But it was not to be. France failed to produce a great general, and the “bagman Marshal,” as Bazaine was called in Mexico, by shutting himself up with 175,000 men in Metz, rendered final defeat certain; though if Marshal MacMahon’s advice had been followed, and if General Trochu had later sufficiently organised the forces at his disposal in Paris to break through the German lines, a stouter fight might have been fought. As it was, one French army after another was defeated in the field, and Paris and Metz were forced to surrender by literal starvation. On January 28th, 1871, an armistice was signed between Bismarck and Jules Favre and the revictualling of the famine-stricken Parisians began, the siege having lasted a little over four months. A National Assembly was summoned to decide the terms of a definite peace or in what manner it might be possible to continue the war.
So well satisfied were the voters of Montmartre with the conduct of their Mayor during all this trying time that they decided to send him as their representative to Bordeaux and polled just upon 100,000 votes in his favour. To Bordeaux, therefore, Clemenceau went, on February 12th, as deputy for one of the most radical and revolutionary districts of Paris. Though neither then nor later an avowed Socialist, no Socialist could have done more for practical democratic and Socialist measures than Clemenceau had done. That, of course, was the reason why he was elected by so advanced a constituency.
He found himself strangely out of his element when he took his seat in the National Assembly. Perhaps no more reactionary body had ever met in France. The majority of the members were thorough-going Conservatives who at heart were eager to restore the monarchy. They were royalists but slightly disguised, dug up out of their seclusion, from all parts of the country, who thought their time had come to revenge themselves not so much upon the Buonapartists who had governed France for twenty years as upon Paris and the Parisians who had chased Charles X and Louis Philippe out of France. They well knew that the capital would never consent to the restoration of the candidate of either of the Bourbon factions. These fitting champions of a worn-out Legitimism or Orleanism were old men in a hurry to resuscitate the dead and galvanise the past into fresh life. Their very heads betrayed their own antiquity. So much so that a favourite pastime of young ladies of pleasure in the Galleries, who had flocked to Bordeaux, was what was irreverently called “bald-headed loo.” This consisted in betting upon the number of flies that would settle within a given period upon a devoted deputy’s hairless occiput. Unfortunately these ancient gentlemen found in M. Thiers a leader who could scarcely have been surpassed for ingenuity and unscrupulousness. He deliberately traded upon prejudices, and his main political assets were the fear and distrust which he awakened in one set of his countrymen against another. In modern as in ancient society there is an economic and almost a personal antagonism between country and town.
The man of the Provinces, living always in the rural districts, the tiller, the producer, the indefatigable toiler, the parsimonious accumulator of small gains, the respecter of ancestral traditions and the devotee of old-world methods and well-tried means of gaining a poor livelihood, profoundly affected likewise by his inherited religion, has, in most cases, a deep-seated contempt, strangely enough not wholly divorced from fear, for the man of the town, and especially for the man of Paris. This animosity, which has by no means wholly disappeared to-day, was keenly in evidence forty and fifty years ago. There is an economic cause at the bottom of the antipathy, but this does not account for its many-sided manifestation. The countryman naturally desires to sell his produce at as high a price as possible. It is for him almost a matter of life and death to do so. The townsman, on his side, the artisan or labourer or even the rentier of the great cities, is naturally anxious to obtain the necessaries of life which he gets from the rural districts at as low a rate as he may be able to buy them having regard to his wages or his income. Hence any expenditure which tends to benefit the country is regarded with suspicion by the townsman and contrariwise as between town and country, except such outlay as cheapens the cost of transportation, where both have an identical interest.
But this general divergence of economic advantage, which has existed for many centuries does not wholly account for the ill-feeling which too often appears. There is a psychological side to the matter as well. Thus the peasant, even when he is getting satisfactory prices for his wares, despises his own customers when they pay too much for small luxuries which they could easily do without. Moreover, he considers the cleverness of his fellow-countrymen of the city, their readiness to change their opinions and adopt new ideas, their doubts as to the super-sanctity of that individual property, property which is the small landowner’s god, as evidences of a dangerous disposition to upset all that ought to be most solemnly upheld. The townsman, on the other hand, too often looks down upon the peasant and the rural provincial generally as an ignorant, short-sighted, narrow-minded, grasping creature, full of prejudices and eaten up with superstition, who, out of sheer obstinacy, stands immovably in the way of reforms that might, and in many cases certainly would, benefit them both.
It is the task and the duty of the true statesman to bridge over these differences as far as possible, to try to harmonise interests and assuage feelings which under existing conditions are apt to conflict with one another. Thus only can the whole country be well and truly served. M. Thiers pursued precisely the contrary course. In order to foster reaction and to strengthen the position of the bourgeoisie, he and his supporters set to work deliberately to excite the hatred of the country-folk against their brethren of the towns. They were willing to accept the Republic only on the distinct understanding that it should be, as Zola expressed it, a bourgeoised sham. The bogey of the social revolution was stuck up daily to frighten the timid property-owners. Above all, Paris was pointed out as the danger spot of order-respecting France. Paris ought to be muzzled and kept under even more strictly by the self-respecting Republic than by the Empire. That way alone lay safety. Thus the dislike of the provincials for the capital was fanned to so fierce a heat that the very title of capital was denied to her. As a result of this unpatriotic and traitorous policy Paris herself was unfortunately forced to the conviction that the reactionists of Bordeaux were determined to deprive her of all her rights, and that the great city which founded the Republic would be made to suffer dearly for her presumption. Nearly all that followed was in reality due to this sinister policy of provocation, adopted and carried out by M. Thiers and his bigoted followers.
Clemenceau’s position was a difficult one. Knowing both peasants and Parisians intimately well, he saw clearly the very dangerous situation which must inevitably be created by such tactics of exasperation. As one of the deputies of Radical Republican Paris, he did his utmost at Bordeaux to maintain the independence of his constituents and to resist the fatal action of the majority. As the son of a landowner in La Vendée, he understood clearly the views of the provincials and how necessary it was that they should be thoroughly informed as to the aims of the Parisians. But Paris had first claim on his services. He therefore associated himself with Louis Blanc, voted with him against the preliminaries of peace and in favour of the continuance of the war. There was a strong opinion at this time that many of the Buonapartists in high military command, as well as in important civil posts, were traitors to the Republic and had acted, as Bazaine unquestionably did, in the interest of the Imperial prisoner instead of on behalf of France. These factionists too were hostile to Paris, and a demand was made, in which Clemenceau joined, for a full investigation of the conduct of such men during the siege. Unfortunately, affairs in the capital were now becoming so critical and the probability of another revolution there seemed so great that Clemenceau felt his duties as Mayor of Montmartre were still more urgent than his votes and speeches at Bordeaux, as deputy for that district. Consequently, after less than a month’s stay at Bordeaux, he returned to Paris on the evening of March 5th. The Commune of Paris was set on foot within a fortnight of that date, on March 18th, 1871.