Europe, over whose destinies the territorial changes they brought about have had an influence which it would be difficult to exaggerate.

M. Hanotaux is, we think, correct in the judgement he passes upon the resolution of Thiers to undertake the peace negotiations himself rather than to submit the question as far as possible to the Conference of London. That Germany would have consented, at first, to any such proceeding is highly improbable, but it is less certain that the Conference would have refused to entertain it. Neither England, Italy, nor Austria desired to see France dismembered, and the time was not far distant when the Russian Chancellor was to discern in the prodigious expansion of Germany a menace to his own country. An adroit diplomatist, even though he might not have been another Talleyrand, would have found ample opportunities for seriously impeding the designs of the German military party. It might have been too much for France to hope that she would have emerged with as little injury to her amour propre as she did from the Congress of Vienna, but we think it not improbable that she might have found herself less cruelly mutilated than she was by the Treaty of Frankfort. It is always fascinating, but perhaps rarely profitable, to speculate on the possibilities of history, but the reiterated admissions of the victor, even in the restricted form in which they have reached us, and the knowledge we now possess of the divergent views entertained even in the entourage of the German Emperor as to the demands of the military party, compel us to the conclusion that France would have been better served by an appeal to the conscience of Europe. Neither of the negotiators on her side was fitted either by training or natural gifts to conduct a delicate and complicated discussion of the kind on which they were about to enter. Thiers, throughout his long career, had never shone as a diplomatist. His eloquence, his energy, and his resource made him a great parliamentary tactician, and his courage in maintaining his convictions in the face of hostile majorities had given him a strong hold on the imagination of his countrymen. The two years whose history we are considering showed him to be a great statesman; but the very qualities which distinguished him were qualities which do not distinguish the great diplomatist. He lacked those powers of self-restraint and close observation of minute. facts which go further in making an adroit negotiator than the width of view and power of foresight which make the

statesman. When he determined to face Bismarck he made a fatal error; his eloquence might have affected a Congress -at times it seems to have even drawn 'iron tears down Pluto's cheek'-but the Chancellor could always extenuate his own responsibility by referring to the constant and inexorable pressure he was subjected to from Berlin; consequently, what little weight eloquence might have with so formidable an interlocutor, it had little weight in the issue. The title of Thiers to the eternal gratitude of his country is due to the manner in which he carried out the peace terms and freed France from the invaders. It must also be remembered that in this ruinous game he held no cards apart from external help, which, under the circumstances, was barely imaginable. France had nothing solid wherewith to menace the victor. All her regular armies were in German prisons, and the hasty levies which had been set on foot by Gambetta's energy had all suffered defeat. Bourbaki's force had been disarmed in neutral territory. Having once determined to conclude the war almost at any cost, Thiers certainly deserves all the credit he obtained for the manner in which affairs were conducted, and he was, on the whole, well served by his agents. The selection by Thiers of Jules Favre as his colleague at the beginning of negotiations, and finally as that of M. Pouyer-Quertier at Frankfort, remains, however, a mystery for posterity. Eloquence and conviction Favre certainly had in large measure, his power over juries and great assemblies of men was unequalled, but anyone more unfitted for diplomatic business it would have been impossible to select. He had the unhappy trick of coining sentences which have only served to advertise his political ineptitude. No grandiloquent phrasemonger has ever been more cruelly punished by hard facts than the author of the words 'ni un pouce de notre territoire, ni une pierre de nos forteresses,' when he became a signatory of the Frankfort Treaty. He was hopeless as a diplomatist. He trembled and he wept ' when he should have remained calm and held his ground.' Eloquence alone and staunch opposition to the Empire explain his original position; and having once been Minister for Foreign Affairs, and in that capacity a negotiator at the first, Thiers kept him in that office, as he was acquainted with the course of affairs. His presence was nothing but a weakness for his own side, and only served to point Napoleon's moral that gentlemen of the long robe should never be employed in the regions of high policy. The greater part of the negotiations after the preliminaries were conducted

for France by M. de Gontaut-Biron at Berlin, and by M. de St. Vallier at the German headquarters at Nancy. The story of these missions has been fully told in the two volumes cited at the beginning of this article, and we are inclined to think that the admirable tact and address of M. de St. Vallier had even more to do with the result than is brought out by M. Hanotaux, and whatever credit is due to him must be shared by General von Manteuffel.

If it be admitted that Thiers showed a lack of the diplomatic instinct in not availing himself, as he might have done, of the London Congress, his tenacity and obstinacy in the subsequent prolonged contest were heroic.

