The matter of Army Reform was equally pressing.  Here, again, Thiers had the ground cleared before him by a great overturn, like that which enabled Bonaparte in his day to remodel France, and the builders of Modern Prussia—­Stein, Scharnhorst, and Hardenberg—­to build up their State from its ruins.  In particular, the inefficiency of the National Guards and of the Garde Mobile made it easy to reconstruct the French Army on the system of universal conscription in a regular army, the efficiency of which Prussia had so startlingly displayed in the campaigns of Koeniggraetz (Sadowa) and Sedan.  Thiers, however, had no belief in a short service system with its result of a huge force of imperfectly trained troops:  he clung to the old professional army; and when that was shown to be inadequate to the needs of the new age, he pleaded that the period of compulsory service should be, not three, but five years.  On the Assembly demurring to the expense and vital strain for the people which this implied, he declared with passionate emphasis that he would resign unless the five years were voted.  They were voted (June 10, 1872).  At the same time, the exemptions, so numerous during the Second Empire, were curtailed and the right of buying a substitute was swept away.  After five years’ service with the active army were to come four years with the reserve of the active army, followed by further terms in the territorial army.  The favour of one year’s service instead of five was to be accorded in certain well-defined cases, as, for instance, to those who had distinguished themselves at the Lycees, or highest grade public schools.  Such was the law which was published on July 27, 1872[70].

[Footnote 70:  Hanotaux, op. cit. pp. 452-465.]

The sight of a nation taking on itself this heavy blood-tax (heavier than that of Germany, where the time of service with the colours was only for three years) aroused universal surprise, which beyond the Rhine took the form of suspicion that France was planning a war of revenge.  That feeling grew in intensity in military circles in Berlin three years later, as the sequel will show.  Undaunted by the thinly-veiled threats that came from Germany, France proceeded with the tasks of paying off her conquerors and reorganising her own forces; so that Thiers on his retirement from office could proudly point to the recovery of French credit and prestige after an unexampled overthrow.

In feverish haste, the monarchical majority of the National Assembly appointed Marshal MacMahon to the Presidency (May 24, 1873).  They soon found out, however, the impossibility of founding a monarchy.  The Comte de Paris, in whom the hopes of the Orleanists centred, went to the extreme of self-sacrifice, by visiting the Comte de Chambord, the Legitimist “King” of France, and recognising the validity of his claims to the throne.  But this amiable pliability, while angering very many of the Orleanists, failed to move