to bombarding Paris, and wished to reduce it, like Metz, by famine. They already computed that it would have exhausted its provisions by the end of January. To admit food for a month, as was proposed, would carry the siege on to the end of February, and keep the army for four winter months in the dreary lines. On the other hand, Paris was so well supplied that it risked nothing by giving up the proposed condition. If the provinces could not raise the siege in three months, they could not raise it at all. But the Government of National Defence refused to entertain the notion of an armistice without revictualling Paris, and thus ended the last attempt to terminate the war before the extreme of misery had befallen the people of France.
The failure was not felt at first to be so disastrous, either at Paris or at Tours. During the conferences at Versailles there had been an abortive revolution against Trochu and Favre. The siege had lasted six weeks with an exasperating tranquillity. The Germans made no attempt to get in, nor the French to get out. Although the garrison was twice as numerous as the besiegers, Trochu did not esteem it capable of raising the siege by winning a pitched battle ; and he waited the moment for a combined attack when an army should come up from the provinces. His troops, seeing that he would not face the enemy, began to share his despondency. The inaction of Trochu, and the departure of Gambetta, who was popular in the streets, caused the Government to lose ground with the advanced democracy. The municipal elections had been promised and then postponed. The Government, which had not the sanction of the popular vote, dreaded the presence of a body sprung from universal suffrage, and the Red Republicans knew that the election of the Municipality would give the supreme power to them. The Emperor had taken the power out of the hands of the people, and exercised it for his own independent purposes, and not in the interest of any section of society. His merit in the eyes of France had been that he suspended the conflict between property and
