its grip on the north-east of France until, as the instalments came in, the foreign troops were proportionately drawn away eastwards.  The magnitude of these losses and burdens had already aroused cries of anguish in France.  The National Assembly at Bordeaux, on first hearing the terms, passionately confirmed the deposition of Napoleon III.; while the deputies from the ceded districts lodged a solemn protest against their expatriation (March 1).  Some of the advanced Republican deputies, refusing to acknowledge the cession of territory, resigned their seats in the Assembly.  Thus there began a schism between the Radicals, especially those of Paris, and the Assembly, which was destined to widen into an impassable gulf.  Matters were made worse by the decision of the Assembly to sit, not at the capital, but at Versailles, where it would be free from the commotions of the great city.  Thiers himself declared in favour of Versailles; there the Assembly met for the first time on March 20, 1871.

A conflict between this monarchical Assembly and the eager Radicals of Paris perhaps lay in the nature of things.  The majority of the deputies looked forward to the return of the King (whether the Comte de Chambord of the elder Bourbons, or the Comte de Paris of the House of Orleans) as soon as France should be freed from the German armies of occupation and the spectre of the Red Terror.  Some of their more impatient members openly showed their hand, and while at Bordeaux began to upbraid Thiers for his obstinate neutrality on this question.  For his part, the wise old man had early seen the need of keeping the parties in check.  On February 17 he begged them to defer questions as to the future form of government, working meanwhile solely for the present needs of France, and allowing future victory to be the meed of that party which showed itself most worthy of trust.  “Can there be any man” (he exclaimed) “who would dare learnedly to discuss the articles of the Constitution, while our prisoners are dying of misery far away, or while our people, perishing of hunger, are obliged to give their last crust to the foreign soldiers?” A similar appeal on March led to the informal truce on constitutional questions known as the Compact of Bordeaux.  It was at best an uncertain truce, certain to be broken at the first sign of activity on the Republican side.

That activity was now put forth by the “Reds” of Paris.  It would take us far too long to describe the origins of the municipal socialism which took form in the Parisian Commune of 1871.  The first seeds of that movement had been sown by its prototype of 1792-93, which summed up all the daring and vigour of the revolutionary socialism of that age.  The idea had been kept alive by the “National Workshops” of 1848, whose institution and final suppression by the young Republic of that year had been its own undoing.