LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE DUC D'AUDIFFRET-PASQUIER (after the painting by Chaplain)

Frontispiece

HENRI WALLON (after the painting by Bastien Lepage). To face p. 161

LOUIS BUFFET (after the painting by Monchablon) ·

367

HISTORY OF

CONTEMPORARY FRANCE

CHAPTER I

THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY AND UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE I. Relative position of political parties at the fall of the first Broglie Cabinet. -Failure of the Goulard combination.-Formation of the CisseyFourtou Cabinet, 12th May, 1874.-The Bonapartist Party.-Parliamentary Electorate, Municipal Electorate; first Reading of the Bill.— Universal Suffrage.-Union of the Centres.

II. The Bonapartist danger.-The Lefts accept the Constituent Power.Second Reading of the Municipal Electorate Bill.-Constitutional proposals. First Republican Victory; urgency voted on the CasimirPérier proposal.-First Reading of the Municipal Organisation Bill. III. The Comte de Chambord's Manifesto, 2nd July, 1874.-The Lucien Brun Interpellation.-The Cissey Cabinet beaten.-Message from the Marshal, 9th July, 1874.

IV. Ministerial Constitutional Programme.-Bill of the Committee of Thirty. -The Casimir-Perier motion discussed and rejected.-Adjournment of the Constitutional Debate.-The state of siege maintained.--The Assembly adjourns from the 5th August to the 30th November, 1874.

I

THA HREE years had passed since the National Assembly first met at Bordeaux. It had concluded peace with Germany; it had repressed a formidable insurrection. It had then assumed the constituent power; but it had failed to give a Constitution to the country.

The Right Majority was rent between three monarchical parties. These divisions favoured the Republic, which existed in fact.

On the 24th May, 1873, the Right had overthrown M. Thiers, believing him to be the principal obstacle to the restoration of the Dynasty.

A year later, on the 16th May, 1874, the Duc de Broglie was set aside in his turn, and the National Assembly, powerless and disorganised, found itself face to face with the country.

M. Thiers' Government had been but a provisional dictatorship, specially entrusted with the liquidation of the results of the war.

Situation of

after the fall

Cabinet.

The Cabinet over which the Duc de Broglie the parties presided had received from the Right a tacit of the Broglie mandate to bring about a fusion between the two Royalist parties and a conditional restoration of the Bourbon dynasty. But the Comte de Chambord, by his letter dated 27th October, 1873, had ruined his own chances and destroyed the hopes of the party of Parliamentary Monarchy; the votes of his partisans had contributed to the downfall of the Cabinet which represented that system.

In fact, the majority in the Assembly was now without a system, or, to speak more accurately, there was now no majority in the Assembly. The Duc de Broglie had been beaten by a coalition which comprised the Extreme Right, the Bonapartists and some Republicans, that is: all the parties which, either in the name of Divine Right, or in the name of Popular Right, refused to admit that the Assembly had the power of constitution. The Assembly was therefore driven to have recourse to the country, and to that Universal Suffrage by which it had been elected.

This was clearly explained by M. Thiers, with his habitual lucidity and logical precision, in a speech uttered on the 24th May, 1874. "Let us hope that, after recent experiences, the Assembly will accept, like ourselves, the