itself. Upon the Chief of the
Executive was conferred the title of President of the French Republic;
and it was stipulated that this official should thereafter be
responsible to the Assembly, and presumably removable by it. A
quasi-republic, with a crude parliamentary system of government,
thereafter existed _de facto_; but it had as yet absolutely no
constitutional basis.

[Footnote 453: In March the Assembly had
transferred its sittings from Bordeaux to
Versailles.]

[Footnote 454: Duguit et Monnier, Les
Constitutions, 315-316; Anderson, Constitutions,
604-606.]

*328. Failure of the Monarchist Programmes.*--This anomalous condition
of things lasted many months, during the course of which Thiers and
the Assembly served the nation admirably through the promotion of its
recovery from the ravages of war. More and more Thiers, who had begun
as a constitutional monarchist, came to believe in republicanism as
the style of government which would divide the French people least,
and late in 1872 he put himself unqualifiedly among the adherents of
the republican programme. Thereupon the monarchists, united for the
moment in the conviction that for the good of their several causes
Thiers must be deposed from his position of influence, brought about
in the Assembly a majority vote in opposition to him, and so induced
his resignation, May 24, 1873.[455] The opponents of republicanism now
felt that the hour had come for the termination of a governmental
regime which had by them been regarded all the while as purely (p. 304)
provisional. The monarchist Marshal MacMahon was made President, a
coalition ministry of monarchists under the Orleanist Duke of Broglie
was formed, and republicanism in press and politics was put under the
ban. Between the Legitimists and the Orleanists there was worked out
an ingenious compromise whereby the Bourbon Count of Chambord was to
be made king under the title of Henry V. and, he having no heirs, the
Orleanist Count of Paris was to be recognized as his successor. The
whole project was brought to naught, however, by the persistent
refusal of the Count of Chambord to give up the white flag, which for
centuries had been the standard of the Bourbon house. The Orleanists
held out for the tricolor; and thus, on what would appear to most
people a question of distinctly minor consequence,