Bismarck, like a good bargainer, began by asking for a good deal more than he expected to obtain. He demanded all Alsace, including Belfort, the greater part of the Department of the Moselle, including Metz and Thionville, and an indemnity of 6,000,000,000 francs. It must be remembered that the Germans were in possession of the forts round Paris, and had turned the guns of Mt. Valérien on the city. The prolongation of the armistice gave Thiers only five days to arrange the preliminaries. This prolongation he obtained in his first interview, and in the third and fourth he succeeded in reducing the indemnity by a milliard of francs, and in substituting the entry of the German army into a restricted portion of Paris for the cession of Belfort. The preliminaries were signed after a further prolongation of the armistice, and the subsequent negotiations were transferred to Brussels. The cession of Metz had been practically admitted by Thiers early in the day as a term of the final Treaty, whatever shape that instrument might assume in the end, and all hope of avoiding this most grievous blow to France was thus eliminated. A Commission of fifteen had been appointed by the Chamber to supervise the negotiations, and M. Hanotaux believes that a reference to them of the Metz question would have proved a 'precious resource.' This seems to us very doubtful. The time was short, and such a reference might only have led to much recrimination and little helpful counsel. The real fact was that Thiers was determined upon peace, and so was the Assembly. had failed to adopt the only means possible for putting pressure upon Germany, relying upon his own capacity to urge his country's case. The full extent of German demands was not known to him until his first interview with Bismarck. He had all along nourished the hope that the demand for Metz, if preferred, would not be

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pressed, relying on the line taken by Bismarck during the negotiations of the previous autumn. But the latter very reasonably pointed out that what had been possible in November was not possible in February. As things now were, France could only retain Belfort by permitting the entry of a large body of the German troops into Paris. The signature of the preliminaries of peace, following on their acceptance by the Assembly, was to be the signal for their evacuation of the capital. The German statesman, in fact, had the game in his own hands, not merely owing to success in war, but also because he was able to make use of one concession by his opponents to exact another. Any prolongation of the German occupation of Paris might have led to serious results in the existing condition of the city. The Assembly, already pledged to peace, knew this, and were not likely to haggle over terms. We fail to see how the reference of the question of Metz to the Commission would have helped France out of this quandary. Thiers, indeed, was gravely hampered by the political difficulties in France herself. The insurrection broke out in Paris only a few days after the signature of the Preliminaries, and the temper of that city with prospects of a Jacobin régime in France were causes which greatly strengthened Bismarck's determination to exact all the pledges for the future security of his own country that he could. The restoration of the Empire might have saved France from her supreme agony at one time, but not in the spring of 1871, when, indeed, it had become impossible, and on March 1 the Assembly, by a formal vote, ratified the deposition of the Emperor and his dynasty.

In order to understand how grievously the incidents of the Commune reacted on the interests of France, we have only to compare the Preliminaries with the final text of the Frankfort Treaty. By the Preliminaries the departments in the neighbourhood of Paris and the forts round that city were to be evacuated so soon as the first two milliards of the indemnity were paid over; by the Treaty this evacuation was postponed until the third milliard was paid or until 'order was re-established in France,' a clause which left the matter in reality at the mercy of the German military authorities. Article 8 of the Treaty marks an extraordinary advance in severity over the Preliminaries: if the French Government proved behindhand in executing its obligations to maintain the German troops, the latter were to be at liberty to levy requisitions in money and kind on the

localities of which they were in occupation, and even in others outside their limits. The method of payment of the indemnity was limited to the precious metals; notes of the Bank of France were excluded. This extraordinarily rigorous provision was inserted in the Treaty but was absent from the Preliminaries. It was undoubtedly so inserted, not for financial reasons, but as a lever for political pressure on France. The Treaty also limited the number of men in the garrison of Paris, and confined the French army to the left bank of the Loire until the Germans should consider order re-established' or until a milliard and a half was paid over. The Treaty of Frankfort was signed on May 10, 1871, and the fort of Issy had fallen into the hands of the Government troops the day before. M. Hanotaux rightly points out that France suffered herein from the same fatality which had pursued her throughout the war. The exaggerated exactions of the Treaty and certain modifications of the territory around Belfort to the advantage of Germany were clearly to be traced to the distrust and alarm excited in the German Government by the spirit shown in Paris and its menace for the future. The Commune collapsed a day too late to help the French negotiators.

This uncertainty as to the political destiny of the French nation was always present to the minds of German statesmen, and seriously hampered the efforts of French diplomacy to hasten the evacuation of the country. The rapidity with which it was carried out in the end is the highest tribute to the capacity of Thiers and the courage and ingenuity with which he met the difficulties that surrounded him. How great those difficulties were at times may be gathered from the records of M. de St. Vallier's mission at Nancy and that of M. de Gontaut-Biron at Berlin. Every extravagance in French politics had its echo in the exigencies of the German military authorities, yet French territory was liberated from the foreigner two years earlier than the date specified by the Treaty of Frankfort. This was only rendered possible by the personal authority of the President and the confidence his presence at the head of affairs secured, not only among his own countrymen, but also in Europe at large. Financiers and investors generally would not so readily have advanced their money had not they seen Thiers repressing disorder and reorganising the administration. And further, it is indisputable that this personal element in the situation played a large part in allaying the suspicions of Berlin.