear me when I pointed out to you the gathering 
 dangers. . . . Permit me to tell you that I regard 
 this war as egregiously imprudent. I love my country, 
 and no one was more painfully affected by the events 
 of 1866 ; but speaking from profound conviction, and 
 if I may venture to say so, from experience, I feel 
 that the occasion is ill-chosen. ... If you do not 
 understand that at this moment I am performing the 
 most painful duty of my life, I pity you. ... As to 
 myself, I am tranquil concerning the memory that 
 men will preserve of my action this day ; but I am 
 certain that you will see the day when you will regret 
 your haste. . . . Affront me, . . . insult me . . . ! 
 I am ready to bear anything in order to spare the 
 blood of my fellow-citizens, which you are so impru- 
 dently ready to shed ! " 
 
 When the exhaustion consequent upon a 
 struggle of several hours compelled him to de- 
 scend from the Tribune, the Minister replied 
 to him. A little refreshed by a moment's rest, 
 he resumed the unequal struggle against so 
 many men leagued together by the Fate pre- 
 siding over the falls of empires. What fol- 
 lowed is we\\ known. War was declared. The 
 Ollivier Ministry could not survive; for not its 
 policy, but that begun on the 2d of December, 
 
1 70 Thiers. 
 
 185 1, was triumphant. After the violence of 
 the Corps Legislatif, Thiers was exposed to the 
 insults of the street and of subservient news- 
 papers. He suffered these things with proud- 
 spirited contempt ; and wrote, some days later, 
 to a friend who had congratulated him upon 
 his courage ; — 
 
 July 21, 1870. 
 
 Your letter touches me deeply. You have guessed 
 all ; the pretexts for the war are indeed pitiful. 
 
 It was certainly well to keep a vigilant eye upon 
 Prussia, and to prepare to take revenge upon her; 
 but mistakes are not so easily nor so promptly re- 
 paired. Especially on the present occasion was it 
 important to wait, and we should infallibly have 
 caught Prussia in straits. On that day we should 
 have had on our side the whole of exasperated South 
 Germany; Austria would have been compelled to 
 declare herself ; England would have been favourable 
 instead of furious, and there would have been, withal, a 
 means of restraining Russia. Until then our proper 
 course was to live on from day to day, to settle all 
 difficulties that might arise, and to atone for our 
 mistakes by patience. 
 
 Far from that, without even desiring war, we began 
 with an absurd outburst. Then we retreated, hoping 
 that Prussia would not too keenly feel our sally, and 
 that England, the usual arbitrator, would arrange all. 
 I interposed to advise prudence and frank acceptance 
 of Prussia's concession, — a concession which wag 
 
The Empire (1863-1870). 171 
 
 inevitable, that power having put itself in the wrong. 
 My advice was accepted, and all was promised me. 
 At this moment our Government had passed from 
 arrogance to fear, and desired but one thing, — 
 the relinquishment of the Hohenzollern candidature. 
 The anxiously awaited news arrived, and in his joy 
 M. Ollivier hastened to the Chamber. Reaching the 
 lobby at the same moment, I said to him that we 
 ought to be satisfied. "Yes, yes," he replied, "the 
 affair is settled." On the instant the Buonapartists, 
 who think to regain power if the Empire recovers its 
 prestige, set up howls of wrath, not in the Hall of 
 Sessions, but in the lobbies, where all this took place. 
 The outcry was furious. I said to M. Ollivier and 
 his colleagues, "Stand firm; do not be afraid, and 
 we will back you up." That afternoon a Cabinet 
 Council was held. For war, M. Leboeuf, drunk with 
 ambition; M. Rigault de Genouilly, hesitating, but 
 finally joining his colleague-at-arms ; and M. de Gra- 
 mont. The five others were for peace. But the 
 strident voice of the war-party had been heard at 
 the Tuilleries. The five men of peace became cowed, 
 and devised a compromise between peace and war ; 
 that is, the requirement of pledges fi-om the King 
 of Prussia. And what pledges ! I straightway told 
 the Ministers that they had at one stroke sacrificed 
 France, humanity, and good policy. They thought 
 not, and promised to be moderate. I persisted in 
 deeming everything lost, and unhappily I was right. 
 Meanwhile, however, the others begged me to place 
 myself at their head, and promised to be very brave. 
 
172 Thiers, 
 
 Alas ! the poor men were incapable of courage ! The 
 famous story of the outrage to France arrived from 
 Berlin; Ministers and Ministerialists seized upon it, 
 cried that France was insulted, war necessary ; and so 
 the famous sitting of July 15 took place. Upon the 
 reading of the Ollivier Manifesto, there were whoops 
 as of drunken savages ; everybody was terrified. I 
 arose, moved by one of the most unpremeditated 
 impulses that ever sprang from an honest heart. I 
 was greeted with howls of rage; but, as you saw, 
 I held my ground to the end. 
 
 What will come of this accumulation of futilities, 
 weaknesses, and follies, I cannot foretell. We must 
 earnestly desire victoiy ; but victory, if it saves our 
 territory, will take away our liberty. Our condition 
 is therefore lamentable; for in any event we have 
 something very precious to lose. I am not disturbed 
 by the storm that has burst upon me ; one cannot be 
 a good citizen at less cost. 
 
 The cruel days came apace. How many 
 indifferent ones must have regretted sacrificing 
 the safeguards of a free country, and abandon- 
 ing themselves ! It was quickly perceived that 
 the warlike preparation, of which so much was 
 made, which seemed the sufficient reason for 
 declaring war, was a mere pitfall. To what end 
 this precipitancy, this unwillingness to listen to 
 any explanation, to communicate any despatch, 
 if not in order to gain some days upon the 
 
The Empire (1863-18^0). 173 
 
 surprised Prussians ? The Emperor himself — 
 before whom the well-known phrasei, " We are 
 ready ! " had been repeated for years, and who, 
 in spite of a painful disease, felt it necessary to 
 go to the front — was greatly astonished at not 
 having to set out at once. He had prepared 
 to leave St. Cloud the day after the session, 
 and his departure was delayed from day to day ! 
 He is said to have been greatly disturbed by 
 this, and to have remarked to one of those who 
 accompanied him to the army, ** There are mo- 
 ments when I fear that M. Thiers was right." 
 
 M. Thiers was only too much in the right. 
 He was himself surprised at the condition of 
 the armament and of the army, when, after 
 having done everything to avert the war, he 
 endeavored to give some advice as to its con- 
 duct. He occupied himself with the matter 
 at first merely by the authority which expe- 
 rience gave him, afterward officially. The 
 circumstances of his taking office are little 
 known. On the i8th of August, the Empress 
 intrusted M. Merimee — who was already 
 suffering with the malady of which he was 
 so soon to die — with a delicate negotiation. 
 She wished to see M. Thiers, to ask his ad- 
 vice and assistance, — about what, she did not 
 say, — and she promised him her entire con- 
 fidence. Thiers kindly and firmly refused. 
 
174 
 
 Thiers, 
 
 *' Why should I see her? This is calling a phy- 
 sician when the case has become desperate ! " 
 " But what if she should publicly summon you ? " 
 "I could not refuse to obey, but my language 
 would be the same ; and such a fruitless step would 
 only advertise our extremity without alleviating it. 
 My conditions would be such as these : the abdica- 
 tipn of the Emperor ; the concentration of our forces 
 at Paris ; the decision to fight the decisive battle 
 under the shadow of the fortifications, and to arm 
 the whole population. Even then I could not 
 promise to attempt a desperate enterprise without 
 knowing what resources I might have at my 
 disposal." 
 
 What especially struck Thiers in the con- 
 versation was that Merimee did not blench at 
 the word " abdication." To such a pass had 
 the most devoted friends of the Imperial 
 regime been brought in the course of a few 
 days! That evening a note from Merimee 
 informed Thiers that the Empress understood 
 his motives, and desired only that he should 
 be assured that she had thought of him in 
 perfect good faith. She did not, however, 
 give up her plan. A renewed negotiation 
 was undertaken by Prince Richard de Metter- 
 nich, the result of which was that M. Thiers 
 was by decree appointed a member of the 
 Council of Defence. Still he would not ac- 
 
The Empire (1863-18^0). 175 
 
 cept, unless the nomination was confirmed 
 by the Corps Legislatif. This confirmation 
 was made by acclamation. He whom they 
 had insulted, a month earlier, as a false 
 prophet, whom they would willingly have 
 stoned as a traitor, now saw his greatest foes 
 bow before his authority, implore his advice, 
 question him as an oracle. The whole nation 
 seemed to look for help to him alone. 
 
 Fresh chagrins and struggles awaited him 
 in this Council. He saw the wretchedness 
 that was hidden under the Imperial purple; 
 he opposed, with passionate urgency, the 
 measures that deprived Paris of its garrison, 
 and the movement of Marshal MacMahon 
 which was to end in the disaster of Sedan. 
 Seeing the inutility of his efforts, he was a 
 hundred times on the point of resigning ; but 
 this would have weakened the defence, and he 
 stood at his post to the end. When, after the 
 defeat, the Emperor's dethronement was called 
 for in the Corps Legislatif, Thiers* moderation 
 led him to propose a softer word, that of a 
 " vacancy of the throne," in order to spare 
 the dignity of those who had not spared his. 
 Instead of immediately discussing this and 
 other propositions, the Chamber stood upon 
 form, and the deputies, not perceiving that 
 time pressed, retired to the committee-rooms. 
 
1 76 Thiers. 
 
 Meantime the news of the disaster spread 
 outside, and the public crowded toward the 
 Chamber. In his deposition before the Com- 
 mittee of Inquiry, Sept. 17, 1871, Thiers 
 described the situation as follows : — 
 
 *'The Empire had aroused such indignation by 
 the woes it had brought upon the land, that no one 
 felt sorry for its fall or thought of keeping it in 
 power. Its own partisans took part, without resist- 
 ance, in this singular scene. Those partisans of the 
 Empire, so dejected then, are on their feet again 
 to-day, complaining of their overthrow, alleging that 
 France was smitten in their person. But why did 
 they not then resist? Why did they not make a 
 single effort to impede that spontaneous Revolution ? 
 For a good reason : because there was not a single 
 person, even among them, who dreamed of saving 
 the Empire. Violence there was none. The depu- 
 ties walked about, mingling with a crowd of well- 
 dressed people, who addressed us by name, and 
 kept repeating to me, * Monsieur Thiers, get us out 
 of this ! ' " 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE WAR. 
 
 THE Republic was proclaimed by the 
 masses without resistance. From the 
 4th of September the Government was ex- 
 tinct. It was hardly a revolution, — the pub- 
 lic merely accepted facts as they stood. That 
 these facts were not regularly established is, 
 however, to be regretted. Though the Corps 
 Legislatif had hardly any more right than 
 any other concourse of citizens to fix upon 
 a course of action, nevertheless it should have 
 been permitted to appoint a Government of 
 National Defence and to convoke the electors. 
 But hardly any one thought of such a thing. 
 The deputies of Paris accepted summary in- 
 vestiture from the multitude and dissolved 
 the Corps Legislatif. Thiers could not con- 
 sent to take part in a Government thus im- 
 provised, but he did not think the Corps 
 Legislatif in a position to interfere. In a 
 sitting held that same evening in one of the 
 halls of the Bourbon Palace, he confined him- 
 
1 78 Thiers. 
 
 self to remarking with some irony that it 
 was not for the servants of the Empire to 
 invoke the sanctity of the popular mandate, 
 and that every one would do well to forget 
 all but the defence of the national soil. This 
 was his first and sole preoccupation. 
 
 The proclamation of the Republic was a 
 surprise to no one. For a long time past it 
 had been impossible for any one to think that 
 any other Government could succeed the 
 Empire. Could this Government immedi- 
 ately make peace? It would have been very 
 desirable to leave the whole responsibility for 
 our sufferings with the Emperor. But the 
 enemy, after his first successes, had deter- 
 mined not to retire empty-handed; and any 
 one who had at that time suggested a treaty 
 involving the cession of Strasburg, the de- 
 fence of which still continued, would have 
 been deemed a coward or insane. No sig- 
 natures at the foot of a diplomatic paper 
 would have availed against the popular 
 wrath. Even those whose forebodings of the 
 future were gloomiest did not for a moment 
 think of laying down their arms. Moreover, 
 Paris still remained, — Paris fortified by the 
 efforts of Thiers, Paris which, from being the 
 revolutionary capital of France, might and 
 should be transformed into its citadel; and 
 
The War, 179 
 
 men loved to think that so long as Paris was 
 ourSy France could not be regarded as con- 
 quered. It was to the preparations for this 
 defence that Thiers now expected to devote 
 himself 
 
 This austere and modest dream was broken 
 by a visit from M. Jules Favre, Minister of 
 Foreign Affairs, who proposed to Thiers a 
 mission abroad. The entire Government, in- 
 cluding M. Rochefort, requested him to visit 
 the principal cabinets of Europe, and to urge 
 upon them the reasons why they could not 
 afford to allow the equilibrium of the world 
 to be overset by the fall of France and by 
 the menace of a universal monarchy. Could 
 he not awaken in some quarters the remem- 
 brance of services rendered, inform the na- 
 tions concerning the state of France, prove 
 that she was not destined to perish, favourably 
 represent the new Republic, obtain the good- 
 will and even the support of neutral powers ? 
 His antecedents, his fame, his energetic op- 
 position to the war, his knowledge of politics 
 and of men, marked him out as the only man 
 capable of undertaking such a mission. Not- 
 withstanding his seventy-three years, notwith- 
 standing his wish and his right to have nothing 
 to do with a war so wrongly undertaken, he 
 decided to accept To represent a suppliant 
 
1 80 Tkicj's. 
 
 and defeated France after having for a lifetime 
 desired to see her strong and proud, after 
 having enhanced and celebrated her military- 
 glory, was very painful. But he gave himself 
 wholly to the stricken land, unmindful that 
 she might again prove ungrateful. 
 
