M. Thiers did not immediately accept the hint, but remained in the capital during the day, to watch the course of events and endeavour to prevent his friends from doing anything rash. He energetically sought to dissuade those who were for resisting the king’s decree by force of arms; but did not succeed. When the barricades were raised, he left Paris, because he thought that the people were doing an unwise thing, which would lead to a fearful slaughter, and perhaps result in himself and friends being shot.
When, however, the battle between the army and the people had really begun, the indomitable little man returned to Paris, and heedless of the bullets that were flying about, he ran here and there trying to collect adherents for the Duke of Orleans. He also had a proclamation of the Duke, as king, printed, rushed out with it, damp as it was from the press, and distributed copies to the victorious insurgents; but this operation nearly cost him his life, for the crowds on the Place de la Bourse were shouting for a republic, and a cry was immediately raised to lynch M. Thiers. He only escaped by dashing into a pastry-cook’s shop, and taking a header down the open cellar which led to the kitchen.
Nothing daunted by this contretemps, however, he sought out M. Scheffer, an intimate friend of the Duke of Orleans, and started off for Neuilly with him (without consulting anybody else), to offer the crown of France to the Duke. When they found the Duke, he despatched M. Thiers to Prince Talleyrand to ask his advice on the subject; and the latter, who was in bed at the time, said: ‘Let him accept;’ but positively refused to put this advice in writing. Thus the Duke of Orleans became King of the French under the name of Louis-Philippe, and the Marseilles student found himself a step nearer the accomplishment of his aim. The poor locksmith’s son had overthrown one king and established another!
It was M. Thiers who caused the remains of Napoleon to be removed from the gloomy resting-place in St Helena to the church of the Invalides in Paris, where they were re-interred amid great pomp and circumstance. He it was who also invented or gave currency to the now well-known constitutional maxim, ‘The king reigns, but does not govern.’
In this reign M. Thiers commenced his great work on the Consulate and the Empire, in which he so eulogised the First Napoleon and flattered the military fame of France, that he unwittingly paved the way for the advent of the second Empire.
The revolution of 1848, which led to the abdication of Louis-Philippe, found Thiers but a simple soldier in the National Guard, and parading the streets with a musket on his shoulder, despite his diminutive stature. A man of his transcendent ability, however, could not be left long in so humble a position, and we therefore find the newly elected sovereign Louis Napoleon trying hard to win over to his side this unique citizen. But Thiers declined the honour, and remained a thorn in Napoleon’s side during the whole period of his reign. When the coup d’état of 1851 was struck he was one of the leading statesmen whose arrest was ordered and carried out. The patriot was seized and forcibly taken out of his bed at an early hour in the morning, and imprisoned at Mazas for several days. He was then escorted out of the country, and became an exile from the land he loved so well.
While the excitement in Paris, which culminated in the outbreak of the war with Germany, was at its height, and the whole nation was singing the Marseillaise and shouting ‘à Berlin,’ M. Thiers’ voice was the only one raised to protest against France precipitating herself into an unjust and unnecessary war. He was unheeded at the moment; but a few weeks sufficed to prove the soundness of his reasoning; and when the Germans were marching on Paris, it was to the locksmith’s son that the whole nation turned in its distress.
The Napoleonic dynasty was deposed, and at the elections for the National Assembly which afterwards took place, M. Thiers was elected for twenty-six Departments—a splendid national testimony to his patriotism and ability. As soon as the Assembly met he was at once appointed ‘Chief of the Executive Power’ of the French Republic. Thus the poor student of the Marseilles Academy had become, almost without any effort of his own, the governor of his country; and how he acquitted himself of the onerous and self-sacrificing task, let the living grief of Frenchmen for his loss at this moment proudly attest.
Previous to this appointment, however, and while the German army was thundering at the gates of Paris, the brave old statesman had, in his seventy-fourth year, shewn his unalterable devotion to France by the famous journey he made to all the European courts to endeavour to obtain assistance. Failing in this, he came back, and being made President, as above mentioned, he made peace with the Germans on the best terms he could get, turned round and beat the Communists in the streets of Paris; and within three short years he had not only paid the heaviest war indemnity ever known, but had cleared his country of the Germans, consolidated her resources, and reorganised her army.
On the morning of the 4th September last, France was suddenly plunged into the deepest grief and dismay by the announcement that her greatest citizen had been taken from her by death on the previous evening, at a time when the whole nation was looking to him as the one man who could save it from the dangerous crisis through which it was at that moment passing.