But, as we have seen, there came a time when the last hard bargains with Bismarck as to the payment of the war debt neared their end; and the rapier-play between the Liberator of the Territory and the parties of the Assembly also drew to a close. In one matter he had given them just cause for complaint. As far back as November 13, 1872 (that is, before the financial problem was solved), he suddenly and without provocation declared from the tribune of the National Assembly that it was time to establish the Republic. The proposal was adjourned, but Thiers had damaged his influence. He had broken the "Compact of Bordeaux" and had shown his hand. The Assembly now knew that he was a Republican. Finally, he made a dignified speech to the Assembly, justifying his conduct in the past, appealing from the verdict of parties to the impartial tribunal of History, and prophesying that the welfare of France was bound up with the maintenance of the Conservative Republic. The Assembly by a majority of fourteen decided on a course of action that he disapproved, and he therefore resigned (May 24, 1873).
It seems that History will justify his appeal to her tribunal. Looking, not at the occasional shifts that he used in order to disunite his opponents, but rather at the underlying motives that prompted his resolve to maintain that form of government which least divided his countrymen, posterity has praised his conduct as evincing keen insight into the situation, a glowing love for France before which all his earliest predilections vanished, and a masterly skill in guiding her from the abyss of anarchy, civil war, and bankruptcy that had but recently yawned at her feet. Having set her upon the path of safety, he now betook himself once more to those historical and artistic studies which he loved better than power and office. It is given to few men not only to write history but also to make history; yet in both spheres Thiers achieved signal success. Some one has dubbed him "the greatest little man known to history." Granting even that the paradox is tenable, we may still assert that his influence on the life of France exceeded that of many of her so-called heroes.
In fact, it would be difficult to point out in any country during the Nineteenth Century, since the time of Bonaparte's Consulate, a work of political, economic, and social renovation greater than that which went on in the two years during which Thiers held the reins of power. Apart from the unparalleled feat of paying off the Germans, the Chief of the Executive breathed new vigour into the public service, revived national spirit in so noteworthy a way as to bring down threats of war from German military circles in 1872 (to be repeated more seriously in 1875), and placed on the Statute Book two measures of paramount importance. These were the reform of Local Government and the Army Bill.
These measures claim a brief notice. The former of them naturally falls into two parts, dealing severally with the Commune and the Department. These are the two all-important areas in French life. In rural districts the Commune corresponds to the English parish; it is the oldest and best-defined of all local areas. In urban districts it corresponds with the municipality or township. The Revolutionists of 1790 and 1848 had sought to apply the principle of manhood suffrage to communal government; but their plans were swept away by the ensuing reactions, and the dawn of the Third Republic found the Communes, both rural and urban, under the control of the préfets and their subordinates. We must note here that the office of préfet, instituted by Bonaparte in 1800, was designed to link the local government of the Departments closely to the central power: this magistrate, appointed by the Executive at Paris, having almost unlimited control over local affairs throughout the several Departments. Indeed, it was against the excessive centralisation of the prefectorial system that the Parisian Communists made their heedless and unmeasured protest. The question having thus been thrust to the front, the Assembly brought forward (April 1871) a measure authorising the election of Communal Councils elected by every adult man who had resided for a year in the Commune. A majority of the Assembly wished that the right of choosing mayors should rest with the Communal Councils, but Thiers, browbeating the deputies by his favourite device of threatening to resign, carried an amendment limiting this right to towns of less than 20,000 inhabitants. In the larger towns, and in all capitals of Departments, the mayors were to be appointed by the central power. Thus the Napoleonic tradition in favour of keeping local government under the oversight of officials nominated from Paris was to some extent perpetuated even in an avowedly democratic measure.
Paris was to have a Municipal Council composed of eighty members elected by manhood suffrage from each ward; but the mayors of the twenty arrondissements, into which Paris is divided, were, and still are, appointed by the State; and here again the control of the police and other extensive powers are vested in the Préfet of the Department of the Seine, not in the mayors of the arrondissements or the Municipal Council. The Municipal or Communal Act of 1871, then, is a compromise--on the whole a good working compromise--between the extreme demands for local self-government and the Napoleonic tradition, now become an instinct with most Frenchmen in favour of central control over matters affecting public order[69].