 There was no time to hesitate. The very 
 next day Paris was to be shut in, and behind 
 the train that carried him to Calais on the 
 1 2th of September, the engineers blew up 
 Creil bridge in order to delay the march of 
 the Prussians. He began with England. The 
 English, in whom coldness is no sign of ill- 
 will, were gradually becoming favourable to us. 
 Thiers found this friendly feeling very marked 
 among the people of all nations. Everywhere, 
 in the railway-stations, in the streets, in the 
 hotels, touching evidences of fellowship ap- 
 peared in men's words, in their faces, in their 
 eyes often filled with tears ; and thus the bitter- 
 ness of the journey was mitigated. Govern- 
 ments were not blind to this popular sympathy, 
 and refusals which wrung the heart were 
 couched in the kindest terms. This amenity 
 could not have been more perfectly felt and 
 expressed than by Her Majesty's amiable 
 Minister of Foreign Affairs. Lord Granville, 
 so French in turn of mind, in tastes and habits, 
 received Thiers as a friend. But neither he 
 
The War. i8i 
 
 nor Mr. Gladstone would make any promises 
 that they could not keep. Of armed inter- 
 vention on the part of England there could 
 be no question, but only of good offices ; and 
 even in these the English deemed it not wise 
 to take the initiative. But they promised to 
 recognize the new Government as soon as 
 an Assembly could be convoked to give it a 
 legal existence. This had been their custom 
 after each one of our revolutions, even that of 
 December 2d (185 1); and as the Imperial 
 policy had never given them any security, 
 they had no especial reason to regret the 4th 
 of September. The opinion of the British 
 Cabinet was that any initiative must proceed 
 from Russia ; and they felt that if Tsar Alex- 
 ander were to pronounce favorably, they might 
 themselves venture upon something more than 
 fair words. This was not only the opinion of 
 the English, but also that of the Russian Am- 
 bassador, M. de Brunnow, an astute old gen- 
 tleman well disposed toward us, who believed 
 that a visit from Thiers would effect wonders 
 with Prince Gortschakoff and the Tsar. 
 
 From London to St. Petersburg the way is 
 long. The sea was patrolled by German ships 
 which would have liked to capture an impor- 
 tant emissary ; and even had he escaped them, 
 how could he pass a week without news from 
 
1 82 Thiers, 
 
 home, and reach Russia absolutely ignorant 
 of the situation? On the other hand, the land 
 journey around Prussia was difficult; but it was 
 upon this that he decided. A light ship had 
 been sent him, — the same that Prince Napo- 
 leon had used for his voyages. The passage 
 from London to Cherbourg was made in twenty- 
 four hours, and he immediately took the train 
 for Tours, where he arrived somewhat behind 
 time the next morning. The preceding train 
 had suffered the serious accident, near Mettray, 
 wherein several persons perished, — notably 
 M. Jules Duval, the well-known editor of the 
 *' Journal des Debats.'* 
 
 In a few hours Thiers was informed touch- 
 ing the military situation by Admiral Fourri- 
 chon. Minister of War. Paris was not entirely 
 blockaded, but the Prussians were constantly 
 advancing, without meeting any serious resist- 
 ance. Even with the French Ministers, Thiers 
 did not forget his mission. It was almost as 
 difficult to convince them of the necessity of 
 convoking an Assembly, as to prevail upon 
 foreign governments to preserve the European 
 balance of power. They acceded, however, to 
 the plan of elections for the 2d of October, — 
 elections which were so often to be postponed ; 
 and Thiers set out again in the afternoon in 
 the hope of soon representing, not merely a 
 
The War, 183 
 
 government born of a popular uprising, but an 
 Assembly based upon universal suffrage. 
 
 Station after station flashed by the rushing 
 train; at the least halt the whole population 
 crowded about to ask the news, to relate their 
 sorrows, to express their hopes for the suc- 
 cess of the mission. Thiers' emotion was such 
 that he was sometimes unable to reply. The 
 next day the frontier was passed, and after 
 crossing Mont Cenis, — for the tunnel was not 
 completed, — he set foot upon Italian soil. The 
 little town of Susa, which he reached Wednes- 
 day, September 21, at seven o'clock in the 
 evening, was in gala array, and, a little later, 
 illuminated. For the Italian troops had en- 
 tered Rome ! That day Italian unity had 
 been achieved without a conflict and almost 
 without a blow. The Italians exhibited none 
 the less demonstrative sympathy for France 
 and for her envoy. This was, however, no 
 time to ask Victor Emmanuel's Ministers for 
 political or military support. So Thiers did 
 not stop at Turin, at Milan, at Venice, or at 
 Nabresina, but went straight through to Vienna, 
 where he had an interview with Count von 
 Beust, Chancellor of the Austro-Hungarian 
 Empire. This conversation, and that upon 
 Thiers' return, are related by Beust in his 
 agreeable " Memoirs." It was hardly to be 
 
1 84 Thiers. 
 
 expected that Austria, conquered by us in 1859 
 and by Prussia in 1866, would be much dis- 
 posed to meddle in the bloody struggle of her 
 two adversaries. Nevertheless, Minister Gra- 
 mont, in the sitting of July 15, had said or 
 implied that France might count upon an 
 Austrian alliance. The Chancellor had no 
 difficulty in showing that nothing, either in his 
 words or in his despatches, had authorized such 
 an assertion, and that he had done everything 
 to explain this to the minister. He afterward 
 stated the same thing in print. But he was no 
 enemy of a country to which he was allied by 
 the graces of his mind, and he lamented his 
 powerlessness. He expressed his regrets to 
 Thiers, adding that the latter would receive 
 throughout Europe, and especially in Italy, fair 
 words and nothing more. ** Oh ! " said Thiers 
 sadly, " I have not been spoiled ! " ^ The Aus- 
 trians were very hostile to the fallen Emperor. 
 In the lively streets of the handsome city was 
 everywhere to be seen a caricature representing 
 Napoleon kneeling repentant before Thiers, 
 who, in the character of the Pythoness, was 
 saying : " Wretch ! did I not tell you that there 
 was not a blunder left to be committed ? " 
 
 He made the run of sixty hours from Vienna 
 to St. Petersburg without stopping. He was 
 
 ^ Memoire du comte de Beust, iii. 350. 
 
The War. 185 
 
 in haste to see Prince Gortschakoff, who 
 seemed to hold the key of the situation. The 
 latter had indeed spoken in no very assuring 
 manner to M. de Saint- Vallier on the day of 
 the Gramont 'declaration. But times were 
 changed ; France was no longer that haughty 
 and mischief-making Empire whose humilia- 
 tion was seen without regret; and even those 
 who did not pity our misfortunes might be dis- 
 turbed by the success of a power no less dan- 
 gerous and turbulent. In default of material 
 support, Thiers felt that Russia would at least 
 entertain a sincere desire for peace. The 
 Chancellor could not be insensible to the com- 
 pliment paid him in this long journey. Every 
 diplomatist is by nature or art something of a 
 Frenchman, and none can be insensible to 
 the advantage of pleasing a distinguished 
 Frenchman. Moreover, Thiers was not simply 
 making this journey in his own name; he rep- 
 resented the Republic, and the sentiments of 
 this government were to be inferred from its 
 choice of an Ambassador. France's strength 
 was still considerable and its resistance still 
 vigorous. The inhabitants of Paris were con- 
 ducting themselves like heroic soldiers in a 
 beleaguered citadel. Would not Prince Gort- 
 schakoff be tempted to aid in this uprising 
 of a great nation, and to countenance some 
 
1 86 Thiers, 
 
 measure leading to a truce and to the forma- 
 tion of an Assembly, either in order to resume 
 relations upon a securer basis, or in order to 
 bring about a treaty which was desired by 
 neutrals and was perhaps necessary to the bel- 
 ligerents, and which might result in a peace of 
 some solidity? The Tsar would have no ob- 
 jections, and whatever might have been said, 
 would not hesitate to treat with the Republic. 
 He had little regret for Napoleon III., to whom 
 he attributed the disagreeable incidents of his 
 visit to Paris in 1867. Provided that the Gov- 
 ernment which was to succeed were peaceable 
 and lasting, the Tsar would not too closely scru- 
 tinize the etiquette of the arrangement. At bot- 
 tom, all the sovereigns of Europe think of France 
 as a Republic for the last hundred years. 
 
 Thiers discussed the means and the end in 
 several interviews, which resulted in the Tsar's 
 offer to write personally to the king of Prussia, 
 asking him to authorize M. Thiers to repair to 
 his headquarters and to treat for an armistice 
 intended to facilitate the election of an Assem- 
 bly. This was accepted, subject of course to 
 the consent of the French Government, which 
 could be obtained only at Tours and at Paris. 
 
 Again Thiers had to cross those broad, 
 silent steppes and to traverse Poland, whose 
 affection for France was so touching. At 
 
The War, 187 
 
 Vienna, he found Count Beust still of the same 
 opinion. At Florence, he had an interview 
 with King Victor Emmanuel, whom he found 
 extremely French in manner, in conversation, 
 and in heart, but restrained by his subjects and 
 by his Parliament. The king had also conceived 
 a plan of peaceable intervention, and had im- 
 parted it to the British Cabinet, which, even 
 before the Tsar's despatch passed over the 
 wires, had proposed to the neutral powers a 
 common intervention. Thus four powers ad- 
 vised the Armistice, and Bismarck accepted 
 the negotiation. 
 
 Thiers now had only to return to Tours in 
 order to confer with the Delegation. This he 
 did forthwith. A change had taken place in 
 his mind : in the first days of the war he put 
 away all thought of participation in this cruel 
 peace ; he felt that he had no right to attach 
 his name to any of the results of an enterprise 
 he had so urgently opposed. Little by little 
 he came to feel that peace would be a relative 
 good, and would put an end to these terri- 
 ble calamities. His imagination grew familiar 
 with the thought of employing his credit in 
 Europe for the deliverance of his country, 
 which, thanks to his efforts, might have to pay 
 a smaller price for peace. But on his return 
 to France he found a different disposition; or 
 
x88 Thiers, 
 
 rather he had been sent out from Paris by the 
 peace party, and now had to negotiate at Tours 
 with the war party. M. Gambetta, full of gen- 
 erous illusions, was imparting his own fire to a 
 great number of the citizens and of the army ; 
 and this he could not do without holding out 
 the hope of victory, without seeking to inspire 
 a horror of the sacrifices which must be the 
 price of peace. The violence of his proclama- 
 tions, perhaps inevitable in the circumstances, 
 seemed to render impossible the opening of a 
 negotiation. But beneath Gambetta's decla- 
 mation was concealed a sagacious and sensible 
 mind. He understood the necessity for the 
 proposed step, though he wished that it might 
 not succeed, and that a chance might still be 
 left for delivering France by force of arms. 
 Finally, on the 28th of October, Thiers was 
 able to leave Tours for Paris by way of Ver- 
 sailles, the seat of the German headquarters. 
 This journey was still more painful than that 
 from which he had just returned, since it was 
 necessary to cross our devastated fields under 
 the escort of the invaders. 
 
 It was in the Bishop of Orleans' pastoral 
 coach, drawn by German artillery teams, that 
 the negotiator, after two days' journey, reached 
 Versailles, where, as at Orleans, great placards 
 in the German language announced the sur- 
 
The War, 189 
 
 render of Marshal Bazaine and enumerated the 
 number of cannon captured and the number of 
 French soldiers sent to Germany. The num- 
 ber of the latter reached four hundred thou- 
 sand ! Such a success could not but render 
 our conquerors terribly exacting, not as to 
 their territorial claims, which had from the time 
 of their first victories been excessive, but as 
 to the other conditions of the Armistice. If the 
 Government at Paris would, like the Delega- 
 tion at Tours, authorize negotiations looking 
 toward this Armistice, several considerations 
 might determine the Prussians to accept it. 
 First, willingness to satisfy the neutral powers, 
 which, either through humanity or through 
 policy, desired the end of the war; secondly, 
 the advantage to the victors themselves of 
 having to do with a recognized Government 
 capable of negotiating in the name of France 
 and of putting an end to the siege of Paris ; 
 thirdly, the well-grounded fear of the new 
 armies which were everywhere forming; 
 fourthly, the very serious dissensions among 
 the confederated German nations, some of 
 which did not conceal their desire for peace. 
 But the best argument of the negotiator would 
 still have been the resistance of Metz, where 
 our best troops had kept a whole German 
 army-corps from moving. 
 
190 Thiers, 
 
 On reaching Versailles, Thiers had nothing 
 to do but obtain from Bismarck permission to 
 pass the outposts and enter Paris. Bismarck 
 understood that there could be no negotiation 
 until the powers of the negotiator had been 
 confirmed by the Government, for the Minis- 
 ters at Tours were only a Delegation. '' We 
 shall discuss matters upon your return, if you 
 return," said Bismarck; "for we are informed 
 that a new revolution is brewing at Paris, and 
 there may be danger in your going there." 
 
 The trip from Versailles to Sevres was made 
 in the same carriage, which the Prussian offi- 
 cer halted at the head of the Grande-Rue. He 
 informed M. Thiers that he was about to de- 
 scend in order to make the necessary signals 
 to stop a firing which was doing no great 
 harm, but was making a great deal of noise. 
 This street of Sevres was especially exposed 
 to the bombs of Mt. Val^rien. " You will 
 have to wait a little while," said the officer, 
 " until the signals are understood and the 
 firing entirely ceases." ** In France," replied 
 Thiers, gallantly, "we make no difference as 
 to courage between soldiers and civilians ; " 
 and he descended to the high bank of the 
 Seine. Soon a boat manned by a single 
 French soldier pushed off from the opposite 
 bank and crossed the river, — for Sevres 
 
The War. 191 
 
 bridge had been destroyed. As the little red- 
 trousered infantry-man coolly rowed them 
 across, while the bombs shrieked above their 
 heads, Thiers said to his companion, who 
 held the tiller, " Do you know what I should 
 call the picturesque in history? The crush- 
 ing by a French bomb of this skiff which 
 bears deliverance and peace to the Parisians ! " 
 Thiers was greatly moved upon entering 
 Paris, as were those who received him and 
 heard from his lips the news from the rest of 
 France. The whole evening, almost the whole 
 night, was passed in conversations which re- 
 sulted in the acceptance of the Armistice on the 
 part of the Paris Government. The capital had 
 gloriously resisted. In the opinion of those who 
 had fortified it in 1840, Paris was not a citadel 
 intended to defend itself to the last morsel 
 of bread, but rather a vast intrenched camp 
 suited to serve as a shelter to an army. But 
 army there was none. At the decisive mo- 
 ment Marshal MacMahon had marched into 
 the ambush at Sedan, instead of retiring under 
 the walls of the capital. Paris could never 
 raise the siege herself, the army at Metz had 
 just been lost, and it was almost demonstrated 
 that the soldiers of the provinces, though they 
 might gain some isolated advantages, would 
 never be able to break the iron band that 
 
192 Thiers, 
 
 encompassed Paris for thirty leagues. How 
 could a wise Government have refused the 
 Armistice which, without any weak concession 
 on the part of the besieged, leaving matters 
 in statu quo, would permit France and even 
 Paris to elect deputies and thus to be regu- 
 larly represented? If, then, the war should 
 be continued, the capital would be a Httle 
 refreshed for her courageous sacrifice, the pro- 
 vincial conscripts would have had a month 
 in which to drill, sympathetic Europe would 
 have become more interested in us, and the 
 German Confederates would have had an op- 
 portunity to quarrel. 
 
