the remark, “If there is no war, my son will never be emperor.” The desired pretext was offered on the 3rd of July 1870 by the candidature of a Hohenzollern prince for the throne of Spain. To the French people it seemed that Prussia, The Hohenzollern candidature. barely mistress of Germany, was reviving against France the traditional policy of the Habsburgs. France, having rejected for dynastic reasons the candidature of a Frenchman, the duc de Montpensier, saw herself threatened with a German prince. Never had the emperor, now both physically and morally ill, greater need of the counsels of a clear-headed statesman and the support of an enlightened public opinion if he was to defeat the statecraft of Bismarck. But he could find neither.
Ollivier’s Liberal ministry, wishing to show itself as jealous
for national interests as any absolutist ministry, bent upon
doing something great, and swept away by the force
of that opinion which it had itself set free, at once
accepted the war as inevitable, and prepared for it
The declaration
of war.
with a light heart.[1] In face of the decided declaration
of the duc de Gramont, the minister for foreign affairs, before
the Legislative Body of the 6th of July, Europe, in alarm,
supported the efforts of French diplomacy and obtained the
withdrawal of the Hohenzollern candidature. This did not
suit the views either of the war party in Paris or of Bismarck,
who wanted the other side to declare war. The ill-advised action
of Gramont in demanding from King William one of those
promises for the future which are humiliating but never binding,
gave Bismarck his opportunity, and the king’s refusal was
transformed by him into an insult by the “editing” of the Ems
telegram. The chamber, in spite of the desperate efforts of
Thiers and Gambetta, now voted by 246 votes to 10 in favour
of the war.
France found herself isolated, as much through the duplicity of Napoleon as through that of Bismarck. The disclosure to the diets of Munich and Stuttgart of the written text of the claims laid by Napoleon on the territories of Hesse and Bavaria had since the 22nd of August 1866 France isolated. estranged southern Germany from France, and disposed the southern states to sign the military convention with Prussia. Owing to a similar series of blunders, the rest of Europe had become hostile. Russia, which it had been Bismarck’s study both during and after the Polish insurrection of 1863 to draw closer to Prussia, learnt with annoyance, by the same indiscretion, how Napoleon was keeping his promises made at Stuttgart. The hope of gaining a revenge in the East for her defeat of 1856 while France was in difficulties made her decide on a benevolent neutrality. The disclosure of Benedetti’s designs of 1867 on Belgium and Luxemburg equally ensured an unfriendly neutrality on the part of Great Britain. The emperor counted at least on the alliance of Austria and Italy, for which he had been negotiating since the Salzburg interview (August 1867). But Austria, having suffered at his hands in 1859 and 1866, was not ready and asked for a delay before joining in the war; while the hesitating friendships of Italy could only be won by the evacuation of Rome. The chassepots of Mentana, Rouher’s “Never,” and the hostility of the Catholic empress to any secret article which should open to Italy the gates of the capital, deprived France of her last friend.
Marshal Leboeuf’s armies were no more effective than
Gramont’s alliances. The incapacity of the higher officers of
the French army, the lack of preparation for war at
headquarters, the selfishness and shirking of responsibility
on the part of the field officers, the absence of any
Sedan.
Fall of the Empire.
fixed plan when failure to mobilize had destroyed all
chance of the strong offensive which had been counted on, and
the folly of depending on chance, as the emperor had so often
done successfully, instead of scientific warfare, were all plainly
to be seen as early as the insignificant engagement of Saarbrücken.
Thus the French army proceeded by disastrous stages from
Weissenburg, Forbach, Froeschweiler, Borny, Gravelotte, Noisseville
and Saint-Privat to the siege of Metz and the slaughter at
Illy. By the capitulation of Sedan the Empire lost its only
support, the army, and fell. Paris was left unprotected and
emptied of troops, with only a woman at the Tuileries, a terrified
Assembly at the Palais-Bourbon, a ministry, that of Palikao,
without authority, and leaders of the Opposition who fled as
the catastrophe approached.
(P. W.)
The Third Republic 1870–1909
The Third Republic may be said to date from the revolution of the 4th of September 1870, when the republican deputies of Paris at the hôtel de ville constituted a provisional government under the presidency of General Trochu, military governor of the capital. The Empire had Government of National Defence, 1870. fallen, and the emperor was a prisoner in Germany. As, however, since the great Revolution régimes in France have been only passing expedients, not inextricably associated with the destinies of the people, but bound to disappear when accounted responsible for national disaster, the surrender of Louis Napoleon’s sword to William of Prussia did not disarm the country. Hostilities were therefore continued. The provisional government had to assume the part of a Committee of National Defence, and while insurrection was threatening in Paris, it had, in the face of the invading Germans, to send a delegation to Tours to maintain the relations of France with the outside world. Paris was invested, and for five months endured siege, bombardment and famine. Before the end of October the capitulation of Metz, by the treason of Marshal Bazaine, deprived France of the last relic of its regular army. With indomitable courage the garrison of Paris made useless sorties, while an army of irregular troops vainly essayed to resist the invader, who had reached the valley of the Loire. The acting Government of National Defence, thus driven from Tours, took refuge at Bordeaux, where it awaited the capitulation of Paris, which took place on the 29th of January 1871. The same day the preliminaries of peace were signed at Versailles, which, confirmed by the treaty of Frankfort of the 10th of May, transferred from France to Germany the whole of Alsace, excepting Belfort, and a large portion of Lorraine, including Metz, with a money indemnity of two hundred millions sterling.
On the 13th of February 1871 the National Assembly, elected after the capitulation of Paris, met at Bordeaux and assumed the powers hitherto exercised by the Government of National Defence. Since the meeting of the states-general Foundation of the Third Republic, 1871. in 1789 no representative body in France had ever contained so many men of distinction. Elected to conclude a peace, the great majority of its members were monarchists, Gambetta, the rising hope of the republicans, having discredited his party in the eyes of the weary population by his efforts to carry on the war. The Assembly might thus have there and then restored the monarchy had not the monarchists been divided among themselves as royalist supporters of the comte de Chambord, grandson of Charles X., and as Orleanists favouring the claims of the comte de Paris, grandson of Louis Philippe. The majority being unable to unite on the essential point of the choice of a sovereign, decided to allow the Republic, declared on the morrow of Sedan, to liquidate the disastrous situation. Consequently, on the 17th of February the National Assembly elected Thiers as “Chief of the Executive Power of the French Republic,” the abolition of the Empire being formally voted a fortnight later. The old minister of Louis Philippe, who had led the opposition to the Empire, and had been the chief opponent of the war, was further marked out for the position conferred on him by his election to the Assembly in twenty-six departments in recognition of his tour through Europe after the first defeats, undertaken in the patriotic hope of obtaining the intervention of the Powers on behalf of France. Thiers composed a ministry, and announced that the first duty of the government
- ↑ In the 14th volume of his L’Empire libéral (1909) M. Émile Ollivier gives a detailed and illuminating account of the events that led up to the war. He indignantly denies that he ever said that he contemplated it “with a light heart,” and says that he disapproved of Gramont’s demand for “guarantees,” to which he was not privy. His object is to prove that France was entrapped by Bismarck into a position in which she was bound in honour to declare war. (Ed.)
