Of the banishment of the religious orders and societies from Italy, which recently came into effect, the same only can be said as of the German expulsion. Our Holy Father, in receiving the generals of the various religious orders on January 2, said in reply to their address: "It is the third time during my life that religious orders have been suppressed. These corporations have always been the support of the church, and it is a dispensation of God that they should from time to time undergo such vicissitudes. This is a secret of Providence which I may not unravel, but I strive to see whether an angel may not be coming to aid the church. I do not say that I desire the destroying angel who visited the host of Sennacherib in order to save the chosen people of God. No, I have not that thought. I wish for an angel who might convert all hearts. We are in exile; we must come before God with the powerful arm of prayer, in order to obtain, if not what we wish, at least some assuagement of our misfortunes."
At the beginning of summer the world was excited by a rumor of the Pope's sickness unto death, and it was curious to observe the effect of the rumor upon the non-Catholic world. Pius IX. has already seen more than "the years of Peter." He has sustained in his own person the trials of Peter. But whatever the end may be which Jesus Christ has reserved for the close of the glorious career of his true Vicar, Pius IX. will leave this world, his soul borne up on the prayers and blessings of two hundred million hearts, while his name will for ever shine resplendent on the glittering scroll of the successors of Peter.
"On his return from Versailles, M. Thiers was greeted at the railway station by a crowd which was awaiting him there with loud cries of Vive M. Thiers! Vive le Président!" So runs a despatch from Paris on New Year's Day, 1873. How oddly it reads now! Le Président est mort: Vive le Président! M. Thiers is politically as dead as he that was laid in his quiet grave at Chiselhurst in the first month of the year. It almost requires a strained effort of the mind to recall the fact that a short year ago M. Thiers was the master of the situation in France, receiving deputations and congratulations on New Year's, and talking of his presidential visit to the Vienna exhibition. A quiet but significant little despatch of the same date may partly explain the rapid collapse of M. Thiers: "Many persons of political distinction left their names at the residence of the Orleans princes." The Catholic World for last January, in its review of the year 1872, said on the French question: "But Thiers cannot last, and what is to follow? The country would not bear the rule of the man of Sedan.... The speech of the Duc d'Audiffret-Pasquier, on the army contracts, killed Napoleonism for the nonce. We can only hope for the best in France from some other and nobler sprout of former dynasties; we cannot foresee it."
It is needless to tell here the story of how M. Thiers was overthrown, or to comment on it, beyond the timeworn illustration that as a rule it is a radical mistake for any one man to set himself up as a necessity for a nation; yet such a mistake is the commonest indulged in by rulers (in esse or in posse, as may be). In the midst of intense excitement in that most excitable of capitals, Paris, Marshal MacMahon was summoned by the majority of the Assembly to succeed M. Thiers. He placed himself as an impersonal instrument in the hands of the government, promising by the aid of "God and the army" to guarantee peace. He chose a conservative government. Order has been kept. The last farthing of the indemnity to Germany has been paid, and the last German soldier has quitted France.
A volume might be written on those few words—the indemnity has been paid: the last German soldier has quitted France. There is nothing but silent wonder for this marvellous feat, which in its way casts into the shade even the German conquest of France. A nation whose armies were one after the other shattered in a few months, an empire destroyed, an emperor led into captivity; its great fortresses beaten down, its capital besieged and taken twice over, first by the foe, after by its own soldiers from the hands of its suicidal children; two provinces, rich and fair, with their cities and peoples, amounting to a million and a half, taken away; its raw levies scattered into mist at a ruinous waste of life and money; its government overthrown and the entire national system overturned, so that men turned this way and that, and nowhere found a ruler. Men, money, provinces, cities, emperor, empire, rulers—all gone; commerce destroyed, the heart of the nation sore with resentment and stricken with sorrow: and all this crowded into a few months! Yet within less than three years this fickle, false, degenerate French nation—for such was the general character attributed to it after the late war—has restored its armies, has maintained peace, although even yet it can scarcely be said to have a permanent government, has set its commerce again afloat, and has rid itself of the foe at a cost that, when proposed, the whole world deemed fabulous.
One cannot help wondering now whether Prince Bismarck was prescient enough to foresee that France could afford to pay the fabulous sum for which he stipulated—more than a billion dollars. The figures are easily written down on paper, the words slip glibly from the lips, yet they signify a sum of money whose immensity, and the power that it contains for good or for evil, it is well-nigh impossible for the mind of man to conceive. When first bruited, the whole world looked aghast and refused to consider the idea that Prince Bismarck, especially after what the nation had suffered, could stipulate for the payment of so vast a sum—one that simply implied national bankruptcy. The world misjudged Prince Bismarck, and possibly he misjudged the power and vitality of the nation that lay quivering under his iron heel, or he might have demanded more. Yet here two years afterwards the almost impossible sum is told out to the last farthing, and the Germans are over the border again, with their gripe still on two French provinces, hastening fast to fortify and defend them from attack.
With what France has accomplished in these short months before our eyes, how irresistibly the thought comes to one—would it not have been wiser, truer patriotism, a loftier statesmanship, to have left those two provinces to France, and not hold them up for ever before her eyes as the fairest prize pitilessly wrung from her in her hour of anguish? Has not Prince Bismarck, or the Emperor, or Von Moltke, or whomsoever's doing it was, left the germ of future wars as a legacy to be fought by those yet unborn, when they shall be rotting in their graves?
A month or two ago, and the crown that once belonged to his race seemed to offer itself to the grasp of the Count of Chambord. Our readers know the story too well to repeat it here. All that need be said is, he refused it. Henri Cinq is very unlike Henri Quatre, the founder of his race. That Protestant gentleman deemed a throne worth a Mass; his Catholic descendant deems a throne insufficient to compensate him for a broken word or a wavering in principle. It is a lesson to kings; and if there be such a thing as royalty in these days—royalty as men once knew, or thought they knew, it—surely it belongs to the man who could quietly turn aside from a crown within his reach when he could not wear, as the brightest jewels therein, truth and honor untarnished. Verily Henri Cinq is the most royal of the Bourbons, and the line of crowned heads is redeemed in the person of their crown-less descendant. Vive la France! Vive Henri Cinq!
The crown which all felt to be virtually offered to him being refused, the conservative government, with MacMahon at its head, still remains in office, and a provisional government is voted for seven years. It is doubtful whether it will live that time. France is still open to eruption. Yet the present government deserves well of the country. It has shown itself wise, calm, and moderate. The debt was paid off, and the nation scarcely seemed to recognize the fact. How that vast sum of money was collected so rapidly and transferred to Berlin, where it came from, and how it was brought together at so short a notice, without any one apparently feeling the worse for it, is, and will probably remain, one of the mysteries of finance.
It is as impossible this year as it was last to forecast the French horoscope. The nation has accomplished wonders, and shown itself capable of everything save choosing a government which could satisfy the whole body. Probably such a government is impossible. Republicanism, in our sense of the word, is as far off from France as ever. Sooner or later some man will again possess himself of the power in France, unless, as is still not improbable, the nation invite the Count of Chambord. The Duc d'Aumale has "won golden opinions from all sorts of men," and continues to win them. He is conducting the trial of Marshal Bazaine with great keenness and discretion.