 It was evident very early the following 
 morning that the population of Paris was 
 aroused and irritated. In the evening we 
 had suffered a reverse at the village of Bour- 
 get, after a success the importance of which 
 had been exaggerated; and now the cry of 
 treason was raised, — the usual resource of 
 vanity. The capitulation of Metz, having 
 been announced by a newspaper before it 
 occurred, had been very properly denied by 
 the Minister, who was now compelled to pub- 
 lish it, and was therefore accused of falsehood. 
 Wild rumours of the negotiation circulated 
 through the crowds of people enervated by 
 the sufferings of the siege. There was evi- 
 
The War, 193 
 
 dently to be what the Parisians call a day 
 {journee)^ — the 31st of October, — and Thiers 
 ran a serious risk of realizing Bismarck's pre- 
 diction, and of becoming a prisoner of the 
 mob rather than of the enemy. This would 
 have been awkward for the negotiation; and 
 since, after all, the Government seemed capa- 
 ble of putting down the insurrection, since all 
 was agreed upon, since it was important to 
 put an end to all these painful scenes, since he 
 could at any time return, he determined to 
 proceed at once to Versailles. 
 
 Bismarck did not peremptorily refuse Thiers' 
 propositions, but entered into the discussion 
 of details, not always in his own name, but 
 in the name of the military party, and of the 
 king, whom he represented as more exacting 
 than himself The greatest difficulty was 
 that of the revictualling. An Armistice of 
 a month, with the exclusion of supplies from 
 Paris, would have been equivalent to another 
 month of siege, and the conclusion of it would 
 find us weaker than at the beginning. If, on 
 the contrary, cattle and vegetables were 
 shipped to the capital, such a month of re- 
 pose would be a great advantage to us. This 
 was the principal point at issue; for Thiers 
 was bound to resist the wiles of the Chancel- 
 lor, who was ready to yield much if his inter- 
 13 
 
1 94 Thiers, 
 
 locutor would treat of definitive peace. *' You 
 are a publisher of books," said he to Thiers, 
 *' and I am quite willing to treat with you 
 concerning the first volume, the Armistice, if 
 you can promise me the second, which is 
 Peace." Thiers had no right to undertake 
 this second negotiation ; he was invested with 
 no real power. He was merely intrusted with 
 a very special mission by the Government of 
 the National Defence, which itself had no 
 ulterior powers. 
 
 On the other hand, it was but natural that 
 Bismarck should wish to profit by his inter- 
 views with a man so considerable, to go beyond 
 this, and to prepare at least the groundwork of 
 a treaty. In spite of so many victories, — by 
 reason of them indeed, — this treaty appeared 
 a difficult one to conclude, and the Chancellor 
 foresaw great perplexities in the task of recon- 
 ciling the claims of the Prussian military party 
 with the just pride of the French people. It 
 was to be expected that our misfortunes would 
 abate this pride ; but at that time this remark- 
 able saying of Bismarck was quoted. " All 
 this is very fine, is it not?" said he to a Ger- 
 man general after Sedan, " but it will make 
 peace very difficult ! " It was to almost the 
 same effect that Victor Hugo afterward said: 
 *' Henceforward there will be two formidable 
 
The War. I95 
 
 nations, — the one because victorious, the 
 other because vanquished." 
 
 Three days had passed in discussions which 
 seemed about to terminate, when on Thursday 
 Bismarck seemed less incHned to treat, and said 
 abruptly to Thiers: "Are you sure that you 
 represent even the Revolutionary Government 
 of the Defence? The report comes from the 
 outposts that a new revolution took place at 
 Paris on the 31st of October, that the Jacobin 
 party was victorious, and that the Government 
 of the National Defence is overthrown. Have 
 I the honor to treat with the representative of 
 M. Felix Pyat and his friends? " 
 
 Disturbed by this unforeseen and tardy com- 
 munication, Thiers obtained authorization from 
 the Chancellor to send to Paris for authentic 
 information. He tHen learned that the Minis- 
 try presided over by General Trochu had been 
 captured at the H6tel de Ville, and afterward 
 delivered by the courage and presence of mind 
 of Messrs. Picard and Ferry. The next day 
 this Government submitted its claims to a kind 
 of plebiscite. The powers of the Government 
 of Defence were indeed confirmed, but only 
 after a promise to entertain no propositions 
 of peace. 
 
 Although the news still justified Thiers in 
 negotiating, his authority was sensibly dimin- 
 
1 g6 Thiers, 
 
 ished, and the more since a proclamation very 
 hostile to peace and even to negotiation ema- 
 nated at the same juncture from Gambetta. 
 All this made the Prussians more arrogant. 
 Not only would they not concede the necessary 
 quantity of provisions, but they demanded the 
 surrender of a fort as a pledge of good faith. 
 To give up a fort was to give up Paris at the 
 termination of the Armistice, in case peace 
 should not then be concluded. A Govern- 
 ment might subscribe to such a condition, but 
 a negotiator scarcely assured of his powers 
 was bound to refuse even to discuss it. Thiers 
 therefore claimed the right to refer the matter 
 to the Paris Government *' I consent," said 
 Bismarck, " but more than last week you run 
 the risk of being detained ; and you ask of us 
 a great sacrifice, for they pay less and less 
 attention, at Paris, to the trumpet and the flag 
 of truce; each letter costs us a man." All 
 risks were, however, to be taken in the in- 
 terests of a negotiation that might check 
 further bloodshed. Thiers returned to Paris 
 by way of Sevres ; but the Ministers, fearing 
 a new tumult, gave him rendezvous at Billan- 
 court. There, in an abandoned house, he 
 found M. Jules Favre and General Ducrot. 
 Both, especially the latter, declared that neither 
 the Government nor the City, at best scarcely 
 
The War. I97 
 
 favourable to a clearly advantageous armistice, 
 could entertain a thought of the proposed 
 one, the inevitable upshot of which would be 
 peace. The Government therefore begged M.' 
 Thiers to throw up the negotiation and to 
 leave the German headquarters. 
 
 He again made his way to Versailles and 
 then to Tours, whence he sent to the neutral 
 powers an account of his mission in a despatch 
 which has been published. He could now do 
 nothing but watch the course of events with 
 anxiety, for he placed little trust in Gambetta's 
 improvised armies, officered as they were by 
 novices, the experienced officers being for the 
 most part prisoners in Germany. Under the 
 Empire, the effective strength of the regiments 
 had been so slight that an undue proportion 
 of officers had been sent to the front. As 
 Thiers put it, '* they had undertaken to wage 
 war with cadres." 
 
 No considerable success came to give lustre 
 to our arms. That unbroken line of defeats 
 and disasters gave the lie to all the common- 
 places about the inconstancy of Fortune. 
 Paris, noble Paris, so guilty in other days, now 
 alone sometimes gave us those thrills of patri- 
 otic joy which had once seemed to us the 
 necessary accompaniment of every war. But 
 the capital saved naught but her honour, and 
 
1 98 Thiers, 
 
 when, in January, 1871, she was obliged by 
 starvation to surrender, all hope disappeared 
 with her. The Government was obliged to treat, 
 not only for the city but for all France, and 
 to agree to a truce for the election of deputies. 
 The elections passed off more quietly than 
 was to be expected, and the Assembly which 
 came together at Bordeaux on the 13th of 
 February, exactly represented the sentiment 
 of the nation at that particular moment. 
 France being eager for peace, the Assembly 
 was pacific. It was also somewhat unrepub- 
 lican, for the RepubHc had been represented 
 in the provinces only by Gambetta, the pro- 
 moter of war to the knife, who had sacrificed 
 the interests of the Republic to what he con- 
 ceived to be the interests of the national honor. 
 Politics had, in truth, been little thought of, 
 and Thiers was elected in twenty-seven de- 
 partments upon very diverse tickets, rather on 
 account of his opposition to the war and his 
 efforts in favour of peace than on account of his 
 fame as a liberal orator and historian. Moved 
 by the same impulse, the Assembly almost 
 unanimously appointed him Chief of the Ex- 
 ecutive Power of the French Republic, and 
 intrusted to him the double task of governing 
 the country and of treating with the German 
 Emperor. 
 
The War, 199 
 
 Thus began a new phase of his restless ex- 
 istence. Fate bestowed upon him in the 
 decline of life the highest fortune, and the 
 opportunity to display his rarest powers in the 
 performance of new services to his country. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 
 
 "TPVERIVING authority from his capacity and 
 •L/ acknowledged worth, being also a man of 
 transparent integrity, Pericles was able to control the 
 multitude in a free spirit ; he led them rather than 
 was led by them; for, not seeking power by dis- 
 honest arts, he had no need to say pleasant things, 
 but, on the strength of his own high character, could 
 venture to oppose and even to anger them. When 
 he saw them unseasonably elated and arrogant, his 
 words humbled and awed them ; and when they 
 were depressed by groundless fears, he sought to 
 reanimate their confidence. Thus Athens, though 
 still in name a democracy, was in fact ruled by her 
 greatest citizen." ^ 
 
 These words may be taken as a faithful 
 expression of Thiers' historic character as 
 Chief Magistrate. He was really our first 
 citizen, and it was as such that he was asked 
 to discuss terms of peace with Bismarck, — 
 "that barbarian of genius," as Thiers called 
 1 Thucydides, ii. Ixv. Jowett's version. 
 
The Third Republic, 201 
 
 him. It is well known what efforts Thiers was 
 compelled to make in order to preserve to 
 France the city of Belfort, which had been 
 singled out in advance as German prey. It is 
 also matter of history how this inevitable and 
 painful peace was ratified by the Assembly, 
 after one of the most touching speeches ever 
 pronounced by a patriot. 
 
 It was a{)parently in the name of the Re- 
 public that peace was negotiated and the 
 Government gradually reconstructed. This 
 Government had been proclaimed on the 4th 
 of September; in its name Gambetta had 
 raised armies and convoked electors; and 
 Thiers, when proclaimed Chief of the Execu- 
 tive Power, had, at the instance of M. Dufaure, 
 who made this the condition of accepting a 
 portfolio, desired that the title should read, 
 " Chief of the Executive Power of the French 
 Republic^ Moreover, in the nature of things, 
 as Moli^re observes, whatever is not prose is 
 verse, — where there is neither king nor em- 
 peror there must be a republic. The As- 
 sembly, however, which was all-powerful, held 
 that to change the form of government was 
 one of its rights. It might have been urged 
 that the electors had scarcely contemplated 
 this, and that the Monarchists were in the 
 majority simply because they represented 
 
202 Thiers, 
 
 peace, while in the provinces the Republic had 
 meant nothing but war to the hilt. But these 
 distinctions were not thought of in the press 
 of more urgent business, namely, the treaty 
 which was to check the shedding of blood, and 
 the rudiments of administrative reconstruction. 
 No monarchy would have been willing to 
 assume the responsibility of this Treaty ; this 
 the Monarchical Right thoroughly understood. 
 The Right accordingly consented to accept 
 the name of Republic as a makeshift, provided 
 it should be talked about as little as possible. 
 
 Thiers had come to think, especially since 
 the beginning of the war, that the Republic 
 was the natural heir of Napoleon III., and that 
 it would at last be necessary to cross the ocean 
 rather than the Channel. He saw that here 
 only would a conservative policy find a solid 
 groundwork whereon to build. He had, how- 
 ever, been struck with the circumstance that 
 so many Legitimists had been elected to the 
 Assembly, and he was no more eager than they 
 to stop to discuss constitutions when the Treaty 
 was to be ratified and Paris, whence there 
 came very alarming news, to be pacified. He 
 was the more disposed to wait, inasmuch as he 
 saw in the Chamber the very rapid formation 
 and growth of a group in which he had great 
 confidence. Of these deputies M. Jules Simon 
 
The Third Reptfblic, 203 
 
 has given a better definition than they could 
 themselves formulate, — for this political phi- 
 losopher has written a masterly history of 
 these years.^ Differing with Thiers upon 
 many points of constitutional theory or social 
 economy, M. Simon was like him in three 
 things that ought to suffice to bind men to- 
 gether, — talent, courage, and zeal for the 
 public welfare. Here is what Simon says of 
 this party in the Assembly : — 
 
 " There were in this body some five-score firm spirits 
 who were alike incapable either of forsaking the prin- 
 ciples whereon all society rests, or of giving up free- 
 dom. Of all forms of government they would have 
 preferred constitutional monarchy, had they found it 
 established, or could they have restored it by a vote 
 without resort to force. But they quickly perceived 
 that neither the Legitimists nor the Buonapartists 
 would consent to the constitutional form ; that such a 
 monarchy could obtain a majority neither in the Parlia- 
 ment nor among the people ; that, both by its nature 
 and by the disposition of its defenders, it would be 
 happily incapable of recourse to violence ; and that 
 the reappearance of the Legitimist party upon tlie 
 political stage was a passing incident of little signifi- 
 cance. Some of these men entertained for the Re- 
 public a distrust which, at first, amounted to aversion. 
 Being persuaded, however, that they must choose 
 
 1 Le gouvernement de M. Thiers, par Jules Simon. 2 vols. 
 8^0, Paris, 1878. 
 
204 Thiers, 
 
 between the Republic and the Empire, and that the 
 latter could never harmonize either with the princi- 
 ples of right and justice or with freedom, they did 
 not despair of forming a Republic at once liberal 
 and conservative. In a word, they thrust aside the 
 Legitimate Monarchy as chimerical, Republican and 
 Caesarian dictatorship as alike hateful ; and while pre- 
 ferring a liberal Monarchy to a moderate Republic, 
 they saw no reason to resort to a revolution merely 
 in order to make the Presidency of the Republic 
 hereditary. Of this party M. Thiers was not merely 
 the head, but the body also." 
 
 This party, which was then very willing to 
 realize what had been called the Liberal 
 Union, thought, and still thinks, that republi- 
 can ideas are merely the maximum of liberal 
 ideas. Unfortunately, however, there are peo- 
 ple who take fright at their ideas when they 
 see them carried out. But there was another 
 pa^-ty which, although the least numerous in 
 the Assembly and split into factions at that, 
 was the most numerous in the country, — the 
 Republican party. What could Thiers do to 
 prevent these parties from ** falling upon one 
 another," to quote his own expression? Pre- 
 cisely what he did do, with a consummate art 
 not inconsistent with perfect sincerity. He 
 said to the Royalists, "You have the power 
 of making a Constitution, and it is very rea- 
 
The Third Republic, 205 
 
 sonable in you to refrain from exercising that 
 power ; " to the RepubHcans, " Peace is con- 
 cluded, administration is reconstructed, the 
 finances are restored, — all in the name and for 
 the benefit of the RepubHc ; definitive success 
 will be with the most prudent." These things 
 he said, not in secret conclaves, in private con- 
 versations, but in the open Assembly, and not 
 once but ten times. His chief care was to 
 reassure the Republicans who might do him 
 the injustice to suspect that, in the capacity 
 of Head of the Republic, he was paving the 
 way to a Restoration. He was thus obliged to 
 promise at every turn that he would not betray 
 the trust confided to him. Betray it to whom ? 
 Certainly not to the Monarchy of right divine, 
 which he had always opposed, but rather to 
 a combination midway between Republic and 
 Monarchy, — a species of Orleanist Stadtholder- 
 ship. This political and moral difficulty was 
 greatly lessened by the conduct of the Orleans 
 princes, who publicly declared that although 
 they might have a claim, they had no right to 
 govern, and who accepted the Republic to the 
 extent of taking office under it. The chief 
 among them, the Duke of Aumale, served the 
 Republic usefully and nobly. None of them 
 seemed to think that the House of Orleans 
 should be anything more than a House of 
 
2o6 Thiers, 
 
 Orange, contributing indifferently Revolution- 
 ary kings and Republican magistrates. 
 
