however, the case was very different.  France was no longer a lethargic mass, dominated solely by the eager brain of Paris.  The whole country thrilled with political life.  For the time, the provinces held the directing power, which had been necessarily removed from the capital; and—­most powerful motive of all—­they looked on the Parisian experiment as gross treason to la patrie, while she lay at the feet of the Germans.  Thus, the very motives which for a space lent such prestige and power to the Communistic Jacobins of 1793 told against their imitators in 1871.

The inmost details of their attempt will perhaps never be fully known; for too many of the actors died under the ruins of the building they had so heedlessly reared.  Nevertheless, it is clear that the Commune was far from being the causeless outburst that it has often been represented.  In part it resulted from the determination of the capital to free herself from the control of the “rurals” who dominated the National Assembly; and in that respect it foreshadowed, however crudely, what will probably be the political future of all great States, wherein the urban population promises altogether to outweigh and control that of the country.  Further, it should be remembered that the experimenters of 1871 believed the Assembly to have betrayed the cause of France by ceding her eastern districts, and to be on the point of handing over the Republic to the Monarchists.  A fit of hysteria, or hypochondria, brought on by the exhausting siege and by exasperation at the triumphal entry of the Germans, added the touch of fury which enabled the Radicals of Paris to challenge the national authorities and thereafter to persist in their defiance with French logicality and ardour.

France, on the other hand, looked on the Communist movement at Paris and in the southern towns as treason to the cause of national unity, when there was the utmost need of concord.  Thus on both sides there were deplorable misunderstandings.  In ordinary times they might have been cleared away by frank explanations between the more moderate leaders; but the feverish state of the public mind forbade all thoughts of compromise, and the very weakness brought on by the war sharpened the fit of delirium which will render the spring months of the year 1871 for ever memorable even in the thrilling annals of Paris.

CHAPTER V

THE FOUNDING OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC (continued)

The seemingly suicidal energy shown in the civil strifes at Paris served still further to depress the fortunes of France.  On the very day when the Versailles troops entered the walls of Paris, Thiers and Favre signed the treaty of peace at Frankfurt.  The terms were substantially those agreed on in the preliminaries of February, but the terms of payment of the indemnity were harder than before.  Resistance was hopeless.  In truth, the Iron Chancellor had recently used very