Yet France flung herself with triumphant energy into the task of paying off the invaders.  At the close of June 1871, a loan for two milliards and a quarter (L90,000,000) was opened for subscription, and proved to be an immense success.  The required amount was more than doubled.  By means of the help of international banks, the first half milliard of the debt was paid off in July 1871, and Normandy was freed from the burden of German occupation.  We need not detail the dates of the successive payments.  They revealed the unsuspected vitality of France and the energy of her Government and financiers.  In March 1873, the arrangements for the payment of the last instalment were made, and in the autumn of that year the last German troops left Verdun and Belfort.  For his great services in bending all the powers of France to this great financial feat, Thiers was universally acclaimed as the Liberator of the Territory.

Yet that very same period saw him overthrown.  To read this riddle aright, we must review the outlines of French internal politics.  We have already referred to the causes that sent up a monarchical majority to the National Assembly, the schisms that weakened the action of that majority, and the peculiar position held by M. Thiers, an Orleanist in theory, but the chief magistrate of the French Republic.  No more paradoxical situation has ever existed; and its oddity was enhanced by the usually clear-cut logicality of French political thought.  Now, after the war and the Commune, the outlook was dim, even to the keenest sight.  One thing alone was clear, the duty of all citizens to defer raising any burning question until law, order, and the national finances were re-established.  It was the perception of this truth that led to the provisional truce between the parties known as the Compact of Bordeaux.  Flagrantly broken by the “Reds” of Paris in the spring of 1871, that agreement seemed doomed.  The Republic itself was in danger of perishing as it did after the socialistic extravagances of the Revolution of 1848.  But Thiers at once disappointed the monarchists by stoutly declaring that he would not abet the overthrow of the Republic:  “We found the Republic established, as a fact of which we are not the authors; but I will not destroy the form of government which I am now using to restore order. . . .  When all is settled, the country will have the liberty to choose as it pleases in what concerns its future destinies[67].”  Skilfully pointing the factions to the future as offering a final reward for their virtuous self-restraint, this masterly tactician gained time in which to heal the worst wounds dealt by the war.

[Footnote 67:  Speech of March 27, 1871.]