 Thiers set forth his policy to the Assembly 
 at Bordeaux, notably on the loth of March, 
 1 87 1, in language so clear and sincere that one 
 is embarrassed to have to explain and justify 
 it. Nevertheless, he found himself obliged to 
 return to the subject more than once, and to 
 repeat words which have received a glorious 
 justification from events. A few hours after 
 delivering this speech he returned to Paris, the 
 Assembly having consented, at his request, to 
 sit at VersaiUes. He found the capital in great 
 commotion, and his efforts to destroy the last 
 traces of the siege and the germs of civil 
 strife were fruitless. He had neither an armed 
 force, nor a civil administration, nor means of 
 making his voice heard by a restless, irritated, 
 inflamed population. The murders of Generals 
 Lecomte and Clement Thomas were the sig- 
 nals for the setting up of the Commune, which 
 was to end as it had begun. What was to 
 be done against an insurrection that had all 
 the organization, all the resources, of a regu- 
 lar army, — an army made up in large part 
 of disbanded soldiery? Thiers took the bold 
 course which he had on another occasion ad- 
 vised : he transferred the seat of Government 
 to Versailles, whither he betook himself on the 
 
The Third Republic. 207 
 
 eve of the session of the Assembly. The best 
 judges have thought this to be one of the hap- 
 piest strokes of his practical genius. At all 
 events, the Assembly was able to deliberate in 
 peace, the Commune was put down, and order 
 was restored. 
 
 Readers of history who have not seen it in 
 the making, may be surprised to learn that so 
 great an achievement brought about little 
 * change in party feeling. The deputies who 
 wished to substitute the Monarchy for the 
 Republic saw in it an encouragement; the 
 rest understood better that an insurrection 
 raised in the name of the Republic could be 
 put down only by the Republic herself. 
 Some members of the Commune may really 
 have thought the Government imperilled by 
 the Monarchical majority in the Assembly. 
 More than ever Thiers was compelled to 
 prove himself no traitor to the Republic. 
 The moderate Republicans were disarmed by 
 his assurances, and if he did not bring over 
 all the opponents of the Empire to his sup- 
 port, he at least compelled all who were not 
 foes of society to range themselves on the side 
 of law. The partisans of authority, who were 
 barely respectful to his authority, held him 
 strictly to account, so that he repeated at 
 Versailles what he had said at Bordeaux, and 
 
2o8 Thiers, 
 
 this with unwearied patience and inexhaustible 
 variety of forms. The following words are 
 from his speech of March 27, 1871 : — 
 
 " There exist foes of society who repeat that we 
 are preparing to overthrow the Republic. This 
 I flatly and formally deny. They are deceiving 
 France ; their aim is to disturb and arouse the 
 country. We found the Republic already estab- 
 lished, a fact of which we were not the authors. 
 But I shall not destroy the form of government of 
 which I now make use in order to restore order." 
 
 Some days later, in full tide of war against 
 the Commune, the Assembly decided, by a 
 great majority, that the mayors of all the 
 communes of France should be appointed 
 by the municipal councils. In a time of tran- 
 quillity this would have been justifiable; but 
 it was of doubtful wisdom at a juncture when 
 the communes seemed about to rebel against 
 the Central Power, when schemes of decen- 
 tralization were rife, when decentralization was 
 being carried to an absurd extreme by a fac- 
 tion in the Chamber, and to a criminal extreme 
 by the Commune of Paris. Thiers, who was 
 a firm centralizer, found himself forced to 
 defend the Republic by cannon against the 
 Communists of Paris, and by the tongue 
 against the decentralizers of Versailles. The 
 
The Third Republic. 209 
 
 difiference in arms marks the difference in the 
 persons and their aims, but it is interesting 
 to note how persistently men's minds were at 
 that time haunted by such inappHcable or 
 criminal ideas. It is worthy of note, also, that 
 the very persons who urged this democratic 
 method of electing the mayors, reproached 
 Thiers with holding out too much hope to 
 the delegates of the communes and of the 
 great towns. 
 
 These delegates, disturbed by the reports 
 current in the provinces of preparations for 
 a Monarchical Restoration, thronged the presi- 
 dential anterooms. A month of dreadful sus- 
 pense passed in the fear of a widespread 
 insurrection that could not have been sup- 
 pressed. This was escaped; but Thiers was 
 compelled to pledge himself still more ex- 
 plicitly to the Republic, and to insist upon 
 the Republican character of the Government. 
 This attitude, the only reasonable and possible 
 one, was becoming easier, for liberal and wise 
 Republicans were beginning to rally loyally 
 to the support of a Government which bore 
 their colours, and by means of which they 
 might hope to escape the still imminent reign 
 of the anarchists. This feeling was shown 
 in the Assembly by the change of the Chief 
 Magistrate's title to that of President of the 
 14 
 
2IO Thiers, 
 
 Republic. In the interim, however, two great 
 events had taken place: Thiers had restored 
 order at Paris, and the complementary elec- 
 tions of July had sent more than a hundred 
 moderate Republicans to Versailles. 
 
 Party strength had shifted, and the will of 
 France had been clearly expressed. Those 
 who had looked forward to the accession of 
 the Count of Chambord saw with consterna- 
 tion the growth of the conviction on the part 
 of the enlightened classes that the Republic, 
 which had been deemed impossible, was alone 
 possible. The Head of this Republic was re- 
 storing order, reconstructing the administra- 
 tion, paying the war-contribution, giving to 
 France a degree of freedom and repose which 
 she had perhaps never known, — and all this 
 in the name of that fragile power, the Bor- 
 deaux Compact, which was little more than 
 organized anarchy. Meanwhile, whenever a 
 consequence of the President's efforts came 
 to light, the Assembly was chary of its praise, 
 and failed not to take a large portion of the 
 credit to itself, — witness the sittings in which 
 were announced the termination of the siege 
 of Paris, the payment of an instalment of the 
 national ransom, the conclusion of the various 
 treaties, especially of the one which hastened 
 by two years the evacuation of our territory. 
 
The Third Republic, 211 
 
 France cherishes with sympathetic admira- 
 tion the memory of this government, the freest 
 that ever existed, founded in the midst of the 
 greatest difficulties by the *' first citizen." It 
 would be interesting to forget his purely politi- 
 cal r61e in order to speak of the man himself, 
 or rather of all the men that were blended in 
 him, making him so apt for government. M. 
 Leon Say, his colleague and his friend, in an 
 able and thoughtful address at the unveiling 
 of one of the statues of Thiers, called him ** a 
 great financier." In this M. Say was indeed 
 the echo of the public voice, but no one is bet- 
 ter qualified to judge. Each of Thiers' Minis- 
 ters might have said as much touching his 
 particular specialty. M. Hector Pessard, in 
 his pleasant memoirs which he modestly calls 
 " My Little Notes " {Mes Petits Papiers), has 
 given the story of one of the President's well- 
 filled days, in which Thiers appears occupied 
 with everything, but finding time for intervals 
 of sparkling conversation. He had the gift, so 
 valuable to a ruler, of persuading every one to 
 whom he gave an order or a counsel that the 
 safety of the State depended upon its execution. 
 And there was nothing touching which he did 
 not command or advise. He was not content 
 with commanding, — he followed to the end 
 the execution of his orders. His Ministers 
 
212 Thiers. 
 
 were well-chosen, for he was somewhat vain 
 of having the most distinguished men about 
 him, but they were not always sufficient 
 for his purposes, and his zeal to have a hand 
 in the business of all departments of the 
 government knew no bounds. He had an 
 ascendency over men that is not sufficiently 
 explained by the superiority of his mind. His 
 passionate insistence, his pressing urgency, his 
 iron will, enabled him to carry his points even 
 with the most obdurate. He overwhelmed 
 them with a kind of violence, rather than won 
 them by persuasion. When aroused upon a 
 subject that interested him, — and when was 
 he not so? — he made everything subserve 
 his aim, whether that aim were financial, 
 administrative, or military. 
 
 The political aim was perhaps the one which 
 he found most difficult to attain, in the Assem- 
 bly at least, for the country was devoted to 
 him. Between the deputies and Thiers there 
 was from the first a certain antagonism hidden 
 under apparent harmony. His pohcy of union 
 was at bottom the true French policy, the 
 policy recommended to Catholics and Protes- 
 tants by Henry IV. after the capture of Paris. 
 This system is a most opportune one when the 
 State and society are to be restored in the 
 teeth of parties ; but it is a peculiarly difficult 
 
The Third Republic. 213 
 
 system in an Assembly, since an Assembly is 
 by its very nature an arena for parties with their 
 jealousies and their grudges. Thiers sincerely 
 believed that his ideas of order and conserva- 
 tion ought to be a sufficient assurance to every 
 right-minded man ; but even these ideas, when 
 pressed into the service of the Republic, 
 could scarcely find grace in the eyes of a 
 Royalist Right. It has been said that his aim 
 was to carry out the policy of the Right by 
 means of the Left, but this is a course which 
 the Conservative party seems least willing to 
 tolerate. This party, like all parties, often 
 prefers, in the Chambers if not in public, to 
 become revolutionary rather than to relinquish 
 power. It aims at exclusive dominion. Its 
 honesty is quite compatible with the rancor- 
 ous intolerance which sometimes converts vir- 
 tue into fanaticism. It deems itself the only 
 party upon which a government can rest. 
 Such was Guizot's theory in his time, and 
 Thiers had been looked upon with suspicion 
 for upwards of thirty years because he would 
 not subscribe to it. Under the Restoration, 
 Martignac was abandoned because he made 
 some members of the Left Centre members of 
 his Ministry. In 1847, the Conservatives of 
 the Chamber sacrificed the July Monarchy for 
 a similar reason; and in 1870 they preferred 
 
514 Thiers. 
 
 to risk the war with Germany rather than 
 submit longer to the Ollivier Ministry. 
 
 Thiers' services to the conservative cause 
 could not, therefore, win him the support of 
 the opponents of his general policy. The 
 applause of the Left was sufficient to complete 
 the alienation of the Right. It is impossible 
 to satisfy the passionate except by sharing 
 their passions, and Thiers did not share them. 
 There were days when he might have regained 
 everything by speaking evil of the Republic, 
 or by disobliging this or that Republican. 
 He would not do it, and no right-minded 
 person could blame him, for the Republican 
 party behaved, on the whole, very wisely. It 
 was indeed maintained that the Conservatives 
 would be satisfied if he would but *' cut off the 
 tail " of this party. " But when the tail is cut 
 off," said Thiers, " some one is always sure to 
 pick it up and make a plume of it." 
 
 As President of the Republic, he might have 
 won over some of the opponents of his general 
 policy by means of private conversation. This 
 he sometimes attempted, his house being 
 always open. But, absorbed as he was, how 
 could he give time to the assiduous attentions 
 of a parliamentary leader? He certainly re- 
 ceived people amiably; but, without looking 
 closely into the matter, he reckoned upon the 
 
The Third Republic. 215 
 
 good-will of those who had cheerfully visited 
 him or respectfully listened to him. He re- 
 fused to make allowance for wounded sus- 
 ceptibilities, and was inclined to attribute all 
 censure to half a dozen malcontents. He 
 habitually yielded to his faculty of seeing his 
 own ideas with such plainness that any other 
 view seemed a contemptible absurdity. By 
 wounding his opponents he often transformed 
 them into enemies, — even those who were 
 not definitely hostile to him, but who merely 
 found it difficult to accept his extreme personal 
 share in a parliamentary government. If, as 
 has been asserted, it was a dictatorship, it was 
 at least based upon persuasion. He was, how- 
 ever, reproached with being, like Napoleon, 
 not open to suggestions. This accusation he 
 seems to have anticipated when he said in his 
 speech of April 16, 1835 : "When a man is in 
 such a position as to hear the truth only from 
 those who have the courage to speak it, he 
 hears it from very few people.'* 
 
 But this President so absolute, so rude at 
 times, had only to ascend the Tribune to 
 become a model of simple grace, and to find 
 a tone of persuasive sincerity which disarmed 
 or embarrassed his enemies. If at times he 
 gave way to his temper, he frightened them; 
 for the Assembly was swayed by the profound 
 
2i6 Thiers. 
 
 conviction that he was a necessary man, first 
 until the Insurrection was subdued, afterward 
 until the territory was delivered. He had only 
 to threaten to lay down his authority, in order 
 to make everything bend before him. It is 
 therefore comprehensible, if not excusable, 
 that when the Assembly came to undertake 
 the task of framing a Constitution, the first 
 article of this Constitution was that they 
 should close their ears to the charmer, and 
 that Thiers should be, as far as possible, 
 barred out of the French Tribune. 
 
 It is not easy to forget the sight of that old 
 man, worn by the toil of night and day, walk- 
 ing up from the President's Palace with his 
 alert step ; making his way to the front bench 
 of that theatre glittering with mirrors and 
 gold; sitting there muffled in cloaks, which 
 were rendered necessary by his liability to be 
 chilled by the drafts of that airy hall ; listening 
 with a somewhat bantering mien to the speech 
 of some deputy; then suddenly becoming 
 aroused, obtaining the floor, and throwing off 
 with a quick gesture the wraps that impeded 
 the freedom of his movements. Never has 
 modern society, in its nobly democratic phase, 
 been better represented. And then, placing 
 both hands upon the front of the Tribune, he 
 would begin an exposition of his policy of 
 
The Third Republic, 217 
 
 common-sense, or a course of instruction con- 
 cerning the finances, the bank, the customs, 
 the army, while now and then from this un- 
 promising soil would spring, naturally and 
 unexpectedly, some exquisite flower of Attic 
 eloquence. The following passage, for ex- 
 ample, occurs in the middle of a three hours* 
 speech on recruitment (June 8, 1872), which 
 contains more than one bit worthy to be 
 quoted by the future historian : — 
 
 " Take the honest man in our society. Upon at- 
 taining manhood he takes a mate and becomes a 
 father. What is his chief care? I speak of the 
 honest man. It is by steady, skilful, honest toil to 
 secure the welfare of his wife, his children, and him- 
 self; and not merely present but future welfare. Such 
 is the honest man. Sometimes even, if he sees a 
 neighbouring family in distress, he will manage to 
 take something from the comfort of his own chil- 
 dren in order to relieve the unfortunate. He is 
 very rarely in the presence of death, except in his 
 last hours. 
 
