In 1868 he was a young lawyer in Paris; but his eloquence and ability were known only at the Cafe Procope to a circle of admiring fellow-Bohemians.  On All Saints Day, 1868, the Press, presuming on the recent relaxation of personal government by the emperor, applauded the crowds who went to cover with funeral wreaths the grave of Baudin at Pere la Chaise.  Baudin had been the first man killed on Dec. 2, 1851, when offering resistance to the coup d’etat. The Press was prosecuted for its utterances on this occasion.  Gambetta defended one of the journals.  Being an advocate, he could say what he pleased without danger of prosecution, and all Paris rang with the bitterness of his attack upon the Empire.  From that moment he was a power in France.  In person he was dark, short, stout, and somewhat vulgar, nor was there any social polish in his manners.

Not long after his great speech in defence of the Press, in the matter of Baudin, Gambetta was elected to the Chamber by the working-men of Belleville, and at the same time by Marseilles.  He entered the Chamber as one wholly irreconcilable with the Empire or the emperor.  His eloquence was heart-stirring, and commanded attention even from his adversaries.

When, on Sept. 4, 1870, the downfall of the Empire was proclaimed, Gambetta was made a member of the Council of Defence, and became Minister of the Interior.  He remained in Paris until after the siege had begun; but he burned to be where he could act, and obtained the consent of his colleagues to go forth by balloon and try to stir up a warlike spirit in the Provinces.  He was made Minister of War in addition to being Minister of the Interior.  From Nov. 1, 1870, to Jan. 30, 1871, his efforts were almost superhuman; and but for Bazaine’s surrender at Metz, they might have been successful.

Gambetta raised two armies,—­one under General Aurelles des Paladines and General Chanzy; the other under Bourbaki and Garibaldi.  The first was the Army of the Loire, the second of the Jura.

When the plan of co-operation with Bazaine’s one hundred and seventy-five thousand well-trained troops had failed, and the Army of the Loire had been repulsed at Orleans, Gambetta with his Provisional Government moved to Bordeaux.  Thither came Thiers, returned from his roving embassy,—­a mission of peace whose purpose had been defeated by the warlike movements of Gambetta’s armies.

Gambetta in the early days of his dictatorship wrote to Jules Favre:  “France must not entertain one thought of peace.”  He sincerely believed any effort at negotiation with the Prussians an acknowledgment of weakness, and he fondly fancied that a little more time and experience would turn his raw recruits into armies capable of driving back the Prussians, when the experienced generals and soldiers of France had failed.

And now we have reached that terrible hour when news was received at Bordeaux that all Gambetta’s efforts had been useless; that Paris had consented to an armistice; that an Assembly was to be elected, a National Government to be formed; and that to resist these things or to persist longer in fighting the Prussians would be to provoke civil war.