France in the Nineteenth Century

by Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer

"From the moment when he dropped, tired out with his journey by balloon, into his chair in the archiepiscopal palace at Tours, and announced that he was invested with full powers to defend the country, no one throughout France seriously disputed his authority. His colleagues became his clerks. The treasury was empty, but he re-filled it. The arsenal was half empty, but in six weeks one great army, and almost two, were supplied with artillery, horses, gunners, and breech-loaders. The Lyons Reds had been told that they were wicked fools, and Communists and Anarchists ripe for revolt in Toulouse, Lyons, and Marseilles had been put down. The respectables everywhere rose at his summons, anarchy and military disobedience quailed."

The fortunes of war forced Gambetta and his Government from the banks of the Loire to Bordeaux. There, at the close of January, 1871, Jules Favre arrived from the Central Committee in Paris to announce, with shame and grief, that resistance was over: Paris had capitulated to the Prussians; and it only remained to elect a General Assembly which should create a regular government empowered to make peace with the enemy.

For a few hours that night the fate of France hung trembling in the scales. Thiers was in Bordeaux. He was known to think that France could only save what was left by accepting the armistice. Gambetta was known to be for No Surrender! Which should prevail? Would the dictator lay aside his power without a struggle?

Gambetta rose to the occasion during the night; but here the histories of Thiers and Gambetta run together; therefore, before I tell of what happened the next day, let me say a few words about the personal history of Léon Gambetta. He was only thirty-three years old at this time, having been born in 1838, when Thiers was forty-one years of age.

Gambetta's birthplace was Cahors, that city in the South of France stigmatized by Dante as the abode of usurers and scoundrels. His family was Italian and came from Genoa, but he was born a Frenchman, though his Italian origin, temperament, and complexion were constantly cast up against him. In his infancy he had been intended for the priesthood, and was sent, when seven years old, to some place where he was to be educated and trained for it. He soon wrote to his father that he was so miserable that if he were not taken away he would put out one of his eyes, which would disqualify him for the priestly calling. His father took no notice of the childish threat, and Gambetta actually plucked out one of his own eyes.

In 1868 he was a young lawyer in Paris; but his eloquence and ability were known only at the Café Procope to a circle of admiring fellow-Bohemians. On All Saints Day, 1868, the Press, presuming on the recent relaxation of personal government by the emperor, applauded the crowds who went to cover with funeral wreaths the grave of Baudin at Père la Chaise. Baudin had been the first man killed on Dec. 2, 1851, when offering resistance to the coup d'état. The Press was prosecuted for its utterances on this occasion. Gambetta defended one of the journals. Being an advocate, he could say what he pleased without danger of prosecution, and all Paris rang with the bitterness of his attack upon the Empire. From that moment he was a power in France. In person he was dark, short, stout, and somewhat vulgar, nor was there any social polish in his manners.

Not long after his great speech in defence of the Press, in the matter of Baudin, Gambetta was elected to the Chamber by the working-men of Belleville, and at the same time by Marseilles. He entered the Chamber as one wholly irreconcilable with the Empire or the emperor. His eloquence was heart-stirring, and commanded attention even from his adversaries.

When, on Sept. 4, 1870, the downfall of the Empire was proclaimed, Gambetta was made a member of the Council of Defence, and became Minister of the Interior. He remained in Paris until after the siege had begun; but he burned to be where he could act, and obtained the consent of his colleagues to go forth by balloon and try to stir up a warlike spirit in the Provinces. He was made Minister of War in addition to being Minister of the Interior. From Nov. 1, 1870, to Jan. 30, 1871, his efforts were almost superhuman; and but for Bazaine's surrender at Metz, they might have been successful.

Gambetta raised two armies,—one under General Aurelles des Paladines and General Chanzy; the other under Bourbaki and Garibaldi. The first was the Army of the Loire, the second of the Jura.

When the plan of co-operation with Bazaine's one hundred and seventy-five thousand well-trained troops had failed, and the Army of the Loire had been repulsed at Orleans, Gambetta with his Provisional Government moved to Bordeaux. Thither came Thiers, returned from his roving embassy,—a mission of peace whose purpose had been defeated by the warlike movements of Gambetta's armies.