 " So much for the life of an honest man in our 
 society. Now let me show you a very diiferent 
 society. You take from our fields men who have not 
 shared in our education, who have not been nourished 
 upon all the grandeurs of history, who have not lived 
 with the works and the memories of the Turennes, 
 the Cond^s, the Vaubans, the Caisars, the Hanni- 
 bals ; and to these men you say : * You are not to 
 
2 1 8 Thiers, 
 
 think of your personal welfare. While all around you 
 is peace, it is the duty of society to keep up your 
 strength by sufficient food, and not to expose you to 
 needless dangers. But peace is to be merely an 
 accident in your existence ; in case of need you are 
 to endure frost and heat, to fling yourselves into the 
 icy flood of the Beresina, and, when there remains 
 scarcely a hope of saving the army, you shall still die 
 to save it. You shall endure the burning heat of 
 Africa, and your honour, your glory, shall be to die 
 beneath the flag.' 
 
 " Is this the ordinary life of the honest man? No, 
 it is a life apart, this soldier's life to which our institu- 
 tions compel certain men. This, gentlemen, is the 
 school of the soldier. To learn to suffer, to bear in- 
 tolerable hardships ; to have always before one's eyes 
 the idea of death ; to be almost happy, when the 
 moment of danger arrives, to march beside one's 
 leaders under the flag ; and, when that flag is victori- 
 ous, to triumph, to be glad, glad as with a personal 
 happiness, — such is the soldier's life." 
 
 In a message to the Assembly after the re- 
 cess of 1872, Thiers made the most com- 
 plete exposition of his policy. What he had 
 scarcely ventured to hope for at Bordeaux 
 had been realized. In less than two years he 
 had dressed and healed the country's virounds, 
 and he nov^r presented to the Assembly a nation 
 peaceful, prosperous, and free. All events and 
 all elections had declared in favour of a Re- 
 
The Third Republic. 219 
 
 public. In his turn Thiers now declared for 
 it, without, however, proposing a Constitution. 
 It was neither through want of logic nor 
 through timidity and indecision that he re- 
 frained from taking this step, but through a 
 feeling which was appreciated by very few of 
 his hearers. At that very moment he was 
 negotiating with Germany for the anticipated 
 deliverance of our territory, and he feared to 
 embarrass the negotiations by the spectacle of 
 a divided Assembly, incapable of founding a 
 government, and too much inclined to over- 
 throw him whose individual word was the sole 
 guarantee in all dealings with foreign govern- 
 ments. He therefore confined himself to sow- 
 ing his ideas in the minds of men, hoping that 
 the Assembly would see for itself that the 
 time had at last come to emerge from this 
 provisional regime, which was growing unen- 
 durable. He got no thanks for his discretion. 
 He was violently attacked, his adversaries be- 
 ing as angry with him for showing that the 
 Republic was the only government possible as 
 if he had tried to impose that government by 
 force. They invoked the famous Bordeaux 
 Compact, which he had been precisely the one 
 to respect ; for they really could not reproach 
 him for having governed well, and it was only 
 by misgovernment that he could have wronged 
 
220 Thiers, 
 
 the Republic. This, indeed, was what dis- 
 comfited them; they would have been glad 
 of an excuse for a saviour of the country, 
 and were vexed to find the country already 
 saved by this eloquent and politic commoner, 
 who, like the great majority of the French 
 middle class, had been made a Republican by 
 reflection. 
 
 The Assembly resumed the discussion of 
 fragments of constitutions, of ways and means 
 of organizing, not the Republic, but ** Republi- 
 can government," according to the wire-drawn 
 euphemism of the time. With these debates 
 Thiers had little to do ; during the last months 
 of his firm but precarious rule he seldom 
 appeared in the Tribune. The negotiations 
 with Germany took up all his time, and he 
 hastened the liberation with as much eagerness 
 as if the conclusion of the treaty was not to be 
 the signal for a final, victorious attack upon 
 him. 
 
 Finally, on the 17th of March, 1873, M. de 
 Remusat, the Minister of Foreign Afi*airs, 
 read the Treaty, whereupon the Assembly ad- 
 journed for a recess of two months. During 
 this recess the situation was modified by two 
 noteworthy occurrences : the election at Paris 
 of M. Barodet against the Minister of Foreign 
 Affairs, indicating a split in the Republican 
 
The Third Republic, 221 
 
 party; and the declaration by M. Jules Simon 
 in a public speech, that Thiers had delivered 
 the French territory. It is easy to understand 
 what irritation such an assertion must have 
 aroused in certain quarters of the Assembly ; 
 while the manifestation on the part of the 
 Parisians, subject though they are to electoral 
 caprices, showed that Thiers could not count 
 upon the support of all shades of Republicans. 
 This was an added reason why the Conserva- 
 tives should have defended him. The Cham- 
 ber thought differently, and the resignation of 
 Jules Simon was not deemed a sufficient satis- 
 faction to those who had been wounded by 
 his words. An interpellation signed by three 
 hundred and twenty deputies was made at the 
 opening session, and the 23d of May was fixed 
 upon for the discussion. 
 
 The debate lasted for two days, and closed 
 with one of Thiers' finest speeches. He was 
 not eager to retain office, and seemed to think 
 only of justifying his course and of retiring 
 with honour. He made a proud and dignified 
 sketch of his policy. The tone was not pro- 
 voking, but the underlying ideas were not of a 
 nature to soothe the rancorous and win over 
 the wavering. It was a farewell discourse. To 
 an interrupter he loftily replied : " No ! I do 
 not fear for my memory, for I shall not be 
 
222 Thiers, 
 
 tried before the tribunal of parties; before 
 them I should be found wanting. But I shall 
 not be condemned at the bar of history, and 
 to that tribunal I appeal." 
 
 By a majority of fourteen the Assembly 
 voted an order of the day which Thiers did 
 not approve. He might, however, have re- 
 tained the Presidency, — for that same Assem- 
 bly had passed a singular bill enacting that 
 the Chamber and the President should have 
 equal terms and should disappear together. 
 But to what purpose? How could he direct a 
 policy which he deemed bad and dangerous? 
 Collisions would have become more and more 
 frequent and disastrous. He therefore offered 
 his resignation, which was immediately ac- 
 cepted, and France ceased to be governed by 
 the man who had ruled by the divine right of 
 superior intelligence, — a legitimacy as good 
 as any. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 RETIREMENT AND DEATH. 
 
 'TPHIERS' personal friends, who were chiefly 
 -*- concerned about his health and his good 
 name, were in no wise depressed by the par- 
 liamentary coup d'etat that deprived him of 
 power. He gained more in the national re- 
 spect than he lost in authority. He had great 
 need of rest, and he could not have held 
 out long under the double burden of his sev- 
 enty-six years and of that overcharged life in 
 which he spared himself neither by day nor 
 by night. It was not, however, to the plea- 
 sures of idleness that he gave himself up ; his 
 new-found leisure was devoted to his " beloved 
 studies." This expression has been so much 
 abused in France as to have become a mere 
 newspaper commonplace. But Thiers was 
 not acquainted with commonplace: it was a 
 thing that did not exist for him. What he 
 said rendered his impression, his thought ; and 
 he employed the right word, careless of what 
 others might associate with that word. He 
 
224 Thiers. 
 
 was quite sincere in his delight at the thought 
 of once more working for himself. He was 
 not attached to power for power's sake, but 
 for the sake of carrying out in action the con- 
 ceptions of his mind. Those who thought 
 otherwise never saw him on one of those days 
 when he threw off the cares of State and per- 
 mitted himself to indulge his artistic taste and 
 his love of research. They knew nothing of 
 his unaffected pleasure at finding himself once 
 more surrounded by his books, his collections, 
 his unfinished works, — that other life so 
 foreign to the duties of the Head of a State 
 where everything was to be done, to be un- 
 done, or to be done over again. 
 
 The first part of his retirement was spent in 
 supervising the work upon the house where he 
 intended to pass the remainder of his days. 
 This house in St. George Place had been 
 destroyed by the Commune, and the Assembly 
 had ordered its reconstruction at the expense 
 of the State. But the Assembly could not 
 restore to him the works of art with which his 
 house had been adorned. Before leaving Paris 
 on the I2th of September, 1870, he had, in 
 anticipation of the siege, secured a portion of 
 the collections in the midst of which he had 
 lived for so many years. All that he had been 
 forced to leave was sent by the Communal 
 
Retirement and Death, 225 
 
 Council to the furniture storehouse, and after- 
 ward to the Tuilleries. Thus the pictures and 
 the marbles that had been the delight of his 
 hours of leisure were consumed with the 
 palace of the sovereigns whose adviser or 
 antagonist he had been, and whose supreme 
 power had fallen to him in the decHne of life ! 
 He caused the ashes of the palace, and the old 
 curiosity shops, to be searched for the precious 
 remains. All was not consumed; the agents 
 of the Commune had reserved some exquisite 
 bits which were found and repurchased. Artists 
 were employed to restore others; and two 
 years after the 24th of May (1873), Thiers 
 found himself again in a house like the one he 
 had lived in for forty years. Here he took up 
 the thread of the old life, with its amusements 
 and its labours. At five o'clock every morning 
 he was at work in that very private cabinet, 
 where he yvas surrounded by the beautiful in 
 all its forms, from the celebrated Dancing 
 Mime bought at the Denon sale and the Faun 
 of Praxiteles, to those expressive heads of 
 mules in bronze, which are said to have deco- 
 rated the chair of the Caesars. There too 
 were casts of the Farnese Hercules, of Col- 
 leone's equestrian statue, of Rude's Mercury, 
 of Cellini's Perseus, and of Michel Angelo's 
 Day and Night, Evening and Morning. The 
 IS 
 
226 Thiers. 
 
 walls were adorned with copies in aquarelle of 
 the most beautiful Italian paintings, and there 
 were portfolios filled with those rolls of silk 
 upon which Japanese painters illustrate the 
 tales of their poets and the episodes of their 
 romances. Less classic in art than in litera- 
 ture, Thiers really preferred the art of Florence 
 and of the Renaissance, but he had acquired a 
 taste for these Japanese artists with their 
 strange mixture of the real and the fantastic. 
 All these marvels of taste have been described 
 by M. Charles Blanc; they can be viewed at 
 the Louvre, Thiers having bequeathed to the 
 State the fruits of his hours of relaxation, as 
 well as those of his toil and his experience. 
 
 As might have been foreseen, his retirement 
 did not check the national movement, and 
 the Republican tendency of the elections, 
 for which he had been reproached, became 
 more and more marked. The report of the 
 alliance between the two branches of the 
 House of Bourbon had aroused the public 
 mind. The rural populations were not es- 
 pecially attached to the Republic, but the 
 word " Restoration " exasperated them. The 
 secular hatred of the old serfs of the glebe for 
 the domination of the privileged classes flamed 
 up at the very mention of a dynasty of the Old 
 Regime. The distinction that had hitherto 
 
Retirement and Death, 227 
 
 obtained between the House of Orleans and 
 the House of Bourbon now disappeared, and 
 with it the last hope of the Monarchy. The 
 National Assembly did not shut its eyes to 
 the indications furnished by the elections. 
 But it was more disturbed by an event which 
 could have surprised no one who had followed 
 the Count of Chambord through his career 
 as an exiled pretender. Everything indicates 
 that this respectable prince did not wish to 
 reign, but merely to preserve intact his sup- 
 posed rights, and to bring into subordination 
 the family which, in his eyes, had usurped 
 those rights. Scarcely had he gained this 
 concession, when he wrote a letter the sub- 
 stance of which was that he could not and 
 would not govern the France of the nineteenth 
 century. 
 
 Marshal MacMahon, the Ministry, and the 
 Assembly yielded to the inevitable. In poli- 
 tics, he is the best man who first sees the ne- 
 cessity of things, and who undertakes in the 
 nick of time to banish difficulties and augment 
 advantages. Herein lay one of the secrets of 
 Thiers' superiority; his successors found them- 
 selves compelled to establish a Republican 
 Constitution under less favourable conditions, 
 inasmuch as they inspired less confidence, as 
 they had embittered party strife, and had 
 
228 Thiers. 
 
 furnished their enemies with new grievances 
 and new weapons. This was the most defi- 
 nite result of the 24th of May, 1873, and of 
 the substitution of the Ministry of Messrs. de 
 MacMahon, de Broglie, de La Bouillerie, 
 Tailhand, Depeyre, and Baragnon, for the 
 Ministry of Messrs. Thiers, Jules Simon, de 
 Remusat, Dufaure, Casimir Perier, and Leon 
 Say. 
 
 Thiers took no part in the debate. He 
 contented himself with voting in ironical si- 
 lence for an excellent Constitution, very simi- 
 lar to the one which he had proposed two 
 years before and which had been the occasion 
 of his fall. He reappeared but once in the 
 Tribune, merely to sustain against General 
 du Barrail, the Minister of War, his opinion 
 touching the construction of the new forts at 
 Paris. This he did with feeling, moderation, 
 and lucidity. It is not unlikely that could 
 Thiers have chosen the occasion for his final 
 speech, this would have been the one he 
 would have preferred. In his last years he 
 had chiefly at heart the things that pertain 
 to the greatness of France in her foreign 
 relations. 
 
 After the Constitution had been established, 
 the National Assembly gave way to the two 
 Chambers. The senators were elected in Jan- 
 
Retirement and Death. 229 
 
 uary, 1876, the deputies a little later. Thiers 
 was elected to both Chambers ; for, although 
 he could not but prefer the second Chamber 
 as being a better arena for political action, the 
 people of Belfort had testified their touching 
 gratitude by choosing him as their senator. 
 The majority of the Chamber of Deputies 
 took a decisive course. After a weak pre- 
 tence of resistance, the President of the Re- 
 public was forced to accept as the President 
 of his Council, whom? M. Jules Simon him- 
 self, whose presence in the cabinet of Thiers 
 had given such umbrage and had seemed to 
 be one of the principal causes of the 24th of 
 May. Never has the logic of facts been more 
 clearly vindicated. It was also doubtless logi- 
 cal that the reactionary coalition should make 
 another of those efforts whose apparent result 
 is to check the tide, and v*^hose inevitable re- 
 sult is to hasten it. It appears that, after 
 some months of administration, M. Jules 
 Simon involved the social order and reli- 
 gion in new dangers. He was dismissed as 
 summarily as the Sultan dismisses his Grand 
 Vizier. After both theory and fact had 
 shown that the Monarchy was impossible, a 
 Ministry was formed from the Monarchical 
 coalition to prorogue and then to dissolve the 
 Chamber. This is what Is known as the coup 
 
230 Thiers, 
 
 d^tat of the i6th of May, 1877. In sooth, this 
 month of May brings forth strange flowers. 
 
