recent for the youthful promise of his heir to be regarded as
having any connexion with the future fortunes of France, except
by the small group of Bonapartists. Thiers remained the centre
of interest. Much as the monarchists disliked him, they at first
shrank from upsetting him before they were ready with a scheme
of monarchical restoration, and while Gambetta’s authority was
growing in the land. But when the Left Centre took alarm at the
return of radical deputies at numerous by-elections the reactionaries
utilized the divisions in the republican party, and for the
only time in the history of the Third Republic they gave proof of
parliamentary adroitness. The date for the evacuation of France
by the German troops had been advanced, largely owing to
Thiers’ successful efforts to raise the war indemnity. The monarchical
Resignation
of Thiers.
majority, therefore, thought the moment had
arrived when his services might safely be dispensed
with, and the campaign against him was ably conducted
by a coalition of Legitimists, Orleanists and
Bonapartists. The attack on Thiers was led by the duc
de Broglie, the son of another minister of Louis Philippe and
grandson of Madame de Staël. Operations began with the
removal from the chair of the Assembly of Jules Grévy, a moderate
republican, who was chosen president at Bordeaux, and the
substitution of Buffet, an old minister of the Second Republic
who had rallied to the Empire. A debate on the political tendency
of the government brought Thiers himself to the tribune
to defend his policy. He maintained that a conservative
Republic was the only régime possible, seeing that the monarchists
in the Assembly could not make a choice between their three
pretenders to the throne. A resolution, however, was carried
which provoked the old statesman into tendering his resignation.
This time it was not declined, and the majority with unseemly
Marshal MacMahon president of the Republic.
haste elected as president of the Republic Marshal
MacMahon, duc de Magenta, an honest soldier of
royalist sympathies, who had won renown and a ducal
title on the battlefields of the Second Empire. In the
eyes of Europe the curt dismissal of the aged liberator
of the territory was an act of ingratitude. Its justification
would have been the success of the majority in forming a
stable monarchical government; but the sole result of the 24th
of May 1873 was to provide a definite date to mark the opening
of the era of anti-republican incompetency in France which has
lasted for more than a generation, and has been perhaps the most
effective guardian of the Third Republic.
The political incompetency of the reactionaries was fated never to be corrected by the intelligence of its princes or of its chiefs, and the year which saw Thiers dismissed to make way for a restoration saw also that restoration indefinitely postponed by the fatal action of the legitimist pretender. The comte de Paris went to Frohsdorf to abandon to the comte de Chambord his claims to the crown as the heir of the July Monarchy, and to accept the position of dauphin, thus implying that his grandfather Louis Philippe was a usurper. With the “Government of Moral Order” in command the restoration of the monarchy seemed imminent, when the royalists had their hopes dashed by the announcement that “Henri V.” would accept the throne only on the condition that the nation adopted as the standard of France the white flag—at the very sight of which Marshal MacMahon said the rifles in the army would go off by themselves. The comte de Chambord’s refusal to accept the tricolour was The comte de Chambord. probably only the pretext of a childless man who had no wish to disturb his secluded life for the ultimate benefit of the Orleans family which had usurped his crown, had sent him as a child into exile, and outraged his mother the duchesse de Berry. Whatever his motive, his decision could have no other effect than that of establishing the Republic, as he was likely to live for years, during which the comte de Paris’ claims had to remain suspended. It was not possible to leave the land for ever under the government improvised at Bordeaux when the Germans were masters of France; so the majority in the Assembly decided to organize another provisional government on more regular lines, which might possibly last till the comte de Chambord had taken the white flag to the grave, leaving the way to the throne clear for the comte de Paris. On the 19th of November 1873 a Bill was passed The Septennate. which instituted the Septennate, whereby the executive power was confided to Marshal MacMahon for seven years. It also provided for the nomination of a commission of the National Assembly to take in hand the enactment of a constitutional law. Before this an important constitutional innovation had been adopted. Under Thiers there were no changes of ministry. The president of the Republic was perpetual prime minister, constantly dismissing individual holders of portfolios, but never changing at one moment the whole council of ministers. Marshal MacMahon, the day after his appointment, nominated a cabinet with a vice-president of the council as premier, and thus inaugurated the system of ministerial instability which has been the most conspicuous feature of the government of the Third Republic. Under the Septennate the ministers, monarchist or moderate republican, were socially and perhaps intellectually of a higher class than those who governed France during the last twenty years of the 19th century. But the duration of the cabinets was just as brief, thus displaying the fact, already similarly demonstrated under the Restoration and the July Monarchy, that in France parliamentary government is an importation not suited to the national temperament.
The duc de Broglie was the prime minister in MacMahon’s
first two cabinets which carried on the government of the country
up to the first anniversary of Thiers’ resignation. The duc de
Broglie’s defeat by a coalition of Legitimists and Bonapartists
with the Republicans displayed the mutual attitude of parties.
The Royalists, chagrined that the fusion of the two branches of
the Bourbons had not brought the comte de Chambord to the
throne, vented their rage on the Orleanists, who had the chief
share in the government without being able to utilize it for their
dynasty. The Bonapartists, now that the memory of the war
was receding, were winning elections in the provinces, and were
further encouraged by the youthful promise of the Prince
Imperial. The republicans had so improved their position that
the duc d’Audiffret-Pasquier, great-nephew of the chancellor
Pasquier, tried to form a coalition ministry with M. Waddington,
afterwards ambassador of the Republic in London, and other
members of the Left Centre. Out of this uncertain state of
affairs was evolved the constitution which has lasted the longest
of all those that France has tried since the abolition of the old
monarchy in 1792. Its birth was due to chance. Not being
able to restore a monarchy, the National Assembly was unwilling
definitively to establish a republic, and as no limit was set by
the law on the duration of its powers, it might have continued
the provisional state of things had it not been for the Bonapartists.
That party displayed so much activity in agitating for
a plebiscite, that when the rural voters at by-elections began to
rally to the Napoleonic idea, alarm seized the constitutionalists
of the Right Centre who had never been persuaded by Thiers’
exhortations to accept the Republic. Consequently in January
1875 the Assembly, having voted the general principle that the
Constitution
voted, 1875.
legislative power should be exercised by a Senate and
a Chamber of Deputies, without any mention of the
executive régime, accepted by a majority of one a
momentous resolution proposed by M. Wallon, a
member of the Right Centre. It provided that the president of
the Republic should be elected by the absolute majority of the
Senate and the Chamber united as a National Assembly, that he
should be elected for seven years, and be eligible for re-election.
Thus by one vote the Republic was formally established, “the
Father of the Constitution” being M. Wallon, who began his
political experiences in the Legislative Assembly of 1849, and
survived to take an active part in the Senate until the twentieth
century.
The Republic being thus established, General de Cissey, who had become prime minister, made way for M. Buffet, but retained his portfolio of war in the new coalition cabinet, which contained some distinguished members of the two central groups, including M. Léon Say. A fortnight previously, at the end of February