The matter of Army Reform was equally pressing. Here, again, Thiers had the ground cleared before him by a great overturn, like that which enabled Bonaparte in his day to remodel France, and the builders of Modern Prussia--Stein, Scharnhorst, and Hardenberg--to build up their State from its ruins. In particular, the inefficiency of the National Guards and of the Garde Mobile made it easy to reconstruct the French Army on the system of universal conscription in a regular army, the efficiency of which Prussia had so startlingly displayed in the campaigns of Königgrätz (Sadowa) and Sedan. Thiers, however, had no belief in a short service system with its result of a huge force of imperfectly trained troops: he clung to the old professional army; and when that was shown to be inadequate to the needs of the new age, he pleaded that the period of compulsory service should be, not three, but five years. On the Assembly demurring to the expense and vital strain for the people which this implied, he declared with passionate emphasis that he would resign unless the five years were voted. They were voted (June 10, 1872). At the same time, the exemptions, so numerous during the Second Empire, were curtailed and the right of buying a substitute was swept away. After five years' service with the active army were to come four years with the reserve of the active army, followed by further terms in the territorial army. The favour of one year's service instead of five was to be accorded in certain well-defined cases, as, for instance, to those who had distinguished themselves at the Lycées, or highest grade public schools. Such was the law which was published on July 27, 1872[70].
The sight of a nation taking on itself this heavy blood-tax (heavier than that of Germany, where the time of service with the colours was only for three years) aroused universal surprise, which beyond the Rhine took the form of suspicion that France was planning a war of revenge. That feeling grew in intensity in military circles in Berlin three years later, as the sequel will show. Undaunted by the thinly-veiled threats that came from Germany, France proceeded with the tasks of paying off her conquerors and reorganising her own forces; so that Thiers on his retirement from office could proudly point to the recovery of French credit and prestige after an unexampled overthrow.
In feverish haste, the monarchical majority of the National Assembly appointed Marshal MacMahon to the Presidency (May 24, 1873). They soon found out, however, the impossibility of founding a monarchy. The Comte de Paris, in whom the hopes of the Orleanists centred, went to the extreme of self-sacrifice, by visiting the Comte de Chambord, the Legitimist "King" of France, and recognising the validity of his claims to the throne. But this amiable pliability, while angering very many of the Orleanists, failed to move the monarch-designate by one hair's-breadth from those principles of divine right against which the more liberal monarchists always protested. "Henri V." soon declared that he would neither accept any condition nor grant a single guarantee as to the character of his future rule. Above all, he declared that he would never give up the white flag of the ancien régime. In his eyes the tricolour, which, shortly after the fall of the Bastille, Louis XVI. had recognised as the flag of France, represented the spirit of the Great Revolution, and for that great event he had the deepest loathing. As if still further to ruin his cause, the Count announced his intention of striving with all his might for the restoration of the Temporal Power of the Pope. It is said that the able Bishop of Orleans, Mgr. Dupanloup, on reading one of the letters by which the Comte de Chambord nailed the white flag to the mast, was driven to exclaim, "There! That makes the Republic! Poor France! All is lost."
Thus the attempts at fusion of the two monarchical parties had only served to expose the weaknesses of their position and to warn France of the probable results of a monarchical restoration. That the country had well learnt the lesson appeared in the bye-elections, which in nearly every case went in favour of Republican candidates. Another event that happened early in 1873 further served to justify Thiers' contention that the Republic was the only possible form of government. On January 9, Napoleon III. died of the internal disease which for seven years past had been undermining his strength. His son, the Prince Imperial, was at present far too young to figure as a claimant to the throne.
It is also an open secret that Bismarck worked hard to prevent all possibility of a royalist Restoration; and when the German ambassador at Paris, Count Arnim, opposed his wishes in this matter, he procured his recall and subjected him to a State prosecution. In fact, Bismarck believed that under a Republic France would be powerless in war, and, further, that she could never form that alliance with Russia which was the bugbear of his later days. A Russian diplomatist once told the Duc de Broglie that the kind of Republic which Bismarck wanted to see in France was "une République dissolvante."