But the reaction Louis Napoleon so confidently hoped for did not come. With military pride humbled in the dust, national pride wounded by the loss of two provinces, loaded down with an immense war indemnity, the people set about the task of rehabilitation; in an incredibly short time, the galling debt was paid, financial prosperity and political strength restored, and with military organization second to none in Europe, France, with revengeful eyes fastened on Germany, waits for the day of reckoning.
For twenty-four years the Republic has existed. Communistic fires always smouldering have again and again burst forth—demagogues, fanatics, and those creatures for whom there is no place in organized society, whose element is chaos, standing ready to fan the fires of revolt; while Orleanist, Bonapartist, Bourbon, are ever on the alert, watching for opportunity to slip in through the open door of Revolution.
England in conscious superiority smiles at a nation which has had seven political revolutions in a hundred years. Republic, then Empire, then a return to the Bourbons, then Constitutional Monarchy under Louis Philippe, then Republic, followed by Empire again, and now for the third time a Republic!
But France, complex, mobile, changeful as the sea, in riotous enjoyment of her new-found liberties, casts off a form of government as she would an ill-fitting garment. She knows the value of tranquillity—she had it for one thousand years! The people, which have only breathed the upper air for a century—the people, who were stifled under feudalism, stamped upon by Valois Kings, riveted down by Richelieu, then prodded, outraged, and starved by Bourbons, have become a great nation. Many-sided, resourceful, gifted, it matters not whether they have called the head of their government Consul, Emperor, King, or President. They are a race of freemen, who can never again be enslaved by tyrannous system.
It was a bright day for France when that ambitious young Emperor of Germany sent his great Chancellor into retirement; and another bright day when, taking offence at scant courtesy at the hands of the Czar, he left ajar the back door to his dominions. An alliance between despotic Russia thirsting for the waters of the Mediterranean, and Republican France thirsting for revenge, is the darkest cloud on the German horizon to-day. It is only a matter of months or of years when France will be at the throat of Germany demanding Alsace and Lorraine. The French army is not the one which faced Von Moltke in 1871; and when France knocks at her front door, Germany will have all she can attend to, without hearing Russian batteries thundering at her rear. A dramatic reconciliation with the old Chancellor is interesting, but it will not undo the work of the last four years.
There is no longer thought of conflict between any two nations of Europe. The next war is to be one of tremendous combinations. National alliances are shifting and uncertain. But at the time this is written (1894) Germany, Austria, and Italy are drawn together in one hostile camp, while France and Russia, in loving embrace, stand in the other; and England, aloof and suspicious, holds herself ready to hurl her weight against whichever one obstructs her path to India.
There is something in the air which makes one think the name Napoleon is still a thing to conjure with. But whatever the future may hold for France, no American can be indifferent to the fate of a nation to whom we owe so much. Nor can we ever forget that in the hour of our direst extremity, and regardless of cost to herself, she helped us to establish our liberties, and to take our place among the great nations of the earth.