 On the day of the dissolution, the Chamber 
 gave Thiers a touching ovation. The Minister 
 of the Interior having been imprudent enough 
 to claim for the Government the honour of de- 
 livering the territory, an immense majority of 
 the deputies rose to their feet, stretched out 
 their hands toward Thiers, and an almost unani- 
 mous shout proclaimed his right to the name 
 of Liberator. This was the last time that he 
 appeared in public. He was not sick; he bore 
 lightly the w^eight of his eighty years ; but he 
 was enfeebled. The emotion which his physi- 
 cal weakness made him unable to conceal, the 
 tears he shed at hearing himself solemnly hailed 
 by the representatives of the nation as the im- 
 personation of patriotism and of law, enhanced 
 the pathos of the memorable scene. 
 
 The dissolution was followed by a period 
 of severe administrative repression designed 
 to influence the elections. Thiers retired to St. 
 Germain, where he was the object of the tender 
 attentions of his wife and of her sister. Made- 
 moiselle Dosne, who made his life easy and 
 happy. There he completed his book of sci- 
 entific philosophy. Then he turned again to 
 politics, and wrote, for the last time, a sum- 
 mary of the principles which had guided his 
 
Retirement and Death. 231 
 
 life, and which had once more been brought 
 into reproach. The publication of this bro- 
 chure, which every one read, assured victory 
 to the Liberals. But he did not live to see it ; 
 he was still holding the pen, when he suddenly 
 and quietly passed away on the 3d of Septem- 
 ber, 1877. A few days later, the manifesto was 
 published under the editorship of M. Mignet, — 
 a worthy witness of his friend's constancy in 
 opinion and in affection. 
 
 All Paris took part in the funeral of the 
 First President of the Republic. During his 
 life the Parisians had cherished a variety of 
 feelings toward him, as was natural in the 
 case of a nervous, changeable people toward a 
 man who changed so little. But as his coffin 
 passed, there was but one sentiment for the 
 dead. Madame Thiers and her friends had de- 
 clined the public funeral offered by the some- 
 what embarrassed Ministry. They preferred 
 to trust to that touching and delicate respect 
 for the dead which is a peculiar virtue of the 
 Parisians, to those memories which made this 
 ** little bourgeois," as the people called him, 
 the representative of the whole middle class. 
 Not his least claim to our admiration is the 
 fact that this ardent publicist, this impassioned 
 historian, this intelligent orator, invariably up- 
 held those ideas of wise and liberal good sense 
 
232 Thiers, 
 
 which, after all, constitute the distinctive mark 
 of the French middle class. 
 
 Measure, sobriety, taste pointed with wit, — 
 these are indeed the qualities that the French 
 name represents throughout the civilized world. 
 They are our pride and our glory; to justify 
 our claim to them it is enough that men like 
 Thiers should have borne the name of French- 
 man. Our history is too often characterized by 
 excess and violence. Are we not the nation of 
 the Jacquerie and of the Dragonnades ? Did 
 we not push religious rancour to the massacre of 
 St. Bartholomew, flattery of monarchs to idol- 
 atry under Louis XIV., political fury to the 
 Reign of Terror, love of glory to the Retreat 
 from Moscow, socialist theories to the Insur- 
 rection of June, 1848, the spirit of reaction to 
 the selfishness of the Second Empire, anarchy 
 to the Commune ? And that respectable Na- 
 tional Assembly, — straining toward the goal 
 of Monarchical restoration, unmindful of the 
 past, blind to the present, and careless of what 
 might be the purposes of those whom it would 
 have conducted to the throne, — was its forget- 
 fulness on the 24th of May, of so many services 
 and good counsels, an evidence of sobriety and 
 moderation? Surely Shakspeare were better 
 fitted than any of our classical poets to cele- 
 brate such events ! Nevertheless, it is by these 
 
Retiremeni and Death. 233 
 
 poets, and by such of our historians and states- 
 men as resemble them, that we are best rep- 
 resented in the Congress of Nations. Some 
 great men, scattered here and there through the 
 centuries, have saved our honour. Montaigne, 
 Sully, Henry IV., Moliere, Colbert, Vauban, 
 Montesquieu, Voltaire, Turgot, — these are the 
 representatives of the French mind and of the 
 French language. In this select company pos- 
 terity will assign a place, and a lofty one, to 
 Louis Adolphe Thiers. 
 
INDEX/ 
 
 Aix, Academy of, unwilling to award 
 its prize to Thiers, i6. 
 
 Alexander II., Tsar, Thiers' mission 
 to, i8i, 184-187. 
 
 Algeria, a school of war for the 
 French, 68-70. 
 
 Ambition, Thiers' relative freedom 
 from, 82, 83. 
 
 America, North and South, France 
 must choose between, 107. 
 
 Andrieux, Frangois, Thiers' Academic 
 address upon, 73. 
 
 Angouleme, Duke of, commands 
 French army of intervention in 
 Spain in 1823, 13. 
 
 Armistice (the) between France and 
 Germany, proposed by the Tsar, 
 186; by other powers, 187 ; Gam- 
 betta and the Delegation consent 
 to, 188, 189; the Pans government 
 consents to, 191, 192 ; the people of 
 Paris object to, 192, 193 ; Thiers' 
 negotiations with Bismarck con- 
 cerning, 193-197. 
 
 Arts, fine, Thiers writes upon, 23; 
 his taste for, 224-226. 
 
 Augustus, the Emperor, his usurpa- 
 tion like that of Napoleon III., 125, 
 126 ; Tacitus' remark applicable to 
 the two Napoleons, 135, 
 
 Aumale, Duke of, his service to the 
 Reipublic, 205. 
 
 Austria, mistake of the Empire touch- 
 i"g> 157 ; Thiers' mission to, 183, 
 184. 
 
 Balzac, Honor^ de, unfortunate in- 
 fluence of his novels upon social 
 and political ideals, 91-93 ; simi- 
 larity of his heroes to the masters 
 of France after the coup d'etat^ 
 126. 
 
 Banquets, campaign of, 95-97. 
 
 Barante, Baron, quoted, 94. 
 
 Barrqt, Odilon, radical leader, 82 ; 
 Guizot's epigram upon, 84 ; moder- 
 ate opposition to Guizot ministry, 
 89 ; repugnance to the campaign of 
 banquets, 96. 
 
 Bazaine, Marshal, unfortunate results 
 of his surrender, 189. 
 
 Belfort, city of, Thiers rescues it from 
 Germany, 201 ; its .t^ratitude, 229. 
 
 BeHamy, Miss, 'biography by Thiers, 
 
 36- 
 
 Benedetti, Count Vincent, 165, 166. 
 
 Berard, M., on the force of "fixed 
 situation," 103. 
 
 Berger, M., Thiers' faithful shepherd, 
 19. 
 
 Bern'er, P. A,, a natural declaimer, 
 60 ; attitude toward the July Gov- 
 ernment, 76, 77 ; description of his 
 oratory, 78 ; joins the coalition 
 against Minister Mold, 80-82 ; in 
 the Left with Thiers, 151 
 
 Beust, Count, Thiers' first interview 
 with, 183, 184; second interview, 
 1S7. 
 
 Bibliography of the writings of Thiers 
 mentioned in this book. See Works. 
 
 Bismarck, Chancellor of the North 
 German Confederation, excluded by 
 the Ollivier ministrj^ from the Ho- 
 henzoUem negotiations, 164-166; 
 first interview with Thiers at Ver- 
 sailles, 188-190; consents to nego- 
 tiate with Thiers concerning the 
 armistice, 193, 194; but wishes to 
 treat for peace, 194, 195 ; his severe 
 conditions, 196: "a barbarian of 
 genius," 200. 
 
 Blanc, Charles, his description of 
 Thiers' art collection, 226. 
 
 * A complete list of Thiers' writings, so far as they are mentioned or cited 
 in this book, is given under the title " Works." All extended quotations are 
 indexed under the headings *' Thiers," " Works," and " Quotations," — Tr. 
 
236 
 
 Index, 
 
 Bodin, M., at first associated with 
 Thiers in the History of the French 
 Revolution, 39. 
 
 Boisser^e, Sulpiz, article by Thiers 
 on, 36. 
 
 Buonaparte. See Napoleon. 
 
 Buonaparte, Prince Louis, plays the 
 part of a pretender in 184S, 110, 
 hi; Thiers breaks with his own 
 party in order to favor the candi- 
 dacy of, 111-114; elected President 
 of the French Republic, 114 ; policy, 
 1 19 ; dismisses General Changamier, 
 120; Thiers goes into opposition, 
 120-122 ; coup d'etat, 123-126. (See 
 Napoleon III.) 
 
 Bordeaux Compact, 210, 219. 
 
 Bourbon, House of, opposition to 
 constitutional freedom, 14 ; its claim 
 of legitimacy the great obstacle to 
 freedom, 33 ; revolutionary charac- 
 ter of their procedure, 56 ; Thiers 
 upon their boasted legitimacy (quo- 
 tation), 77, 78; their attitude in 
 1848 as represented by Falloux, 113, 
 114 ; their attitude under the Third 
 Republic, 213 ; why they sacrificed 
 Martignac and Ollivier, 213, 214; 
 alliance with the House of Orleans, 
 227. 
 
 Broglie, Duke Victor de, opposition 
 to the Bourbon monarchy, 30 ; 
 characterization of the Doctnnaires, 
 30, 3 1 ; opinion of contemporary 
 literature, 53 ; famous words about 
 the July Revolution, 53 ; remark to 
 a signer of Thiers' manifesto, K5 ; 
 with Thiers in the Soult ministry, 
 64 ; republicanism, 100 ; his part in 
 the Liberal Conference of 1863, 144- 
 146 ; quoted, 160. 
 
 Brunnow, M. de, Russian Ambassa- 
 dor at London, 181. 
 
 Buffet, L. J., Finance Minister under 
 Ollivier, 160 ; the first to resign, 161. 
 
 Calmon, M., his edition of Thiers' 
 speeches, 11 ; his prefaces to these 
 speeches, 64, 153. 
 
 Campaign of banquets, Thiers' oppo- 
 sition to, 95-97. 
 
 Canouville, M. de, compares Thiers 
 with Napoleon, 69, 70. 
 
 Camotj L. H., attitude toward the 
 Empire, 145. 
 
 Carrel, Armand, gets credit for a 
 notable passage by Thiers, 36. 
 
 Catholic party. See Clergy. 
 
 Cavaignac, General, victory over the 
 insurrection of June, 1848, no; can- 
 
 didate for the presidency of the 
 Republic, 111 ; attitude toward the 
 Empire, 145. 
 
 Cayla, Madame de, reputed mistress 
 of LouisXVnL,22. 
 
 Chambord, Count of, renounces the 
 hope of the crown, 227. 
 
 Changamier, General, dismissed by 
 President Buonaparte, lap. 
 
 Charles X., King of France, charac- 
 terized, 35 ; what he did for Thiers, 
 45- 
 
 Charles XII. of Sweden, Voltaire's 
 History of, 45. 
 
 Charter, constitutional, of June, 1814, 
 attitude of the Restoration, mon« 
 archy toward, 27-29. 
 
 Chenier, Andre, Thiers distantly re- 
 lated to, 16. 
 
 Church, Roman Catholic. See Clergy, 
 
 Clergy, the Roman Catholic, their 
 hostility to freedom under the Res- 
 toration, 27 ; victory in the contest 
 with the University concerning sec- 
 ondary instruction, 90,^ 91 ; Thiers' 
 concessions to them in 1849 and 
 
 1850, 115-119.. 
 
 Coalition of Guizot, Thiers, Berryer, 
 and Barret against Minister M0I6, 
 80-82. 
 
 Colbert, a representative French- 
 man, 233. 
 
 Cologne Cathedral, article by Thiers 
 on, 36. 
 
 Common-sense, Thiers on, 109. 
 
 Commune (the), how Thiers met it, 
 206, 210 ; destruction of his house 
 and collections by, 224, 225. 
 
 Compact of Bordeaux, 210, 219. 
 
 Conservatives, French Tories, Guizot 
 their leader, 83 ; far less disposed 
 than he to concede reforms, 89-91 ; 
 forlorn hope of this party, 92, 93 ; 
 exclusiveness and intolerance of, 
 213,. 214. 
 
 Constitution, proposed revision in 
 
 1851, 122 ; the Emperor's modifica- 
 tion of that of 1S52, 142-144 ; that of 
 1869 voted by plebiscite, 161 ; Thiers* 
 postponement of the discussion of 
 that of the Third Repiiblic, 202, 
 204, 205, 219; its first article, 216. 
 
 " Constitutionnel," the, contains an 
 extract from Thiers' prize essay, 17 ; 
 first journal for which Thiers wrote, 
 21 ; character of his articles, 22,23 ; 
 the organ of Thiers' political ideas, 
 
 Consulate and Empire, History of. 
 See History, 
 
Index. 
 
 237 
 
 Conversation, brilliancy of Thiers', 
 67-69; in the time of the Third 
 Empire, 129-131; Thiers' use of 
 in preparing his speeches, 153. 
 
 *' Corinne," Madame de Stael's ro- 
 mance, Thiers' criticism of, 23-25. 
 
 Coupd'EiatioilD&c. 1851), 123-126; 
 its influence on Thiers' judgment of 
 the iSth Brumaire, 135. 
 
 Co7ip d Etat{ol May, 1877), 229, 230. 
 
 Cousin, Victor, taunts Thiers with 
 ignorance of Greek, n8. 
 
 Crimean War (the), Thiers' attitude 
 concerning, 132. 
 
 " Defence of Property," book by 
 Thiers, ioS._ 
 
 Delacroix, his genius divined by 
 Thiers, 23. 
 
 Delegation of Tours, 187, 188, 189, 
 190. 
 
 Disraeli, Benjamin, plagiarism from 
 Thiers, 36. 
 
 Doctrinaires, their attitude toward the 
 Bourbon monarchy, 30, 3 1 ; Thiers' 
 divergence from them, 3i-33- 
 
 Dosne, Mile., Thiers' sister-in-law, 
 230. 
 
 Doudan, X., description of Thiers' 
 conversation quoted and criticised, 
 68-71 ; phrase quoted, 164. 
 
 Duchies, question of the, Thiers' ad- 
 vice concerning, 157. 
 
 Dufaure, Jules, political principles, 
 102 ; refuses to follow Thiers' 
 leadership in 1848, in ; accepts a 
 portfolio under Thiers, 201. 
 
 Dupin (the Elder), on the confiscation 
 of the Orleans estates, 125. 
 
 Duval, Jules, editor " Journal des 
 Debats," 182. 
 
 Duvergier de Hauranne, Prosper, 
 discusses Algiers with Thiers, 69 ; 
 republicanism, 100; exiled with 
 Thiers in December, 1851, 124. 
 
 Education Bill of 1850, alliance of 
 
 Thiers and Falloux in favor of, 
 
 117-119. 
 Empire, Consulate and. History of. 
 
 See History. 
 Empire, the Second (1851-1870). See 
 
 Napoleon III. 
 Empress (the). See Eugenie. 
 England, her constitution regarded by 
 
 Thiers as a model for France, 32, 
 
 34; Thiers' mission to, 180, 181. 
 Eugenie, Empress of France, her 
 
 marriage, 127; seeks the aid of 
 
 Thiers, 17^-17$' 
 
 Falloux, Alfred de, blame of Thiers 
 in his memoirs, 113; alliance with 
 Thiers against the University, 117- 
 119. 
 
