This is how a newspaper writer speaks—­and justly—­of Gambetta’s government:—­

“From the moment when he dropped, tired out with his journey by balloon, into his chair in the archiepiscopal palace at Tours, and announced that he was invested with full powers to defend the country, no one throughout France seriously disputed his authority.  His colleagues became his clerks.  The treasury was empty, but he re-filled it.  The arsenal was half empty, but in six weeks one great army, and almost two, were supplied with artillery, horses, gunners, and breech-loaders.  The Lyons Reds had been told that they were wicked fools, and Communists and Anarchists ripe for revolt in Toulouse, Lyons, and Marseilles had been put down.  The respectables everywhere rose at his summons, anarchy and military disobedience quailed.”

The fortunes of war forced Gambetta and his Government from the banks of the Loire to Bordeaux.  There, at the close of January, 1871, Jules Favre arrived from the Central Committee in Paris to announce, with shame and grief, that resistance was over:  Paris had capitulated to the Prussians; and it only remained to elect a General Assembly which should create a regular government empowered to make peace with the enemy.

For a few hours that night the fate of France hung trembling in the scales.  Thiers was in Bordeaux.  He was known to think that France could only save what was left by accepting the armistice.  Gambetta was known to be for No Surrender! Which should prevail?  Would the dictator lay aside his power without a struggle?

Gambetta rose to the occasion during the night; but here the histories of Thiers and Gambetta run together; therefore, before I tell of what happened the next day, let me say a few words about the personal history of Leon Gambetta.  He was only thirty-three years old at this time, having been born in 1838, when Thiers was forty-one years of age.

Gambetta’s birthplace was Cahors, that city in the South of France stigmatized by Dante as the abode of usurers and scoundrels.  His family was Italian and came from Genoa, but he was born a Frenchman, though his Italian origin, temperament, and complexion were constantly cast up against him.  In his infancy he had been intended for the priesthood, and was sent, when seven years old, to some place where he was to be educated and trained for it.  He soon wrote to his father that he was so miserable that if he were not taken away he would put out one of his eyes, which would disqualify him for the priestly calling.  His father took no notice of the childish threat, and Gambetta actually plucked out one of his own eyes.