the monarch-designate by one hair’s-breadth from those principles of divine right against which the more liberal monarchists always protested.  “Henri V.” soon declared that he would neither accept any condition nor grant a single guarantee as to the character of his future rule.  Above all, he declared that he would never give up the white flag of the ancien regime.  In his eyes the tricolour, which, shortly after the fall of the Bastille, Louis XVI. had recognised as the flag of France, represented the spirit of the Great Revolution, and for that great event he had the deepest loathing.  As if still further to ruin his cause, the Count announced his intention of striving with all his might for the restoration of the Temporal Power of the Pope.  It is said that the able Bishop of Orleans, Mgr.  Dupanloup, on reading one of the letters by which the Comte de Chambord nailed the white flag to the mast, was driven to exclaim, “There!  That makes the Republic!  Poor France!  All is lost.”

Thus the attempts at fusion of the two monarchical parties had only served to expose the weaknesses of their position and to warn France of the probable results of a monarchical restoration.  That the country had well learnt the lesson appeared in the bye-elections, which in nearly every case went in favour of Republican candidates.  Another event that happened early in 1873 further served to justify Thiers’ contention that the Republic was the only possible form of government.  On January 9, Napoleon III. died of the internal disease which for seven years past had been undermining his strength.  His son, the Prince Imperial, was at present far too young to figure as a claimant to the throne.

It is also an open secret that Bismarck worked hard to prevent all possibility of a royalist Restoration; and when the German ambassador at Paris, Count Arnim, opposed his wishes in this matter, he procured his recall and subjected him to a State prosecution.  In fact, Bismarck believed that under a Republic France would be powerless in war, and, further, that she could never form that alliance with Russia which was the bugbear of his later days.  A Russian diplomatist once told the Duc de Broglie that the kind of Republic which Bismarck wanted to see in France was “une Republique dissolvante.”

Everything therefore concurred to postpone the monarchical question, and to prolong the informal truce which Thiers had been the first to bring about.  Accordingly, in the month of November, the Assembly extended the Presidency of Marshal MacMahon to seven years—­a period therefore known as the Septennate.