 Favre, Jules, 76 (foot-note); one of 
 the Five, 144 ; his speaking charac- 
 terized, 151 ; proposes to Thiers the 
 mission to the neutral powers, 179 ; 
 rendezvous with Thiers, 196. 
 
 February Revolution (year 1848), lack 
 of moral justification, 99; endan- 
 gered civilization, 103. 
 
 Female sex. See Women. 
 
 Ferdinand VII., King of Spain, re- 
 instated by France in 1823, 14. 
 
 Ferry, Jules, deputy in 1869, 160; 
 with Picard rescues the Trochu 
 ministry, 195. 
 
 Finance, Thiers' papers and speeches 
 on, 58, 59. 
 
 Florence and Venice contrasted by 
 Thiers, 158, 159. 
 
 Fourrichon, Admiral, Minister of 
 War after the 4th of September, 
 182. 
 
 Freedom, political, relation to moral 
 freedom, 58; Thiers' definition of, 
 154. 
 
 French Academy, Thiers' reception 
 into, 73-75. 
 
 French re^Dresentative men, 233. 
 
 French traits, 232. 
 
 Gambetta, Leon, elected deputy in 
 1869, 160; head of the war party 
 at Tours, 188 ; his improvised ar- 
 mies, 197; sacrificed the interests 
 of the Republic, 198. 
 
 Gautier, Thdophile, his love of art 
 for art's sake, 52. 
 
 Gerard, the painter, Thiers comments 
 upon his picture of Corinne in- 
 spired, 23. 
 
 Gladstone, W. E., unwillingness to 
 make promises to Thiers, 181. 
 
 "Globe," the, Thiers does the art 
 criticism for, 23 ; organ of the Doc- 
 trinaire opposition to the Bourbon 
 monarchy, 30, 31. 
 
 Gortschakoff, Prince, Thiers' inter- 
 views with, 18s, 186. 
 
 Government of Louis Philippe. See 
 July Government. 
 
 Gramont, Duke of, Foreign Minister 
 under Ollivier, 163 ; his " hussar- 
 diplomacy,"^ 164-167; his mistake 
 about Austria, 184. 
 
 Granville, Lord, reception of Tbiersj 
 180. 
 
238 
 
 Index. 
 
 Greek, study of, Thiers complains of 
 the time given to, n8. 
 
 Guicciardini, cited by Thiers, 155. 
 
 Giiizot, F. P. G., his oratory, 60; his 
 oratory compared with that of 
 Thiers, 63; elected to the Acad- 
 emy the year after Thiers, 75 ; 
 leader of the coalition against the 
 Mold ministry, 81, 82; becomes 
 leader of the timid conservatives, 
 83, 84; ambassador to England 
 under Thiers, 85 ; succeeds Thiers 
 as prime minister, 86; resists elec- 
 toral reform, 87 ; remark concern- 
 ing Thiers, 88 ; more liberal than 
 his party, 89; quoted, 90; note to 
 Metternich (.quoted), 94, 95 ; quoted, 
 116; attacks the Education Bill of 
 1850, 119 ; his party spirit, 213. 
 
 Haubersart, M. de, discusses Al- 
 giers with Thiers, 69. 
 
 Hauranne. 6V(e Duvcrgier. 
 
 Henry IV., Thiers' policy identical 
 with that of, 212 ; a representative 
 Frenchman, 233. 
 
 " History of the Consulate and the 
 Empire," the most splendid monu- 
 ment of contemporary literature, 
 10; account and criticism of, 135- 
 140; Metternich's estimate, 141. 
 
 "History of the French Revolution," 
 account and criticism of, 38745. 
 
 Hohenzollern, Leopold, Prince of, 
 crown of Spain offered to, 164. 
 
 House in the Place St. George, 
 Thiers' art collection in, 224-226. 
 
 Hugo, Victor, his tardy justice to 
 Louis Philippe, 50; quoted, 194, 
 195- 
 
 Instruction, secondary, 90. (See 
 Education Bill.) 
 
 Italy, Thiers' attitude toward, 157 ; 
 graceful remarks concerning, 
 (quoted), 158, 159 ; eventful day 
 on which he first set foot on her 
 soil, 183 ; his interview with her 
 king, 1 87. 
 
 Japanese art, Thiers' fancy for, 226. 
 
 "Jerome Paturot" (novel by Rey- 
 baud), description of Thiers' ora- 
 tory quoted from, 71, 72. 
 
 July Government, its ill-fortune, 47- 
 49; attitude of imaginative writers 
 toward, 49-53 ; Thiers' brochure on, 
 55-58 ; golden era of, 78, 79 ; hos- 
 tility of the clerical party to, 91 ; 
 iojury inflicted by Balzac's novels 
 
 upon, 92-94 ; overthrown, 98 ; a 
 habitable republic, 99; regretted 
 by Thiers, 102 ; hostility of the 
 Catholic clergy to, 116, 117 ; Thiers' 
 later feeling toward, 149; why sac- 
 rificed by the conservatives, 213. 
 July Revolution (year 1830), why ac- 
 ceptable to the people, 34 ; occasion 
 and nature, 46 ; a noble spectacle, 
 53 ; share of Thiers in, 54-57. 
 
 Lafayette, his policy of conspiracy 
 against the Bourbon monarchy, 28, 
 
 2Q. 
 
 Laffitte, Jacques, his use of Thiers* 
 financial papers, 58. 
 
 Lagarde, Denis, the Emperor's ironi- 
 cal remark concerning, 143. 
 
 Lamartine, Alphonse dc, his History 
 of the Girondins, 40, 42 ; his ora- 
 tory, 60 ; opposed to war in 1848, 
 104. 
 
 Law, John, study of by Thiers, 36. 
 
 Lecomte, General, the Commune be- 
 gins with his murder, 206. 
 
 Left Centre. See I^iberal party. 
 
 Legitimate monarchy and legitimacy. 
 See Bourbon. 
 
 Lemoinne, John, his anecdote of 
 Thiers, 53- 
 
 Leopold, Prince of Hohenzollern, 
 crown of Spain offered to, 164. 
 
 Liberal party, how it suffered by the 
 French Revolution, iji, 42; be- 
 comes a Whig party with Thiers as 
 leader, 83 ; moderation of the liberal 
 opposition to the Guizot ministry, 
 86-89; the caucus of 1863, 144-146 : 
 Thiers states its mission under the 
 Empire, 149 ; Jules Simon describes 
 its attitude under the Third Repub- 
 lic, 202-204 ; Thiers reconciles it to 
 the Republic, 204-206. 
 
 Liberal Union (the), 130, 131, 204. 
 
 Liberty. See Freedom. 
 
 Literature, imaginative, hostile to the 
 July Government, 49-53 ; social 
 influence exemplified in the case of 
 Balzac, 91-93. 
 
 Littre, E., credits a notable passage by 
 Thiers to Armand Carrel, 36. 
 
 Louis XVIII., Thiers offends the lit- 
 erary vanity of, 21. 
 
 Louis Philippe (at first the Duke of 
 Orleans), his qualification for the 
 throne, 33, 34; happily named, 46; 
 anecdote of, 47, 48 ; Victor Hugo's 
 tardy justice to, 50 ; brought back 
 to Paris by Thiers, 54 ; summons 
 
Index. 
 
 239 
 
 Tkiers and takes flight, 98; re- 
 garded as a persecutor of the clergy, 
 1 16. 
 
 Machiavellt, cited by Thiers, 154. 
 
 MacMahon, Marshal, Thiers opposes 
 his movement that ended in Sedan, 
 175; should have fallen back upon 
 Paris, 191 ; his ministry after Thiers' 
 resignation, 228 ; his coup d'Stat, 
 229, 230. 
 
 Merimee, Prosper, his relation to 
 Napoleon III., 51; attempts to 
 mediate between the Emperor and 
 Thiers, 132, 133; negotiates with 
 Thiers on behalf of the Empress, 
 >73, 174- 
 
 Mettermch, Prince of, obliged to flee in 
 1848, 104 ; irritation with the Pope 
 in 1849, 115? estimate of Thiers' 
 Consulate and Empire (quoted), 
 141. 
 
 Mexican expedition (the), 155, 156. 
 
 Mignet, Frangois, Thiers' lifelong in- 
 timacy with, 18-20; prosecuted for 
 freedom of speech, 35; a partisan 
 of the Revolution, 43 ; editor of 
 Thiers' last political work, 231. 
 
 Milo of Crotona, how he pressed the 
 pomegranate, 103. 
 
 Mirabeau, Marquis, Thiers' alleged 
 imitation of, 59, 60. 
 
 M0I6, M., the coalition of party chiefs 
 against his ministry, 79-82. 
 
 Moli^re, J. B. P., quoted to describe 
 Thiers, 66, 67 ; quoted, 201 ; a rep- 
 resentative Frenchman, 233. 
 
 " Monarchy of 1830, The," brochure 
 by Thiers, 55-58. 
 
 Monarchy of July, or of Louis Phi- 
 lippe. See July Government. 
 
 Montaigne, a representative French- 
 man, 233. 
 
 Montalembert, Count of, failure of 
 Guizot to conciliate him, 91. 
 
 Montesquieu, on usurpatioxi in a free 
 state, 125, 126; a representative 
 Frenchman, 233. 
 
 Morality, relation to politics, 57, 58. 
 
 Musset, Alfred de, quoted, 138. 
 
 Napoleon Buonaparte, compared 
 and contrasted with Thiers, 70, 71 ; 
 Thiers' eulogy of (quotation), 74, 
 75 ; Thiers' consistent judgment of 
 his "character, 135, 136; Thiers' ex- 
 cessive admiration for, 136-138; not 
 open to suggestions, 215. 
 
 Napoleon III., the coup cCetaty 123- 
 126 ; his reign a series of surprises, 
 
 126, 127 ; and of novel proposals, 
 128 ; mistook day-dreaming for med- 
 itation, 128, 129 ; pood society lias 
 no need of a saviour, 129-13 1; his 
 way of receiving Thiers' sugges- 
 tions, 132, 133 ; did he cause Thiers 
 to think worse of his uncle? 135, 
 136 ; his modifications in the Con- 
 stitution of 1852, 142-144 ; his " un- 
 recognized incapacity," 156 ; his 
 foreign policy, 156-158 ; deceives 
 himself by universal sufErage, 159 ; 
 his reform ministry, 160-163; picks 
 a quarrel with Germany, 163-166 ; 
 fears Thiers was nght, 173 ; _ the 
 Empress invokes the aid of Thiers, 
 173-175 ; "vacancy of the throne," 
 175; hostility of the Austrians to, 
 184. {See Buonaparte, Prince Louis.) 
 Nodier, Charles, competitor with 
 Thiers for election to the Academy, 
 73- 
 
 Om.ivier, Cinile, one of the Five, 144; 
 his eloquence characterized, 151 ; 
 head of the reform ministry, 160 ; 
 his blindness, i6r, 162 ; joins the 
 Buonapartists, 166 ; his weakness 
 described by Thiers, 171. 
 Orleans, Duke of. See Louis Phi- 
 lippe. 
 Orleans, House of. See Louis Phi- 
 lippe ; July Government. 
 Orleans Monarchy. See July Gov- 
 ernment. 
 Orleans, Princes of, their services in 
 organizing the French army, 86; 
 their estates confiscated by Napo- 
 leon III., 125; Thiers* reference 
 to the fact, 14^ ; their behaviour 
 under the Third Republic, 205, 
 206; their concession to the Count 
 of Chambord, 227. 
 
 Palmerston, Lord, on the Schles- 
 wig-Holstein question, 157. 
 
 Paris, condition of after the fall of 
 Metz, igi ; people of, oppose the 
 armistice, 192, 193; day of the 31st 
 October at, 195 ; surrender of, 197, 
 198; its feeling for Thiers, 231. 
 
 Parliamentary reform, demanded by 
 Thiers and refused by Guizot, 88, 
 89. 
 
 Pasteur, Louis, Thiers follows his 
 researches, 133. 
 
 "Paturot, Jerome" (novel by Rey- 
 baud). Description of Thiers' ora- 
 tory, 71, ya. 
 
240 
 
 Index. 
 
 Pericles, Thucydides' >A^ords concern- 
 ing (quoted), 200. 
 
 P^rier, Casimir, his ministry, 61 ; 
 Tillers decides to support him, 62. 
 
 Pessard, Hector, description of Thiers 
 as president, 211. 
 
 Picard, Ernest, one of the Five, 144; 
 characterized, 151; quoted, 159; 
 with Ferry rescues the Trochu 
 ministry, 195. 
 
 Plateau, M., Thiers repeats his fine 
 experiment, 133. 
 
 Politics, related to moralitj', 57, 5S. 
 
 Polybius, cited by Thiers, 155. 
 
 Prevost-Paradol, Minister to the 
 United States, 160. 
 
 '* Property, Defence of," book by 
 Thiers, 108. 
 
 Proudhon, Pierre Joseph, Thiers' 
 report and speeches on his proposi- 
 tions and theories, 109, no. 
 
 Prussia, Thiers points out her sudden 
 accession of strength (quotation), 
 163 ; her self-respect wounded by 
 the OUivier ministry, 164, 165 ; dec- 
 laration of war with, 166 ; Thiers' 
 opinion as to the true course of the 
 ministry toward (quoted), 170. 
 
 Pyat, F^lix, tries to overthrow the 
 Government of Defence, 195. 
 
 "Pyrenees (the) and the South of 
 France during the Months of No- 
 vernber and December, 1822," 
 Thiers' first book, 13-16, 21. 
 
 QuESTORS, proposition of in 1851, 122, 
 123. 
 
 Quotations from Thiers' writings, 23, 
 36, 37, 73. 77. loi, 105, 109, 121, 
 148, 154, 15s, 158, 163, 168, 170, 
 176, 208, 217. (See Works.) 
 
 Radicalism, Thiers' hostility to (quo- 
 tation), lOI. 
 
 Remusat, Count of (father of the 
 author), Thiers' intimacy with, 97 ; 
 refuses to follow Thiers' leadership 
 in 1848, in; exiled with Thiers in 
 December, 1851, 124; Minister of 
 Foreign Affairs under Thiers, 220- 
 
 Republic of 1848, people poorly pre- 
 pared for, 99 ; attitude of Thiers 
 toward, 100-103 ; how it escaped 
 the dangers of war, 104, 105. 
 
 Republic, the Third, proclaimed by 
 the masses, 177, 178; Thiers at its 
 head, 198 ; in its name he recon- 
 structs the government and nego- 
 tiates peace, 201-210; difference 
 
 between the Republic and Republi- 
 can government, 220. 
 Republican party, reconciled by 
 Thiers to the old Liberal party, 
 204, 205 ; why he would not cut off 
 its tail, 214. 
 
