France from Behind the Veil: Fifty Years of Social and Political Life

by Princess Catherine Radziwill

It was that word “dishonourable” that upset the Comte de Chambord. Himself the soul of honour, he could not but be affronted by the supposition that he could have had the intention to ask from the Duc de Magenta anything that could have compromised his loyalty as a man or as a soldier. I believe this had more than any other thing to do with the discouragement that made him seize the pretext of his white flag in order to renounce his pretensions to the throne of his ancestors. A good many years later, talking about Marshal MacMahon at Frohsdorf, he told me that “C’est un imbécile, et ce qui est pire, c’est un ambitieux, qui ne veut pas se l’avouer, et qui cherche à dissimuler ce sentiment sous le grand mot de son honneur” (“He is an imbecile, and what is worse, he has ambition, which he doesn’t want to own, and tries to hide under those great words, ‘his honour’”).

I don’t think anyone ever made a more scathing and more true appreciation of the character of the Marshal than the last descendant of the Bourbons when he voiced that judgment.

Once the possibility of a monarchical restoration was put aside, and especially after the Prince Imperial had fallen in Zululand, by which the Bonapartists were reduced to impotence, it seemed as if the Republic was to be the only possible government in France.

I was in Paris when the heir of the Napoleons ended his short existence so gloriously and so tragically, and I do not think that I heard one single person doubt that this Republican regime was certain to last.

Until then great hopes had existed, even among the former enemies of the Empire, that the young Prince would be able, by one of those freaks of political life which occur so often in the existence of nations, to step once more upon the throne from which his father had been overthrown. He was supposed to possess courage, cleverness, great steadfastness of character, strong principles, and an ardent love for his country. That alone constituted certain guarantees for the future.

The Orleanists knew very well that until the country had altogether forgotten the incident of their claiming back their confiscated millions at a moment when the country was smarting under the unparalleled disaster of 1870, they had no chance of being called back to power. The Comte de Chambord had made himself impossible; the Republic was acceptable to but very few; the Prince Imperial had therefore the possibility if not the probability of returning to France as its Emperor, and this solution was wished for even by people who, before the war and the changes which it had brought about, would have recoiled with horror at the idea of being thought supporters of the Bonapartes. But when fate intervened, and the tragedy which was enacted in Africa put an end to all hopes and calculations that had been made, it became evident that the country must resign itself to a Republican government. And I am persuaded that apart from the ardent Monarchists, who fought for a principle more than for a dynasty, every reasonable person in France thought so.

The whole situation rested on the fact that in the opinion of many, the Republic ought to be essentially Conservative, whilst in that of others, who were gradually to increase in number, its first duty was to show itself distinctly Radical, and determined to follow the glorious principles, as they were qualified, of 1789.

The Duc de Magenta, who found himself in a certain sense called upon to decide between these two currents, did not very well know what to do. His own leanings were distinctly Conservative, and he was no admirer of the Radical programme, scarcely even of the moderate Republican one. Nevertheless he imagined that he could have the necessary authority to appoint ministers of moderate views. There were still men of great valour in their midst, like M. Buffet and M. Dufaure, not to speak of the Duc d’Audiffret Pasquier, who had made a name for himself by his famous speech against Napoleon III. in the first National Assembly, nor of the Duc de Broglie, to whose help the Marshal was to have recourse later on. There were soldiers like General Changarnier and General Chanzy, who had fought so valiantly whilst in command of that army of the Loire which had made the last effort to free France from the victorious Prussians; politicians like M. Ribot, whose austerity and loyalty of principles have never to this day been doubted. There were also, even in the ranks of the Left, men like Leon Say, whose presence in a ministry was in itself a guarantee that it would never yield to the demands of the extreme Socialists, or like Gambetta, who, whatever can be said against him, was a great patriot, incapable of imperilling the existence of his country by an alliance with anarchism. Any man blessed with the slightest common sense, and possessed of frankness in his dealings with his colleagues, which unfortunately for him Marshal MacMahon never showed, might have consolidated the Republic by making use of these various elements. He was unable to do so, however, and went on from blunder to blunder, from concession to concession, reminding one of no one so much as Louis XVI., who also accepted everything and reconciled himself to nothing.

When the vote of the Chamber had made Jules Simon President of the Cabinet, Marshal MacMahon might easily have found in him an ally and a supporter in his wish to establish the Republic upon bases which would have strengthened the position of France in the eyes of Europe.

Jules Simon was a man of high principles, unsullied honour, a thinker, a writer, a philosopher, of austere life and strong convictions—one who was not guilty of meanness nor permitted himself anything base. He was a staunch Republican, a sincere Liberal, a true follower of whatever was good and great in the Revolution of 1789; he abhorred excesses and extravagances, no matter in what shape or under what colours they presented themselves.