 Restoration of the House of Bourbon 
 in France, 14 ; hostility to the 
 principles of the Revolution, 26-29 ; 
 why Martignac was abandoned un- 
 der, 213 ; the fear of it under the 
 Third Republic, 226, 227. 
 
 Revolution, the French, its useful 
 results, 26, 37, 38 (quotation) ; 
 Thiers' History of, 38-45; reason 
 for its failure, 57 ; Thiers an adher- 
 ent of (quotation), loi. 
 
 Revolution of February, 1848. See 
 February Revolution. 
 
 Revolution of July, 1830. See July 
 Revolution, 
 
 Reybaud, Louis, quotation from his 
 novel of " Jerome Paturot," 71, 72. 
 
 Rhetoric, inefRcacy of its precepts, g, 
 152; Thiers' contribution to, 152, 
 153- 
 
 "Rolla," by Alfred de Musset, 
 quoted, 138. 
 
 Roman Catholic party. See Clergy. 
 
 Roman expedition, Thiers defends 
 the credits for, 115. 
 
 Romanticism, Thiers' opinion of, 53. 
 
 Rouher, Eugfene, on the Mexican ex- 
 pedition, 156 ; expounds the foreign 
 policy of the Empire, 156. 
 
 Russia, Thiers* mission to, 181, 184- 
 187. 
 
 Sacy, S. U. S. de, his classical tastes 
 commended by Thiers, 53. 
 
 Saint-Cyr, Marshal Gouvion, article 
 by Thiers on, 36. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve, debt of modern criti- 
 cism to, 37 ; on Thiers' description 
 of the Mountain, 42 ; quoted, 79 ; 
 estimate of Thiers' Consulate and 
 Empire, 135. 
 
 Saint-Hilaire, Barthelemy, opposes 
 the Education Bill of 1850, 119; 
 elected deputy in 1869, 160. 
 
 Sardou, Victorien, his hero the En- 
 gineer, 50. 
 
 Say, Ldon, on Thiers as a financier, 
 211. 
 
 Schleswig-Holstein, Thiers' advice 
 concerning, 157. 
 
 Scientific studies, Thiers blames the 
 prominence allowed them by the 
 University, 118 ; his later interest in, 
 133, 134. 
 
Index. 
 
 241 
 
 Secondarjr instruction, bill of 1844 
 concerning, go. (See Education 
 Bill.) 
 
 Sense, common, Thiers on, 109. 
 
 Sex, the. See Women. 
 
 Shakspearcj his fitness to celebrate 
 French violence, 232. 
 
 Simiane, Madame de, her comparison 
 between the royalists and the party 
 of Lafayette, 29. 
 
 Simon, Jules, opposes the Education 
 Bill of 1850, 119; his oratory de- 
 scribed, 151 ; his description of the 
 party of Thiers, 203, 204 ; obnoxious 
 declaration about Thiers, 221 ; prime 
 minister in 1876, 229; dismissal by 
 MacMahon, 229, 230. 
 
 Socialism, Thiers' refutation of Proud- 
 hon's, 109. 
 
 Soldier (the), Thiers' estimate of the 
 ability required for the profession 
 of (quotation), 36, 37 ; his opinion 
 of Algiers as a school for, 68-70 ; 
 the life of (quotation), 217, 218. 
 
 Soult, Marshal, Thiers in his ministry, 
 64. 
 
 Spain, Invasion of by France in 1823, 
 13-15- 
 
 Speeches of Thiers, CaImon*s edition, 
 II, 64, 153; method of preparation, 
 152,153. (6"^^ Quotations; Works.) 
 
 Stael, Madame de, Thiers' criticism 
 of, 23-25. 
 
 Style, characteristics of Thiers', 9-1 1, 
 139. 140. 
 
 Suffrage, its extension demanded by 
 Thiers and refused by Guizot, 87 ; 
 rise of universal, 98. 
 
 Sully, a representative Frenchman, 
 233. 
 
 "Tablettes Universellbs," week- 
 ly review to which Thiers contribu- 
 ted, 21 ; bought up by the Bourbon 
 ministry, 22. 
 
 Tacitus, Guizot's unfortunate quota- 
 tion from, 82 ; quoted, 135. 
 
 Talleyrand, befriends Thiers, 21 ; on 
 the salotis of the Revolution, 129. 
 
 Terror, Reign of, influence in French 
 politics, 41, 42. 
 
 Thiers, Louis Adolphe (1797-1877), 
 place in French literature, 9-12 ; 
 book on the Pyrenees and the south 
 of France, 13 ; birth and education, 
 16; early friendship with Mignet, 
 18-20 ; writes for the " Constitu- 
 tionnel," 21-23; estimate of Ma- 
 dam* de Stael (quoted), 23-25 ; 
 
 political principles and practice 
 under the Restoration Monarchy, 
 31-34 ; success of his policy, 35 ; 
 on the art of war (quoted), 36, 37 ; 
 on the French Revolution (quoted), 
 37, 38; "History of the French 
 Revolution," 38-45 ; share in the 
 Revolution of July, 1830, 54-57; 
 Deputy and Under-Secretary of 
 State, 58; unpromising dSbut in 
 the Chamber, 59 ; first success as 
 a speaker, 61-64 : Minister of the 
 Interior under Marshal Soult, 64; 
 merits and defects of his speeches, 
 64, 65 ; boldness in action, 66 ; 
 brilliancy in conversation, 67-69 ; 
 simple and conversational style of 
 his oratory, 71-73 ; installation 
 speech at the French Academy 
 (quoted), 73-75; on the legitimate 
 monarchy (quoted), 77 ; joins the 
 coalition against the MoU minis- 
 try, 81; ambition, 82, 83; opposi- 
 tion to Guizot, 83-91 ; blindness to 
 the signs of the times in 1847, 
 93-95 ; inaction at the crisis of 
 February, 1848, 96-98 ; attitude to- 
 ward the Republic, 100; quoted, 
 loi ; loyalty to the fallen Monarchy, 
 102, 103 ; discouragement shown by 
 letter to a friend, 105, 106 ; again 
 a deputy, 106; on the Finance 
 Committee, 107 ; " Defence of 
 Property," io8; on common-sense 
 (quoted), 109; refutes Proudhon's 
 socialism, 109 ; favors the candi- 
 dacy of Buonaparte, 112; defends 
 the Roman expedition, 115; alli- 
 ance with the clergy against the 
 University, 116-119; resumes the 
 leadership of the Liberal party, 
 120; quotation from his speech, 
 121 ; supports the Republic against 
 the encroachments of Buonaparte, 
 122 : exile, 124-126; attitude toward 
 the Empire, 129-131; social life, 
 131; patriotism, 132; scientific 
 studies, 133, rj4; "History of the 
 Consulate and the Empire," 135 ; 
 estimate of Napoleon, 135-138; 
 defects and excellencies of his 
 historical method, 138-141 ; enters 
 the Corps L^gislatif in 1863, 144 ; 
 first great speech, 147; the same 
 analyzed and quoted, 148-150; 
 prudent and moderate opposition 
 to the Empire, 150-152 ; method 
 of preparing a speech, 152, 153 ; 
 definition of a free country (quoted), 
 154 ; vigilance the price of national 
 
 i6 
 
242 
 
 Index, 
 
 safety (quoted), 155; sharp oppo- 
 sition to imperial foreign policy, 
 155-158; graceful passage on Italy 
 (quoted), 158, 159; supports the 
 reform ministry of OUivier, 160 ; 
 demands that the army be strength- 
 ened, 162 ; points out the strength 
 of Prussia (quotation), 163 ; firmly 
 opposes the declaration of war, 
 166-168 ; speech of July 15, 1870 
 (quoted), 168, 169 ; letter to a 
 friend describing the scene in the 
 Chamber, 170-172 ; overtures of 
 the Empress, 173, 174 ; member 
 of the Council of Defence, 174 ; 
 Sedan, 175 ; describes the over- 
 throw of the Empire by the Cham- 
 ber (quotation), 176 ; Embassy to 
 all the great powers, 179; at Lon- 
 don, 180, 181 ; at Vienna, 183, 184 ; 
 at St. Petersburg, 184-186; at 
 Florence, 187 ; returns to Tours, 
 187, 188 ; negotiations with Bis- 
 marck looking to an armistice, 
 188-197; head of the French Re- 
 public, 198 ; first citizen, 200 ; 
 moderate liberal attitude during 
 the critical and formative period of 
 the Republic, 202-206; transfers 
 the seat of government to Ver- 
 sailles, 206, 207 ; promises not to 
 destroy the Republic (quotation), 
 208 ; pledges himself to the Re- 
 public, 209; great achievements, 
 210; greatness as an administrator, 
 211, 212; management of the As- 
 sembly, 212-216; description of 
 his appearance in the Chamber, 
 
 216, 217 ; quotation on the soldier's 
 life from a speech on recruitment, 
 
 217, 218; completes the liberation 
 of French soil, 218-220; resigna- 
 tion, 221, 222; in retirement, 223; 
 works of art adorning his house, 
 224-226 ; receives an ovation from 
 the Chamber, 230; final literary 
 work, 230, 231 ; death and funeral, 
 231 ; one of the first representatives 
 of the French mind, 232, 233. ^^See 
 Quotations; Works.) 
 
 Thiers, Madame, 230, 231. 
 
 Thomas, General Cl(fment, his mur- 
 der, 206. 
 
 Thucydides, words about Pericles 
 applied to Thiers, 200. 
 
 Thureau-Dangin, M., history of the 
 July Government by, 49. 
 
 Tocqueville, Alexis de, political 
 prmciples, 102 ; defection from 
 Thiers, iii. 
 
 Tours, Delegation of. See Delega- 
 tion. 
 
 Turgot, a representative Frenchman, 
 233. 
 
 Ultramontane party. See Clergy. 
 
 Union, the Liberal, 130, 131. 
 
 Universal suffrage. See Suffrage. 
 
 University of France (the), the Guizot 
 ministry sacrifice it to the clerpy, 
 90, 91 ; alliance of Thiers and Ea'l- 
 loux against, 117-119. 
 
 Vauban, a representative Frenchman, 
 233- 
 
 Vauvenargues, Thiers' prize discourse 
 upon, 16-18. 
 
 Venice, contrasted by Thiers with 
 Florence, 158, 159. 
 
 Vernet, Horace, his popularity pre- 
 dicted by Thiers, 23. 
 
 Versailles, transference of the seat of 
 Government to, 206, 207. 
 
 Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy, 
 Thiers' interview with, 187. 
 
 Voltaire, Thiers belongs to his intel- 
 lectual family, 26; Thiers' style 
 compared with his, 44 ; Thiers' 
 subject compared with his, 45 ; 
 Thiers like him in other respects, 
 65 ; characteristics which he shared 
 in common with Napoleon and with 
 Thiers, 70; his scientific knowledge 
 and that of Thiers, 134, 135 ; a rep- 
 resentative Frenchman, 233. 
 
 War, art of. See Soldier. 
 
 Wellington, Duke of, Thiers' anec- 
 dote of, 128. 
 
 William I., King of Prussia, approves 
 the renunciation of the Spanish 
 crown by Prince Leopold, 164, 165 ; 
 pressed by the Ollivier ministry, 
 165, 166. 
 
 Women, Thiers' want of esteem for 
 their genius, 25 ; his gallantry 
 toward, 131 ; his wife and her sister, 
 230. 
 
 Works of Thiers, general remarks on, 
 9-12; "The Pyrenees and the 
 South of France during the Months 
 of November and December. 1822," 
 13-16, 21 ; prize discourse on Vau- 
 venargues, 16-18; political articles 
 for the " Constitutionnel," 21-23 ; 
 political bulletins for the "Ta- 
 blettes Universelles," 21; art criti- 
 cism for the "Globe" (quotation), 
 23-25; biography of Miss Bellamy, 
 36 : article on Sulpiz Boisser^e, 36 ; 
 
Index. 
 
 243 
 
 article on Cologne 
 1 L.a\ 
 
 le Cathedral, 36; 
 study of John Law, 36; article on 
 Marshal Saint-Cyr (quoted), 36, 37 ; 
 article in response to Montlosier 
 (quoted), 37, 38; " History of the 
 French Revolution," 38-43; Pro- 
 test against the July Ordinances, 
 54, 55 ; "The Monarchy of 1830," 
 55-57 ; first two speeches on finance, 
 59, 60; first successful speech, 61 ; 
 speech on foreign affairs (August, 
 1831), 62, 63 ; first ministerial speech, 
 64; speech upon being received 
 into the Academy (quoted), 73-75 ; 
 speeches of Dec. 31, 1834, and of 
 Jan. 22, 1835 (quoted), 77, 
 port upon the Education 
 1844, 9o» 117; speech of Feb. 2, 
 1848 (quoted), loi ; letter of March 
 3, 1848 (quoted), 105, 106 ; " De- 
 fence of Property," loS ; speech of 
 May 6, 1834 (quoted), 109 ; report 
 and speeches upon Proudhon's theo- 
 ries and proposals, 109, no; speech 
 in defence of the Italian policy 
 (1849), 115; speech on the first act 
 of the conspiracy of Louis Buona- 
 parte (quoted), 120, 121 ; speech on 
 the proposition of the Questors 
 (Nov. 1851), 122 ; unpublished work 
 on scientific philosophy, 134, 230 ; 
 
 78; re- 
 Bill of 
 
 " History of the Consulate and the 
 Empire," 135-141 ; first important 
 speech in the Corps L^gislatif 
 (quoted), 147-150; definition of a 
 free country (quoted), 154 ; on poli- 
 tical prudence (from the speech of 
 April 13, 1865), 15s ; on Italy (from 
 the same), 158, 159; speech of 
 March 14, 1867, 157, 158; speech 
 of Jan. 27, 1870, 160, 162; speech 
 of June 30, 1870 (quoted), 162, 163 ; 
 speech of July 15, 1870 (quoted), 
 167-169 ; letter of July 21, 1870 
 (quoted), 170-172 ; deposition be- 
 fore the Committee of Inquiry, 
 Sept. 17, 1871 (quoted), 176 ; ac- 
 count of his mission to the neutral 
 powers, 197 ; speech to the Assem- 
 uly at Bordeaux, 206; speech of 
 March 27, 1871, (quoted), 208; 
 speech of April i6, 1835 (quoted), 
 215; speech on recruitment (June 
 8, 1872, quoted), 217, 218 ; message 
 to the Assembly (1872), 218, 219; 
 farewell discourse, 221, 222 ; his 
 last speech in the Assembly, 228; 
 his summary of his political princi- 
 ples, 230, 231. (See Quotations.) 
 
 Writers, imaginative, attitude toward 
 the July Government, 49-53. 
 
 Writings of Thiers. See Works. 
 
UNWIN BROTHERS, /V\ 
 CHILWORTK AND LONDON. 
 
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